Who Needs Halloween When You Have The Real Life Horror Of China?

Yeah, so there’s a new post up at 123ish.com, about the current situation with Hong Kong’s protests and China. It came onto our radar when it involved the gaming community via the Hearthstone fiasco, when a tournament player got suspended for making a little demonstration in support of Hong Kong’s struggle for liberation from China.

I went into covering that story intending it to be light-hearted satire, poking a jab at Blizzard Entertainment and making a few swipes at dictator Xi Jinping and his Winnie the Pooh resemblance. But once I started reading up on what the hell is really going on in China, the story got too grim. Be advised, that link goes to some stomach-churning stark reality. Hong Kong is protesting because it doesn’t want to be subject to Chinese control. After seeing just a taste of what’s going on there, can anyone blame them?

At the very least, China’s torture of Falun Gong members amounts to a modern-day Inquisition, except even Torquemada never got sadistic enough to harvest organs from subjects while they were still alive. The treatment of everybody else in China isn’t exactly winning any human rights pageants either. The continued censorship of most of the world by China through corporate proxies is added salt in the wound. We are all living under China’s bootheel already, whether we know it or not.

Xi Jinping is a modern-day Hitler, and in some ways he’s even worse. This is no laughing matter. China must be stopped now. Why is the rest of the world turning a blind eye?

Faster than I could post, new stories of horrors and atrocities are coming out of China by the day. Read well, because we can do something about China now, or we can all look forward to a “re-education camp” tomorrow.

I wasn’t taking boycotts against Blizzard and other companies seriously before. But now, I’m going to have to at least think it over. If the price of doing business in China is kowtowing to this savage, monstrous regime, then it is not worth it.

UPDATE: A Redditor explains the culture of fear inside mainland China. He, too, points out “Chinese government may be the most powerful totalitarian regime in human history.” and “The West has tolerated CCP for too long.”

UPDATE: NGO Human Rights Watch now declares China “a global threat to human rights.” HRW executive director Kenneth Roth states: “Beijing has long suppressed domestic critics. Now the Chinese government is trying to extend that censorship to the rest of the world. To protect everyone’s future, governments need to act together to resist Beijing’s assault on the international human rights system.”

 

Let’s Talk About Terpenes…

Let me give you one word for your future career, young people. (*Leans in with portentous whisper*): Terpenes.

Terpenes are going to be huge, folks. Have you accepted terpenes into your heart as your lord and savior? Over at my DabConnection gig, I’ve been talkin’ some serious terpene turkey. I started out trying to illuminate this curious corner of cannabis chemistry because I see a lot of questions about them, and not much answers. I ended up falling into a research rabbit hole and starting writing up encyclopedia-type entries on the top terpenes in cannabis. Meet some of nature’s most whimsical organic compounds, after the jump.

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New at 123ish: My Favorite Magic: the Gathering Commanders

Yes, it’s time once again for grandpa geek to neckbeard about my top MTG Commander EDH generals. These are the staples, the ones I rebuild and replay again and again, because they’re worth the time and trouble. I see players asking in the forums all the time, “What EDH deck should I build next?” Well, this is my attempt to answer that question with a list of those I propose will appeal to the widest possible base, regardless of budget, skill, or experience.

It’s also a LONG post, so bring your coffee.

UPDATE: But wait, there’s more! I later wrote “How to Enjoy Magic : The Gathering on a Poverty Budget,” full of thrifty tips for the defiantly budget hobbyist.

 

On the Beauty of Questions

Once a year over at my 366 Weird Movies reviewing gig, I turn in one philosophical rant about the nature of weirdness in art. The new one is a little bit of Zen navel-picking speculation I call “Questions Are Beautiful.” It was provoked by a comment somebody made on my review of Cube (1997), saying an analysis of the ontological mystery would make good meat for an essay, so I green-lighted myself to accept the challenge.

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