Amazon US prices used to be among the cheapest in the world. Leading up to and during the pandemic, I would do much of my shopping on Amazon US, which ships to Hong Kong for free without Prime and is 100% tax-free. Slowly over the past decade, though, their
Officially, Hong Kong's nominal GDP was US$424 billion in 2025 versus Shenzhen's US$557 billion. I assert that these numbers severally understate the relative value produced by Shenzhen vs Hong Kong in the same way comparing the USA's nominal GDP to China'
“The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.” -William Gibson I have an infant son and have been taking spatial photos and video of him since his birth (and previously during the pregnancy) so that I can view them on Apple Vision Pro. It's
I was taking a Pony AI robotaxi around Shenzhen this evening with my dad. Until the post month, I'd only take a Pony AI robotaxi to experience the technology or demonstrate it to visitors. The reason is that, up until recently, there weren't really enough vehicles
Another article about another American leaving China. This one is a weird one though. But from 2023 — a time of widespread pressures on local government finances following three years of virus restrictions and a property slowdown — he was asked instead to pay closer to market rent. Given that his visa
I've always wondered why Chinese people living in mainland China seem so much less propagandized than Americans. I think I finally found a possible answer while listening to historian Darryl Cooper interviewed by Tucker Carlson. ...go back to the internal migrations in the 20th century after the Second
Adopted from a reply to Erik Voorhees and fluidvoice.btc's discussion on X re protectionism with regard to immigration: Nothing is ever fair in life or markets, but I respectfully submit that if a nation allows lots of immigration for one class of people or category of jobs
I just sat my 3 month old son down on my leg for his post midnight feed burping. Deep in milk food coma, I tilted him forward and gently patting him on the back with a cupped hand until I heard that satisfying sound of a baby's burp.
There's a lot of unspoken assumptions in societies about how things work. In democracies, at least the US one in which I was raised, there was a strongly held belief that somehow voting picks the best people for the job. Even as early as middle school, it was
The Coldcard hack shows how hard it can be to run a bitcoin-only business. While building the hardware wallet itself might not be that expensive, it is a one-off cost. The associated ongoing software updates, paying for the updates to be professionally audited and running a credible bug
A Chinese friend was telling me today that many of his friends felt that the economy today was very unfair. Today isn't like the 1990s in China where everyone was equally poor and "just" working really hard was a receipe for success they say. It sounds
After listening to The Knowledge Project's episode on John D. Rockefeller over the past few days, I started reading more about him online. I knew Rockefeller's Standard Oil was big, but didn't know that it was so big that it was selling kerosene in