No Strings Attached?
Hey peeps!
Welcome to #25 of WTFact. I just realized I’ve been writing these for a whole year now. Wow. Time flies as fast as these emails running through the “series of tubes.”
I can only hope anyone unfortunate enough to read these actually extracts some value from them!
Now onto the Facts.
From J.J.’s Vault
I love origin stories. Especially ones about terrible people starting terrible movements that affect our terribly terrific lives. Screw them.
I was digging around some statistics last week and found 2 charts that are about completely different topics—vaccination rates and voting—yet they look the same. Yikes.
I finally hit 10,000 followers on Medium. It puts me somewhere in the top 500 writers on the huge platform. That’s awesome. If you’re one of those 10,000—thank you so much! I give advice on how to achieve these results yourself if you’re interested.
I did a deep dive look at the whole ‘Quality over quantity’ debate. In my view, the mantra is false.
I also collected 90 amazing ‘hooks’ (opening lines) of viral articles on Medium to learn what gave them a special edge. If you’re a writer you might want to check it out.
Aaaaand I curated a bunch of great books about improving your writing, as you can never really stop getting better in an artform (if you can call my scribbles such a thing).
Lastly, a thank you to my Gremlin.
Lastly last, a recent piece also went viral yesterday on Medium—which is fandamntastic! I mentioned it previously—5 famous historical facts that are completely false.
(Super thanks if you helped upvote/share/threw your screen across the room after reading it!)
In the News
Someone just slapped the French president. Because of course they did. Merde!
Caffeine consumption apparently temporarily reduces our brain’s grey matter—but it may not have an effect on our overall brain health. Since I’m about to slam another frappa lappa cappa cino, I choose to interpret that as a good thing.
The first effective weightloss drug for diabetes was just approved in the US. Studies showed weightloss in obese partipants ranged from 15% all the way to 30%. That’s nuts. Hopefully the side effects are minimal. I’m sure my love life also wouldn’t mind a few doses here and there as well.
Google is on a mission to make their searches appear way more like conversations in the future. While I’m extremely curious and in need of vocal conversation during this lockdown, it may have drastic effects on SEO for the writers out there.
Deutsche bank went against the grain this week and strongly warned the world about potentially massive inflation. I’ve been wondering about this ever since the pandemic stimulus packages started flowing in around the world. Where’s the massive inflation from the massive increase in the money supply? I’ll definitely be exploring this subject more in the near future. But in the meantime—hey Bitcoin!
From J.J.’s Life
We’ve entered into week 3 of quasi-lockdown here in Taiwan. Japan’s started sending AZ vaccines to Taiwan, which is simply amazing.
It’s also a slightly humorous caveat: They don’t want to use any of them in Japan ‘cuz of the bad side effects of AZ. They’re also suspected of giving a collective middle finger to the CCP by doing so, given their own troubles with them.
A billionaire here, the one that makes all the chips in your phones—Terry Guo—is also trying to procure about 5 million vaccines for us too. That’s cool!
Caveat: He wants to run for president (again).
And the US is now saying they’re going to send over vaccines too. Fantastic.
Caveat: They’re trying to make Taiwan the Isreal of Asia—which considering all of the flight incursions from China—I counted 5 this morning alone—I’m more than happy to see the support.
Nothing comes with no strings attached in the modern world.
I’m surprised even string isn’t sold with accompanied commitments these days.
Thanks everyone!
Please feel free to click the heart, the share, the comment, or the signup button if you haven’t done so and don’t yet hate me. (Don’t worry, give it a bit of time.)
J.J. Pryor
PS. the artwork is from an artist named Anton Gudim. Funny guy.
Keep on making those chips. We need your country's manufacturing capability to produce chips for our toys. We in the United States of Idiots have a record of abandoning our "friends" when they are no longer of any use to us. See Vietnam. Iraq, and Afganistan as current examples. I'm not saying we should have been in any of those countries, to begin with, but we did abandon them when it suited our political needs.
Since Taiwan has no oil, rare earth minerals, or many "white" people if you lose your edge in chip design and manufacture you will quickly see no more of Uncle Sam. After all, we can't risk our economic ties to China over a small island of no strategic importance. Think Hong Kong.
Have a thoughtful day.