In a story that topped headlines and internet chatter in China last week, Dalian Polytechnic University in China’s northern Liaoning province sparked outrage by expelling a 21-year-old female student for appearing in videos posted nearly seven months ago to the Telegram account of a visiting Ukrainian esports player. Videos of the student in the visitor’s hotel room showed nothing sexually explicit, and it was unclear why the videos had become an issue now, but the university responded vehemently with a public statement naming the student and accusing her of “improper association with foreigners” (与外国人不当交往) that had “damaged national dignity and the school’s reputation” (有损国格、校誉).

Activists across Taiwan are pushing for the expulsion of dozens of ‘pro-Beijing’ legislators, leading to uproar

Posting a piefed link on Mastodon used to result in a "preview box" (not sure of the right term) with:

• a thumbnail of the first image in the post
• the post title
• the first line of the post

E.g. https://ohai.social/@klu9/114892796205984469

Now new posts I make on Mastodon with Piefed links give a preview box that only shows "log in to Piefed". (But the earlier posts on Mastodon still show the full preview box.)

I don't know if this is a result of a Piefed change or a Mastodon change. (Or if maybe it's a different PieFed post type? 'Discussion' vs 'Image' vs 'Link' etc)

Any way to make Mastodon+Piefed show the proper preview box?

A man who used an onboard emergency hammer to smash a hole in the window of a stalled train to relieve the suffering of his fellow passengers in a sweltering carriage has become an unlikely and memeworthy hero. His small act of rebellion—in defiance of a perspiring train attendant who half-heartedly attempted to stop him—has become a timely metaphor for other forms of altruistically motivated disobedience.

The flow of goods in Manzhouli, China’s main border crossing with Russia, underscores increasingly close ties between the two countries, complicating China’s relationship with Europe.

https://archive.is/rS9Cg

AstraZeneca, Pfizer and other multinational drug companies have spent a record amount on medicines developed by Chinese biotechs this year

AstraZeneca has signed the most licensing deals with Chinese biotechs, at least $13.6bn of licensing deals with five companies so far this year

US pharmaceutical companies AbbVie, Merck, Pfizer and Regeneron also signed multibillion-dollar licensing deals in the first half of 2025.

Pfizer signed the biggest Chinese licensing deal this year, a $6bn agreement with 3Sbio to develop a cancer drug

All this [pharmaceutical] money has gone into China because China has invested in their industry while the US government has not,” Axelsen said.

At the moment, the iQiyi series King of Stand Up Comedy mentioned in the article is still available.

(Video doesn't play in Firefox, use a Chromium-based browser. For free, 6-minute samples only; VIP membership required to view full episodes.)

• Series 1
• Series 2

My Mandarin is terrible so I had to try to understand it by the English subtitles. After the 20th time the crowd laughed without me having the slightest clue why, I gave up.

Geng Jun’s “Bel Ami” (“Piaoliang pengyou”) is a queer film from the People’s Republic of China that will likely never see the light of cinema projectors in its home country. The film has caused quite a stir internationally. It was nominated in numerous categories at the prestigious Golden Horse Awards in Taipei and won three of the most important prizes: Best Editing: Chen Hoping, Best Cinematography: Wang Weihua, and, above all, Best Actor: Zhang Zhiyong.

Geng Jun’s “Bel Ami” (“Piaoliang pengyou”) is a queer film from the People’s Republic of China that will likely never see the light of cinema projectors in its home country. The film has caused quite a stir internationally. It was nominated in numerous categories at the prestigious Golden Horse Awards in Taipei and won three of the most important prizes: Best Editing: Chen Hoping, Best Cinematography: Wang Weihua, and, above all, Best Actor: Zhang Zhiyong.

A spinoff of the company "Protector" — an Uber-style rentier app that lets users temporarily hire an armed bodyguard — Patrol offers property owners the chance to rent out "off-duty police officers to help protect their homes."

Tips from the Office of Strategic Services (precursor of the CIA) for agents who would encourage people in fascist-controlled areas to commit "simple sabotage" (requiring no special tools or skills).

The purpose of this paper is to characterize simple sabotage, to outline its possible effects, and to present suggestions for inciting and executing it.

Sabotage varies from highly technical coup de main acts that require detailed planning and the use of specially-trained operatives, to innumerable simple acts which the ordinary individual citizen-saboteur can perform. This paper is primarily concerned with the latter type. Simple sabotage does not require specially prepared tools or equipment; it is executed by an ordinary citizen who may or may not act individually and without the necessity for active connection with an organized group; and it is carried out in such a way as to involve a minimum danger of injury, detection, and reprisal.

Where destruction is involved, the weapons of the citizen-saboteur are salt, nails, candles, pebbles, thread, or any other materials he might normally be expected to possess as a householder or as a worker in his particular occupation. His arsenal is the kitchen shelf, the trash pile, his own usual kit of tools and supplies. The targets of his sabotage are usually objects to which he has normal and inconspicuous access in everyday life.

A second type of simple sabotage requires no destructive tools whatsoever and produces physical damage, if any, by highly indirect means. It is based on universal opportunities to make faulty decisions, to adopt a noncooperative attitude, and to induce others to follow suit. Making a faulty decision may be simply a matter of placing tools in one spot instead of another. A non-cooperative attitude may involve nothing more than creating an unpleasant situation among one’s fellow workers, engaging in bickerings, or displaying surliness and stupidity.

This type of activity, sometimes referred to as the “human element,” is frequently responsible for accidents, delays, and general obstruction even under normal conditions. The potential saboteur should discover what types of faulty decisions and the operations are normally found in this kind of work and should then devise his sabotage so as to enlarge that “margin for error.”

EDIT:
There's a Mastodon bot that posts short excerpts from the manual:

• https://fedv.link/https://ohai.social/@simple_sabotage@mastodon.social