klu9

https://song.link/s/5ByAIlEEnxYdvpnezg7HTX

Last night on https://watch.vcr.party/ (Mastodon) we watched Red Sun Rising (1994), a Don "The Dragon" Wilson martial arts movie so classy its full title is actually Red Sun Rising: Based on the Legend of the Death Touch.

Before we even get through the opening titles, it's clear we are in a familiar location: The Japanese Garden at The Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in Van Nuys, Los Angeles, California.

You know... Starfleet Academy.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Tillman_Water_Reclamation_Plant

Watch the video if you'd like to see the familiar grounds of Starfleet Academy but instead of a sage old man imparting nuggets of wisdom, you want to see a evil wizard ninja imparting sensuous neck snappings.

Oh yeah, content warning: sensuous neck snapping.

Bonus: the lead female role is acted by Terry Farrell, playing a racist LAPD cop. (Don't worry, though, in the end it turns out... she's not quite as racist as the other LAPD cops.)

Bonus bonuses:

• The evil wizard ninja is played by James Lew, "uncredited stunt Romulan" (words I want on my headstone). https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/James_Lew (Also in the truly terrible Shira The Vampire Samurai.)
• Head FBI agent played by Edward Albert https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Edward_Laurence_Albert

Most of the population of China cannot afford or obtain a VPN (Virtual Private Network). For the privileged portion who do manage to purchase and install a VPN, does that solve their global internet access problem?

More info:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Tiger_Day

Image "Tigerlillia Terribilis" from Edward Lear's Nonsense Botany. Article and more images:

• https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/edward-lears-nonsense-botany-1871-77/

Via Mastodon:

• https://fedv.link/mastodon.social/@publicdomainrev/114936358395711528

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.