Thoughts on some excerpts from the ISIS propaganda magazine [non-China]

I found out that ISIS publishes its own propaganda magazine. Taking a look at a couple of issues, I'm amazed at the modernness of the writing and formatting, combined with what seems like a complete rejection of the basic values of modernity.

This is a scary passage:

This one projects quite a different image:

But then it's back to the same:

This passage suggests it's a cult (though I guess that's true of most religions, to a certain degree):

The amazing thing for me about this is how the people who made this can be so primitive in their opinions and yet so media savvy. The degree of intelligence and cultural awareness displayed, side by side with the brutality and closed-mindedness, surprises me. Their complete faith in their interpretation of Islam, despite its conflict with the humanistic ideas that I think of as a major product of civilization, seems primitive. But they're clearly media savvy and engaged in the global culture. It's not like they don't know about the beliefs. They just choose to reject them.

Sources: Issue 4, Issue 2

On Bitcoin [non-China]

I'm a bitcoin optimist, for several reasons. One of them is that I experience the inefficiencies of the current monetary system on a routine basis as someone who lives in a foreign country. Every time I want to transfer the money I make in Chinese RMB to my American bank account, I have to pay PayPal a 4% transaction fee. I hate having to use such an expensive way to transfer money, but it's better than the alternatives! (See how to use PayPal to do so here.) Compared with a wire transfer, at least PayPal is instant, and avoids the wire transfer fees from a bank which would come out to nearly as much.

PayPal's fees. 0.5%-2% sounds nice. The problem is, PayPal doesn't allow you to link a Chinese bank account!

Why should transferring money from one country to another cost so damn much? This is one of the questions that Bitcoin sets out to address. With Bitcoin, there's no banks holding your money and charging high fees to send it somewhere else. Once you own bitcoin, it's yours.

The Kunming incident & thoughts on terrorism

It was pretty scary to hear about this incident from a friend of mine. I've been to Kunming - my Facebook profile picture used to feature the train station where the shootings took place - and I'm sure for him, as someone from Kunming, it was far worse. However, my opinions on the matter may be different from those of my friend, or of most people.

Below is a translation of a short article by China's state-affiliated Xinhua News Network, followed by my thoughts on terrorism.