I am always up for a virtual map stroll through China. Today was Shenyang, where I tried to locate a shop. This is sort of like virtual geolocating. China is difficult to navigate because the maps are old on purpose, for security reasons. GPS locations are purposely skewed, also for security reasons. Even knowing Chinese, it is difficult to use a map to navigate China.
Air quality index PM2.5, Toronto vs Beijing, Shanghai, Changzhi, 2018 May 27 15:00 Toronto time
Toronto issues its first air quality advisory of the year 2018. Toronto AQI 2.5 is 50. In contrast Beijing is 442, Shanghai at 147, and Changzhi at 137. The scale was to go up to only 100.
Alerts for: City of Toronto
Statements
12:33 PM EDT Sunday 27 May 2018
Special air quality statement in effect for:
City of Toronto
Possible high levels of air pollution are expected today in the southwestern Ontario and Greater Toronto Area.
This plays out exactly the same in many countries, so one should not be at all surprised. A Chinese company wants to buy a foreign company, the foreign government blocks the sale, Chinese Government gets upset, calls the blocking racially motivated and implements trade sanctions on the foreign country. There are many cases in many different countries that I see this as one from China’s economic trade playbook.
Facial recognition sunglasses used by Chinese police in Zhengzhou, Henan Province during Chinese New Year.
Facial recognition software has been used in China for quite a while. China has used facial recognition software to scan large gatherings of people in an effort to capture known criminals. The benefit to greater society outweighs all privacy concerns. In North America, we value our privacy and do not want the authorities to accumulate vast amounts of facial recognition data. North Americans believe we should be able to walk around in public and not be recorded for whatever purpose.
Little Giant 554405 VCMA-15 non-submersible condensate pump, removed from black base. Output tube, pump intake and impeller (large round part). You can see the impeller shaft through the intake windows.
Even the most elementary animals do not defecate where they live. Even so, their scat is biodegradable and is quickly transformed to base organic waste by microbes. This is natural. Man, on the other hand, has created a remarkable material: plastic. Remarkable, yes, but it is inorganic and as it does not break down to an organic waste, it is polluting the earth and mankind. Ironically, we are eating our own waste.
The Wuhan Shengshi Yangguang Jiudian, also called the Wuhan Shengshi Sunshine Hotel, 武汉盛世阳光酒店
地址: 455 Han Yang Da Dao, Hanyang Qu, Wuhan Shi, Hubei Sheng, China, 430072 汉阳区汉阳大道457号(地铁四号线五里墩B出口步行500米可至)
Plus code: 8P2PH62W+PJ
GPS: 30.551812,114.246563, but this will not be accurate in China
The hotel is right beside the Wuhan Huaxi Hospital 武汉华西医院, west of the Hanyang Train Station subway stop 汉阳后车站 and east of the Wulidun subway 五里墩, line 4. The hotel is rated 4.1/5
We all know that China annexed and militarized some disputed islands in the South China Seas. These islands are claimed by multiple countries. In 2016 a dispute between the Philippines and China resulted in the Hague ruling that China did not have claim to these islands. No matter, China took them over anyway. They how house surface to air missiles. Much more can be gleaned online with minimal Googling.
I have noticed a lot of different types of discrimination in China. Sometimes it is discrimination against foreigners, but usually against fellow Chinese. There is the rural/urban divide, men vs women, Xinjiang vs the CCP, etc. But sometimes there is discrimination based on age. The most predominant is against women over 30, the so called “leftover women”, which is a very derogatory term. This time it is age discrimination in the IT industry.
The Oukei TW-2700-E1 Table Tennis Training Machine is a consumer grade serving machine. It stopped working due to an out of aligned spring. Photo 1 by Don Tai
My neighbour is hard working and has few hobbies. She loves table tennis but has no partner, so she bought a table tennis machine, which shoots balls at her. This machine, an Oukei TW-2700-E1, she loves, allows her to return balls without help from the family. It was unfortunate when the machine began jamming. I opted to fix the machine, and she was grateful to have it back in service. It turned out the fix was very simple, but rendered the machine unusable.
A friend at Tongji University, Shanghai. Using his GPS coordinates of 31.2820193,121.5083353 he is at the red pin., but this time over 500m west north west of his Google location Baidu Maps.
A friend is visiting China and has graciously allowed me, through Google, to follow him. I provide location advice as i can read Baidu’s Chinese maps. This time I was able to use his GPS coordinates and track him on Google and Baidu Maps. Now you would think that two mapping systems would give you near identical results, but no, they do not.
