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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • Pineapple fun fact: Before selling them for consumption, pineapple merchants rented pineapples to people who couldn’t afford to purchase them. Those who rented would take the pineapple to parties, not to give as a gift to the host, but to carry around and show off their apparent ability to afford such an expensive fruit.

    A pineapple could cost up to 8000$ in the 1700-1800.

    This fun fact has been brought to you by: Eat the rich!™



  • Just over a week after U.S. President Joe Biden defended police crackdowns on dozens of anti-war protests on college campuses by declaring that students don’t have “the right to cause chaos,” a new analysis on Friday showed that nearly all the campus demonstrations have not been violent at all—and many that have descended into violence did so due to police interventions or aggressive counter-protests.

    The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) examined 553 campus protests that took place across the U.S. between April 18-May 3 and found that fewer than 20 resulted in serious violence or property damage—meaning that 97% of the protests remained non-violent.

    Jeez louise, all you had to do was read 2 paragraph…




  • Former president Lee Teng-hui has stated that he never pursued Taiwanese independence. Lee views Taiwan as already an independent state, and that the call for “Taiwanese independence” could even confuse the international community by implying that Taiwan once viewed itself as part of China. From this perspective, Taiwan is independent even if it remains unable to enter the UN.

    Most Taiwanese and political parties of the ROC support the status quo, and recognize that this is de facto independence through sovereign self-rule. Even among those who believe Taiwan is and should remain independent, the threat of war from PRC softens their approach, and they tend to support maintaining the status quo rather than pursuing an ideological path that could result in war with the PRC.

    The questions of independence and the island’s relationship to mainland China are complex and inspire very strong emotions among Taiwanese people. There are some who continue to maintain the KMT’s position, which states that the ROC is the sole legitimate government for all of China (of which they consider Taiwan to be a part), and that the aim of the government should be eventual unification of the mainland and Taiwan under the rule of the ROC. Some argue that Taiwan has been, and should continue to be, completely independent from China and should become a Taiwanese state with a distinct name.

    On 25 October 2004, in Beijing, the U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Taiwan is “not sovereign,” provoking strong comments from both the Pan-Green and Pan-Blue coalitions – but for very different reasons. From the DPP’s side, President Chen declared that “Taiwan is definitely a sovereign, independent country, a great country that absolutely does not belong to the People’s Republic of China”. The TSU (Taiwan Solidarity Union) criticized Powell, and questioned why the US sold weapons to Taiwan if it were not a sovereign state. From the KMT, then Chairman Ma Ying-jeou announced, “the Republic of China has been a sovereign state ever since it was formed [in 1912].”



  • Background: On 30 August, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reported that at a meeting of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, it had been decided that a comprehensive inspection be conducted of the validity of decisions made by military medical commissions since 24 February 2022. These are decisions on disability and unfitness for service that were or may be related to corruption violations. All cases where the decisions were unreasonable and illegal should be investigated by law enforcement agencies, the president said. In addition, Zelenskyy announced that the system of determining fitness for military service must be reassessed to make it easier for commanders to recruit soldiers for combat missions and to prevent the concept of limited fitness from being manipulated.