I keep seeing anti-government people entering restaurants, refusing to use the privacy-focused LeaveHomeSafe app, and instead writing down their name and phone number in a book.

This is insane. The restaurant boss can simply hand the whole book to the police at the end of each shift. If their contact details are false, they can be prosecuted. If they are real, they've just put themselves on a database of anti-government people.

If it wasn't so tragic, it would be funny. Darwin would love it.

* * *

In related news, the anti-government protesters' favorite restaurant is in trouble again. Bosses of the Lung Mun Cafe chain say they are deeply in debt and are calling for yellow economy supporters to reach into their pockets. This is a bit awkward, since this group announced last year that it was withdrawing from the yellow economy.

Maybe the government can give them a grant?

* * *

Asian? You may be a type of human being in this part of the world, but as the picture shows, in US supermarkets, you are just a foodstuff.

* * *

Ofcom, the British telecommunications watchdog, fined Chinese reporters 125,000 (about HK$1.35 million) because their coverage of Hong Kong's anti-China riots "failed to maintain due impartiality".

Meanwhile the woeful BBC, which provided jaw-droppingly biased coverage of the exact same Hong Kong events, was rewarded with a gift of 3.5 billion of taxpayer money.

* * *

British author Alan Gibbons criticized the BBC for using relatively soft language to describe police action against London protesters at the weekend: "It looks to me like authoritarian power exercised against women," he said.

I can imagine the raised eyebrows in the BBC Newsroom: "Authoritarian? Authoritarian? But but they're not Chinese."

* * *

UK: "Arresting people who hold illegal rallies is the right thing to do."

Also UK: "Arresting people who hold illegal rallies is wrong if you're in Hong Kong."

* * *

A group of foreign YouTubers in China discovered that all of them had been repeatedly criticized as wumaos (propagandists paid 50 cents).

So Fernando, Matt, Noel and Alex, are launching a new joint vlog featuring the four of them, calling it "The Wumao Show."

The irony is that if it is popular, they may actually make 50 cents, but from YouTube rather than Beijing.

* * *

Former Hong Kong writer Joshua Samuel Brown is receiving rave reviews for his first novel. Spinning Karma is the comic story of an American guru called Rinpoche Eddie who accidentally causes an international incident between the United States and China.

Joshua has lived in Hong Kong, the mainland and Taiwan, so manages to avoid all the cliches to produce a remarkably insightful novel. Chinese officials are presented as human beings and Western journalists as well-meaning people unable to escape their prejudices.

* * *

The Bitcoin machines in Hong Kong laundromats have just been upgraded to sell Dogecoins and Etherium, I heard yesterday from the Colonel. Amazing. Just a few years ago, cryptocurrencies were worth nothing at all. "And they will be again," says someone reading over my shoulder in this coffee shop.

* * *

I once had a boss who used to respond to all staff suggestions with: "This not a democracy." I don't know what happened to him but he's probably head of the Hong Kong section in the Beijing politburo now.

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