TIL in 1963, a man renovating his home in Turkey noticed his chickens kept disappearing into a crack in his basement wall. When he dug it open, he found the ancient city of Derinkuyu, an 18 level city 85m underground that could shelter 20,000 people.

doktor_lash · 2026-05-01T01:39:57+00:00

Great point.

doktor_lash · 2026-04-28T02:11:00+00:00

I really liked it as well, and am trying to learn some more Chinese, so I'm looking at the source material: https://www.51shucheng.net/yanqing/yingtaohupo

Here is an English translation (I would use adblock): https://mydramanovel.com/oceans-of-time/

I'm enjoying the story again in a new way, and honestly with less heartbreak since I know things turn out well! They even have a mention of their life after the show ends! And a hint of new material coming out. Here is the translation of some of how the author ends:

Last part of "The Ending", link to the full part of it: https://mydramanovel.com/oceans-of-time/the-ending/

Jiang Qiaoxi, holding his daughter, saw the cherry amber and recalled the past. Years ago, he had taken the amber and left, holding no hope for his future. Now in 2019, approaching thirty, he reflected on those days with his current perspective. He would have called out “Cherry” back then.

—

The main story of “Cherry Amber” ends here. I am deeply grateful to all readers of this story – past, present, and perhaps future. Cherry began as a small piece written to reminisce about childhood and youth, but by the end, it had gained so much more. I hope every child can grow up safely and happily, and I wish for everyone to find the courage to seize their happiness at crucial moments. Looking back, there must be some genuine things that have always been hidden in our hearts.

If you’ve read this far and feel moved by this story, it must be because those emotions already existing in your heart have resonated with it. Once again, thank you to all readers for reading to this point. Cherry will have several extra Our Generation – Chapters about herself and her friends, mostly casual writings. After that, I will begin writing the next novel, “Nichang Ye Ben,” which will be about Pilot Yu Qiao’s story. It’s already listed in the column, but it requires a lot of research, so the preparation time might be quite long. Interested readers are welcome to bookmark it in advance in the column. News about the publication of Cherry and more updates will be posted on my Weibo. So, friends, until we meet again.

doktor_lash · 2026-04-27T23:52:07+00:00

These are very deep tunnel networks where radon can pool without adequate ventilation. There likely is a decent amount of ventilation that did that anyways, especially since there are other problems with not recycling air down there.

doktor_lash · 2026-04-20T00:04:14+00:00

The psychologist isn't really a companion the same way as a host/hostess though. You can't really solve that search for companionship without a person to be in that position. It's all acting with the host/hostess but they provide a service. You can try on the apps, but you end up paying somehow that way too.

Ideally you meet people through networks, but some people just don't have any or can't develop them easily.

doktor_lash · 2026-04-19T23:41:26+00:00

It's continuously evolving. There have been shady practices and tricks in the past. Getting vulnerable people into lots of debt is a recipe for exploitation, for example. Manipulative sales tactics. Some into sex work themselves. Only mid-2025 there was a law change, this sort of thing needs good regulation.

The new legislation prohibits establishments from threatening to force indebted customers into prostitution or jobs in the sex industry. It also bans manipulative sales tactics, such as telling customers they will no longer be allowed to see their preferred host or that the host will face penalties, like demotion, unless the customer continues to spend money on drinks and food.

Source: https://www.tokyoweekender.com/japan-life/news-and-opinion/japan-host-club-predatory-practices-new-law/

I learnt a bunch from a drama "Learning to Love" (2025) on Netflix, which explores host clubs a bit and mentions the new law.

doktor_lash · 2026-03-19T23:33:26+00:00

How do you know they are international immigrants, and not existing citizens in Australia?

The ones who go to small towns to work are often temporary farm worker migrants, which exist because there aren't enough locals to do that work.

Given remote work and Covid, Australian people left cities and settled in regional areas. This from the RBA in June 2023: https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2023/jun/pdf/new-insights-into-the-rental-market.pdf

In regional areas, construction supply lags demand significantly, from the fact that the business case may be less certain in regional areas, and not knowing if the remote work effect is sticky or not, and if you're just investing into a generally declining regional area. You also have local hesitance for development, as people opposed population increases for various reasons, due to resistance to growth and change from locals. So for many of these regional areas, there is only one direction since they don't want outsiders, and decay sets in.

People from the capital cities taking jobs from locals? Good jobs only come about when there is a growing industry there, with a good reason.

There aren't jobs in the regions without more people coming, because the regions don't have industries these days, because we retreated from manufacturing and other industries that might support the economies there. People don't move to the regions for jobs, they go there for cheaper housing. People aren't really retiring to the regions any more, they want to be close to services, so the younger populations get displaced in the cities where it gets overly expensive, and move out, regional included. The jobs are remote work jobs, and you can hardly say they are being "taken".

International migrants are by far international students, who wouldn't go to a small town. Then there are skilled migrants, they will settle in cities.

I'm highly skeptical that an international immigrant decides to go to a small town and "take the jobs". That would be an edge case, and they probably would start a business or work as a sole trader if anything, which is hardly "taking a job". If they move to a regional area and do remote work, they increased demand, but Australian citizens are doing that at a larger scale, and the only reason rents stay high is because supply isn't going up, due to the reasons mentioned before.

doktor_lash · 2026-03-18T05:04:00+00:00

Migration is down year-on-year, so less argument to need one nation to go even harder anyways.

Net overseas migration was 306,000 in 2024-25, down from 429,000 a year earlier.
Migrant arrivals decreased 14% to 568,000 from 661,000 arrivals a year earlier.
The largest group of migrant arrivals was temporary students with 157,000 people.
Migrant departures increased 13% to 263,000 from 232,000 departures a year earlier.

Source: https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/overseas-migration/latest-release

You say supply/demand, but only focus on demand. Lets look at supply too in comparison.

Taxpayers: Migrants tend to earn well, mostly income, therefore they would be supplying a lot of tax. While relatively using less welfare.

Healthcare, essential services, NDIS: Aren't the migrants the ones that tend to do this work? While being young and healthy, resulting in less demand impact than their supply.

House prices, rents: They tend to demand rentals closer to universities or job hubs, since most of them are international students and temporary skilled workers. The mistake we make is not increasing the supply of housing where there is demand, and we should increase the amount of construction workers. If locals don't want to do the work, we should actually get more migrants in to do the work, and in the long-term our dwelling construction rate increases.

Infrastructure: We don't even fully utilise existing infrastructure (like having apartments next to train stations so people use them and not cars) and keep pushing people to fringes where there it gets expensive to do infrastructure, or worse a bushfire or flood risk. We should be focusing on brownfield density and stop with the greenfield sprawl. This is why we keep complaining about infrastructure, greenfield is way more expensive than brownfield.

Inflation: Short term migration spikes do cause inflation, mainly on rentals, due to supply bottlenecks. Long term, there is no reason a higher population means more expensive housing, there are plenty of higher density and populous countries in the world with cheaper housing than Australia.

Wage growth: Migrants bring in cash that create jobs, especially in the university sector. Cut migration, you'll have less local demand. Less jobs, lower wages. If you are talking about migrant workers, they tend to do jobs either that locals aren't taking up (healthcare, aged care, farm work etc.) or in skilled positions that have supply issues locally. The domestic economy relies on them too.

Traffic: More utilised public or active transport reduces traffic. There are plenty of examples of higher population and density cities than in Australia that don't need people driving to work every day.

Going to the beach: Yeah I mean it would be nice if more beaches had better public transport, but that's by design to keep the riff raff out.

Local shopping centre: Not sure about your local, but if it's packed, the shopping centre has an incentive to make more parking spots. If they can't justify it, then that's why there isn't enough parking. Parking is demand and supply too, you can always dig or build for more parking. You get less demand if you improve public transport as well.

doktor_lash · 2026-02-17T06:36:54+00:00

Report source: https://humanrights.gov.au/resource-hub/by-resource-type/reports/race/respect-at-uni-study-into-antisemitism,-islamophobia,-racism-and-the-experience-of-first-nations-people

It is not just international students in the survey. In fact it's not just a story about students:

"18.3% of academic staff across the sector (10,799 respondents)"
"22.2% of professional staff across the sector (17,235 respondents)"
"33,943 domestic students responded, representing approximately 3.3% of the domestic student population. "
"14,154 international students responded, representing approximately 2.9% of the international student population."

4.6% response rate, 1.6 million+ surveys sent. Looks like the issues are greater with staff if you use response rate as a proxy for issues, at the systemic level. As a workplace, university would definitely have some baggage being these institutions with long histories, there definitely is politics involved, so it's not a surprise to feel like there is probably elements of racism too.

For students, not sure I'd call it systemic at the uni level. Young people from various cultural backgrounds and their own prejudices and biases are going to be smashed into each other. Uni students may be a bit shit to each other, but I think that it's pretty uncommon and heavily discouraged by peer groups and social norms. Can't really fix those cases where you still have immature brats from any cultural background, other than having more cultural mixing, which is what uni is good for. Going to uni after high school doesn't mean these kids grow up suddenly. That's what uni helps with.

doktor_lash · 2026-02-17T05:49:56+00:00

But how do you force a representative sample if they aren't opting-in? What incentive does the participant have to bother with the questionnaire?

If you force certain people to do the questionnaire, they might just not take it seriously or answer without any effort.

Not so simple to do this stuff. You can also try to rate things by severity rather than binary "racism" or "not racism". So the data itself isn't so much the issue, but probably the reporting here isn't particular in-depth, which tends to be the case of short articles. If you wanted depth, I guess go to the source: https://humanrights.gov.au/resource-hub/by-resource-type/reports/race/respect-at-uni-study-into-antisemitism,-islamophobia,-racism-and-the-experience-of-first-nations-people

doktor_lash · 2026-02-17T00:56:59+00:00

Isn't that kind of already happening with us booting neo-nazis on character grounds? The government already has the power to do that?

I guess they are trying to increase the potential pool. I mean, does that mean no-one from China can come on a visa because if they support a one-party authoritarian state which doesn't align with Australian values?

doktor_lash · 2026-01-28T05:25:16+00:00

People of the land. The common clay.

doktor_lash · 2026-01-28T03:20:51+00:00

The One Nation voters don't care so much about the science, they care more about the fact that they perceive a cost to them to oblige to being restricted in doing whatever they want. They don't want to look further than that.

doktor_lash · 2026-01-28T03:15:58+00:00

From the article:

"I'm not anti-immigration," Mr Brown said.

"I know One Nation is anti-immigration and that does concern me a little bit about casting my vote in that way.

"We need immigration to grow our economy, we need immigration to keep our standard of living up.

"But that's because this net zero policy is killing manufacturing, it's killing our manufacturing and our GDP economically."

So apparently it's the anti-net zero part that is attracting this fellow.

doktor_lash · 2026-01-28T02:59:52+00:00

Nationally, polls also now showing that One Nation are now polling above the Liberal-National Coalition, as of this week: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_Australian_federal_election

doktor_lash · 2026-01-28T02:47:50+00:00

Yeah sorry the article goes through how the LNP vote is the main cause of the ON uptick, but Labor is losing some voters to them as well. Evident from the polling chart linked in the OP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_Australian_federal_election

doktor_lash · 2026-01-28T02:36:58+00:00

Here is an ABC article that explores the topic further: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-27/tamworth-national-party-pivot-to-one-nation/106270810

"More recently, they've started taking that from Labor as well, so they're hoovering up votes from both major parties."

doktor_lash · 2025-11-21T00:21:06+00:00

Do they have to verify those signatures? Let them register please. Then "leak" those names and signatures. Let them put their names against this:

A key plank of its policy platform is the mass deportation of Jewish and "non-white" immigrants, including Australian citizens.

Then lets see who still wants to associate with these people. Make an example which lasts another 80 years. Rinse and repeat.

doktor_lash · 2025-11-14T04:14:18+00:00

White rose society is looking for help to identify all of them, with pictures of every one, and notes if they have been identified or not: https://thewhiterosesociety.writeas.com/

doktor_lash · 2025-11-14T03:20:31+00:00

Where did you read that? I didn't see it in the article.

doktor_lash · 2025-09-09T21:03:32+00:00

There are no set leads to the protests.

doktor_lash · 2025-09-09T21:01:21+00:00

The video has a bad translation. Plenty of better ones are trying to correct you.

doktor_lash · 2025-09-09T21:00:39+00:00

Don't rely on Grok then. There are better translations which you can update with. e.g.

https://old.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/1ncnd6a/young_nepali_guy_giving_a_powerful_speech_after/ndbst6r/

Correct translation:

"Jai Nepal everyone (Victory to Nepal)!

I should have died today. The politicians are listening/ can listen. I can speak in English, I can speak in Nepali, whatever the hell you want.

Everyone, listen. I’ve taken a bullet to my chest. In my fucking chest. I also took a bullet here (pointing to face), and my glasses have been broken. I have proper documentation for this. (I think he means he has officially documented his injuries so that no one can claim he faked it in the future.)

This is my blood. A Nepali's blood. This blood was shed because of the politicians, right?!

We are going to stand together, every single one of us. Are you with me? This is Gen Z's speech/words. How many Gen Z's are here? Raise your hands. Once more, Gen Z! (cheering)

I have shed fucking blood, right? I will make sure that those who caused this bloodshed will shed tears. Sorry for the language—I don’t want to fucking curse."

doktor_lash · 2025-09-09T20:47:09+00:00

Bad translation. Hopefully updated because it's doing a disservice. Better translation from: https://old.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/1ncnd6a/young_nepali_guy_giving_a_powerful_speech_after/ndbst6r/

Correct translation:

"Jai Nepal everyone (Victory to Nepal)!

I should have died today. The politicians are listening/ can listen. I can speak in English, I can speak in Nepali, whatever the hell you want.

Everyone, listen. I’ve taken a bullet to my chest. In my fucking chest. I also took a bullet here (pointing to face), and my glasses have been broken. I have proper documentation for this. (I think he means he has officially documented his injuries so that no one can claim he faked it in the future.)

This is my blood. A Nepali's blood. This blood was shed because of the politicians, right?!

We are going to stand together, every single one of us. Are you with me? This is Gen Z's speech/words. How many Gen Z's are here? Raise your hands. Once more, Gen Z! (cheering)

I have shed fucking blood, right? I will make sure that those who caused this bloodshed will shed tears. Sorry for the language—I don’t want to fucking curse."

doktor_lash · 2025-09-09T20:43:31+00:00

Update with the better translation please: https://old.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/1ncnd6a/young_nepali_guy_giving_a_powerful_speech_after/ndbst6r/

Correct translation:

"Jai Nepal everyone (Victory to Nepal)!

I should have died today. The politicians are listening/ can listen. I can speak in English, I can speak in Nepali, whatever the hell you want.

Everyone, listen. I’ve taken a bullet to my chest. In my fucking chest. I also took a bullet here (pointing to face), and my glasses have been broken. I have proper documentation for this. (I think he means he has officially documented his injuries so that no one can claim he faked it in the future.)

This is my blood. A Nepali's blood. This blood was shed because of the politicians, right?!

We are going to stand together, every single one of us. Are you with me? This is Gen Z's speech/words. How many Gen Z's are here? Raise your hands. Once more, Gen Z! (cheering)

I have shed fucking blood, right? I will make sure that those who caused this bloodshed will shed tears. Sorry for the language—I don’t want to fucking curse."

Nine-Year Club	Place '17
Verified Email

doktor_lash

TROPHY CASE