Editor’s note for Friday, August 7, 2020

My thoughts today:

No commentary today, just a request: You may have noticed that we have been tinkering with the format of our newsletter. This introductory section now (usually) contains commentary from me, we’ve compacted the links section, and we’ve been playing around with the design.

Do you like it, love it, or hate it? Please reply to this email to tell me your thoughts or give us any feedback that will help us make this newsletter more useful for you.

Now for some lighthearted stuff — we could all use a laugh or a smile in these stressful times:

Here is a video of a 1929 Shanghai fashion show colorized using AI by YouTube user DGSpitzer.

And here is today’s hilarious top story on Xinhua News Agency’s Chinese-language website. It’s titled: “Overseas readers can’t wait to get their hands on Xi Jinping’s third book.” The book in question is the third volume of Xi’s The Governance of China. I have not read it yet, nor have I read the second volume, but I have read the first, which is a wonderful soporific and an even better doorstop. Believe me, there is not a single person in the whole world who actually wants to read this book.

The propagandists at Xinhua aren’t even drinking their own Kool-Aid: There is no equivalent story on any of Xinhua’s foreign-language website home pages.

Our word of the day is The King of Knowing 懂王 dǒng wáng, a Chinese internet nickname for Donald Trump. As Tony Lin explains: “The nickname is used by all sides and comes from his catchphrase “nobody knows xxx more than me.”

—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief