We are a few days away from our exciting adventure to the Orient.  One stop will be Taiwan.  However, Japan-China relations just deteriorated. Japan's first female Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on 31October2025.  All went well. But on November 7, Takaichi veered from Japan's policy of " strategic ambiguity " about Taiwan, suggesting that an attack on Taiwan could amount to a "survival-threatening situation" that would permit Japan to exercise collective self-defense. This drew the ire of China, which has maintained that Taiwan is part of China, and that they will someday, by force, if necessary, regain total control,  as was done with Hong Kong.  We also will visit that city, twice on this trip. Takaichi refused to retract her remarks. Usually, most of what happens is just tense talk, but this time, China urged their citizens to hold off on any trip to Japan this year. If the Chinese take this seriously, Japan will be si...

 I get a bit into bitcoin today to reflect how volatile it can be. Yesterday,  President Donald Trump threatened new 100% tariffs on China. The  U.S. stock market tumbled , with the Dow Jones Industrial dropping 879 points, or 1.9%.  The broader S&P dropped 2.71%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite slid 3.56%. Gold rose 1.5%.   Read my posting of yesterday on how just this commodity could trigger a collapse of the USA and World . In particular,  cryptocurrencies Bitcoin ( almost a 10% decline ), Ether ( 14.2% ) and Solana ( 20% ) led the sinking , bringing total liquidations to $14.28 billion, the largest in crypto history.  One of Trump's executive order to allow digital assets to be included in 401(k) plans led to  Bitcoin  soaring to a record high of $124,000 last week.   When to capitalize (b)itcoin?  When referring to the protocol, technology or network.  But lowercase bitcoin is used as a unit of currency....

My blog yesterday ended with some beautiful photos, indicating that these were sent to me by, for me, a relatively new informant, Gan Jing World.  Before I go into this mysterious organization, though, first, a question.  Do you want to be a billionaire? Turns out that the jackpot for the Powerball drawing tonight at 10:59 PM EDT is up to $1.8 billion. This is the second-highest grand prize in history, to the $2.04 billion jackpot won in November 2022. By the way, there is also Mega Millions, which had a $1.602 jackpot in August 2023.  Costs $5/ticket. But back to Powerball, say you match all five numbers.  Are you then a billionaire? Nope.  You have two options. Take a one-time cash payment, and while that is $1.8 billion, for the moment you are a billionaire.  However, the way this works, you only get $826.4 billion. Or, take 29 annual payments to get the full $1.8 billion.  But you still need to pay taxes and wait for 29 years to get it all. Either ...