Results tagged “commenters”

So, as some of our commenters in a previous post brought up, Youtube is indeed back! So what was behind the temporary block — was it the 17th Party Congress or was it Youtube's Hong Kong/Taiwan versions? I guess we will never know. But enjoy it while it lasts people. You never know when the block will come back up, but when it does, you know you have VPN to fall back on ;-)

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At the risk of pissing off our rich and powerful film producer friends and thereby never getting invited to a press junket again, we want to begin this movie review with a simple declarative sentence, the likes of which has not and may never be seen again in film criticism: the movie Blood Brothers (天堂口) sucked ass.

Shandong Province's Qilu TV has struck yet again with another quirky news story featured in its daily news program last Thursday -- this time of a woman who starts barking like a mad dog after getting bitten by a mad dog. In the video clip, one sees the poor woman coughing, wheezing, panting and barking like a dog, seemingly uncontrollable. She has to be restrained with cables tied to the couch, which in turn is tied to a 20kg rock. Apparently, her husband has brought her to the hospital, but none of the doctors admitted her for fear that she might start attacking them other patients?

Remember the really creepy lovelorn Japanese man, Saitou Takuya (斋藤卓也) who was so madly in love with a girl he saw on the Beijing subway that he put up a video of her on the internet that he secretly took of her, asking people to help him find her? A number of commenters did wonder aloud if the whole thing was a spoof, but apparently not.

Henan Province's Qilu Television recently featured 24 year old Wang Chengke (王成科) who claims he has been eating glass since he was six. In the video clip on the right, he starts by smashing a Tsingdao bottle on the ground, then eating it piece by piece. Subsequently he smashes a glass ashtray on the ground, eats it and comments that it doesn't taste too bad at all! Like us, some commenters on 56.com were cynical and expressed their disbelief, what with the recent fake news reports and all, but we googled around a bit, and found that Wang's story has been reported in many other media outlets. In fact a Google search for the search terms 王成科 (his name) and 吃玻璃 ("glass eating") registered 173,000 search results! (Then again, one could always argue that this doesn't come as a surprise considering how much the Chinese media copy from one another!) In this story from Qingdao News, a doctor is quoted as saying that Wang's gastric acid is 5 times stronger than the average person's and estimates that he must have eaten about a tonne of glass by now, while another story on Jiangnan News way back in 2003 tells us that he's even found a talent agent for himself (we hope the freak show makes them both lots of money)! Just plain bizarre, or yet another fake news story? We'll leave it to you to decide for yourself!

Hello Shanghaiists! You may have noticed that we've made a few small changes to our commenting and feedback systems:

From Engadget, a post titled "iPhone cases (not clones) already in China":

Alert web surfers notice that the Shanghai Metro has redesigned their website. The English version is well done, and has some cool "inside" pictures of the subway car storage warehouse.

When we woke up yesterday morning we discovered a new year's surprise: Our beloved shoes are gone. Like many good Chinese girls, we keep our shoes outside our front door (but inside a locked gated corridor ... with metal bars perfect for stealing shoes through, evidently). First we thought we might have just misplaced them (we can be kind of messy). But after searching our pile of shoes, we were very certain they were gone. And we were quite confused why someone would steal this pair, then we came to the conclusion the thief must be a man, since the shoes left untouched were all high-heels or very feminine boots. The pair that was gone was masculine style riding boots.

Browsing the Ditiezu.com (Subway-ers) BBS, we came across some interesting tidbits:

We don't remember exactly how we came across shanghaidailyphoto.com, but we thought we'd share. It is as it sounds: A single blogger (in this case "Jing") posts a single photo about Shanghai every single day (give or take). She's not a professional photographer, or someone who aspires to be one. But she likes her camera, she likes Shanghai, and she is diligent (although she only just started this in September). "I live and work in this city," she wrote in her first post. "I love this city. :) Hope the photos could record the small footstep of it."

Sunday. Usually, a quiet, contemplative day in the Blogosphere. But not here in the Ist-a-Verse. Nonono! Just look below and see all of the wild and crazy stuff our staffs are up to.

Before we begin, we'd like to extend our deepest sympathies to the family of James Kim. We are not, by any means, trying to discount that tragedy by juxtaposing posts about the Kims with more light-hearted posts. It's the nature of doing a compilation such as this one: we're trying to give a full slice of the goings-on in the Ist-a-Verse: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Commenters, however, thought it kind of rang true:

Some news about everyone's favorite internet giants:
• Yahoo! China to become a community based portal:

  "I’m changing Yahoo! China from a full portal of self-generated content to user-generated content," said Jack Ma, the company’s chairman and chief executive officer, speaking at a conference in Singapore.

  We're not quite sure what this means -- we think it means more stuff like Yahoo! answers, but what we're worried about what there is going to be less of -- as far as internet search engines for Chinese language news goes, Yahoo is pretty decent.
• Is Microsoft going to pull out of China? Apparently, that's what a senior official at Microsoul said recently:

  Fred Tipson, senior policy counsel for the computer giant, said concerns over the repressive regime might force it to reconsider its business in China. "Things are getting bad... and perhaps we have to look again at our presence there,' he told a conference in Athens.

  Commenters on that post wonder if this is just a sympathy piece from Microsoft, or what the real motivations are, since no one seems to believe that Microsoft loses sleep about setting up shop in non-democratic countries.
• Last but not least, Google. They might establish a joint venture with Ganji.com, the Chinese company they share an internet content provider (ICP) license with. It seems that foreign internet companies like Microsoft and Yahoo all have to find a local company to share a ICP license with, which it seems that Google already has. What kind of benefits will creating a joint venture bring to Google that they don't have now? We're hoping a reader can enlighten us.

Austinist knows that few things in life are scarier than zombies, people with way too much money, and politicians who try too hard to be funny. Slightly less scary, depending on whom you ask, are indie film makers, screenwriters, R-Rated movies, and indie rockers.

Shanghaiist has posted before about the controversy surrounding the new high school history textbooks in Shanghai, which were thrown under the media spotlight after an article in the New York Times by Joseph Kahn claimed that the new history books were a big departure from the old books and went so far as to nearly remove Mao from China's history. You can read what the folks over at the Peking Duck thought about it this issue here and here. It seems that only one or two people there managed to compare the new history textbooks in Shanghai, which move away from the "great man" theory of history, with a somewhat similar movement in teaching of American history towards more social and cultural history, along the lines of (and this perhaps isn't the best or only example) Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.

Late last month, we told you about the Shanghai Wild Animal Olympics, and we probably didn't infuse the post with the proper amount of outrage. Thankfully, some commenters picked up our slack and even directed readers to the animalsasia.org website, which includes information on how you can help put an end to such disgusting displays. We will now quote that information here:

Yesterday's Metro Express reports on a vote by 2470 internet users of real-estate website Sofun.com to decide which Shanghai metro station has the most romantic potential, ie where you would be most likely to meet your one true commuting love.

Danwei reported on September 11 about a poll on Netease which asked if you had another life, would you choose to be Chinese? There were five yes answers (yes+a reason) and five no answers (no+a reason). Danwei translated the results as follows:

Londonist answers the questions "How much is a cab from London to Marrakech?", and "Can a monkey blog?", as well as asks "What kind of guy can get shot in the knee then cycle to the hospital?"

Gothamist gets us started with "Law & Order", muppet style. Oh, you know what isn't a crime? Taking pictures on the MTA. So, why are cops stopping photographers? In other Gotham crime, a group of Asian men was attacked by a group of white guys in Queens. Finally, Boy George reports for his court mandated community service. Sweet.

The people over at Engadget went all ga-ga about a new mp3 player out of China. They called them "cheap-as-free":

Austinist makes it easy for us, with Candidate on a Civic Building, Blank on a Blank, and Penguins on a Freeway (warning: sad).

A commenter at another Shanghai forum wondered why we didn't post much on Shanghaiist over the weekend. The easy answer is: Because it was the weekend. But this weekend was busier than most (for us, at least). Before the Happy Hour was the Roller Revival -- lots of fun ... great venue ... great music ... great costumes -- which we managed to escape with all bones in tact. Unfortunately, that is not something all of the party goers can say. There was at least one broken wrist, which shouldn't really come as a surprise since it was an open bar and most of the crowd had wheels on their feet. (Here are some photos.)

LAist has so much fun this week! They go to E3, where they overhear the timeless remark "Man, this is where nerdy girls get laid." Is that a promise? They also give us this week's best CDs and make us realize that LA is the best place to use Zillow.

Londonist prepares a Happy Birthday bath for Buddah this week and then things get all cliched. A madman goes on a rampage while axe-wiedling and London's mayor warns an American diplomat to avoid the kitchen if the heat bothers him so much.

SFist commeters pose for before and aftershocks when the mayor commemorates a 1906 earthquake...at 4:30 in the morning. A hot tip on the Chronicle vending machines comes in and the SFist war correspondent risks life and limb to post this dispatch from the frontlines.