L. M. | Kantonier - 粵

一個來自南粵嘅流浪者，清理緊自己身上嘅支性。
Ein heimatsloser Wanderer aus Kantonien.

"Wer ist der König der Ehren? Er ist der HERR, stark und mächtig im Streit!" - Psalm 24:10

[Patrick T. Brown @PTBwrites]

Welcome to Canada, where "just let consenting adults have a little more control over their death" has quickly become "just let us force religious hospitals, who have sworn an oath to care for and cherish life, to be the ones who kill their patients," among other dystopic outcomes

[Ben Sasse @BenSasse]

Friends-

This is a tough note to write, but since a bunch of you have started to suspect something, I’ll cut to the chase: Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.

Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence. But I already had a death sentence before last week too — we all do.

I’m blessed with amazing siblings and half-a-dozen buddies that are genuinely brothers. As one of them put it, “Sure, you’re on the clock, but we’re all on the clock.” Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all.

Still, I’ve got less time than I’d prefer. This is hard for someone wired to work and build, but harder still as a husband and a dad. I can’t begin to describe how great my people are. During the past year, as we’d temporarily stepped back from public life and built new family rhythms, Melissa and I have grown even closer — and that on top of three decades of the best friend a man could ever have. Seven months ago, Corrie was commissioned into the Air Force and she’s off at instrument and multi-engine rounds of flight school. Last week, Alex kicked butt graduating from college a semester early even while teaching gen chem, organic, and physics (she’s a freak). This summer, 14-year-old Breck started learning to drive. (Okay, we’ve been driving off-book for six years — but now we’ve got paper to make it street-legal.) I couldn’t be more grateful to constantly get to bear-hug this motley crew of sinners and saints.

There’s not a good time to tell your peeps you’re now marching to the beat of a faster drummer — but the season of advent isn’t the worst. As a Christian, the weeks running up to Christmas are a time to orient our hearts toward the hope of what’s to come.

Not an abstract hope in fanciful human goodness; not hope in vague hallmark-sappy spirituality; not a bootstrapped hope in our own strength (what foolishness is the evaporating-muscle I once prided myself in). Nope — often we lazily say “hope” when what we mean is “optimism.” To be clear, optimism is great, and it’s absolutely necessary, but it’s insufficient. It’s not the kinda thing that holds up when you tell your daughters you’re not going to walk them down the aisle. Nor telling your mom and pops they’re gonna bury their son.

A well-lived life demands more reality — stiffer stuff. That’s why, during advent, even while still walking in darkness, we shout our hope — often properly with a gravelly voice soldiering through tears.

Such is the calling of the pilgrim. Those who know ourselves to need a Physician should dang well look forward to enduring beauty and eventual fulfillment. That is, we hope in a real Deliverer — a rescuing God, born at a real time, in a real place. But the eternal city — with foundations and without cancer — is not yet.

Remembering Isaiah’s prophecies of what’s to come doesn’t dull the pain of current sufferings. But it does put it in eternity’s perspective:
“When we've been there 10,000 years…We've no less days to sing God's praise.”

I’ll have more to say. I’m not going down without a fight. One sub-part of God’s grace is found in the jawdropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more. Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived. We’re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and I’ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape.

But for now, as our family faces the reality of treatments, but more importantly as we celebrate Christmas, we wish you peace: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned….For to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9).

With great gratitude, and with gravelly-but-hopeful voices,
Ben — and the Sasses

[Daniel Bordman @DanielBordmanOG]

Never criticizing Chinese ecological terrorism as a means of statecraft is one of the main reasons I never take “environmentalist” NGOs seriously. That, and a hatred of nuclear power.

[Jonathon Van Maren @JVanMaren]

Without fail, the first thing a cult leader discovers is his divine right to sex with more than one woman.

[michaelturton @michaelturton]

KMT policy is quite simple: destroy governance, and blame the DPP for the resulting dysfunctions.
https://t.co/nuaOlRNLCI

[Mad ML scientist @HououinTyouma]

new sitcom idea: 18 yo chinese ccp spy joining an SF defense startup and realizing no one has actually done any work because they are too busy going to parties and chasing social clout, so she has to create all of the tech herself before she can send it back home

[Ross Douthat @DouthatNYT]

And on the pedestal, these words appear:
"we will allow even more,
including erotica for verified adults"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
https://t.co/frWo54aOAq

[Brad Wilcox @BradWilcoxIFS]

1. "The Musk children will probably never have to worry about money. But [our research indicates even] rich kids from non-intact families [do] markedly worse emotionally & socially than their peers from intact families." Take depression:

[L. M. | Kantonier - 粵 @Kantonier1]

@lymanstoneky There have been individual Chinese mercenaries fighting on Russia's side for quite some time already (some even posted on Chinese soc med). But if it's on the same scale as the (rumored?) North Korean involvement then yeah it's a different story.

[Yuan Yi Zhu @yuanyi_z]

Reading this headline and article, you would never know that the “targeting” of Mark Carney by Chinese state actors was *in his favour*.

[Jimmy Rushton @JimmySecUK]

The Trump administration inadvertently sinking the Russian economy through sheer stupidity would objectively be the funniest outcome of Trump’s trade war.

[Kareem Rifai 🌐 @KareemRifai]

We literally had US troops on the ground to enforce that armistice, and those troops are still in South Korea nearly a century later.

David Sacks accidentally arguing for a security guarantee backed by US troops for Ukraine. Cerebral.

[Mike Bird @Birdyword]

The most obvious explanation for current US trade policy is that Donald Trump is the Manitoban Candidate, a sleeper agent put in place decades ago by the Canadian Liberals until such time he was needed

[Bonchie @bonchieredstate]

These charts are the most concise explanation of Europe I’ve ever seen.

[Thomas Chacko @thomasjac82]

The total exemption from civil liability is one of the most inexplicable bits of this legislation, though if it was always intended that this be run through private contractors I can see that it makes it a much more attractive business to get into.

[Adam Rossi @rossiadam]

When I was a kid “save the whales” was a big thing.

The young people today seem to care a lot about climate change hurting sea life, and the plastic garbage in the pacific.

Yet they seem to overlook the Chinese fleets relentlessly over-harvesting the international oceans 🤷🏻‍♂️

[Santiago Capital @SantiagoAuFund]

"We are going to stop trading with the US and dedollarize our economy" is the international version of Americans saying "I'm going to move to Canada if Trump wins"...

[L. M. | Kantonier - 粵 @Kantonier1]

@lymanstoneky During their partisan years the Chinese Communists also used poppy trade to finance themselves (google "Nanniwan"). Once they took power, they too banned it & started painting the "Opium Wars" as "national humiliation." Luckily for them they found other more lucrative ways later

[Blume Industries CEO Balding 大老板 @BaldingsWorld]

Not seeing the problem. If Hong Kong is a part of China, then Hong Kong is China, we treat Hong Kong as we treat China. Next topic

[Yuan Yi Zhu @yuanyi_z]

February marks the 10th anniversary of the Supreme Court of Canada's decision to legalise euthanasia.

We were promised there would be no slippery slopes.

A decade on, there was no slippery slope; it was a cliff.

Me for @nationalpost.