Million-Follower Detective - Netflix Series

Watch Million-Follower Detective | Netflix Official Site
NITFLIXZ

Teenage boys being goofballs, doing stunts, recording their antics to post on-line and collecting followers. One of their group inexplicably takes a toy gun to a police station and starts pointing it at people. The police, as expected, shoot him. Since this is the world we live in, there are a bunch on people with nothing better to do than to hang around in front of the police station. They all have their smartphones and somebody manages to record the shooting. Since our guy, a scruffy old police detective, is the shooter and the video gets posted online, he attracts a sizeable following, and as you might expect, most of it is negative.

The detective's estranged daughter is also posting videos or herself wearing a mask and making predictions. It's all full and games until she starts predicting deaths and the deaths start occurring. And wouldn't you know it, the guys who are turning up dead are the original goofballs we started with.

The investigation goes round and round but eventually we start getting some clues, and they all point to a car crash that you could blame on our goofballs. I wouldn't blame them, but the driver does, and when he has a second crash immediately after the first one and his pregnant wife is killed, he embarks on a complicated course of revenge that involves forcing the daughter to make the predictions and then fulfilling those predictions.

Only at the very end do we find that the second crash was caused by errant bullet fired by another cop while harassing a druggie, and goofballs weren't really the problem at all.

Kinmen Island 1949

The Battle that Saved Taiwan - Kinmen Island 1949
Historigraph

I didn't get much 20th century Chinese history when I was in school. Something about Japan bad, and we helped the Chinese fight against the bad Japanese, but that was about it. Only much later did I hear that the Communists abandoned the fight and marched West and hid out until the Japanese were defeated, then came back and kicked the war weary nationalists over the strait to Taiwan.

Anyway, Kinmen Island looked familiar because it's the home of the Black Dragon Howitzers.

A Foggy Tale - Netflix Movie

A Foggy Tale - official trailer
Mandarin Vision

Apparently we didn't get our quota of repression from binge watching Tehran so now we're in Taiwan watching another repressive regime in action. The story starts slowly but after laying out the ground work it picks up speed and becomes engrossing. The epilog makes it look like it is a true story, but I found nothing on the net to confirm this.

Netflix summary:

After losing her brother to a government execution, a young girl takes a dangerous journey to reclaim his body and raise the money for a proper burial.

Midgard Times review:

A Foggy Tale is set during the period of White Terror—a nearly four-decade era of martial law, political repression, and authoritarian rule by the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, or KMT) under Chiang Kai-shek—and, for most of its runtime, Chen Yu-hsun films those oppressive years as though they were distant memories recalled decades later. The result is a mostly detached and unsentimental tale told with the observational restraint of a documentary. Through the eyes of a young Taiwanese girl named Yue (Caitlin Fang), Yu-hsun captures the ordinary lives of citizens living during the White Terror. By keeping a child at the center, Yu-hsun refuses to sugarcoat her proximity to physical harm and dangers posed by predatory men and the police officers. After arriving in Taipei from Chiayi, Yue is abducted by a child trafficker, and when she angrily accuses a cop of killing her brother, another officer kicks her and violently beats her. Yet when Yue blames the police for her brother's death, she isn't accusing a single individual so much as the entire repressive system.

A Foggy Tale opens with Yue and her brother, Yun (Tseng Jing-hua), discussing what they hope to become in the future. From there, Yu-hsun cuts to one year later and takes us to the moment when the news of Yun's execution by firing squad arrives at Yue's residence. The implication is clear: under oppressive rule, dreams, ambitions, and futures are abruptly cut short by a regressive, close-minded system. There are other sentimental touches, like Yue finding a brother-from-another-mother in Chao Kung-tao (Will Or) and reuniting with her elder sister, Hsu (9m88), who was given up for adoption years earlier. Yet Yu-hsun never exploits these moments for melodramatic effect. He remains curiously level-headed throughout. Scenes that might have turned cloying or excessively brutal in the hands of a lesser filmmaker are presented in a matter-of-fact manner.

When Yue is taken to a room at Paradise Funeral Home to identify her brother's body, what stands out in the foreground is the employee's casual lack of empathy in the face of her discomfort. Even then, Yu-hsun shows little interest in launching direct attacks against any particular person. Cruelty is not sensationalized, and acts of kindness arrive without sentimental fanfare. Such a style of filmmaking often results in impersonal work, yet there is something about A Foggy Tale that prevents you from dismissing Yu-hsun's efforts. He casually introduces elements like a Robin Hood-style figure or Kung-tao making a deal to murder someone in ways that initially leave you taken aback. Is Yu-hsun assembling different varieties of vignettes to depict a particular moment in history? Does the key to the puzzle lie in the titular tale that Hsu tells her sister?

Wikipedia page about the White Terror.

Train from Chiayi to Taipei

Had I Not Seen the Sun - Netflix Series

Watch Had I Not Seen the Sun | Netflix Official Site
Nitflixz

Very slow moving ghost story about a serial killer. We've got an extensive assortment of villains, from debt collecting thugs to drunken abusive parents to fancy pants tyrants, never mind the primary villain who has murdered nine or ten people. And that's only in the first three episodes.

The main thrust of the story seems to be about friendship and trust. The ghost story kind of peters out. The second season is a bit confusing because they bring in a new actress for the primary role, and then she develops two or three, or maybe four, different personalities.

There is very little killing in the first season, but our killer gets rolling in the second season. You are very happy to see most of the victims get theirs, they were pretty shitty people.

2 seasons, 10 episodes each.

Kaohsiung Music Center

Kaohsiung Music Center

The Kaohsiung Music Center is on the Ciajhen harbor in southwest Taiwan. I got onto it from this photo from Aljazeera:

Taiwan lies near the junction of two tectonic plates and is prone to earthquakes [File: I-Hwa Cheng/AFP]

Taiwan

Wikipedia has a page about it.

The Victims' Game - Season 2 - Netflix Series

The Victims' Game (Season 2 Teaser subtitled) | Trailer in English | Netflix
Trailers in English

We watched the first two episodes tonight. So far our hero has managed to be in the vicinity of the murders of two people who were vaguely connected to another pair of murders that happened fifteen years ago when our hero was the forensic examiner. The first victim had traces of his skin under her fingernails. You know our guy didn't do it, I mean he's the hero, and this a murder mystery made for TV. Of course he's not the villain, but somebody is sure going to a lot of trouble to make him look guilty. And how do you even steal enough skin from someone (without them noticing, mind you) to make a decent sample that they could then stuff under the murder victim's fingernails?

This guy is autistic, but he has two good looking women who are after him. One is Lois Lane, the investigative reporter from season one, and the other is the new forensic examiner. There's another hot chick, I think she's from the prosecutor's office, but she's been pretty neutral so far.

The police are a bunch of Keystone Kops. There's a pack of them that follow the prosecutor around and whenever they see our hero they all take off running after him, but they never manage to catch him. Huh. Imagine that. Almost like they are taking a smoke break as soon as they get around the corner and out of sight of the camera.

We watched season 1 exactly 2 years ago. Note: It is Victims' Game, not Victim's Game. That is, it is a game belonging to a group of victims, not just one. I'm telling you this because Blogger's search function could not find this old post using either Victim, Victims or Victim's. Stupid apostrophes.

Russian Metal

Explaining Commodities (Scene)

Mish Talk headline: Citigroup Takes Delivery Of 100,000 Tons Of Aluminum And 40,000 Tons Of Zinc

When you are speculating on commodities (like coffee, tea, or aluminum, or orange juice like in Trading Places) the idea is unload your purchase onto someone who actually wants it rather than to take possession of it, because then you would need some place to put it. Evidently Citigroup has leased some warehouse space in Taiwan to store these ingots, so they are jumping in with both feet. Okay, that's fine by me. I ain't playing on the London Metals Exchange.

But then we have this line from Mish:

Much if not most of these metals are of Russia origin. But that’s OK because the Biden administration placed no bans on Russian aluminum or zinc.

So evidently Russia is not the devil incarnate, they are only bad if they sell cheap gas and oil to Europe.

Cyber Warfare

East Asia Undersea Communication Cables

Zerohedge reports on what could be a more physical kind of Cyber Warfare:

According to Taiwanese authorities, on Feb. 2, a Chinese fishing boat damaged an undersea communications cable that connects Taiwan's main island to Matsu Islands. About one week later, a Chinese cargo ship severed another cable. 

Located approximately 30 miles off the coast of China, the tiny island of Dongyin has quickly established a backup communication system, as reported by the WSJ. The new system uses a high-powered microwave radio to transmit data to Taipei. WSJ described the disruption as a "wartime scenario" and "in a potential preview of a Chinese attack." 

Matsu Islands

Dogyin is one of the Matsu islands. The Matsu islands are tiny and are five to ten miles from the coast of Red China. Taiwan is more like 100 miles from the coast of the mainland.

Here is another post about the proximity of the two Chinas and air attacks.

Submarine Cables:

• Telegeography Submarine Cable Map
• Surfacing
• Post: Cocos Islands
• Post: Surfacing

The Drones Keep on Coming

Shenyang J-6 Drone

Shenyang J-6

My Daily Kona has a story about how Red China is converting their fleet of aging J-6 fighter aircraft into drones. They are old and obsolete but still serviceable which means they could make excellent attack drones. China has a several airbases that are just a stone's throw from Taiwan and since the J-6 is capable of Mach 1.3 it would take it about 6 minutes to cross the 100 mile wide Taiwan Strait.

Chinese Airbases near Taiwan

China has several thousand of J-6 aircraft. Should they convert them all to drones and use them to attack Taiwan, Taiwan would have its work cut out trying to shoot them all down. Anti-aircraft missiles would be the weapon of choice. Conventional anti-aircraft guns have a hard time against supersonic aircraft.

Of course China has got its work cut out converting these aircraft into drones, and then there's the little matter of making them work. Who knows what kind of problems they are going to run into, especially if they try to get them to fly supersonic. I don't know that anyone is building supersonic drones. Yet.

My Daily Kona lists five Chinese air bases that are near the strait. I couldn't find all of them. Wikipedia has a list of about 170 Chinese air bases. I picked five that sort of matched Kona's list and plotted them on a Google Map.

Temple

Jing Fu Temple Taipei, Taiwan

Travel Taipei has a page about this place.

The Victims' Game

The Victims' Game | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix Asia
Not the best show in the world. None of the characters are very sympathetic. The lead guy is a forensic investigator with the police. He is afflicted with Asberger's which, rumor has it, is a mild form of autism. He is very focused on his work and not too good in the social skills department. The other lead is an agressive, attractive, young woman reporter. So Superman and Lois Lane, sort of, dealing with a suicide death cult, a group of people who are all suffering in one way or another. Their facilitator arranges for each one to commit suicide but making it look like the suicide of another member of the group. So we get a who chain of suicides and each exposes some kind of bullshit corruption. Meanwhile our girl's editor keeps diverting her from the story she really wants to write because they would reflect poorly on one or another of their big advertisers.

This show was set in Taiwan. We watch a lot of shows out of South Korea and Western Europe, but I think this might be the first one I've seen from Taiwan. The Korean shows all kind of blur together, I think they use many of the same sets. This show looked different. I'm not quite sure just what was different. It still looked Asian, just different.

Curiously, at the end of the season, Superman and Lois Lane looked like they might have formed some kind of attachment. It's curious because we haven't seen any sign of affection between them before now. But they have been working together all season on some emotionally charged stuff. So maybe seeing some affection now is not out of line. And it's not obvious, no kissing or hugging or anything like that, just the way they behave around each other. It was either skillfully done or maybe I just imagined it.

Stuff

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company plant under construction near Interstate 17 and Loop 303 in north Phoenix. TSMC

When we dismantled the partitions on the main floor of the new house we saved the doors and cabinets. I was under the impression that we could reuse them when we built the new partitions. Silly me. The girls decided they wanted all new stuff, so now I've got a bunch of perfectly good doors and cabinets that I need to get rid of. I put an ad on Craigslist offering them for free but the only response was from a couple of people who wanted the one louvered door. After a bunch of fiddle farting we finally agreed on a time they could come by and get it, so I drove the 15 miles to hand over this one door.

The person who showed up was a cheerful middle-aged Chinese woman with her equally cheerful sister. They were both wearing dungarees and are totally into doing things on their own. We're talking, I mention I used to work for Intel and she tells me her niece (cousin? daughter? some relative) has recently graduated from school and has gone to work for TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) in Taiwan and will be transferring to their new plant in Phoenix once it is completed. I was surprised to hear this because I thought something like this would be big news, but I hadn't heard a word about it. Probably because I don't follow the correct propaganda, er, news feeds.

TSMC is one of the big three semiconductor manufacturers in the world these days, the other two being Intel  (USA) and Samsung (South Korea). Intel has big plants in central Arizona, New Mexico and well as in Silicon Valley and just down the road from my home in Hillsboro.

I still have rest of the old doors and cabinets. I could have just relegated them to the dumpster, but Portland has a place the deals in reclaimed building materials, so they will probably accept them. All I have to do it haul them down there. It's funny how much perfectly useful stuff goes to the landfill because people can't be bothered with it, while at the same time we have people who spend hours or even years restoring a piece of junk.

Black Dragon M1 Howitzer & China

The Black Dragon M1 Howitzer: The WWII Superheavy Artillery That's Still Relevant in Taiwan
Megaprojects

The video starts with an ad that lasts up to the 1:10 mark, just in case you don't want to listen to Simon talking about hair loss.

This gun saw some serious use in WW2. It was used again in the Korean War and then the US put it away. The Republic of China (also known as Formosa or Taiwan) still has a few of them on some of the small islands just off the coast of mainland China. Taiwan has 166 minor islands besides the main island of Formosa. You can see that some of them are very close to the Chinese mainland.

Taiwan & Outlying Islands, notably Kinmen and Matsu

The Chinese Communists and the Nationalists have been fighting each other more or less continuously since 1927. Sometimes the war heats up and they start shooting at each other, and sometimes it cools down and they just glare at each other but they have never come to terms. The Commies have been making noise about how 'they should all be one China' lately. It might be that they are trying to distract their populace from bad economic news, but that kind of thing has started wars before, notably the Falklands war between Argentina and the UK.

Update July 2026 added Kinmen Island to map caption.