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Melissa Chen

@MsMelChen • 337,406 subscribers

VP @strategyrisks | Board + co-founder @IdeasB2 | Board @envprogress | 🇸🇬 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 | ✍️ The Spectator & elsewhere | Email: [email protected]

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If there was a Miss Congeniality award for World Cup teams, Japan 🇯🇵 would easily win it, hands down No contest

If there was a Miss Congeniality award for World Cup teams, Japan 🇯🇵 would easily win it, hands down No contest

633,675 views

It’s hard to capture the pure joy and jubilation on the streets of Tel Aviv tonight. We were having a late al fresco dinner when throngs of people would come by at regular intervals, singing and chanting merrily. They carried Torah scrolls like they were Stanley Cup trophies, hoisting them into the air and dancing around it. They have many reasons to celebrate today. The hostages are home, war is over, and it’s Simchat Torah - the happiest day of the Jewish holiday season where they celebrate and honor God’s Word.

It’s hard to capture the pure joy and jubilation on the streets of Tel Aviv tonight. We were having a late al fresco dinner when throngs of people would come by at regular intervals, singing and chanting merrily. They carried Torah scrolls like they were Stanley Cup trophies, hoisting them into the air and dancing around it. They have many reasons to celebrate today. The hostages are home, war is over, and it’s Simchat Torah - the happiest day of the Jewish holiday season where they celebrate and honor God’s Word.

544,542 views

Boys can call each other jihadi and fascist in the group chat and still slap backs and crack jokes when they’re in the same room. But right-of-center women with the same politics trying to rebuild a nationalist conservative uh.. axis to save their own countries meet for the first time and they hug like sisters separated from birth 🇮🇹PM Meloni meets 🇯🇵PM Takaichi at the G20 in South Africa:

Boys can call each other jihadi and fascist in the group chat and still slap backs and crack jokes when they’re in the same room. But right-of-center women with the same politics trying to rebuild a nationalist conservative uh.. axis to save their own countries meet for the first time and they hug like sisters separated from birth 🇮🇹PM Meloni meets 🇯🇵PM Takaichi at the G20 in South Africa:

311,144 views

Today isn’t just Boxing Day. It’s also Mao’s birthday. There’s this episode of The Simpsons where Homer takes his family to China. In Tiananmen Square, they come across a placard that reads: “On this site, in 1989, nothing happened.” Then Homer pays his “respects” to Mao Zedong as “a little angel that killed 50 million people," and inadvertently recreates the iconic Tank Man image. Obviously, this episode would have never been made today:

Today isn’t just Boxing Day. It’s also Mao’s birthday. There’s this episode of The Simpsons where Homer takes his family to China. In Tiananmen Square, they come across a placard that reads: “On this site, in 1989, nothing happened.” Then Homer pays his “respects” to Mao Zedong as “a little angel that killed 50 million people," and inadvertently recreates the iconic Tank Man image. Obviously, this episode would have never been made today:

260,881 views

Ah yes, the Omnicause strikes again It’s a revolution without end, and without any requirement to be grounded in reality

Ah yes, the Omnicause strikes again It’s a revolution without end, and without any requirement to be grounded in reality

45,075 views

Miami just does World Cup differently. Ready for 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 vs 🇳🇴

Miami just does World Cup differently. Ready for 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 vs 🇳🇴

59,567 views

All these campuses from Columbia to NYU could use a hero like him:

All these campuses from Columbia to NYU could use a hero like him:

266,118 views

Ian Miles Cheong Day in the life of Candace Owens

Ian Miles Cheong Day in the life of Candace Owens

27,704 views

Someone has to give you a dose of reality about 2026 and it might as well be me

Someone has to give you a dose of reality about 2026 and it might as well be me

15,053 views

Video taken just a few days earlier in the very same park where he disappeared. Was told Gibbs stays on the paved track around the park, occasionally gets distracted, but then catches up.

Video taken just a few days earlier in the very same park where he disappeared. Was told Gibbs stays on the paved track around the park, occasionally gets distracted, but then catches up.

18,570 views

Videos

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The outrage over Shane Gillis’s gym joke recalls the backlash Jordan Peterson faced thanks to a 2018 Vice interview where he pointed out that women wear makeup and high heels at work as sexual displays. The Professor was ahead of his time and showed what it's like when a reflexive low-IQ lefty refuses to engage with reality in order to preserve his bubble of ideological safety. In both these incidents, you have someone observing (or joking about) women's deliberate sexual signaling in mixed sex spaces, and instead of examining the signaling, the biology, or the inconsistent rules, the reflexive response was to treat that truthful observation itself as the offense. Our choices in clothing and cosmetics have aesthetic, evolutionary, social and sexual functions. Yet modern feminists like to pretend the sexual component is absent or irrelevant. Both controversies highlight how hypocritical things are because on one hand, female sexual presentation is common and in fact, ENCOURAGED, yet male visual attention or commentary is pathologized. Peterson’s broader point was that post-sexual-revolution and #MeToo environments demand male restraint and “enthusiastic consent” protocols while refusing to discuss female signaling, hypergamy, or the biological asymmetry in visual arousal. Reaction to Gillis’s banal joke reveals the same double standard at play. Both women (and men) deliberately dress and behave in ways that maximize sexual attention, status, or mate-value signaling. Remember when second wave feminists used to own the "I’m a 'ho" energy? Pepperidge Farm remembers. Back then, dressing sexy or slutty was treated as straightforward empowerment and self-expression. Today’s third wave feminism is in denial about the biological realities of sexual signaling, and then piles shrill emotional moralizing on top of the dishonesty. Dr. Dr Jordan B Peterson argued that once traditional sexual norms are dismantled without replacement, mixed environments become minefields. Women still engage in sexual display, but men are punished for acknowledging it, and the rules governing behavior are written in moral language that defines male behavior as toxic by default. This will keep happening until one side stops pretending that signaling and biology don’t exist.

Melissa Chen

77,227 views • 16 days ago

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*** ON WHAT IS CURRENTLY KNOWN AND WHAT IS UNKNOWABLE ABOUT THE NEPAL-TIBETAN LANDSLIDE DISASTER *** There are always wild speculations in the immediate aftermath of any disaster, and in the case of the Nepal–Tibet landslides, those have ranged from secret glacier server farms (!!!) to a burst Chinese dam to geoengineering. As of now, this is just noise as they are unverifiable. What is NOT noise is China’s information control. User-generated footage of the tidal wave of mud and water hitting Gyirong Port, the main China-Nepal crossing, vanished quickly from WeChat and other Chinese platforms. State media has instead focused on rescue operations and leadership visits including Premier Li Qiang's. It has shown little of the devastation or victim accounts. Bear in mind, just as the BBC rightly points out here, that foreign journalists have almost no access to Tibet which China has annexed decades ago. Almost everything that you will read in the Western media comes from official Chinese sources, so read the news coverage with that constraint in mind. China’s confirmed-death count started at 3 and remains far lower than Nepal’s, even though the port was hit directly and video showed crowds fleeing. As of August 30, Nepal reports 734 dead and 2,498 missing, including hundreds of foreigners and roughly 900 hydropower workers, some trapped in tunnels. China reports 16 dead and 546 missing, including 261 foreigners (104 Nepalis, 49 Indians, 33 Latvians, 18 Americans, 15 Britons, and others). That gap, plus the censorship, is why this leaves a sense of deja vu to many people who have witnessed Chinese actions during covid - downplay the scale, tightly manage the narrative, fail to warn neighbors. Nepali officials, including a minister, have said they received no timely cross-border alert from China. What is actually true about Chinese activity in Nepal? Nepal is a sovereign state balancing India and China, calling itself “the yam between two rocks.” It joined the Belt and Road Initiative, takes Chinese infrastructure and hydropower investment, and consistently affirms the One China policy while restricting anti-China activity, especially on Tibet. China’s economic and political weight in Nepal has grown to the point that some now describe it as close to a vassal relationship. There are multiple hydropower projects in the Nepali valleys where so many workers are missing. Further up in the Tibetan region, there is also extensive mining, blasting, and slope work being done. All of this development, in theory, can increase exposure and can disturb slopes and permafrost. But we don't really know if Chinese construction has changed drainage or slope stability in that specific area. The affected corridor is heavily built-up and settled, and yes the same area has flooded before. That is what can be established. Wilder claims remain unproven until independent teams can access the region. The official account on both sides is still climatic and glacial - that a glacier collapsed and caused an ice-rock avalanche, not an engineering failure on the Chinese side. A mixed cause is possible, but until China opens the area, it simply cannot be tested.

Melissa Chen

181,925 views • 2 months ago

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It is insane to see this 5th April 1982 interview with Margaret Thatcher from the vantage point of today. At this point, the Argentinians had just invaded and seized the Falklands. You can actually see what they call an "iron will" in her eyes, and hear it in every measured, authoritative word. There's no bluster or misplaced confidence, just a quiet conviction. She was a totally different type of leader unseen in a long time, which Britain sorely needs today. Thatcher’s government staked everything on retaking the islands after Argentina's invasion. Polls showed her deeply unpopular beforehand; victory, thanks to the "Falklands Factor," delivered a landslide in 1983. Defeat almost certainly would have forced her resignation amid national humiliation, collapsing Conservative support and likely ushering in a Labour government amid economic strife and union unrest. More than politics was at stake. Giving up would have meant abandoning British citizens to a right-wing junta’s aggression, a Suez Crisis on steroids for the television age. Images of surrender would have flashed around the world, signaling weakness. It would have shattered the idea that Britain still stood ready to defend its people and its territory. Watch how she explains why fighting was not just necessary, but morally imperative. Listen to the way she deftly handles questions about America, praising their diplomatic efforts while making it crystal clear that this was Britain and only Britain's responsibility to shoulder alone. And when the ITN interviewer asks her at the end if she's prepared to resign if she fails? Trust me.... just watch how and what she answered it with. This type of leadership feels like an extinct species now. It’s exactly the kind of clear-eyed, unflinching European voice the West could use more of today. (Javier Milei has long been an open admirer of Thatcher for precisely these reasons btw)

Melissa Chen

276,541 views • 3 months ago

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The Alysa Liu as hero vs. Eileen Gu as anti-hero arc continues to play out. She skated with such lightness and joy, taking the Olympic gold today - the first individual to win gold for the USA 🇺🇸 in this event in 24 years. Just look at her post-performance reaction - pure all-American exuberance bursting out like fireworks on the 4th of July. She's so bubbly and almost cartoonishly enthusiastic, beaming at the crowd as she skates around, unable to conceal her wide grin. Meanwhile, across the slopes today, Eileen Gu faced her own dramatic twist, crashing down the halfpipe after clips of her press conference demeanor went viral. In it, she laughed loudly at a reporter's question before delivering a haughty and defensive response about her record, saying "I'm most decorated female freeskier in history." It's totally fine to highlight her self-evident success but the way that came off, compared to Alysa's warm and approachable on-ice outburst, just reinforced The Tale of Two Athletes. Eileen raked in $6.6 million from the Chinese government to ski for Team China, and her brand endorsements pull in upwards of $20 million in off-ice income. Alysa on the other hand didn't take the China deal, and had to endure being targeted by Chinese spies all because of her father who is a Chinese political refugee. I hope American companies are paying attention: patriotism is a brand in itself, one that deserves to be profitable too. Alysa is genuine and inspirational and her story is also one about grit and grace and sticking to ones' principles. What a great American hero. Congratulations Alysa Liu, American Patriot 🫡

Melissa Chen

536,858 views • 8 months ago