Watching the real-time industrialization of their nation, piloted by companies like Xiaomi and BYD, from a nation of dirt floors and bicycles to Roombas and electric cars within two decades gives a different perspective from the West, where potable water is expected and Flint, Michigan, is ridiculed. There was a recent news article with Chinese scientists featured as national heroes, contrasted with America, where our heroes are the products of the entertainment industry.

Within Chinese youth, the sentiment may be different, but there must be some sort of understanding within older Chinese millennials that engineers, scientists, and business leaders who emphasize technological growth (which is inherently anti-labor in the immediate short term) lead to products that better the lives of ordinary people. I don’t think that understanding is as prevalent in the current era amongst Western cultures that have taken things such as roads, running water, and household products for granted.

There is some sort of societal memory that producing things is still Good, and that a better way to produce Things with less Labor is to be celebrated. Because it is a nation where Things were, until recently, and still are for some non-insignificant portion of the population, not available compared to the West. The job loss is not as significant as the existence and affordability of a vacuum cleaner instead of a broom.

But I think we have largely forgotten about that here aside from a few industries. Household products required to survive comfortably are largely a solved problem. Most people in the US have access to a fridge, reliable transportation, running potable water, showers, a toilet, vacuum cleaners, and other things that we take for granted.

Thus, what’s the incentive for producing?

We now espouse the meaning of our work, of our jobs, of our personal satisfaction with what we do. We do things because we want to, or we need the money, or we think it makes the world a better place. We place the needs of the workers first and foremost without thinking of the product. Of course, this is a generalization, as the CEOs and the leaders of firms think about the product first and foremost, but the general worker does not. The salary system represents the intentional detachment between the worker and the product, amortizing the risk amongst the employees. Sure, we may have layoffs and stock options and tips and other performance-based incentives, but largely the individual employee’s incentives do not match.

Thus, when AI comes along and threatens those things, we as individual employees of the firm are concerned. Technology has always been, economically, a way to produce more given the constraints of labor and capital, and for white-collar workers, AI looks to be a way to accelerate that graph asymptotically whilst demand remains constrained. Not a great place for the labor side of the equation, to be quite fair.

In the West - and within younger Chinese who were born with cell phones in their hands - I’m sure that this production seems to be at the expense of the Worker. However, to older folks across the pond, it can only be seen as something extraordinary.

You grow up sweeping dirt floors and now your Xiaomi automatically maps out your room and cleans it. You grow up not having access to knowledge and now you can ask your phone anything and it can give you the answer. It’s nothing but a miracle. No wonder you embrace AI. Of course you would want agents; work is an act of suffering. Yet you ask your American friend and he or she loves his work and is afraid AI will replace him. You are afraid that your job may be in danger too, but you order your bowl of noodles for 14 yuan, it arrives in 20 minutes from a self-driving, AI-powered delivery robot, and you remember how you no longer need to boil your water and knead your dough from scratch.

I think we in the West need to remember that the product of our work is important too. Societies that still have vivid cultural memories of material scarcity are more likely to view automation as an opportunity for abundance rather than job preservation.

We are competing on a global level. If BYD makes better cars than Ford, they will eat our lunch no matter how many barriers we put up. And those barriers are Not Good for us. If BYD makes a better car, why should we put up with an inferior Ford?

I personally believe there are opportunities to innovate. There are always more features you can put in a car, and we should accelerate our production at the expense of labor. There are things that we can do in 2026 that would’ve been unthinkable in 2025, and reaping the fruits of that progress will be beneficial for our nation in the long run. A decade ago, coal miners were told to learn to code, but now, in the abundance of both cheap solar and cheap code, there must be something greater that coders, designers, engineers, artists, bean counters, and other people who work their minds can do that would lead to a society with more abundance.

A while ago, I saw this page emphasizing the importance of bundling your intent with your message for professional communication. Please give it a read—it’s a very important concept for the workplace. I deeply dislike it when people simply say “Hi” without including the context of their message.

Recently, I’ve started applying this concept to personal messages too. Asynchronous communication is hard, round-trip times are long, and text is an extremely lossy medium for communicating intent if you aren’t used to it. If you message me, please let me know the intent of your communication in the first sentence instead of being wishy-washy.

If you want something from me but think it might be too much, just ask! Perhaps it’s the result of working in a professional environment, but I’m much happier being asked directly for something than having someone socially engineer me into thinking it was my own idea to ask if they needed it. Time is valuable.

Also, provide as much information as possible! Please don’t make people ask you for details. Put everything into one message as concisely as you can.

“Hi! Can you help me with this?”
“Can I get some details?”
“Oh yeah… X, Y, Z.”
“Yes/No”

vs.

“Hi! Can you help me do X on Y at Z?”
“Yes/No”

Don’t waste time! Your life will be much better if you do this, and people will appreciate it.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

In August of 2013, popular idol group AKB48 released their 32nd single, “Koi Suru Fortune Cookie” (恋するフォーチュンクッキー, Koisuru Fōchunkukkī; “The Fall-in-Love Fortune Cookie”), or better known as Fortune Cookie in Love (I don’t think I’ve ever heard it called “The Fall-in-Love Fortune Cookie”). Over the next few years and into the next decade, it would become one of their more popular songs, even being remixed into some of the jingles for the Tokyo Metro. The music video would soon be released, a gargantuan performance involving thousands of extras and taking place in front of Hakata Station. The joyous, upbeat aspect of Koi Suru Fortune Cookie attracted the eyes of millions and gradually became one of their best-known songs alongside Heavy Rotation. You’ve probably heard it somewhere if you’re a weeaboo.

I’ve heard it hundreds of times!

One of the quirks of Koi Suru Fortune Cookie is the opener. They had a black DJ introduce them (who the heck was this guy??), which was not uncommon for many pop songs at the time. However, the lyrics have always stuck with me.

The guy goes:

おい日本のみんな、聞こえてるか？

What’s up Japan? Can you hear me?

最近日本は元気無いって？

Is life gettin’ you down?

カネがない、仕事がキビシイ、

No money, no job,

イマイチなニュースばっかりだもんな！

Too much bad news?

でもクヨクヨしててもしょうがないだろ？

Well, there’s no reason to be down.

いまは立ち上がって踊るのさ！

It’s time to get up!

AKB48から、オマエのテンションアガりまくる、最高にホットな新曲だ！

We have a hot new song from AKB48 to make you feel good!

「恋するフォーチュンクッキー」！！！

“Koisuru Fortune Cookie.”

踊れ、ニッポンよ

So dance, Japan!

踊り狂っちまえよ！

Crazy!

To a native English speaker, it sounds like stage banter. The gentleman is asking how you’re doing! Are you feeling down? Does your life suck? Well, AKB48 is going to cheer you up! Let’s get ready for AKB48! It’s just another introduction meant to hype you up, to set the stage for a cool performance. And that’s what I always assumed they were talking about, but I recently took it upon myself to go through the JP subs, which read a bit differently. I’m not sure if the translation was first written in JP or EN, but the JP subs are more directed.

Instead of addressing you, the audience, they address you, a citizen of Japan. Or more specifically, the people of Japan. The second line isn’t asking you as a viewer how down you are, but is more specifically asking about the national spirit of Japan itself. The rest of the introduction becomes a plea to the people and nation, with the context being societal problems of no money, no jobs, and terrible news, and how AKB is here to save the day.

While the EN listener thinks it’s a general “how’s it going, audience?” the JP reader gets a different picture; the scene is bleak, the nation is in stagnation, but here we are. The music video itself, with its thousands of people in the streets of Hakata, further exposes this concept; the people of Japan are dancing as the fortune cookie of love is going to change the national outlook.

And I don’t think this is a coincidence. What sounds like a catchy pop song to Westerners is a call to changing the fortune of the country.

To understand the background, we have to start in the ’70s and ’80s. A brief history lesson:

In 1985, the Plaza Accord was signed, which intentionally devalued the dollar and led to rapid yen appreciation. The Bank of Japan implemented monetary easing, leading to cheap credit. Over the next few years, speculation was rampant, and land and home values soared. The stock market could only go up! The national sentiment was great! It led to a culmination in ‘89, where the Nikkei peaked at an all-time high… for the next 35 years. Over the next year, the BoJ would drastically increase interest rates, tanking the Nikkei to about half of its value. The optimism of the bubble economy ground to a halt. Banks failed, hiring stopped, and the economy slowed down. The first lost decade (it was really only half a decade, kind of) kicked Japan in the balls. Worse yet, in ‘95, the national sentiment became grimmer after an earthquake and the Tokyo Sarin Gas Attack. The Nikkei would not return to its 1989 level until 2024.

However, in ‘96, temporary relief seemed to appear on the horizon. Due to banks stabilizing and increased exports, a brief moment of optimism shone through the economic downturn. Then, 1997? Thailand happened, and the Asian Financial Crisis, exacerbated by IMF shenanigans. Contagion quickly hit all the Asian economies, and Japan was not spared. A part two of the lost decade had hit the nation. Banks started to fail, the government basically bailed them out, and in ‘99, the BoJ basically gave up and basically made money free to borrow.

The ’90s were not a great time. One of my other theories for why there was so much grimdark post-apocalypse slop anime produced during this time was the post-bubble economy and the negative vision of the future.

In the ’00s, hope was rising. The economy started growing again, albeit slowly. Demand for Japanese machinery and electronics gave hope to the market. Sony and other Japanese tech giants seemed like they were doing well. And then, wham, ‘08 happened.

There’s a lot of politicking going around at this point, but GDP was in the dumps. It was so over. But in December 2012, a man named Shinzo Abe got elected.

Abe had a new vision: Abenomics. It consisted of three parts: aggressive monetary policy (really, easing), flexible fiscal policy (spend money on bridges to nowhere), and structural reform (putting women and old people to work). And somehow, it kind of worked in the end. However, Abenomics emphasized one pivotal point: Japan would not only have to revamp its economics, but also have to reimagine the optimism that would allow it to achieve its economic goals. It wasn’t enough to just set policy; Abenomics had to set expectations.

The people would have to believe in and look toward a better future. If people believed that the future would be better, they would manifest it. It’s Japan’s self-fulfilling prophecy, a national version of Keynesian expectations. More specifically, the cycle went like this: higher expectations for the economy -> more spending -> more growth -> higher expectations for the economy -> … It wasn’t enough that the economy should change, but rather that the behaviors of individuals in the nation should change.

The music video presents the AKBs in front of a giant parade, dancing in front of Hakata Station with thousands of onlookers. They’re not on some grand stage; they’re alongside ordinary people. The smiles are contagious. The music video pans to footage of regular people. Schoolchildren, office workers, families, commuters, tourists, police officers, companies, and government agencies all start to smile and dance. The message is to smile and join them! TV crews are in the background, everyone jiving and smiling, broadcasting the message throughout the nation.

“To capture good luck, put a smile on your face.”

“Make the fortune of tomorrow better than today.”

Following 30 years of continuously being kicked down by foreign currency manipulation, contagion, natural disasters, and economic depressions, Japan finally had a chance to reinvent itself. Koi Suru Fortune Cookie asked the audience to “break the shell” for something even “God wouldn’t know!” and for us not to take it negatively. It’s practically a song of national revitalization, spurring the listeners to do what? Generate economic value by smiling more.

Abenomics:

Optimism -> Spending -> Investment -> Growth -> More optimism

Koi Suru Fortune Cookie:

Smile -> Capture good luck -> Others join in -> Tomorrow becomes better -> More smiles

I have listened to this song hundreds of times without realizing what it was really about. It’s not just a love song! It’s more than a graduation song! It’s something greater - a call to a better vision of the future by the citizens of the nation. I think that’s partially why it’s so popular: it’s a song that manages to capture the sentiments and zeitgeist of the era. It’s no wonder this became one of their best-known songs! It spurred a huge trend and became a nationwide dance phenomenon for a reason. Smile, for things will get better! Understanding the song from that perspective makes me appreciate it just a bit more.

The Beef Wellington is a dish that’s notoriously difficult to make. It consists of a beef tenderloin in the center, a mushroom layer on top of that (sometimes with prosciutto or other intermediate layers as well), and puff pastry on the outside. The difficulty in cooking the dish lies in the heat control and guesswork required to cook the protein to exactly medium-rare while also not overcooking the puff pastry and burning it.

Out of all the recipes out there, hardly any is worse than Beef Wellington. I can’t think of any other dish where the individual components, cooked with minimal effort, taste better than their combination.

It’s a pointless dish. A beef tenderloin tastes amazing by itself with just a little bit of seasoning. Mushrooms, sautéed, baked, cooked with just a tiny bit of oil, or even grilled, taste amazing. And puff pastry is great on its own as well.

Put together, they don’t add anything to each other. Beef Wellington consists of completely non-complementary foods smashed together and presented on a plate. Yet we are supposed to pretend that it’s some kind of high-class dish, a masterpiece! It’s terrible!

In a way, Beef Wellington reflects the national ethos of Britain itself: tradition in the face of things that are simply better. It’s the culinary equivalent of the UK’s relationship with air conditioning. Presented with the straightforward option of installing a window unit, they instead explain that their homes are “built to keep the heat in,” buy three fans, open every window in the house, and convince themselves that sweating indoors is a cultural virtue rather than a solved engineering problem.

Anyways, the act of cooking Beef Wellington should be considered a form of food terrorism.