NERDNEWS

NANJING: THE BURNING CITY

Dark Horse Comics—with their hands in everything from Sin City to Hellboy—published the China-centered historical graphic novel Nanjing: The Burning City by Ethan Young this fall, adding to a growing list of impressive graphic novels set in modern Chinese history, perhaps best illustrated by the works of gene Luen Yang’s Boxers & Saints. Nanjing catalogues the Nanjing Massacre in the Imperial Japanese invasion, opening with, “The day before the city’s capture, Chinese military officials began fleeing Nanjing in chaos. Many commanders abandoned their own troops without giving any orders for retreat. This is a story about the forgotten ones.” This monochrome, 216-page graphic novel chronicles a fictional tale of the survivors left in the wake of the initial Japanese invasion. The drama is heartfelt and emotional and the illustrations, also done by Ethan Young, present a dark, somber feel, giving the piece a fantastic platform from which to delve into the complex horrors of an abandoned city in the midst of chaos and murder. Young doesn’t shy away from the darker elements of the time and presents them in a spotty, gray style that accentuates the time period as well as the horrific events of the age. Young’s previous work, Tails, was named Best graphic Novel by the Independent Publishers Book Awards.

– TYlER RONEY

WORLD’S SMALLEST SNAIL

While in guangxi Province, you could check out Silver Cave, the Longsheng Rice Terraces, or cruise along the Li River in luxury in peace. Or, you could go hunting for snails. These tiny creatures were discovered by a team of scientists from Shinshu University in transported soil samples and captured public imagination with the fact that they can, literally, fit inside the eye of a needle. The initial discovery found seven different tiny snail species, the smallest of which is the Angustopila dominikae, which has a shell that measures in at just 0.86 millimeters in height, making it possibly the smallest land snail ever discovered. So, if you find yourself in guangxi Province, just kicking around Hechi, Bama County, or Jiaole Village, try your luck beneath some limestone cliffs to search for this little critter. Indeed, the researchers pointed out that, “This finding underscores the need to explore more cave systems in order to make inferences about subterranean biodiversity in China.”Much of the cave systems throughout China remain unexplored, and there are surely more microgastropods waiting to be discovered.

– T.R.

GENETICALLY MODIFIED MICROPIGS FOR SALE

Cats are ambivalent, dogs bite your furniture to threads, hamsters—well, they just die. But genetically-edited pigs that grow to only 15 kilograms? Who could resist? The Beijing genomics Institute 〔BgI〕 announced in early October that they can now supply consumers with a cute micropig for a price of 1,600 USD each, free to choose your own color pattern. The Bama pigs, already quite small at just 30 to 50 kilograms, were modified with TALEN enzymes that inhibit growth hormones. This new porcine economic adventure was announced at the Shenzhen International Biotech Leaders Summit by technical director of animal science Yong Li, who stated, “We plan to take orders from customers now and see what the scale of the demand is.”One imagines that wealthy pet owners would be clambering over one another with fistfuls of cash, but some have been quick to note that it may not be altogether ethical to genetically edit a creature only to use it as a subservient pet with ultimately unpredictable affects to the animals’ well-being or quality of life. This is a good point and the counterargument is just as compelling as it pertains to ethics, but neither addresses the fact that owning a genetically edited pig that will only grow to the weight of a small Labrador is cool and adorable.

– T.R.

2020: THE YEAR OF SOCIAL CREDIT

Many interested parties—from internet commentators to the ACLU—began to bang Orwellian drums at Alibaba’s and Tencent’s credit services, in which users are given credit scores based on their purchases and online activity. However, it was quickly pointed out by those in the know that this sort of app is not government made and has in fact drawn fire from public institutions. But, these new apps brought the government’s own mandatory social credit system back into the spotlight. By 2020, a mandatory social credit system will supposedly be put in place, using everything from the political opinions of a user’s friends to their online purchases to give their citizenship a market value. There’s not much information on the government system out there, with the exception of the State Council document from June last year, declaring, “A social credit system is an important component part of the Socialist market economy system and the social governance system.” It also reiterates the statements of the Third Plenum by adding that they will “establish and complete a social credit system, commend sincerity, and punish insincerity.” “Sincerity”, or 诚信 〔credibility, honesty〕, is the watch word in the piece, appearing over 130 times, but no one is quite sure how one tests for “sincerity” online； for example: “The social credit system is such a good idea.” Perhaps some sort of sarcasm detection machine is in order. The Alibaba and Tencent credit systems may look like the advance guard, but they’re bush league.

– T.R.