Links #6
Filing house burping under things I did before it was cool on TikTok (although I do like that it has a silly name now). Also known as Lüften, it's the sometimes landlord-mandated German habit of airing your house daily, even in the depths of winter. Maybe sleeping with the window open in the summer will be the next cool (heh) thing.
China’s Hottest App Is a Daily Test of Whether You’re Still Alive - currently known as 死了吗 (Are You Dead Yet), but maybe rebranding to... demumu. It's an app where you have to press a button every couple of days so people know you're alive. See also: kodokushi.
Also in China news, the cry cry horse goes viral, a stuffed horse with the mouth panel stitched on upside-down by mistake giving it a "forlorn and fearful" expression. My mom immediately asked how she could get one.
Is Life a Game? I found this piece a little unfocused, but the idea that many aspects of life are increasingly gamified, which in turn changes those activities (e.g. wine scores changing tastes) resonated with a couple of Culture Study podcasts I listened to recently: one on birding and the ebird app, and the other about running and Strava. And loosely, also this piece about "fawning", insofar as scores and rankings serve as a form of external validation.
Lastly, been seeing a lot of news about the billionaire wealth tax proposal in California but not many details about what it actually entails so here's a good overview from the wonks over at Berkeley (and on ballotpedia with technical details).
The proposal is basically: a 5% wealth tax for people with net worth over $1 billion [1]. It's a one time tax for people who were billionaires as of Jan 1, 2026. Estimated to affect ~200 people. Payment can be spread over 5 years [2]. Wealth calculation includes offshore wealth, trusts, corporate shells (but notably excludes directly held real estate due to Prop 13). Equity sale and issuance can be used for valuing private businesses, in addition to profits. It can be deferred for illiquid assets like startup stock. It's not perfect and barely addresses the vast inequality, but it's a good start: LGTM!
(technically it goes from 0% to 5% between 1 and 1.1 billion, but this only matters to ~1 person) ↩︎
For reference: since 2020, billionaire wealth has increased by 81%, i.e. it nearly doubled. ↩︎