Comrade Xi, let me say a word about the Uigu...

As if we didn't already have enough problems near Earth, American astronomers have now discovered an asteroid somewhere in the void between Mercury and Venus that "could one day hit Earth." This was reported on Monday by the "New York Times", which is considered halfway serious, citing the astronomer who discovered the rock called 2022 AP7. dr According to Scott Sheppard, it is a potential “planet killer”: “If it hits Earth, it would have devastating effects on the entire planet. It would be very bad for life as we know it.”

You have to make an effort to get anything positive out of this news. Maybe like this: If an asteroid takes care of us soon anyway, at least we don't have to worry about the climate catastrophe or nuclear war anymore. So you don't have to stick yourself on the street anymore, kids. Doesn't help anyway.

But we admit, the consolation value of this thought movement is rather small. What is more comforting is that 2022 AP7 appears to be an object that ultimately has a "very low" chance of impacting Earth. We think this is a fundamental problem with asteroid reporting. 99 percent of all articles about asteroids consist of the news that someone somewhere has discovered a lump that could eventually wipe out life on Earth.

At the end of the text someone always says, like here the astronomer Alan Fitzsimmons in the "New York Times": Only if everything went wrong, "could it become a problem for our descendants in a few thousand years". Asteroid coverage lacks urgency overall.

A week ago on Friday, Elon Musk took over Twitter, and surprisingly on Sunday he confirmed all his critics: he linked a crude story about the mugging of Nancy Pelosi's husband that came from a notorious fake news outlet called the Santa Monica Observer . There's a tiny possibility that there's something to it, Musk whispered. A few hours later he deleted the link. There's a tiny possibility that letting the most fidgety troll buy the whole Fairytale Forest wasn't such a great idea.

On the night of Friday, Chancellor Scholz embarked on what is probably the shortest ever measured visit to China in the short history of short visits to China. On Friday morning local time, he stumbled out of the plane in Beijing. For a moment one had to worry that he would be taken away by party soldiers, like the former party leader Hu Jintao recently after an alleged weakness at the CP party congress.

But luckily Scholz caught himself in time before the red carpet. As a gift, he brought the Chinese head of state Xi Jinping a piece of the port of Hamburg, which, however, turned out to be a little smaller than Xi had wished. Before the conversation, Scholz had announced that he would also address topics "in which we pursue different perspectives".

This meant hotter things like Taiwan, the war in Ukraine or human rights, which the Chinese consider to be a western rice bun. Little was leaked about the specific course of the conversation, but we have a reasonable guess that the part about human rights went something like this:

Scholz: Comrade Xi, let me say a word about the Uigu...

Xi: What?

Scholz: The Ui...

Xi: What?

Scholz: Well, the Ui...

Xi: What?

Scholz: Ui, ui, ui, ui, the jasmine tea is really excellent.

Xi: I say so. Next hot topic.