Most people enter Ukraine from Poland during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I needed to do it from Hungary but could not find any information describing the journey. Even a Ukrainian gave me the wrong information. Hope this information helps those who have such a need. Take InterCity train IC 34 leaving Budapest at 7:23 (Central EuropeCentral European Standard Time). The Hungary side border paperwork is done on the train. That is a significant advantage of taking a train to enter Ukraine. The train is modern and has free Wi-Fi. The train travels for 5:17 and arrives at Chop at13:40 (Eastern European Standard Time, one hour ahead of the Hungary time). If you jump off the train as soon as it stops at Chop, you can go through the Ukrainian side border checkpoint in a few minutes, then catch the train leaving at 13:52 for Kyiv. It was 14:00 when I went there. I stayed in Chop to catch the next day's train. Now, there seems to be train leaving at 16:58 and arriving at Kyiv at 8:38 the...

I write this on the CCP's "meritocracy" for 2 reasons: 1. Even some fierce CCP critics still imply certain CCP's meritocracy by thinking the CCP has some capable officials in its top echelon but they are marginalized by the middle school dropout (a.k.a. General Secretary Xi). One example is the current premier Li. Li is surely significantly better educated than the MSD and likely has a higher IQ, but I can't think of any significant achievement in his entire career. His tenure as the head of the Henan province was marred by the horrific Aids epidemic.   2. The Moscow KGB thug's regime shows similar kakistocracy. First, let's use CCP's own words to show its kakistocracy. This is a screenshot of an article from THE main CCP mouthpiece titled "Reverse selection in bureaucracy endangers national security". "Reverse selection" here means the opposite of the natural selection of the fittest to survive. Their own words: "The bad elimi...

Summary PRC COVID-induced excess deaths: Absolute minimum requiring a miracle: 1 M Likely minimum: 2.5 M Likely range: 3 M - 5 M How I derived these numbers: First, if you doubt the current high COVID fatalities based on anecdotes instead of official data, let's think in this way. People are paying what is equivalent to 2 - 3 months' salary to avoid unpredictable long waits at Beijing crematoria, so long waiting lines are common. Beijing has 12 crematoria and many more in its vicinity. If people could drive 100km or more to have timely cremation, they would not spend so much money to save the 1 or 2 hours of transportation.  If Beijing with the best healthcare resources has such a high fatality rate, you can imagine the fatality rates of other places. It is fair to compare the PRC with other East Asian countries. Japan, S. Korea, and TW are exemplary - high vigilance, high vax rates, and orderly opening, so they have much lower excess death rates than most other countries. If t...