Lobis Homen

There’s an entire literary genre built around the cosmopolitan who loves the Global South—as long as the Global South loses with elegance and dignity. Ishaan Tharoor has written a masterpiece in that genre.

He makes a list of the World Cup’s "charming countries": the Japanese cleaning the stadium, the kind Koreans, Vozinha, the noble loser. All lovable, endearing, unforgettable. All eliminated.

The truth is that this kind of picturesque admiration comes with conditions. The "other" is worth celebrating only as long as they remain endearing. And more often than not, they’re considered endearing because they lose and pose no threat to power.

Tharoor built his "love" for Argentina around its decline: hyperinflation, chaos, a team supposedly suffering from injustice. That’s an aesthetic relationship with the periphery. The moment the periphery stops being picturesque and starts winning, the toy breaks.

His use of Eduardo Galeano’s quote about Maradona and Napoli makes the point obvious: it celebrates a dark South humiliating the white North that had despised it. Then he uses that same quote to argue that Argentina is now the North. That’s where the unspoken assumption slips in: the South American who "looks" European somehow no longer counts as a victory for the Global South.

Argentina is part of the Global South whether he likes it or not. That isn’t something he gets to decide based on whether he finds the country sympathetic. On top of that, he argues that Argentina has become part of the establishment because Milei was supposedly going to be sitting next to Trump in the stands (which now doesn't even appear to be true). It’s exactly the opposite.

An Argentine invited to a stadium in New Jersey, sitting beside the people who hold power, is about as peripheral a scene as you can imagine.

Mistaking proximity for power is a basic analytical error. We were never less sovereign than when we were at our friendliest with those in power. The embrace is submission without friction—a surrender. The problem isn't that Argentina somehow became "bad." The reality is much simpler: Tharoor liked an Argentina that lost.

QUIÉN NOS HABLA AQUÍ DE OLVIDO, DE RENUNCIA, DE PERDÓN?

Creo que no somos conscientes de lo normalizado que tenemos esto.

OP: Why couldn’t traditional Chinese Yinpiao银票/silver drafts be forged if they were merely slips of paper? (cr大明宝钞，渐越)

Traditional Chinese yinpiao/silver drafts were paper vouchers issued by private banks starting from the Song Dynasty(960–1279). People could exchange these slips for physical silver at bank branches across the country.

Silver drafts were made in multiple copies with matching serrated seal edges. One copy went to the customer and others stayed at the bank. All edges had to fit perfectly together to withdraw silver. The unique split edge marks were almost impossible to copy.

This mechanism is known as qifeng骑缝 (split-joint seal) in China. It first originated in the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046–771 BC). The Rites of Zhou records that contracts were written on bamboo or wooden slips in duplicate. Notches and marks were carved in the middle before splitting the slips, with each party keeping one half. The two halves would be matched by their notches for verification.

During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (770–221 BC), this idea evolved into hufu虎符/tiger tally tokens. A military tally was split into two pieces with identical inscriptions carved along the split edge. Troops could only be deployed if the patterns and characters on both halves perfectly aligned, serving as a metal version of the split-joint anti-counterfeiting system.

The technology matured in the Tang Dynasty (618–907). Government documents and private contracts commonly used split-joint seals stamped across the dividing line. The Chinese character "hetong合同" (contract) was written across the middle before the paper was torn apart, so the complete characters would only appear when the two halves were put together. This split-coupon system was later adopted for Song Dynasty (960–1279) jiaozi paper money and yinpiao/silver drafts of the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368–1912).

Official Song dynasty paper money (Jiaozi交子) was abolished in 1107. Private silver drafts issued by Qing-era piaohao票行 (ancient exchange banks) vanished completely in 1951, hit hard by modern banks and currency reforms. Nowadays silver drafts no longer circulate as currency. Their collectible value depends on their rarity and physical condition.

First they were called "chirographs", but later the word "indenture" (in its earliest meaning as just a legal document of any kind between two people) came to be used, originating from the practice of a contract being written twice on a single piece of parchment and then cut in half with serrated edges (as in dent, "teeth" -> indents -> indenture) in order for each party to take one half, so they could later piece them together and verify that there had been no forgery -- same as the Chinese silver drafts!

(Charter of the Clerecía de Ledesma, 1252, showing the serrated indents at the top -- presumably they are cutting rather than tearing because they're using parchment, which I expect is much harder to tear than wood-pulp paper like the Chinese were using)

Our goverment has illegally sold many of our water, riverbanks and burnt acres and acres of native land. The buyers are US and Israel.

I've seen people (Afroargentinians, indigenous argentinians, brown argentinians, white argentinians, mestizo, hell even asian argentinians) explaining and recontextualizing and trying and trying. I have seen people who are not even arguing anything get swarmed by hateful comments for using the Argentinian shirt, even worse if they're foreigners who have embraced our country. I have seen these comments telling them "argentinians want you dead, argentinians would turn on you".

They hide behind "you all think like your goverment". They refuse to listen to any nuance on the region. They quote examples of racism and anti-indigenous in Argentina without context, without understanding this shit hurts argentinians first. Brown argentinians are the first victims of argentinian racism.

In this foreign narrative, they don't exist. We don't exist as people, we're a concept. The nazi country. The shithole.

While all of this is happening, Milei is trying to pass a law that allows foreign companies to acquire largue quantities of land. Israeli companies and diplomats are circling us like vultures. The US and Europe are getting for cheap local scientific advancements worth millions.