Jaycee Chan: as NWA might say, a snitch is a snitch/ if you’re poor or rich

In the hopes of avoiding getting bored to death in a Chinese prison cell, film “star” Chan has allegedly spilled on his friends like an action hero, according to Liberty Times, a Taiwanese newspaper.

The “laundry list” contains up to 120 names including a singer with a Taiwanese band “whose surname starts with F, has invested in two night clubs in Taiwan and his family has strong connections with the military.”

Who could it possibly be? Netizens point to Johnny Fei, whose father is a general – but the latter has already told the media, they got the wrong Johnny.

It’s long been known that you need to be on drugs to properly enjoy Mando-pop; it’s vaguely reassuring to learn, then, that its producers are suffering with us. Look forward, then, to a long series of arrests of artists whose work is but a footnote on the arse grapes of musical history.

Meanwhile, a letter that pusillanimous performing-arts associations have been made to sign, pledging not to hire any musicians guilty of drug crimes, has supposedly been leaked [NOTE: the authenticity of this letter has not been verified]

The letter, leaked on Weibo

 Dear Singers and Actors,

 How are you?

 I’m writing this letter with grave worries and anxiety. As you must have heard, many showbiz professionals have been busted for whoring and doping recently, and the suddenly toughened-up mainland media environment for entertainers is making us very concerned.

 As a major entertainment group, we feel we are duty bound to notice our entertainers of the importance to abide by law and morality. Please, actors, do not give yourself excuses like “releasing the pressure and relieving oneself” to bring unforeseeable disasters to yourself and the company.

 But since we hold the attitude to “always stick with our people,” we have some sweet advice, as below, for you. Please make sure you follow these: 

1)    Reject invitations to any party involving drugs and report to the company truthfully with absolutely truth [sic]. Keep yourself completely uninvolved with drugs and we won’t allow serious doping problems like Chan and Ke to occur

2)   Those with more colorful private life, we advise you to use Liebao Cleaning Master [a smartphone app to delete junk files and boost running speed] to have your personal information cleansed thoroughly, protected and avoid being leaked.

3)   Reject your friends or other people in the business’s invitations and seduction to go to places linked to prostitution and report to the company about such things. Saving racy pictures is prohibited and we don’t allow incidents like Edison Chan to happen

4)   Be careful of your image and stay low-key at bars, clubs etc, and avoid things that damage your image, like drinking, smoking and swearing in public

Please do follow the four pieces of advice above. I’m bloody begging you now. 

Yes, it’s tough being successful in China these days. Officials get vanished, Big Vs are squashed, businessmen fear looting and movie stars get treated like 13 year olds. It looks like the PRC may never get that Cypress Hill tour.

H/T Valentina Luo

A comprehensive report on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s website by correspondent Stephen McDonell explains how he’d headed down to dirty dawg bar Dos Kolegas for some beery r ’n’ r following a stint in sunny Ukraine. It was at this point that Knacker turned up with some “small containers” – which didn’t contain Welcome Back gifts.

This phone camera image, via ABC, shows the scene at Dos Kolegas two weekends ago

“With toilet doors open, police watched as we gave samples one by one. Women too had to squat with the toilet door open. A police woman would stand in the doorway and partially block the view of those who walked about in front of the stalls”

It got even worse for those who flunked out:

“[They] were taken outside the bar and made to sit on the ground with their hands tied behind their backs – heads down. Some had their mouths taped closed”

For the sorry bastards who failed what McDonell identified as a marijuana test – who included at least one dazed FOB tourist – two weeks of detention await, followed by deportation: “No lawyers. No right of appeal. No telephone calls allowed.” (Loyal rag the Beijinger earlier cheerleaded the arrest of drug dealers as “welcome news to the vast majority of foreign residents of the city who choose to live within the letter of the law.” So, look forward to their strongly worded editorial regarding probable cause and due process soon)

Naturally, the expat rumor mill is now in overdrive and the theories flying: did Dos Kolegas not pay their maintenance fee? Is this part of the wider crackdown that has seen various hapless stars – including the son of CCP enthusiast Jackie Chan – busted for personal use, while their hapless management sign letters effectively banning any naughty artists from recording with them (quick pause while one pictures the history of Western pop sans narcotics: it’s 40 blissful years of One Direction).

The establishment targeted – and some were quick to link the raid to a spot check on Dada and others in February, under the aegis of a routine examination of “fire extinguishers” – attracts an overseas clientele.  The aforementioned sweep on dealers, meanwhile, occurred in an area, the Gongti West strip, best known for nightlife purgatories like Baby Face and True Color (can’t specifically name any others, as I’m not a patron) and commonly frequented by thundercunts of the Li Tianyi persuasion.

As there is currently a national drug crackdown you may have overlooked among all the other crackdowns, it seems more likely this is a raid based on specific information, such as a suspect grassing up his/her mates for a lighter sentence. Wrong time, wrong place. Can happen to anyone, like the long-term foreign business owner who happened to be sharing a sofa with a woman when her apartment got raided some months ago. He was gone within days.

A wider issue is the use of on-the-spot urinalysis, which the American Civil Liberties Union (I know – don’t laugh) has called “intrusive… degrading… an invasion of privacy… [it] reveals not only the presence of illegal drugs, but also the existence of many other physical and medical conditions,” adding the tests are subject to “human error [and] false positive results.” And that’s tests conducted under laboratory conditions – which I submit that the public bathrooms of Dos Kolegas do not at all resemble.

Urine samples commonly test for “for 31 different metabolites caused by marijuana, 4 caused by cocaine, 3 caused by opiates, 1 caused by Phencyclidine, and 5 caused by amphetamines.” God help you if you just returned from a fact-finding trip to Colorado. False positives can include Ibuprofen for marijuana, decongestants and diet pills (amphetamine), certain antibiotics (heroin and cocaine) and poppy seeds (opium and heroin). Everyone thing you wanted to know about urine tests but were too baked busy to research can be found here.

Police allegedly explained these methods thus: “[we] could not appear to be showing favoritism towards [foreigners] because it could be misconstrued as corruption.” So, foreigners may expect the same application of the law and their rights as Chinese – i.e. at the unaccountable whim of the state.

More worrying, at least from one point of view, was the tentative suggestion that the Thought Police may be turning their attention to what we say – or more specifically, write – as per this tweet by Kunming resident, and co-founder of the East By South East blog, Brian Eyler:

A tweet suggesting visa applicants may be required to sign pledges

At publication time, we’d yet to hear back from Eyler regarding the provisions against “online criticism” or  criticism of the government (in lieu of an update, Eyler says in this thread that the interviews occurred in 2014 in Kunming, and were more of a “lecture”).

[UPDATE:] Eyler says the interview lasted three minutes: “Basically a high-ranking PSB officer sat across the room from me puffing on a cigarette and rattled off a bunch of ‘don’t dos,’ including the ones I posted on Sunday. He mentioned no attending protests and no doing drugs… He didn’t mention blogging, Twitter, WeChat or anything specific – just something about 网上写负面的东西 [“writing negative things online”].

“The interview only applies for foreigners applying for their long terms visa for the first time in a new locality… Could have been directed at me, can’t rule that out, but I have nothing to suspect that the blog has fallen onto the local government radar even through our blogging about the PX protests last year.”  Beijing Cream also  contacted other respondents for details of their experiences. Nothing they reported rang any alarm bells. [ENDS UPDATE]

In Tianjin, where police chief Wu Changshun was incidentally detained on corruption charges earlier this month, expat Matthew Stinson said he’s merely been occasionally required to attend the Exit-Entry Bureau in person, where they “sometimes remind us not to promote a religion.” Eric Fish, an American writer who hosts the China Hang-Up podcast and has lived in Nanjing and Beijing, said his experience amounted to little more than a standard lecture to fellow teachers. “Most of it was just safety stuff and reminding us to register,” Fish replied, stating that this was back in 2008.

“The most political thing he said was to not conduct religious activities… When I got a student visa in Beijing at Tsinghua, a cop came and gave basically the same lecture to an auditorium full of new students,” Fish added. Students at his Tsinghua journalism program “had to sign a pledge not to do any reporting while they were in China before they were issued their [student] visa.” (My own experience, in 2009, amounted to turning up at the Bureau in person because “they want to have a look at you,” as per the advice of my friendly HR representative. “He likes you,” she whispered later. I felt like a prom queen.)

Amid the obfuscation and anger is an unfriendly reminder that we’re all living in a police state – albeit one where the cops would probably much sooner do nothing than spend their days being proactive.

Trying to read the tea leaves too much, particularly when linking the arbitrary policing of foreigners to wider issues of central administration, is usually an exercise in futility. Best to view local policy in China as like a Tom Friedman metaphor: it may not make much sense to begin with, and even less so later, but it’s the one with the Pulitzer and column in the Times, so we have to suck it up.

Follow RFH on Twitter @MRFH

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post incorrectly spelled the surname of Stephen McDonell as McDowell. 

More than 30 foreigners, most of “black complexion,” have been arrested on drug charges, and more than 790 grams of methamphetamine, ecstasy, and marijuana have been seized, according to an article on Tuesday in Legal China. Expect a few less head nods and “You good?”s around Taikoo Li. Also, you might need to find a new drug dealer.

A continuous, in-depth investigation began in early March following a citywide law to combat drug-related crimes, specifically those conducted by foreigners, according to China Daily. The investigation came to a head on May 15-25. The Beijing Public Sec Bureau Narcotics Corps, aided by reporters and “drug addicts” (see: rat), conducted a series of sting operations around Sanlitun Village, Dongba, and East Second Ring Road.

Legal China detailed the operation:

On the evening of May 22 at 10:22, drug addict N is persuaded by the police to voluntarily redeem himself by agreeing to go to a foreign drug traffickers apartment on East Second Ring Road in front of the transactions.

At night 10:48, two black-skin expatriate men appeared in front of the apartment, and defecated in the grass. N exchanged information with the drug traffickers, and the dealers said they reached the trading location. Then Liangmingshenfen investigators attempted to arrest the two. After the two men appeared to see someone, they dropped their possessions and attempted to escape. They were quickly caught.

Beijing Police announced that the purpose of this investigation is to ensure social stability and to avoid the adverse social impact of drug trafficking.

In other news, the Great Wall Music Festival is this Sunday! You’ll need to be a bit more diligent in preparing.

(Image via Legal China)

Global Times:

A foreign man, who claimed to be a journalist, was detained by Beijing Customs after they discovered heroin inside his sports shoes at Beijing Capital International Airport.

The alleged smuggler, whose identity and nationality have not been revealed, arrived in Beijing at 8 am on January 11. He told the customs officer he had nothing to declare, and being a reporter, he would stay in Beijing for a long time. It is not known where he boarded his flight.

Huh, I wonder why authorities suddenly got suspicious.

Scene:

Customs officer: Let’s see your passport.

Smugger: <nervously slides over passport>

Customs officer: <stamps it, continues flipping through pages> Do you have anything to declare?

Smuggler: <eyes dart> Um, why would I have anything to declare?

Customs officer: Oh, people bring in iPhones, iPads, gold watches, Louis Vuitton bags, X-ray machines, laser guns, mango… it doesn’t really matter. Just check “no” and we’ll get you on your way…

Smuggler: No, no, I don’t have any of those things, I’m a journalist.

Customs officer: <blanches, looks up>

Smuggler: You know, a journa–

Customs officer: Sir, come with me.

“However, this self-declared reporter had no journalist visa which made him suspicious,” said a press release from Beijing customs. The suspect only had a small carry-on and a laptop bag, which contained no camera or other equipment.

As BJC reader (and journalist) Valentina notes: “Tip to drug smugglers: if you want to avoid attention, don’t do something that pretty much says, ‘COME ON! Search the fuck out of me.’”

The smuggler was carrying 680 grams of heroin and is believed to have been working with a drug gang.

Foreign heroin mule detained (Global Times, h/t Alicia)

Marcus Williams became the first basketball player in China to be busted for “doping” on December 9 when he tested positive for marijuana, but so far he’s managed to avoid making silly, trite excuses such as “I was using for medicinal purposes.” We commend him for that.

His agent, however, is happy to do so on his behalf.

Shen Zhiyu, as quoted in Xinhua:

“Williams has been bothered by stomach problem for a long time so he brought some marijuana to China as a painkiller,” said Shen.

“He suffered from a stomachache before the match and the medicine from the team doctor did not work,” he said.

“So he had some marijuana and did not tell anyone,” Shen added. Williams was drawn to take the test in the Dec. 9 match when Shanxi clinched a 103-99 away win at Jilin.

Williams says he wants a second chance. “I really cherish the opportunity playing for the team,” he said, as quoted by Xinhua. “I will always ha[ve] them on my mind and keep watching the game.”

Because we’re talking about pot here — which, even in China, is still just pot — no one seems to care. Williams’s club, the Shanxi Brave Dragons, was fined 10,000 yuan, but the team’s deputy general manager, Zhang Beihai, says it would welcome Williams back. “Williams had contributed a lot to Shanxi. Although he can no longer fulfill his task this season, the club will welcome him back next season as long as his return complies with CBA’s regulations,” he said.

Williams’s contract is until 2014, and he said Shanxi would be his first choice if he returns to the CBA.

Meanwhile, if you want to know how Williams’s running mate, Charles Gaines, is doing, consider his stat line in the two games in which he’s been the lone foreigner:

January 2, vs. Zhejiang: 60 points, 29 rebounds
January 4, vs. Dongguan: 44 points, 12 rebounds

Shanxi lost both games by a combined 45 points. We’re obligated to note that this happened in one of those contests.

Kristof:

Want to buy illegal drugs in China? No problem — just go to the wild and woolly Internet here and order a $50 or $100 package of methamphetamines, ecstasy or cocaine. It’ll be delivered to your door within hours!

“Our company has delivery stations in every part of China,” boasts one Chinese-language Web site, with photos of illegal narcotics it sells. “We offer 24-hour delivery service to your door, and we have long-term and consistent supplies. If you just make one phone call, we’ll deliver to your hands in one to five hours.”

Another Chinese Web site offers meth wholesale for $19,700 a kilo, or deliveries to your door of smaller quantities in hundreds of cities around China. Even in remote Anhui Province, it delivers drugs in 21 different cities.

It all leads to this question:

Doesn’t it seem odd that China blocks Facebook, YouTube and The New York Times but shrugs at, say, guns?

It’s China. Nothing is as odd as it seems.

There’s more about date rape drugs, American political fecklessness vis-a-vis gun control, prostitution, VPNs, and Xi Jinping. Nicholas Kristof is great.

Cheap Meth! Cheap Guns! Click Here. (NY Times)

In Beijing in 2010, 80 diners went to the hospital after ingesting poisoned eggplant. We’re now learning that shady agents from a rival restaurant were to blame, as they spiked the ingredients with a blood pressure medication. NPR:

In the eggplant incident, the miscreants hid the drug clonidine – a white, odorless powder – in the restaurant’s starch. When the chefs thickened up the braised eggplant with the starch, they inadvertently served up a few nearly toxic stir-fries.

All diners that ate eggplant for lunch on April 23, 2010, fell sick almost immediately, the report says. They got dizzy and tired, suffered from nausea and blurred vision, and even started vomiting.

They were seeking to gain a “competitive advantage.” Police traced the substance, and two perpetrators ended up being sentenced to one year in jail.

It’s an old story, but one for the files in the food safety department. It seems silly worrying about roadside mutton kabobs when even eggplant will try to kill you once in a while.

Docs Discover Drug-Spiked Eggplant Sent Beijing Diners To Hospital (NPR)

This is somewhat of a shocker. Marcus Williams, the leading scorer in the Chinese Basketball Association, has become the first player to test positive for drug use in the league. We had no idea the CBA tested for marijuana until now, but according to Xinhua:

Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) said in a statement that the point guard, playing for Shanxi, was banned for six months and the club was fined 10,000 yuan (about 1,500 U.S. dollars) following his positive test on Dec. 9.

“We should learn from this lesson, to conduct more tests, to improve our regulations. We won’t tolerate doping,” it said in the statement.

Let’s be clear what we’re talking about here: pot. It’s not a performance enhancement drug, and it’s barely illegal in many parts of North America. But one case of it in the CBA and suddenly everyone’s all, We should conduct MORE tests, improve regulations. Why is this a bigger issue than, say, point-shaving, and shitty refereeing?

China Anti-doping Agency agreed that more tests needed in the basketball professional league.

“The truth is there were not many tests done in the basketball league,” said Zhao Jian, vice director of CHINADA, adding that a total of 12 tests were conducted by far this season.

Twelve tests. Total. And the league’s leading scorer on one of the most controversial teams in the league — Shanxi’s owner, “Boss Wang,” is the type to not care about upsetting others — just happens to get caught? Something seems a bit fishy.

For the record, state media has talked about cannabis in such terms before, when an Olympic judo fighter was expelled for “doping.”

Williams was averaging 30.9 points, 6.2 rebounds, and 5.2 assists per game for the 11-4 Shanxi Brave Dragons, currently a game out of first place. The team will now try to find another foreigner to replace him, as Williams’s six-month suspension will last through the end of the season. The other foreigner on the team is Charles Gaines, averaging 29.2 points and 14.3 rebounds, who together with Williams formed the league’s most formidable duo. The former Arizona standout will be missed.

And to think, just Wednesday, Xinhua published a rosy profile on Williams titled, “Former NBA guard Williams finds career, homelike feeling in CBA.”

Scientists have discovered that the animals, of which there are around 1,600 in the wild, produce a powerful antibiotic in their blood stream that kills bacteria and fungi.

They believe the substance could be used to create potent new treatments against drug resistant superbugs and other diseases.

The antibiotic is thought to be released by the bear’s immune system to protect them infections when they are living in the wild. Researchers discovered the compound, known as cathelicidin-AM, after analysing the panda’s DNA.

Scientists have been able to synthesize the compounds, so there’s no risk of pandas being hunted like black bears and harvested for their bile.

The Chinese researchers found that the cathelicidin-AM, which is produced by immune cells in the animal’s blood, was found to kill bacteria in less than an hour while other well known antibiotics took more than six hours.

They hope to develop the substance either as a new drug to tackle superbugs or as an antiseptic for cleaning surfaces and utensils. Dr Yan and his colleagues also believe there may be other potential drugs hidden within the panda genome.

Must ask though: do we really need more antibiotics in a country that already overuses them? Possibly it’s just a never-ending fight: science finds super-antibiotic, forcing super-bacteria to evolve into Batman-bacteria.

Giant Pandas hold new weapon in fight against superbugs (The Telegraph)

Let’s play a game: identify the strangest part of this incident from Changzhou, Jiangsu province:

Is it the man, on drugs, who, after his own vehicle was nicked on the road, got out and took two vegetable knives from a street-side vendor, dropped 100 yuan, and then “borrowed” (stole) a van?

Is it the medium-speed police case, featuring the man telling his pursuers to stop chasing him by way of waving his arm outside the window? (Hey guys, c’mon, stop it!)

Is it the group of cops, now on foot, holding up sticks to keep the knife-wielding man at a distance, all the while saying things like, “Let us talk,” and shouting at passengers in other cars on the road, “Roll up your windows!”?

Is it the man holding himself hostage, telling cops to keep their distance?

Or is it the fact that the standoff is resolved after the man is talked into getting into a police car on his own power?

This incident happened in May, but the amusing footage was just broadcast on Saturday. No one got hurt except the knife-wielding man, who cut himself on his right hand.

Journalists are fed a lot of crap by the world. Specifically by public relations flacks and sources, but really, the world at large, because we’re surrounded by crap, by fetid logs of horse and other rancid mammalian shit dripping with stupidity and awfulness.

It takes a decent journalist to filter that shit and present it in a way that is digestible to a halfway intelligent and educated human being. It means processing a piece of information in such a way that gives everyone else a little credit for not living in a cave of fecal stalactites.

Well, here’s China Daily, specifically its full story about American judo fighter Nick Delpopolo’s expulsion from the Games for a positive drug test:

HEADLINE: US judo fighter expelled for doping

Nick Delpopolo, 23, is the first of the 10,500 games Olympic athletes to fail an in-competition doping test.

His case is the fifth positive test for a banned substance reported by the IOC (International Olympic Committee) since its official London Games testing period began in mid-July.

The other four athletes were caught before competing.

Gee, what awful banned substance did he take? Androstenedione? Epitestosterone? He’s a judo fighter, so maybe dehydroepiandrosterone?

Cannabis.

Huh. You didn’t think that bit of info was relevant, China Daily? Here we have an illustration of a neat trick of journalism, specifically media. You can turn a story about one thing into another simply by withholding information. A story that deserves to be about IOC’s incredibly outdated drug-testing policy that considers cannabis a performance enhancing drug is, on China Daily’s pages, a story about the disgrace of an American Olympian who is only the fifth athlete to test positive for a “banned substance,” and the first since the London Games began.

By contrast, here’s Washington Post’s headline and lead:

Headline: US judo fighter Nick Delpopolo expelled from Olympics for positive test for marijuana

American judo fighter Nick Delpopolo was expelled from the Olympics for doping Monday, saying he unintentionally ate something before the games that had been baked with marijuana.

The incident is such that it’s inspired fresh rounds of debate on whether cannabis should ever even be banned in the first place. Reuters:

And many wonder whether the expensive time and effort of sporting drug testers might be better spent catching serious cheats who top up their blood with EPO or pop anabolic steroids to boost testosterone levels and muscle growth.

“There’s no evidence cannabis is ever performance enhancing in sport, and since its use is legal in a number of countries, there’s no reason for it to be banned by WADA,” said David Nutt, a professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London.

“I can’t think of any sport in which it would be an advantage. And it seems ludicrous that someone could quite legally smoke cannabis in Amsterdam in the morning and then come over to London in the afternoon and be banned from competing.”

No, we won’t be finding this kind of rational discussion in China’s leading English-language newspaper.

To be fair to China Daily, I’m sure several small- and medium-market US papers have excised the conversation in the same way, and editors at more than a few publications probably equate marijuana with a performance enhancing drug, or at the very least, a dangerous and illegal drug. It’s these people who stink up the world by living in their holes of poop ejaculate. It’s these people for which China Daily writes.

(H/T Joe P.)

Remember Royston Chan’s story for Reuters about eggs soaked in the urine of “virgin boys”? I have yet to be able to eat a marinated egg since reading that story without gagging.

I’m not going to be able to take any urokinase, either (not that I ever would), after reading the following story from Sina:

Headline: School bathroom collects boys’ urine to sell to pharmaceutical company

Actually, that should give you the gist of it. Anything you read past this point, I tell you in advance, is too much information.

(Any translation errors are mine alone.)

…many primary schools (in Nanchang, Jiangxi province) have suddenly seen red plastic buckets appear in their bathrooms. This journalist’s investigation found that specialists were using these plastic buckets to collect boys’ urine, and after slight refinement, were selling them to biochemical pharmaceutical companies to extract urokinase. The specialists said the urine can indeed be used to manufacture medicine, but attention needs to be paid to the process and extraction method to guarantee safety.

A few days ago, local resident Mr. Li called this journalist and said several schools’ bathrooms in Xinjian County suddenly had many plastic buckets, “Don’t know why they’ve been recently collecting students’ urine, and only urine from boys’ bathrooms at that.” Mr. Li said he felt it was very strange. “If they’re using fertilizer, then they wouldn’t need plastic buckets, and they wouldn’t need to take pains to bring vans to transport.”

Our enterprising reporter, Yuan Yukun, reports that the students felt this was very strange. Quoting an unnamed source:

“Why do people use plastic buckets to store urine?”

In the penultimate paragraph, our correspondent experiences a revelation after talking to a “medical expert”:

Urokinase is indeed an ingredient in drugs to treat cardiovascular diseases, and can treat cerebral thrombosis, acute myocardial infarction and other thromboembolic diseases. But from a medical point of view, in order to guarantee the freshness of the samples, first, donors have to be healthy individuals, and second, the urine enzymes need to be extracted within eight hours of collection… Although students’ urine is relatively healthy, whether students have used antibiotics, and whether their urine has gone bad, are questions that require professionals to verify, and can’t be done through the naked eye.

One must ask…

You know what, I’m not going to touch this. Not gonna do it. Just so you know, the pharmaceutical company that was named in the story is Nanchang Wanhua Biochemical Products Co., Ltd., “the key supplier of biopharmaceutical products in China,” according to its website. You think they’re embarrassed to be implicated in this boy-urine-collecting ring?

Wanhua Biochem is specialized in the production of human urine extracts such as Urokinase (UK). With a great deal of urine collect spots, we get fresh and safe urine for our daily production.

Answer: quite the contrary.

I’ll chalk this up to cultural differences. Personally, I think it’s wrong to collect the urine of schoolboys on the sly and use it to make medicine, extraction and refinement process be damned. Other people think this is par for the course, a simple business practice to keep costs low for the consumer. Potato/potahto. Let it be.

(H/T Alicia)