Secret Recyclables – The Weird Side of the Internet
Written by Staff on July 1, 2024
Secret Recyclables – The Weird Side of the Internet – by Liam Sweeny.
State secrets. No, not ours. I wouldn’t tell you that the nuclear launch codes are hidden in the UPC of a Mrs. Butterworth’s squeeeze bottle in a southern Preoria convenience store. That’s because it’s probably not true. We go to great lengths to keep our state secrets as “eyes only.” But China’s got a bit of a different problem, illustrated by the patriotic action of a Mr. Zhang.
Zhang, a family name and all we’re going to get from Chinese state media, is a retired state company man and a collector of military books and newspapers. Hey, gotta have a hobby. So he’s at a local recycling center and he makes a small find – four old military books for 6 Yuan, which is a little bit less than a buck (and now you can vacation in China and not get ripped off when exchanging your money.)
So he gets home and lo and behold, he’s got in his hands four books of Chinese military state secrets. Of course, he does the right thing, calling a hotline to alert the authorities, but what else would you do? Wait for the Chinese feds to come knocking at your door to ask why you didn’t do the right thing?
As for the recycling center? They went and found out that whomever was responsible for shredding said secrets were instead dropping them off at the center as paper waste, which threw a chunk of change in their pocket. Man, thew guts on those people. Cause we think of China as a place in which you do not want to f**k around and find out, and here people are, doing that with national secrets.
But here’s a thing about China lately; more and more stuff is being considered “state secrets,” so those books could’ve been about the shoe polish Chinese soldiers use to shine their boots, who knows? At some point an average citizen walks their dog past three state secrets before it poops, which may of itself be a state secret.
So praise to Mr. Zhang.
RadioRadioX