EB-5 Fraud (Eb-5欺诈, EB-5詐欺, Eb-5 사기)

Recently, I started helping my relatives in China with an EB-5 matter that's becoming increasingly common nowadays: EB-5 fraud, where an EB-5 company takes money from Chinese clients for an investment like building a bridge or a building and promising a return plus getting a green card to the U.S. years in the future......and then never delivers the funds, or embezzles the funds, claiming the investment just didn't pan out and the money's now gone, conveniently. There are so many scams out there now like Bitcoin scams, mysterious messages saying that I owe money for running a toll that I never used, etc., but the EB-5 scam is kind of a classic one of getting investors to invest with promises of high returns but not delivering, much like the pyramid schemes and Ponzi schemes of the early 20th century or even closer to the Bernie Madoff schemes in the 2000s. Unfortunately, it's common because Chinese investors don't know the law here in America, they make the investment without fully appreciating the risk, figuring it's worth it to take the risk if they get a green card in the end. (I guess the green card for permanent residence in America, as much as current residents complain about it here, is still worth something to America, often a LOT of money like $500,000 per green card). Plus there's a language barrier, a culture barrier, the EB5 company holds all the cards because they receive the money and the investors don't know what legal channels to pursue, etc. Oh and then there's the matter of a lot of Chinese people coming into great wealth in the last 20 years or so, and they gotta put their money somewhere, so they want to come to America! For any future investors: don't be like my relatives, not consulting an attorney before investing, but once there are signs of trouble, finally consulting attorneys to see what can be done. Know all the risks BEFORE you put the money in. My relatives also have the mistaken assumption that all attorneys in America can handle pretty much everything (I guess attorneys have this reputation in America too as most don't understand what attorneys do). Just like you wouldn't go to a dermatologist or psychiatrist to handle your open heart surgery, you can't just go to any attorney for any legal problem. There are specialties, especially differences between litigation and transactional, criminal law and civil law, Intellectual property versus family law, etc. It's not a one-size-fits-all profession, but alas that's one of the downsides of going to law school and becoming a lawyer: all friends and family now just assume you know every law there is (lawyers don't know every single law out there, we learn how to interpret the law and argue about the law to help the client), how to handle any type of legal situation, what to do if they end up in jail and need to be bailed out. Through questions from distant relatives I've learned quite a lot about trademark law and immigration cases and now EB-5 fraud, which I'm happy to volunteer to do, but I know for sure I'm not providing the best legal representation out there. I'm just a normal dude with "Esq" at the end of his title and a State of California Bar number.

Bodies of Water (水体, 水域, 수역)

There are too many bodies of water in the world. Too many gulfs, too many straits, too many rivers, too many estuaries, too many seas, too many channels, too many sluices, too many oxbow lakes. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate all the physical bodies of water, they're the life blood of the earth (although some would argue their rising sea levels is causing land to disappear and bad for the overall health of the world) but there are too many NAMES of bodies of water that we need to know about, like every body of water has to have a name. There's recently the big controversy about the Gulf of Mexico being called the Gulf of America, a silly debate really about names and labels and symbolism of American strength.....that gulf, whatever you want to call it, is important because it has large chunks of America and Mexico bordering it, and is a huge body of water flowing into the Caribbean Sea with all those islands. The Great Lakes are named the great lakes for a season: they're so big and take up so much of the mass of North America that you have to get to know them, which states they border, etc. But do we really need to know GREEN BAY is part of Lake Michigan, that tiny sliver of Lake Michigan bordering Wisconsin (I know, coming from someone who grew up in Illinois this seems biased at best). Do we really need another name when it's all connected? I probably have tons of logical fallacies in this argument, and honestly geography is one of my favorite categories, but how many people in the world really need to know about Baffin Bay, or McMurdo Sound, or the Weddell Sea? Those are places that a tiny sliver of people working in extremely cold places only need to know, and even they proably get confused where the Ross Sea starts and the McMurdo Sound begins. Some of these bodies of water seem like downright plant-flagging, like hey I did something great or I claimed this land, I need my name on it, like the Magellan Strait, "world-renowned" for connecting the Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean in southern Chile near Tierra del Fuego? Really, is it that important? It's not as great as the Panama Canal cutting through 2 big continents, you could just sail a little further south of Chile and go around that way if you really wanted to get through. (I'm probably just upset the other day I got Strait of Magellan mixed up with the other strait named for a famous explorer, the Cook Strait in New Zealand). I think some of this obscure geography facts does make non-trivia people roll their eyes, and the geographic stuff is easy and fun to write questinos about, but really difficult to find a use for in America on questions about the Gulf of Aqaba (you really going the Sinai Peninsula after you visit Egypt?) or the shrinking Sea of Azov. Sure, a sea is shrinking and might shrivel up. But that seems like a problem half a mile away. Other trivia categories seem.... a little more practical, or at least interesting. Every movie, book, song, or TV show tells some sort of story that is dynamic, with characters and plot and it changes, so people are interested about what happened and the conflict that people face. History is very useful about what the earth has gone through. Cars, corporations, fashion, food.......all every day uses, even if a little "corporatized" making it sound like an ad every time they promote a Blizzard from Dairy Queen or McFlurry from McDonald's. Anatomy and medicines/diseases are probably the most useful trivia of the bunch. But weird obscure places in the world very few people ever go to or care about? Hard sell, which is why nature documentaries have to put animals in them otherwise people tune out.

Tires ( 轮胎, タイヤ, 타이어)

Today I got all 4 tires on my Honda Accord replaced because....it was time. 8 years, 80,000 miles, those tires had seen a lot, and maybe on some level I could feel it. A lot of things in life happen gradually without us noticing, and it just gradually makes small changes incrementally, like gaslighting or the famous boiling frog story of the temperature of boiling water gradually increasing while the frog is in it leading to negative consequences as eventually the frog will be boiled alive. I couldn't really tell if anything was seriously wrong with the tires. Eventually, I felt like my tires would grind down to such a level that they wouldn't be road worthy, or they would just burst while driving, so I decided to make a change. After getting it done, the driving felt......smoother. The car still reacted to bumps and potholes, of course, but on flat land it felt a little smoother, and on turns there wasn't as much friction. The wheels feel nice, like I'm wearing a new T-shirt that doesn't have the sweat stains or marks from various previous incidents. A lot of facets are like this, incremental changes: shoes getting worn down every time you walk around in them so that the tread wears off and you don't get the traction (this is the most analogous to tires), dust piles up in the home until it becomes a thick layer coating the whole area, battery life on Apple iPhone goes down gradually as Apple tries to get you to buy the newest model by making their older phones run out of battery faster, and the human body obviously: gradually our bodies get older and everything is less tight, we get flabby. Oh and also I have a knot in my back that formed gradually because of bad posture and not sitting up straight until one day it just became a strain no my whole body; now I feel it all the time and can't get out of it. These are all tiny little things that aren't noticeable like bananas turning ripe, but eventually they become glaring problems. Does the boiling frog metaphor work the other way though? Do certain things get incrementally better without us noticing, until one day we've just become unwittingly a huge success? Not as much, because as human beings we're quick to celebrate the happy things in our life that make us feel good, like checking my bank account (hey there's more there now this Friday! Yay!) or winning sports games, there are various scores and numbers to tell us how we are doing, and we pay attention to those like a hawk, never letting them just go on unchecked, so very few things "suprise" us after long periods of neglect. (Hey suddenly I'm married and have 3 kids!) We usually notice all the good things, except maybe the rewards points I get on credit cards and Chipotle purchases. The other day I realized I got had more than a THOUSAND Chipotle points! That must get me something good, right? Nope, 1600 points is needed for an entree, the simplest burrito. Darn. Trivia, I'm hoping, works this way, where one day I just wake up really good not realizing I've mastered all the major things to know in trivia (no one knows everything of course, it's an infinite field of knowledge). Maybe some karma points, like donating blood/platelets eventually builds up to something and we don't even know it? An immunity to chronic diseases later in life? A "free blood transfusion card" for when us blood donors actually need blood to use it when we need it? Not sure that's how it works. No, I think the positive inverse of the boiling frog analogy is probably what I mentioned, the intangible love and trust and goodwill that you "bank" time and time again without noticing you're doing so, until one day you realize you're in a loving relationship with parents, wife, child, or friend. Suddenly I've been friends with someone for 30+ years! I know everything about them. That sort of thing, you know like important stuff.

LaCrosse (长曲棍球, 라크로스, ラクロス)

Growing up, I never had a chance to play lacrosse, and I'm starting to realize that was a missed opportunity to do a sport that is pretty fun, like playing hockey but you don't have to skate, playing soccer but you don't have to dribble with your feet (I'm starting to realize feet were my problem with sports; I was pretty good with hand-eye and upper parts of the body, just the inability to jump high, run fast, or kick hard was a big problem). In suburban Illinois, it was a mix of tennis- (I recently realized pickleball has a Michael Jordan of the sport named Ben Johns? In tennis Alcaraz v. Sinner is the new Agassi v. Sampras, Nadal v. Federer, list all other comparisons, etc.) In the winter, it was swimming and driving us to a nearby bowling alley for...bowling. Oh and the indoor sport we did most similar to lacrosse was.....handball. I actually have some fond memories of handball and it's actually similar to lacrosse, just without sticks, and less facemasks. That's the one thing I don't appreciate about sports requiring helmets or other headgear: I wore glasses back then, would never have enjoyed putting glasses back on my nose and all the awkwardness. That's probably why I liked swimming back then: I was finally able o ditch my crutch and have equal opportunity in the pool. Lacrosse was just too hoighty-toighty, East coast for Chicago I guess. When MJ and I recently visited the National LaCrosse Hall of Fame, we learned that a.) Lacrosse is not an Olympic sport, but it was way back in the early 1900s, their international association is trying to lobby them back in, and I sympathize having been part of different campaigns to get dodgeball in as an Olympic sport, and b.) All of the national champions are schools in one part of the nation, mainly the Northeast, like Maryland Terrapins, Duke Blue Devils, Cornell Big Red, Virginia Cavaliers. Oh and it's coming back as an Olympic medal sport in 2028! Figures that the sport that started as an indigenous sport and since then became the national sport of Canada would be concentrated in the Northeast. Goes to show some games and sports are just cultural and limited to certain regions. Those of us who grew up in the Midwest missed out, I fear. We did also learn about Native American tribes that played the sport, including Iroquois nation of Onandanga, Seneca, Mohawk, Oneida, and....Cayuga. That's some trivia right there. More trivia: The American painter who depicted many Native Americans was George Catlin, in the 1800s. That's the great thing about having a child (or children) if ambitious: it's like giving yourself a second chance at sports, to live vicariously through your children, and let them figure out what sports or activities they want to do, let them have a shot at being really good at something. Whether it's dodgeball, pickleball, lacrosse, swimming, whatever, a child gets to start from scratch and is like an open book: the pages haven't even been written yet. (That's from a Natasha Bedingfield song). I wish for any child of mine to be able to get that chance from a young age and get as dedicated as possible, and I imagine a child of mine will want to be competitive and chase their dreams. Here I am, 38 years old, and still chasing my dreams, wishing for that one chance to be something great.

Malcolm-Jamal Warner

I was saddened yesterday by news of the death of Malcolm Jamal-Warner, the actor who played the role of Theo Huxtible in the now-forgotten comedy series "The Cosby Show." Why is it forgotten? Not because it wasn't a good show, it told a great story about a family of African Americans living in New York City growing up in an upper-class neighborhood, they were my TV family growing up: I always thought of myself as Theo, having to deal with various sisters but also the pressure of eventually becoming the man of the house. No, the Cosby Show was canceled because the gross acts of one man, the lead actor on the show, who abused his power as the star in gross ways, negating all the good work by everybody else done on the show, and now nobody will ever talk about the Cosby Show: Jeopardy won't have clues about it, it doesn't come up in any "top sitcoms in history" lists, it's like the show never happened, expunged from history. Except it will always live on as a part of me, like the first episode where Theo pierces his ear and might have an infection but doesn't want his dad to find out, like the episode Theo was given a harsh lesson by his parents about paying for rent and having to pay for everything in the real world. Another reason why I don't go in the ocean anymore at the beach (other than because I watched Jaws and who knows what's in there): people drown, like what happened to Malcolm Jamal-Warner: the official cause of death being asphyxia and drowning due to strong currents. It's always a little fuzzy with celebrities because the cause of death often gets tangled up with drugs or some sort of underlying causes (heart attacks that were drug-induced, etc, also see the weird circusmstances around the death of Gene Hackman) but this one seems to be a clear case of drowning by waves. Drowning cases in the U.S. are higher than I expect, with 4000 deaths per year, and a slight uptick recently since 2020-2022 (more people tired of being bottled indoors due to Covid and taking more risks at the beach?) The lifeguards are much more limited than at a swimming pool ( I always wondered why there are 3 lifeguards covering a small area of a swimming pool but just one lifeguard for what seems like a mile of beach), you're really on your own. I'm a pretty good swimmer from my youthful days on the swim team, but I will readily admit I would be no match for strong waves, and most people have an inflated sense of how good of a swimmer they are, which is the problem. They die because they think they can make it back; sad really. And said for Warner, who inexplicably was 54 years old (tempus fugit, aka time flies, I only remember him as the forever 13-year-old boy from the Cosby Show), which sounds old when I think about it as my 20-year-old self) but now that I'm getting older........that really doesn't sound too far away. He was still a young man! Sad. Every summer there is seemingly one headline that just comes out of nowhere to gain traction and because the trend of the summer. last year it was the Hawk-Tua Girl (who has since disappeared off the grid) and this year it's the Coldplay concert couple who were caught having an affair. Not sure if it's just because summer has slow news days, people are ready for anything to break up the monotony, the salacious headlines get more attention, or what, but it's everywhere since last Friday: people at baseball stadiums around the country are mocking the couple by hiding when they get shown on camera, doing spoofs. Here I am just wondering how it might become Jeopardy relevant and become a clue at some point (give the controversy a name! That would make it more likley to show up on Jeopardy). But then again, we're all delighting in the breakup of 2 families in the most public way possible, so there's that.

Musings on Reddit

I'm a big fan of Reddit, I own the stock (RDDT), I think there are genuinely good people who use Reddit and try to provide good advice, and I've gained a lot of good knowledge on the site from crowdsourced material and AMA sessions (Ask Me Anything) that you can tell is the actual person claiming to be who they are. That said......I think Reddit, much like the rest of the internet, can cause a lot of anxiety if you're on it too long. The same old adage of "anything is excess can be dangerous," and the Internet is rife with excess. MJ was a very diligent user of Reddit for her IVF process, and credit to her she really read every single comment, compared notes with different subreddits, found stories that aligned with our case. The IVF reddit, though, can be a breeding ground for trauma, horror stories, and jealousy.... MJ reported that eventually people who went on there to post about their successful IVF cycles received retaliation and backlash for "oversharing" or seeming too proud of themselves for having been successful while others were still having difficulties. It's such a difficult balance to have sympathy for those who are going through setbacks and frustration, but what's wrong with sharing successful IVF stories if they are genuinely trying to help other people going through the same process? Something beautiful and productive eventually devolved into doing harm. Similary with preparing for children, reddit can really cause anxiety with everyone posting special cases. I do wonder if the people who go on Reddit are the ones with extreme conditions or feel the need to share all the time; those who are just trying to help just stay calm and don't say anything. My suspicions were confirmed today at a "parent council" (one of MJ's friends had a pool party where tons of kids the same age came along with their parents) and multiple parents told me, "don't be alarmed by what you read on the Internet.") A lot of what's on the Internet is for pushing products or for commercial gain, as newborn parents are the most vulnerable to doing whatever they can to get this baby thing right (I'm already getting a lot of videos popping up in my feed about birthing classes and birthing products) and what better way to sell something than to appeal to fear and making people feel inadequate, or unprepared? If only there were a magic pill or get-out-of-jail free card that we can get for taking care of everything in the childcaring process. I often wonder also who the average user is and why they're so confident and assured in their beliefs; I often am not sure about anything I say and second-guess myself all the time, being convinced by something somebody else said I hadn't thought about. I notice this pretty often actually; I find in American culture people tend to say things with confidence a lot more even in cases where they shouldn't have had that much confidence. It could also just be the anonymity of the Internet and not having to face any social consequences; I also post on Reddit sometimes and I feel the freedom to post my strongest opinions (without need to post evidence) in a faceless forum where people are not reading my facial expressions or seeing who I am that they can remember me for next time. What IS good for reddit? The Jeopardy reddit, or reddit for TV shows. So much analysis and articles I never thought about, angles to explore, other shows to watch. The Jeopardy reddit is pretty chock full of former contestants (you can tell from the highlighted part in their bio when they appeared on the show) and future contestants talking about the show. Good resource for sure for all things Jeopardy, and not too serious as to render any trauma or drama like the IVF reddit.

Jaws (颌, 顎, 입 부분)

I recently got to watch "Jaws" at a live orchestral play-along of the classic summer blockbuster, first played in 1975 and still a classic today, its 50th Anniversary. It's just a summer classic: first released in the summer, the movie's set in the summer, right before July 4th weekend, it's in a summer resort locale of Amityville (somewhere near New York City, one of those beach cities), the main antagonist is a shark that only would cause problems in the summer (don't see many people going in the water during the icy winter), and the beaches evoke images of summer and long, endless days spent out at the beach under the sun. It's still got star power: the orchestral hall I attended, which normally does NOT seat that many people for a normal Friday night or Saturday night showing of a Mendelsohn or Bach concert, was pretty packed to the "gills" on a Sunday afternoon showing of Jaws. It reminded me of why I go to movies: the screen is big, the lights are dimmed, the audio is pumped up, you really get into teh movie, and also......for better or worse, the rest of the audience reacts to the movie, which can be great for a comedy when the laughter is timed correctly, horrible if someone is just not cognizant of others and yells out spoilers, coughs, sneezes, etc. Something about going to the theater, though, still retains its value and is a different experience than watching on my computer sitting no my couch: I can stop watching or pause the movie at any point, I can be on my phone, I can fall asleep, I can barely pay attention, I can be donating blood (!) but that's actually kind of the point now: theaters actually FORCE you to concentrate on the movie and get off your phone (the ushers made sure to remind those who still had them out) and thousands of people actually collectively did something together and shared in the collective community of the event, something that doesn't happen as often in a world where we're separted by our phones all the time. It doesn't hurt that Jaws was, is a good movie. Not MJ's cup of tea (although we did watch all 3 seasons of Squid Game together), with people being eaten by a shark and losing limbs and blood in the water (I've never liked diving into ocean water with all the salt and big waves, it just gives me even more reason not to now), but the tension is pretty high; the villian doesn't even show up in its full form (we finally get a glimpse of him) in the 2nd half of the movie (AFTER the intermission!) and of course the iconic line: "You're gonna need a bigger boat." People clapped at that utterance as well as Quint's speech about losing men to sharks during WWII. Luckily, Jaws isn't really a horror movie; the shark attacks are not scary necessarily, and watching it with orchestra allows you to know exactly when Jaws is going to reappear, soon after the conductor picks up the baton again and starts up the strings playing the daa-dum music again presaging certain doom. If and when civilizations devolve into machines and simulations, I'll remember experiences like watching Jaws with a room full of people and orchestra playing the score as one of the luxuries of real life, the epitome of the human experience. Nothing like sitting in an air-conditioned room watching a summer blockbuster shark movie during the dead of summer. Watching Jaws is somewhat similar to watching the newest Jeopardy superchamp no Jeopardy, Scott Riccardi, tear up the competition on Jeopardy. I recently learned that I have made it into the Jeopardy contestant pool (it's a dream come true) so I could be called anytime within the next 2 years to be on Jeopardy, so of course I've ramped up studying even more and gotten involved even more, and being a competitive person naturally but even more so with Jeopardy, compared myself to Scott. I'm not quite at his level yet, but I hope to be when I'm ready to be on the show. It's a little discouraging to find out that Scott is only 26, in a different generation than I am, and still getting all these questions right, but then I remember I'm a pandemic baby of Jeopardy, only really started watching every day in September 2020 soon after finishing less intellectually challenging shows like Tiger King and other Netflix shows. But boy would I be upset if I ran into a champion like Scott if I got onto Jeopardy.... he encourages me to study harder.