The drains have backed up again

Skating on thin ice

Wahey! Weibo's nationalistic shitheads are at it again. The it being brutally castigating their Olympians' performances, when failing to excel at things that they—the nationalistic shitheads, that is—wouldn't have a hope in hell of achieving in the first place. In particular, figure skater Zhu Yi, who fell a lot, leaving Team China out of the medals.

Her performance was called shameful and embarrassing by some, with personal attacks made on her background and her poor grasp of Mandarin. The criticism also appeared to be linked to discontent that the US-born and raised skater was allegedly chosen for the team event over Chinese-born skaters.

BBC News droid

It doesn't appear to have occurred to them that she's a US plant. Part of a sophisticated and clandestine plot to sabotage China's performance at their own Olympic Games, bringing shame on the entire country and making them a global laughing stock. The US has tried to keep it secret, but I'm here to shed light on the whole, sordid affair!

So, remember where you read it first, kids.

To hell with it, I'm going to nitpick! US-born and raised should be written US-born and -raised, since it represents a shortening of US-born and US-raised. And that's two more tags for this post.

Anyone who considers born and raised to be a colloquialism that needs only to be prepended once, as a whole: fair enough, we can agree to disagree. I'm sticking to it.

Lest anyone reading the BBC's article thinks that my nitpicking of the corporation's editorial rigour was inordinately pedantic, or just flat-out wrong, how about the removal of Zhu Yi's country of birth with a stealth edit? Thus rendering my pedantry, right or wrong, redundant? I think the cap fits now!

screenshot from original article on Wayback Machine
The original version of the article: courtesy of Wayback Machine. Zhu was born in the US.
screenshot from current article
The version of the article as it currently stands: given that the original was factually correct, the reason for this change is unclear.
US-born Beverly Zhu [Zhu Yi], who won the 2018 US Figure Skating Championships, triggered a heated discussion in China after she joined the Chinese team last year, which means she can compete for the host nation at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics.

Mandy Zuo, Can China win the World Cup with a handful of naturalized players?, Inkstone

According to her record held by the International Skating Union, Zhu's place of birth is given as Westwood USA.