Happy New Year!

Hello dear readers,

Albert and Michelle here. Happy Lunar New Year! We last wrote about our deep sense of paralysis at our current moment. We still feel unmoored, as there’s been so much bad news: the absurd geopolitical standoff between the US and the EU over Greenland; the violent occupation of Minnesota; the crackdown in Iran that left thousands dead; and the relentless, simmering military tension right here in the Taiwan Strait. Every time we’ve tried to start this newsletter in the past couple of weeks, we’ve felt at a loss.

But! Like almost all of social media, we’ve been transfixed by Alysa Liu. The quick primer, for those of you who don’t know: Liu became the youngest U.S. national champion in figure skating history in 2019, at just thirteen years old. She participated in the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022, where she won a bronze medal in the team event — competing, remarkably, in the country her father had fled.

Alysa’s father, Arthur Liu, was a political dissident who took pa…