“There’s been a lot about the premier-as-savior talk — that these officials could stay around and push back against Xi, but obviously that’s not going to happen,” said Christopher K. Johnson, the president of the China Strategies Group and a former C.I.A. analyst of Chinese politics. “Proximity to Xi is all that really matters now.”

Sadly, 2018 was not done with the devices and further borkages followed later in the year.

[A] fortunate accident […] happened to me when I was a very little boy. A good-hearted old Irish nurse (whom I shall not forget in my will) took me up one day by the heels, when I was making more noise than was necessary, and, swinging me round two or three times, d——d my eyes for a skreeking little spalpeen, and then knocked my head into a cocked hat against the bed-post. This, I say, decided my fate, and made my fortune.

We have an ample supply of water