How to Mobilize Millions: Lessons From Hong Kong | At-Home Shocks for Depression

Companies are increasingly peddling personal brain-stimulating devices, but there’s little evidence yet that they work.

For three and a half months, every weekday morning was identical. A nurse practitioner would escort me from the locked psychiatric unit to a small room on the neurological unit, where I was seated in a large, dentist-style chair and a few electrodes were attached to my temples. A technician positioned a large metal coil against the upper left portion of my skull, and then the tapping began.

Imagine a small woodpecker tapping against your skull rapidly for four seconds, pausing for 30 seconds and then resuming its persistent tapping for another four seconds. Imagine this pattern repeating for 45 minutes. It wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t painful either. I had volunteered for the experience, as part of a clinical study on transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, after sliding into an unrelenting depression that didn’t respond to medication. I was among the 30 percent of people who receive TMS and find it effective. Now, versions of that technology are increasingly available in the comfort of your home, and at affordable costs.

Chieng has built his outsider persona into a career — one that’s taking off.

Ronny Chieng didn’t go to Australia to become a comedian. He went to become a lawyer, which didn’t pan out. After training in Melbourne, he wasn’t able to find a job in law, so he went into the next most stable profession, stand-up comedy.

That’s a bit of a joke, but Chieng, 33, would have been hard-pressed to find a place better suited than Melbourne to kick off a career in stand-up. While to American audiences it often feels like Australian breakouts like Hannah Gadsby come out of nowhere, Melbourne boasts the third-largest comedy festival in the world and has a red-hot comedy scene. Not everyone wants to leave, and not everyone can. But Chieng — who was born in Malaysia and now lives in New York — has not only made the leap across the Pacific but also hasn’t abandoned his Australian roots.

Escaping the Chinese state’s surveillance might, Hong Kong’s protesters are changing the face of popular resistance.

What began as a protest against an extradition bill has grown into a battle over the future of Hong Kong — and a rare instance of popular defiance against President Xi Jinping’s increasingly authoritarian China.

On July 1, the anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong from British to Chinese rule, protesters stormed the city’s Legislature, smashing windows and ransacking the heart of government in unprecedented scenes that were broadcast around the world. They blame the shift in tone both on Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s botched handling of the proposed law and an aggressive police response in recent weeks.

After the leaders of Hong Kong’s 2014 pro-democracy Umbrella Movement — the last time the city was hit by major demonstrations — were locked up, protesters drew inspiration from Hong Kong actor Bruce Lee’s famous quote: “Be water, my friend,” an allusion to a nimble, leaderless way of organizing that has echoes in other movements around the world, including France’s yellow vest protests, protests in Sudan, Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring.