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The Trump administration is throwing various hobbies enjoyed by Americans into chaos and is harming small businesses domestically and abroad with its ever-changing tariff structure that is turning the United States into a hermit kingdom. It has made buying and selling things on eBay particularly annoying, and is making it harder and more expensive to, for example, buy vintage film cameras, retro video games, or vintage clothes from Japan, where many of the top eBay sellers are based.
“Trying to figure out what the future of this hobby is going to look like for those of us in the USA (other than insanely expensive),” a post on r/analogcommunity, the most popular film photography subreddit, reads. “All of my lenses and my camera body came from Japan, they would have been prohibitively expensive [now], paying an extra $80 per item. I feel like entry level to this hobby is going to get hit especially hard.” Another meme posted to the community under the title “Shopping on eBay be like this now” reads “The age of the Canon Mint++ is over. The time of the Argus C3 has come,” referring to a common way that Japanese eBay sellers list Japanese-made Canon cameras. The Argus C3 was a budget mass-produced, American-made camera that was not popular in Japan, and so most of the people selling them are in the United States. Some people like them, but it has been nicknamed “the brick” because it “could serve as a deadly weapon in a street fight.” It remains very inexpensive to this day.
The photography hobby is a microcosm of what anyone who wants to buy anything from another country is currently experiencing. The de-minimis exemption, which allowed people to buy things internationally without paying tariffs if the items cost less than $800, made it very easy and less expensive to get into hobbies like film photography, retro video games, and vintage fashion, to name a few. The Trump administration is ending that exemption Friday and it will quickly become a financial and/or logistical mess for anyone who wants to buy or sell anything from another country. Communities and companies focused on electronics, board games, action figures, skincare, flashlights, sex toys, watches, and general ecommerce are also freaking out, stopping service to the United States, or telling U.S. customers to expect higher prices, higher fees, longer shipping times, more paperwork, more headache, and unpredictable delays.
In recent days, national mail carriers in the European Union (including DHL, which is widely used internationally), Australia, India, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and, crucially, Japan, have started restricting many shipments to the United States. Some of the few remaining ways to send shipments internationally to the United States is through UPS and FedEx, which have warned customers that the end of de-minimis means more paperwork, higher shipping prices (both have increased their international processing fees), and also means that either the shipper or the receiver will have to pay tariffs on whatever is being sent, which of course adds both costs and processing time. This is on top of the fact that FedEx and UPS are often more expensive services in the first place.
Denmark's foreign minister summoned the top U.S. diplomat in the country for talks after the main national broadcaster reported that at least three people with connections to President Donald Trump have been carrying out covert influence operations in Greenland.
(Image credit: Kwiyeon Ha)
Whether you want to or not, it’s time to Return To Silent Hill. A new trailer for the long-dormant horror series has emerged from the mist, thirteen years after Silent Hill: Revelation 3D cratered in theaters. However, the news should be cause for celebration for fans of the original, as director Christophe Gans, director of 2006’s Silent Hill, has retaken control of the franchise. Gans’ new movie adapts Silent Hill 2, bringing in character James Sunderland (played by Jeremy Irvine) and Mary (Hannah Emily Anderson), the estranged lover who supposedly invited him to this cursed town with a freaking Pyramid Head in it. Coming from the folks at Cineverse and Bloody Disgusting, the team behind the V/H/S series and the Terrifier sequels, it stands to reason that the film will be as gory and arty as Gans wants it.
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Israeli airstrikes on Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza killed at least 20 people Monday, including five Palestinian journalists. Eyewitnesses say Israel carried out a “double-tap” strike on the hospital. A drone initially hit the hospital’s roof, killing one journalist setting up a live stream, and then another strike hit journalists and rescue workers who were responding to the initial strike. “Israel knew exactly who was there,” says Palestinian writer and analyst Muhammad Shehada. “Israel has killed 244 journalists, by far surpassing all 20 years of the war in Vietnam or all six years of the Second World War.”