China, living up to its reputation as the country that always puts a positive spin on everything, has released a list of five “surprising benefits” of smog. As published on the China Central Television’s website, they are:

1. It unifies the Chinese people.

2. It makes China more equal.

3. It raises citizen awareness of the cost of China’s economic development.

4. It makes people funnier.

5. It makes people more knowledgeable (of things like  meteorology and the English word haze).

The article was pulled, but then the Global Times published an article claiming air pollution might help the Chinese military by obscuring sight lines, which can reduce the effectiveness of surveillance and weapons systems.

There will be more. Heck, everyone knows smog takes your mind off only being able to have one child, clouds your brain while you spend all day doing the same mundane task making iPhones for people who pay more for the phone than you make in a month, and helps you to not see North Korea and its missiles aimed at you while Kim “The Kid” Jong-un playfully holds a big red button in his hand.

Pope Benedict may have worn red shoes, but Pope Francis, it turns out, worked the red rope. In an interview recently, he admitted that when he was a teen he worked as a bouncer in a nightclub in Buenos Aries. It’s not really so different from being Pope — people are still confiding in him and trying to convince him they should be allowed to end up someplace where they think angels hang out.