ZDL

You would be shocked at the number of "Irish"-Americans who believe the IRA are good guys.

No troubles, mate.

Completely different words.

Breaking down the words:

• 投 tóu: cast, throw
• 桃 táo: peach
• 报 bào: report
• 李 lǐ: plum

This sounds like gibberish because it is. Chinese characters aren't quite words, but are more like "roots" in English (like "bio" meaning "life"). As such they have broad and shifting meanings. The big two are the first word and the third. The first word literally means "throw" or "cast" (as in fishing line), but has other shades of meaning that imply "giving". The third word literally means "report" in most uses, but can also mean "repay" or "reciprocate". Factor into this that word forms and declensions just aren't a thing in Chinese, and this particular expression stems from the Book of Songs which is written in the very, very, very terse language of Classical Chinese and …

… well translation is shifty and difficult.

Another way to translate this (with implied meanings in [brackets]) could be: "toss [someone a] peach [and he will] reciprocate [with a] plum".

Or, you know, give a peach in return for a plum. (And my brain screwed up above which I will correct: I flipped plum and peach for some reason.)

As for the other part of your question, the characters for the online purchasing platform are: 淘宝. Breaking that down:

• 淘 táo: wash, cleanse, sift, eliminate
• 宝 bǎo: treasure, jewel

That first one is MOSTLY used to talk about sifting (such that 淘金 means "sift gold" or more idiomatically "pan for gold"). So the literal translation of that name is "sift treasure" or, more idiomatically, "treasure hunt".

Insert the "the more you know" meme right here. 😆

Oh, God. Freeze Peach has reached the UK.

A vaguely similar expression exists in Chinese: 投桃报李 (tóu táo bào lǐ or "give a peach in return for a plum"). It suggests that reciprocity is key to gift-giving; that giving is as much part of the joy as is receiving.

For the first problem, you use thicker grades of plastic. If you tried to tear one of these plastic milk bags by hand you'd be ... well ... it's hard, just trust me. (Hell, they're even marginally knife-resistant. Don't ask me how I found out.)

For the second problem there are special holders custom shaped to put the bags in. Maybe a picture will help.

Wait until you find out that craft beer in China is sold in bags too.

Yeah, pretty much.

I'm not sure where the difficulty lies.

You take milk. You take a plastic bag. You put the milk into the plastic bag.

(I'm not being sarcastic here, I'm genuinely flummoxed at where the conceptual problem is.)

Most things get denser as they get colder. Water is one of the major and most important exceptions to this. Water is at its densest (without invoking the various exotic ice forms) at 4°C. It gets lighter as it gets colder.

Without this property there could have been no life in Earth. If water acted like almost all (perhaps all?) other liquids, its solid form would be denser than its liquid form and ice would sink to the bottom, meaning all bodies of water would freeze solid bottom to top in cold weather. The fact that water freezes only at the top is why life could form and why non-aqueous liquids are unlikely to allow life to form.

When I had lots of money I preferred giving, partially because it made me feel good, but partially because often gifts I received were just not very well thought-out. ("I noticed you have a lot of RPGs, so I got you this new D&D module." Never mind that the one RPG I don't have is D&D in any flavour... That sort of thing.)

When I have less money (like now) ... I still prefer giving, but only marginally.

Relating to other people without an accounting system.

Roko's Basilisk is all part of the "Less Wrong" cult that permeates Silly Con Valley.