China also has a more efficient energy transfer system than elsewhere in the world, so the loss is a lot less than you would expect, lower than, for example, it would be in US.

I only realized it’s NOT an armband after you pointed it out x)

If you live inside the heart of the West, your life is still good enough—yes, even those struggling and clinging on the edges of poverty—and the bread and circuses still mostly work as distractions. But the world isn’t only the West. There are plenty in the other 6/7 of humanity who are willing to die for the hope of change. Life was hard before, but having endured impacts of a global pandemic, wars, and starvation, people are getting pushed to their limit. We are seeing many sparks of revolution starting to light on the dark prairie.

How many of them are fighting for the “right” reasons? How many of them will end up in a better place? Nobody knows. But if even one or two turn into full-on fires, things will certainly get shaken up. And thereafter, unlike the Arab Spring days, there are Global South countries arising that are strong and wealthy enough to lend a hand, whose national interests lie toward helping regions to transition toward stability after any social blowups.

At some point, change will come upon us, and we won’t have any say in how peaceful or violent it will be.

A society literally dominated by chaebols… The system doesn’t work well 😔

I really need a “hide read post” option 😺

OK, here’s a couple more that are famous and great for touristic reasons of history /culture /good food /great landscape /etc

Xi’an (one of the ancient capitals of China, starting point of the traditional and new Silk Road), Guilin (every single time they show China in cartoon, with giant mountains and winding rivers, they’re basically showing here), Shenzhen (the new hyper modern high tech city), Guangzhou (old English name was Canton, as in Cantonese food), Suzhou and Hangzhou (historically famed for being chill and beautiful, lakes and canals etc), Hainandao (Chinese version of Hawaii), Nanjing (another ancient capital of China, lots of culture), Harbin (lots of Russian architecture here, and a FANTASTIC and huge ice sculpture show every year)

…sounds grim and surreal. Pretty sure I’ve read post-apocalyptic fiction with similar backgrounds :|

There was a period when foreigners, especially English-speaking white foreigners, were treated effusively in China, elevated above all Chinese people and often far above the natural social place these folks had back in their own countries. They got better jobs, better job situations and benefits, and Chinese people in general gave them respect and admiration based on their whiteness and exotic Westerness alone.

Then China opened up to the world at ever increasing pace, Chinese people became more sophisticated, and an entire generation of previously-fêted foreigners lost their elevated place in society. They crashed back to earth and drifted back to the social positions they always would have had based on their personal abilities and talents.

Laowhy and Serpentza lived through the tail part of that shift. The good and easy time they’d had in China soon ended, they were barely making ends meet, and soon had to leave. They became deeply bitter, and attributed that natural change in society to the CPC ruining the good times for everyone, not just themselves. Thereafter they fell in with various anti-China crowds within and without China, and also found just how lucrative anti-China videos are on yt.

So it’s a combination of both a personal sense of being wronged, plus the good grift, that resulted in their channels and stance today. They were always grifters at heart, the change in money merely changed the nature of their content.

Arguably, this is part of cultural DNA of the united states, which forebears arrived to escape authoritarian persecution, and whose Constitution assumes the state is there to deprive the rights from citizens, which must be protected from the state via laws, rather than believing that a state can also work to specifically enact and protect those rights, that without a state there ARE no rights.

This is the classic conception: there is the single country that is China, with two regions (the mainland region and Taiwan region) and two governments on each region, each asserting their own rights as the sole and legitimate government of all China. The government on Taiwan lost this competition years ago, and now it has only 13 countries left in the world that recognize their legitimacy, one of which is the Vatican.

However, recent trends in Taiwan is to promote independence on the down-low, to change their mandatory history education to say Taiwan never had anything to do with China, not even historically, that it essentially sprang into existence some one hundred years ago, owes more thanks to Japan for its culture, and whatever cultural elements that are similar to the mainland are just because the mainland had been a large general influence all over Asia.

The DPP doesn’t dare to change the Constitution overtly to make Taiwan an independent country, though they keep treading the red line in their actions, because they know that the day they do so will be the day the CPC is forced into military action. The US also would not approve, as it wants Taiwan to be a manageable thorn in the CPC’s side, not an out-of-control element that will pull the US into a war it isn’t yet ready for.

The Chinese have historically held learning in high esteem and it remains the case today, imparted from parent to child at all levels of society. (I am sick from hearing it nonstop growing up, lol.)

Comes from Confucian traditions and the historical meritocratic bureaucracy. Taking the imperial exams was how one ascended the social ranks, for millennia, or maintained one’s current high rank. Titles in the bureaucracy was not heritable, and every generation that fails to get a similar high level job gets demoted some ranks down, until they are relegated to commoners, oh the horror. Hence studying has always been considered the best thing to do to develop one self and one’s place in society.

Do you believe that third world countries in general who have a desperate need to develop and not be poor anymore should be prevented from access to cheap energy because that’s all they can afford? If so, do you believe already-developed countries should pay subsidies so these countries can use the far more expensive green energy and build the infrastructure to access it?

Do you know that as the world’s factory, how much of the carbon China produces should be counted under the tabs of all the countries that put in orders for it to produce? What do you feel about those western countries which are the world’s highest carbon emitter per capita and yet refuse to sign onto climate accords or take big actions?

Do you only expect perfection in a black or white way and everything that doesn’t meet that standard is completely pointless, instantly to be dismissed, or are you able to celebrate some progress where they exist? If not, because you believe the climate issue is an urgent one that must contain no compromise, what policies do you believe is practically implementable and quickly effective and what steps to you think we can take to get there?

Out of all of American anti-china pro-war talking points, this is the most insidious one that I have heard floating around.

The UNITED STATES is the one that sees TSMC as their core interest in Taiwan, hence they created immense pressure on TSMC to open a branch in Arizona, promising all kinds of benefits, but once there they revealed their actual policies will practically force TSMC to provide its trade secrets to the US government.

To the Chinese people, Taiwan is a lost piece of land and a lost group of people that is separated by a civil war where the mainland has long since won by sheer effort of being bigger and basically the recognized the government of China. There are strong emotions, poems, songs dreaming about reunification, for decades (from both mainland side AND Taiwanese side, btw). Whether one accepts the validity of their perspective or not is fair, but the fact is those desires are based on wanting to right a historical wrong, a period of humiliation where the country was broken apart, and wanting a lost relative back into the family fold.

The idea that that China wants to reunite for ECONOMIC reasons is sheer absurdity. And viscerally infuriating. A disgusting demonization, honestly. As though a China that can put a space station up into space by itself, after being barred by Americans from participating in any American based space initiatives, will have trouble to produce chips of any size in a couple of years now that there is the need to do so.

Looks like science fiction, but is science fact … Heh xD

I also love how in these solar panel fields in, say desert places, the panels shield the ground, and they would put starter plants into the ground, with some moisture, and that would be enough to start an entire ecosystem of plants, insects, little animals etc

Oh wow, boingboing and deli.cio.us, nostalgic old site names I haven’t thought about in years… :)

Mine also finally stopped about an hour ago 😭 Good bye, Boost

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-reactivates-coal-fired-power-plant-to-save-gas/a-62893497

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertbryce/2022/10/28/the-iron-law-of-electricity-strikes-again-germany-re-opens-five-lignite-fired-power-plants/

‘Intensive use’ of German coal power plants releases additional 15 mio t of CO2 in 2022 – report https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/intensive-use-german-coal-power-plants-releases-additional-15-mio-t-co2-2022-report

Yeah but those ads are skippable whereas YouTube ads aren’t. I support YouTube creators having some control over their own income by adding native ads and not be yanked around by random YouTube policies.

I tend to watch hour-long shows with in-depth analyses from viewpoints that isn’t mainstream, or in different languages from different countries, more than 5 hours per day, and YouTube premium is worth it to me.

I enjoyed that movie so much, and now very excited for the third :)

Paper in general, gun powder, compass