🇨🇦🇩🇪🇨🇳张殿李🇨🇳🇩🇪🇨🇦

Half-German, Half-Chinese, Half-Canadian, all-bad at math, currently living to her consternation in the People's Republic of China.

Formerly 🇨🇦🇩🇪🇨🇳张殿李🇨🇳🇩🇪🇨🇦 (npub12gf…j3qf), but de-USAifying my social media servers.

偏见蒙眼盲
无知恨中华
若知龙之美
悔恨泪满颊

Other Mastodon: 🇨🇦🇩🇪🇨🇳张殿李🇨🇳🇩🇪🇨🇦 (npub1573…l4ry)
Pixelfed: 🇨🇦🇩🇪🇨🇳张殿李🇨🇳🇩🇪🇨🇦 (npub15k4…094j)
Pronouns: 同志 / 同志 / 同志的
WriteFreely: zhang.dianli (npub1ukc…z88m)

Public Key

npub199g9tsl6xg2sl9g026336sd72jedhvvqd5p9vj76n9jx6797ymdqzu4dj9

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqszj5z4c0ary9g0j584dgcagxl9fvkmkxqx6qjkf0dfjerd0zlzdkspz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsfxacue

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relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub199g9tsl6xg2sl9g026336sd72jedhvvqd5p9vj76n9jx6797ymdqzu4dj9

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Last Notes

2026-05-01 03:11:15 UTC

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I've had plenty of experience with "progressive" circles in Canada. There is an emphatic racial hierarchy even there, and it's not Asians on the top.

2026-05-01 02:48:34 UTC

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Never. Too much racism exists for Europeans and North Americans to think that non-whites may have things to teach them.

2026-05-01 01:45:26 UTC

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During COVID-19, the big employers in Wuhan were brought into a meeting with government officials. The general warning of that meeting was that if these companies did opportunistic mass layoffs they would find themselves in deep, hot water rather rapidly.
Basically telling the rich folk that they're taking a hit from the battering the economy took, just like everybody else did.

2026-04-26 23:01:18 UTC

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They are really desperately trying to find a Reichstag Fire of their very own, aren't they?

2026-04-18 04:17:49 UTC

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I linked to a CNN article a while back where they said that Canadians going to other destinations was "robbing" US destinations of tourist income.
They literally called it robbery.

2026-04-18 01:29:00 UTC

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Oh, absolutely. I'm just saying that there wouldn't *BE* a problem in rare earths if the USA acted like a responsible nation instead of swaggering bullies.

2026-04-18 01:07:13 UTC

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I love also how the Chinese control over rare earths is viewed as a bad thing.
It wasn't a bad thing for ages … when the USA wasn't parading around like the block bully. Both sides of trade got wealthier. The the USA got alarmed at how wealthy China was becoming and started to fuck around. And found out.
Had the USA been good world citizens from the get-go, there would never have been a problem with rare earths.

2026-04-11 01:17:10 UTC

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Which is ironic because orcas aren't whales. They're dolphins.

2026-03-29 14:37:26 UTC

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Yes. There are pigeons made of faecal matter. You know: stool pigeons.

2026-03-23 03:47:41 UTC

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Wow. That was fiery as all get-out! 😮

2026-03-18 06:28:55 UTC

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Caffeine. Alcohol. Refined sugar. Social media. LLMbeciles. Populism.
All drugs, in increasing order of addiction.

2026-03-02 01:05:20 UTC

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For some reason I'm not getting sound.

2026-02-24 08:34:02 UTC

https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/116/124/639/803/725/213/original/d9059b7866420a84.png

2026-02-23 07:34:26 UTC

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Within line of sight of me I have tea packaged in bamboo tubes and stored for use in calabash gourds.
We've been "growing packaging" for thousands of years.
So it's not a "what if' but rather "here's the next step".

2026-02-20 10:26:06 UTC

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Ah. Possibly lost interest, then, or possibly had technical failure?

2026-02-20 09:52:59 UTC

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What's a forkiverse?

2026-02-20 01:37:26 UTC

The Beaverton isn't pulling punches, I see.
https://www.thebeaverton.com/2026/02/u-s-legal-scholars-baffled-as-prince-andrew-arrested-for-epstein-ties-korean-president-sentenced-for-insurrection/

2026-02-18 08:52:07 UTC

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Makes sense.
Me, I'd hyphenate it in a way that makes a follow-up question: "It is, is it?"

2026-02-18 08:20:34 UTC

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How would they hyphenate "artisanal"?

2026-02-16 13:48:55 UTC

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Given how much his kind practically drool over the Spartans, perhaps he should be given the Spartan treatment.
I believe upstart Heliots were hunted to death? (Or does he imagine himself an example of the elite of a warrior culture?)

2026-02-12 02:30:49 UTC

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I'm not sure how any government (China is doing essentially the same thing here) thinks they can induce people to have more children while at the same time making anything related to children (health care, schooling, even clothing and food!) so expensive that most people can't afford it.

2026-02-04 22:44:14 UTC

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You forgot:
- repeatedly and ad nauseum posture about the previous points as if any of those who do it will listen
I recommend you follow the advice you give in the final three words as well.

2026-02-04 22:28:50 UTC

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Ah!
You're a prescriptivist!
You should have a chat with any of your colleagues who happen to be linguists and run your theories past them. Watch their faces. (The polite ones won't laugh out loud.)
😉

2026-02-04 22:10:13 UTC

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Singular "they" has been in use since the 14th century. The claim that this is "incorrect" dates to the late 18th century when a bunch of toffee-nosed upper class scholars decided that it was they who would determine what was "correct" or not.
You know, the same crowd who thought splitting infinitives was wrong because it wasn't done in Latin (despite, you know, Latin not having an infinitive form which could even be split!).
Relax and link yourself to seven centuries of culture.

2026-02-02 22:00:21 UTC

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There are a lot of companies who won't be seeing me darkening their doors ever again over this indeed.

2026-02-01 07:33:48 UTC

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Even if it were an order of magnitude more expensive solar is a win over petroleum in powering what matters in the modern era.
Petroleum: you gots it, you uses it, you don't gots it.
Solar: you gots it, you uses it, you still gots it.
You can't meaningfully compete with "free" unless you're cheating somehow.

2026-01-24 00:04:35 UTC

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And sometimes is given away free for favour.
This always makes me laugh. "I won't use WeChat because the Chinese government, who can't do anything meaningful to me, will read or listen in to whatever I do. I'd rather let Zuck the Fuck have that information. You know, the guy who literally performs evil experiments on his user base."
Some days I despair for humanity. The rest I just point and laugh.

2026-01-22 05:26:26 UTC

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Redcaps were pretty horrific creatures in folklore!

2026-01-16 13:14:29 UTC

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Holy shit! This is ... staggering news. I'd assumed Carney had swallowed the neocon thug bullshit he'd been swigging on Wall St. all the way.

2026-01-15 08:04:03 UTC

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It's not really all that useful for professional networking either. And it has (or at least had; I don't know if it's still structured this stupidly) a major issue in how it operates.
Paid accounts get less than unpaid accounts in terms of networking.
See, I tried to connect with past coworkers back when I had an account. But my account was a free account and theirs was paid. So I wasn't allowed to send a message.
Think about what that implies for a moment.

2026-01-14 02:02:01 UTC

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I still think it's hilarious that the Chinese government was smack-talking the USA for **decades** and Chinese people were all "c'mon, nobody could be that bad!"
...
And now they're finding out that their government wasn't smack-talking the USA **enough**! The reality was worse than the propaganda!
A former student of mine came back to China holiday from a university in Pittsburgh. She looked INCREDIBLY depressed when I met her because she was going back the next day....

2026-01-01 03:20:01 UTC

For Canadians who participate in #ElbowsUp, please, for the love of all that's holy, don't fall for the maple-washing that's going on. Where ingredients are sourced is largely irrelevant. That's just telling you where the labour is getting exploited. Check the **OWNERSHIP** of companies. That's where the money flows.
As a practical example, French's Ketchup uses "Canadian tomatoes" sure. That means Canadian workers are getting pennies while McCormick's, a US firm, is getting dollars.

2025-12-28 00:26:26 UTC

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Yep. Currently it's politics and obviously such. But that won't be the case for long. When China starts making its own jet engines en masse, say goodbye to tungsten and titanium availability outside the borders, for example (one of hundreds).

2025-12-28 00:19:41 UTC

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Of course the article frames this in terms of warfare. As if American industry and military has a **right** to that substance and the Chinese are interfering with their God-given ownership of everything no matter where it might happen to be found.
Yet when identical (if more clumsy) techniques are used against the Chinese, it's only natural and good and the way of business.
Fucking hypocrites, the lot of 'em.

2025-12-27 05:56:42 UTC

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And when you consider what the government was telling them, that's really saying something.

2025-12-27 03:28:42 UTC

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Yep. And the scary part is there's not that many pandas. These things are irritable eating machines.

2025-12-16 01:57:06 UTC

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The key to solving the cost-of-living crisis is for wages to go up in tandem with productivity instead of having all the productivity wind up in the pockets of a tiny handful of people.
For some reason the USA is 100% averse to doing this.

2025-12-15 13:44:24 UTC

https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/115/723/874/152/818/465/original/ecae40ab1412322f.png

2025-12-08 08:13:56 UTC

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Oh, absolutely. But the others aren't a whole lot better. 😆 His wife makes my skin crawl too, not quite as much.

2025-12-08 07:45:58 UTC

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On whose behalf? 😆

2025-11-30 00:38:41 UTC

You know, German has a word—Fremdschämen—that means feeling embarrassment on behalf of someone else (someone else you don't even know and who is oblivious to your embarrassment on their behalf).
I think about that word a lot when watching degenerative AI fans babble about "their" writing or "their" art.

2025-11-15 02:51:03 UTC

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What's wrong with kiwifruit? I mean I get grapefruit. Take everything bad from oranges and from pomelos and grow a hybrid that contains that. And carambola ... meh. I don't hate them but they're not something I'd reach for unless that's all there is. But kiwifruit? What's the problem there?

2025-11-15 01:43:45 UTC

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They're betting a LOT of money on payout from this. This is exciting!

2025-11-12 22:25:35 UTC

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It should be noted that the local authorities spotted the hazard and closed the bridge a day or two before the landslide took out the bridge.

2025-11-12 22:19:37 UTC

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And when traditional religion, which is at least honed by thousands of years of trial and error in providing some kind of unifying vision, is abandoned (often under the influence of capitalist drives) you get new religious movements that are utterly ludicrous *and* utility-free like TESCREAL.

2025-11-03 03:19:13 UTC

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What do you call a person who's afraid of riddles?

2025-10-30 07:55:38 UTC

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Yes

2025-10-30 07:24:39 UTC

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Is this the one you mean?
@npub12dn…0hjt
https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/115/461/918/723/942/944/original/89e9b1a58eb0c998.jpg

2025-10-30 05:42:54 UTC

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Only the ones who piss him off, natch. 😆

2025-10-30 05:17:30 UTC

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Oh wow. I love the way the faces look on each side.
This is going to be a juicy negotiation.

2025-10-25 23:25:21 UTC

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Except in the USA where "leftist" means "centre-right".

2025-10-25 16:03:38 UTC

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Gravity batteries are awesome. I saw one that was basically just a train car on slanted tracks with cables that either used electricity to pull the car up (charging) or let the car slide down, powering a generator (discharging). It was kind of amazing: so simple and yet apparently rather efficient.
There's also one a few hours away from here that uses water and a dam to do the same kind of thing: pump the water up to charge, let the water out to discharge.

2025-10-25 08:17:49 UTC

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Yes, but which consensus and when?
There's people today working off the LONG-debunked "consensus" of "Alpha Males" in wolf packs. That was once consensus. It is no longer.
There was once consensus that gender and sex were the same thing. This is not the current consensus.
And a lot of people in the atheist movement, even the pro-science ones, are behind the times with their scientific consensus. (And to be fair, it's REALLY hard to keep up! SO MUCH SCIENCE!)

2025-10-25 07:29:36 UTC

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You've missed nothing. Dawkins is clearly still a little boy scarred by frightening tales told of Hell when he was physically younger. This fear taints everything he writes that isn't a scientific paper.
But there's a whole lot of reductionist reactionaries across every skeptic's movement I've encountered. A whole of of "the science says" types who seem to be unaware that science is a constantly evolving field and that things that were "said" in the past have since been unsaid.

2025-10-25 07:10:53 UTC

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Nobody who is a minority or female who even had peripheral relationships with the "skeptic's movement" of 15-20 years ago is even slightly surprised that they've gone full Nazi today.
I mean look at how Dawkins reacted to a woman who said "guys, don't invite women to your hotel room for coffee in an elevator late at night, it's creepy" way back when (I want to say 2010-ish?).

2025-10-15 05:45:37 UTC

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I need these.

2025-10-13 13:16:47 UTC

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Across my time here, the feeling I get is that they may not trust individual specific actions—which was amplified a *lot* during the Jiang era—but overall view the government as being better than the alternatives they can envision from examples around them.

2025-10-10 22:49:40 UTC

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To be fair, look through the historical recipients and your qualifications don't seem so far off the mark, do they?
Henry Kissinger…?

2025-10-09 11:40:06 UTC

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*takes surreptitious notes* Oh? What kinds of rock excellence names could you name?

2025-10-09 07:19:28 UTC

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What about rock, more broadly. Who has the better tunes?

2025-10-07 03:10:38 UTC

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If *all* you did was promote your Patreon, I'd drop you like a MAGA date.
You don't.
Ergo I don't.

2025-10-02 02:04:29 UTC

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GDP has always been a ludicrous measure.
If I buy a pen from you at $1 today, and tomorrow you sell that same pen back to me for $1, the GDP has gone up by $2.

2025-09-27 08:50:13 UTC

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OK, you want details:
1. Cashiers are trained. It's not *lots* of training, but there is training. There's a reason for that training: it's easy to fuck up when you are processing purchases.: to miss items accidentally, to run items past the scanner twice, not to mention dealing with items that have no bar codes (like fresh produce).
Self check-out expects you to now to do that work untrained, which leads to…
🧵 ▶️

2025-09-27 08:19:37 UTC

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You should look into the problems with the self-serve machines. They are absolutely not a panacea. I will actively avoid stores that only have them, and never use the ones that are there if a store has them.

2025-09-25 12:54:44 UTC

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And oddly they're *also* the same people ringing alarm bells about how China is taking over the world.
Like literally the same individuals.
I think there may be some people who need their meds adjusted.

2025-09-25 12:29:04 UTC

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I had someone (a Lou Dobbs fan, so you get a hint as to the mentality) tell me in grave, no-nonsense terms that I should get out of China before the 2008 Olympics. (This was in 2003.) Because "China's economy is going to collapse at the end of 2007 and they're going to be looking for scapegoats."
Here I am in 2025 still having a ball.

2025-09-24 07:15:18 UTC

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The issue is that any kind of profound, enduring change takes a long time. Further, at the initial phase of any such change you're going to see possible backsliding on key elements.
This means that if you are at risk of being thrown out of power by a demagogue who will take advantage of people's dissatisfaction at that backslide, you will not take any long-term action. Ever.
Whatever you do has to pay off in a single election cycle. And nothing worth doing can.

2025-09-22 14:01:43 UTC

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I live for all practical purposes in such a community. (Not formally, but there's very little I need that's not within a 15 minute walk of home. And if you factor the metro or bus into things, there's nothing that's not within 15 minutes.)

2025-09-20 03:16:41 UTC

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It is wonderful! The only concern I have is that as this ramps up, the Beast may go totally insane and start nuking. I'm in one of the rather obvious nuke targets.

2025-09-20 01:55:45 UTC

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Some of us have popcorn.

2025-09-20 01:45:18 UTC

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Also, man the interest people would have in the humanities if something actually relevant to modern people were taught instead of mouldy old dead stuff.
You can't force young people to be interested in Elizabethan poetry. But you can lead them that way if you **START** with something they're interested in.

2025-09-17 23:10:03 UTC

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Farmers voted overwhelmingly for Trump.
You reap what you sow. You'd think farmers would understand this.
Fuck them.

2025-09-13 01:48:41 UTC

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Huh. They're really bent on triggering WWIII, aren't they?

2025-09-13 00:43:47 UTC

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The Israeli government assassinated the PM of Yemen?

2025-09-01 06:36:33 UTC

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No, they don't. Hence people bragging about being "serial entrepreneurs" when to most people this sounds only barely a moral step above "serial killer".

2025-09-01 04:55:36 UTC

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I'm talking, though, about the @npub1dad…y568 foundation's "Music" community that will boost, supposedly, musical content.
They boost #punk, but not #metal. It's ... odd to me.

2025-09-01 04:28:45 UTC

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I think it's interesting that my #punk posts are getting boosted, but not my #metal ones.

2025-08-30 05:31:53 UTC

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And in the comments is the inevitable: "Run it like a business."
That's Amtrak's exact PROBLEM. They're trying to run it like a business instead of a public service. The result is a focus on saving money to the point that the product doesn't do what it's meant to do.
The country that has the largest and arguably best HSR system in the world did the exact OPPOSITE of running it like a business. China's HSR, outside of some very specific routes, operates at a net LOSS.

2025-08-30 05:26:48 UTC

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There's no good burger joints in China.
Yet.

2025-08-30 05:19:38 UTC

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This is me laughing from the 200km/h inter-city local expresses. Or from the 320km/h HSR.

2025-08-30 05:18:35 UTC

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There are three reasons for her return to China.
1. Chinese people in the USA are tired of being the racial kicking ball of US paranoia.
2. The Chinese government basically gave her a blank cheque and said "go do your thing".
3. She's a woman and likely got treated FURTHER like shit in the USA as a result.

2025-08-26 04:10:36 UTC

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Has he not noticed that his tariff threats have not fallen on fallow ground here?

2025-08-26 01:10:58 UTC

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Caraway and cheese is one of those taste combinations you can't live without once you've tasted it.
Some cheeses can't be eaten without it, in fact. (I'm looking at you here, Handkäse!)

2025-08-24 00:12:11 UTC

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"I am going to spend my time writing to tell you I didn't want to read."
What a tragic mental position to adopt.

2025-08-21 01:36:16 UTC

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Wait, you mean concentrating a monoculture into a small space might actually facilitate the spread of contagion?!
WHO KNEW!?

2025-08-09 14:31:25 UTC

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How do Murcans think that 350 million people in a world of 8 billion are irreplaceable?

2025-08-07 21:47:52 UTC

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https://mstdn.business/@cnbusinessforum/114987742136191406

2025-08-07 00:41:06 UTC

Hey, software pushers. Wanna know why everybody hates your products?
It's because of stuff like this.
#Tech #Ad #DarkPattern #SoftwareSucks
https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/114/984/689/876/847/123/original/372e6112a72c70b4.webp

2025-08-03 11:40:14 UTC

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Australia is like the USA when it comes to trade in this neck of the woods: if you're not buying what they're selling, they don't change what they sell, they just whine loudly and claim you're doing "protectionism".

2025-07-25 14:11:47 UTC

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Do you wear a fedora? (I know the whip is probably too far.)

2025-07-16 08:45:16 UTC

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Hence the need for fetters.
But also, most of the "wealth" of the oligarch class is fantasy money anyway. It will vanish in a puff of market movement.

2025-07-16 07:26:37 UTC

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Also capitalism isn't really all that great at generating wealth either when it's left unfettered. Unfettered capitalism has done the literal *opposite* of generating wealth in the west in recent decades. It's made a few *individuals* very wealthy, but on the whole western economies have done very badly at even keeping people at the levels they were at in the '70s, not to mention expanding their economic situation.
And the fewer fetters on the capitalism, the worse the outcomes.

2025-07-15 12:22:04 UTC

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Chinese air conditioners are more capable than North American ones, at a lower price point and, key here, ABSOLUTELY FAR MORE EFFICIENT.
This is what happens when you have a government that enforces ever-tightening restrictions on appliance efficiency. Businesses actually innovate.

2025-07-15 12:04:19 UTC

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You know, something about the "solarpunk" æsthetic bugged me and I think you just put a finger on it.

2025-07-14 07:08:53 UTC

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There are so many hot takes in medical and psychological studies it's hard to take them seriously at times.
You've spotted a good one here, and that's reminiscent of studies that "proved" marijuana use is linked to underperformance and demotivation.
Or, you know, that underperforming and demotivated people drift toward marijuana usage...

2025-07-09 05:43:06 UTC

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This is where I introduce a term to you today: 全过程人民民主. Look it up. (And I don't mean ask ChatGPT! ACTUALLY LOOK IT UP! It's good exercise for your brain!)
I'm not going to get into arguments about whether or not this is "real democracy". I'm not going to get into arguments with know-nothings who've never stepped foot outside their cowshit-laden towns but are experts on one of the most complicated governance systems in the world either.
But I will tell you this is an example.
🧵 ▶️

2025-07-09 05:33:03 UTC

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So what the western press absolutely pushes as its narrative is that any system that isn't liberal (in the old school sense) capitalism is top-down authoritarian and thus bad. This is why, despite literally *everybody* involved in that job site being publicly-available information on Jinan's government site, the only named entity in reportage on this dome is a government agency. IN BEIJING!
The materials firms that designed the skin? The design firms that created the dome? Unnamed.
🧵 ▶️

2025-07-09 05:29:43 UTC

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Well, I mean, it *would* be bizarre if I hadn't read, you know, every piece of reportage on China in western media for the past three decades or so.
Because the role of media in the west stopped being "informing the public" ages ago (if, indeed, it had ever actually had that role). The role of media in the west is to further a narrative that is in line with what a bunch of rich assholes want you to believe: that any system that isn't the one they're milking to death is bad.
🧵 ▶️

2025-07-09 05:26:19 UTC

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RIGHT NEXT TO THIS ARTICLE is a link blurb about a trivial redesign of Yet Another Shopping Mall. Here's what it says:
"FMG Fabbrica Marmi and architect Paolo Gianfrancesco, of THG Arkitektar Studio, have designed the restyling of the third floor of Reykjavik's largest shopping center."
For a trivial mall redesign they named the architect and lead construction agency. For a novel engineering project they named ... "the Ministry of Ecology and Environment in Beijing".
This is bizarre!
🧵 ▶️

2025-07-09 05:23:20 UTC

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So, let's start with the headline. "Why China built..."
Let's clear this up right away. "China" didn't build shit. Thousands of Chinese workers who work for independent construction contractors did. Contractors who are privately owned businesses. (Note the plurals all along!) The dome was designed by an engineering firm who used the materials research of various structural materials firms, and all of this was governed by an lead construction firm.
Why were none of these named?
🧵 ▶️