comfy @ comfy @lemmy.ml

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3 yr. ago

We have evidence that China is developing Warriors of Mass Destruction. /

That's not the point. You can say the same about Blender, etc.

Yes it's ToS, and also its structure - it's basically a non-profit club rather than a for-profit business like GitHub (now owned by M$), which means it isn't prone to enshittifying.

That spam was a troll who found a loophole in the notification system. It was obviously not a data breach. That's clear to anyone who's worked with software databases or web servers.

Glad I could help :) My curriculum was similar, mine didn't really talk about communist countries at all, and since a lot of our media like movies come from the US during the Cold War, when their government's biggest enemies were the Soviet Union and the worker labor movement fighting for more worker rights, those movies often chose communist countries or communists as an easy choice for villains, so there's a shallow but very widespread and normal idea that those countries are just simply evil, and ours is good. On top of that, most newspapers and television channels are owned by the richest people (mega-millionaires and billionaires, not just middle-class money), rich enough to own or invest in them, and funded by large companies advertising, and usually the people with that much money love how capitalism is working and are threatened by socialism or communism, so they have a self-interest in highlighting all the mistakes of those countries and all the wins of their own. I was amazed that a few years before, the US government was putting out posters like these during World War II, where Russian and Chinese soldiers are celebrated as allies alongside Canadians and English!

On a related point, it's also important to remember that many people instinctively compare these countries to rich, developed countries like Britain, the USA, and others, instead of comparing them to how they were before and after. I used to do this too, but countries are so different, with different histories, resources and neighbors that it's usually unfair to simply compare them like that. This short 3 minute clip from a Michael Parenti lecture gives some good examples of this, focusing on their experience talking to Cubans.

• reddit (I joined Lemmy years before most people reading this, and was already only lurking a couple of selected subreddits through an alternative frontend for years before that)
• Bill Gates (FOSS have hated that prick since 1976, but even I was hating their reputation laundering long before right-wing conspiracy nuts decided Gates was a communist vaccine microchip liberal or whatever)
• Musk, I guess. I was years ahead of the mainstream, but again, not ahead of socialist communities and environmentalists.
• and twitter, and BlueSky

haha I think they meant chilli hot instead of temperature hot, but I can't say no to a nice gravy.

I go for salsas and chunky condiments (e.g. black bean chilli crisp, hot Indian chutneys) than just a liquid hot sauce, even then it's sriracha.

Haha I wonder if they just didn't want to share their secrets!

And holy fuck, is it hard to find good, solid, well-sourced information about how to do that safely.

I have a similar experience with some basic fermenting (e.g. kombucha, pickling). I'm growing cultures of microbes like yeast and bacteria and while I've been able to spot some obvious unwanted cultures on failed batches, there's a surprising absence of reputable info and unfortunately I've had to get by on the brewing equivalent of gym broscience, mostly on reddit, some of which I've spotted is misinformation. The SEO AI-generated articles plaguing search results don't help either.

Your post implied that all countries outside of the west sided with China when this is clearly not true.

I didn't mean to imply all countries, and it's my mistake for phrasing it like that, sorry.

Even in Africa there is a lot of pushback among the population (not necessarily the elites) against Chinese imperialism. Sri Lanka is another example where there is a measures of opposition to jingoistic Chinese meddling.

That's true. It's also important to note, at least with Africa, that there is also pushback against ongoing European imperialism, so when it comes to a "do you prefer US or China more" situation like OP, they might still pick one of them while also giving pushback.

Cool stuff, thanks for sharing!

please don’t shuffle blame away as if there was some giant institutional force preventing them from voting

My point isn't that the giant institutional force prevented people from voting (although voter suppression is, incidentally, a huge issue too).

All the US federal elections are a popularity contest, where rich people have ludicrous amounts of power to determine which politicians even end up as viable options on the ballot, through tools such as lobbying parties, mass media ownership, flak and advertising [wikipedia: further reading] to influence the exposure and framing of candidates. How many candidates does the typical citizen even learn about from the news or pop culture? Probably a number between 1 and 4, and only two will be endorsed by the major parties and therefore viable options in practice. That's the institutional power in action. One can't look at Clinton, Biden and Trump in 2016 and 2020 and pretend any were the best (or even decent) choices for a country's leader. These candidates rise to the top because of institutional pressures, hence, pay-to-win - the owning class decide on the options that citizens can vote on.

IIRC, Australia (I'm assuming you're from there because of your instance?) has a voting system where at least the minor parties are a viable option and independent candidates have a real chance. That's not the case in the US federal election. There's no option but the big two, the parties beholden to billionaires and mega-millionaires through tools like lobbying and mass media needed to win the popularity contest.

Obviously the PRC also has major influence over which candidates citizens can vote for, and they don't have direct federal elections for party leaders (they're elected by the local members who are elected by citizens), but the main difference is that it's not a popularity contest where celebrities like Trump, Reagan and Schwarzenegger end up as political decision makers partly due to name recognition rather than credentials and trust, or where money decides the available options.

Left wing voters didn’t show up

I find it hard to believe that Gaza protest votes were anywhere near enough to sway the election, we're talking IIRC about a 15 million drop. The Democrats weren't delivering. Voter turnout from both parties went down.

Many countries in Asia have suffered from invasions and conflicts with China.

Yes, that's a reason why some don't side with China.

Africa and the Middle East and South America and other Asian countries didn't have conflicts with China (in fact, they're typically invaded by European countries and/or the US) and so have tended to side with China.

I don't see where we're disagreeing or how what I said was any more simplistic than your reply.

The USSR (Soviet Union) and the PRC (China). The USSR is not Russia, and it doesn't exist anymore.

And of course it's fair, and in fact important to criticize them. We have the benefit of hindsight and can see how some of their decisions were serious mistakes. On the other hand, it's also important to analyze what they did good and learn from that too. Neither was perfect, both were improvements, and the terrible fates of Russia and Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union is proof of how much good the SU was for its citizens.

which don’t respect the needs of there citizens.

They both inherited countries plagued with regular famine and have both eliminated it. In fact, in 1983 the CIA documented the SU as having a better typical diet than the USA. Clearly they respected the food security of their citizens.

The SU managed to rapidly build low-cost housing after repelling a HUGE invasion of extermination from Nazi Germany. The "commieblocks" were critical in housing people after war. China has also made huge strides in home ownership and elimination of poverty. Meanwhile, poverty and homelessness is increasing under capitalist countries, with them doing little to resolve their housing crises. Clearly they respected the need for shelter of their citizens.

Keep in mind, that both these countries were devastated by world wars and civil wars. Their countries started off in serious crisis and had already had revolutions. If they didn't respect the needs of their citizens, they would have ended up failed states overthrown by their desperate population or quickly collapsing to invasions.

As for China, the government, despite censorship and political repression, still remains popular among its citizens, according to censorship-resistant US studies^[https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-survey-reveals-chinese-government-satisfaction/]. It's largely avoided war, hugely reduced poverty, and has become a world leader in technology.

There are many valid reasons to criticize these countries and it's important we do that. But they clearly respected the basic needs of their citizens. There are few other countries which have done more to reduce poverty and homelessness than them.

On the other hand, this isn't exactly news to them. Countries outside of the Western world and Asian neighbors have been siding with China over the US for a while now, probably due to all the invasions and coups.

The PRC has a pretty clear ideological basis. Many of its leaders have written theoretical works about economics and governance. The direction might veer one way or another over the years but it's the same party running the show. So at the end of the day, one thing they have going for them is consistency. You can know what to expect. From an international perspective, they're an appealing trade partner.

The US ran a pay-to-win popularity contest to give the keys to a reality show failed-businessman backed by a weird mix of alienated mega-millionaire and billionaires who clearly have little idea of how the levers work, alongside the vicious selfish bigots who ally with them. It was already an inconsistent system for a long time, but now there's no more facade of professionalism to keep them half-rational. It's pretty much the 1930s all over again.

"Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."

(to be clear, I was saying 'amateur hour' tongue-in-cheek ;)

I am lucky to have my grandmother’s cook book with 3x5 index cards hand written, with the date and whom the recipe is from…but I don’t use lard in her Ginger Bread recipe from 1932.

That's wonderful! All I got was a disintegrating notebook of delights. I do like deciphering it but not when I'm hungry!

A lot of people have a purist attitude to politics. "Critical support" is a vital part in understanding these positions of Hexbear and others, that one can support a side of a conflict and still be critical of it. Geo-politics isn't a simple binary. No two groups will perfectly align, but that doesn't mean they can't see mutual lines of benefit despite their disagreement. For example, just because someone supports Ukraine doesn't mean they have to defend everything their government does, such as supporting the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. It would be absurd to assert that! Similarly, it would be absurd to tell the communists still crying about 1989 that they support the entirety of the capitalist Russian Federation, the same RF that destroyed many of the gains the USSR made for both countries by enabling oligarchs to loot the place and plummet life expectancy.