Also, why is the talk only about tritium and carbon-14 in this report, ignoring 64 other elements present in the water that potentially contain harmful effects. The IAEA report states they only investigated these two elements by Japan’s request, it does not imply that there are no other elements they can or should also investigate, just they didn’t because they weren’t requested to.
What? That’s exactly what happens. Various stations in Washington DC have been closed, for 6+ months at a time, the past two years, for renovations. They made do with route workaround and shuttles in the meantime. Are you implying stations shouldn’t update just because it might cause inconvenience? Safety trumps inconvenience.
This “underlying trend of things” is the dao, by the way :) Daoist philosophy and worldview, and Confucian philosophy and worldview–in addition to an awareness of history–still deeply underly Chinese thought and society. The way Judeo-Christian philosophy underlying the West. It’s part of what accounts for the “with Chinese characteristics”.
Of course China is authoritarian. It’s an iteration of the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Lol.
To be more serious. Every single citizen of a country will have lots of complaints about their own country, even those who think most things are working ok. By sheer nature of living somewhere, you become intimately aware of its problems and weaknesses, and wants to see certain changes and improvements. Does this mean they dislike the country as a whole? Or love another country more than their own? No.
The CPC is enjoying an unprecedented high approval rating due to being a highly efficient government capable of implementing long-term plans to improvement the country. Many people have witnessed those changes with their own eyes, lived through them personally, and mostly approved of the results.
In addition, a part of the CPC’s mission is to protect and revive China and Chinese culture, which it has done so by alleviating poverty, strengthening the economy and the military, and enhancing China’s influence and reputation in the world. Not every single Chinese person is a socialist or at all interested in politics, but a great majority (even including overseas Chinese) DO resonate with that mission, with seeing how the country has improved, how traditional cultural elements are being preserved and incorporated with modern elements in creative ways in all forms of media, architecture, art works, ways of life, all the scientific achievements, etc.
Yes, there is censorship and an element of authoritarian control. Moreso in the past, and a little more relaxed in the present, but it’s definitely there. Arguably, the Chinese people is more familiar, even comfortable, with an authoritarian government (how else does one keep a vast country with huge population together throughout the thousands of years). However, because the government is vested with more power in general, the people have higher expectation for it to perform and to take care of everyone. It’s part of the Confucian social contract that hides deep in the structure of society. That being the case, when people fall through the cracks in various ways, they blame the government personally for failing them, more than a typical Western person would in a similar situation.
Also, the government makes policies primarily based on what benefits the society overall, and not the individual (by this, I do not mean ethnic minorities or classes of people, who are protected as part of a harmonious society; but the concept of individualism itself). If you’re an individual who happens to not conform with what is considered to be socially beneficial, or who wants to be disruptive in some way (and it may even be a perfectly acceptable type of disruption in the West), you would feel the boot of repression upon your neck.
With 1.4 billion people, even tiny percentage of unhappy people is tens of millions of unhappy people. Each have their own story, and justification, and many grievances are valid. Because no government is ever so perfect as to take the best care of every single person, no government is entirely free of corruption or negligence or ineptitude. The CPC has made mistakes that massively affected some people’s lives for the worse. It has also dramatically improved things in other ways. For some people, the two did not even out. For others, they imagine the West to be a shining beacon that is far better, more free, where people can truly make money and live a good life. Simultaneously, a current trend is for Chinese netizens to say they never realized how great their own country is and how much they love it, until they broke through the Great Firewall via VPN and started to see how the outside is doing.
Overall, the only way to determine how a country’s government is doing is to analyze vast statistics, and in comparison with other governments. In that light, the CPC’s numbers are pretty good, but there are always room for improvement.
Unfortunately, the separatist government on Taiwan has a 40% core base who firmly believe that the USA, Japan, and South Korea will definitely come help them fight the PLA. In fact, they rely upon it, because in actuality they themselves are NOT joining the army, which is having difficulties with recruitment. But they sure believe that the US with its awesome navy will crush the PLAN, since the mainland is practically falling apart in some type of 1970s communist dystopia.
While there may have been legitimate reasons for these folks’ reluctance to change their life and become a part of the mainland–many of which could probably have been addressed and negotiated if everyone were calm and relations were frequent and friendly as they were 15 years ago–they are also the product of intense anti-mainland propaganda that includes rewritten history books and rampant media misinformation.
So yeah, that’s why these things always work so well. First they have a whole system of information warfare that salts the ground, and then they use people’s genuine hopes and wishes against them, and even though everyone knows they’re being used, they still believe they can get what they want as a result of being used.
At that point of wealth you aren’t thinking about spending money as an individual, or even an individual family (even including hangers on and staff). You are essentially a representative of a power that parallels governments, with worldwide reach, and will think along those lines. You want to implement worldwide policies, dictate the tides of capitalism, play with your own regime change politics, break the barriers of old age, gene manipulation, and get the process started on astro-mining and colonizing Mars.
I notice that as well, but the ones I come across seem to me more like classic conservatives (more isolationist and/or anti-atlanticist, strong military for defense but also our country should mind our own business, etc.) While we disagree on many core values, they seem reasonably rationale and factual, and have a solid grasp on international geopolitics. Versus the insane incoherence–well, more like “will say anything outrageous to satisfy a riled up base”–of rightwing populism.
I contribute that less to a deliberately created pipeline, though, than the natural result of the complete suppression of a genuine left in this country. With communism equated to Nazism since elementary school, most people will avoid lefty-sounding talking points and titles and then have only one direction to go when they look for alternatives to the mainstream narrative. And the YouTube algorithm picks that up in its big data.
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.
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?
Really, really clear signage here. But I can still see the argument: during time of high stress, the adrenaline prevents them from paying attention to “inessential details” 🙄
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
‘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.
Because it’s part of an entire worldview, an entrenched information system (I.e. framework for narrative, how the story is being told), with fully intertwined rationale and philosophies of justification. In there are woven many positive emotions as well, and rhetorics hitting the right emotionally resonating notes—patriotism, belief that the west is the light in the darkness, that you’re the good guys, doing the right things, etc. Behind it is also a foundational belief that US is powerful enough to crush anything it doesn’t like, so who really cares about nuance—sometimes, not even conscious.
To give up this worldview, one has to give up a lot of deeply held assumptions about one’s life, one’s self identification, one’s “tribe”, etc. It’s unlikely to happen just with some debate here or there, or reading some news stories from far away.
I enjoyed that movie so much, and now very excited for the third :)
Paper in general, gun powder, compass
Scholz recently welcomed Li Qiang (Chinese Premier) in high style, though afterward he had to say he lectured the Premier on all the correct talking points. It’s crazy to think his party is actually the most pro-China (a.k.a realistic and actually working slightly for the benefit of Germany) out of all three in charge. The rest seem to actively want to destroy all its manufacturing capabilities.
And Macron is showing a definite urge to move away from complete vassaldom, being the only country in Europe that can, with an independent military, once it’s been humiliated enough by the US to remember a faint memory of De Gaulle.
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.