it was only a few months ago that people downloaded redbook, a chinese social media app filled with gay people kissing each other in the frontpage
i don't disbelieve that there's a blanket ban on lgbtq issues in China, in the same sense that anti porn laws are applied selectively in Japan and that a similar social conservative streak dominates in India. but given that the main source for this issue is RFA then i'm gonna err on the side of caution. which is to not assume that there's a repeat of the chechnya concentration camps situation
i can assure you that after we lost world war 7 the earth doesn't even have oceans any more (we had to pay reparations in water), so there's no merchant marine at all. this is stolen valor
its for summoning cenobites
the funny thing about wikipedia is that it has a small army of state sponsored posters and even that can be dwarfed by the overwhelming commitment of one nationalist constantly editting obscure history pages and mischaracterizing academic sources
AI on the other hand has a small army of underpaid moderators who take psychic damage for a living trying to make sure ChatGPT doesn't tap into the yankee zeitgeist and starts using slurs. plus the very recent episode of grok being used in such a stupid, hamfisted way that it started simulating calls for help against elon musk's desire to make it go against its 'be truthful' directive and spread the lie of white genocide
as far as propaganda tools go it has a lot of potential but i'm not sure the powers that be know how to employ it just yet. propaganda on the internet so far has been mostly about astroturfing and crowdsourced anger. now you have bots talking to bots and LLMs telling people to eat rocks for the mineral content
the real danger comes from the fact that AI will allow people to rationalize whatever they want. grandpas share and talk about obviously fake videos all day on their social media because it confirms their political biases. as soon as AI oligarchs learn to be at least as subtle as a PragerU video, we are doomed
One goddamn trillion in development spending and maybe none of it was spent productively.
Entire belt and road appears to be in the hundreds of billions btw.
To be honest I just think that in the short history of US hegemony there's been a massive political hazard when engaging in consumption led growth. The moment your country is unable to finance itself the US swoops in and seizes everything like a vulture. Sure, with export oriented growth means you're dependent on the US for its financial system and debt driven consumption. The hazard isn't gone there either. But go back 40-50 years in time and every peripheric developmentist country was permanently crippled by the US Fed. As bad as things have gotten for the likes of Japan and South Korea, they haven't devolved into Brazil or Turkey - which, for that matter, are two best case scenarios.
China at one point looked up towards the developmentist third world. It is now looking down on them and asking what went wrong.
The double circulation strategy is something the chinese government has talked about directly. So it is something that they are doing. But, medium term, they also have to slowly wean themselves off a western led finance, banking and trade system first. With the way things are set up now, the US gets the short end of the stick of any trade war against China. If things are progressing further, why rock the boat and risk changing that calculus?
damn this is positively brazilian. george santos' influence can't be overstated
I'd wager that this is neither good, nor bad, or even malicious. It's just the status quo. Does Israel even want normalization with the country it is invading? So there's no reason for the US to demand it. Besides, Trump is talking to al-Sharaa and Bin Salman at the same time and it doesn't seem like Saudi feels like normalizing with Israel either.
Even their doomsday 'evil China scenario' involves the country curing cancer.
US embassies sanctioning themselves from doing business in a foreign country (coup plotting) was too good to be true.
I think that on some level people sorta assume that someone like Jeffrey Sachs - neoliberal economist at the vanguard of pillaging the USSR - had the perfect redemption arc. You can easily imagine a true believer in neoliberal economics, but also politically reasonable in a way that he'd make suggestions that the dismantling of the USSR would never abide. It makes sense to, because that's kinda like how Jeffrey memorializes himself. Then that person lived long enough to see China's ascension and the US' insanity disprove all of their fundamental beliefs in life.
The cherry on top is that same Jeffrey Sachs goes onto debate against someone like Mearsheimer on the notion that China is inevitably going to behave in the same pattern as the US and the European empires did, fundamentally on the belief that current China treasures peace more than any western elite group ever did.
Looking for tips on recipes to try with textured vegetable protein. It's neutral in flavor and I have no idea on what to do with it. Someone suggested soaking it in a vegetable broth instead of water, but gosh that didn't work and just ruined what seasoning I was adding onto it.
I love the New York Times.
I remember being told the same when Bush killed millions in Iraq.