hey its me 矛盾 remade because I lost my pw to hard drive failure woops
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cio of chen weihua fanclub 👺 she/they tme
Oh have they finally stopped being weird about xinjiang? or at least enough to get vetted or w/e onto the deprogram. like, ive blocked them on socialmedias for being basically a radlib who calls themself progressive (type of sino diaspora whos anti-PRC but still tries to leverage their ‘heritage’ for clout/career) but its been a few years and people can change but id be surprised
not entirely sure what you mean by “left thoughts” (eg what all that encompasses/excludes) but I’ll give it a shot
ngl most of chinese society isn’t very political and this is reflected in video games. (I’d say cinema is kind of an exception but also there’s established support structures esp. by the party for the film industry; even then it’s more common for “left themed” movies to be about specific historical events or important people, than like, Communism In a Fictional/Fantasy/Scifi setting, of which I can’t name a single one of those off the top of my head. IMO there’s good reasons for this*, even regardless of publications & RFT bureaus.) More popular setting/thematics of CN-based video games are culture or [older, usually not modern] history, or a fantastical mix of both. Additionally many games particularly the smaller ones are Chinese-language only, no English translation available.
When I played Genshin I remember some cleverly crafted writing that was ambiguous enough for western (sinophobic and anticommunist/anti-antiimperialist) audience to interpret differently, particularly the dendro area sumeru. I don’t play it myself but I have a friend who plays Honkai: Star Rail and who regularly gets excited about the more overt parallels to revolutionaries/history in the writing but I’m not sure if that’s only the Chinese language version/if that gets dulled down in English translation. Also not sure if grinding and slogging thru a gacha game just for some plot here and there is your cuppa tea.
.* alternative history even if overtly fictional is generally discouraged. i think the reasons are obvious (just look at how western media spins 6-4)
Right on. Sorry if I misread what was intended to be voiced from “average centrist” pov, there’s been a ton of ai/tech reactionary buzz even among nominally “communist” circles recently, to the point where I’m even irked when people call generative tools “slop machines” in the same way they say “chinese goods” to insinuate cheap/bad product, when it’s like, that’s what you (or rather, walmart and amazon and they’ve monopolized and limited what alternative options you have) ordered the cheapest crap (for highest markup). Does nobody remember handmade slop content farms like 5minutecrafts? Same “market forces” (if you wanna call it that) are just ordering the same “slop” just from different sources, it’s not like before genai came to wider prominence there was actually that much less “slop” and un-factual/poor quality/misleading content.
and speculative real estate (“investments”) also
um. factories [physical and organizational structures of productive labor] aren’t a “means of oppression”. Capitalists owning them and workers not having control or ownership of the conditions, operations, product etc of them are the “means of oppression”, not the factories themselves. Do we at the 'grad need a rehash of marxism/ML basics…?
qi gong/modified tai chi and meditation practices (by themselves) are at worst harmless, but unfortunately that cult uses that as a front/excuse/cover to describe and advertise as their primary activities, and they even go as far to ascribe spirituality to those activities and synthesize syncretize them into their belief system, particularly their version of faith healing.
Like it’s not even medical quackery it’s straight up faith healing, or rather, they believe that if you come down with bodily sickness, it’s a reflection of impurity in your thoughts/belief/practices. And furthermore, you shouldn’t even touch (evil, something to do with aliens/ufos) modern medicine at all: if you believe in their cult leader enough and do the Correct Practices and think the most pure/correct Thoughts particularly about their cult leader you will be healed. If you fail to be healed through FLDF practice it means you didn’t do enough. Worse, part of that “good deeds/practices” to idk up your spirit points would be to contribute labor to cult activities (for example proselytizing, putting up flyers, writing, etc, all for no monetary pay)… in order to ‘heal’!!!
iirc this belief system was AMONG the main reasonS they got kicked out of the PRC, family members of FLG “practitioners” lodged many complaints to the government that their loved ones were dying of colds and easily curable diseases as well as refusing cancer screenings/treatments.
accelerationism (someone else did mention in their reply)
lelouch vi britannica is an anime character and someone the likes of him doesn’t exist irl (intended tone:light)(sorry, couldn’t resist)
“socialist-sympathetic petty bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie” don’t exist in the US at least not in any meaningful or organized capacity, and you more or less described why a hot mess contradiction would mean they self-select for “extinction” under a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, but they (well, at least the national bourgeoisie) exist in the PRC. Obviously the difference is that the PRC is a dictatorship of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie are not the ruling class, however, the national bourgeoisie are permitted and encouraged to cooperate in building the nation and the socialist project. One such guy [who’s shown up in english-language media from time to time] is a venture capitalist Eric Li 李世默, who I recall describing his venture capitalist role as “willing to take on more risk than the government normally would [in supporting/funding new businesses new tech new fields]”, but he’s just one example. I urge those curious to independently research the topic further, but keep in mind that the conditions, particularly historic and social, in the US are vastly different from those in the PRC.
(edit:I must note that all citizens in prc benefit from social goods and relevant conditions such as relatively affordable quality healthcare, with access still expanding to more rural areas, and relatively unprecarious housing. as such, there’s less pressure compared to both workers and capitalists in the US to scramble, squeeze, and cutthroat-compete, or blame others of their class or blame workers/immigrants [I can’t say non-existent tho. esp re:bigotry towards immigrants in places like hk]； well, for the blame game, there’s also some difference in political education [again not perfect… chinese liberals do exist and many are proletariats tho plenty are wannabe-bourgeois])
I don’t have personal experience here, but something I looked into for myself in the past (and don’t currently have much opportunity to get into atm) as a starting point is workforwater.org – more or less similar advice re:look at prospective career paths specific to what you’re looking for. That website/org seems to have a (nation)wide but not super deep network to help connect mentors, apprenticeships/ish (depending on the role/location), and intern programs, at least for both water utilities and wastewater treatment industry. Either way, it’s a leg up in terms of networking for that specific area. Many of the higher positions require engineering, although I can’t recall if it’s mechanical or civil or either/both.
Just thought to put it out there in case you had some interest in that field, infrastructure might be crumbling in this country but it’s still sorely needed, and will be needed always… so, points for job availability and stability.
Dark factories sounds really awesome (best bet would be mechanical->robotics or electrical??) but unless you plan to leave the US I can’t see heavy or innovative automation getting off the ground here unless it’s under the graces of bezos or musk or their ilk, or a startup looking to eventually get acquired by venture capital (this is an extremely precarious position to be in, startups fail all the time but even when they “succeed” eg get bought out, your position may be eliminated in the acquisition process).
i’ve had people drive in from neighboring [US] states and be absolutely terrified of our urban highway interchanges [texas][many of them also sky-high but not quite this high I don’t think? - for reference, youtube practical engineering-why are texas highway interchanges so tall], imo it (the concern/fear?) is just something you might just be used or unused to
anyway yay for infrastructure 🎉
wanted to draw China and Japan (both of which were hostile towards the USSR) into a costly war with one-another in order to weaken them both
I mean that alone is bullshit for the time period. sino-soviet relations didn’t go south before prc was even established…
The tone of the quoted section is just so self-righteous! Clinical language and do-gooder spin for, in other words, “We need to find more people to identify as sick to put through the torture machine* but I prommy this is helping them for their own good”
*I’m not super active in autism community but I’ve seen ABA particularly for kids regarded as forcefully inducing trauma
I didn’t say that “we should agitate people with petit bourgeois aspirations to side with the working class [their real class] via gen ai tools”. I guess I got ahead of myself when I said there already have been efforts to convince artists that gen ai or tech in general isn’t their enemy, corporate monopolization etc of tech however is because capitalists are;; (eg yes there should be said efforts, maybe better/more efforts in that regard. but anti-ai is very entrenched at this point)
However I did point out that these people are, influenced by a combination of (self-circulated and corporate) propaganda and their own petit bourgeois aspiring class interest (resisting acceptance of proletarian status), pitching their weight with our (and their own) class enemies; with gen ai/ai art as the driving wedge at this present moment but any new tech that reshapes the material landscape would be treated similarly – my comment isn’t about ai in particular, rather it’s more about the art community in question.
Or, maybe I wasn’t clear enough? Anti-ai art frenzy in the artist community is being funnelled towards support for harsher ip and trademark laws, by companies who would actually still be using gen ai but want to hoard and control (and expand) “their” datasets. Yes more people on the side of the working class is good but class traitors exist and if these people, after explaining that technology itself isn’t their enemy but capitalists are, still want to be willing pawns then, well, for on,e I have better uses for my time and energy, and yeah I’d agree with m532 they’re “dumbasses”
case in point: this is a project borne of the anti-ai craze: unvale.io ; here’s a tumblr post they circulated (since there’s a sizeable art/artist community on tumblr who are anti-ai) but digging into the replies, people are fully disambiguating the draconian, PG, family friendly TOS and pointing out that posting to their platform makes an oddly convenient place to harvest virgin (un-touched by gen ai tools) and corporate-friendly data. Not everyone looks through the notes however and plenty of people are still reblogging just the first post and “spreading word about an awesome new no-ai platform!!”. Also, lol @ #supportourtroops shit :: no oct 7 or 9/11
*outside of this direct discussion there’s also extreme ableism among the artist anti-ai crowds as well.
I remade. I’m back hello hello 同志们
I think the anti- “anti ai artist” sentiment at least online is (or rather should?) be more directed towards the semi-hobbyist to small-business-petit-bourgeois types that pitch their weight with our class enemies, eg will side with stricter intellectual property laws to the point of agreeing that “art style” should be included in trademark/ip law. They also happen to be the loudest crowd when it comes to anti-ai art noise, to the point of also attacking and brigading professional artists who use ai tools. In my observation, the “small business owner” type artists are the most resistant to being proletarianized and act accordingly; in any case, many wage laborer artists also have self-biz hustles like online stores for periodic sketchbook/artbooks/prints (I point this out in a neutral manner not to detract from their primary[assuming] wage income but to color the discussion of petit bourgeois aspirations among the “[digital] artist” community).
I have seen efforts to “convert”/“deprogram” parts of the artist community away from supporting harsher ip laws and explain why Disney or record companies etc benefit the most and supporting harsher ip/etc does not benefit them, and in fact works to empower exploitative schemes of capitalists, but these efforts have a harder time gaining foothold amongst the typical anti-ai/ai art black-and-white views entrenched in the community, especially as call-out and cancellation brigades roll out regularly in those circles.
edit: I dunno if yall were around from deviantart to [idk what platforms certain art communities use anymore][idk artstation?] era but the absolute EASE that online “artists” throw the word “steal/theft” to apply to whatever they didn’t like (petit capitalist mindset where “inspiration” becomes “mimickery” becomes “copying” becomes “stealing” eg “actually deprived me of money”) has been around for decades at this point. I think there are still circles who treat tracing(for practice) and even referencing as untouchable/sacrilege.
re: 我只有一只狗 ；firstly I want to point out that the first 只 would be pronounced with 3rd tone while the 2nd instance (量词 count-word) would be pronounced 1st tone
I don’t have official etymology on this but as a native speaker for both mandarin and english I suspect this case is somewhat similar to what’s going on with the English “the more the merrier”. So, articles (part of speech) like “the” ”a" "an” or the more general/wider classification of determiners (part of speech) like “both” “this” “that”, aren’t exactly the same as 量词 count words in Chinese but I’d say their functions are very similar. However, what’s happening in “the more the merrier” (or other “the x the y”, "the less [they know] the better“ or whatever), “the” isn’t acting like an article at all, where you expect it to modify or accompany a noun, but it descends from “tha” from middle english rather than from the/article and somewhere along the way “tha” lost other places where it would be used, only retaining the “the x the y” umm linear graph relationship(?if that’s the best way to describe what’s happening between linking conditions together?), and converged/merged with “the” whose main use is as an article (part of speech). Although, for 只 I don’t think it’s quite recessed/withered on the “only”(3rd tone) side as much as english “the(tha)”, because it’s still widely used as “只是” (only/but/however) and is just as common to see it there as seeing it as a 量词 count word.
There are a bunch of other cases of single characters having multiple meanings/pronunciations, plenty of them being “less used case” and others being “specific case/always pronounced one way when used in specific 词”
– example A, 乐 usually pronounced le4 on its own, means “joy”, more fleshed out would be like 欢乐 huan1 le4 ; but if you see it written out in 音乐 “music” it’s always pronounced yin1 yue4;; (eg 乐器, musical instrument, yue4qi4) [this is the most drastic example I can come up with off the top of my head, most other alterations in pronunciation/meaning overloaded onto single character are tone diff)
– example B, 好 usually just means “good” (depending on context might also mean “oh those two are going out”, still this pronunciation) most often seen this way and pronounced hao3, but when used in 爱好[ai4hao4] “hobby” or 好奇[hao4qi3] “curiosity” it’s always fourth tone hao4
I’m not fully versed on TCM but as chinese diaspora/being casually exposed to parts of it, I know it’s some serious stuff (as in, definitely has effects. that I have personally experienced…) and it’s not “Just” “traditional” (connotation: some ancient rites that have never changed or evolved in use/practice). Also my layman understanding is that TCM and general culture regarding health/healthcare is that TCM is more preventative in nature, while attitudes about western (“modern”) medicine is that it’s for ailments/conditions that require immediate attention or reactive in nature… Additionally it’s important to note that TCM and western medicine aren’t in conflict, or at least it’s discouraged for people to believe that TCM is superior or should be the sole mode of healthcare to follow, if that makes sense (I have to note this because in the west I believe it’s very common for pseudoscientific/cultish “alternative medicine” to purport that all of modern medicine is bogus or unreliable while their alternative practice is superior).
Also I don’t have links on hand but iirc there have been modern scientific medical research into aspects of TCM, such as acupuncture being better than placebo for specific conditions… oh, and my personal observation that dermarolling and microneedling have an odd resemblance to guasha (tho I also see influencers/beauty bloggers telling people to use both/all. two comments: beauty industry has been ramping into skincare/dermatology territory for a while now… also the facial version of guasha popularized by beauty industry/influencers both eastern and western is Different from TCM guasha, which leaves marks that should fade relatively quickly).
Lastly I’ll die on this hill: TCM is [mostly]* real medicine while chiropractice is full-on quackery. *moxibustion spooks me and I have the least confidence about that. also cupping
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writing this post made me actually look up cupping, even if only briefly, which I thought was a TCM-only thing, but I learned that cupping and different variants are used in health practices associated with other non-sinosphere cultures, specifically wet cupping which I had never heard of until today. also learned that cupping wasn’t prevalent in TCM until 1950s ??
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//not really TCM related but recently I saw a post floating on rednote that was like “[foreign visitor posting]: I noticed yall don’t really use pain medications even ibuprofen, what’s up with that” and many cn responses being something to the tune of “don’t need to mask the pain in order to keep going, we try to find and treat the cause not the symptom eg pain. only use pain medications when it’s very hard/impossible to cure the cause such as chronic conditions”