foodislove

In the board game Warhammer there is the tale of the Dwarves strongholds. They forever remembered grudges. Even over the course of time, when the nature of the grudge was forgotten, they still held on to the ill will. This article is well reasoned, researched, and makes sense to a Chinese speaker. However, this will be dismissed like the UN Tribunal simply because the result contradicts the official narrative promoted by China.

There is simply too much nationalism and national pride locked up with the whole South China Sea and Taiwan that no amount of logic and truth can change how it is perceived in China.

The South China Sea dispute has nothing to facts like these, and all about geopolitics and power within China. Like with the Austria pre-ww2, if the Chinese were to invade and conquer Taiwan and control the entire SCS, they'll magically find other "distractions" and "conflicts" to distract people away from their own misrule and corruption.

With Putin's Russia and the CCP, there must always be enemies (both internal and external). If they don't exist, you create one (think FalunGong)

This proves the point. I added the "bimbo of a wife" comment as an example. If you look on web forums, there are unmitigated attacks of similar calibre towards Tsai (President of Taiwan) calling her a "old whore", "old maid", "japanese collaborator", and such.

The first time you see such nonsense like the "bimbo" reference, you call it out. However, after you see it 50 times, you just ignore it. For you, you ignore it, but since nobody calls it out, it is gradually asserted as fact. This is the same trend online by the organized trolls whereby nobody even bothers to call them out when they pretend Taiwan is part of China; that the South China Sea belongs to China; and that Xi Jinping is the new Kim Jong Il.

The first time you see something like this attack, you call it out. By the time you see it 200 times from 20 different people, you'll be indifferent.

I should write a better 50c algorithm that spews Peng is a stupid bimbo until everyone on the internet accepts it.

Note. I don't think she is a bimbo, but the point stands none the less

I'm sorry. Where were you when your counterparts kept calling Michelle Obama a "monkey" or Tsai, the President of Taiwan a "old maid", "japanese collaborator" and other things?

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Yes. Most of the time, all you need is a basic computer and internet to SSH into a more powerful VM in the cloud. I don't host my dev stack on my computer so local computing power is mute. It's strange but a celeron chromebook is all I need.

When I travel, I don't take my heavy Macbook Pro. I take my old Acer C720 because it has Bash, a Cloud IDE, and everything I need to code. Just in case I need to do more, I have KDE on chroot for when I need more tools.

Or they throw money into sectors that they can't win thereby depleting resources away from areas they can. It can seem the Chinese are advancing in every field, but their unfavorable demographics and inability to attract overseas talent will eventually catch up.

This reads like an investment bank's disclaimer that's 5 pages long in tiny print at the back when they sell you questionable risky investments.

It's designed to make it look like there is a full vetted and functioning process when at the end of the day, it's just a human mod who makes the call.

Like with banks and other customer care agents, the only times these actions can really be challenged or changed is if there is a furore that affects FB's image.

There is just so much trolling and bullying on fb that if they had a real appeal process, it'll quickly become a flood because if they take Hate speech seriously, then the slippery slope leads them to monitor other online problems that is caused by FB.

So no. I think this is just a nice sounding disclaimer for a process that'll only be used when the next storm hits fb but won't actually help clean up all the hate and evil on fb.

I've been making my own movements for fun for a while. Most of the parts you can print/order, but for accuracy purposes I tend to use an existing balance spring (generally sourced from any old Seiko movement).

I recommend 2 books if you want to make your own movements

1) Watchmaking by George Daniels 2) Practical Watch Repairing by Donald de Carle

The first is a textbook and second deals with repairing, but actually taught me the more practical side of how to assemble & regulate a watch, and what makes a movement accurate.

I've made my own hand-winding movement. It is within COSC specs but only when it's more than 75% wound, perfectly flat, and in a cool place. Oh did I mention it's the size of a ping pong bat. It makes me appreciate ETAs and their reliability even more now. It's time consuming and drives me nuts at times but totally worth it.

Exactly. That's how we prepped for Putnam

That writing programs to solve problems that someone else has solved elsewhere? That's called IBM Watson and Jeopardy.

Agreed

The Gaokao reference you make is interesting. One of the biggest complains about standardized testing in the States is that it pushes teachers to "teach to the test". The Gaokao takes that to the extreme. It's much harder than the SAT quant, but the way my cousin and her class prepped for years is literally prepping for the test.

Imagine the SAT quant prep book with its "These are they types of questions you will encounter in the test" and take that a few steps further. Wayy higher level maths and more, but not infinite, models of questions on which they prep for every day and night for years.

Your last paragraph "blocking tech will prompt China to intensify their efforts to develop their own technologies" is exactly my point. It's much easier and less time consuming to have someone give it to you than to develop it from scratch :)

I can tell you are Chinese and extremely proud of her achievements. Saying as a whole, the education system in China produces less on creativity should not be viewed as an insult to national honor. There's nothing wrong with admitting that things are not the best. Otherwise, how can you improve?

Historically speaking, the only significant peaceful comparison would be the British -> US circa 1950s.

To be fair, people asked the same question in the 1900s. With the world getting so interconnected thanks to steamships and telegraphs, perhaps the age of major conflict had passed (this was right before ww1).

Also, global connectivity doesn't mean much when the great firewall creates 2 distinctly different internets. If you take Chinese state media as a barometer of public opinion, you clearly see there is very little affinity towards the rest of the world. The xenophobia and nationalism, if anything, is more likely to lead to conflict because nationalism is a double edged sword.

Best case scenario is the status quo. Even though China wants a bigger say in global affairs, they realize they have benefited from a peaceful international system over the last half-century and it's in their interest to preserve it largely intact. They have some long-term plays like "one belt" infrastructure, but that's something to supplement the existing system rather than to replace.

Personally I think the most likely risk is economic. No country can escape the laws of economics forever. At some point, the economy will have a downturn. Like with Putins Russia, when things are bad domestically, there is pressure to create conflict abroad (aka Ukraine) to distract their people which if managed badly, could turn out quite ugly