stephenthinkpad posted:

Well too bad I don't play x86 games, is there any way I can take advantage of the cheap SSD price? Can I shelve it up my phone?

Grapplejack posted:

President xi my people are dying. Send cxmt 2*16 3600 sticks

Truga posted:

you can get a decent backplane off aliex for $30-40, then just bolt it into a cheap+small case and plug it into the cheapest mobo/cpu/ram combo you can find. if that sounds like too much effort, real quick search turned up a prebuilt case+backplane combo for $100 https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005442575652.html and a computer for $200 https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005309885895.html
buy some ram and hdds and you're done. also if the box ever dies on you, you can just swap out the mobo instead of having to buy new like with qnap/synology because they're packed with proprietary form factor bullshit

Cerebral Bore posted:

yea, and japan and south korea produce the other half. it's actually kinda comical that the us empire is completely reliant on an industry that's concentrated entirely in either china or in its immediate backyard

quote:

Q    Hey, John.  I’ve got two for you on China.  We reported last week about China trying to ban iPhones for certain government agencies.  Now they’re saying they are seeing security threats with these phones.  They’re stopping short of issuing laws.  But we have reported on the internal guidance, and the President even mentioned it in Hanoi, saying, you know, they’re changing the rules of the game. 

Should we expect the administration to respond and there to be repercussions for China if they do go through with that?

MR. KIRBY:  I don’t want to get ahead of where we are right now.  We’re watching this with concern.  Clearly, it seems to be of a piece of the kinds of aggressive and inappropriate retaliation to U.S. companies that we’ve seen from the PRC in the past.  That’s what this appears to be. 

The truth is, we don’t have perfect visibility on exactly what they’re doing and why.  And we certainly would call on them to be more transparent about what they’re seeing and what they’re doing. 

Q    So, you are — it’s — it’s accurate to say that you are trying to seek that information from the Chinese —

MR. KIRBY:  We are — we’re watching this as closely as we can.  I’m not going to — I’m not going to get into diplomatic conversations, but it’s concerning.

Q    Okay.  And separately but related, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel, has been pretty candid on Twitter talking about China and Xi Jinping’s policy of disappearing officials in his Cabinet.  Is this something that you guys are aware of or, you know, endorsing his message to be as forthright?  I mean, the White House has been pretty careful in how you do diplomacy with China, which is not really poking Xi Jinping the way the ambassador is.

MR. KIRBY:  I’ll let the ambassador speak to his social media account. 

We’ve long been clear about our concerns about a full range of worrisome PRC activities in — in the region there.  And I think I’d leave it at that.

KomradeX posted:

In the 90s everyone realized owning and building things was an unnecessary cost and the real value is in brands so were gonna turn all out former industries into being million dollar luxury condos

Danann posted:

https://twitter.com/hellowo63335565/status/1701034169097474345

tl;dr China started mass producing SSDs which is why they're so cheap now.

Palladium posted:

wow thats also japan to a T

Grapplejack posted:

What's the investment in Tibet look like nowadays? People talk about xinjiang because of the push but I don't think anyone gives a poo poo about Tibet anymore so I don't know what it looks like there

Orange Devil posted:

https://www.ceicdata.com/en/china/gross-domestic-product-per-capita/gross-domestic-product-per-capita-tibet

GDP tripled from 2010 to 2021

Cerebral Bore posted:

but at what cost???

corona familiar posted:

lol $135 per diem for meals in China

was this guy eating at Michelin-level restaurants for every meal? a meal at a place like https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g308272-d8261321-Reviews-Epices_Foie_Gras-Shanghai.html is like 200-500 RMB

stephenthinkpad posted:

Fizzy is expanding his news franchise to the Eurasian thread and he is going to push out Someguy TT.

Some Guy TT posted:

eh unless elon musk switches the default sort option for non accounts back to most recent instead of most liked i cant really see myself seriously pursuing the gimmick again the ratio of stupid to good articles just isnt as high when im not looking for them on twitter

PhilippAchtel posted:

Some Guy TT posted:

so my question is has china actually been helping developing countries destroy rainforests to build oil fields and i just havent been hearing about it or is this just a thing we assumed they were going to do nine years ago because thats what we would do if we didnt have any scruples about the environment

Trimson Grondag 3 posted:

nah most japanese wine is terrible.

Grapplejack posted:

What's the investment in Tibet look like nowadays? People talk about xinjiang because of the push but I don't think anyone gives a poo poo about Tibet anymore so I don't know what it looks like there

quote:

“Tibet will strive to make highways reach all townships and administrative villages by 2020 in a bid to boost rural development. …By 2020, all townships which meet necessary conditions and 80% of administrative villages would have access to bus service.”

---

However, for the Tibetans living in these border areas, perhaps it is too little too late for their lives in India. It is these Tibetans who are generally forced to seek a living using less-than-legitimate means, and for whom such a restrictive existence will grow tiresome after 60 years. And so it is clear where the push and pull factors come from. China, where family members are still living; China, where well-paying jobs are aplenty; China, where the infrastructure is improving with the government’s assistance; China, where religion is now easily accessible and people can practice openly; China, where the grass is greener, and there is no doubt about this.

quote:

Many Tibetans followed the Dalai Lama out of Tibet to live in India. So many Tibetans are 2nd and 3rd generations, born in India. They are more Indian than Tibetan. All of these Tibetans claim to be loyal and to love the Dalai Lama so much. If that is the case, why are thousands of Tibetans emigrating to the West and or returning back to Tibet? Why are they leaving the Dalai Lama behind in India? Tired of waiting for a future with no end under an ineffectual administration, the rapidly emptying schools are the surest sign that Tibetans have definitely lost hope in the Dalai Lama and his regime headquartered in Dharamsala. Surely the Tibetans still love the Dalai Lama as he tried his best, but it does mean they have lost hope in his abilities to rescue them out of poverty and getting their country back.

celadon posted:

the only thing ive seen thats really novel, but barely potentially malevolent, is the establishment of escrow accounts associated with large loans. as in a country puts 10M into an account China presumably can pull from as a condition of getting their 1B loan. that seems like it could just be a way to guarantee liquidity to Chinese lenders or reduce some sort of shock in the case of crisis, but depending on exactly the terms and conditions it could maybe be onerous.

and it didnt seem like the sort of thing everybody else was doing, IMF and other lenders were pissed that China would be 'jumping the queue' in any sort of debt crisis. presumably they themselves will start implementing a strategy using escrow accounts, though.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/09/07/zambia-china-debt-imf-economy/
https://apnews.com/article/china-debt-banking-loans-financial-developing-countries-collapse-8df6f9fac3e1e758d0e6d8d5dfbd3ed6

in general these articles seem extremely light on numbers and deceptive when numbers are revealed. in the above article "Is China Responsible for Zambia’s Debt Crisis?" they eventually mention that china is roughly 1/6th of external debt, which undermines the thesis significantly. there are ways that could still pan out, but the usurious rates of the Chinese lenders are never quantified, nor is the way in which sovereignty is being threatened, certainly not how the latter is unique to Chinese debt. a economically unstable country with any Chinese debt can thank china for its situation, regardless how much debt they carry or its terms.


but ultimately the real concern in all these articles is the growth of Chinese economic influence at all, its not really about how China is uniquely evil in lending. China providing 10B at 1.5% to help a country wipe 10B at 2.5% interest of IMF debt would be seen as a terrible example of Chinese manipulation of debt to ensnare the global south, even though the debtor country would be in a better position.


i will say that i dont know for certain that China is a significantly better lender, just that i'd personally assume they're playing the same game with largely the same rules as the west.

crepeface posted:

https://twitter.com/KyleTrainEmoji/status/1612925007444987906?s=20

drat that owns

yellowcar posted:

hawaii has a better case to be a real country than taiwan does

Cao Ni Ma posted:

No one talks about tibet anymore because the economic conditions have improved so much that its just not a vector for potential unrest anymore.

Likewise HKs political reforms were so thorough that the conditions where a foreign power could start unrest were neutered

So the big goal of the US is to try and stop the economical growth of xinjiang so it doesnt turn into another tibet. Its not even a thing that slowing the economic growth would immediately lead to political unrest either, its something the US could look forward to in like a few decades at least. But if the econmic conditions are constanrly improving then the potential vector basically disppears forever

celadon posted:

the only thing ive seen thats really novel, but barely potentially malevolent, is the establishment of escrow accounts associated with large loans. as in a country puts 10M into an account China presumably can pull from as a condition of getting their 1B loan. that seems like it could just be a way to guarantee liquidity to Chinese lenders or reduce some sort of shock in the case of crisis, but depending on exactly the terms and conditions it could maybe be onerous.

and it didnt seem like the sort of thing everybody else was doing, IMF and other lenders were pissed that China would be 'jumping the queue' in any sort of debt crisis. presumably they themselves will start implementing a strategy using escrow accounts, though.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/09/07/zambia-china-debt-imf-economy/
https://apnews.com/article/china-debt-banking-loans-financial-developing-countries-collapse-8df6f9fac3e1e758d0e6d8d5dfbd3ed6

in general these articles seem extremely light on numbers and deceptive when numbers are revealed. in the above article "Is China Responsible for Zambia’s Debt Crisis?" they eventually mention that china is roughly 1/6th of external debt, which undermines the thesis significantly. there are ways that could still pan out, but the usurious rates of the Chinese lenders are never quantified, nor is the way in which sovereignty is being threatened, certainly not how the latter is unique to Chinese debt. a economically unstable country with any Chinese debt can thank china for its situation, regardless how much debt they carry or its terms.


but ultimately the real concern in all these articles is the growth of Chinese economic influence at all, its not really about how China is uniquely evil in lending. China providing 10B at 1.5% to help a country wipe 10B at 2.5% interest of IMF debt would be seen as a terrible example of Chinese manipulation of debt to ensnare the global south, even though the debtor country would be in a better position.


i will say that i dont know for certain that China is a significantly better lender, just that i'd personally assume they're playing the same game with largely the same rules as the west.

Spergin Morlock posted:

it's good that an absolute monarchy with slavery got toppled actually

Josef bugman posted:

Are there any good books, unfortunately only in English, on the post Qing and early CCP period in China? Or at least anything people would recommend.

quote:

Between the end of the Opium War in the 1842 and the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949 China, long the most prosperous and sophisticated country in the world, was subjected to the military, economic, and political domination of Western imperialism. The old dynastic system was overthrown in 1911, and in 1921 the Communist Party was formed, which led the revolutionary struggle over the next three decades. Since the founding of the PRC China has pursued its distinctive path of socialist construction, a challenging and often contentious process which is still unfolding today. This volume traces the crisis of Old China and the course of the revolutionary struggle up to 1949, and follows the development of New China through the era of Mao Zedong’s leadership, the launching of reform under Deng Xiaoping, and the beginning of a new era under the leadership of Xi Jinping. China’s use of market mechanisms to develop the productive economy has generated contradictions as well as dramatic growth, and China has achieved great things in education, health care, and the provision of other social services. But the process of socialist construction remains an unfinished and ongoing venture, and the future of the revolution is very much a work in progress.

crepeface posted:

I just finished listening to a 6 hour podcast (7 parts) about China's foreign policy from 1949 to the present while assembling some furniture so obtuse and diabolical that I'm convinced that this is China's revenge strike for the century of humiliation.

anyway, they attribute the largest break of sino-soviet relations as because of krushev meeting the Americans and agreeing on peace and nuclear non-proliferation at a meeting that excluded China while the US were aggressive in their region. USSR didn't like that china wasn't accepting their lead and recalled the scientists they had stationed in China for over a decade giving them help. china felt like USSR was behaving like a "great nation" dictating terms rather than promoting socialism and the US exploited these divisions by playing them against each other.

but even before Stalin's death, there were differences like Soviets being less globally confrontational than China, who were building up allies in the third world. there were also differences in how China chose to develop its economy compared to the path the USSR took (more focus on peasants etc)

part 1 is more focused on setting up the state of affairs with USSR and USA but is still probably worth listening, but part 2 is where they focus on the Sino-Soviet split:
https://twitter.com/TheSocProgram/status/1390419032826781697?t=Thi6X7GZ8BGNeep6Wx-2uA&s=19

or you can mainline the whole thing:
https://twitter.com/TheSocProgram/status/1421526521060093955?s=19

Punished Turtle posted:

When these same slave-owning American plantation owners gave the queen the choice between abdicating or having a US navy ship indiscriminately bombard the civilians of Honolulu, would it surprise you to find out that they were not doing it for higher ideals or to improve the lives of those they enslaved?

Punished Turtle posted:

Hawaii in 1893 wasn’t close to an absolute monarchy. America was the country that brought the institution of slavery to Hawaii originally, and their citizens owned the plantations that used slaves (most of which were native Hawaiians). The monarchy at this point was a fairly weak constitutional one and had been heavily weakened and compromised by American business and religious interests for decades.

When these same slave-owning American plantation owners gave the queen the choice between abdicating or having a US navy ship indiscriminately bombard the civilians of Honolulu, would it surprise you to find out that they were not doing it for higher ideals or to improve the lives of those they enslaved?

When the Great Satan exterminates a form of independent sovereignty, even a flawed one which it had already heavily suborned, it is not to be celebrated.

Frosted Flake posted:

This ties into what Gradenko was saying about anthropology. Imperial powers destroy local societies, and it seems often times the people who are left are traumatized survivors of an apocalypse. When anthropologists document them as representatives of the same culture that was all but wiped out, it effectively vindicates the imperial power. Domestically, it titillates the liberal middle class at home, while also directing middle class morality to the empire building project.

For example, the Ghost Dance, Sun Dance and Potlatch were all banned by the authorities, and the stories about them shocked and horrified the middle class population, but there's mountains of evidence that westward expansion created them and they do not represent pre-contact religious or social life among indigenous people.

A more benign example would be the 1930's-60's American depiction of Hawaii and Polynesia, seen in a million films like South Pacific. In particular, the stereotype of naked and carefree women on tropical isles, I think the Simpsons even joked about this. If I recall, Polynesian society did have codes of modesty and everything else, not reflected in the the hyper sexualized depiction of them. They "needed" to be "taught" modesty and sexual morality by missionaries from the same middle class that eagerly bought National Geographic off the shelves?

I think, just like kimonos and "Geishas" in postwar Japan, the American impression of Polynesian women was the result of their society being obliterated by a war and huge numbers of GIs flush with cash providing the only income for whole communities. I don't think anyone at the time was willing to grapple with the implications so instead anthropologists recorded this sort of idyllic, sexual, Polynesia as "authentic", rather than the result of contact with the west.

crepeface posted:

that's super interesting from the perspective of all the discussion of anthropology in the ukraine thread that got kicked off from the excerpts of "Weaponizing Anthropology" that gradenko posted. quoting this post from FF as a link to the discussion there

crepeface posted:

that's super interesting from the perspective of all the discussion of anthropology in the ukraine thread that got kicked off from the excerpts of "Weaponizing Anthropology" that gradenko posted. quoting this post from FF as a link to the discussion there