ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
No bio...
User ID: 1012
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
17hr ago
That's a tricky one. IMHO there's probably nobody on this board who is really qualified to disentangle the nuances there, since AFAIK we do not have any regular born-and-raised-in-the-PRC posters (and even if we did the fact that they post here would make them highly unusual). But my understanding is that zhonghua 中华人 /zhonghuaminzu 中华民族 is used to mean "ethnically Chinese people," and I have heard it used (often as "huaren"华人) in conversations where the speaker was simply a non-PRC Chinese (e.g. from Taiwan) but also by PRC Chinese appealing to the loyalty owed by huaren (or huaqiao 华侨) to the mother country (PRC).
Re disliking Chiang Kai-shek... that's a tough one since AIUI he wasn't a very sympathetic character. I think there are plenty of PRC haters who have little love for Chiang.
I confess to not knowing enough folks from southern China to really grasp their views on Chineseness and compare them with those of northern Chinese (with whom I had much more contact).
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
21hr ago
Does your coworker speak Mandarin as his first language? Is he from the northern PRC? Is he a nationalist? Those are important factors to consider when evaluating his opinion. I agree with others that including Korean is highly suspect. It suggests a level of ignorant northern Han chauvinism, the kind that still sees China as the "middle kingdom" (IMO better translated as the "central kingdom") and all other so-called cultures surrounding it as uppity monkeys who were enlightened by the hoary and superior Han Chinese.
To your question, no, they are not the same language at all. A lazy analogy (in that you could nitpick it to death and probably find a more exact example) is that they are like English and, say, Romanian. Both are Indo European, both use the Roman alphabet. They probably have some words in common that could be identified by a linguist. But day to day, they are mutually unintelligible, and the Romanians do things to the Roman alphabet that make English speaker say "wtf," such as "ă" and "ș". They are only part of the same "Chinese" language in that all Romance languages are part of "Romance," and even that is too generous IMO.
I'm not sure that both sides' actions are comparable. The left cancelled people for relatively mundane political opinions and for making edgy jokes. Normies felt like you had to walk on eggshells under ascendant leftism. The right is cancelling people who say really tasteless things about someone who just got murdered in front a large crowd that included his wife and kids. They are also bashing trans people, but I think the vast majority of normies have mixed feelings about trans at best. The right is not going to cancel you if you make an edgy joke about women or blacks or if you express support for Gavin Newsom or whatever. I don't think most normies feel threatened by the right in the same way.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
1d ago
The Gellar device emits a wave called a Gellar field, essentially creating a bubble of real space around the ship.
Scrolling your phone with one hand in the grass.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2d ago
This is true, but I think the online world has made it much easier and more rewarding to put on that new identity, and it is home to much more powerful and persuasive entities than the IRL world. Before the internet, your new persona might impress your skater or goth friend circle, and they and perhaps the cool kids at school would try to exert pressure on you. You might see an ad on a billboard or a TV commercial. It's much more insidious now.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2d ago
Oh damn, I just realized they're different guys.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2d ago
I get where you're coming from, but there is no way to turn down the temperature. The brainwormed extremist 5% on each side have control of the thermostat and are only interested in turning it up. The moderate left and right want the other side's extremists to stop raising the temperature, but they are unwilling to police their own extremists (or if they are, they are denounced as traitors and are sidelined). Neither side is willing to unilaterally disarm for fear of what the other side will do to them (though to be fair, I think the right is more justified in this fear based on the last 10 years). So the temperature will ratchet up until some event releases all the pressure.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2d ago
For an additional data point, I "knew" this much about him before the shooting. I'm a trad social conservative, centrist on economic issues.
- He was some debate guy who went to colleges and did gotcha stuff
- He was the leader of Turning Point USA, a boomercon "college Republican org" that was about 20 years behind the times in terms of grasping the current political climate
- TP USA was the org that regur published cringe "wow imagine if the situation were reversed" style memes that were widely mocked both on the left and the online right
I'm trying not to get taken in by the St Charlie mythos that is popping up overnight. He seems like a decent family man and I don't think he was "evil," but he was definitely a talking head and political activist, two occupations that many Americans find vaguely distasteful on both sides of the aisle. That doesn't make his assassination any less horrifying or, frankly, radicalizing to me, but I'm resisting turning him into a Lei Feng or Horst Wessel in my mind.
The past few years should have made it clear to anyone that much of the Right's dedication to "free speech" is just as much of a lie as the Left's.
Nah, sorry. A lot of us were principled free speech advocates until it became clear that we were trying to cooperate with a group of committed defectors. Which, hey, "always defect" is a valid strategy, but when your opponent begins to mirror that strategy, you don't get to rewrite history to claim that they were defectors the entire time.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2d ago
My thoughts on this are very simple. The taboo has been broken. Cancelling is fair game now and always for everyone. I 100% do not doubt that if e.g. Gavin Newsom wins a trifecta in 2028 we will be right back to the bad old days of internet deplatforming and cancelling of right wingers (only turbocharged because so many have come out the woodwork). People who throw around the term "woke right" are idiots who still think that this time, if the right presses the cooperate button, the left will stop smashing defect at every opportunity, contrary to all of recent political history.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2d ago
And lurking in the background, with both of them, is the deeper reality that many of us (I certainly include myself here) are spending more and more of time as floating eyeballs attached to brains with floating fingertips, living mostly in the screen.
I came across this idea in the last few years and the implications are terrifying. The way it was out was that when you are online and invested in your online persona, you are essentially projecting your consciousness, your soul, out of your body and into a different dimension, a dimension where there is zero distance between you and all manner of hostile and corrupting influences. Other people, of course, but also alien artificial minds and egregores many times more powerful than you. And perhaps other emergent entities that we still do not yet understand. Since the space feels so "real" and meaningful to many, the online persona can often feel more real than the meatspace persona, and so the online persona, the one subject to an unknown array of corrupting forces, increasingly dominates and directs the actions of the meatspace persona. This is not just a long-winded way to say "people get radicalized online." It's not "radicalization" in the same way that visiting the wrong mosque might get you caught up with Al Qaeda or whatever. It's a much deeper andore profound psychological transformation.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
4d ago
Are "top Dem leaders" really more representative of the average leftist that actual average leftists posting on social media? I've been hearing variations on "just a few kids on college campuses" for 20 years now, and I stopped buying it years ago, sorry.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
4d ago
Thanks for sharing this bit about Cenk. I know very little about him but, in times like these it's heartening to discover that prominent members of your outgroup are more honorable and principled than you had assumed. A little ray of hope.
In my comment I was describing how I've seen some of my normie friends and family talking. I certainly do not hope for war, I think it's unimaginably destructive to society and the human spirit and would probably result in the end of American society as we know it (through radical transformation, not destruction), no matter who "wins." But given our trajectory, I think you would be foolish to not start making preparations to protect yourself and your family in the event that mass political violence breaks out.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
4d ago
I have been thinking about this a lot recently. There's always a discussion that goes like this:
"50% of Group X think Group Y are partially responsible for Group X violence against Group Y. But, only 3% of Group X would be willing to actually commit violence against Group Y."
Group Xer: "See, that proves Group X is 97% peaceful."
Group Yer: "See, that proves that 50% of Group X is violent."
I have always tried to lean toward the former interpretation. Citizens of fascist or communist tyrannies who supported and participated in their regime are AFAIK never seen as completely blameless. And as the violence becomes more egregious, it gets harder and harder to believe it.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
4d ago
Getting fired for opinions while your enemies operate with impunity is worst of all. Your rules fairly, and all that. As has been said many times here, liberal norms only work when a shared moral fabric is smuggled in as the bedrock of civic life, when certain fundamental questions about human existence are not up for debate. Once there arise factions who can no longer agree on these fundamental questions, it's only a matter of time until one faction purges the others and enforces a new consensus, after which liberalism can be restored in this new moral context.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
4d ago
I think a lot of people have just been pushed over the edge by this. It hits all the visceral buttons:
- he wasn't a politician
- he came across as a normal guy
- he had a wife and kids
- his young kids were in attendance
- he said things that a lot of people agreed with
- he was killed at an event that was explicitly aimed to promote (non-violent) dialogue between left and right
Regardless of whether he was a saint or not, I can think of few plausible ways to make this more inflammatory than it already is. It's perfect rage and hate fuel. If it were Fuentes (who is an outrage-baiting dick) or a politician (who we expect willingly take on this risk to some degree) or even some friendly but unmarried talking head whose whole life was politics, people could rationalize it away. But many (myself included) see a guy who is just like them or their husbands or sons, and combined with seeing in Iryna their wives or daughters, it's just too much.
The time for dialogue has been over for some time now, but we have been able to maintain peace because frankly many grillpilled normies had their heads in the sand because facing the truth (risk of Yugoslavia 2.0) was too horrible to contemplate.
But this is impossible for many of them to ignore. Charlie will be sainted, regardless of who the real Charlie Kirk was, because the truth doesn't matter to them anymore. All that matters is winning.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5d ago
If it turns out to be yet another "lone wolf with mixed political leanings and a history of mental illness" I'm going to have a really hard time suspending my disbelief. And I'm probably going to buy some more tin foil.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
6d ago
Blacks sat in the back under threat of violence. I think people would be less outraged if a gang of whites had immediately jumped the Charlotte subway guy and killed him in retaliation.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
6d ago
In Japan, the food that many people eat every day is shit. It's very high in low quality carbs, grease, and salt. Most of the vegetables are fried, pickled, or otherwise covered in oil or salt. It really is as OP says, it's stuck in nutritional trends from decades ago, probably because the average age is quite high.
I'm not attacking Japanese food. It's delicious. And there are healthy meals like kaiseki, kaisendon, sushi, etc. but those are not things Japanese people eat regularly. The regular diet here is not great.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
7d ago
As any hiring manager knows nowadays, the job pool is mostly incompetents, liars, lazies, addicts, or otherwise unwanted because of a serious flaw.
As both a hiring manager and a grass-toucher, I really do not believe this. Yes, our recruiters, both internal and external, bring in a lot of garbage, but I don't think that's because there are no qualified applicants. It's because in the last ten years, then has been a sharp increase in the offensive capabilities of "bad actors" in the employment market (Indian tech consultancies gaming the visa system, Linkedin spammers) with an especially sharp increase in the last few years due to the adoption of LLMs. It's more difficult for me to judge the quality of an applicant before meeting them by checking their Linkedin, CV, cover letter, or email correspondence. Everyone has learned that all text-based communication can be polished by an LLM, and so typos, poor writing skills, and obvious bullshitting are all easier to avoid (although em-dashes and chatgpt-speak are still giveaways sometimes). I have a lot more screening interviews now that are a waste of time since it's more difficult to vet ahead of a video call.
However, this is probably a temporary state of affairs. Hiring managers and recruiters optimizing for quality will improve their defensive capabilities by inventing new, harder-to-fake vetting procedures. We just aren't there yet, the defense is still catching up.
Let's say the US has X amount of specialized talent and thus they can only do Y amount of productivity with in a year.
I dunno, man. This just does not pass the smell test for me. In a country of nearly 350 million people, there aren't enough bright, talented people to fill jobs? I get that companies want to hire a top 1% intelligence/conscientiousness person for their very important software role, but will it doom American industry and creativity if we force them to use the top 5% of the American talent pool instead of the top 1% of the global talent pool? We may move forward slightly slower, but we will also avoid the negative effects of creating a new class of alien elites who see America as merely an economic zone. If we tied work visas to renunciation of other citizenships and the ability to pass civics test or something, I might change my mind a little.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
11d ago
Hey, fair enough. If you (the general "you") are so fragile that your will is crushed by the thought of some people thinking you suck, then I guess you should probably just crawl under a rock and die because this fallen world is simply too cruel for you to survive. I don't really have advice for those sorts of people, they have set the victory conditions unrealistically high and made impossible for themselves to win. Personally, I think it's a pathetic cope, a way to rationalize and justify wallowing in your comfortable sty of self-indulgence instead of putting yourself out there and enduring some embarrassment ("those meathead powerlifter bros are just a bunch of assholes anyway! going to the gym is for jerks and I don't want to be jerk!").
Some people really do just want to curl up into a ball of self-pity and wither away into nothing. They , like everyone else, have been given free will, and so ultimately the choice is theirs.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
11d ago
I've barely been following this but I just want to register my disappointment that the filmer's nationality appears to have been used as a smokescreen to lead people away from no-no opinions, and I fell for it. My initial suspicion was a Pakistani, a nonwhite Asiatic Muslim. A "Bulgarian man" implies a white European Orthodox Christian (inb4 Bulgarians aren't white). But this "Bulgarian" was actually a Turk, a whit(ish?) Asiatic Muslim.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
11d ago
I'd be interested to hear other's opinions, because that just hasn't been my experience. When I was a scrawny dweeb wearing an ill fitting t-shirt and cargo shorts at the gym doing all my lifts wrong and at pathetic weights, nobody gave me a hard time. I think I've met a jerk at the gym maybe twice in my life, and both times the interactions were brief and the guy clearly had a screw loose. I've had far more interactions where someone gave me a thumbs up or some lifting advice.
If you're talking about people silently laughing at you in their minds, well, if you're that wrapped up about what people might be saying about you in their minds then maybe you're too neurotic to excel at anything.
If I had to update my OP, I'd add something I often tell my sibling: "You're Not As Interesting As You Think/You're Not the Center of Everyone Else's Universe." The fact of the matter is that most people are the center of their own universe. They are thinking about what they are doing, what they plan to do, the music they're listening to right now, which plates they need for the next set. They're not interested in you, and if they see you they spend near zero seconds thinking about you (exceptions for attractive young women). This is easy to verify. How much time do YOU spend thinking about the completely unremarkable randos you pass by in the street? Probably close to zero seconds. About other people in the gym? In the age of phones I mostly see people listening to music or scrolling, other gym goers might as well be invisible.
So I disagree that it's "guidance counselor" advice. It's a mostly accurate depiction of others' behavior. The only exceptions I can think of might be high school or college gyms, but that's just because mamy people are insecure bullies at that stage of life regardless of whether you suck or not.
My gut says he's probably a PRC nationalist, though I say so with low confidence. Taiwanese have a generally warm view of Japan despite having been colonized by the Japanese for decades, so not all Chinese see the Japanese as a nemesis. The idea that "Japan was the ultimate enemy" is probably the strongest most unambiguous message in PRC propaganda, closely followed by "we must never forget the Century of Humiliation at the hands of Western powers" and "the CCP deserves undying gratitude for creating the 新中国 which awakened Chinese
racialclass consciousness and helped unify 中国人 enough to end their exploitation by evil foreigners." Given that, and given that the "Chinese=Han=Standard Mandarin" as an idea is pushed to promote national unity (no criticism here, every European country did it in the 19th and 20th century), I would take his linguistic theories with a grain of salt. Of course, I don't know the guy, so I'm speculating about his beliefs a lot here.I'd be curious to hear what he actually believes if you feel you can broach this rather sensitive topic with him.
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