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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   773 thread views

Transnational Thursday for January 9, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Their GPUs are qualitatively inferior

The speed with which China moves from qualitatively inferior to on par is amazing. Up to the point that when it comes to small electronics (scales, chargers etc) even the most chinesium ones work quite acceptable.

The chineese phone flagships are quite good recently.

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A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

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