fqye

I can't believe how ignorant some people could be.

It is so easy to find reports and evidence of how Tiktok could be of great value to people.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/16/dining/tiktok-ban-cooking...

https://www.today.com/popculture/books/what-is-booktok-meani...

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-67555175

Some opinions here are super ignorant. Yes Tiktok has lots of silly videos but it also is a way for many talented people to reach their audience. Many small business owners and indie artists depend on it to make a living.

I initially agreed with the author but at a second thought, I found the author made a big mistake of not distinguishing different types of quality.

The article talked about mostly entertainment or art related quality. However when it comes to utility related quality, it is a totally different story. It is obvious. I even don't need to expand on that.

This cool but comfyui has been doing this for years.

Why is it impossible for Talyor Swift to ask that question herself? Because she is a blonde singer?

It is very common for someone top of one's trade to command respectable knowledge and skill in another trade.

Einstein was a decent violin player. It wouldn't be a surprise if he asked some deep questions in musics in certain circumstances.

Talyor Swift has got to the top and sustained at the top of probably the most competitive business, and keeps her wealth growing. She has certainly financial knowledge and discipline. I am pretty sure she is capable of asking that question.

I don't think it was full out from Russia's side. They could still mobilize millions and use nukes. They haven't really bombed Kyiv's critical infrastructures and government buildings, for example president's office.

I think Putin will bet it all on full out war to conquer Ukraine in 2023. I wish I would be wrong.

I think he meant a treaty of quasi independence yet on face a special autonomous region of China for Taiwan.

And your assessment is right. It is unimaginable for any leader of CCP to grant independent state to Taiwan. He would be buried by party members and mainland Chinese.

This sort of treaty still needs to be approved by China's parliament. Though in most cases it is a just formality for parliament to approve any treaties but when it comes to a treaty that grants independence of Taiwan, vast majority of parliament members would object it.

And please be aware that Chinese people do go to street. Recent demonstrations in multiple cities and universities against endless covid lock downs proved it.

Full out invasion by Russia to Ukraine.

I first found out his story from new yorker https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/02/pursuit-beauty when the issue came out. I almost busted in tears.

I just wish he continue to enjoy mathematics, no matter if this paper is flawed or not.

Typing this from shanghai now.

It is crazy that CCP is again on the course of self destruction.

Maybe this sort of self destruction is inevitable for every single major power. It is just a matter if one can correct the wrong and change course before it is too late.

USA ditched Trump by election. Putin is doing shit to Russia.

It is happening in China now.

Chinese people can put up with CCP because we have been through too much disasters. A stable and somehow rational one-party rule is NOT so bad as long as stability is maintained and people's private space is respected to an acceptable level.

Shanghai is right now at the edge of breaking this unwritten agreement between CCP and the people. If this goes on for a few more weeks, there will be social unrest.

I am not optimistic about it.

No. My complaint is that the study method is fundamentally unreliable. And if we accept that the reports are reliable, and analysis is reliable, 2.5% of all brain dead reports are questionable don't sound suspicious at all.

I admit that I stopped reading further when I saw that line.

Still in the summary:

These two apparently disparate topics converge in a unique case: the intimate involvement of transplant surgeons in China in the execution of prisoners via the procurement of organs. We use computational text analysis to conduct a forensic review of 2838 papers drawn from a dataset of 124 770 Chinese-language transplant publications.

We find evidence in 71 of these reports, spread nationwide, that brain death could not have properly been declared. In these cases, the removal of the heart during organ procurement must have been the proximate cause of the donor's death. Because these organ donors could only have been prisoners, our findings strongly suggest that physicians in the People's Republic of China have participated in executions by organ removal.

--

It is 71 reports out of 2838 reports. And the reports themselves could have reliability issues.

And the judgement of brain death has always been controversial. 71 out of 2838 is just 2.5% that is subject to question.

Care to share a link where I can book an organ transplant tour in China?

It is so in China and it is every 5 minutes in most cases. Precisely because of this, I chose doctors from good public hospitals because of their super rich experiences instead of fancy private hospitals.

China tried the US elite college admission approach by alllowing top universities to accept a small number of students before Gaokao as pilots. And corruption ensured. Lots of complaints from the public. It was reverted back to purely based on Gaikao scores. Not ideal but it is the closest to fair admission it can get in China.

Chinese has this idiom 入乡随俗, meaning in other people's land you follow other people's custom.

It is a culture of us to make the hosts feel comfortable by giving ourselves a name of the hosting country, though of course some Chinese chose not to.

A french friend who worked in China for a long time gave himself a very nice Chinese name 欧大壮, literally Europe, Big And Strong. It is a very down to earth Chinese name.

He was liked instantly when he introduced his Chinese name.

> It’s crazy to me that this ‘after school study’ was identified as a major reason for declining birth rates, as if decades of policy and the ensuing culture could turn on a dime and the government could ramp womb production by 250% from the party offices.

It is again another example of superficial interpretation of what's happening in China.

Benefits of for profit off school tutoring of core subjects like Chinese literature, math, English have been debated for a lot time in China by educators, academics and government officials. And there were study and theories that those tutoring have no link to actual academic benefits. There were such studies in China, Germany, Korea and many other countries.

For profit k-12 tutoring companies have been using all means to drive up parents' anxieties of fearing their children to be left behind if not to take the courses.

And because of fierce competitions, most smaller k-12 tutoring companies couldn't survive and they often make a big sales push to collect as much tuition, as much as tens of thousands of RMB per child before they close and run. It happened so many times that media lost interest in them.

Chinese government always plays heavy hands in market. This is no different. But the decision itself isn't as simple and sensational as to boost child birth.

The USA hasn't yet provided evidence of Huwei spying for Chinese government.

There was woman's liberation movement before CCP took power in 1949.

It started at the end of Qing dynasty and continued with up and downs until Chiang's China. You are also right too that communism naturally calls for equality between man and woman.

Cherry picking and then overgeneralization are the two poisonous pills that are been fed to westerners about China.

Western media pick all the authoritarian measures CCP did or is doing and blow them up and make them all about China.

They ignored many things Chinese government (here most westerners or media couldn't tell the difference between Chinese administrative government and CCP and thought they were the same thing), and Chinese people did right in the past decades.

I often say China today has been built on three things:

1. Equality between men and women. China did very well in this. There are lots of problems still obviously but in general women in China are quite equal to men. China has the most self-made female billionaires, maybe more than the rest of the world's combined.

2. Unleashed entrepreneurship. No need to say much about it here.

3. A very solid education system together with Han Chinese tradition of valuing education. Nine years of free and compulsory education for the entire nation before high school and many options for next level education.

his dark forest theory:

- All life desires to stay alive.

- There is no way to know if other lifeforms can or will destroy you if given a chance.

- Lacking assurances, the safest option for any species is to annihilate other life forms before they have a chance to do the same.

The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds another life—another hunter, angel, or a demon, a delicate infant to tottering old man, a fairy or demigod—there's only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them.

>> Very interesting take.

The Zhurong rover, whose name translates to “fire god,” used a detachable wireless camera to capture a clever image of itself and its landing platform on the surface of Mars.

The obsession of 'China bad' now is absurdly similar to the ’US bad' during China's darkest period before opening up.

McKinsey would think it is a badge of honor because it means they were competent and their advice made difference significant enough from pure BUSINESS point of view.

Was a subscriber too. cancelled for its politicizing everything, and a superficial and biased China desk.

Now I subscribe to New Yorker and Bloomberg.