The inverse of this idea is actually very popular in China, regularly hear people just straight up say “foreigners are shit at maths” or words to that effect
The inverse of this idea is actually very popular in China, regularly hear people just straight up say “foreigners are shit at maths” or words to that effect
Two lovers entwined passed me by and heaven knows I’m miserable now…
Counting lives saved is difficult, but it can show us the great difference some people have made— Scientists can make an enormous difference in the world.
I mean just look at that
Yeah, that and closing the nuclear power stations both seem pretty terrible, fair enough. With regard to her refugee policy, perhaps it’s a low bar but seeing a leader of a major power apparently show some moral conviction makes me feel more warmly towards her.
Perhaps I’m misremembering things here, open to hearing alternative interpretations. Interesting question though, which political leader of the 21st century has showed the most moral courage? Which decision has had the greatest positive impact relative to the harm it caused their political career?
why? I find it hard to think of a politician in recent years making a more significant moral decision that they knew would hurt them electorally than Merkel’s decision to open Germany’s borders to refugees when so many countries were moving in the opposite direction
what? You never put off doing some chores?
Genuine question, how was the US worse than other countries in this? According to the nature article, most people globally have received at least one dose. WTO stats also indicate the US exported most of the vaccines it produced. Also, didn't many US companies participate in the Open Covid pledge?
The characters or the writers?
maybe I just stink of dogs but I reckon most dogs would sniff me given half the chance, seems like most problems could be solved by keeping them on leash and not letting them run up to strangers, but then I hope people also have access to dog parks or similar fenced off areas where they can run free
Plus specialist working dogs take tens of thousands of $ to train so I’m not sure that it quite follows that therefore it should be easy to get your dog to stop sniffing stuff, pretty much a dog’s number 1 hobby, anyway agree if you don’t like them you shouldn’t have to share an office with them
Agree that dog owners should be responsible. But a lot of people have some strange hyper-sensitivity to dogs that leads them to scowl and scream if a dog so much as looks at them… as long as they’re trained to piss outside they would definitely be my top choice of animal to share an office with
I signed the 10% Giving Pledge this year, and this week, I decided to donate 19% of my annual income to global health charities. It's not going to be anywhere near "enough", but I'm happy to do it --
In my pre-Bellingcat days, I worked for an organisation that housed asylum seekers, and I'd challenge anyone who think they get an easy time to spend a few months living in the same conditions and see how they feel about it then.
Should have stuck to creating delicious pork dishes...
Andrew had a heart of the most immense kindness and generosity and an intellect that was, in the true sense of the word, awe-inspiring. I was very privileged to know him. May his dear soul rest in peace. Andrew C. West, 1960-2025.
啊men
Or voters who keep their opinions to themselves at least… makes it even harder to change your mind when you’ve committed to something publicly
Up from Mompós to Cartagena, the great fortress of the Spanish Americas - reinforced with some of the most extensive defences in the world following British and French attacks to become an unassailable bastion of Spanish presence in the Caribbean /1
It seems like there are ways around using a phone number linked to your ID though, or at least to make it difficult for the police to track you. My friend reported several phone numbers linked to the people who stole his phone to the police but they said it wasn't enough to find/identify them.
Do resident permits all need to renewed annually? I know people from some countries can obtain longer term visas, is that separate from residency?
I couldn’t have expected the guy who tried to ban Muslims from America and claimed Haitian immigrants were eating people’s pets to implement radically evil anti-immigration policies, cynical is insufficient, fuck Joe Rogan
Hmmmm I wonder what this meant…
Which of the countries do you think have not seen an upsurge in the “politics of insecurity” in the last 15 years? I would say most of the places the author mentions have suffered from this issue
Some Diaspora Jews, hearing recriminations of Israel, often think "is this actually about me and my family? Is Israel merely a code for Jews" Is this a totally unreasonable thought? No, because sometimes Israel is code for Jews. But the jump to "no-one can say nasty things about Israel" is insane
🇨🇳 China tells EU it will not allow Russia to lose war against Ukraine – South China Morning Post
That was the first work of his I read, always stayed with me. I’m making my way through “Postwar” and his other works now. Tragically taken too soon, his analysis is dearly missed in our present era
Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten 20th Century
Tony Judt wrote the following back in 2008, seems quite prescient now
Not always focused on failures but Brian Potter’s substack ‘Construction Physics’ is very good and often looks in depth at why certain technologies or industrial approaches didn’t take off or wouldn’t work today www.construction-physics.com/p/why-did-su...
My latest post! In researching the history of coal, I stumbled across a puzzle that has baffled people for over four hundred years: why the coal briquette never became widely adopted in England. Now, finally, there is an answer! www.ageofinvention.xyz/p/age-of-inv...
I wonder how much this sort of dominance will translate into ‘soft power’ for the Chinese government, a Chinese friend told me every time she goes abroad her Tik-tok feed is full of anti-ccp content (Tiananmen Square, attacking Xi etc), although pro-CCP tik tok in the us seems to be a thing
Right, whoever made that comment clearly hasn’t been to Southeast Asia
Beautiful chart, have recently been listening to “Vaccine: The Human Story”, a brilliant concise history of the fight against smallpox, really drives home the horror of this disease. Also makes me think we underplay importance of ‘man vs disease’ historical narratives as compared to ‘man vs man’
Smallpox declined gradually, until the WHO coordinated the global effort to eradicate it 🧵
What remarkable Xi Jinping timing to meet his fake Panchen Lama roughly 30 years after Beijing abducted the actual six-year-old Panchen Lama, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, who to this day decades after being the world's youngest political prisoner has never been seen again. Still crickets from global media.
“Issues with Han majoritarianism” seems like a massive understatement
Can honour set to a leg? no: or an arm? no: or take away the grief of a wound? no. Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no. What is honour? a word. What is in that word honour? what is that honour? air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? he that died o’ Wednesday.
you could have been （萝卜）Carrot/Radish Marchini, but you blew it!
Regardless of whether you think commies are leftists, the statement that the *world* today is purely a product of liberal governance seems like a gross oversimplification at best, even considering just 'the west' it seems false.
Hmm I think (self-identified) leftists have governed over quite large swathes of the world in recent history and even up to the current day
How do you feel when people tar you as a CCP apologist because some genuine apologists might make use of your arguments to advance “CCP does nothing wrong” narratives?
Ok so I didn’t really need that in my adult beverage but thanks for sharing
My feed is full of people claiming AI is rubbish, and then every so often you pop up doing amazing things with AI tools, thanks for providing some useful perspective. BTW, are most the tools you’re using widely available? I’m unable to register for a lot of stuff cos I only have a Chinese mobile 😭
this sounds like some mad revisionist history, anyway post-fergie era man utd have still won more trophies than Arsenal so "ruined" might be a bit much 😜
Wow this entire thread and comments section is just this meme, fergie must have ruined all your childhoods
Somewhat irritating, but perhaps a reaction against the UK visa office’s arrogant presumption that 90% of people applying for a visitor visa secretly want to settle illegally in the UK, a presumption that comes with real shitty consequences for a lot of families
Bravo, great thread, as someone who has a foreign spouse it means a lot that people are willing to speak up to defend the right to a normal family life. Putting a financial requirement on the spouse visa essentially exiles many British citizens from their own country
You have a right to a family life, which includes being able to settle a foreign spouse or children, not have them live in limbo for a decade
Yes, it is terrible cos the rules are cruel and unreasonable, it is also bad when it happens to other people but understandably doesn’t make the news as that happens everyday. The easiest way to get a visa (or citizenship) is still being wealthy, no evidence that ‘the class system is falling down’
Author denied UK visa unable to attend premiere of play based on his memoir
thepointmag.com/examined-lif... its often combined with a sense that people belong inherently to one of many fixed character types
A few Palestinian YouTube channels have stopped because they were killed. These were kids. They sang songs & loved birds, and showed us the ocean. I'll never forget Medo, a young man growing a garden in the midst of a genocide. Israel killed him; he showed the world that Palestinians are human.
Depends on time and place I guess, in "The World of Yesterday" Stefan Zweig recounts the extreme reverence with which actors were treated in Vienna towards the end of the 19th century, although as he notes Vienna was far from typical in its appreciation for the arts
What is the standard for newer Xiangtan speech? A lot of variation in that area, might this distinction still exist in some places?
Just heard that Dave Allen died, and this has made me sad. The things he and Andy Gill did with bass and guitar were wondrous. Both gone, now. youtu.be/EFi4lHiThFA?...
Go woke go broke
Cambodia was hit by a tariff of 49%. Madagascar - 47%. Lesotho - in southern Africa - has a 50% tariff - the highest of any country. This could devastate the economy of a small, impoverished nation that relies on exports of clothes.
That would be an explanation that makes sense, but does it fit with other differential tariffs applied to overseas territories? Could just be a stopped clock
I would climb Kilimanjaro for you (assuming reasonable weather conditions), but I think we can both agree that if I find a K2 level fittie I’m obligated to move on
ICYMI, this 2002 PhD dissertation by Pan Yue, current head of the national ethnic affairs commission, drew up a blueprint for settler colonialism 20 years ago. he specifically wrote that China should learn from the experience of the westward movement
👀👀👀 keen to hear the full story
Itamar Ben Gvir: "Annihilate, smash, eradicate, erase, crush, shatter, burn, be cruel, punish, ruin, crush. Annihilate!" This is the genocidal voice of the Israeli government.
Wow, as a Brit currently struggling to get a visitor visa for his wife it’s kind of difficult to get my head round the fact these stories are from the not-too-distant past… although I guess even then some nationalities faced more scrutiny than others, but still sounds preferable to now
Estimates by @charlesjkenny.bsky.social @justsand.bsky.social: US foreign aid likely prevents 2.3 to 5.6 million deaths annually, largely in Africa. And that a complete disruption would result in over 4000 lives lost per day.
lol, forgot about that. Most Chinese students who go to study abroad probably go for Masters too so not related to gao kao, and a lot of them scrape the money together themselves, perhaps after a few years of work and saving… fuck this guy for shitting on people who want to pursue their dreams
Even with USAID cuts, many Chinese nationalists convinced themselves that ending donations to the BBC would result in more positive coverage of China, despite the fact USAID donations were less than 0.05% of the BBC’s annual income, but yeah, they will be celebrating
Yeah, that’s really gross… totally in character for Andy though I guess
Just awful, I already knew these guys were nasty bastards, but I didn't expect they would try to bring back the Chinese Exclusion Act. Unbelievable.
This isn't the canary in the coal mine, it's a mine shaft full of dead miners.
Also, an example of the fabulous information environment on Chinese social media, a video of Musk talking about his early life but the Chinese subtitles claim he is stating that Covid was a man-made virus from the USA and that the vaccines were designed to kill people...
Ahaha if it’s any consolation you’re not the only one, I literally had this up on my phone when I saw your reply
Dao, then, wherever you may be, I am the Lord of the Dao said he, And I’ll lead you all wherever you may be, And I’ll lead you all in the Dao, said he
Or maybe he offends us cos he tries to whip up pogroms against Haitian immigrants, defends racists being given senior govt positions, helped destroy health aid for millions in the developing world, and is now throwing Ukraine under a bus… and he does it all with a smug, shit-eating grin…
What accounts for such high expectations for Trump in India? Are there some genuine expected benefits or is it just the idea he will be tough on China and shared nationalist currents/islamophobia? I wonder if all the anti-Indian migrant stuff coming from his supporters/employees will make a dent
Interesting data, it’s a fair point that europeans or people in the west are often parochial, but these surveys were from before Trump took office so these numbers could change fast, and on the issue of condemning Russia’s invasion, Trump seems more out of step with world opinion than Europe
What if you could explore Wikipedia on a map? A little project I've been building with a friend over the past months! wikiexplore.org
Exactly this. Some try to use long-term utilitarian justifications or claim Musk is concerned with humanity’s long term future, but it’s clear they don’t give a shit about the vast mass of humanity, and are just in it for personal glory, power trips or for the benefit of their imagined ‘ubermensch’
I legit think the NPC meme they love to use is a tell for these sociopaths. They don’t think killing kids by withholding HIV treatment is any different than stabbing a prostitute in Grand Theft Auto.
Tom Hardy has a decidedly dodgy Welsh accent in the movie ‘Locke’, somebody commented it could only be explained by his character having a backstory in which he was adopted by an Indian family as a young boy
So what do you think are the most important factors? do you think all of the factors suggested here are relatively inconsequential?
Obviously not quite on the same level, but one regret that always stays with me is ever enforcing the “toilets for customers only” rule at the restaurant I was working at
Can we change his Chinese name to something like 妈死疴 or is that too much of a little pink thing to do?
Churchill on Imperial Japan: “A declaration of war by Japan could not be reconciled with reason... But governments and peoples do not always take rational decisions. Sometimes they take mad decisions or one set of people get control, who compel all others to obey and aid them in folly.”
#USA: We are calling on the US government to immediately resume funding for the full range of PEPFAR operations as well as other critical health and humanitarian aid. Uncertainty around PEPFAR program puts millions of people at risk www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/uncer...
Whatever your thoughts on Altman, given current events, do you really think Musk should be allowed to accrue even greater power for himself? If you’re worried about someone moving fast and getting what he wants or acting dictatorially Musk is not the solution you are looking for
Let’s look at some of the people Musk and Trump just killed: in Thai-Myanmar border migrant camp Umpiem Mai, more than 10k displaced people. USAID withdrawal meant immediate closure of hospital: “multiple patients, relying on oxygen support, died” www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02...
Zuck also has a history of sucking up to dictators, see his kowtowing before Xi Jinping. Did ‘the left’ make him do it or could it be due to him being a billionaire who ruthlessly pursues his own business interests? Could he possess a modicum of his own agency?
This piece may have a grain of truth but for the most part strikes me as self-flagellatory nonsense, right-wingers incl. Trump have insulted Zuck a lot. Plus, if insults are enough to cause someone to switch sides why do Rubio, Cruz etc. all continue to stick with Trump
…EA and it would be bad if the forum descended into purely political theatre. However, PEPFAR and other (future) terrible policies with potential for high negative impact on human/animal welfare are downstream of unusually bad people being in charge. Is that being stated loud enough?
I’m very glad that you, stefan and Duncan did push back here. A lot of baseless criticism in the comments here sadly. Also glad that PEPFAR is a focus cos it’s likely the most consequential decision the new admin has made so far.the focus on high-impact cause areas is one of the great things about..
humility in politics is good, but when the nazi salutes start coming out it’s past time to draw the line. I thought the idea that all lives had equal value was pretty fundamental to EA yet haven’t seen many people willing to join the dots and say publicly that Trump/Musk are bad for humanity
Yeah, this is good. Still it’s a little disappointing to see hardly any response on EA forums to the most powerful country (and the one with the potential to do the most good) sliding towards autocracy under leaders with a propensity for cruelty and apparent disregard for ethics or democracy
god help us… isn’t the whole conspiracy that the US was funding this research in Wuhan?! The tankies probably ignore that part
@fuchsiadunlop.bsky.social any recommendations for food in Chengdu? Or good places to buy speciality products like 腊肠、辣椒酱等等 sorry I know this is a bit of a vague request 😂 , p.s. big fan of your work