free_rms

5 ms·

1.
by free_rms 6y ago
Is "communist" not a description of the economic system? How "communist" was Pinochet? He had total 1-party control, after all. Is North Korea a Democratic Republic? That's what they call themselves, after all. Yo
2.
by free_rms 6y ago
It's not a personal attack, you're still calling China communist and don't seem to understand how things work there. They're something else. There's more small business than america, by a lot, the biggest internet
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by free_rms 6y ago
US politics have had a "big bad" for 80 straight years now, it's basically a reflex.
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by free_rms 6y ago
I'm all for securing domestic chip manufacturing but can we stop with the vanquishing? It sounds like you're talking about an army of orcs.
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by free_rms 6y ago
I did say I was out on a limb.. Anyways, you've made clear that your reference point for understanding China is Soviet Eastern Europe. If you check a map and a calendar, you can see some places where that reference point might be inex
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by free_rms 6y ago
> You don't know the first thing about my information diet. You've given some pretty strong hints about it in fact, and tripled down in this comment. I'll go out on a very specific limb, tell me I'm wrong: Moved to t
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by free_rms 6y ago
In the book we're discussing, the Cultural Revolution is presented as a catastrophe where the heroes are well-meaning scientists who's neutral observations of nature are twisted into being counter-revolutionary. The book covers th
8.
by free_rms 6y ago
This thread started under the topic "believe it or not, Chinese people are actually pretty happy with their government given the record over the last few decades". Can you think about what would be persuasive to such a person? The
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by free_rms 6y ago
Do you even know who Deng Xiaopeng is? Changing systems without a massive, disruptive loss of life is actually a huge accomplishment. No other nation has transitioned out of communism smoothly. It had the side effect of not changing nam
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by free_rms 6y ago
The third book is good, almost as good as the second imo. Manages to become completely insane while still feeling believable at each step.
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by free_rms 6y ago
Germany's an ally. We don't try to beat them up over hitler, and it wouldn't make sense if we did. For basically the same reasons, so good choice of analogy I guess.
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by free_rms 6y ago
I don't know if you read the books but there are some pretty severe consequences.
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by free_rms 6y ago
Can you name the dates and major events within the Great Leap forward or Cultural Revolution without googling and reading wikipedia? I'm not trying to assert authority here but you could look at the last 500 years, the last 200, 100, y
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by free_rms 6y ago
Apparently the evil alien robot in book 3 is waaaaay more Japanese-sounding in the Mandarin version.
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by free_rms 6y ago
What's happening in India is that farmers were/are going to be screwed, and they're really mad about it. What has happened in China is that a billion farmers are massively, undescribably better off. You literally cannot de
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by free_rms 6y ago
I didn't get that from it at all. The theme of the last book is a conflict between values and survival. What's the point of survival if you sacrifice all values to do so? Liu is Chinese just like most of HN are American so there
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by free_rms 6y ago
Expert programmers should write 'low quality' programs if that's what the situation calls for. Most of us are solving business problems, and lateral thinking can be worth more than perfect engineering or fancy algorithms.
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by free_rms 6y ago
Absolutely right, and I should have written that :) That said, seems like the easier narrative for the NYT to go with as well -- they don't have to own up to their editorial failures up the chain that way.
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by free_rms 6y ago
It's concerning that that's the lever, though. Break every rule of your profession and publish a bunch of BS? We'll give you another chance. Gave an inappropriate backrub 10 years ago? You're out! He should have been
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by free_rms 6y ago
If the UK is banning Chinese 'State Media', the BBC is a pretty natural target for a clap back..
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by free_rms 6y ago
Which society should they demographically match, America?
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by free_rms 6y ago
They have a lot of experience in every part of the car except the drive train. And once you have the battery, the rest of the drive train is.. pretty easy? I think? You're just hooking 2 motors to 2 wheels? Someone tell me what I&#x
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by free_rms 6y ago
The whole point is the immature shit-for-brains act. It's funny on multiple levels when mashed up with analysis of equities. You don't have to dig the humor but the public square is not "your house".
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by free_rms 6y ago
Not OP but it's the grown up subset rather than the Abbie Hoffman set. Hilarious pranks are hilarious but sesame street is more widely and subtly influential.
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by free_rms 6y ago
Kill a hundred thousand Yemenis and nobody bats an eye, but you bone-saw one little washington post reporter and now it's a crisis.
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by free_rms 6y ago
Very well put re: the cherry picking. I wasn't so much arguing for autocracy as arguing against buying our own agitprop.
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by free_rms 6y ago
I think it's more about multipolar vs unipolar. The time period you describe includes multiple massive european wars between nation states who were incentivized to improve industrialization, logistics and yes technology. China's p
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by free_rms 6y ago
Huge buried assumption in this comment that democracy in general or America's system in particular is more likely to produce 'correct' decisions than China's 100 million party members and their hierarchical politics. It&
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by free_rms 6y ago
China as a nation dealt with 'change' in the form of white men on awesome ships with awesome guns coming and having their way for 100 years. Going from their nadir in WWII to what they are now in 70 years seems awfully adaptable t
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by free_rms 6y ago
The linked post said project manager. Good PRODUCT managers, in small numbers, are worth their weight in gold IMO. Researching/talking to users takes time, making decks takes time, stepping back and surveying the landscape takes time.

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