No.12938 KONTRA
>>12937>vertical formatWhoever made that video needs to go to an Uighur camp right now
No.12939 KONTRA
>>12938>hurr durr why is content not made for my ancient consumer technology and its aspect ratio anymore???Are you retarded or just an annoying boomer?
No.12963
https://annas-blog.org/duxiu-exclusive.htmlNo need for me to upload to libgen anymore. Someone managed to retrieve the whole database.
>The collection is 7,543,702 files. This is more than Library Genesis non-fiction (about 5.3 million). Total file size is about 359TB (326TiB) in its current form.>>12827What is Xi-ism/Xi Jinping Thought anyway, apart from inane apparatchik talk.
No.12982 KONTRA
>>12939I heard the new iPhone comes with an option to hold it sideways
No.12985 KONTRA
>>12982And yet people mostly use their phone vertically 🤯🤯🤯
No.12994 KONTRA
>>12982EU forced them to do it. It's not an actual feature.
Steve Jobs invented vertical screens for a reason.
No.14400 KONTRA
>>13750Eggsplain the teletubies looking bird painting on the second pic plz
No.14661
>>14616I laughed a good 5 minutes to this joke
>>14621Normalize square wear to communicate functionary status
No.15017
>>15016> Mandarin speaking only, but my travel companion is a good translatorDon't Taiwanese speak Mandarin?
No.15018
>>15017I'm not Taiwanese, if that's what's implied. Yes though, Taiwanese speak Mandarin. Some speak the local language too, but it's more so rural, or the older generations. Mandarin works pretty much everywhere.
I feel like a monkey on display here. A few days ago (back on Taiwan), there was a bus going by, and some guy got up to so obviously finger point me out to everyone. Lots of stares and attention, while outside Taipei. Not all good attention though, but mostly good natured.
I also got told to die by a homeless mainlander on Kinmen, because supposedly I am an American (I am not), and my companion is Taiwanese - so also doesn't deserve to exist.
These islands are bizare, in that there is a lot of abandoned buildings around, and it generally feels like there is a mix of developed infrastructure, with a population that doesn't need it. I think it's in part due to there no longer being the army presence it once had, and the Chinese tourism being depressed lately. It's unique.
No.17124 KONTRA
>>17120Honestly you are not making it easy on yourself by talking about a topic like that.
Then again I always took the easy route and talked about Chinese topics instead to save myself the trouble of pronouncing transcribed names + the Chinese teachers always liked that more.
No.17147
Great article on drug use in China:
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/sinopharmacology-levi-kingFirst time I read about Liu Zhaohua, a drug lord who [even if jokingly] justified his meth operation as a parallel to the opium forced upon China
I somewhat envy the author's experience in the 2000s. Speaking from personal experience of the few times I went to the less mainstream techno clubs here, drug use seems indeed to be very rare. But then again I haven't actively looked for it. I have only been offered poppers bought off Taobao by some exchange students and chewed on betel nuts in Yunnan.
No.19321
>>19316I have to admit, i actually kinda like that style.
Lots of it is from this guy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Dees No.19323
Chiner won't be able to get out of it's middle income trap and doesn't lure in skilled labor from all around the world as the US of A do.
So their ghost cities will never fill up and freshly married couples end up with 10 appartments for their single child.
Fun fact: while we often claim that Chiners high environmental polution is due to us letting them make our goods, by far the highest part of it is due to cement production. About 14% vs. global average of 5% and I don't see them shipping apartments to us.
would be a good business tho.
Freedom and liberty, biatches!
No.19326
>>19323> 10 apartments for their newly born childNo one will ever live there, but I bet they will keep them in the books until after the tofu buildings collapse.
No.19327 KONTRA
>>19323Ghost towns are a bad meme because most of the time they are just yet unrealised infrastructure projects in the making some youtube schmuck makes a video on and then retards repost them, without following up on the fate of the place and how you later have a million people actually living there and it being some tier 3 city.
The goal of these infrastructure projects is to decrease pressure on exisiting urban centres from the rural population who seeks to move to the cities. (Still literally hundreds of millions of people.)
Also China doesn’t need foreign human capital the way the US does. Even if China does work on scooping up foreign experts to head research departments and such, even if they are just there to increase the general quality of RnD the Chinese have such an enormous number of people doing anything that the US is probably only ahead in GDP because of legacy finance. Or at least you can’t tell me that currently a Chinese factory and a Chinese worker is only 25% as productive as the US is if we look at the GDP to Population ratio.
If you want to pinpoint an actual big social issue in China, instead of housing overproduction look at how migrant workers live as essentially second class citizens due to the way the bureaucracy is structured.
No.19328 KONTRA
>>19297I think we actually discussed this in class once and the lecturer told us that China is currently in its “Star trek phase”. Utopias, exploration, humans living better thanks to technology, solarpunk, the final frontier etc.
They have a positive outlook on AI making their lives easier in the long run instead of taking our jobs/exterminating humans etc.
I’m honestly a bit jelous because it’d be nice to just genuinely feel positive about the future I think.
Probably said this before but during class one of the example sentences was “China’s economy keeps getting better and better year by year. What about Hungary’s?” and we all looked at the teacher and then lowered our heads in despair. (Even though we were averaging a 3-4% GDP growth afaik so it’s not like it’s fucking over for this country (it is) but we have internalised a pessimistic narrative about the future and it’s a paradigm that’s hard to let go.)
Whenever I see a newly renovated public space or building, my first thought is that “Okay, but what about the upkeep? How long will it take for it to fall into disrepair? What’s the point?” and that’s not good.
No.19330 KONTRA
>>19327>>19328What flavor was that kool-aid you drank?
No.19332
>>19323>by far the highest part of it is due to cement production. About 14% vs. global average of 5%To be fair, they had a lot of railways and highways and buildings to built, but the returns of such infrastructure investments have diminished to western levels, without the rate showing down. Put bluntly, they misallocate capital to prop up GDP.
No.19348
>>19328So it's true what they say?
You Hungarians suck major Xi dick because you believe you are some far away descendants of the Han-Chinese? Like unironically Han the Hun in Hungarian?
Do you think this will make your own borked Orbanomics great again, for example not having to pay Western prices for low quality groceries while getting Eastern wages as pay?
Did you try not behaving like spit-slurfing serfs before all that too for once?
No.19349
>>19323>by far the highest part of it is due to cement productionIt is known. Your point being? Are you suggesting instead of building infrastructure China should just switch to a primitivist society?
>>19328>Okay, but what about the upkeep?Upkeep in might become quite a challenge in a couple years for China as well I assume.
No.19350
>>19348The Hungarian as such is an opportunist. He is equipped with a farmer's low cunning and makes use of whatever situation arises. He abhors rules and established processes. He abstains from communicating along established channels of reporting. He seeks creative excuses. He tries to outplay one authority against the other, and thus, he hates when the authorities communicate. He is vengeful and seeks petty revenge for real and perceived slights.
This national character should be sufficient to explain the ambivalent position Hungary takes between Beijing, Brussels and Moscow, playing the three against each other and trying to profit from it.
It is also why Hungary is so very useful to China, which very much does have long term strategic planning.
No.19351 KONTRA
>>19350Is this from some 1850s Habsburg civil servant handbook?
No.19352 KONTRA
>>19332Btw the diminishing returns on infrastructure investment in Mainland China is why the Belt and Road Initiative is important domestically for China. It’s a mess of contracts and financing but ultimately it allows China to export a huge amount of its construction capacity without having to reduce it which would cause unemployment.
No.19362
>>19352When will the Budapest-Belgrade railway see return on invest?
Doesn't matter much to China, they don't pay for it.>>19351Those k&k-beurocrats must have made interesting experiences in Hódmezővásárhelykutasipuszta and I guess they would not have been as mild as I have been.
No.19363 KONTRA
>>19362Considering that the last time I heard about the project it was about to completely collapse, probably never.
No.19367
>>19363https://magyarnemzet.hu/belfold/2024/04/bejelentettek-mikor-keszul-el-a-budapest-belgrad-gyorsvasutIs the last I know. It still won't be worse than German infrastructure projects (BER, Stuttgart 21), but you are right, it will never see return on invest. Still profitable for China.