It was very interesting to contrast the speeches of Putin (particularly) and Xi with the ones coming out of the Western bloc representatives (not to mention the “Reset” megalomaniacs).

Sure, we should assume that all of them are politico-diplomatic speeches edited, when not composed in whole, by professional PR/marketing/propaganda writers, liberally sprinkled with platitudes and seductive, when not deceptive, propositions. And yet the contrast is informative.

About the “Munich-esque Davos” article, I think its only value is in the title, in recognising the approximate parallel to the 2007 speech, the rest sounds like annoying dithyramb from an unbridled optimist or an overconfident patriot.

I recommend people to read the transcripts in full. From national media you will only get tiny pieces suitably spun to push the local agenda. (This article is, at best, a limited summary.)
Full address by Putin: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/64938
Full address by Xi: http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2021-01/25/c_139696610.htm

Finally, can you imagine what a Biden speech would have been like ;^)?

LMAO @ “ideological imperialism”.

As animalogic mentioned, by looking at the effective results of so many US regime-change interventions and “sponsorships” around the world we realise that for the US, ideology is just the excuse and rhetoric, the foundation upon which the “moral mandate” to rule the world is constructed (the US “exceptionalism”).

The Western empire (US + Judea + vassals) is an economic, cultural, and military empire, like so many before it. Its ideology (so often summarised in slogans: “democracy”, “freedom”, “human rights”, “equality”, …, materialism, multiculturalism, disgenics, sexual depravity, …, ;^) is circumscribed to the sphere of mainstream, i.e. state, public opinion.

You bring interesting examples, Weaver1. You are right about many believing in the ideology. Many do so honestly even. Part of the point I wanted to make was that it is better to judge results, rather than intentions (whether they are honest or hypocritical).

As for the mentioned cases, except for Brazil, it is very telling to note that all of them were geopolitically not aligned with the US (and Bolivia and Venezuela are democracies, however many deficiencies they may have).

I’m not sure what you are referring to in the case of Brazil. The old military junta or something recent? If the former, then AFAIU, in the coup of 1964 the existing government was from the Left. Because of Cold War-era dynamics in Latin America the traditional (say, iron-forging and coal-mining rather than libertine and neo-liberal) Left was typically very critical of the US (it goes hand-in-hand with their criticism of imperialism; yes, in Latin America the traditional non-commie Left was fairly nationalistic, certainly when compared to the current globalist, neo-liberal Left of the West). So, if the US did intervene or “sponsored” someone during the coup of ’64 in Brazil, then it was the military against the democratic government. Reportedly, the US had warships in the Atlantic prepared to assist in the overthrow. How much influence it actually had on events I’m not knowledgeable enough to say. What I can say is that, under the justification of countering communism, the US, directly or indirectly, economically or militarily, rhetorically or kinetically, rightly or wrongly, supported several military coups against democratically-elected governments, not less in Latin America. Which I think illustrates the point I made in my original comment.

Finally, to try and answer your question more directly, I would like to mention that wars tend to be very profitable for certain powerful groups of interests in the MIIC, finance, energy, and government sectors. Needless to say, this contrasts sharply with the “profit” for the majority of the population, which, as someone said already, largely funds, fights, and dies in them.

Personally I would give my support to totalitarian utilitarian cosmist one world government dictatorship, which would put all humanitys resources in the fanatic quest of reaching the stars, to make humanity a space faring civilization in the next hundred years, but maybe totalitarian is too much?

This odd statement-question gave me pause. Having quietly read in the order of 1000s of comments in this forum I had imagined AltanBakshi to be a grounded, rather than stars-bound, Buddhist. Are you saying that you would indeed give your support for one such globally totalitarian “cosmist” project?

At least cosmism as a dream is better for the nations and peoples of the world than progressive dream of the world of the tomorrow.

What would be better than spread humanity to other planets, and at the same time spread the biosphere of our dear mother Earth(Prithvi) to distant stars?

Surely such struggle for conquest of space would be more moral goal, than shallow consumerism of modern post-industrisl society…

It could be, yet not too much morality is needed to improve upon the state of affairs in certain parts of our materialistic world. The thing that surprised me, though, about your statement-question was how readily the nationalism-bent Buddhist I had imagined seemed to commit to the uncertain, open-ended, “fanatical quest” (as you put it yourself) of a global dictatorship. A benevolent one, of course. (Alas, the translation of benevolence to good is hardly a given.)

Although I asked specifically about your position, I find the more general comments about Buddhism interesting, thanks.

Also Im not a nationalist, I despise petty nationalism, in my view its shortsighted. South Korea is an excellent example. Those fools so despise their culturally close neighbours, that they are ready to become a fake copy of America. Same with the Eastern European butthurt belt, if they would have a common sense, or any sense of Realpolitik, they could play USA and Russia against each other and gain much. Its extremely clear that Russia is the weaker power, and doesnt have will, like American elites, to spread their way of life, or armies to other countries, except in the case of former USSR, but petty nationalism makes them blind.

Well, when I said “nationalism” I certainly did not mean the “petty nationalism” that you described. Also I did not try to call you a “nationalist”: I intended “nationalism-bent” as in “tending or inclined toward nationalism”. Seemingly I was wrong, but perhaps I should explain anyway (I have some time to waste now):

Clearly, extremes and excesses are unhealthy. A problem with all “-isms” is that they tend to be taken as generic solution-recipes for any problem, in any context, at any time, which leads to excesses. In fact that’s pretty close to what a “Fooism” is in vulgar practice: the systematic or dogmatic predilection or application of “Foo” whenever a choice needs to be made or a problem needs to be solved. Unbalanced, the process often leads to extremes. Nationalism is not immune to this. In fact, I’m pretty sure that a standard strategy for globalists to fight nationalism is what we could call “hyper-nationalism” or “tribalism”: an exacerbated form in which past rivalries and grievances, present differences and disputes, and projected fears or envy for the future are stressed in opposition to internal unification and external collaboration. Ultimately, an insidious form of divide et impera. I believe I have seen this strategy employed (not a few times) in this very forum.

For that reason, I try to avoid labeling myself to unfamiliar people as a bare nationalist if I have the time for a more elaborate discussion. Correspondingly, I avoid calling other people outright nationalists if brevity is not of the essence. Which is why I opted for “nationalism-bent”. Nevertheless, conversing always in fully-unpacked form is impractical, and given that actual sociopolitical betterment of my people and like-minded people across the world is my intention, and not just philosophy, I have no problem packing some subtlety and risk and speaking directly of nationalism and nationalists when nation needs to be defended or globalism attacked.

As I see it, nationalism is not a destination, and not even a designated road, but more like a guiding star: by following it we move away from our current dilapidated sociopolitical landscape towards a more natural and fertile ground. So someone “inclined/bent towards nationalism” is, e.g., someone moving (or intending a move) away from globalisation and towards stronger nationhood, which doesn’t imply the kind of “pettiness” or “tribalism” you pointed at. There is no need to shove nationalism into the corner of petty tribalism.

Actually, I don’t accept your example of South Korea as example of nationalism. Nation is defined by people first, principally by their ethnicity and culture; in short, by long-lasting generational information both genetic and social. I assign a heavier weight to the genetic term. Borders do contribute to the equation, but they are non-leading corrections and time-dependent: only after long enough time of physical separation a people could meaningfully drift apart as nations. Thus I consider Korea is a single nation, though there are two countries. A Korean nationalism would includes the people of both countries.

Perhaps things are not so clear-cut for your example of Eastern Europe’s “acrimonious belt”, as they are (to me) for Korea, but my view is along the same lines. Ukrainians and Belorussians, in particular, seem overall close-enough to Russians that a rift between (the majority of) those peoples looks highly artificial. In this regard, I would mention that while I reject the rancorous and opportunistic behaviour of Ukrainian “tribalists”, for the benefit of third-party atlanticists, I am also repelled by and fail to see the wisdom of many Russians who often gloat at the miseries of their naive and misled cousins, if not brothers. Yes, they largely called such misfortune upon themselves, and mistakes ought to be pointed at and acknowledged so that one can learn from them, but half-brothers they remain (in general, I disagree with Karlin about stupidity, that is, stupid/foolish people, needing to be mercilessly attacked: there has to be room for mercy for the mistaken but humble brothers, not imprudent or indulgent, but still honest commiseration, which is easy to feel for family, and perhaps not too difficult for co-ethnics) and Russians have much to gain from countering discord and antagonism and instead fostering reconciliation and goodwill among the people of both sides. Well, maybe that’s just difficult to do in the middle of a climate of hostilities, when loyalty is paramount, with the memory of fallen co-nationals still fresh. And it’s not like Russia is presently in a position to afford much magnanimity, either. Pity.

Or do you think the global elites are moving to China and don’t care if it defeats the US?

I’m interested in seeing statistics regarding global capital elites acquiring residence permits, residential property, learning the language, marrying ethnic local citizens, adopting children, changing their names or surnames, and other methods of legal safeguard to insert themselves into Chinese society and China’s future (from the inside).

“coup” accusations

The liberast Armenian diaspora is going to be insufferable again, aren’t they?

But what about proper Armenians in Armenia? I can’t imagine someone as apparently incompetent as Pashinyan being very popular after the debacle of N-K, but they themselves put him in power. I wonder, has the new reality made them reconsider?

There is an opposition rally underway in Yerevan’s Freedom Square, while Pashinyan is giving a speech at Republic Square

Relevant to my question, but the “opposition rally” link just leads to the same “emergency parliamentary session” article.

410,000 Ukrainians became Russian citizens. The passport-giving program in the LDNR is evidently advancing at an increasing clip. This makes the prospect of a Ukrainian “Operation Storm” increasingly unfeasible.

What do you mean? Perhaps you wanted to write “unnecessary”? Presumably a big majority of those new citizens are ethnically- and fealty-wise very close to Russians already, not the less from the LDNR area, as you seem to notice by bringing up that “passport-giving program”. With less such people in LNDR, the Ukraine would, one supposes, find it more, not less, feasible to “storm” it.

There is an “Afroshop” a few blocks from where I live. When I paid them a visit, the female shopkeeper asked me, in English, “What are you doing here?” in a surly tone.

Disrespectful.

I happen to live in the part of Moscow that happens to have the highest density of Blacks in Russia.

Hm. I feel a sudden need to learn Russian…

works quite well for non-political things.

Oh? Are you saying we are allowed to have non-politicised things again?

the sanctity of their democracies.

Apostates, schismatics, and heresiarchs! Everyone knows the only One True Church of Democracy has its seat in Washington!
…is roughly their thinking, I venture.

Urbit is semi-anonymous, it seems to me

Only as long as you are able to hide your IRL identity when purchasing, “mining”, or otherwise acquiring a network identity and then hide your origin when using the network. IIUC, “unidentified” nodes are anonymous or rather pseudonymous by design but also untrusted (from the POV of the network) and valueless (from the identity-economy POV).

Since a provider can’t turn it off, the authorities have to enforce the ban by confiscating your Urbit ID.

The network is p2p so there is no one provider (like, say, Gab Inc. or Parler Inc.) to “turn it off”, but I think it is incorrect to imply that the only alternative is “confiscating your private key(s)”. For example they could mandate the installation of network packet inspection (and disruption, Chinese-firewall-style, or maybe just logging, for judicial proceedings) devices into internet operators. Or, since the software is remotely updatable, they could force the company behind the software to push an update which gives the government a censor role. Or, since there is a trust relationship between nodes (those associated to an identity, not the “hairy asteroid” nodes which are explicitly untrusted and consequently unprivileged nodes), they could buy or co-opt privileged nodes to try to compromise downstream nodes. Etc.

Warning, rant:

but I don’t know much about it yet.

I’m pretty sure none of the very based people recently shilling for it have a good technical understanding of what the system is (no, it’s not a chat application, nor a distributed “social media”, and don’t bother with the few pages of “introduction”: they contain basically just salesmanship babble and little to no information). A small sampling, I promise, without animus:
– Spandrell, perceptive blogger and someone capable of mastering the limitless hanzi, and, if I have to guess, a generic JavaShit blogrammer (sorry, this is redundant, and not all his fault, I’m sure: lameness is built into js) who vehemently rejected contributing to the riches of one liberal jew so that his efforts can instead accrue to the riches of his favourite monarchist jew.
– Ludwig, someone with a rather sharp geopolitical eye, who considers himself instantly “sold” at the price of a bunch of vaporous techno-utopic promises.
– Karlin, our very excellent political commentator, statistician, and generous host inter alia, of, if I’m not mistaken, political “science” training, and with an affinity for futurism/posthumanism escapades.

Very fine men whose opinions I have come to value richly, but they are not exactly offering the technical analysis that would convince me at any rate. (But, OTOH, it’s not like e.g. the cryptocoin mob was convinced by technical arguments. No, 98.41% of them don’t really care about a digital decentralised currency, they just want to make lots of easy money. Perhaps Spandrell and co. have gotten hold of some PKI infrastructure/identity-issuer keys, but I doubt it.)

Honestly, the system sounds interesting and I would read on it myself, if I had enough time and wasn’t so strongly dissuaded by their ridiculous penchant for the coinage of unwarranted neologisms, the perversion of existing technical names, and their apparent predilection for what atm I can best describe as faux arcana. “Operating function”, “star”, “ship”, “pier”, “jam/cue”, “mug”, “fort”, “rune”, “gene”, “mark”, “duct”, “vane”, “mold”, “vase”, “king/serf”, and innumerably more monosyllables, best when four-type long, fuck! It looks to me purposely anti-pedagogical. Indeed, like one “handshakeworthy” individual in the same thread referenced above by Max Payne, I also guessed that the obfuscation may have been deliberate, as a selection mechanism:

…I believe because initially they wanted to speak to a very small group of [hackers] who saw what was on it and were intrigued to learn more. Starting from a small clique of like-minded people.

[…] I also think the esotericism of the programming languages is also to prevent anyone from having a go [at a competing alternative based on the same design and/or code], and to limit people who can program in these languages to just those who are heavily invested in them.

OTOH, we know that moldbug really likes to coin terminology or borrow it from seemingly unrelated fields (“repeater/kernel”, “brahmin/vaisya/…”, “armiger/yeoman/…”, etc.) in an effort to disconnect the reader from pre-conceived notions, that is, in an effort to make him more receptive to those notions he intends to promote. It can be a reasonable strategy when discussing aspects of a system for which no good or established terminology exists or when certain facets of it need to be highlighted and brought forth by way of metaphors. But I don’t think it is this case: there are good technical terms for almost all the concepts employed and the new names don’t bring any added value: node/instance, infrastructure, governance, routing, dns, address, data/file type, ast, opcode, rpc, bootloading stages, (de)serialisation, packeting, service, master/slave, etc. In fact the names chosen seem so gratuitous that they remind me of that sleight of hand often used by marketers, merchants, and salesmen: a disguise for the purpose of inducing a sense of novelty/fashion, or forestalling scrutiny, or avoiding association with unflattering or damning facts. Like calling propaganda “public relations”, datacentres “cloud”, programs “sdde”, computerised “smart”, new “next-generation”, extra-governmental policy consultants and lobbyists “thought barrels”, perverts “sexual minorities”, Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha “Windsor”, Bronstein “Trotsky”, Bauer “Rothschild”, etc.

What was his motive?

Likely the principal motive was disassociating the company behind the product from his (in)famous reputation; notice that he didn’t just leave the company, but promised: “I will not contribute code to it”, “I will not write nor speak publicly about it”, “I won’t be back”, “a level and neutral platform”, “not a political structure”. I suppose he did most of the hacking he wanted to do, meanwhile the investors are interested in payback. I guess they figured his reputation amongst “handshakeworthy society” could be an obstacle for the company. He still kept a significant fraction of “shares” though (in the company and in the identity-issuing pseudo-PKI business), so will be quite rich if the network gains popularity and people purchase keys.

This is an odd one. It may be bold, or foolish (how often are these entwined, confused). Trollish too, but you would be trolling “our side” as well! Mostly it is shitposty, I guess.

You had already argued for the global fertility curve transition(s) and it did not involve sjws or leftist indictments. That previous argumentation constitutes 2 of the 3 points made here (downward, cultural inflection, and upward, genetic inflection). You now add sjwism to the equation. And what are the consequences? IIUC, according to the Cortesian argument offered it would change the hypothetical future fertility differential in favor of westerners/whites from “superior” to “much superior”, thus you trollishly spin it in baizuo terms.

So the gambit consists in trading now cohesion, trust, and security in the social realm; fertility, intelligence, educational quality and success in the human-capital realm; political and (eventually) military power in the realm of statehood; for a (possibly large) increase in the fertility delta in 1 or 2 generations. This predicated on the validity of the hypothesis that culture-driven, regressive, and genetic-driven, progressive, fertility transitions are global phenomena taking place in phase-shifted synchrony and that they will continue unswerving. In particular, as Passer By noted, this postulates universal applicability, and that the progressive genetic pressure is much stronger than the regressive cultural/environmental pressure. All of this in the context of declining white fraction not only worldwide but also in some western countries, and what looks like an incipient west-east economic inflection.

Call me conservative, but as an intentional strategy it sounds farfetched and riskfraught. So much so that probably only a psychopath or a gambling maniac (or perhaps a visionary rara avis with AK’s bold, trollish, and acute post-malthusian foresight 😉 would consciously pursue it. And while there are indeed some psychopathic personalities who likely do further “the woke” as a consciously selfish strategy, they do not represent the interests of the white/western population (the whites in this class only represent themselves, they are the already very powerful who would just as contently rule over a nation of mestizos, mulattoes, or blacks).

Ok, so you didn’t say anything about intention. The motive of the phenomenon may be called a confluence of emergent dynamics (“affluence silences the voice of duty”, “decadence is a moral and spiritual disease, resulting from too long a period of wealth and power, producing cynicism, decline of religion, pessimism and frivolity”) and intent, or simply left unspecified, but in any case to paint sjwism as ultimately beneficial for westernites looks a very hard sell. Even if “breeder genes” eventually do come to the rescue, there is no telling how much, by then, will be left to salvage.

with the effects not even uniformly negative

So what are examples of “not uniformly negative” effects of SJWism? Uh… Rising revenue from “grievance studies” tuition? I can see some positive effects of traditional Left ideology (the one that still cared about workers and class). I can see none in this disease.

allowing them scope to come to a symbiosis with the pathogen.

The ones who manage to establish a mutually beneficial relationship with the cancer have become carcinogenic themselves. Furthermore, it is not quite a symbiosis, they are in competition for virulence.

Bur the context in this article is clearly not related to galactic conquest. Just boring old families on our boring blue earth. It is dystopian and depressing to think that artificial breeding would be what’s needed to raise fertility to healthy levels again, which, I guess, was Blinky Bill’s tacit implication.

Seeing this upbeat reaction to in-vitro human breeding I’m reminded of your joking admission of being “a little traumatized by life, which may have led to some unusual opinions and interests”. Non-jokingly, I’m starting to feel a little pity! :‑)

Basically, it’s a mirror of “Coffee House” demographics patterns.

Are you implying some meaning in this correlation? Do you see correlation between the “psychopathic” (see nyborg’s comment) traits of management careerists and the geeky types of utilitarianism/futurism/posthumanism?

There is also negative correlation in the “Burning man 2014” category, which I guess is related less to the aforementioned “geeks” and more to liberal/libertine/hippie types (“hippie” might be a misleading characterisation: it was once supposed to imply non-conformism, nowadays hardly so). Do you see this negative correlation as an outlier or as “positive anti-correlation” instead?

And of course, the Chinese word for assimilation(do Indians even have a word?) is 同化. Perhaps a transliteration might help: it means “same language.” Assimilation in Chinese is quite literally, explicitly “to make the same language.”

Not my intention to contradict when I’m not at all versed in the tongue (or “eye”, in this case, I suppose ;‑). But doesn’t the first ideogram 同 mean “same, similar”, while the second 化 means roughly “process, making, -fication”? Where does the “language” meaning come from? Naively, I would expect the juxtaposition to mean something like “process of making same/similar, same-ification”, that is, “assimilation”.

Continuing from https://www.unz.com/akarlin/war-in-donbass-update/#comment-4552343

It’s from the phonetic implication:

话(huà) – words
同化(huà) – to melt, become one

So together, “melt into the same words”

I see, thanks. So how canonical is incorporating phonetic correlations into the presumed meaning of words?

We heard recently (IIRC from our 三王国 romantic) how one defining virtue of the 中文 linguistic system was its capacity for unifying many (spoken) languages through a common ideographic writing system. Of course, the point would be that the meaning extracted visually would be the same regardless of how different people are accustomed to verbalise it. But then including phonetic correlations into meaning would directly undermine this quality! Furthermore, even assuming one master pronunciation, there are several more 汉字 with the same huà/huā reading, what’s so special about 话? And aren’t we missing meaning from some 同-homophone too, then?

I know that such associations of meaning could happen regardless of overarching designs*, and although I may sound a bit like advocatus diaboli, what I’m trying to puzzle out is how standard it is that 同化 should mean “make same language” as opposed to that being your (or your collinguals) “dialectal” interpretation, and whether such phonemic->semantic process is a widespread phenomenon in 中文.

(*) Although not really the same, an example from Japanese: AIUI, they have these words called 熟字訓 (jukujikun) whose pre-existent sound and meaning was given a written form by choosing arbitrary 漢字 exclusively for their sound (as if they were phonemes). Then, in a few cases, as time wore on, some of the meaning of the word would spill into, say, one of the (previously semantically unrelated) kanji of the jukujikun. Afterwards, new words would be created where the kanji in question is now presumed to carry the new meaning.

This same person – and others such – also rail against the alleged tribalism and nepotism of Indian Americans as a reason for them making it, entirely ironically missing their own extreme tribalism – and deep ignorance – in making these comments.

You’re arguing here that people who object to Indian nepotism are themselves nepotistic. This is a classic Freudian tactic. If someone says something homophobic that must mean they’re a closeted gay.

Accusing Indians of tribalism is one of the weaker insults hurled at them. That’s going easy on them. I would accuse the Indian diaspora of being parasitic, unscrupulous, cowardly, corrupt, and shameless. Tribalism is low on my list of complaints against them.

So one then is to believe that Sundar Pichai became head of Google because Larry Page, Sergei Brin, Eric Schmidt et al were crypto-Indians. Similarly with Satya Nadella who was personally groomed by Bill Gates and turned Microsoft around after the disastrous Steve Ballmer. And apparently scientists like these 12 Indians deeply involved in NASA Mars missions https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/other/meet-the-indians-on-the-mars-perseverance-team/ar-BB1e4aye got their jobs (and many accolades) simply because JPL is sone Indian stronghold (rather than one that attracts highly motivated, intelligent scientists worldwide. There are many other nationalities who also work at JPL).

These same commentators would rail against Wokeism – which is identity politics run amok for the benefit of grifters and power hungry opportunists of all colors – but then apparently objective merit based achievements in the US – which they would otherwise support – in which both EA and SA (Indians) are over-represented is due to “nepotism”.

Silicon Valley Jews hire Indians because they’re a useful golem against white people.

You are simply picking a select number of accomplished individuals and implying they represent Indian people as a whole. What does the ability of 12 NASA scientists tells us about the ability of Indian-Americans in general? Not much. You do realize this method of yours is not any more informative than the one you are attributing to others, namely stereotyping all Indians based on how India as a whole appears. Among Indian Americans, gas station owners or restaurant owners are more representative than the select people you are mentioning.

Also, what is it with online Indians always lumping themselves in with East Asians? I have never in real life come across the idea that these two groups of people are similar, yet often I see online Indians trying to piggyback on East Asian accomplishment. People used to accuse the poster Thomm of being Indian, one time I saw him doing the same thing, so now I also believe he is Indian. Newsflash guy, East Asians in the U.S. also have the same complaint about Indians. Look up Ryu vs Intel Corporation if you don’t believe me. In contrast one of the most common stereotypes about East Asians in the U.S. is that they don’t cause any trouble(the others are that they study too hard, are passive, worship money, and are good at math).

It’s not just the nepotism either. Indians doctors are overrepresented among medical fraudsters and pill mills. Indians have extremely low civic engagement. Some Indians, like Sikhs for example, demand society accommodate their foreign customs. There is also the simple fact that large numbers of the Indian diaspora are openly anti-white.

I won’t go into your point about meritocracy. Ron Unz himself has written good articles on the subject which I recommend you read.

Clearly family based businesses, like small shops or motels etc are “nepotistic” in the same way that any privately held organization – eg the Trump Organization – is nepotistic. (Even publicly owned businesses eg Ford, Walmart were nepotistic and indeed quite exclusionary to people of the wrong color for quite a while. THAT apparently is not nepotistic or tribal.

Nepotism can extend to any form of social organization. Knowing the right people is one of the more surefire ways of getting a job. This creates ample opportunity for favoritism. Mencius Moldbugman describes Indian practice better than I:

https://twitter.com/moldbugman/status/1137961234722988032

Reading this blog then has reinforced my observation about many people: that they can be highly intellectual and discerning about certain topics but fall back into primitive drooling tribalism and idiocy outside their topic of expertise. In other words, the logic, commitment to reason and inquiry they display in their area is cast aside in favor of their raw emotions and deep prejudices outside it.

Or maybe people have come into contact with real life Indians and know how they operate, especially when there are large clusters of them.

In any case, as an Anglo-Saxon, I find it prejudicial, in the legal sense. How can the defendant not appear guilty if he is stuck in a cage like an ape at a 19th century zoo?

John Pilger reports as witness of Julian Assange’s extradition trial at London’s Old Bailey (October 2020):

Q: Having watched Julian Assange’s trial first-hand, can you describe the prevailing atmosphere in the court?

The prevailing atmosphere has been shocking. I say that without hesitation; I have sat in many courts and seldom known such a corruption of due process; this is due revenge. Putting aside the ritual associated with ‘British justice’, at times it has been evocative of a Stalinist show trial. One difference is that in the show trials, the defendant stood in the court proper. In the Assange trial, the defendant was caged behind thick glass, and had to crawl on his knees to a slit in the glass, overseen by his guard, to make contact with his lawyers. His message, whispered barely audibly through face masks, WAS then passed by post-it the length of the court to where his barristers were arguing the case against his extradition to an American hellhole.

Consider this daily routine of Julian Assange, an Australian on trial for truth-telling journalism. He was woken at five o’clock in his cell at Belmarsh prison in the bleak southern sprawl of London. The first time I saw Julian in Belmarsh, having passed through half an hour of ‘security’ checks, including a dog’s snout in my rear, I found a painfully thin figure sitting alone wearing a yellow armband. He had lost more than 10 kilos in a matter of months; his arms had no muscle. His first words were: ‘I think I am losing my mind’.

I tried to assure him he wasn’t. His resilience and courage are formidable, but there is a limit. That was more than a year ago. In the past three weeks, in the pre-dawn, he was strip-searched, shackled, and prepared for transport to the Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey, in a truck that his partner, Stella Moris, described as an upended coffin. It had one small window; he had to stand precariously to look out. The truck and its guards were operated by Serco, one of many politically connected companies that run much of Boris Johnson’s Britain.

The journey to the Old Bailey took at least an hour and a half. That’s a minimum of three hours being jolted through snail-like traffic every day. He was led into his narrow cage at the back of the court, then look up, blinking, trying to make out faces in the public gallery through the reflection of the glass. He saw the courtly figure of his dad, John Shipton, and me, and our fists went up. Through the glass, he reached out to touch fingers with Stella, who is a lawyer and seated in the body of the court.

[…]

http://johnpilger.com/articles/eyewitness-to-the-trial-and-agony-of-julian-assange

But then including phonetic correlations into meaning would directly undermine this quality! Furthermore, even assuming one master pronunciation, there are several more 汉字 with the same huà/huā reading, what’s so special about 话? And aren’t we missing meaning from some 同-homophone too, then?

I think that there is, in theory, a limited range of phonetic alteration from the characters. This is likely what Qin attempted to suppress; I don’t actually know if it is completely possible to prevent meaning drift if phonetics is left completely independent and although I’m not a linguist enough to say this definitively, I believe that’s how Kanji developed and even though it often uses characters similar or identical to Chinese, meaning drift has happened.

That said, phonetics is an important part of Chinese written language now(I notice, at least casually, that kanji seems to avoid the phonetic components). In modern Chinese, phonetic-semantic characters(also known as sound-meaning characters) are the majority(I’ve read 80%) of Chinese characters and allow some degree of ambiguity to happen. The ever simplification of phonetics has led to some interesting results:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den

The poem was written in the 1930s by the Chinese linguist Yuen Ren Chao as a linguistic demonstration. The poem is coherent and grammatical in Classical Chinese, but due to the number of Chinese homophones, it becomes difficult to understand in oral speech. In Mandarin, the poem is incomprehensible when read aloud, since only four syllables cover all the words of the poem.

At any rate, in terms of its actual utility function, the semantic function helps with clarity and for the most part, it doesn’t get too ambiguous with the phonetic component. I’ll give an example below:

根 is tree/plant root, or gēn. Its inherits its phonetic character from 艮, a Kangxi radical, a building block for Chinese, with a similar sound of gèn. The left radical to 根 is 木(mu) or wood, so together you have “something with the sound of gen, which is wood”, which is a “root.” Someone who did not know the sound-radical would be able to tell that it refers to plantlife, but would be less able to clarify the specific part of the plant. Usually from the context of the sentence, a reader can confirm that it is referring to “root.”

Then, in a few cases, as time wore on, some of the meaning of the word would spill into, say, one of the (previously semantically unrelated) kanji of the jukujikun. Afterwards, new words would be created where the kanji in question is now presumed to carry the new meaning.

Chinese language is indeed a huge collection of such meanings, clarifications, misunderstandings, etc. I did some research before on the specific characters, and I believe there are notes like “this was a sound corruption that was eventually accepted into normalized use for a new meaning.”

Replying to Daniel Chieh, from https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-146/#comment-4559341

Interesting. Though in that case the drift may be even more limited than you thought. (I looked this up.)

Indeed, in Japanese 鬼 nowadays seems to generally mean a rather physical demon/troll. Qua word. But qua kanji or kanji component it can still carry the more ethereal meaning “spirit, ghost” from Chinese. For example:
– 餓鬼 (gaki) which is the hungry ghost or preta from Buddhism that AltanBakshi had mentioned;
– 幽鬼 (yūki) or 亡魂 (bōkon), spirit/soul of the deceased;
– 鬼火 (onibi), ignis fatuus.

Some funny cases:
– 餓鬼, as above, was at some point used also for “brat” or “unruly kid”; nowadays though they more commonly use the phonetic alphabet for this word, lessening the ghoulish connotation;
– 債鬼 (saiki) is a cruel usurer or bill collector, literally “debt ghoul/demon”.

Cheers.

Nope, as mentioned I looked up most of that info. My superficial knowledge of Japanese is ex ex (meaning, it stems from a past girlfriend ;‑) and a short study of the language I did during the period of her exchange studies at my university. Although a rather short affair, both the study and the relationship, they left me with a deep appreciation for that language and its Chinese characters (to say nothing of Japanese girls ;^).

I join mine to the voices welcoming the dissident thoughts of an actual 日本人 free-thinking 釘 (surely 1 or 2 remain unhammered ;‑). (Or any other oriental thoughts, of course.)

Thanks. So 士 (shi) in Japanese would carry the “aristocratic warrior/gentleman” (i.e. samurai) meaning. They certainly seem to have diverged, with Japanese leaning somewhat more toward the “warrior” notion than the Chinese “scholar” (e.g. 飛行士, is an aviation 士, a pilot; 騎士, is an equestrian 士, a knight), but I guess we can see some commonality if we focus on the “gentleman/aristocrat” and “scholar/ministerial officer” parts on each side. For example, in both societies they comprised a class above the commoners. (Also interesting is that already in Chinese 武士 (wushi) [war officer(?)/warrior/soldier] we find the bushi of Bushidō, 武士道, the chivalrous Way of the Samurai.)

But interestingly the most common kanji for samurai qua word is apparently 侍, which in both languages seems to carry the “attendant, servant” meaning, perhaps reflecting their subordination to the noble class of Daimyō lords.

The research posted above shows women are not more ethical as soon as you factor in a tendency to conformity. They support hate speech laws much more than men do. Here’s another piece of research: https://eml.berkeley.edu/~sdellavi/wp/GenderGenerosityAERPP2013Final.pdf

‘When put under pressure, women may give more, and contribute more to public goods because they are more likely to be on the margin, and hence sensitive to an extra push. But they may say no if given a simple option to do so’

Reminds me of an old post by Spandrell:

interesting post from Psychology Today (yes, the place where Satoshi Kanazawa used to blog before being busted for having good taste in women).

Read the whole thing, but let me stress the important points:

• When men watch wrongdoers getting punished, there is activation in reward centers of their brains, whereas women’s brains show activation in pain centers, suggesting that they feel empathy for suffering even when it is deserve (Tania Singer and collaborators).
• Women are more likely to factor personal cost into decisions about whether to punish an unfair stranger, which suggests that women are more context-sensitive, and men adhere to principles (Catherine Eckel and Philip Grossman).
• Women were twice as generous in a game that involved dividing $10 with a stranger (Eckel and Grossman, again).

Ok read this carefully and tell me how it is not obvious that women should not be allowed to vote or be voted. Women do not belong in political society. Period.
[…]

https://spandrell.com/2011/11/17/women-dont-belong-in-political-society

Other items from the (quite PC-worded) article referenced by Spandrell (https://archive.is/J7gbq):

• When looking at pictures of immoral acts, women’s judgments of severity correlate with higher levels of activation in emotion centers of the brain, suggesting concern for victims, whereas men show higher activation in areas that might involve the deployment of principles (Carla Harenski and collaborators).
[…]
• Women are more likely than men to think it is okay to imprison a person on trumped up changes in order to stop violent rioting in the streets (Fiery Cushman and Liane Young). But women are also less likely to endorse diverting a runaway trolley down an alternate track where it will kill one person instead of five (John Mikhail).

I skimmed over those threads. I suppose you are bringing the subject of language learning ability versus IQ and the correlation or utility curve thereof. But are you trying to make any point in particular?

Since 三国之浪漫士 (just invented this) was also asking me about learning Japanese, I could offer a comment or two.

Fist I should repeat that I’m not an expert at all and certainly didn’t go anywhere near the field of Classical Chinese/Japanese mentioned by Razib Khan’s commenter. However, in my observation there are at least two aspects that should greatly help in learning extensive and ideographic languages like C/J (in comparison with, say, other more grammatically complex but phonemic/alphabetic languages) and those are memory and “high cortical connectivity”. With the first I mean simply the availability of a decently-sized pool of mnemosubstrate for storage of concepts. With the second I mean the ability to efficiently draw connections and relationships between concepts, rapidly creating a firm scaffolding for new concepts (ideograms and their properties, in this case) as they become supported by and themselves support other concepts in a coherent structure. I’m sure that these aspects of memorisation and reasoning play an important role in the compound we call intelligence, but they might not be the ones most directly associated with abstract mathematical and spacial thinking (i.e. real intelligence ;-). Furthermore, it’s not clear which are the IQ measurements that Khan claims are “not perfectly” correlated with language-learning ability, and how accurately they are supposed to capture these processes (actually, now I see Khan opined that facility with languages is not just “imperfectly” correlated but orthogonal to IQ scores).

Overall, though, my impression would be closer to that another of the commenters: one probably starts getting diminishing returns in terms of language-learning ability once a certain IQ threshold is reached. Following Gomes’ analogy, rather than CPU-bound, the process might be memory+bandwidth+switchboard-bound (or FPGA-bound ;-), so to speak.

Notice too that both Gomes and Khan may be biased in their opinions: Gomes thinks CJK learning is highly “g-loaded”, but he desisted due to the perceived difficulty, while Khan thinks it’s an orthogonal ability, but by own admission he is generally unskilled with languages. I wonder if Lazy Glossophiliac has written anything about this. Apparently he taught himself a bunch of languages, the latest one being Mandarin Chinese.

One thing in which I do tend to agree with Gomes, based my anecdotal experience, is that a difficult language may indeed serve as an evolutionary “filter” or selection-pressure mechanism: maybe not so much in the academic settings of which Gomes spoke, where other filters/barriers are already in place (or were anyway, before widespread anti-meritocratic policies), but certainly in society at large. There is also a different sense in which a difficult language may work as a filter/barrier: mastering a complex language demands high investment, and an extensive language moreover demands continuous investment. This leaves fewer resources to allocate into learning others. When a foreign language becomes a pathogenic vector, this costly hurdle may be better viewed as moat and bailey and motte. Chinese, Japanese (defences cracking only after decades of vassalage), Russian, Hungarian: check. Suomi: ?

Interesting. I went and looked at the Tai Kung Liu Tao and it turns out the word for charioteer used by Jiang Ziya even includes 士. So there we have another parallel. (Also, I’m now thinking that “scholar” may be a bit too specific [“scholar” makes me think of school/academia], so perhaps “specialist” or “expert” could be more widely applicable.)

Infogalactic says 战车/戰車 (zhànchē) for “chariot”, which incidentally is the Japanese for “tank” (the armoured vehicle). This would be “war car/carriage”, I guess. (It is amusing for me to discover now how 車 may be pictographically interpreted as a chariot’s cab viewed from above/below.) The version of the Liu Tao I found uses 武车/武車 (“martial” instead of “war”), and charioteers Tai Kung advises King Wu (confusingly, the king’s name is also 武) to call 武车之士/武車之士. 之 seems to be just a possessive particle (like の), so this would literally be “Specialist of the Martial-Carriage”. The English translation did use “warrior”, though, like me the other day.

While I read that chariots were operated by a crew of 3 (driver, archer, and a kind of halberdier), I find another hanzi/kanji curiosity: the driver was called 御者 (yu zhe) or 御車 (yu che), with 御 meaning “to drive/conduct/manage”, but that’s the same character which in Japanese serves as a kind of (slightly archaic) honorific prefix: 御機嫌よう (a salutation), 御太陽/お太陽 (“Oh Sun”, or “Sol-emn” ;‑).

I was wondering what took cavalry so long to replace chariots. Turns out they used to have rather small horses:

https://www.ancient-origins.net/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/Bronze-driver.jpg?itok=OdZOIxd-

Pretty good, though a bit of a mouthful LOL.

But maybe that’s that’s something that could happen with ideographic languages: concepts could be formed through a kind of meaning accretion:

In those of the northern hemisphere (on whose Ursprache there is very little data in the Eleventh Volume) the prime unit is not the verb, but the monosyllabic adjective. The noun is formed by an accumulation of adjectives. They do not say “moon,” but rather “round airy-light on dark” or “pale-orange of-the-sky” or any other such combination. In the example selected the mass of adjectives refers to a real object, but this is purely fortuitous. The literature of this hemisphere (like Meinong’s subsistent world) abounds in ideal objects, which are convoked and dissolved in a moment, according to poetic needs. At times they are determined by mere simultaneity.

The only issue is, as previously discussed, that those concepts can then seep into the component ideograms. After centuries, many characters are encrusted all over with the semantic sediments of the past. If not for the blessing of oblivion, they would eventually turn unwieldy, too shifty. Funes would have found it impossible to write Chinese.

I wonder what’s the rate of meaning growth of hanzi compared to alphabetic words. Would Chinese dictionaries grow at a greater rate than alphabetic ones, or vice versa, if they could be kept apart?

You are asking about my personal impressions as a student? If so, you can read some below (and in a previous reply to Blinky Bill), otherwise, please ignore it.

There’s also a backflow from Kanji to Chinese, besides the obvious ones e.g. Jap-specific 寿司 Sushi. The vocabs that acquired from Rangaku 蘭学 „Dutch learning“ or „Western learning“, Chinese vocab that were imported from West through Japanese

Of course. Actually, the other day when considering 武士/wushi/bushi I was just about to say that “while, for historical reasons, one might presume that the borrowing or influence of words is typically in the C->J direction, this isn’t clear in this case” and that “ultimately, it may be pointless to try to determine it, given that more or less the whole CJK stew was cooked in the same civilisational pot”.

And indeed, the case of ateji spellings (like 寿司) was one I recently brought up in discussion with Daniel Chieh. Just a while ago I was looking up “romance/romantic” and found 浪漫 (rōman). I’m not completely sure but it sounds like another ateji. It is also the same hanzi in C, so perhaps it’s another J->C import?

In math, Manifold is the generalized concept of a surface, such as Earth’s surface which is a curved surface
In Japanese its rendered as 多様体, exact same in meaning as English or German Mannigfa[l]tigkeit, or French Variété
In Chinese its rendered 流形, Flowing Shape, a more visual description

I like this evocative style of coinage more than literal translations, ceteris paribus. It feels more poetically arousing (even though such “poetic interpretation” may be entirely subjective or unintended); e.g. 風物詩. It has to be a new word though, I don’t really like ateji much, they fudther complicate the reading combinatorics.

The stirrup, which gives greater stability to a rider, has been described as one of the most significant inventions in the history of warfare, prior to gunpowder. As a tool allowing expanded use of horses in warfare, the stirrup is often called the third revolutionary step in equipment, after the chariot and the saddle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirrup

That was interesting, thanks. I even learned a bit (e.g. I now know 圓 also means “round/circle”, after the coin, and that 円 is a derivative form).

我想回家
不要勉強

These were recognisable to me. I got close to the first one ( ) and in the second there are two actual J words (but the second is a bit misleading). But are these grammatically-complete sentences? They rather look like those 4-letter Chinese aphorisms.

王阳明

Nice name.

Julian Assange has strongly implied that Seth Rich was the source of the DNC emails that cost Hillary Clinton the presidency. So if Seth Rich died in a totally random street killing not long afterward…

WikiLeaks and Assange have long prided themselves on always publishing truthful information and on protecting the anonymity of their sources. Some sources for documents eventually published by WikiLeaks (note: not necessarily “WikiLeaks sources”) ended up identified and charged (e.g. Bradley Manning, Justin Liverman) but not due to a disclosure by WikiLeaks or Assange.

Here you have claimed that Assange “strongly implied” that Seth Rich was their source and, furthermore, that Rich was killed “not long afterward”. Is there evidence for that?

Though Assange did bring up the topic of Rich’s murder in relation with journalistic sources, I do not think he ever implied him as WikiLeaks’ source (“strongly” or otherwise), much less before Rich’s death and theories about him being the source were already widely discussed publicly.

Notice that I’m not trying to deny the claim that Rich was WikiLeaks’ source. (I actually think he is a reasonably likely candidate.) But unless you have proof for that statement what you are doing is defaming WikiLeaks and Assange, and tainting their good reputation for confidentiality, in addition to accuracy.

~ Paul Robinson (RT) – Biden’s Russia policy ludicrous, unbelievable, contradictory & unprecedented: First offers Putin summit & then imposes sanctions

Contradictory, certainly. Ludicrous and unbelievable, I suppose so, for us outsiders anyway, “like a host spitting on the table when inviting a guest for dinner”. Unprecedented, not quite: they did a very similar thing in the case of the Anchorage summit with China, a month and a half ago. (The previous quote is a comment à propos by one Lü Xiang.) The US announced the ratcheting up of its economic warfare policies* vis-à-vis China merely a day ahead of the scheduled meeting in Alaska. Like in this latest case, it was the US who had initiated the dialogue and proposed the meeting in the first place!

(*) When done by sovereign states (specially unilaterally, as is common) against sovereign states (specially unaligned ones), “sanction” is a propagandistic buzzword purporting to imply that the (fully self-interested) agent is in a position of impartial arbiter and adjudicator.
How to explain this behaviour? What could be the goal?

At the time, Global Times had offered that it’s a pressuring tactic (by a side that engages “from a position of strength”, that is, one that presupposes its dominance), alternatively that it’s a signal of lack of internal consensus among US decision makers. Robinson suggests possible LDPR de-escalation while maintaining a hardened stance against their perceived “enemy”, and carrot (or olive branch) & stick.

I observe that, of those, only the “internal dissension” theory seems compatible with genuine desire to seek productive dialogue and diplomacy. The alternatives would require an additional hypothesis of either madness, schizophrenia, or passive-aggressive disorder in order to explain the apparent self-sabotage, which is not a serious proposition, however much we might joke and/or despair about the West’s condition. But with the circumstance now repeated the likelihood of the theory is diminished: the hypothetical internal disagreement is supposed to be transitory, and one would expect that they would more or less get themselves sorted after ~3 months.

So if the USG isn’t really that interested in diplomacy, what motivates it to go through the motions?

Maybe the point is to avoid a meeting but reserve the chance to claim that they actually wanted it and it was the other side that rejected it, conveniently ignoring the contradictory behaviour (after all, “that’s just, like, your opinion, man”, i.e., a simple matter of “narrative”). In other words, theatre for domestic consumption. In this regard, we can note that in this case the “stick” came right after the “olive branch”: 2 days, April 13 to April 15. That was quicker than in the Anchorage case: 6 days, March 11 to March 17. In that case the “stick” came so late that, I guess, by then some members of the Chinese delegation and media may have been already on Alaskan soil. Washington had even clarified that, actually, it was “not expecting specific negotiated deliverables from the meeting”. Still Peking decided to go ahead with the meeting, but did not ignore the discourtesy and publicly and sternly denounced it. Was this shorter “turnaround” a deliberate attempt to prevent the same outcome? Or was it perhaps a signal of the USG discontent with the results of Biden’s phone call with Putin?

An additional consideration: I remember that around the time of the Anchorage summit they went on stressing how “USA was back”, implicitly hitting at Trump, who one is supposed to believe had caused a “departure”, I guess, from the world’s centre stage. Could it be that they believe this nonsense themselves? Perhaps what looks like passive-aggressiveness was meant to serve as a show of self-assurance and dominance. Maybe they are feeling a little bit insecure and this is meant to assuage their own anxieties. Or, more likely, it is a display meant for uneasy vassals and prospective subjects looking for a new master (or considering a re-shuffle of their allegiances).

Alternatively, the strategy is to try and create distraction and confusion with deliberately erratic behaviour: “I’ve got it, you guys! Just act really fucking crazy, it will totally throw those easterners off!”

Politically incorrect American jokes:
A skydiver who jumped without his parachute died of covid.
Because of an explosion in methamphetamine lab two people died of covid.

Politically incorrect Russian jokes:
My nose is not running, I have no fever, I have no headache, my sense of smell is keen. Must be asymptomatic covid.
Doctor, when do you expect covid epidemic to end? I don’t know, I am not interested in politics.

Comparing the video and the photos I see that there are some greens being grown in the surrounding parterres. Tall trees or shrubs, I wonder? Hopefully noble trees. They would make the view even more interesting for the pilgrim’s approach at ground level.

As a religious institution, I would say that the Military Cathedral is my second favorite religious center in Russia

I was wondering if the cathedral actually functions as a church, rather than just as a monument, memorial, or museum. Seemingly it does, or it’s starting to. There was an Easter service some 10 days ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab23ZZoz07I

Video Link

Although, with it located at >1 hour from the city, I guess service might be reserved for special occasions or for military personnel, and not likely to be used for, say, everyday meditation/worship/prayer or every Sunday’s sermon. As a monastery, it still could actually house or teach monks, though.

It can also be said it resembles a hollowed-out tree trunk, the rugged exterior perhaps a deliberate approximation to bark.

Among other things, the following charts by Global Times claim that Han population fell 5% in relation to other ethnicities since 2010.

Lol, is this what you are eyeing?

Prime Minister Albin Kuri: “I would vote to unify Albania and Kosovo”

https://www.euronews.com/2021/02/16/i-would-vote-to-unify-albania-and-kosovo-election-winner-albin-kurti-tells-euronews

Some excerpts from the mouth of this so-called “leftist nationalist” individual:

No, we are not going to get vaccines from Serbia, which gets vaccines from Russia and China. Both in terms of values and interests, our orientation has always been towards the West.
[…]
We don’t want to replace the EU and US with any eastern non-democratic powers because it has been proven that there is no certainty regarding quality, on the one hand, and on the other hand, there are always strings attached in the form of geopolitical games.
[…]
I think that they [Serbia] should move away from the Russian Federation and from China and they should try to do it as fast as possible. They have to liberate themselves from Kosovo. We liberated Kosovo from Serbia. I think that Serbia should liberate itself from Kosovo.
[…]
So I believe that full independence implies also, independence from independence, so we could join a federation with Albania or an EU federation.
[…]
Two referendums in the future could solve this, in Albania and Kosovo […] The constitution would have to be changed first […]
[…]
[How would you vote in that referendum?] I think I would vote yes. Yes.

Lmao, like the man wasn’t already so smeared to hell and back.

An obscurantist like Dugin ironically has a much clearer view of what transhumanism is compared to you. No, transhumanism is not technology. It’s turning humans into something else, “overcoming” humanity. It’s like transgenderism, which stems from the same philosophical root.

It’s a goal of satanists and gnostics.

A nationalist is implicitly and explicitly anti-transhumanist, because state power is only useful so far as it protects and advances the interests of the nation – if said nation (of actual people) ceases to exist, that is the ultimate defeat.

Imagine Russia taking over the world by turning every single Russian into a mutant with superpowers – is that a triumph of Russian nationalism when the original Russian people are gone? At least that scenario sounds cool and mutants being organic maybe can carry the legacy of the original people, depending on the severity of the mutations. But what if the minds of all Russians are uploaded into cybernetic bodies, killing the meatbags in the process and making the new “Russians” much more efficient, and again they take over the world, the galaxy even – how would this be a triumph and not a complete and utter defeat for a Russian nationalist?

“For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? ” is an underrated saying in my opinion.

The problem is that transhumanism would destroy much of the content of the nation that the nationalist claims to treasure, while barely preserving its form. Consider the old hbd European paradox. Universalist and modernizing, therefore succesful, but also given to disparaging tradition, and innovating away old bonds, creeds, and eventually even nations. That’s what is ‘Faustian’ about us. We are very good at attaining power through technology, but in doing so trade away our sould. Someone I know once said if was fine if my country turns to Hong Kong near the Rhine, because ‘we have to be hospitable’. Typical European. A complete lack of attachment to anything beyond abstract ideals and ‘progress’.

What I’m saying is, transhumanism continues the uprooting process inherent in modernity- a process that has already subverted European nations more or less completely through deterritoralization. There’s no reason to expect that even more modernity will save nations, instead of hollowing them out even further.

Sounds like another retort to Bashibuzuk.
*Skims the open thread*
Aaaand indeed it is.

I think the previous one about ports was much better. This one, attempting to incorporate “transhumanism”, which might be better called posthumanism (cognate with posthumous), into nationalism is is quite odd. Or was it supposed to be funny? Is this “rightoid entertainment” too? ;‑)

I don’t quite get it. Didn’t you once acknowledge regret about leaving Russia, during the disastrous 90s? But now you encourage a young man (who you do not know and who has claimed, I’m not sure with what degree of seriousness, “autistic” tendencies and “self-isolation”) to desert his own nation, during the prosperous or at least promising 20s? And for penta-ocular cultural-marxist Canada?

I’ll echo Karlin this time and say “odd nationalism”.

I have read elsewhere that they included something or other about “women’s rights in employment” and egalitarian this or that… Not sure if “retarded or just pretending”.

So you are Han Chinese in HK, but you “haven’t decided yet” whether your nation is in China or elsewhere? Hm…

I remember some comments by Chinese immigrants in the West and some of their, let’s say, insecurities and experiences. One time a repatriated immigrant gave advice to a younger Chinese guy living in the US (IIRC). Don’t know if it might be interesting to you, situations are probably very different, but I remember it as being quite forceful and based: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/sinotriumph-101/#comment-2520964

As I have gathered (and as you have just said yourself), the post-USSR years in Russia where trying not only in economic terms, so when I said “disastrous 90s” I was not focusing exclusively on pecuniary impoverishment. So, while I hear your clarification, thanks, I’ll make one of my own, just in case:

I left Russia not because it wasn’t prosperous at the time.

It was not my intention to associate your emigration with this kind of flagrant materialism. Instead the “disastrous vs. promising-prosperous” contrast was meant to emphasize that just like one can feel regret for leaving one’s country, even with the attenuating circumstance of having done so during a period of terrible socio-politico-economic conditions, then I can imagine one could come to rue it all the more if leaving when one’s country is expected to do well, at least economically.

I remain personally unconvinced about the “nationalist” character or merit of emigration (unless, perhaps, sometimes, when it is in that spirit bluntly reflected by the Chinese man whose comment I linked above, and also demonstrated by many Jews), but since I never lived a 90s-Russia-like environment, I withhold further comment.

Liberal, Labour, Green… so is there an opposition party in Australia? ;‐)

I don’t think so. Ron Unz is the one ultimately deciding which articles to republish on his site. If he chose to publish this one, is because he didn’t miss the satire, unlike you, apparently.

Obviously Anglin is here mocking the so-called “conservative” right-wing, which when it comes to criticising the liberals in office, actually do so by chasing them from the left and by “red-baiting” in a manner extremely reminiscent of the Russiagate circus (just replacing Russia with China).

I thought it was pretty funny… in that better-laugh-than-cry sense, because I thought it was also an acceptably accurate mimicry.

You appear to have hopes for pan-Asian unity or something. Its not going to happen.

Well, not with that attitude ;^).

Cheers.

Is the target explicitly online games/MMOs? If so, I agree with Daniel Chieh that encouraging more offline, single-player, or even local multiplayer games would be a positive development.

I half-remember some news headlines, a few years ago, about some Chinese youngster who died after health complications due to him spending literally all day playing some MMO game. So I suppose the addiction problem is probably real.

But I do wonder: If the existing regulation attempting to curtail the time children spend on online games (already quite stringent by western standards, not less due to their absence) was unsuccessful, as implicitly admitted by the need for new regulations, why do authorities expect that more of the same will now work?

Looks, from afar, like typical politician ineptness. If the previous mitigations did not work, I tend to think it was probably because people just disregarded its application: parents not enforcing it, companies not enforcing it, children logging-in under different identities, VPNs, hacked binaries, etc.

I don’t really know what the new regulations propose in terms of enforcement, but I have heard non-expert chatter of face-recognition embedded in the game software (not for login, but in-band, while playing) and I couldn’t avoid a chuckle thinking of masks and other low-tech contraptions that children would probably put up with in order play (presumed addictive) vidya. It’s clear that without the parents’ (and greater social circle’s) active cooperation, a 3rd-party (like the government) could only hope to assume the enforcement itself if a full-blown digital panopticon society is established. Despite some steps taken in that direction, I don’t think China is at that stage (thankfully), so centralised government enforcement of such regulations is unlikely to work.

If the previous regulations did not work, and if the cause was lack of enforcement by parents, and if, as argued above, the government will not be able to assume enforcement itself, then it’s likely that the new regulations will also flounder. What is to be done, then? Well, an easy answer is to somehow enlist the cooperation of the parents/family and pay more attention to potential underlying causes driving youngsters to waste so much of their time on worthless entertainment, and their parents to abet it. Ok, easy answers are typically pretty useless.

Maybe the excessive vidya is related to that other phenomenon of apathy and disaffection with social life, supposedly due to a perception of excessive competitive pressure, that some have called “lying flat”, although I thought that phenomenon was centred on adult (if young) population, not minors. Maybe parents do not have the time (or space) to care for their children after ungluing them from the computer/phone screen. In relation to both of these topics, if one is feeling optimistic, maybe the authorities are not completely out of touch: there was also mention of another set of guidelines or regulations, termed “double reduction” if I remember, apparently intended to reduce the academic burden for children, and to increase extracurricular activities in school. XinHua mentioned things like: restricting private tutoring to weekends and holidays (IIRC), fewer exams throughout the year, shorter exams, less homework, starting school a bit later in the morning, and arranging for after-school extracurricular activities like sport, art, tutoring, or free time. The latter sounded a bit like the Japanese 部活/bukatsu but it was not clear to me to what age-groups the practice was meant to be applied nor whether it was to be nationally adopted or not (the article mainly mentioned Shanghai, Peking, and primary school).

I’m not, however, much given to optimism, so I’ll end on a more suspenseful note:
– Apparently, “priority” classes for gifted students were banned (?).
– I read that there’s a project to reform the scoring/grading system, and there was the following potentially worrisome quote: “In the future, grades will be a less dominant factor in evaluating a student’s ability. […]”
I did not look up the details.

I’m not understanding your poor reception of these last 2 anti-benchmark reforms.

Well, it’s just that I like excellence pursuit and I favour meritocracy, and, though an outsider, I strongly prefer that the Chinese “global pole” continues to pursue excellence and remains meritocratic. Those two policy items, which I stated just as vaguely as I currently understand them, seemed to hint toward potential compromises in those two areas, respectively. But, as I readily admitted, I don’t know the details. Are my reservations unwarranted? Maybe I misunderstood? I’m always glad to up-correct overly negative prognostics.

I read rumours that, at Washington’s request, Ukraine agreed to receive ~5000 evacuees from Afghanistan. Is this true?

Also, the EU is supposedly offering money and other perks to various Central Asian “stans” in exchange for them agreeing to open their borders to fleeing Afghans, perhaps trying to preempt another 2015 in Europe (and rather redirect it toward Russia, as we can expect migrants to bubble upward).

Sounds like an extremely serious subject so I’m wondering if the topic is being discussed by politicians campaigning for the coming elections in Russia.

>jews
>loyal to $non_jews
Lol
I thought Russians had already learned that particular lesson.

Bashibuzuk turning in his… er, bed?

Poo taste.

Paronomastically, aesthetically and morally.

So, considering recent trends, should we now expect politicians in the breakaway island to welcome “miners” and make moves towards legitimisation of decentralised cryptocoins?

So it seems Belorussia has banned a Russian media organisation…

A Romanov descendant, Georgyi Mikhailovich, got married in St. Petersburg. I know very little about the former imperial family but after reading about the marriage and looking at some of the photos I’m left wondering…

– He was born in Spain and lived most of his life in Spain and France. He married not a noblewoman, not a Russian, not a Slav, not an Orthodox (she converted for the marriage), not a Germanic princess (as I believe was the Romanov custom), but an Italian commoner. The two have not lived in Russia for long. Do Russians even know who he is? Do Russians perceive any sort of connection to him? Does he represent “Russianness” in any way?

– He looks more or less mediterranean; his mother, overweight, looks almost Mexican; the bride looked unimpressively mediterranean (though, to be fair, she’s past her best years). All three seem to have dark hair and dark eyes. How much Romanov blood does his branch of the family have?

– His part of the family (his mother and now him) seem to be claiming succession to the former imperial crown. How legitimate are their claims? How can he be eligible to the “throne” when he married a commoner and not a princess?

– Does Georgyi Mikhailovich and/or his family have any connection whatsoever to the Russian state? Or, dare I ask, to some other state? I note that media reports claim that he worked (in what capacity?) for the European Parliament, quite a loony and often anti-Russia organisation. Do non-ruling royal families (say in Spain, England, or Holland) usually have a relationship with their respective state’s security apparatus? Are they afforded any kind of security clearances?

– Malofeev was apparently invited to the ceremony. What does he think of it all?

BTW deportation is never justified unless they do it themselves

Not sure if you’re speaking in code or losing your mind, lol.

Among some Russians in Russia and abroad with a sympathy to the Russian monarchy, he isn’t viewed as a legit heir.

I kind of like the idea of forcing them to sign a consent form with is headed “self-deportation.”

The main question (as always with royalty): does he carry a male-baby-predisposition gene? In other words, would he have enough sons? He looks pudgy and his commoner mamacita a bit old, so we may have a dead-ender, but I would give them a chance.

The governing elites welcome people connected to a security apparatus, no matter where. Today it is almost a sine qua non, from Bushes, Putin, Obama, the pope, Macron, Merkel, they have all been wetted. It is in a weird way a plus, a known entity, the elites hate instability and surprises (see Trump for a recent example).

Romanovs on a male line are from the Y-DNA Haplogroup N, suggesting an original Ugro-Finnish northern-Euroasian descent. They heavily mixed with Vikings, Slavs, Tatars, Germans, Balts, Poles, and as all Euro royalty cannot easily claim ethnicity. The most common descent among the major Euro royal houses is actually Italian – early Middle Ages were very Italian in outlook. Many descended from the Germanic invaders to Italy like Lombards and Goths, but many were simply a continuation of the Roman aristocracy. So the fat guy with his Mexican chola mother is not far of…

He [Soros] thinks that China actually needs Yank dollars to build its factories and invest. He thinks that somehow China’s balance of payments is going to fall apart without the US market, without US investors telling President Xi what to do. The Chinese government won’t have a clue as to what to invest in and how to let the ‘free market’, meaning George Soros and BlackRock and other companies, operate. So he’s living in a dream world where other people need us.

It [the US] thinks like George Soros, that if we stop investing in Asia and other countries, that will force them to knuckle under to the US.

I do not think this is likely. Probably, neither Soros nor the USG really believe that China needs their investment to such an existential level. But they must understand that such foreign investment is (also) a form of “hedge” against war. Probably, what Soros and the group of anti-China hawks inside the USG seek instead with those moves is to disentangle a greater part of their financial interests from those of China, thus paving the way for future aggressive “negotiations” (credible threat of war, or maybe actual war) with reduced risk of collateral damage.

The author did end up touching on this in his “postscript”, when he mentions the (perceived) Chinese expectation that large US investors would lobby against the MIC’s “anti-China policy”.

I did an image search for that title. A black boy? I don’t suppose he’s a personification of the lokomotive’s coal, right? ;^)

How binding are those “points of understanding”? I read a short report that indicated that they were the product and purview of a group of industry self-regulation reviewers, not a government injunction.

There are some reasonable points of focus there, like the pay-to-win model, gambling (“gacha”), the homo and “effeminate” stuff, Chinese history revision, Chinese separatism, and the technical topics you mentioned. But there seems to be quite a bit of overzealousness too, IMO. Like the stuff about evil, anti-social, or anti-human storyline choices or settings (these categorisations are extremely wide, amorphous, what do they specifically have in mind?), or anime-style games, which IIRC, according to Daniel Chieh, have been making serious inroads into global and even Japanese markets (it seems utterly foolish to indiscriminately curtail such developments just because they are stylistically native to Japan; suffuse it instead with Chinese culture and slowly evolve it into culturally-Chinese directions), or the stuff about violence, which is similar to the nonsense we typically hear from anti-gun advocates in the west.

In general, there is significant amount of vagueness, which could be used as a carte blanche to disqualify lots, but which also provides a very large wiggle room for discretionarily allowing a great deal. I have observed more than once that industries that self-regulate (commonly to avoid government regulation) by casting such wide nets, do so with the implicit understanding that most fish will slip through. I wonder if this is one such case. Although, in China’s case, wary of the past, I can’t avoid worrying a bit about the potential for “spiraling”.

The result would be the practical elimination of 90% of titles & game developers and China, possibly with the mass exodus of gaming industry personnel into Japan or elsewhere, which tells a lot on where the sources of influence lay.

Cui bono, poignant as ever. The media in the west and Japan is typically aghast when reporting about these topics, while their industrial lobbyists may actually be fanning some of it.

Going by the content of that article, saying that Russia will send “more gas” is misleading. The article only indicates that Gazprom will (probably) honour its current contracts regarding Ukrainian gas transit, rather than drop them, pay the resulting fines, and switch sooner to the more profitable NS2.

It’s an “interesting” choice. Honouring contracts is important (as France would surely agree) but Russia knows well that part of that money will be used against it.

But what is the choice, really? Russia has no control over the process of EU certification for NS2. Until NS2 is certified and inaugurated the only available choice is: stick to the existing contract and split profits with a hysterically inimical government ruling over a brotherly nation, or drop it and calmly watch European energy prices continue skyrocketing (which can be interpreted as a pressuring tactic towards the EU, perhaps for them to speed up the certification, or perhaps something else).

There is also the seemingly crucial issue that, AFAIU, a EU court ruled that NS2 AG cannot make exclusive use of its own pipeline because of some (originally intra-EU) anti-monopoly regulation.

So, really, the only thing that article is saying is “Russia is not arm-wrestling the EU”. It is not saying that Gazprom will contract more capacity with Ukraine, which is what the Atlanticist lobby in US/EU/Germany want (“fund the government that will buy weapons from us to threaten you”).

Related: A few days ago, thanks to their idiotic self-inflicted gretinism, some Chinese cities/industries experienced electricity shortages, and amid the scramble for securing coal and gas supplies they also requested Russia to increase its export of electricity. What was Russia’s response? Gas prices have been increasing in Europe and also in China. What’s the state of Russia-China energy trade? Is Russia prioritising the friend to the south, the frenemy to the west, none/itself? (Are you out there, Blinky Bill?)

Hm. That Japanese shrine of war-fallen and war-criminals comes up quite frequently in Sino-Japanese diplomatic disputes. I didn’t know it also played a role in this vidya issue.

Quite a notorious shrine that one. Probably one of Japan’s strongest symbols of nationalism. It is likely that many Japanese (and some foreigner) figures visiting it do so as a deliberately political act, one which is immediately and stridently heard in China and Korea, unavoidably triggering reactions (and individuals). Unimaginable the West accepting something remotely similar in, say, Germany. But it is expedient for them in Japan, and it’s not like the crimes in question affected the holy causes of choice, so it’s all good ;‑).