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Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

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Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#141

Post by tablespoon »

robocat wrote: post #118
wodenokoto wrote: post #41

> At this time the public opinion control system warning was triggered, and manual intervention began. ... manual intervention could not keep up with the speed of retweeting and posting. All available staff were called up to support the suppression effort. How does the authors know all this? This sounds like super detailed insider information.

> All available staff were called up to support the suppression effort. The orders already issuing from the telescreen, recalling them to their posts, were hardly necessary. Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. A large part of the political literature of five years was now completely obsolete. Reports and records of all kinds, newspapers, books, pamphlets, films, sound−track…

Quotes from 1984 are cliche, and they tend to obscure more than they elucidate.

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#143

Post by digital-cygnet »

cycomanic wrote: post #113
alephnan wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They assume that people will execute their orders perfectly, even under extreme hardship China has also taken 1 billion people out of poverty in just 3 decades. > For all its failures, democracy at least has taught us to incorporate the human imperfection into the process and the decisions. Since we’re talking counter evidence: - Singapore is a benevolent dictatorship - Japan’s schooling system prepares its citizen…

> It’s not entirely attributable to democracy. In fact, many are arguing to remove the electoral college. A popular vote would be more Democratic in the Ancient Greek sense no? But our founder fathers designed America against that, to prevent tyranny of the masses. That's at least a gross oversimplification. One of the primary reasons for the electoral college was that it allowed the compromise with southern states t…

Federalist 10 (James Madison) does pretty explicitly state this. It seeks to explain how the proposed US Constitution protects against one of the key problems with representative government -- that of faction (aka, what we would call parties today). The tyranny of the majority is described as follows:

> When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens

And the remedy provided by the indirectness of the American system (i.e., election of representatives, senators, and electors instead of direct democracy) is that it will

> refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Under such a regulation, it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose

Generally I recommend reading this whole paper, 18th century prose aside, as it provides a fascinating insight into how the framers thought of some of the key points of the Constitution

https://billofrightsinstitute.org/primary-sources/federalist...

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#144

Post by lanamo »

kenneth wrote: post #125
woutr_be wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of experience in Hong Kong, this is exactly what happened. People weren't afraid of testing positive, they were afraid of being taken away to a poorly maintained quarantine facility for two weeks. Even your close contacts would be quarantined for two weeks, making it so that many people (unsurprisingly) lied about who they met, or where they went. For people, who live paycheck to paycheck, this would essentially…

Indeed, that was exactly the issue in Hong Kong and when the likelihood of having this happen in HK with the mandatory tests and rising cases started to skyrocket, that's when I left to go take refugee outside the madness. Ironically, I promptly got covid in Europe and it was no big deal. The disease itself is no big deal, the real risk is authoritarian governments who have gone mental. All of my friends who have got…

fellow HK gweilo here - me too would have gone full John Wick mode! it is impressive to witness such a mass psychosis, but if you touch my dog, then...

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#145

Post by please-reread »

alephnan wrote: post #132
native_samples wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"China" didn't do that. The Chinese people did that after Deng Xiaoping got into a position where he could stop the government actively destroying all progress in the country. And whilst I used to be impressed by this "lifted a billion people" take, the reality is that lots of countries industrialized, modernized and huge numbers of people left behind agrarian poverty. This isn't unique or special and in fact when ra…

> Taiwan, Korea, Japan Japan has less than 1/10th China’s population. Taiwan has less than 20% of Taiwan. Japan was far richer than China per capita before WWII. Japan was the superpower that believed it could take on the West. Until recent, did China ever try to expand and attack the West? Japan was never occupied by a resource colonizer, while China had the opium war. Right now, both Japan and Taiwan’s economy are…

> Taiwan has less than 20% of Taiwan.

You are mistaken. Taiwan is 100% of Taiwan.

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#146

Post by FredPret »

alephnan wrote: post #132
native_samples wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"China" didn't do that. The Chinese people did that after Deng Xiaoping got into a position where he could stop the government actively destroying all progress in the country. And whilst I used to be impressed by this "lifted a billion people" take, the reality is that lots of countries industrialized, modernized and huge numbers of people left behind agrarian poverty. This isn't unique or special and in fact when ra…

> Taiwan, Korea, Japan Japan has less than 1/10th China’s population. Taiwan has less than 20% of Taiwan. Japan was far richer than China per capita before WWII. Japan was the superpower that believed it could take on the West. Until recent, did China ever try to expand and attack the West? Japan was never occupied by a resource colonizer, while China had the opium war. Right now, both Japan and Taiwan’s economy are…

Being from Africa and now living in the first world, my experiences align with what native_samples is saying. We had colonialism and then most countries in Africa had governments with understandably anti-Western ideas - for decades.

Even today a very serious issue holding back progress there is thousands of little regulations that are designed to lead to bribes.

If Africa’s national borders and governments could be redrawn from scratch, it would organize itself into a much happier, richer place.

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#147

Post by prartichoke »

kenneth wrote: post #128
anovikov wrote: post #101

It is astounding to see that people don't revolt. Just get to the streets and kill everyone in uniform from whatever service they are, burn police stations and resume normal life. What will authorities do? Send the army into a 20M city?

They tried that in 1989. Might want to look up what happened in Tiananmen Square.

Except those were peaceful protests

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#148

Post by woutr_be »

lanamo wrote: post #144
kenneth wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, that was exactly the issue in Hong Kong and when the likelihood of having this happen in HK with the mandatory tests and rising cases started to skyrocket, that's when I left to go take refugee outside the madness. Ironically, I promptly got covid in Europe and it was no big deal. The disease itself is no big deal, the real risk is authoritarian governments who have gone mental. All of my friends who have got…

fellow HK gweilo here - me too would have gone full John Wick mode! it is impressive to witness such a mass psychosis, but if you touch my dog, then...

They wouldn’t even blink twice when they take your dog away. When I returned to HK in January, the entire experience was so dehumanising. You’re literally treated like cattle, from the moment you get off the plane, you’re just following a long queue, going through different station, and end up waiting for hours without anyone telling you what’s going on.

Everyone on my flight ended up waiting for over 12 hours i the airport, because people tested positive. Not a single person came to explain what was going on, it took several passengers shouting at staff to get bits of information. I saw a woman with kids break down in tears because she too had been there for over 12 hours.

Don’t even get me started on the two week quarantine, I felt like I was treater as a prisoner. I’ve lived here long enough to not expect decent customer service, but it wasn’t my choice to be locked up for two weeks, the least staff can do is treat people nicer.

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#149

Post by thorin »

Honestly, this video is sad, but it's incredibly tame compared to criticisms of western Governments you see every day online. China even with their firewall can't stop people sharing this kind of thing widely. Everyone knows all their "official" figures around Covid are made up. I think they are backing the wrong horse on this occasion and their strategy could backfire bigtime. I don't think the other countries will have much sympathy if there is widespread hunger and unrest in China. Will be interesting to see what happens.

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#150

Post by _23sd »

Just a note, the English subtitling in the video embedded in this post is pretty inaccurate in places. Not in a malicious way, I think the translator just isn't very skilled at English. If you haven't seen the video before I would suggest this version which should be easier to understand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38_thLXNHY8
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