🇨🇦🇩🇪🇨🇳张殿李🇨🇳🇩🇪🇨🇦

Half-German, Half-Chinese, Half-Canadian, all-bad at math, currently living to her consternation in the People's Republic of China.

偏见蒙眼盲
无知恨中华
若知龙之美
悔恨泪满颊

Pronouns: 同志 / 同志 / 同志的
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Writefreely: zhang.dianli (npub1ukc…z88m)

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Last Notes

2025-02-06 16:51:27 GMT

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Well thanks for making my feed more interesting instead.

2025-02-02 18:04:29 GMT

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Try to buy local if you can. If you can't try to buy at least in the neighbourhood of local. If that's not workable, try to buy direct from producer (especially but not only for farm products).
NEVER buy from the USA.
NEVER buy from anybody who supports Canadian MAGAts.

2025-02-01 09:07:08 GMT

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Europeans have more options available and can shift easier. If they stop finally bending the knee to the USA they could make huge bank by dealing with China, for example.

2025-02-01 02:36:20 GMT

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I have been saying since the 1990s already that Canada needed to wean itself from relying on the USA to run it economy.
Naturally the siren's call of "easy money" meant doing even more deals with the Devil instead of doing the difficult work of establishing other lines of trade.
And now Canadians are paying the cost.

2025-01-30 18:25:28 GMT

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Fair enough. I'd also have to get SO to sign on to this as well and that might be a bit troublesome.

2025-01-30 18:18:40 GMT

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Polygamy is a thing, you know.

2025-01-30 14:59:16 GMT

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I disagree here. Employers follow fads. Fads by their very definition are short-lived. That means if you graduate in 2025, by 2027 you'll be unemployable because employers will want different fads followed and you never learned fundamentals.
University should be where you learn theory and some carefully-selected praxis to ground it. Employers should be the ones teaching the praxis of their particular enterprise.

2025-01-30 14:55:14 GMT

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I have nothing against letting 19-year olds choose because the alternatives are all worse.
I just think the courses should be harder and failure rates should be higher. The degree should *mean* something. As things stand you can sleepwalk through most humanities and social sciences and get a solid B. This needs to change.
And from the opposite end, employers need to stop being idiots requiring degrees that aren't actually necessary.

2025-01-30 14:53:06 GMT

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Ah, that's where the miscommunication happened.
Canada produces too many of those *and* too man "computer science" graduates to feed the scam that is the tech sector as well.

2025-01-30 14:40:19 GMT

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Even you talked about bus drivers and librarians having Masters degrees. **THAT** is almost the very definition of devaluation.

2025-01-30 14:39:41 GMT

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The devaluation comes from the glut of supply.
In Canada I watched as credential creep happened to the point that you needed a minimum of what Americans would call an "associates degree" (or some such thing—the three-year thing you mentioned) **TO ANSWER TELEPHONES**. All the people going out and getting degrees didn't get jobs related to their degree (because there's a finite number of these, typically). Degrees just became Yet Another Hurdle To Jump to get employed at all.

2025-01-30 13:26:08 GMT

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To me this represents a watering down of educational credentials' value.
There was a time, just barely in my lifetime, where having a *baccalaureate* was an accomplishment and something to be proud of. Now having a B.<whatever>. is just a source of wallpaper. A Masters is the minimum for respect.
And it looks like Sweden speed-ran the devaluation of education and now Masters degrees are the wallpaper level. (I assume baccalaureates are toilet paper?)

2025-01-25 11:27:55 GMT

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I'll be sure to cite the celebrated AI guru "HD" in the future.
Could you point me, perhaps, to a few of your published, peer-reviewed papers so I can persuade those of a more cynical bent than me of your genius?

2025-01-06 11:02:29 GMT

I just heard the funniest description of Google's search results:
"It transcends typical platform dysfunction and enters the realm of performance art."

2025-01-04 07:52:03 GMT

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There's professional courtesy with people who want to shoot darker-skinned folk.
They won't do it when white folk are between them and their target.

2024-12-10 01:55:12 GMT

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This is why I put "western" in "scare quotes". 😉

2024-12-07 11:36:57 GMT

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Oh, absolutely. And ESPECIALLY not the horrifically oily *cake* that's passed off as "bread".

2024-12-07 10:21:38 GMT

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Meat floss? That's very old.
But yes, "western" bread is comical here. I avoid it. It's like cake, but without the charm.

2024-12-07 07:48:28 GMT

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I would take an axe to all my grandparents¹ for a good roggenbrot right about now.
---
¹ N.B.: They're already all dead.

2024-11-30 23:59:04 GMT

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This is what capitalism has wrought: In my (extreme) youth, the brightest minds on the planet were doing things like sending people to the moon, or sending probes that are now sailing outside of the solar system (and still largely functioning!).
The brightest minds today are trying to figure out how to get more ads in front of my eyes and nothing "modern" I've bought in the last decade lasts even 5 years if treated with kid gloves.

2024-11-26 04:00:50 GMT

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It used to be really commonplace here to let ivy grow on walls of apartment complexes. Until there was a spate of massive fires in ~2005, give or take a few years, after a heat wave dried the ivy and turned them into perfect tinder to completely envelop a building in flames before anybody was even aware there was something needing escape.
A lot of people died, but hey, at least the buildings looked great before they turned into smoking husks!

2024-11-25 22:47:02 GMT

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Most people looking at that picture: "That would be cool and oh so green!" Me looking at that picture: "Holy shit is that a fire trap!"

2024-11-10 05:35:21 GMT

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Do they have a presence that's not on a sociopath's society-manipulating platform?

2024-10-30 12:54:46 GMT

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At various points in Chinese history, rulers came in who wanted all knowledge of previous rulers expunged. They went often to very ... extreme, let's call it ... measures to accomplish this erasure.
What saved the knowledge from extinction?
Essentially piracy. Copies of forbidden texts made and circulated in the underground, stored for when, inevitably, said ruler dies and the texts could be resurfaced.
Let me get my pirate's hat. I've got work to do.

2024-10-10 00:22:10 GMT

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This kind of thing is why I laugh at the alarmism over the way algorithmic ads are supposed to be veritable mind control.
I've never, not even once, seen an ad that was even remotely applicable to me from an algorithmic ad feed.

2024-10-09 00:53:33 GMT

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In the mean time, here in China, as part of a desert reclamation process, large olive groves are being planted en masse.

2024-10-08 22:33:37 GMT

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I've had known-to-be-EVOO only once. In Greece. At an olive plantation. Made by the people who gave it to me.
And none of the stuff I get in department stores **anywhere** compares. I doubt I've ever had EVOO before or since.

2024-10-07 22:39:18 GMT

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Getting it straight from the producer without *any* middlemen involved at all is about the only way of being sure you're getting EVOO. And even there it's not 100% because the involved crime syndicates have very long tentacles that slither into everything. But it's the best way we've got.

2024-10-07 13:06:22 GMT

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I personally think that 90% of the people in North America who think they've tasted EVOO have never tasted anything better than a VOO at best, and likely not even that high a grade. Far more likely is that they bought OO at EVOO prices and for what they think is OO they likely got ROO instead.
For Europeans that's closer to 75%.
Olive oil has been faked for most of my life and then some.
---
OO = Olive Oil
VOO = Virgin OO
EVOO = Extra VOO
ROO = Refined OO

2024-09-26 07:49:59 GMT

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Hallucinating AI or non-hallucinating AI?

2024-09-21 01:28:11 GMT

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Yes, the so-called "qu" behind Chinese wines and liquors (similar to Japanese "koji" only far more diverse) makes for a very unique flavour profile and is why there is so much diversity in the flavours of what is ostensibly the same hooch.

2024-09-20 12:30:27 GMT

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Or a collection of short stories.

2024-09-20 12:29:01 GMT

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Mine are the 50-page test, the avoidance of anything that has "volume" (or an equivalent) in the title (so no trilogies, series, etc.), and sticking with classics and folklore, increasingly.

2024-09-20 12:21:57 GMT

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That's a lesson I learned the hard way.
I came upon 50 as my "throw away" level too.

2024-09-17 09:12:30 GMT

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They should be sobbing?
I don't get the outrage.

2024-09-09 07:50:22 GMT

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I was brought up in a household where Abba was the spicy fare. Mostly my parents played things like James Last, Nana Mouskouri, Heino, or other elevator music like that.
My wake-up to a world of music that wasn't tedious was, surprisingly, The Police (Ghost in the Machine) to be specific. Then, being prone to obsession as I am, I started hitting the record section of the library and listening to a little bit of EVERYTHING until I found my main jam: hard and heavy.

2024-09-08 09:11:01 GMT

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Pity you didn't ask me about '70s bands though. I could have gone on a loooooooooooong list there including influential bands nobody's ever heard of (The Adverts) and such.

2024-09-08 09:09:55 GMT

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<HanSolo>I know. I have excellent taste.</HanSolo> 🤣
Thanks!

2024-09-08 09:01:01 GMT

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Hmmm... Good question. Technically The Who and Santana are '60s bands, but most people would associate them more with the '70s when they had their peak outputs. It would be cheating to mention them, I think.
Maybe CCR? The Doors? Wasn't B.B. King at the height of his powers in the '60s? If so, he's definitely on the list.

2024-09-08 05:50:26 GMT

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Ah. You know my feelings about the Beatles, apparently.

2024-08-31 01:13:38 GMT

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What else would you call it?

2024-07-06 10:22:00 GMT

I just heard the best way to read "ChatGPT". In French: "chat, j'ai pété."
I will never unsee that and will never be able to take anything that says "ChatGPT" seriously as a result.
#ChatGPT #ChatJAiPété #CatIFarted

2024-07-05 10:47:45 GMT

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The same thing with music and record shops. Nice music genres were only available in a small number of places, and the gatekeepers hung out in those places (and in the case of one record shop, the gatekeeper was the flippin' OWNER!).
Gatekeeping is real and has a real cost on the field being so kept.
🧵 (2/2)

2024-07-05 10:46:06 GMT

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In some cases—RPGs in the late '80s through the '90s, comics (getting worse over time!), and, yes, niche music genres (pretrock and certain styles of metal)—you couldn't until recently really easily avoid said gatekeeping fans.
I got gatekept for RPGs in the '90s despite the unwashed (literally!) gatekeepers likely having been born *AFTER I STARTED PLAYING THEM*. They stunk up (literally) the game shops and latched onto any "outsiders" they perceived like antibodies.
🧵 (1/2)

2024-07-05 01:18:16 GMT

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I live not too far from Dujiangyan¹, a hydro-engineering project that's over 2200 years old *AND STILL IN USE TODAY*. (How many of our "great" technological achievements made this century will be able to say the same thing?)
Since the whole story of how it was conceived, how it was built, and how it was used is well-recorded it's really easy for me to remember that ancient peoples were no dumber than we are, and indeed possibly a bit smarter.
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¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dujiangyan

2024-07-05 01:05:16 GMT

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There's a whole lot of gatekeeping going on in certain fringe circles. Pretentiousrock fans are some of the worst, almost as bad as comic book guys.
"I really like Genesis." "Oh, really!? Did you have that obscure bootleg from 1978 where Phil accidentally dropped his drumsticks and Peter made a quip?" "Uh... no?" "I KNEW IT! YOU'RE NOT A REAL FAN! YOU'RE JUST TRYING TO GET COOL POINTS! REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
So I like my pretrock quietly without the fanbase.

2024-07-03 22:27:05 GMT

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Dodging *WHAT* you utter buffoon?!
WTAF are you on about?!
Did you get dropped on your head and have your language centres damaged as a child?
Holy fucking SHIT! Is this Twitter now or something? 'Cause you're definitely giving off Twitter vaguevibes here!
I'm going to give you one chance—one, no more, no less—to explain yourself before I decide you're a useless mouth-breather who gets muted.
COMMUNICATE, motherfucker!

2024-07-03 11:05:28 GMT

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I haven't seen anybody blame Israel for Sudan?

2024-07-03 04:32:49 GMT

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In this, the third, civil war in Sudan we have a whole lot of shitfuckery with no real "good guys" (nor even "barely acceptable guys") on either side of the conflict and millions displaced and hundreds of thousands dead. It is itself the product of shitfuckery that goes at least as far back as colonial shenanigans and subsequent partitioning.
It's complicated, in other words, and that's probably really why it's not in the press.

2024-06-26 01:40:26 GMT

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So maybe we can, and work with me here, take *all* of their wealth and toss them into work camps so they do things for the benefit of society instead?

2024-06-21 04:57:26 GMT

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As a side note, when I was interviewing for a school, I talked to the outgoing foreign teacher. He was bitterly disappointed in China ... for the same reasons I found it EXCITING.
I'd found more optimistic energy in China (especially Wuhan) than I'd found in decades of living in Canada. He, on the other hand, came to China to find quiet, wise kung fu masters or some such thing. So he was disappointed and I was invigorated.
That's one of the weird things that stereotyping brings.

2024-06-21 04:39:56 GMT

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Most of the rest of the misconceptions are in this vein. A lot of it stems from the kind of ignorance that's inevitable when dealing with people so far away.
So I don't get offended by "Chinese people eat dogs" (because some actually do; I stress SOME, though).
I don't get offended by the stereotypes of Chinese people as inscrutable mystics. Hollywood is a powerful force, and most exported Chinese pop culture also reinforces that.
I just quietly smile and nod.
🧵 (10/10)

2024-06-21 04:37:05 GMT

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More offensive to me at every fucking level than the vilification of the Chinese is the agency-stripping of the Chinese. It's incredibly fucking insulting to hold the attitude that the Chinese are docile sheep who need to be guided by (almost invariably white, most times male) western saviours.
Fuck. Right. Off.
People with that attitude undermine any influence they may ever hold over Chinese people in seconds when that gets exposed. Just fucking stop it!
🧵 (9/n)

2024-06-21 04:34:38 GMT

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One of the things that repulses me all the fucking time when I see westerners talking about China is the removal of agency from Chinese people. The way even well-intentioned westerners babble, you'd think the Chinese were programmed robots.
Any time I see people talking about the Chinese as if they were docile robotic sheep, my mind instantly gives me the sentence "Tell me you've never met a Chinese person without actually saying it."
🧵 (8/n)

2024-06-21 04:31:30 GMT

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I've actually written about this before¹. Twice². The Chinese have five thousand years of recorded experience with despots. That means the despots have five thousand years of experience in knowing how to do despotism right, but it also means the people have five thousand years of knowing how to deal with despots.
(Protip: Sometimes dealing with them gets REALLY fucking bloody!)
🧵 (7/n)
---
¹ https://wordsmith.social/zhang-dianli/china-and-authoritarianism
² https://wordsmith.social/zhang-dianli/palliative-hotel

2024-06-21 04:28:14 GMT

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This leads to astonishing diversity in styles of leadership and management and leads to things like people who see, say, how COVID-19 was handled in Shenzhen extrapolating GROSSLY inaccurately to how it was handled in Chongqing or Wuhan or Beijing or Shanghai or Kunming or ... you get the drift.
So let's move on to the next misconception. #3 is only peripherally related to #1/2: the Chinese live in fear of their government and follow its dictates without question or thought.
🧵 (6/n)

2024-06-21 04:24:46 GMT

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It is literally impossible for a single person or small group to navigate the fractal complexity of Chinese local culture. Attempts to do so in the past invariably led to disaster. And since the Chinese are almost obsessive record-keepers, these failures are all well-known to the current despots in power.
As a result the Chinese style of authoritarian governance is to set policy and goals and leave it up to the local authorities to get it done.
🧵 (5/n)

2024-06-21 04:23:34 GMT

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And this leads to misconception #2: the government is a monolith.
This is very hard for people to understand who haven't experienced it, but despite China being a massively authoritarian state, there is almost scary amounts of local autonomy. Part of this is cultural¹. The rest is practical.
🧵 (4/n)
---
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven_is_high_and_the_emperor_is_far_away

2024-06-21 04:19:03 GMT

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This gets down to weird levels. For example the two dialects I have the most direct experience with (Wuhanhua and Jiujianghua) are both Mandarin dialects, and most of the time they're mutually intelligible, but either can, at the drop of a hat, switch into a mode where mutual intelligibility is gone. In this regard it's like German. It's all dialects of Hochdeutsch in most of Germany, but ... when they want to people in Bavaria can make themselves unintelligible to others.
🧵 (3/n)

2024-06-21 04:16:08 GMT

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(For those interested, that's Mandarin, Yue/Cantonese, Min, Wu, Gan, Xiang, Hakka, Jin ... and two others I can't think off off the top of my head at the moment.)
Famously Yue and Mandarin differ about as much as French and Portuguese. But even within the groups there are mostly-unintelligible dialects. For example Min has Minbei and Minnan (north and south), and these are about as different as, say, Spanish and Catalan.
🧵 (2/n)

2024-06-21 04:13:03 GMT

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The single #1 misconception I keep seeing, and the one that underlies most others, is that China is monolithic.
It isn't.
Even within the (overwhelming) Han majority of China there are huge differences from one group to another. Evidence: language is the carrier of culture. There are ten mutually-unintelligible major dialect GROUPS in China alone. That's a minimum of ten cultures sufficiently differentiated that they need what amounts to different languages.
🧵 (1/n)

2024-06-13 22:07:13 GMT

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I'll be starting in Ottawa and going cross-country to northern B.C.

2024-06-13 11:25:28 GMT

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This is one thing I'm going to dread when I go to Canada in July. Because I will be masking the fuck up in enclosed public spaces, and I just KNOW there is going to be some limp-dick who thinks they have the right to tell me what to do.

2024-05-20 06:54:52 GMT

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That's very similar to my final conclusion on PbtA-style games: not for me. For very similar reasons.