I didn’t (and don’t) believe in the supernatural metaphysical claims made by any religion, and don’t like that it seems to give hateful people a reason to be more biggoted and spaces to find each other and organize behind hateful causes

There are plenty of good religious folks though. By 25 I had moved much more into a “live and let live” mindset about religion. I’d also started to look more into Buddhism and realized there was a lot of value in the Buddha’s teachings even if you set aside the supernatural claims about the nature of the soul, rebirth, etc.

“But it makes you a HYPOCRITE! We’re better because we’re HONEST about wanting people dead!”

He developed spasmodic dysphonia (involuntary larynx contractions) in 1996 at age 42.

It was caused by eating tainted hippopotamus meat. He had hit the hippo while driving a mack truck near Pablo Escobar’s compound in the middle of the night, pursued by paramilitary forces. He returned 2 days later under cover of darkness to eat its liver and testicles, which an alternative health guru told him contained antioxidants and hormones that could prevent aging. He wound up about a week later in an El Salvadoran prison after rampaging through various towns in Colombia, Panama, and El Salvador causing property damage to several farmers’ vegetable stalls, soiling himself repeatedly, and accosting locals. Eye witnesses report that he had the voice at the time of these incidents. The US had him extradited soon after agreeing that they’d try him, but they dropped the charges on administrative grounds almost immediately.

That’s probably not true - no one really knows why spasmodic dysphonia happens. Seems to be something to do with your Basal Ganglia.

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My theory is that technology provides cognitive shortcuts/a way to offload cognitive labor.

If you learn the basics without technology, you have to have fundamental understanding and skills.

If you start with technological assistance right away, you may never build that fundamental level of understanding and skill.

The more the tech does for you, the worse it is. You may never learn critical thinking, problem solving, memory, or concentration skills if the answers are just handed to you.

Oh nice. I had looked on opensecrets and it showed a fair bit, but that must have been from a while back then. https://www.opensecrets.org/profiles/ro-khanna/us_congress/summary

I don’t agree with all his positions, and he does take a lot of money from big tech, but his heart is absolutely in the right place. He is a real public servant.

I wonder then if other sorts of vagus nerve stimulation are effective. Because you can stimulate your vagus nerve with deep breathing, Valsalva maneuver, and lots of other things.

I am definitely sympathetic to the defense against foreign dissent-manufacturing. I don’t doubt that is a serious issue.

But, ethnicity and nationality are separate things. Being a Chinese citizen does not make one ethnically Chinese - or in this case Han Chinese. I think what you are calling “sub-ethnicity” here is just what people mean by “ethnicity”. And what you’re implying is “ethnicity” is just “nationality”.

Though I think the CCP is trying to establish the concept of a Zhonghua Minzu (中华民族) or “Chinese Nation/Ethnic Group” - which is an artificial category intended to create a unified Chinese national identity out of the 56 ethnic groups recognized in China - maybe that’s what you mean? Either way, that doesn’t fit the typical anthropological definition, in my opinion.

I think they walk a fine line with that concept - it’d be very easy for that national identity to represent the Han majority more than the small minorities. As evidenced by the language restrictions posed by the law. Given the Han majority is 90% of the country, I don’t see how it could be otherwise.

To the extent that it reduces racism and foreign-sponsored dissent groups, that is good. To the extent that it limits free practice of culture and true, non-US-State-Dept sponsored, free speech, I’d say it’s overly draconian. But, I can also appreciate the need for more “authoritarian” laws in a country that has been under attack by foreign powers for as long as China has.

I am not a Chinese legal expert and have not read the full law, nor do I fully understand the context. So I withhold full judgment and don’t value my opinion too highly.

Here’s the wiki article on the law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_on_Promoting_Ethnic_Unity_and_Progress.

Some stuff makes sense - like economic modernization of regions with many minorities (especially poor regions), teaching Mandarin in schools so that everyone can speak the majority language, and preserving cultural works and texts of minority groups.

Other stuff seems repressive, like the broad enforcement section, the extremely broad reach of the law into all public and private institutions, legislating what various actors can/can’t teach the youth if it might “harm Chinese ethnic unity” which is left pretty vague. Very ethnostate-coded stuff on the whole, not great.

Some sections I thought were noteworthy, taken from wikipedia, shortened with DeepSeek. There is lots more stuff in there.

"Chapter I… tasks the whole of government and society to achieve these goals, mandating general obligations on a wide range of public and private actors such as … " [basically all imaginable institutions]

“Chapter II, titled Building a Shared Spiritual Home, lays out the ideological characteristics … requiring fostering identification with ‘the great motherland, the Chinese nation, Chinese culture, the Communist Party of China, and socialism with Chinese characteristics’ through patriotic education … and promotion of ‘Chinese cultural symbols and image of the Chinese nation’. It also codifies the predominance of Standard Chinese (Putonghua) in public life … and requires that Chinese characters be displayed more prominently than minority scripts if both must be used in public.”

“It tasks the Ministry of Education and the National Ethnic Affairs Commission in developing textbooks regarding ‘the community of the Chinese nation’ … It vows to support the standardization, digitization, and preservation of minority texts. It broadly requires media, internet service providers, families, among others, to promote the CCP’s ethnic policy … while prohibiting them from ‘instilling in minors ideas detrimental to ethnic unity and progress’.”

“Chapter V and VI concern the enforcement mechanisms … permits citizens to report conduct that ‘undermines ethnic unity and progress’ … Procuratorates may initiate public interest litigation when any such conduct also ‘undermines national interests or the public interest’. It generally leaves penalties to be imposed under other applicable laws. It also asserts jurisdiction over foreign organizations and individuals that ‘commit acts targeting the PRC that undermine ethnic unity and progress or create ethnic division’.[7] The law empowers the state to pursue those outside of China perceived as undermining notions of ethnic unity.”

FMHY - not exactly a megathread, but kinda

I am nearly certain this was at least heavily edited with ChatGPT

I think they are investigating that though, right? It’s just a different sort of story, requiring more reporting investment and more specialized reporters. I’ve seen lots of reporting on the war over the past months (humanitarian, economic, military, etc. etc.)

Obviously though most of that reporting is institutionalist, serves western interests, etc. I just don’t expect different from the corporate press

Well that’s a bit of a false equivalency. Yes the war is costing billions in tax payer money and innocent lives, which is bad, but that isn’t corruption. That’s just a warmongering administration getting into and losing unnecessary wars.

All these random, relatively small, examples of corruption are sometimes uses of taxpayer money like in this case, but that isn’t the problem - if the pool needed to be resurfaced then that is a legitimate government expense. It wasn’t necessary, but that’d just be waste if we stopped there. The actual problem is the corruption - the facilitation of funding to the Trump campaign and Trump family, illegally, through pay for play schemes.

Both things matter, and obviously the war matters more as it has cost innocent lives, they are not the same type of thing though.

I think the media latches onto simple corruption cases like this because they’re easy for people to grasp.

“Trump overpays donor to do subpar job on major national monument, ruining it” is a simple quid pro quo with visible (and ironically metaphorical) results.

It’s a little harder to talk about all his insider trading schemes, Melania movie $40M kickback, crypto rugpulls, campaign finance violations, etc. Because those have more plausible deniability and the results don’t have immediate and observable effects - often just pay for play schemes between him & corporations which are less concrete.

People can either delude themselves into thinking it’s legitimate because they don’t understand financial stuff/how things typically worked before being massively corrupt, or because it’s initially just Trump making money (usually illegally) which is something they expect him to do and the illegality is difficult to explain or not very hard-hitting.

“Very close to”

Wow much spiritual

That seems pretty neat. I like that it’s a “dumb” phone that can still use most apps.

Price seems a bit steep at $600, though.

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“Counting or not counting gang violence?”

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