• 9 Posts
  • 106 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: May 7th, 2022

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  • The problem is: these guys aren’t foundational to how these companies work. Killing them might cause some confusion, and even make it so the upper management stops squabbling for personal gain for a decade. You’d probably strengthen it.

    If, by some miracle, you do cause the whole organization to unravel and split up: you’ll likely get a repeat of standard oil, where the new companies combined expanded so much quicker and made so much more profit. Just like how pruning a tree makes it healthier and grow with more vigor.

    Better to let the rot start from the roots.




  • As someone working in Chinese media. It’s qualitative. One of the issues is that except for the most prosperous cities, other regions in China have a hard time getting their media sectors of the ground. One reason is due to the government providing relatively lucrative, large and low effort projects, which hamper development. These projects, depending on the committee (and whether or not they want to get bribed and wait out the clock), can just be pigeonholed for months if not years, with no funding reaching these companies. In the meanwhile, these companies don’t dare take on bigger projects because “what if we suddenly get the money next month and we have to start”. A lot of time and opportunity is squandered, and the staff of these companies take on projects that might not be their right fit, as such you have a problem with specialization and creating task-orientated pipelines that improve quality and completion time.

    There are more graduates in media than vacancies. From this year on, the majority of provinces will scrap media studies from most universities that don’t have such a specialization.

    The issues are systemic, and very much on the quality side of things. China’s government puts too much trust in that the quality of its media and thus cultural power will rise with the same amount as their GDP does.



  • When the intellectual cadres of China were sent to the country side, these wereactivities to bring culture, science and technology, and medical and health care to the rural areas.

    When the intellectual cadres of the West get sent to the country side, or wherever, it will be for the purpose of casting away illusions.

    Sometimes I wonder whether these chronically online internet leftists are just spoiled suburban kids that don’t have the social skills to become influencers and merely turned to leftism because they are too poorly socialized to take the next step.


  • The West owns enough potential mines, the problem is that they don’t care about developing them. Instead they’ll sit on the land for a few years and then sell it on. Also, the problem isn’t the availability of the metals but the processing. China does the processing, and as such they have to buy from China.

    “Battle for Resources” is only a partial truth. The resources or rather productive forces will remain underdeveloped as long as capitalists can inflate their spreadsheets through the virtual economy and hiking prices in the short term.






  • It’s not necessarily the main reason, but it’s a reason. Tons of stories, I’d even argue that it’s most, don’t even venture into someone’s sexuality, race and neurotypicality. Readers generally don’t care, as long as it isn’t shoehorned in just for the sake of ticking boxes because you want to have a vibrant cast.

    All these characteristics bring their own baggage with them, and thus conflict. If you’re focusing on a story about a parent choosing to move on from losing their partner and having to remarry to make ends meet, sacrifice their own desire for love for the well-being and future prospects of their children, just as an example for conflict. Then giving the character autism, or an ethnicity that’s being discriminated against in that society, or any other characteristics; then it might take away from, diminish or even undermine the story you want to tell.

    In longer stories you can have different character arcs that allow for more nuanced characters and sub-plots. Weaving all of that together in a cohesive whole is a skill not many writers possess. Heck, if you’ve ever frequented fiction aggregate websites you’d know that the top user created lists are collections of stories that lack any and all romance.



  • Great tool to radicalize people, though as marxists we shouldn’t define ourselves by our direct contribution to the almighty GDP.

    Some jobs don’t produce a form of wealth or labour you can extract, all while still contributing to a prosperous society.