🇨🇦🇩🇪🇨🇳张殿李🇨🇳🇩🇪🇨🇦

Within line of sight of me I have tea packaged in bamboo tubes and stored for use in calabash gourds.
We've been "growing packaging" for thousands of years.
So it's not a "what if' but rather "here's the next step".

2026-02-20 10:26:06 UTC

- reply

Ah. Possibly lost interest, then, or possibly had technical failure?

2026-02-20 09:52:59 UTC

- reply

What's a forkiverse?

2026-02-20 01:37:26 UTC

The Beaverton isn't pulling punches, I see.
https://www.thebeaverton.com/2026/02/u-s-legal-scholars-baffled-as-prince-andrew-arrested-for-epstein-ties-korean-president-sentenced-for-insurrection/

2026-02-18 08:52:07 UTC

- reply

Makes sense.
Me, I'd hyphenate it in a way that makes a follow-up question: "It is, is it?"

2026-02-18 08:20:34 UTC

- reply

How would they hyphenate "artisanal"?

2026-02-16 13:48:55 UTC

- reply

Given how much his kind practically drool over the Spartans, perhaps he should be given the Spartan treatment.
I believe upstart Heliots were hunted to death? (Or does he imagine himself an example of the elite of a warrior culture?)

2026-02-12 02:30:49 UTC

- reply

I'm not sure how any government (China is doing essentially the same thing here) thinks they can induce people to have more children while at the same time making anything related to children (health care, schooling, even clothing and food!) so expensive that most people can't afford it.

2026-02-04 22:44:14 UTC

- reply

You forgot:
- repeatedly and ad nauseum posture about the previous points as if any of those who do it will listen
I recommend you follow the advice you give in the final three words as well.

2026-02-04 22:28:50 UTC

- reply

Ah!
You're a prescriptivist!
You should have a chat with any of your colleagues who happen to be linguists and run your theories past them. Watch their faces. (The polite ones won't laugh out loud.)
😉

2026-02-04 22:10:13 UTC

- reply

Singular "they" has been in use since the 14th century. The claim that this is "incorrect" dates to the late 18th century when a bunch of toffee-nosed upper class scholars decided that it was they who would determine what was "correct" or not.
You know, the same crowd who thought splitting infinitives was wrong because it wasn't done in Latin (despite, you know, Latin not having an infinitive form which could even be split!).
Relax and link yourself to seven centuries of culture.

2026-02-02 22:00:21 UTC

- reply

There are a lot of companies who won't be seeing me darkening their doors ever again over this indeed.

2026-02-01 07:33:48 UTC

- reply

Even if it were an order of magnitude more expensive solar is a win over petroleum in powering what matters in the modern era.
Petroleum: you gots it, you uses it, you don't gots it.
Solar: you gots it, you uses it, you still gots it.
You can't meaningfully compete with "free" unless you're cheating somehow.

2026-01-24 00:04:35 UTC

- reply

And sometimes is given away free for favour.
This always makes me laugh. "I won't use WeChat because the Chinese government, who can't do anything meaningful to me, will read or listen in to whatever I do. I'd rather let Zuck the Fuck have that information. You know, the guy who literally performs evil experiments on his user base."
Some days I despair for humanity. The rest I just point and laugh.

2026-01-22 05:26:26 UTC

- reply

Redcaps were pretty horrific creatures in folklore!

2026-01-16 13:14:29 UTC

- reply

Holy shit! This is ... staggering news. I'd assumed Carney had swallowed the neocon thug bullshit he'd been swigging on Wall St. all the way.

2026-01-15 08:04:03 UTC

- reply

It's not really all that useful for professional networking either. And it has (or at least had; I don't know if it's still structured this stupidly) a major issue in how it operates.
Paid accounts get less than unpaid accounts in terms of networking.
See, I tried to connect with past coworkers back when I had an account. But my account was a free account and theirs was paid. So I wasn't allowed to send a message.
Think about what that implies for a moment.

2026-01-14 02:02:01 UTC

- reply

I still think it's hilarious that the Chinese government was smack-talking the USA for **decades** and Chinese people were all "c'mon, nobody could be that bad!"
...
And now they're finding out that their government wasn't smack-talking the USA **enough**! The reality was worse than the propaganda!
A former student of mine came back to China holiday from a university in Pittsburgh. She looked INCREDIBLY depressed when I met her because she was going back the next day....

2026-01-01 03:20:01 UTC

For Canadians who participate in #ElbowsUp, please, for the love of all that's holy, don't fall for the maple-washing that's going on. Where ingredients are sourced is largely irrelevant. That's just telling you where the labour is getting exploited. Check the **OWNERSHIP** of companies. That's where the money flows.
As a practical example, French's Ketchup uses "Canadian tomatoes" sure. That means Canadian workers are getting pennies while McCormick's, a US firm, is getting dollars.

2025-12-28 00:26:26 UTC

- reply

Yep. Currently it's politics and obviously such. But that won't be the case for long. When China starts making its own jet engines en masse, say goodbye to tungsten and titanium availability outside the borders, for example (one of hundreds).

2025-12-28 00:19:41 UTC

- reply

Of course the article frames this in terms of warfare. As if American industry and military has a **right** to that substance and the Chinese are interfering with their God-given ownership of everything no matter where it might happen to be found.
Yet when identical (if more clumsy) techniques are used against the Chinese, it's only natural and good and the way of business.
Fucking hypocrites, the lot of 'em.

2025-12-27 05:56:42 UTC

- reply

And when you consider what the government was telling them, that's really saying something.

2025-12-27 03:28:42 UTC

- reply

Yep. And the scary part is there's not that many pandas. These things are irritable eating machines.

2025-12-16 01:57:06 UTC

- reply

The key to solving the cost-of-living crisis is for wages to go up in tandem with productivity instead of having all the productivity wind up in the pockets of a tiny handful of people.
For some reason the USA is 100% averse to doing this.

2025-12-15 13:44:24 UTC

https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/115/723/874/152/818/465/original/ecae40ab1412322f.png

2025-12-08 08:13:56 UTC

- reply

Oh, absolutely. But the others aren't a whole lot better. 😆 His wife makes my skin crawl too, not quite as much.

2025-12-08 07:45:58 UTC

- reply

On whose behalf? 😆

2025-11-30 00:38:41 UTC

You know, German has a word—Fremdschämen—that means feeling embarrassment on behalf of someone else (someone else you don't even know and who is oblivious to your embarrassment on their behalf).
I think about that word a lot when watching degenerative AI fans babble about "their" writing or "their" art.

2025-11-15 02:51:03 UTC

- reply

What's wrong with kiwifruit? I mean I get grapefruit. Take everything bad from oranges and from pomelos and grow a hybrid that contains that. And carambola ... meh. I don't hate them but they're not something I'd reach for unless that's all there is. But kiwifruit? What's the problem there?

2025-11-15 01:43:45 UTC

- reply

They're betting a LOT of money on payout from this. This is exciting!

2025-11-12 22:25:35 UTC

- reply

It should be noted that the local authorities spotted the hazard and closed the bridge a day or two before the landslide took out the bridge.

2025-11-12 22:19:37 UTC

- reply

And when traditional religion, which is at least honed by thousands of years of trial and error in providing some kind of unifying vision, is abandoned (often under the influence of capitalist drives) you get new religious movements that are utterly ludicrous *and* utility-free like TESCREAL.

2025-11-03 03:19:13 UTC

- reply

What do you call a person who's afraid of riddles?

2025-10-30 07:55:38 UTC

- reply

Yes

2025-10-30 07:24:39 UTC

- reply

Is this the one you mean?
@npub12dn…0hjt
https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/115/461/918/723/942/944/original/89e9b1a58eb0c998.jpg

2025-10-30 05:42:54 UTC

- reply

Only the ones who piss him off, natch. 😆

2025-10-30 05:17:30 UTC

- reply

Oh wow. I love the way the faces look on each side.
This is going to be a juicy negotiation.

2025-10-25 23:25:21 UTC

- reply

Except in the USA where "leftist" means "centre-right".

2025-10-25 16:03:38 UTC

- reply

Gravity batteries are awesome. I saw one that was basically just a train car on slanted tracks with cables that either used electricity to pull the car up (charging) or let the car slide down, powering a generator (discharging). It was kind of amazing: so simple and yet apparently rather efficient.
There's also one a few hours away from here that uses water and a dam to do the same kind of thing: pump the water up to charge, let the water out to discharge.

2025-10-25 08:17:49 UTC

- reply

Yes, but which consensus and when?
There's people today working off the LONG-debunked "consensus" of "Alpha Males" in wolf packs. That was once consensus. It is no longer.
There was once consensus that gender and sex were the same thing. This is not the current consensus.
And a lot of people in the atheist movement, even the pro-science ones, are behind the times with their scientific consensus. (And to be fair, it's REALLY hard to keep up! SO MUCH SCIENCE!)

2025-10-25 07:29:36 UTC

- reply

You've missed nothing. Dawkins is clearly still a little boy scarred by frightening tales told of Hell when he was physically younger. This fear taints everything he writes that isn't a scientific paper.
But there's a whole lot of reductionist reactionaries across every skeptic's movement I've encountered. A whole of of "the science says" types who seem to be unaware that science is a constantly evolving field and that things that were "said" in the past have since been unsaid.

2025-10-25 07:10:53 UTC

- reply

Nobody who is a minority or female who even had peripheral relationships with the "skeptic's movement" of 15-20 years ago is even slightly surprised that they've gone full Nazi today.
I mean look at how Dawkins reacted to a woman who said "guys, don't invite women to your hotel room for coffee in an elevator late at night, it's creepy" way back when (I want to say 2010-ish?).

2025-10-15 05:45:37 UTC

- reply

I need these.

2025-10-13 13:16:47 UTC

- reply

Across my time here, the feeling I get is that they may not trust individual specific actions—which was amplified a *lot* during the Jiang era—but overall view the government as being better than the alternatives they can envision from examples around them.

2025-10-10 22:49:40 UTC

- reply

To be fair, look through the historical recipients and your qualifications don't seem so far off the mark, do they?
Henry Kissinger…?

2025-10-09 11:40:06 UTC

- reply

*takes surreptitious notes* Oh? What kinds of rock excellence names could you name?

2025-10-09 07:19:28 UTC

- reply

What about rock, more broadly. Who has the better tunes?

2025-10-07 03:10:38 UTC

- reply

If *all* you did was promote your Patreon, I'd drop you like a MAGA date.
You don't.
Ergo I don't.

2025-10-02 02:04:29 UTC

- reply

GDP has always been a ludicrous measure.
If I buy a pen from you at $1 today, and tomorrow you sell that same pen back to me for $1, the GDP has gone up by $2.

2025-09-27 08:50:13 UTC

- reply

OK, you want details:
1. Cashiers are trained. It's not *lots* of training, but there is training. There's a reason for that training: it's easy to fuck up when you are processing purchases.: to miss items accidentally, to run items past the scanner twice, not to mention dealing with items that have no bar codes (like fresh produce).
Self check-out expects you to now to do that work untrained, which leads to…
🧵 ▶️

2025-09-27 08:19:37 UTC

- reply

You should look into the problems with the self-serve machines. They are absolutely not a panacea. I will actively avoid stores that only have them, and never use the ones that are there if a store has them.

2025-09-25 12:54:44 UTC

- reply

And oddly they're *also* the same people ringing alarm bells about how China is taking over the world.
Like literally the same individuals.
I think there may be some people who need their meds adjusted.

2025-09-25 12:29:04 UTC

- reply

I had someone (a Lou Dobbs fan, so you get a hint as to the mentality) tell me in grave, no-nonsense terms that I should get out of China before the 2008 Olympics. (This was in 2003.) Because "China's economy is going to collapse at the end of 2007 and they're going to be looking for scapegoats."
Here I am in 2025 still having a ball.

2025-09-24 07:15:18 UTC

- reply

The issue is that any kind of profound, enduring change takes a long time. Further, at the initial phase of any such change you're going to see possible backsliding on key elements.
This means that if you are at risk of being thrown out of power by a demagogue who will take advantage of people's dissatisfaction at that backslide, you will not take any long-term action. Ever.
Whatever you do has to pay off in a single election cycle. And nothing worth doing can.

2025-09-22 14:01:43 UTC

- reply

I live for all practical purposes in such a community. (Not formally, but there's very little I need that's not within a 15 minute walk of home. And if you factor the metro or bus into things, there's nothing that's not within 15 minutes.)

2025-09-20 03:16:41 UTC

- reply

It is wonderful! The only concern I have is that as this ramps up, the Beast may go totally insane and start nuking. I'm in one of the rather obvious nuke targets.

2025-09-20 01:55:45 UTC

- reply

Some of us have popcorn.

2025-09-20 01:45:18 UTC

- reply

Also, man the interest people would have in the humanities if something actually relevant to modern people were taught instead of mouldy old dead stuff.
You can't force young people to be interested in Elizabethan poetry. But you can lead them that way if you **START** with something they're interested in.

2025-09-17 23:10:03 UTC

- reply

Farmers voted overwhelmingly for Trump.
You reap what you sow. You'd think farmers would understand this.
Fuck them.

2025-09-13 01:48:41 UTC

- reply

Huh. They're really bent on triggering WWIII, aren't they?

2025-09-13 00:43:47 UTC

- reply

The Israeli government assassinated the PM of Yemen?

2025-09-01 06:36:33 UTC

- reply

No, they don't. Hence people bragging about being "serial entrepreneurs" when to most people this sounds only barely a moral step above "serial killer".

2025-09-01 04:55:36 UTC

- reply

I'm talking, though, about the @npub1dad…y568 foundation's "Music" community that will boost, supposedly, musical content.
They boost #punk, but not #metal. It's ... odd to me.

2025-09-01 04:28:45 UTC

- reply

I think it's interesting that my #punk posts are getting boosted, but not my #metal ones.

2025-08-30 05:31:53 UTC

- reply

And in the comments is the inevitable: "Run it like a business."
That's Amtrak's exact PROBLEM. They're trying to run it like a business instead of a public service. The result is a focus on saving money to the point that the product doesn't do what it's meant to do.
The country that has the largest and arguably best HSR system in the world did the exact OPPOSITE of running it like a business. China's HSR, outside of some very specific routes, operates at a net LOSS.

2025-08-30 05:26:48 UTC

- reply

There's no good burger joints in China.
Yet.

2025-08-30 05:19:38 UTC

- reply

This is me laughing from the 200km/h inter-city local expresses. Or from the 320km/h HSR.

2025-08-30 05:18:35 UTC

- reply

There are three reasons for her return to China.
1. Chinese people in the USA are tired of being the racial kicking ball of US paranoia.
2. The Chinese government basically gave her a blank cheque and said "go do your thing".
3. She's a woman and likely got treated FURTHER like shit in the USA as a result.

2025-08-26 04:10:36 UTC

- reply

Has he not noticed that his tariff threats have not fallen on fallow ground here?

2025-08-26 01:10:58 UTC

- reply

Caraway and cheese is one of those taste combinations you can't live without once you've tasted it.
Some cheeses can't be eaten without it, in fact. (I'm looking at you here, Handkäse!)

2025-08-24 00:12:11 UTC

- reply

"I am going to spend my time writing to tell you I didn't want to read."
What a tragic mental position to adopt.

2025-08-21 01:36:16 UTC

- reply

Wait, you mean concentrating a monoculture into a small space might actually facilitate the spread of contagion?!
WHO KNEW!?

2025-08-09 14:31:25 UTC

- reply

How do Murcans think that 350 million people in a world of 8 billion are irreplaceable?

2025-08-07 21:47:52 UTC

- reply

https://mstdn.business/@cnbusinessforum/114987742136191406

2025-08-07 00:41:06 UTC

Hey, software pushers. Wanna know why everybody hates your products?
It's because of stuff like this.
#Tech #Ad #DarkPattern #SoftwareSucks
https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/114/984/689/876/847/123/original/372e6112a72c70b4.webp

2025-08-03 11:40:14 UTC

- reply

Australia is like the USA when it comes to trade in this neck of the woods: if you're not buying what they're selling, they don't change what they sell, they just whine loudly and claim you're doing "protectionism".

2025-07-25 14:11:47 UTC

- reply

Do you wear a fedora? (I know the whip is probably too far.)

2025-07-16 08:45:16 UTC

- reply

Hence the need for fetters.
But also, most of the "wealth" of the oligarch class is fantasy money anyway. It will vanish in a puff of market movement.

2025-07-16 07:26:37 UTC

- reply

Also capitalism isn't really all that great at generating wealth either when it's left unfettered. Unfettered capitalism has done the literal *opposite* of generating wealth in the west in recent decades. It's made a few *individuals* very wealthy, but on the whole western economies have done very badly at even keeping people at the levels they were at in the '70s, not to mention expanding their economic situation.
And the fewer fetters on the capitalism, the worse the outcomes.

2025-07-15 12:22:04 UTC

- reply

Chinese air conditioners are more capable than North American ones, at a lower price point and, key here, ABSOLUTELY FAR MORE EFFICIENT.
This is what happens when you have a government that enforces ever-tightening restrictions on appliance efficiency. Businesses actually innovate.

2025-07-15 12:04:19 UTC

- reply

You know, something about the "solarpunk" æsthetic bugged me and I think you just put a finger on it.

2025-07-14 07:08:53 UTC

- reply

There are so many hot takes in medical and psychological studies it's hard to take them seriously at times.
You've spotted a good one here, and that's reminiscent of studies that "proved" marijuana use is linked to underperformance and demotivation.
Or, you know, that underperforming and demotivated people drift toward marijuana usage...

2025-07-09 05:43:06 UTC

- reply

This is where I introduce a term to you today: 全过程人民民主. Look it up. (And I don't mean ask ChatGPT! ACTUALLY LOOK IT UP! It's good exercise for your brain!)
I'm not going to get into arguments about whether or not this is "real democracy". I'm not going to get into arguments with know-nothings who've never stepped foot outside their cowshit-laden towns but are experts on one of the most complicated governance systems in the world either.
But I will tell you this is an example.
🧵 ▶️

2025-07-09 05:33:03 UTC

- reply

So what the western press absolutely pushes as its narrative is that any system that isn't liberal (in the old school sense) capitalism is top-down authoritarian and thus bad. This is why, despite literally *everybody* involved in that job site being publicly-available information on Jinan's government site, the only named entity in reportage on this dome is a government agency. IN BEIJING!
The materials firms that designed the skin? The design firms that created the dome? Unnamed.
🧵 ▶️

2025-07-09 05:29:43 UTC

- reply

Well, I mean, it *would* be bizarre if I hadn't read, you know, every piece of reportage on China in western media for the past three decades or so.
Because the role of media in the west stopped being "informing the public" ages ago (if, indeed, it had ever actually had that role). The role of media in the west is to further a narrative that is in line with what a bunch of rich assholes want you to believe: that any system that isn't the one they're milking to death is bad.
🧵 ▶️

2025-07-09 05:26:19 UTC

- reply

RIGHT NEXT TO THIS ARTICLE is a link blurb about a trivial redesign of Yet Another Shopping Mall. Here's what it says:
"FMG Fabbrica Marmi and architect Paolo Gianfrancesco, of THG Arkitektar Studio, have designed the restyling of the third floor of Reykjavik's largest shopping center."
For a trivial mall redesign they named the architect and lead construction agency. For a novel engineering project they named ... "the Ministry of Ecology and Environment in Beijing".
This is bizarre!
🧵 ▶️

2025-07-09 05:23:20 UTC

- reply

So, let's start with the headline. "Why China built..."
Let's clear this up right away. "China" didn't build shit. Thousands of Chinese workers who work for independent construction contractors did. Contractors who are privately owned businesses. (Note the plurals all along!) The dome was designed by an engineering firm who used the materials research of various structural materials firms, and all of this was governed by an lead construction firm.
Why were none of these named?
🧵 ▶️

2025-07-09 05:16:50 UTC

OK, big thread time. It will seem a little bit meandery, but I promise it all comes together in the end.
The topic is, as is increasingly usual for my rants, the #disingenuous #western #press and its service of #narrative over information. The seeds of this rant were planted when @npub1ren…znvz posted a link to this story:
https://www.domusweb.it/en/news/2025/07/07/in-china-an-inflatable-dome-reduces-construction-dust-and-noise.html
I urge you to read both the headline and the article before continuing. But I'll be starting with the headline.
Obliquely.
🧵 ▶️

2025-07-06 22:03:03 UTC

- reply

The Yellow Emperor: Mythical or legendary?

2025-07-05 15:39:30 UTC

- reply

Canada should join BRICS.

2025-07-04 14:40:04 UTC

- reply

Wow. Academia vs. tech. Same planet, different worlds! That's just so weird to me! 😆

2025-07-04 14:19:44 UTC

- reply

Weirdly, when I worked in tech most of the people who talked loudest about "meritocracy" had some of the least merit beyond being male and white and middle class.

2025-07-02 21:51:05 UTC

- reply

What, beating malaria at 100,000 or so?

2025-07-01 02:53:22 UTC

- reply

Yes

2025-07-01 02:45:50 UTC

- reply

And here's the test.
This post does not contain alt text deliberately. @altbot will describe it (likely very inaccurately) in a response. Alternatively you can go to https://pxlfd.ca/p/ZDL/821941180629046082 where this and other similar items are portrayed and described in exhaustive detail.
https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/114/775/677/733/441/109/original/5a4f99e58546bb97.jpg