Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[ChairmanPoo]

It wasnt like that.
China provided lists of sanctioned retailers. But those have waiting lists.
So countries are trying alternate unsanctioned retailers. With mixed results.
But the Chinese goverment has promised to investigate the companies involved (I think they'll probably get at least some people shot)

China produces good quality stuff. But also bad quality stuff. I mean it's a frikking huge country. I think you need to be careful about whom you purchase from.

[Reelya]

"China" doesn't actually have a good handle on what's going on in China. That's why they're trying to put in an automated trustworthiness rating system*. It's not so they'll "know what everyone is doing", it's more akin to Youtube putting in automated content moderation since they can't possibly know what everyone is doing, and the automation means they don't need to.

* that's the "social credit system" that was proposed, but most articles about it are clickbait.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

A non-clickbait article:
https://www.china-briefing.com/news/chinas-corporate-social-credit-system-how-it-works/

The real reason for it is that in China there is a lot of fraud, corruption and mistrust, and this is impacting people's willingness to engage in commerce. So the social credit system includes, and reserves the harshest penalties for company directors and government agencies heads.

The idea is that by having crowdsourced trustworthiness ratings, then a core of trusted entities will build up and it will incentivize people to stick to their word in contracts and the like. The goal is not that they want to monitor how many hours a day you spend playing video games or any of those other claims. They couldn't give a shit - if you're at home playing video games then you're not out on the street, so you're less of a hassle for the authorities. Also, closely monitoring consumption would be counter-intuitive to the goal of the social credit system, which is to foster commerce.

[delphonso]

A doctor from Wuhan has released a Covid19 guide book, for those interested in reading it. It's mostly medical procedure, but might have interesting info for you.

[ChairmanPoo]

I think I read it before. It was interesting. There was talk about trying to make a community based Spanish translation.

[bloop_bleep]

Re: Chinese social credit

So it has nothing to do with tracking and disempowering dissidents? ... Right.

I wouldn't exactly trust a publication called "China Briefing". It says it's run by a Pan-Asian organization, but I'm sure the Communist Party has its feelers running all throughout the thing.

[Reelya]

Re: Chinese social credit

So it has nothing to do with tracking and disempowering dissidents? ... Right.

Yeah, but they don't actually need to have a social credit system for that. They can just arrest you. For example, they mention in the below article about someone blacklisted from certain services, but that had absolutely nothing to do with any sort of scoring system, and no such scoring system is necessary to do that. For the purposes of control generally governments don't want to build a system with any sort of transparent scoring, they want to keep all that information hidden. If a scoring system comes in, and the rules are transparent then that actually conflicts with the arbitrary execution of power, it doesn't enhance it.

Most of the stuff about individuals is about tracking credit history, the same thing the west has with credit scores. Currently China barely has any way of tracking that stuff. So it's just western-inspired credit history tracking, since, you know, China doesn't actually have a credit-rating system currently. This is really for the benefit of business and not the state. If the state rates you and then makes that rating publicly available then that's revealing information, which they're generally against doing so. For example if a journalist writes a critical story, then their rating drops, then it's now public information that the government dropped his rating because of the story he wrote. Which is ... not a thing they want to reveal. It makes good drama in a dystopian sci-fi or spy thriller movie, but that's generally not how reality works.

This is what I mean by clickbait. China is implementing stuff that's 99% the same stuff we all have in the West, then suddenly that's big brother gone mad. There's stuff like being declined train tickets, but if you look at the examples of reasons, it's mostly fucking up on trains that causes them to do that. Even in free America, they can ban you from public transport for being a repeated nuisance.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/china-social-credit-system-explained

[Max™]

Seems relevant, if you know or happen to be someone in a situation where repairing a ventilator may become an important option: https://www.ifixit.com/News/36582/our-medical-repair-database-is-going-strong-but-still-needs-help

The whitest of white hats, ifixit, has got you, hopefully.

US cases: 124k, deaths, 2.1k and expected to speed up now after ~800 deaths yesterday and ~20k cases.

[bloop_bleep]

I saw an article recently which described an "every man for himself" situation in New York General Hospital for protective gear.

EDIT: Dammit, still can't find it... I'll keep looking...

EDIT: Found it. https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-outbreak-03-28-20-intl-hnk/h_a3c2e7461af128b10c219e854df322da

EDIT: Was a bit inaccurate what exactly the article claimed. Fixed it.

[Teneb]

I'm curious if the speculation about fertility effects in men will pan out to anything - that'd really seal the deal on covid as the "Earth's response to humanity" virus.

Gotta keep in mind that this kind of talk is pretty damn close to what the ecofascists are sqwaking these days. I know you ain't one, but still.

[Rolan7]

It's possible to be against unsupportable growth without being racist about it.  Just because "sustainability" is one of their latest smokescreens doesn't mean they own it or that it's bad.

Not that I have any hopes that this virus is going to improve things on that front.  It has all the horror, and relatively little change in population impact longterm due to the demographics it (mostly) targets.

[wierd]

I wouldnt be so sure... The younger generation is the one most strident about sustainable policies and practices-- it has been the incumbent generation that is most heavily targeted that has been fighting such changes for decades.

It could be a tipping point politically.  Just be aware of the carpet baggers, and other power-seizers that will waltz in.

[Reelya]

But that's basically smoke and mirrors. Merely posting green memes on social media is the extent to which most millenials are greener.

https://www.bchydro.com/content/dam/BCHydro/customer-portal/documents/news-and-features/report-millennials-and-baby-boomers-March2019.pdf

The main driver of boomers using more electricity is that boomers have bigger houses, and a big driver of that difference is heating/cooling costs for the larger space, plus the fact that a lot of millenials only watch shows on a phone or laptop, not an entertainment system. But ... if that boomer dies, someone else moves into that house, and starts using all those facilities, and totally be watching all their shows on a big screen which chews up more power than a laptop.

Also included in the report is the fact that boomers cook more often, so that counts towards household emissions. However this is a false equivalence because it fails to account for emissions and waste from getting take out. So, the "green" Millennial moves into the huge house of the dead "wasteful" boomer, then instead of cooking for themselves they order food via Uber Eats every single night.

The thing is, most of the categories in which Millennials do better than Boomers merely arise because the millennials have a lack of money to afford the wasteful things like a big house with space for a giant entertainment system, not a lack of them wanting those things. I can totally see the scenario where the Millennials grow up to be even a more power-hogging generation than the Boomers. Boomers use more energy that Millennials right now, but they certainly used a lot less when they were the Millennial's age.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

That doesn't follow at all - for one thing, plenty of boomerhaus' don't get anyone else living in them. They're not financially viable for millennials like they are for boomers, and plenty of them are hoarder shitholes too. Many simply lie fallow, generating wealth for house flippers and conglomerates. Hence why America already has more empty homes than homeless people.

Millennials are locked out of the political system, and our views on environmentalism thus are not reflected in policy, which is where they have the only significant impact. Outside of that, the best we can do is send boomer industries to the slaughter by not buying.

[Rolan7]

The main driver of boomers using more electricity is that boomers have bigger houses, and a big driver of that difference is heating/cooling costs for the larger space, plus the fact that a lot of millenials only watch shows on a phone or laptop, not an entertainment system. But ... if that boomer dies, someone else moves into that house, and starts using all those facilities, and totally be watching all their shows on a big screen which chews up more power than a laptop.

Woah, I didn't mean to imply that older generations consume more resources per capita.  Just that younger generations are currently less eager, than previous generations, to reproduce as if we have infinite space and resources.

Though younger generations *are* cohabitating more due to being squeezed of financial power by older generations.  Which is teaching a culture of efficiency, and not just the old nuclear family vs bachelor model.
And that's all I have to say about that.

Edit: Though they definitely do consume more resources per capita, duh, but we don't cull them because they're us 20-30-20000 years down the line, and that's completely unrelated to anything I meant to say.

Edit2: I just want them to stop telling me to make children

[Inarius]

Edit2: I just want them to stop telling me to make children

It stopped for me, around 30-32