As JD Vance delivered his speech about “European overregulation” and criticized “endless compliance costs imposed on the US companies by GDPR” I have seen some voices from Europe who said something to the effect “I don‘t know a single EU company happy about #GDPR either”.

Well, it’s kind of obvious companies aren’t happy because GDPR was not made to make companies happy but to protect the privacy of consumers 😄

This regulation is based on fundamental differences between US and EU legal systems. In EU, you own and control your personal data. In US it’s owned by whoever managed to extort it from you, and then aggregate, personalise and resell to any other entity anywhere.

For example, if you want to pay higher insurance premium because you have genetic tendencies to diabetes or obesity - well, that’s the US way of doing business, but it’s not the only one, nor it’s somehow axiomatically “better”. And yes, high insurance premiums also have the effect of increasing overall country’s GDP, just as a house burnt and rebuilt also does this magic, yet somehow few people celebrate it 😉

Then someone asked me if I really “feel that my data is better protected thanks to GDPR”. And yes, as a matter of fact the most invasive behavioural profiling aren’t being rolled out by companies like Twitter or Facebook to EU specifically because of GDPR, while in US they just roll them out without asking anyone.

Anyone… of course except for the states which have regulations very similar or even more restrictive than GDPR, such as California. Yet, because California is “their”, these companies and their CEOs with high media presence simply shut up and make their apps compliant with CCPA without all this barking about “how GDPR kills out business”.

It’s the same with EU VAT, about which Vance also whined, whereas US sales tax accounting rules are not even harmonized across states. But hey, you know what? An US business that has to emply a tax consulting company to get multi-state accounting right also increases overall GDP! 😄

So effectively what in US is perceived as each state’s fundamental right, sign of their diversity and key part of their autonomy, in the EU is portrayed as something equivalent to Soviet Union style central planning. And when they post all the memes about “bottle caps” in EU, they of course never mention a gazillion of state-level archaic or absurd regulations which are nonetheless binding, especially if someone likes to build a class lawsuit around them.

And now as Tesla opened a new factory in #China, I’ve never seen Musk make a single critical remark about the overregulation in China, even though it’s even more complex than EU and US taken together due to its vast geographic and administrative diversity.

"Chen Yaozuo was a #Teochew prime minister & grand tutor of the crown prince of the #SongDynasty (960–1279) in the 11th century. Coming from a family of officials, he was a rising star at the start of his career, until he bravely, or some might say foolishly, answered a call of Emperor Zhenzong for open criticisms by submitting a memorial that spelt out the ills of the times, including matters that no one else dared to speak about. As a result, Chen Yaozuo was banished & demoted to become an assistant prefect in the Teochew prefecture. This happened in 998, almost 180 years after Han Yu of the Tang dynasty suffered a similar fate."

"....Chen Yaozuo was more of a problem-solver than Han Yu, and he knew this. At the same time, he sensed the Teochew people’s deep admiration for his fellow Confucian. Cleverly capitalising on this, Chen Yaozuo erected a shrine in honour of Han Yu and he used it to commence his own programme to promote education among what was still a backward population. In pursuit of this goal, the Sichuan native also set up a Confucian temple and places of learning, while identifying and encouraging able families to send their children to schools.

Chen Yaozuo left Teochew after three years of devoted service to its people. He subsequently revealed in an inscription presented to a study room in Zhangpu (a county in Fujian adjacent to Teochew prefecture) that his time in Teo-yor was passed without major worries, despite it being enveloped in miasma."

"Chen Yaozuo’s heart remained with the place even many years after his departure. His poem below, “A note to Registrar Li Zi in Chaoyang” (送潮陽李孜主簿), illustrates this:

潮陽山水東南奇
The mountains and waters of Chaoyang are a wonder of the Southeast
魚鹽城郭民熙熙
Fishing boats, salt beds, and people going in and out of the city form a merry sight
當時為撰玄聖碑
Back then I had to write inscriptions for the sages
而今風俗鄒魯為。
Today its customs are like Zou and Lu [i.e. the home countries of Mencius and Confucius]

#Chinese #historians credit Han Yu for starting what we may call a #revolution through #literacy in Teochew. Yet the extent of Chen Yaozuo’s tireless contributions towards this cause can be seen by its fruits. Before his arrival, the Teochew prefecture produced only three men who attained the status of jinshi, the highest scholarly title awarded by the Chinese imperial court since the late 6th century. By the end of Song, the records show more than 170 jinshi from Teochew, of whom about a third came from Teo-yor.

Beyond scholarly titles, the creation of an educated class sparked a golden age in Teochew with accelerated advancements in agriculture and industry that ended its days as a backwater."

Ref: inf.news/en/history/08fbe53052…

Ref: theteochewstore.org/blogs/late…

#AsianMastodon #China #Gaginang #ChineseRevolutionaries #ChineseImperialEra #TeochewHistory #ChineseHistory #AsianHistory #SouthEastAsia #HistoryOfChina #LearnHistory #TootSEA #ChineseScholars #TeochewRoots

I pray to God that #China just burst the AI bubble with this stunt and that a lot of people lose vast fortunes over it. Why? That's what five different companies get for trying to force their five different versions of the same thing on me at least three to five times a week.

I hope they all burn.

Let's say China manages to get just a little bit of data about people from just a few of these ... 😑

"China's overlapping tech-industrial ecosystems"

high-capacity.com/p/chinas-ove…

#cybersec #cybersecurity #infosec #itsec #china #privacy #gdpr #dataprotection #dataskydd

China's overlapping tech-industrial ecosystems

EVs, batteries, lidar, drones, robotics, smartphones, AI. China's progress across a range of overlapping industries creates a mutually reinforcing feedback loop.

^{Kyle Chan (High Capacity)}

Full year results of household survey for 2024 in China just posted. Real household income and consumption rose faster than overall GDP growth. Gains to rural households are significantly higher than urban households.

#china #economy

"Testing has been completed of a device for carrying out irradiation tests of various radioisotopes - such as yttrium-90 - at the two pressurised heavy water reactors that make up Phase III of the Qinshan nuclear power plant in China's Zhejiang province.

There is no isotope irradiation test function module in the original design architecture of the pressurised heavy water reactor (PHWR), People's Daily reported. It said this meant that the Qinshan project team needed to create a special device that could seamlessly embed the isotope irradiation test function and is compatible with the existing design of the reactor, as a core irradiation test platform. It noted medical isotopes are mostly short-half-life isotopes, which require the rapid loading and unloading of irradiation test targets during the normal operation of the reactor.

"After repeated adjustments, the project team and the design institute finally designed a prototype of the device concept," People's Daily said. The isotope irradiation test platform reportedly has the ability to automatically load and unload isotope irradiation targets online.

"During the debugging and verification process of the device, it underwent thousands of action tests, which fully verified the reliability of the device," People's Daily said. "On 3 April 2023, the National Nuclear Safety Administration officially approved Qinshan Nuclear Power to use the irradiation test device to conduct yttrium-90 irradiation tests. On 23 April, the project team continued to work for nearly 120 hours during the overhaul of Qinshan No.3 Plant, successfully completing the device installation, cold commissioning and system identification operations. On 14 December, with the first yttrium-90 target successfully unloaded from the reactor, the hot test of the device was successfully completed."

The report noted that this marks the official completion of the first commercial reactor isotope research and development platform in China.

"The platform has successfully realised the research and development and production of short-half-life medical isotopes for domestic commercial reactors, opening up a new path for the localisation of medical isotopes and the development of radioactive drugs," it added. "In the future, Qinshan Nuclear Power will continue to deepen the production of reactor-irradiated isotope irradiation, and contribute to the independent and controllable supply of medical isotopes and the expansion of diversified applications of nuclear technology in China."

China National Nuclear Corporation's Qinshan comprises seven reactors, making it China's largest nuclear power plant. Construction of Phase I of the plant - a 300 MWe pressurised water reactor (PWR) which was the first indigenously-designed Chinese nuclear power station to be built - began in 1985, with the unit entering commercial operation in 1994. Qinshan Phase II is home to four operating CNP-600 PWRs, built with a high degree of localisation. Units 1 and 2, comprising the first stage of Phase II, began operating in 2002 and 2004, respectively. Units 3 and 4 entered commercial operation in October 2010 and April 2021. Phase III consists of two 750 MWe pressurised heavy water reactors supplied by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd and commissioned in 2002 and 2003.

In April this year, CNNC announced that the Qinshan plant has started mass production at one of its PHWRs of carbon-14, which is used in medical and scientific research and in fields including agriculture and chemistry as well as in medicine and biology. Apart from very limited production in experimental reactors, it was previously imported."

#Nuclear #News #China

world-nuclear-news.org/article…

Qinshan plant set to increase production of isotopes

Testing has been completed of a device for carrying out irradiation tests of various radioisotopes - such as yttrium-90 - at the two pressurised heavy water reactors that make up Phase III of the Qinshan nuclear power plant in China's Zhejiang provin…

^{World Nuclear News}

#China will give all the least developed countries with which it has diplomatic relations zero-tariffs for 100% tariff lines starting from December 1, becoming the first large developing country and major economy to announce such a policy.

This underscores the country's commitment to win-win cooperation and providing new opportunities for the world through its own development. Compare this to countries who are putting 100% tariffs on imports from developing countries.

globaltimes.cn/page/202411/132…

China to give least developed countries zero-tariff treatment

China will give all the least developed countries with which it has diplomatic relations zero-tariff treatment for 100 percent tariff lines starting from December 1, becoming the first large developing country and major economy to announce such a pol…

^{www.globaltimes.cn}

One of many earlier #British #ColonialCrimes in #SouthEastAsia. The #BriggsPlan in #Malaysia.

The Nazi regime during WWII forever gave the term #ConcentrationCamp a name symbolic of #atrocity, so when British #colonizers once again visited the idea of #ForcedRelocation of #IndigenousPeoples to isolate them they needed another name for the enclaves. They came up with #NewVillages. The New Villages were created under the Briggs Plan, which was developed to combat the communist insurgency in #Malaya during the 1950 #MalayanEmergency. The plan was prepared by Sir Harold Briggs, a British General who was the Director of Operations in Malaya.

#Britain lost the Malayan Peninsula and their fortress at Singapore to the Japanese during WWII and reoccupied their former dominion after the fall of Japan. Among the many difficulties the British encountered was the presence of roughly a half-million #Chinese in rural Malaya, most working as farmers working small plots of land for their own sustenance on land they did not own or lease. The British administration regarded these Chinese as squatters and found them a problem because they were physically distant from the machinery of British authority, which most of the Malayan population was not happy to see return to their country.

When the Malay #CommunistParty received support from armed #guerrillas from Malaya and #China, the British, intent on restoring #Imperial rule to the peninsula, looked with additional distrust upon these rural Chinese. While some of the Chinese were certainly sympathetic to the communists, most were indifferent. The British concern was that the communist #insurgents would receive support from the squatters in the form of food, neglecting the fact that the majority of the Chinese squatters were barely able to grow enough to support themselves. The Briggs plan required the forced relocation of the Chinese.

The New Villages isolated the Chinese, and they were guarded by Malayan police and British Military Police and some troops. The Chinese could not leave the villages except under escort and nobody was allowed in without the permission of the guards, making them effectively prisons. The villages were built with running water and electricity, amenities absent from most Malayan villages, and health care and some educational facilities were provided. This caused resentment towards the British from the Malay outside the villages, who didn’t receive the same amenities, and the Chinese, who resented the forced relocation settlement.

Although the New Villages, of which 450 were built, were an improvement over the forced detention camps of the Boer War, and death rates in the villages were roughly the same as for the rest of the country, there were racially motivated #CollectivePunishments directed towards the Chinese population in the villages. #Deportation without trial by the administration was a common punishment for the Chinese. Law within the villages was the decision of the British. Many of the villages are still standing and in recent years have been restored to serve as tourist destinations by the Malaysian government with support from China.

#AsianMastodon #SouthEastAsia #TootSEA #ColonialismInAsia #Decolonization #DecolonialLearning #ColonizerCrimes #ColonialViolence #Decolonize #AsianHistory #MalaysianHistory #LearnYourColonialHistory

#Europa necesita de inversiones para detener la caida del empleo

Para ello decidio imponer #aranceles a ¿todos? los #vehiculos que no se fabriquen en la #UnionEuropea lo que esta afectando de manera muy dispar a la #industria

Todas las fabricantes de #China deberan pagar al menos el doble y hasta 3 veces mas que la fabricante de #EEUU, #Tesla
1/x

Wednesday, November 6

Russia’s war against Ukraine

Military and police members inspect the remains of a Russian drone in the Shevchenkivskyi district after the Nov. 5 attack in Kharkiv. As a result of the strike, two women were injured. (Oleksandr Manchenko/Gwara Media/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)

Umerov confirms first battles between Ukrainian and North Korean soldiers in Kursk Oblast. The clashes were small-scale, according to Ukraine's Defense Minister Rustem Umerov.

Russia launches record number of drones in October, General Staff reports. Russia launched at least 4,300 Shahed-type attack drones and similar UAVs imitating Shaheds against Ukraine between August and October 2024 — a sharp increase compared to earlier months — according to the Ukrainian Air Force.

Ukrainian Legion in Poland reportedly receives over 500 applications in a month. The recruitment center of the Ukrainian Legion in Poland has received over 500 applications in a month from Ukrainians living in 30 countries, Ukrinform reported on Nov. 5, citing the center's officials.

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Ukrainian GPS spoofing for repelling drone attacks could indirectly affect smartphone clocks, General Staff says. Users in Ukraine have begun to experience more frequent automatic time changes on their smartphones due to the activation of electronic warfare systems during air raid alarms.

Google responds to claims map images revealed locations of Ukrainian weapons. "These satellite images were taken more than a year ago and come from publicly available sources — we deliberately do not publish the latest images of war zones," Google said.

Putin appoints Ukraine war veteran as governor of Tambov region. Russian President Vladimir Putin has appointed a Ukraine war veteran to govern one of Russia’s regions, marking the highest position awarded to a participant in the full-scale invasion so far.

The Kyiv International Economic Forum (KIEF) — one of the largest international forums in Eastern Europe — will take place on Nov. 7, with the Kyiv Independent as a media partner.

KIEF brings together representatives of business, government, and society to promote Ukraine's integration into the global community.

Register here: **forumkyiv.org/en/**

Read our exclusives

Zelensky used talk with Trump about nuclear weapons as leverage before crucial US election, analysts say

With Ukraine's future hanging in the balance ahead of the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election, Ukraine’s president turned up the heat, invoking the specter of nuclear weapons to nudge whoever lands in the Oval Office toward offering more conventional weaponry to Kyiv.

Photo: Uliana Boichuk/Novyny LIVE/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images

Ukraine war latest: Kyiv confirms first battles between Ukrainian and North Korean soldiers in Kursk Oblast

The first clashes between the Ukrainian Armed Forces and North Korean soldiers have already taken place in Russia's Kursk Oblast, Ukraine's Defense Minister Rustem Umerov confirmed on Nov. 5 in an interview with South Korean TV channel KBS.

Photo: Ed Jones / AFP via Getty Images

Ukraine struggles to contain Russian advance in Donetsk Oblast as US elections loom

As U.S. voters head to the polls on Nov. 5 for presidential elections likely to shape the course of Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine, the situation on the battlefield is beginning to unravel for Kyiv.

Photo: Gaelle Girbes/Getty Images

‘Trump wants to do everything he can to help Putin,’ McCain Institute head says

Evelyn Farkas, head of the McCain Institute—a U.S.-based think tank named after the late Republican Senator John McCain—fears that Donald Trump's return as president would be the worst-case scenario for Ukraine.

Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Harris or Trump — Ukraine braces for best, worst-case scenarios as US elects new president

The two candidates' pre-election positions on continuing to support Ukraine with weaponry are in such stark contrast that some experts estimate whoever emerges victorious will impact whether Kyiv stays in the fight or is choked of supplies to the point of capitulation.

Photo: Rebecca Noble/Getty Images

Human cost of war

Russian military shoots 6 Ukrainian POWs in Donetsk Oblast, Prosecutor General's Office says. Russian troops shoot six captured Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers in the Pokrovsk sector of the front line in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office reported on Nov. 5.

Russian attack on Zaporizhzhia kills 6, injures 23. Russian forces reportedly targeted an infrastructure facility, starting a fire. The full extent of damage is being determined.

Russia strikes near residential area in Kharkiv**, injuring at least 2.** Moscow struck the Shevchenskyi district with a Shahed-type drone at nearly 5 p.m. local time, according to the preliminary data.

McFaul on Ukraine's future with Trump vs. Harris

International response

Sweden unveils new aid package for Ukraine worth over $9 million. Sweden will provide Ukraine with a new aid package valued at nine million euros ($9.8 million), which includes two vessels designed to enhance maritime security. The country will also supply 40,000 protective masks and respirators to Ukraine's Emergency Service personnel.

Estonia wants to bar Russian, Belarusian citizens from voting in local elections. Estonia aims to narrow voting eligibility in local elections to exclude Russian and Belarusian citizens in order to counter Russian influence, Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal told state broadcaster ERR on Nov. 4.

North Korean military involvement in Russia's war to be met with 'coordinated response,' G7 foreign ministers say. Besides the G7 members, including the U.S., Japan, Italy, the U.K., Germany, France, Canada, and the High Representative of the European Union, the statement was also signed by South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand.

U.S. presidential election

Republicans take back US Senate. The Republican party has won control of the U.S. Senate, according to projected election results on Nov. 5.

Trump wins key US state of North Carolina. With 90% of votes tallied, Trump led Democratic challenger Vice President Kamala Harris 50.8% to 48%. The projection marks the first call of a major swing state in the U.S. presidential election.

Chinese accounts linked to Russian election disinformation. Analysts at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab found that accounts originating in China helped amplify Russian disinformation videos targeting U.S. voters.

Russia stepping up election interference as US citizens head to polls, intelligence agencies warn. Russia is expected to intensify attempts to undermine the U.S. vote on election day with a focus on swing states, U.S. intelligence agencies said in a statement on the eve of the election on Nov. 4.

Bomb threats across multiple states traced to Russian email domains**, FBI says.** As Americans head to the polls on Nov. 5, the FBI has announced that bomb threats targeting polling sites in multiple states appear to have originated from Russian email domains. The agency clarified that none of these threats have been deemed credible.

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Good article on Chinese electric vehicles: China can't cut the subsidies it isn't giving. bloomberg.com/opinion/articles…

#China #EV #economics #ElectricVehicles

No, The Chinese Have Not Broken Modern Encryption Systems with a Quantum Computer

The headline is pretty scary: “China’s Quantum Computer Scientists Crack Military-Grade Encryption.”
No, ... schneier.com/blog/archives/202…

#quantumcomputing #China

Primero fue #EEUU que de la mano de Biden cerro la puerta a su mercado a todas las marcas desde #China, antes siquiera iniciaran su llegada (con mucha prevision), y los medios se apuraron a solo fortalecer el discurso y relato oficial: #USA sube los aranceles a la importacion de autos chinos (¿pero que autos? Cuando nunca se ha importado un solo auto desde ese pais)... entonces queda claro cual fue el objetivo... evitar que desembarcaran.

-5-

This is an AMAZING deep dive into Chinese crypto and app based money laundering. Incredible really. The mechanics of it and the social aspects of how it all works. An ethnographic masterpiece

globalchinapulse.net/moving-br…

#China #MoneyLaundering #Crypto #DeepDive #Ethnography

Many people think that Le Ying is a loser. She’s very overweight, still living with her parents, doesn’t have a proper job, and is a doormat in almost every relationship in her life. One day, she gets into a huge fight with her sister, and leaves home to seek an independent life.

After a series of disappointments, she decides to train to become a boxer – even when everyone is laughing at her for even trying.

My thoughts

Some of the criticisms levelled at Yolo is that it’s not very funny.

Well, if you expect it to be a laugh-out-loud comedy, you’ll be sorely disappointed.

This movie is a character study of a woman who has spent most of her life pleasing or giving in to others and denying her true feelings and desires, in the faint hope that they would finally love her in return.

Somehow, subconsciously, she knew that this approach to life was the wrong one, but do not know how to live life another way. So, she mentally gives up on life … she overeats to comfort herself and doesn’t even bother to try better herself because all her efforts had been in vain before, so why bother?

When she endures a betrayal, she decides to change her life. However, because she did not change the way she approached life, she ended up in a worse place that she had been.

And this was the last straw. For the first time, she wanted to fight and not give up. Now the last three words is very crucial – it’s not about winning, it’s about not giving up on herself.

This movie beautifully shows you how she moves on from being a person who didn’t think she was important enough to fight for, to someone who who fights tooth and nail for herself – to do something that everyone said she could not.

That final battle in the ring was very important because she wanted not to just prove to herself that she could last till the end, but not give up on herself.

So, Yolo may not be the exciting comedic romp that some people want, nor does it follow the “ugly duckling becomes swan” trope, but it has an important message. If you live your life by cutting up pieces of yourself to please others in the tiny hope they will love you or appreciate you eventually, that’s the wrong approach.

Instead, always believe in yourself even if people say it’s impossible; never give up on yourself. In the end, you should not snuff out your desires or dreams so that others can live their dreams – it’s important for you to pursue yours too.

A beautiful movie, but you need to look deeper beyond the surface of “fat girl finally becomes pretty”.

dramatea88.wordpress.com/2024/…

#China #ChineseDrama #Movie #Movies

Yolo (movie review)

Yolo was a big hit in China. An overweight girl transforms herself into a professional boxer. However, it’s more than an ugly duckling story. It’s a character study of a woman who decid…

^{Drama Tea}

**Every map of China is wrong**
_And this is intentional…_
-- Anastasia Bizyayeva

medium.com/@anastasia.bizyayev…

#China #GPS #WGS84 #Mapping

Every map of China is wrong - Anastasia Bizyayeva - Medium

I work in a climate tech startup, and although I don’t directly manipulate geospatial data in my role (at least not at the moment), I’m very interested in this aspect of our work. I came across a…

^{Anastasia Bizyayeva (Medium)}

#russia #china #iran #northkorea #propaganda #democracy #ruleoflaw #maga

“Autocrats in China, Russia, and elsewhere are now making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom around the world.”

1/

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

Russia and China Are Winning the Propaganda War

^{Anne Applebaum (The Atlantic)}

Our iOS app got banned from the Chinese appstore because it is able to influence public opinion or is "Capable of Social Mobilization".

See our blog post for details: monal-im.org/post/00010-ios-ba…

#xmpp #ios #china

This one arrived yesterday 😊 Looking forward to reading it!

#AmReading #books #bookstodon #China #literature

Beijing supports 'full' UN membership for Palestinian state, says Chinese FM Wang Yi

> Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Thursday says that Beijing supports the “full” membership of the Palestinian state in the United Nations.

> “We support #Palestine becoming a formal member of the United Nations,” foreign minister Wang Yi told journalists at a press conference. firstpost.com/world/china-un-p… #UN #China #Israel

Beijing supports 'full' UN membership for Palestinian state, says Chinese FM Wang Yi

The Chinese foreign minister added that the ’long-cherished wish’ of the Palestinian people to create an independent country can no longer be ignored and that ’the historical injustice suffered by the Palestinian people cannot continue for generation…

^{Ayndrila Banerjee (Firstpost)}

How a Malaysian Chinese would behave in the US Congress TikTok interrogation 😆

#Malaysia #China #TikTok

youtube.com/shorts/vjAt8D52cGU…

Malaysian at US congress

^YouTube

Analysis: Clean energy was top driver of #China’s economic growth in 2023

#cleanenergy
carbonbrief.org/analysis-clean…

Analysis: Clean energy was top driver of China’s economic growth in 2023 - Carbon Brief

Solar power, along with manufacturing capacity for solar panels, EVs and batteries, were the main focus of China’s clean-energy investments in 2023

^{Lauri Myllyvirta (Carbon Brief)}

Basque musician Ibantuta took his oud and made a trip along the Silk Road. This is a clip from China.

youtube.com/watch?v=Ic_ZjSrJa_…

#WorldMusic #China #NowListening #MastoMusic

When Oud meets Guzheng | Kunming, China

Kunming, China. The meeting of the Oud and its cousin, the Guzheng, in a park, reflecting Chinese culture and way of life.Title: Flowers full bloom 山丹丹花开红艳艳A...

^YouTube

One of the phrases that’s been popular in China this year according to this article: sixthtone.com/news/1014370

For more context, people in China have been assembling plain white bread sandwiches to try to understand how we live in this part of the world, and they are posting through it (the idea of eating anything cold or raw, especially a vegetable, is seen as especially disgusting in the Chinese world, with some exceptions)

theguardian.com/food/2023/jun/…

#Food #China #Language #Chinese #Mandarin

I come back to this Tang Dynasty-inspired dance all the time. Love the music, especially when it is sung Chinese opera style, and definitely the beautiful dance, which is about Princess Anle, an arrogant and willful princess who helped overthrow her father and ended up beheaded by rebels.

I know right? Griiim.

#China #Dance #Culture

youtu.be/YQnlHKLuVnY?si=A4rucp…

Classical Chinese dance 'Once Upon a Time in Luoyang' by Tang Shiyi | 舞蹈：唐诗逸《洛阳旧事》| CNODDT

When snow falls on Luoyang (a city in central China’s Henan province considered as one of the cradles of Chinese civilization), the peerless beauty wakes up ...

^YouTube

As the scale of the environmental and economic damage from #Dnipro dam destruction is not yet fully comprehended, I just wanted to make one note on social perception of risk.

For the last year everyone has been concerned about about the hypothetical threat of #nuclear power plant attacks in Zaporizhzhia NPP. It never happened thanks to mobilization of international community to execute pressure on Russian occupational forces that included numerous visits of IAEA, diplomats from the West and China etc and even installing a permanent IAEA monitoring mission in ZNPP.

At the same time, over one night #Russia has materialized actual threat of scale that may go well beyond any worst case scenario in ZNPP after it was shut down. Warnings about impact of a hydro dam failure were already voiced in 2022 after Russia has planted explosives on the dam in Novaya Khakovka and hinted it will be used as a weapon if necessary. But there were no Chinese diplomats coming to Moscow, no IEA monitoring mission on the dam and media forgot about it the next day.

Why? Because water seems to be a “natural” threat that everyone is familiar with. In case of #Fukushima it was the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami that killed over 20’000 people but world’s attention is still focused on the nuclear plant disaster today where zero people were killed. Some environmental organisations intentionally distorted the tragedy by attributing all these deaths to the plant failure!

Is water any safer? Well, it’s not - if you’re killed by water, you’re dead in the same way as if you were hypothetically killed by gamma radiation. 1975 Banqiao dam disaster[^1] in #China killed 26,000 to 240,000 people, and rendered 12’000 km2 unusable for decades due to sediments and pollution. Since then, there’s a few dam failures[^2] globally almost each year - e.g. 2021 Rishiganga dam killed over 60 people. Last dam failures in USA were in 2020. Fujinuma dam failure in Japan in 2011 as result of the same Tōhoku earthquake killed 8 people, which is 8 more than Fukushima NPP disaster!

Yet hydro power is widely considered “clean and safe”, which is pretty much the same cognitive bias as legal qualification of gloves or boots used at a nuclear power plant as “nuclear waste”, while coal ash or natural gas mining tailings are not, even though they have much higher actual content of radioactive elements 🤷‍♂️ In terms of human deaths per amount of electricity, hydro power is 43x more deadly than nuclear,[^3] which is why it’s important to look at the actual data and science rather than yield to the socially accepted biases, where coal is “dirty but safe” and hydro power is “clean and safe”. You can’t talk over physics, which is why in countries that do this[^4] you can actually see more people being harmed,[^5] and the fact they’re harmed by “natural” coal or water doesn’t make a slightest difference to them.

[^1]: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Ban… [^2]: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_fail… [^3]: ourworldindata.org/safest-sour… [^4]: write.as/arcadian/ideological-… [^5]: grist.org/energy/the-cost-of-g…

As the #Wuhan #summer #heat approaches (it's only 33°C today, so we're not there yet) there's a couple of perfect comfort foods for coping with it. Today's lunch is #凉皮 (#liángpí, lit. "cold skin"), it's originally from #Shǎnxī (often spelled #Shaanxi to distinguish it from #Shānxī without having to use tone diacritics) but has since spread around pretty much the entire northern half of #China to all the provinces neighbouring it, including where I live in #Hubei. You can read about it here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liangpi

Served chilled, it is one of the best ways to combat summer heat, able somehow to cool better than the Wuhan-local #凉面 (#liángmiàn, lit. "cold noodles") despite those being chilled as well.

What you see here is the liangpi before it gets mixed up. Only barely visible in the shot (through the little loop of noodle at the very bottom) is the preserved egg that was added because I love #CenturyEggs.