As it happens I have been to Xinjiang myself, I was there last August. Yes, that’s an anecdote - just like your random vloggers are anecdotes. If you want to make an informed opinion of any subject, you need to find out what serious sources are saying - academics, professional reporters, people who compile statistics for governments, etc. In this particular case, rando tourists are obviously not going to give you an accurate impression of what happens in Xinjiang, the de-facto colony of a literal police state. Anyway, it’s irritating to be wasting my time explaining all this so that’s all I have to say here.

A literal Pavlovian! For whom Muslims in Xinjiang presumably don’t count because their oppressors aren’t “white”. What a world.

Zero and I feel bad about it.

In (very partial) mitigation, I regularly contribute bug reports and other detailed feedback on lots of issue trackers.

Here’s the fundamental problem. I benefit from a whole bunch of FOSS projects. I absolutely cannot afford to donate 5 USD to each one per month. Even donating $1 to each would be unaffordable - and of course that makes no sense because of the fees problem. It’s the same problem with podcasts, and indeed basically all internet content.

We have to find a way to make non-DRM micropayments work better. It’s the only alternative to the poisonous ad-based information economy. I so want a solution like Flattr to become widely adopted. That is: I decide a cap on my monthly donation total, and then that sum is divided up among the projects I choose according to criteria I choose.

This is the sort of specialized question that should be asked in a specialized community, rather than here. It even concerns a country, and communities always exist for countries.

Who is this “we” you talk of?

And that’s on TV. Watching it as a spectator: wait, wait, wait, wait, wait (wait… wait…], WHOOSH

Cricket. Not even close.

just a voice reading a text […] Simon Whistler

The ultimate voice reading a text IMO. Specifically, a voice reading a text that it has clearly never seen before and where the producers have not even bothered to explain how to pronounce the names in it. IMO Simon Whistler is like Justin Bieber - essentially a product of the YouTube algorithm. In this case, a hipstery guy with an amazing beard and a posh authoritative accent talking confidently about… whatever. To me it just screams inauthenticity. But it’s obviously what people want so congrats to him for riding the gravy train.

The main public library in Paris opens on every single day of the year except one, and it’s not Christmas Day. It’s 1 May.

I found that to be a revealing statement of values.

This is all true. it’s something that crosses my mind whenever I spend (i.e. waste, probably) any time at all in debate. In person too, BTW, although text feels even worse because of the way it disembodies your interlocutor.

And yet. Open debate is all we have. The alternatives cannot possibly be better. I tell myself that even if 99% of it is useless, that remaining 1% can make a lot of difference statistically. I can certainly think of occasions when I’ve changed my mind, or at least seen things in a new light, because of a single comment someone made in debate. But yes, it’s rare.

We need to enroll this guy in a mentoring program.

OP does not actually read the articles they post. OP simply posts anything and everything that makes China look bad, and nothing else. For accurate coverage of German business ethics (or indeed anything other than the evil doings of the Chinese communist party), you will need to look elsewhere. Alas.

Luigi Mangione.

Personally I agree with this take, but you undermine your own point with the completely gratuitous (and indecorous) “fucking” tossed in there. IMO.

This is what superpower competition should look like.

Sad if true. I don’t see it being practical to tell people to use different apps depending on the number of interlocutors.

Yes, it was called Pidgin. But things become more complex when you add E2E encryption. The ideal destination is a single agreed protocol, just like one exists for things like telephones, the web, and email.

Seems this is the standard response in animals in times of stress and penury, and humans are no exception. The challenge is to find a way to surmount it. Tough times coming.

But possibly not better than 1855, unironically.

Messengers are the archetypal example of software that has to deal with the network effect. IMO we don’t have the luxury of trying and using lots of FOSS messengers and never picking a winner. At some point there has to be only one left if we want anyone to use it.

The frontrunner candidate is Matrix.