I have seen that the lemmy.ml mods will openly ban discussion about the CCP. I am wondering if the sh.itjust.works team allows criticism of government bodies, while still banning racism.
The doc starts off talking about open source, but it quickly becomes clear that the Lemmy project is primarily political in nature.
To me this is concerning -- what happens when largely pro-US Reddit refugees swarm a community (community in the general sense, not the Lemmy sense) which was intended by the founders to combat those peoples views? Sure, instances and people can choose to ignore the lemmy.ml instance, but the founders control the project at a much deeper level than that.
Personally I hope that alternative implementations that are compatible with Lemmy arise, totally outside of the influence of the original founders. Yes there is kbin, but I actually prefer the Lemmy model (from what I've seen so far), and I think there would only be benefits of having another high quality implementation which is totally separate yet totally compatible with the original Lemmy. It would make the whole thing more resilient, and could be fertile ground for future improvements to flourish.
Is that post really anti us and pro china though? To me it looks like anti pro us, and anti anti china.
I had already formed conclusions after reading through one of the founder's comment histories (which I'd encourage), so my reading of it may have been biased. Either way it's clear that the motivation driving them is, or at least was, largely political in nature.
Also, how do you see the founders controlling the project more? Especially at the “much deeper level”?
They own the github repo, they control what code gets committed, they control whether the project lives or dies really. They have the power to lose interest or decide to abandon the project, at which point the best hope the community has is that others pick it up. It's not normally something I worry too much about with open source projects but again, strong geopolitical associations makes it feel precarious to me -- if they don't like where things are going, maybe they'd feel motivated to actively shut it down and discourage any peaceful transition of (code) ownership. Obviously this is all conjecture.
I’m a New Zealander living in The Netherlands, whether you choose to believe that or not.
I'm not sure why you think I'd have trouble believing that!
Couldn't someone just fork it and update current servers with that fork and still keep all of the data though? It should still just work the same but just not be from a codebase controlled by the founders
That's right. It's a legitimate solution if the lead dev drives it into the ground. I don't think lack of developers to fork or maintain it would be an issue. The only barrier I see is adoption of yet another platform. So in my mind, there's always an option to just separate if Lemmy turns into one big tankie brigade. But forking is still a PITA and not ideal.
I don't think using a fork would separate it into another platform. It would still be Lemmy. They would only need to separate of their code bases change so drastically between the two that going to other instances from the forked one starts breaking things. And even then workarounds could then be put in the former version so everything still plays nice.
I'd think if they would resist a "global citizen" approach in favour of the now de-facto "hegemonic nations" approach, that would be a good reason for offering such a fork. ... It could quickly supersede the "old Lemmy" when people start to realise that the new system allows migration and resilience against domain-takedowns. :-) @CowsLookLikeMaps
Criticising pro-US doesn't necessarily mean anti-US, you can be in the middle. Similarly, criticising anti-China doesn't necessarily mean pro-China. Praising when something good was really done and criticising when something bad was really done, you can achieve at least some level of unbiased, rational and reasonable opinion.
Founder of the shill think thank "Victims of Communism" and close collaborator of the Falun Gong cult who is behind the vast majority of the reports on the Uygur situation. You make of that what you will.
Adrian Zenz is not pro-CCP but it seems like wildbus8979 probably is. It is worth pointing out that the Uighur situation is getting much different treatment by the media than genocides by western nations. Not to mention American imperialism etc.
That's not really the point though. The point is, CCP censorship and wildbus8979 is at the very least, completely missing that point.
Ah, I see. I was a bit confused because it seemed like wildbus8979 was simultaneously calling Zenz a bad guy and a pro-Uighur guy, which wouldn't track coming from an anti-CCP guy.
You can not be pro CPP and still question western propaganda, crazy huh? 🤷
I think the Arab League probably knows better than some fucking fascist and a weird ass cult. But you believe what you want... Not to say that I think things aren't complex in the region, but I think the west purposefully misrepresents the reality.
I enjoyed watching Naomi «Sexy Cyborg» Wu's videos in Xinjiang, her girlfriend is Uighur and they seemed to have no issues walking around.
Yep, you can be both. I'm both. It's just that you seem really interested in trying to make people believe there's nothing going on with the Uighurs in China... No matter how many propaganda videos you post there is much more evidence to the contrary.
You shouldn't trust western media fully either but if you're fully buying that China isn't doing anything wrong then you're either very gullible or arguing in bad faith.
The KMT were brutal fascists and the communist parties around the world sacrificed more than canadians during world war 2 wtf is wrong with you... revisionist history to own who? If the kmt were powerful they wouldnt have gotten insta bozo'd by the CCP. Modern china is nothing to defend but youre weird, posting pro fash propaganda
We'll it's all true but there are some smaller differences, I live in ex Yugoslav country which was in eastern block but more liberal than Soviet puppet states.
Most people aren't racist or xenophobic (except Balkan rule: hate thy neighbor). We are just an extremely introverted and paranoid society, that's why many empires fell around our people. We never had any colonies because our people were used as labour for other empires, so we never developed a superiority complex to other races.
We're just anarchy that's preserved through community.
Never actually met an immigrant who actually stays here in Eastern Europe but yeah communist shouldn't come back. But I don't want capitalism either, this shits wack for our people and workers. Guess there isn't a place to create new economic structures that could surpass both of them.
I mean he's not wearing any trousers, unless he has some kind of prehensile penis that he can retract at will? Like a foot long yellow elephants trunk snuffling around for honey.
Hey man don't infringe on my ability to be degenerate in one instance and self-righteous in the next. Besides everyone has wondered about Winnie the pooh's genitals at some point. Right guys? Right?
The Chinese Communist Party is absolutely not above criticism, but I always found the China obsession on reddit to be odd. While I don't think it should be banned outright, I think y'all ought to consider what is motivating such a weird fetish (because frankly that is) for a specific government.
Exactly. Chinese capitalism is currently threatening American capitalism, so American media and american society more generally demonizes it. China is willing to offer cheaper loans to 3rd world countries than any western countries and banks like the IMF. Of course, this is still exploitative imperialism, but it is slightly less bad than the west. China. Of course, China treats its workers terribly, but it at least tries to reinvest the surplus it takes from those workers into domestic production and infrastructure. Tankies love to depict China as ontologically good because it opposes american hegemony and has a rapidly growing economy. They ignore its imperialism and domestic exploitation. Redditors, American exceptionalists, and their ilk depict China as ontologically evil, a threat to world peace, the most totalitarian country imaginable. They of course ignore the comparably bad conditions of America's puppet states and its domestic prison system. The reality is much more boring. Two capitalist nation states are fighting over their shares of the world market.
I'm not an American but it's hard to equate these two countries. While I don't love the US, you can't deny that the CCP literally runs concentration camps...
The US also runs concentration campus, has slave labor, forced sterilization, torture, genocide, violently repressive police, persecution of religious minorities, etc. etc. etc. Hence why it's a red flag (no pun intended) when people in the west have A Lot To Say about China and just China.
::slaps top of any country:: you can fit so many human rights violations in this bad boy
(I have a lot more complaints about the US than China, but that's because I live in the US, not because I think other imperial powers are exempt from criticism.)
Yup, the flip side of the coin is that reddit really has a hate boner for China. The anti-CCP side has its own collection of nutty people, with a lot of the talking points tracing back to the cult nice people that send out all those Shen Yun flyers.
Shit's complicated. That said, banning all criticism of the Chinese government isn't the answer. We need to be smarter about the information that we digest.
You're somehow implying that being an anti-ccp "fanatic" is basically crazy, and that people should reconsider their position... because... ? hate boner for china? what does disliking the CCP have to do with "hating china"?
why should we look for likeable things about the ccp when they're committing genocide? lmao. and why should we spend effort looking for likeable things about the ccp when they have millions of genzedongers around the world (example: lemmygrad.ml) to do it for them?
I think instead we should balance it with posts appreciating Chinese culture. They have a long artistic and cultural history that goes way beyond the current gov.
Thing is, I'm not talking about China or the Chinese people. If I say "CCP is committing genocide" am I talking in any way about "The Chinese People"?? I'm not. Talking shit about basically Hitler2.0 has absolutely nothing to do with The Chinese People. Why should I go around randomly yelling good stories about the Chinese culture any time I wanna talk shit about Xi Jinping or his posse of evil? Makes no sense right?
You can dislike the CCP without hating China, or being fanatical about it. There are people that have trouble with it, though. As an example you could say that the CCP sponsors campaigns of corporate espionage on a large scale to steal technology from other countries. That one is pretty uncontroversial. But some people have trouble preventing themselves from taking it further and making generalizations about how creative the country's citizens are, as an example.
I haven't seen that. First time I see a suggestion such as that you're mentioning, that the Chinese could be uncreative. I read lots of Chinese books all the time and if anything I'd say they're more creative than western authors in many respects.
Honestly, you've got some recommendations? I'm actually more into non-fiction, but I really gotta start practicing my Chinese more. I wish more books adhered to the traditional character set and the top to bottom format though.
There are a couple xianxia novels. Reverend Insanity (incomplete banned by the ccp but has some of the best word building and intelligent writting), Lord of Mysteries (more western fantasy lovecraftian mystery) and Forty Millennium of Cultivation (has 40k elements in it). Non fiction isn't really popular probably because anything non fiction in China that has anything to do with history is at risk due to censors and people in the west aren't really interested in reading ccp bootlicking.
Haha I can't read a drop of Chinese, but the one that everyone tends to recommend as a gateway is The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin. Haven't read it yet but I did watch Wandering Earth on netflix, which is based on a short story by the same author.
I was trying to learn some Chinese the other day to read some of the raw wordings in Ascending, Do Not Disturb. The novel itself is not amazing, although I did like it a lot, but the translators left some terminology untranslated and I had some fun researching how to read that.
I can't recommend Chinese sci-fi or nonfiction, haven't read any, I only read fantasy novels. My favorites are Coiling Dragon and Douluo Dalu. If you can read Chinese then why not try those lmao. I wish I could read Chinese. I wouldn't spend so much time finding translations.
I will say that most Westerners will find Chinese much easier to learn than Japanese. You only need to learn about 100 characters to understand 70% and then 1000 to understand like 95% of stuff.
I mean you probably wrote like 50 words in your reply, how hard could 100 be right?
novelupdates.com has a lot of translations of asian novels in general, most terrible quality bc they're done by amateurs but some are great, and sometimes it doesn't matter cuz the stories themselves make up for the shitty translation.
My first xianxia was very shitty but I enjoyed it, it's called Martial God Asura. "Very shitty" is not an understatement, it sucks, but I enjoyed "watching" the story's landscapes in my mind's eye.
Coiling dragon is a classic. I forgot about Douluo Dalu that was a very interesting novel with the powers and assassination traps or whatever they were, pretty creative. I've always like Renegade Immortal more than ISSTH.
Mine are.
Reverend Insanity
Lord of Mysteries
World of cultivation/Avalon of 5 elements.
I read the first book or part of cradle and did not like it, I even got banned from novel translation because I said I found it mid because apparently Will was a "friend of the sub" 🙄. Guess the cringe mods aren't as bad as r/progressivefantasy which is run by a bunch of authors that just banned people from posting books with AI generated covers.
I remember when we were getting like 20 chapters a day+ of Martial God Asura on r/lightnovels. Those were the days. Good novels good discussion good sub, too bad all that fell apart with pateron chapters and wuxiaword turning to shit.
Douluo Dalu's protagonist's weapons were some throwable things, pretty much a Mary Sue who never failed a shot and never failed to surprise an opponent. Basically his reincarnation cheat. He also focused on poison a lot. I don't know why I liked it so much. I honestly have so much criticism for it hahah but at the same time the story was pretty cool.
One of my favorite things in Xianxia is not even the whole killing and fighting, although that's not bad either, but chiefly the literary tourism I can do. I love doing tourism as well and meeting different cultures and perspectives, different landscapes, it feels very rewarding.
I haven't been able to start with Japanese literature, though. Their train of thought style prose is impossible for me.
I tried Reverend Insanity (is that the Gu guy who's notoriously evil?). I've tried a few times. I think I get the same problem as with Japanese novels, trying to stick my head into the character's drive and not really "clicking".
Lord of the Mysteries, was that the guy that was kind of integrated with a tree and was like a mind beside a city and was farming Bleach-style minions to do his bidding and govern his ever-expanding domain? I don't know if that's the one or if it was a other one that I recall had more of a punkish urban fantasy vibe.
And yeah, I used to read everything on wuxiaworld. Their shenanigans turned me toward doing a bit more piracy. I was very poor when I started and literally had no money to pay anything. Nowadays I do but I'm not as obsessive about it. I did pay like $70 for a yearly Viki subscription to watch more kdrama though. Nowadays my wallet seems to have a hole lmao. My software dev money is financing shitty startups around the world.
Edit: I also "disingenuously" implied that I don't like the violence in Xianxia but chiefly the tourism. Tbh I do like their contrasting and super exaggerated and ultra-violent perspective of the world. That feeling they evoke of eternal growth and violence is, while obviously not emulatable, mesmerizing. There's something very human about conquest war and they readily accept it.
Yeah they were like these spring traps didn't make much sense but it was an original idea I never saw. I think that book was just very easy to read/well written along with having somewhat decent power system. But characters and world building weren't that amazing I agree.
For me I read them for the world building, I used to read them for the power fantasy but after your 3rd immortal god slayer infinite power overlord you get tired of it. I like when the world is very complex and the characters and their motives are interesting and smart. Then it just feels like a puzzle the author has to solve while making sure everything makes sense and isn't contrived. I like when the MC in RI was stuck, none of his plans could progress so he was like I'm just going to shake the table and hope some new paths open up. I also don't mind build armies / countries and go to war like in WOC reminds me of the expanse.
Lord of Mysteries was more guy in pre industrial/steam punk? world with esoteric monsters trying to figure out his environment. It basically is a detective novel for the first third or more.
I remember when they were asking for donations for translation of coiling dragon while I was a broke highschool/uni student. After I graduated I was like well I was willing to donate to help translation because it felt like a team effort but now it just feels like a commercial product with people running pateron pages where they don't disclose how much they make. Now I have absolutely no interest, maybe I would if they sold non kindle versions.
The only Korean shows I've watched was All of Us Are Dead and Hellbound
I don't remember spring traps in douluo dalu, mmm. I remember fighting, poison, building weapons and smithing, some spiritual hammer, and tons of superpowers. Maybe I just forgot them.
Agreed 100% on the worldbuilding. My most enjoyable books have enormous very complex worlds. The books I've been trading most recently try to have characters who are distinguishable among themselves. Some of the things I enjoy the most are when the character travels and suddenly everything is new again lmao, but with some stability because, well, they and their plot are still there.
The most recent book I read was like the most complex puzzle like you mention, and the author just kept piling on things and I was like, how are you even gonna untangle this mess lmao, sometimes he just goes and inserts a mood like "well no one even knows what happened but that's okay".
Aahhh so LoTM was that one. I tried to read it but it was so strange at first that I didn't get immersed quick enough for my ADHD to lock in. That's most things tbh. By the time I remember I was doing X, I already forgot what I was doing and I'm doing Y with great passion and I'm like, whelp, this is my life now. But it gets recommended so much that I will probably give it another try later on in life.
I hadn't watched a Korean show in like all my life. And suddenly this year I decided "why not watch one of these?" and I just watched the soapiest romance ever and I actually liked it, so I've now watched over 15 kdramas this year and more to come. It was a surprising development, to say the least. From almost hating it because of prejudice against romance, Korean stuff and things teenage women like, to obsessively binging them with zero period of transition.
Hah that travel thing reminds me of Warlock of the Magus World the MC gets strong enough to sneak into another "universe" and starts with nothing except a very clear understanding of the rules and is able to twist the world into doing impossible things after a while. All while trying not to attract attention from higher end beings that do not want his kind invading. One of the better novels I finished just in the creativity of the world including a whole esoteric dream world.
Yeah LoTM is very strange doesn't read like a classical xuanhuan novel if it can even be defined as that.
Damn you flipped on the kdrama's, I personally could never get into romance or drama's. Prefer horror and scifi in my television, preferably both at the same time along with lovecraftian elements. But as you can guess I am mostly disappointed, especially stuff that becomes mainstream and popular.
I tried reading Warlock of the Magus World. I love the way people describe his character. Somehow though reading it was much harder. There was something coarse stopping me all the while and ultimately it wasn't giving me the good feel I usually get. I don't know what it was, maybe the different kind of motivation the character has. Which reminds me of RI, similar characters probably.
Damn you flipped on the kdrama’s, I personally could never get into romance or drama
You know, it is so stupidly strange. As a kid, I was a snob metalhead, doing anything not to be "girly", I dressed black, carried a chain, wanted to be violent, read the "Bible of the Church of Satan" and I was like 10% is weird but the rest is awesome! And then I met the ideas of Stirner and was like "holy shit he's me!". My tastes in music are super aggressive and many claim it's not even music even though it's what I enjoy. And my tastes in literature are similarish to yours. These books have a lot of cool shit but they're pretty much aggression with sugar on top lmao.
So in my teenage ideas of superiority and manlihood I'd insult lgbt people, people who liked romantic stuff, any genre of music that was anything less than rock, and even tho I don't have that perspective anymore, my tastes in music and media have remained rather stable.
To switch from being all "waaaaar, weeaponnns, aggression is my music!" to watching soapy dramas of pink girls and boys in love. It's hard for me to understand how that happened but here we are.
I think it starts off kinda mid until he moves to like the central area next to his clan and the world opens up a bit more and he has more interesting things cooking. Yeah it's similar to RI, not evil characters but characters that will do evil things if it benefits them. Also the whole there are no eternal enemies just eternal benefits.
Yeah it is true that these books are basically that, though lots of more classic novels have tons of violence. Foundation was one where it was like "violence is the refuge of the incompetent" but then you realize that to avoid all violence you would literally need to have superhuman levels of intelligence and charisma like in the books with psycho history concept. So nowadays I like when there is conflicts/battle/wars since it makes far more sense.
I'm more into Stoicism, derivation of your own ideas from first principles, plato's scholar warrior/athlete. Egoism doesn't really align with my values probably runs more contrary to them then anything. I listen to anything that helps put me in a flow state and that I personally find enjoyable. Metal and rock are a bit too much to play while working/studying I really didn't get into music much as a teenager.
Funny enough my tastes haven't really changed from a teenager more like hyper focused to into particular aspects that I like and things I don't.
Egoism isn't like hedonism for me. Sometimes maybe. It's more of a realization of priorities, when you realize that 99% of what people tell you is important is actually completely irrelevant. Serve God, your country, morality, your family, your property, etc. You end up sacrificing your well-being for others, to externalities and ideas, many of which couldn't even be less important to you, and some of which are actually harmful. Egoism for me was discovering that it was not my parents' first concern to protect me from bullying, because they had their own lives too, and that everyone's important things are what's directly around them, and what's important to me is external to others.
Stoicism is not completely incompatible with egoism. I don't think they can be compared too well because I think they belong in different categories. I myself have taken a lot from stoicism. Egoism is more about prioritizing whatever you truly "want", "like" or "prefer" instead of what you "should" according to any one, thing or idea.
Ironically metal is what I use precisely for that purpose. If I'm too unfocused or anxious, I put on some black metal to calm down. It's like meditation that takes me right back to the basics.
Foundation was one where it was like "violence is the refuge of the incompetent"
I don't know which foundation you're talking about then. Maybe I just read it differently because I don't remember that. Then again it's been 15ish years since I read it.
Well the reason you care about those thing is because ingroup bias and psychological hard wiring to care about people that share the same genes as you. Also some of that sounds like I don't want to value those things just because it's popular to value those things. Though those things don't have to be and probably aren't independent from externalities of others. Seem to me a major fault with Egoism is thinking that people cannot share externalities. Though I don't really know much about it.
A part of Stoicism is also contributing positivity in some way to society. I'm not really a fan of anarchism as a whole, don't think it really solves anything and tries to state a solution to modern society by reducing it down to a more simplified form with less rules but doesn't prove to me that this leads to a better society/world.
A major part of egoism is actually a union of egoists. It's not like we aren't social beings, or that we are unaffected by others and are unaffected by our effect on others. Regardless of any person's beliefs, humans in general are empathetic and gregarious.
Egoists might align with anarchism but I don't think that most egoists even think much about how to improve "society" itself. To generalize egoists is, in general, a bad idea, though, because it's a very generic concept that can fit into many many thought currents. Regarding society, every hierarchy "claims" you in a way. You belong to a ruler, to your family, to society, to civilization, to humanity, etc., Each of those categories impose certain duties on you.
It's like muslims have women cover themselves. Does belonging to society mean that they should follow these rules? Then there's the "outer society", human civilization, which is idealized here in the west as having something to do with free will and such, but this is a minority thought, and most people don't agree. So which of all the outer societes' rules should they follow? I think most prescriptive philosophical currents claim to be the "one true best way of doing things", and then you have to look at an index of 1397 major currents to find it, and you see the dislike count for the one you like and there's 5.5 billion dislikes for being too insert pejorative descriptor.
In the end society as an observable organism is real, but as a collective deserving loyalty, I think that's way more subjective.
Also, my favorite kdrama actress just starred in a new drama that was just released. "See You In My 19th Life". Seems I will have to obsessively binge that too.
U got any recommended readings on stoicism that are from this century? I tried reading Marcus Aurelius. It doesn't really explain the why of anything.
I read the first book or part of cradle and did not like it, I even got banned from novel translation because I said I found it mid because apparently Will was a "friend of the sub" 🙄. Guess the cringe mods aren't as bad as r/progressivefantasy which is run by a bunch of authors that just banned people from posting books with AI generated covers.
I hadn't read this. Hilarious and ridiculous.
On the 1st one maaaaybe depending on how you phrased it, some people sound very aggressive like "author X is a dumbfuck and this is so mediocre, no effort went into this, my dog could write better by shitting onto a pigeon (he did this btw) so I'm not gonna buy the 2nd one and if you do you're a cuck", but then again some people are very sensitive.
The 2nd one is......... what? 👀 I can't. Been like 3 minutes looking at the screen thinking about it lmao. No words.
The thing is I wasn't planning on getting banned at worst I wrote that it was shit which really isn't too weird of a comment and I've seen people call other novels and readers worse on that sub. The mods just really bootlick the author. Since you would not get banned for saying similar things about other novels, I don't even think I went even that far with my language.
The progressionfantasy mods are just preying on authors with less money and told people to just pay for artists. People in comments were VERY unhappy with that announcement. But ye good drama I couldn't believe it either.
Yup bad mods bad. U wanna mod Chinese thing btw? I was thinking of adding some Xianxia memes and recommendations idk. Later tho cuz I have a lot of work till June 30ish due to some deadlines and contract dates
Yeah if you want I can also post some general guides, though I think that a community like that will never be as big and active as it was in the old days. At least it won't require much moderation.
Yeah I was thinking that. That's why I decided to not make it like r/MartialMemes or r/Xianxia. Too overly specific and we'll get like one post every 2 months and that's gonna be me any time I open a new book. But at least there were like 5 people in this thread interested in Chinese literature so I was like, that's cool, time for the community I'd been yearning since I joined (first thing in my bio lol).
Yeah I think I read (mostly halfway to quarter way through) all the xianxia novels that I found interesting and wouldn't mind finding something new. Going to read the 3 body problem soon before it gets made into the netflix series.
And yeah. You did more than I would. I think I don't finish 9out of 10 shows I start. Triple that for books. Not sure I've finished a book I didn't like yet.
Think I finished 6 translated Chinese novels, 2 of those were under 1k chapters. Just took me a decade :). I think it's impossible to finish one of these novels without liking it, 2k chapters is a grind that's like 200+ hours per novel.
Super true. I was reading a novel when I lived in Venezuela, and I was astounded that months into my life in Spain, I was still reading it, and I'd get this feeling that it had been such a big part of my life at that point. Ironically I can't remember which novel that was. But yeah I usually spend weeks if not months to finish a normal one of these, sometimes even reading all day.
In contrast, a normal novel can be read in like 8 hours. Makes me think I've read the Xianxia equivalent of hundreds of normal novels. And it certainly has taken its toll in my fiction mind. I've been writing stories since I was a kid and my stories now tend to have these vast worlds filled with amoral god-like beings that tend to have a bit of a tendency to kill people like ants, and characters that just go around in some kind of cross-world chase for something infinitely far away. I should really learn to balance that a bit cuz it has stifled my will to write a bit.
Yeah something like foundation is 6+ hours to read, you kinda forget the people and details but with these long novels you can't help but basically memorize the characters and their motivations since you've read it so much. Doesn't help some novels like Martial God Asura with it's 5k chapters just repeat arc after arc. These novels are best when shorter the vast majority of the time, most of these authors just can't write an engaging story that isn't just on the fly asspulls and repeating sequences of events.
Hah I'm the opposite I just think of stuff as huge systems, you define the world and characters and run the simulation with some creativity. Thing is most of these novels are very easy to read and not that cerebral taxing it would be much much harder to read the equivalent in good literature.
most of these authors just can’t write an engaging story that isn’t just on the fly asspulls and repeating sequences of events
MGA was such a bad offender of this lmao, same story like 15 times. I LOVED the scenery but I got super triggered and had to stop when the author seemed to degrade mentally during his writing and shit just became worse and worse quality.
huge systems, you define the world and characters and run the simulation with some creativity
i'd die from this, I can't lol. I once read this booklet (dl) and it pretty much reflects the way I write. I don't think before writing, only during, and anything else will make me feel terrible about the whole thing. Writing a story where I already know many things to the point where it's just a sort of "simulation" is painful for me.
it would be much much harder to read the equivalent in good literature
i read this entire series of books (dl) (when they were 5) in one day. To be fair I did sleep at like 7-8 am. They are also pretty casual. I didn't feel like I gained anything from them lol. Except enjoyment and the idea of two robots being cute friends and sharing pirated music libraries.
Then there's this book (dl) which despite being pretty average in length still took me like a month to finish while being extremely enjoyable, and I keep squeezing its ideas and memories.
MGA is absolutely terrible in general but it really starts getting wild when you realize every place he moves to he is suddenly the bottom of the totem pole and the same trope events repeat. Fighting someone stronger that nobody expects him to beat, some butthurt master gets killed by him, people seek revenge, he eats lots of cultivation resources etc... etc... I CAN'T BELIEVE it has 5k chapters.
I don't know how you can write something without an outline it feels to me the farther the plot goes along the more obvious that past events and present events in the novel weren't really that well planned out. Though most novels don't seem that well planned out in general.
All systems read, I have that on my list, someone on /lit/ recommended it to me. Also that's pretty crazy I remember once after exams I spent all day and all night reading coiling dragon.
Yeah I want to get started on Iliad but I know it's going to be a struggle to read, I know I should because of how fundamental it is to just general literature.
i've never started on iliad and i don't really want to lol, i feel like with bad xianxias i've already filled my fill of barely readable translations for this half of my life. the Circle novel is in that "shared universe" but it feels closer to a kdrama than to whatever iliad is. is iliad a greek xianxia?
the murderbot diaries series (all systems red) is very readable, light and ez, at least for me.
Yeah my brain is not wired for poetry and those books are long af. I'll get into it eventually. I'll probably read the second foundation series since apple is going to ruin the second book with another mediocre show so I might as well just read it. Iliad is just an epic.
I wanna reread foundation again. That shit was dope. I never finished the one that comes after the empire. The last one? Where there's these dudes who were left on Foundation and they're the start of the new cycle. I left it after some dude on some farm planet had done something and I can't remember more than some interplanetary trading ship or something.
It really isn't that complicated. If Chinese politics is to be taken seriously, then there is a ton of low hanging liberal fruit for the picking. There is no reason for the Chinese legal system to not have public trial, for starters. There is no reason for China to censor the internet or speech or free association the way it does. And most importantly, there is no reason for China to not confront the very real sins of Mao and Deng in public.
I agree there is complexity which exists beyond this kind of stuff. But these are first principles for free society, and political agency, and should be taken seriously.
it's also possible China censored the internet as a form of protectionism. social networks tend to form monopolies because people go wherever everyone else is. whichever state that network is based in then gets a boost to its tech industry
I'm sympathetic to what you listed, and it would be nice to see those things come to pass. I'm just cynical about anything that starts to sound like "regime change" after watching the US campaigns in the middle east these past couple decades.
Even though Tiananmen was a long time ago, there have been more recent cracks in the facade like the unrest over lingering COVID zero policies. It's encouraging to know that people do have limits, but I don't know how popular those sentiments are across the broader population.
It's always nice to hear from someone else that recognizes how similar all this saber rattling is to the buildup to the first iraq war. All of a sudden after years of radio silence, everyone seems to care really deeply about the situation in another country.
There are plenty of awful regimes around the world, but China is unique in how powerful and dangerous it is.
In particular, if China were to invade Taiwan, which it has a stated intention of doing, then the TSMC chip fabs—the only place on Earth capable of mass-producing modern electronic circuits—will almost certainly be destroyed in the fighting, and that will cause a global economic depression that'll make 2008 look like a minor inconvenience. That's a huge global threat.
Yeah idk what could possibly be the motivator for that, I mean it's not like they're currently in the middle of any genocides right? Or posturing about invading a certain island neighbour? Nah no way, they'd never do that!
As i stated: "The Chinese Communist Party is absolutely not above criticism"
There is a point at which the criticism becomes a weird fetish though, and that is something that was a common occurrence on reddit. Likely moreso tied to nationalist politics and rabble rousing foreign policy that I personally have a disdain for.
Unusual to word it as a fetish. Would you say there's a weird fetish for American focused criticism? Makes sense to me that the largest nations that have the most influence globally and all countries and companies have to tiptoe around garners the most focus and criticisms.
I'm not a tankie and have no love for the government of China (or any government) but there is an extent to which criticism of China is deployed by xenophobes and nazis as a kind of socially acceptable rallying call or dog whistle. So, I'm all for criticizing China, but remember the allegory of the crustpunk bar
There's a crazy amount of sinophobia on Reddit, but let's be clear, the people who fervently defend the Chinese government are being just as disingenuous.
It's not sinophobia to criticize the CCP. I haven't seen anyone saying anything about the Chinese people. What's more common is criticizing the CCP and its actions as the ruling party of China. I don't think there's generalized "sinophobia" as you claim.
The commenter above made it pretty clear that criticism of the government, i.e. the CCP isn't the issue. The issue at hand is that there most definitely is casual racism on some very popular subreddits that are tolerated more than I'd like. Redditors have blindspots, just like anyone do, but their particular blindspots include casually racist attitudes towards Chinese people. I hope that you're just lucky in the types of threads and subs you frequent, but I 1000% have seen more than just casual sinophobia that had nothing to do with criticizing their government.
idk maybe i am indeed very lucky cuz i have not seen that, and instead have seen a lot of criticism against ccp being re-purposed as "sinophobia" by the genzedong community.
notice, for example, how we ended up talking about racism in a thread about criticizing the CCP. coincidence? i think not.
I don't really know who they are, but it's still important to consider even if some bad actors also bring it up disingenuously. The alt-right likes to call everyone groomers now, that doesn't mean grooming is a convenient smoke-screen that isn't real.
i don't know what you're talking about here. what's important to consider? that criticizing the ccp may be racist? and what does the alt-right calling ppl groomers have to do with the topic? sorry i don't see the connections here.
I'm saying that it's important to consider that just because disingenuous people call attention to something as a way to dismiss your argument, it does not mean it's not real. It just means they know how to dismiss your argument really well.
What does that have to do with the alt-right? Because lately any time someone says that it's not evil to be gay and that pride month isn't some national holiday to turn everyone gay, instead of trying to defend their insane stance they just call you a pedophile or groomer and leave it at that. They don't actually care about pedophiles or groomers, otherwise they'd actually do something about the church or conservative congress members either being investigated for or charged with sex crimes against minors. All that matters is whatever works to shut you up.
I’m saying that it’s important to consider that just because disingenuous people call attention to something as a way to dismiss your argument, it does not mean it’s not real. It just means they know how to dismiss your argument really well.
dismissing criticism of ccp as sinophobia is not a "dismissing the argument really well", it's just bad faith argumentation
the fact that the alt-right has an agenda when they criticize the ccp, due to political reasons or otherwise, is
irrelevant to whether we should criticize the ccp and
irrelevant as to whether the ccp has things that ought to be criticized or not
if your argument is that there's ppl who criticize genocide due to geopolitical reasons instead of actually caring about the genocide, and that thus, we should not align ourselves with them, and to do so, we should refuse to criticize the genocide...
now if you're saying "there's ppl with an agenda, so you should question their information", fo sho, we should question all sources, biased or not, but the biased sources even more.
however, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't mention problems where we see them, criticize things we think are wrong, or that we should endlessly hesitate about shit and worry about everything we say because, maybe despite the fact that it's very credible, it could have a remote chance of being wrong, and maybe it's better to think that the holocoust may not have happened because maybe we're victimizing the germans and maybe there's a jewish conspiracy to fabricate.. do you see where i'm going? lmao.
ultimately, you're biased, i'm biased, everyone's biased, and i like free speech and will practice it whenever i want, and i invite you to visit !fucktheccp because why not. /out
I feel as if you missed the entire point of what I'm saying to be honest, and I don't know how else to rephrase so that you do so I'm just gonna give up on that. I'll check out the community just for the sake of charitability.
Yeah tbh I didn't very much understand what the point was regarding alt-rights criticizing gays and queers with an agenda, and how you were plugging that into the CCP criticism. I don't personally think that alt-righters doing anything should affect the way I do things cuz why should I let them lead my life, same as commies or any other ideologues. I am me and I do what I want.
Any government or governing body should be open to criticism. They are suppose to be working for the people they serve. How is anyone going to know better if no one tells them what they are doing wrong? @wriggly3171 you have my support
Yeah, it's not about levying criticism. It's about having an outsized agenda, arguing in bad faith, spamming the critiques where they don't below, trying to co-op a shared space to create an echo chamber, etc...
Right on! So I have a question, if I posted something that got me banned from lemmy.ml (such as an article criticizing the CCP for example) I would just not have access to the communities on that instance right? Like it won't affect my experience in other instances right?
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