Notices by 🇨🇦🇩🇪🇨🇳张殿李🇨🇳🇩🇪🇨🇦 (zdl@mastodon.online)

@aral

@glynmoody Europeans have more options available and can shift easier. If they stop finally bending the knee to the USA they could make huge bank by dealing with China, for example.

@glynmoody I have been saying since the 1990s already that Canada needed to wean itself from relying on the USA to run it economy.

Naturally the siren's call of "easy money" meant doing even more deals with the Devil instead of doing the difficult work of establishing other lines of trade.

And now Canadians are paying the cost.

@liztai @craigburdett I think it will contribute to an increasing cynicism about the PsTB and their motivations, not necessarily a more favourable view of China.

And personally I don't give a shit if a bunch of ignoramuses wish to wallow in ignorance. That will hurt them more than anyone else in the long term. I have no sympathy for self-inflicted injury.

I know it's very difficult for people coming from diffuse societies to understand the nature of discrete societies, but concentrate here: in all of southeast Asia you're not going to generally find people making disparaging and belittling nicknames for people higher up in society or their output. This is true *even if they disagree with that person*.

There's NO way that "Little Red Book" would ever be the nickname for the "Treasured Red Book" even by opponents of Mao!

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"Little Red Book" is a disparaging name given to "Quotations of Chairman Mao" ***BY WESTERNERS***. The formal Chinese name, 毛主席语录, translates to what I just cited and the affectionate name is 红宝书, or "Treasured Red Book".

You don't use "little" when describing things other than children or your (VERY good!) friends in China. It's disparaging and disrespectful, and I guarantee you that, outside of some dissidents, you're not going to find people publicly calling that book "little".

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https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/14/tech/rednote-china-popularity-us-tiktok-ban-intl-hnk/index.html

"Xiaohongshu’s name could be seen as a tongue-in-cheek reference to a red-covered book of quotations from the founding father of Communist China, Mao Zedong."

NO IT FUCKING CAN'T! ARGH the parochial nature of the western press is so FUCKING AGGRAVATING!

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As a postscript, for the inevitable American "instant expert", here's a search on 小红书 on Taobao. You'll just have to trust me that the search results continue looking like this for the hundreds of pages that get listed. Next to it is the search for 红宝书, the actual affectionate title for Mao's book. Notice any differences?

@craigburdett @liztai Even worse, the "Chinese" app they banned is segregated from China proper, while the one that people migrated to involves even closer contact with Chinese people (and undermines the HELL out of the anti-China narrative the PsTB have so carefully crafted over the years).

@liztai I've been ranting about this several times over the past few days, including taking the lazy-ass western press to task over it.

Sometimes it feels like I'm screaming into the wilderness. Good to see someone else screaming as well!

@liztai @Thebratdragon 6 works as well.

But whatever you do don't give a 4. Not in the price, not in the name, and DEFINITELY do not sell four items in a pack...

It's coming up to spring festival and thus to the time for cleaning up.

I have a few things to clean up in my digital life:

1. Ditching mastodon.online for another service that doesn't suppress knowledge of Israel's genocide.

2. Migrating away from @protonprivacy after its founder bent the knee to fascists.

I'm open to suggestions on either front.

#migration #mastodon #protonmail

@kmmfoo @ireneista @blogdiva @TransitBiker In the broader world, start standing up to those people who say bigoted things, even (nay ESPECIALLY!) if it's "just a joke". The culture has to change and this can only happen when the people stuck in the old ways get hit repeatedly with the news that it's no longer OK to be a shitbag.

There was once a time where almost everybody thought drinking and driving was OK. Now civilized folk frown at it. This didn't happen by looking the other way.

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@kmmfoo @ireneista @blogdiva @TransitBiker Some of this was already provided.

When you have places like "free fridges", don't just *invite* the non-white, non-straight, non-cis people to them, TAKE THEM ALONG WITH YOU. Escort them.

Praxis in mutal aid is sometimes inconvenient. Cope or don't chant the "mutual aid" mantra.

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@skinnylatte Side note: after a recent book purchase (中国茶经, which is distinct from 茶经, I found dozens (not exaggerating!) of new-to-me varieties of tea that I'm starting to excavate. I just picked up a 250g bag of 2003 六堡茶 for a song and a dance by dealing with the farmer directly. This is an exciting new dimension for me!

@skinnylatte For starters they don't talk about badly made-up Orientalist-sounding names like "Divine Miracle Green Tea", right? 🤣

@skinnylatte Or if you're in China and surrounded by actual Chinese tea culture, reading what w*elided* folk say about Chinese tea on social media.

@yogthos This is what capitalism has wrought: In my (extreme) youth, the brightest minds on the planet were doing things like sending people to the moon, or sending probes that are now sailing outside of the solar system (and still largely functioning!).

The brightest minds today are trying to figure out how to get more ads in front of my eyes and nothing "modern" I've bought in the last decade lasts even 5 years if treated with kid gloves.

A knife attack wounds five in China¹ and it's world headlines. In the meantime, in the USA² for just the last week alone, we have these mass shootings:

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¹ https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/28/asia/stabbing-attack-haidian-beijing-china-intl/index.html

² https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting

@kibcol1049 I personally think that 90% of the people in North America who think they've tasted EVOO have never tasted anything better than a VOO at best, and likely not even that high a grade. Far more likely is that they bought OO at EVOO prices and for what they think is OO they likely got ROO instead.

For Europeans that's closer to 75%.

Olive oil has been faked for most of my life and then some.

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OO = Olive Oil
VOO = Virgin OO
EVOO = Extra VOO
ROO = Refined OO