矛⋅盾

yall have no idea how mad I was that I couldn’t see 30000 miles from Chang’an on big screen theaters when it came out because no theaters in the US was putting it on, at least in my area. tbh I was surprised that Nezha 2 is getting any screens in the US now

iceberg moment or whatever but the first movie had insufferable fandom 🫠

movie itself was fine, both 2 and 1 have some kid-level basically fart jokes or whatever, overall agree that the direction had/has younger target audience

“this trifold only folds twice! false advertising” really kills me lmfao

Dongfeng missile program 🫡

Don’t know if we’ll be seeing chinese scientists in US under house arrest or worse again (hopefully not) but, for those unfamiliar: 钱学森 Qian Xuesen co-founded NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (1940s), later got the attention of McCarthy-ites and his family was subject to basically house arrest and surveillance for 5 years (deferred deportation), went back to China and led a bunch of programs and never looked back, became known as the “Father of Chinese Rocketry”.

the US attracted brain drain candidates for decades now, but would soon rather let anticommunism and racism get the better of them again and repeat the same “mistakes” and shoot themselves in the foot… honestly better for the Chinese people who can and did return as sinophobia ramps up (and probably will continue apace again in Trump’s 2nd term, not that the western media didn’t try to elevate sinophobia during Biden’s term between Pelosi’s flight to Taiwan, weather balloon, accusing zoo of fielding a man in a suit as a sunbear, etc). Space Race then, chips/AI now (article mentions Mr Sun returned during Trump’s first term, motivated by the racist ‘China Initiative’)

that’s his online handle… truck nuts mentality anyone?

The Bustling World released a new trailer recently.

Um, it’s a isometric/top-down SIMs builder?GTA-like?Stardew Valley-elements RPG??? I’m primarily interested in its aesthetic approach, certainly heavily influenced by famous painting Along the River During QingMing Festival, although I’m not entirely sure on core gameplay/gameplay loop yet.

And speaking of core gameplay… I will say, it does feel like the devs have kept adding more features since initial trailer so I’m hoping they don’t get too caught up in those, borrow elements from too many things and end up incoherent mess…

Revisited Planet Crafter recently, love it. However, once I take a break from it, I can’t really get back in, because I have to acclimate to that style of uh, camera control? I really easily get dizzy/disoriented with similar 1st person POV games, not sure why but having your character model on screen has always reduced or eliminated that effect on me. I guess that’s my one gripe, I really wish Planet Crafter (or even Subnautica, another big fav of mine but can’t replay it much for same disorientation reasons) had a third-person player model, even as an option.

Anyway, been on a break from video games since then, aside from occasional “social hours” dota. Looking forward to any more news from The Bustling World, hopefully we’ll be able to play it this year? fingers crossed

edit: don’t really pay attention to console games unless interested enough to look into emulators, hehe. sorry switch

internet-connected vulnerabilities seems relatively avoidable to the individual user if you’re able to run it locally, which is a feature of deepseek that isn’t available via competitor AI services. I thought that was one of the main reasons it’s giving openai & chatgpt a run for their money? that you could download it yourself and with decent enough specs run it completely locally and without internet connection.

also, statistical models used by LLMs don’t store data that could eg be used to steal someone’s identity, so the headline/first few paragraphs of alarmist “security” concerns is misleading. because, at least from me just skimming it, they’re crowing about accessing certain backends and ““highly sensititive information”” when it’s like… chat log between the devs??? of course that’s sensitive info and the devs themselves should care about securing it. but the framing is again, misleading, lowkey clickbait in trying to play it/ambiguous reading as “this program retains chat logs submitted to feed the learning datasets”… like the general public doesn’t know how tech works, so much alarmism about “ai stealing my art/fanfic” because they dont understand none of that gets stored in the algorithm/model, so it’s easy to make the headline read like that to people who already think that way. ergo, reads like an advert to scaremonger people who are relatively tech-illiterate

obviously start-ups might want to give some pause/thought cover their asses in terms of security, as it’s got less to do with their actual goals/operations therefore might not be thinking about hiring people for specifically infosec. but ngl this article reads more like advertising for this company’s services, rather than some “empire gonna try to strike back” thing

“most progressive” framed around since the 60s is oddly convenient innit

yeah their discord has been really quiet until they released this most recent PV. I wondered if the devs bit off more than they could chew.

Sometimes the sinophobia machine paints the June fourth event as a brutal quashing of a student protest, which is like maybe a smidgeon of the truth in that there were students there, and well… the US has got that right at home, from recent ceasefire campus protests to Kent State 1970.

However regarding 6-4, I must point out that many prominent student leaders were very much not gunned down. Many of them (along with other dissidents) smuggled out of PRC by Operation Yellowbird; CIA and MI6 already had a network in place as they were aiding students in organizing protests, so were able to react quickly when China announced arrest warrants. Like, these student leaders didn’t die, they went on to get (or were honorarily awarded) degrees from prestigious universities. They’re still alive today, thriving even. (except for one guy who wants to go back to China, even tried to turn himself in, nope. Dude’s got a whooole interesting entanglement in dissident activities, but then again many of the other beneficiaries of Op Yellowbird do as well)

China Digital Times

one of their sponsors is literally NED, yep

the real 川建国 🫡

imo that kind of ‘analysis’ is frankly very steeped in neoliberalism-derivative defeatism and doomerism (‘end of history’ and other such trite epistemology): unable to imagine any exits or alterations from The One Inevitability of Capitalism. I’m not familiar with that subreddit but “singularity” does sound like how followers of that camp (and adjacent antiwork types) treat capitalism, like it’s a black hole, an all-powerful force of nature (not dissimilar to how bourgeois society talks about ‘hand of the market’), instead of a system that is built and maintained by humans. A million other things can and probably will become more important factors to the status of humankind before any of that technofuturist (doesnt matter if its ‘good’ or ‘evil’) “prophet”-eering would come to pass.

Past revolutionaries have succeeded in the face of seemingly impossible odds; current present-day people oppressed by US imperialism have resisted with greater obstacles. Guerillas made sure that even if their enemies render the land toxic, filled with mines, or otherwise impossible to live in, invaders can’t take and hold onto their land, and because supplies aren’t free nor infinite, eventually constant (over)commitment forces them to withdraw. The United States might crow about its military (and clearly its got a track record in special ops in raping, looting, couping, blowing up pipelines etc*) but it has not definitively won a single “war” it involved itself in since WWII. Gaza was the most policed/surveilled place on earth! yet Israel, who markets itself as being cutting edge in the field of surveillance to export its tech to other countries, can’t figure out where al Qassam are based (and supplied), always claiming the next school or hospital is really where their enemies are hiding. On what basis do these techbro&derivative types have to say that ALL subjugated people are doomed? Just because in their immediate surroundings, where the concentrated brunt of oppression is NOT happening, people aren’t resisting much?

Think of it another way, if capitalist billionaires can get their hands on robot armies, what’s stopping their enemies from doing the same? Why, other than simply monopoly concerns, is the west so freaked out about China’s (or DPRK or Iran or Russia etc etc) technological development, including chips manufacturing and AI?

*I’m rambling long enough but there’s some argument to be made that coups and related interventionism is more cost effective for empire than direct war.

I actually had a double-take - open source. OPEN SOURCE! I mean, yeah, it’ll still have to be down to whoever has production capabilities, but it’s still exciting.

I just finished my first (and likely only) playthrough of Horizon Forbidden West+DLC Burning Shores (I loved the previous game Horizon Zero Dawn).

I wasn’t prepared to get slapped in the face with sinophobia (the writing re: the Quen) but yeah it really soured my experience. I know it’s not like super overt but I understood the angle where it was coming from and what the writing was trying to communicate to its audience. Maybe I’ll find it funny in a few weeks (as many sinophobic tropes/accusations are more reflective of the west than they are of china;; “moral lessons” about finding the truth for yourself is much more applicable to westerners “forced” to reiterate antichina-isms than it is applicable to whatever the average westerner thinks about censorship and free speech in china) but right now I’m just unhappy.

At least I didn’t spend money on it this time around🏴‍☠️