Closing out Beijing
I for one am a big fan of a gym that has “shut up and squat” on the wall
After Beijing Sport University, we visited a handful of CrossFit gyms in Beijing, all of which seemed to be owned by successful – even wealthy – people with a fitness kick. One of the gyms was owned by two women business partners who had a healthy restaurant upstairs at street level and the gym downstairs, adjacent to a large mall. Most of the clientele were women. One of the partners was a strikingly tall, attractive woman who we learned had a day job reading the news on Chinese State controlled television – CCTV.
For those who don’t know, all of the channels on CCTV are controlled by the government. What is striking about it, however, is that there are a variety of channels and the selection of programming includes a sports channel, talk shows, and game shows (which all seem to be of the same “Asian” variety, but what do I know?), among others. In other words, a reasonably full slate of options to watch, but they are all run out of the same building in Beijing. It is known by the average Chinese person as “the pants building.” Because a picture is worth… some amount of words, here ya go.
…You get the picture (and notice the blue sky!)
By the end of our whirlwind three day visit, smog had begun to descend and we left for the train station as the air began to reach unbreathable levels. I’ve seen bad smog before in a number of countries, but Beijing at its worst really is something to behold. I won’t bore the reader with examples, but there are some great Instagram feeds showing a time-lapse of the smog rolling in. In 15 minutes, the skies have darkened and it looks post-apocalyptic. I thought our friends who had traveled to Beijing before us were exaggerating when they described it, so my imagination had under-imagined how bad it could be. I was – yet again – completely wrong. I’ll talk about it in detail in a later post, but suffice it to say that the Chinese are quite conscious about it and Beijing’s location in the north of the country, closer to where the mining and processing happens, and in a bowl, along with prevailing winds, makes it like graffiti against the facade of total control that officials in Beijing like to portray to their people and the world.
Shanghai
When my boss first returned from China, Shanghai was what he talked about most. “I think it might be the center of the universe,” he said jokingly. He then pulled up some graphics on shipments into and out of Shanghai, airline flights, and a whole bunch of other metrics and graphics that certainly bolster Shanghai’s case. I won’t bother with links to numbers because I’ve found that no matter how I try to describe it to people, words are simply inadequate. Additionally, the Chinese government is so controlling over narrative that it’s hard to get honest numbers about any aspect of Shanghai that aren’t either exaggerated or underreported. For example, even something as seemingly straightforward as population is caught in a miasma of Chinese agitprop around (a) who will be counted for official purposes, (b) Neo-Malthusian proclamations (from years ago) about what number can be sustained by the city, (c) the one-child policy’s legacy, and (d) the sheer mass of humanity in Old and New Shanghai.
The 2020 population is currently listed as 27 million; in my opinion, there is no way Shanghai is less than 30 million inhabitants and it’s probably a good bit more than that, perhaps closer to 40 million, if one includes the ExPat community, which the Chinese government doesn’t. To put a finer point on it, if you don’t have a PRC identification card, the most mundane tasks become more difficult, from buying a train ticket to opening a bank account to getting a cell phone to getting a lease and a whole lot in between; you don’t really ‘exist’ from the government’s perspective. That’s not to say that you can’t do it or that there aren’t workarounds, just that it’s harder and it makes it easier for the Chinese government to pretend you don’t exist. None of that, however, diminishes the wonder of Shanghai.
Shanghai (Pudong) at sunrise, early December 2016
This picture is taken from The Bund on the east side of the Huangpu River. The area was formerly the waterfront part of the Shanghai International Settlement, which resulted after the British found an excuse to start a war with China (the first Anglo-Chinese Opium War in 1843) and then every other colonial power, including the U.S., France, and anyone who could weasel their way in, jumped to get their noses into China for trade. Shanghai’s history is a fascinating trip through a lightly covered (in my opinion) aspect of both U.S. and European history. I won’t delve into it here except to note that you can find significant populations located in specific areas of Shanghai to this day that includes Germans, Turks, Brasilians, French, Americans, Jews (from WW2) and even Japanese(!). More on all of that later.
Looking from left to right, the ball with the pointy top is the Oriental Pearl Radio and TV Tower. Begun in 1991, it was completed in 1994. Its top is 1535 feet high and until 2007 it was the tallest building in China. As your eyes scan right, you see the “bottle opener” building, aka Shanghai World Financial Center, which took over as the tallest building in China, and among the top 5 tallest in the world at the time of its opening in 2008 – at a whopping 1614 feet. In this picture and from this angle, the Jin Mao Tower just to SWFC’s left is (literally) overshadowed by the Bottle Opener and another building in front of it, but Jin Mao is itself an architectural marvel and still among the world’s tallest buildings (currently 34th) at 1380 feet. To the right, dominating the skyline is Shanghai Tower, a behemoth of a structure at 2073 feet. It deserves its own post, but I’ll let you enact your own labor and encourage a read on Wikipedia. Even that won’t do it justice, however. You really do have to see it up close and then ride the elevators to the highest observation deck in the world and just look out in awe at Shanghai below you.
2nd, 9th, and 34th tallest buildings in the world – all at one intersection in Shanghai Pudong
I don’t really know what to say about it all other than that it is a whole lot of concrete, steel, and glass. Truly, engineering and architectural wonders. I always joke to people that after seeing the Great Wall, which was built with hands and feet and a lot of slave labor, that Shanghai Pudong is the inevitable result of what happens when you give the Chinese people front end loaders, cranes, and modern construction equipment.
View from Shanghai World Financial Center south across the Huangpu to the Bund at dusk
From this photo, Jin Mao Tower peaks its top up above the edge of the observation deck in the left foreground, while the Pearl stands right in the center. While Jin Mao has now slipped to 34th in the world, when it was finished it contained the tallest hotel in the world. The architecture inside is breathtaking and at night it still stands as a beacon because of how it is lit up.
A picture that slightly conveys what I’m trying to describe
I didn’t really intend this post to focus so much on Shanghai’s architecture, though it is certainly a worthy subject, but in the basement of the Shanghai World Financial Center was a pictographic that gave me some pause. I thought I had a JPG of it, but I can’t find one, so I’ll have to paint a word picture for you.
Along the X-axis was the Gregorian calendar year, with the zero point of the timeline being ~1900. The Y-axis of the timeline was essentially height in feet, although it wasn’t marked as such. Instead, specific dates would be marked – such as 1931 – and then a silhouette of a building was placed there, the Empire State Building filling in that slot. Below is an example from the wikipedia article on the World’s Tallest Buildings, although as you can see, this is organized by height rather than date.
As I looked right along the timeline, what I saw was the Empire State Building at 1931 – built in just over 15 months and rising to 1380 feet (1454 with antennae/masts). Then on the timeline came the Sears Tower (now the Willis Tower) in 1973 at 1450 feet; it was built in two years. The next two buildings on the timeline were both in Hong Kong, Bank of China in 1990 at 1205 feet (with masts) and then Central Plaza in 1992 at 1240′ (w/ masts); they took 5 years and then less than 3 to build, respectively. From that point on, the timeline is increasingly crowded, but what stuck out to me, starkly, was how many of the buildings are in China. The message is not subtle visually.
A quick look at the wiki entry on the tallest buildings in the world reveals that of the top 20, the U.S. has built 4; China has built 9. If one extends the list to the top 42 tallest buildings in the world, the US has 9, only one of which cracks the top 10 (One World Trade Center at #7) and three of which were built before 1975. China has built (go ahead, take a guess in your head) – 20. Almost half of them and the oldest is the aforementioned Jin Mao Tower in 1998. I should also note that the two buildings in Hong Kong that I mentioned above are NOT included in that list of 20 because they’re not tall enough to crack the top 42 in height.
Given the name of my avatar and the poem from which it is taken, I’m not one to give great credence to monuments to Man’s ego. All of those are coming down eventually, it just depends upon the timescale of one’s consideration. On the other hand, if you want to have some sense of the scope and scale of what is going on with a modern culture – and perhaps any culture, modern or ancient – the skyscraper or large-scale monuments and buildings are just one indication of the state of that society. We still revere the Parthenon – devoted to Athena, the patron saint of Athens – which began construction in 447 BC and was completed a mere 9 years later. Not bad for no earth movers, graders, or other modern machinery. The Pyramids at Giza remain the subject of significant speculation and numerous theories about the why and the wherefore, but no one questions that they represent significant achievements of those people.
The Bund deserved its own picture; it’s not as spectacular in height, but still beautiful architecture along the waterfront
Notice I did not say “governments” because government is an abstraction. Governments don’t build things; people do. Xi Jinping didn’t swing a hammer and neither did Donald Trump; while both may nudge their people in those directions, and incentivize building, nothing gets constructed without some cultural lodestone that desires to build. And that brings me back to China.
Shanghai for me was one giant monument to the Chinese will to build – and to do it on a scale that can be seen from space. Of course, I’m referring to the Great Wall of China, which I will save for another time and its own post, but modern Shanghai rivals the Great Wall for the sheer scope and scale of what is possible in the current tradition of architecture and cultural displays. Some (have) and will use this as proof of the superiority of the “Chinese” method of socialism, or of some other pet idea that they want to prove, but I see only proof of the Chinese people’s willingness to build on a scale that simply doesn’t exist elsewhere. Lest this seem to be a product of my own imagination, consider this about the Great Wall, from its Wikipedia entry:
The frontier walls built by different dynasties have multiple courses. Collectively, they stretch from Liaodong in the east to Lop Lake in the west, from the present-day Sino–Russian border in the north to Taohe River in the south; along an arc that roughly delineates the edge of Mongolian steppe. A comprehensive archaeological survey, using advanced technologies, has concluded that the walls built by the Ming dynasty measure 8,850 km (5,500 mi).[4] This is made up of 6,259 km (3,889 mi) sections of actual wall, 359 km (223 mi) of trenches and 2,232 km (1,387 mi) of natural defensive barriers such as hills and rivers.[4] Another archaeological survey found that the entire wall with all of its branches measures out to be 21,196 km (13,171 mi).[5] Today, the defensive system of the Great Wall is generally recognized as one of the most impressive architectural feats in history.[6]
Let me add to it that during this same period of time, which spans roughly 1800 years, the Chinese also built the world’s longest canal. The Grand Canal
is the longest as well as the oldest canal or artificial river in the world.[1] Starting at Beijing, it passes through Tianjin and the provinces of Hebei, Shandong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang to the city of Hangzhou, linking the Yellow River and Yangtze River. The oldest parts of the canal date back to the 5th century BC, but the various sections were first connected during the Sui dynasty (581–618 AD). Dynasties in 1271–1633 significantly rebuilt the canal and altered its route to supply their capital Beijing.
The total length of the Grand Canal is 1,776 km (1,104 mi). Its greatest height is reached in the mountains of Shandong, at a summit of 42 m (138 ft).[2] Ships in Chinese canals did not have trouble reaching higher elevations after the pound lock was invented in the 10th century, during the Song dynasty (960–1279), by the government official and engineer Qiao Weiyue.[3]
In one of the giant buildings I’ve discussed above, there is a picture of Shanghai from the 1970s, when the tallest building was a hotel that sits along a bridge across the Huangpu River. I can’t remember its name, but a Chinese friend told me that when he was a student in nearby Hangzhou (about 2 hours by car west of Shanghai), his elementary school class took a trip to that hotel and that it was perhaps 6 to 8 stories tall. He said the rest of Old Shanghai and what is now Pudong were flat. He pointed it out to me while we were in the bar of the Park Hyatt Shanghai, inside the “Bottle Opener,” looking at the Bund and marveling at it all over a glass of spirits.
Auchentoshan 3 Wood for you whiskey snobs to chortle about
Shanghai sounds fascinating.
“Governments don’t build things; people do.”
Nonsense. I have it on good authority that:
1) You didn’t build that
and
2) Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together.
I am going to be wildly inappropriate and comment that your new profile pic is hawt, Hayek. I’d dare say it’s even combustible.
Aww thanks. It was my attempt at an uncombed, un-make-uped, unposed, unfiltered pic. WYSIWYG.
The lighting could be adjusted a bit. Something tells me you may be less shiny IRL.
Yeah, that is pretty washed out. I am not shiny in real life.
Yeah, it’s definitely a flattering photo.
I give you people Al Bundy because I care about you and don’t want to inflict a picture of myself on you while you might be eating.
I love Al. I would love to hear his thoughts on wokeness and white privilege.
What’s he going to do with 12 bucks if he’s dead?
Shot does not mean dead.
I suppose not.
I loved Shanghai. We stayed within a block or two of the Shanghai tower so we were able to go out at night and not worry about getting lost. We found this amazing little basement restaurant with what I now think were a bunch of Uighurs (sp?) running it. it was about a 12 x 20 space. The menu was on the wall as a set of 12 pictures with a price in Yuan. And they had two or three picnic tables crammed in there. You ordered by pointing and then paying. it was some kind of barbequed / grilled meat. and it was fucking delicious after a night of drinking Baijiu (and Tsing Tao 40s for hydration, cause that is some sex in a canoe beer right there). We were also there for the World’s Fair the year it was hosted in Shanghai which was a good time.
I hope to go someday. I’d prefer being hosted by someone who knows what’s what, but on the other hand, maybe I have to get over being a chicken and just be willing to make silly mistakes.
My husband spent a month in Singapore playing with a band. He’d be pretty comfy with the street markets and cultural differences. Maybe it’s not too late for a new adventure.
I went with my grad school cohort. There were the adventurous ones of us, and the ones who were not as. But we’d coax some of the less adventurous ones to go with us. None of us knew a damn thing other than 1 dollar got us 7 yuan, how to say hello, and thank you. I say go for it. let yourself experience it and realize that as long as you are eating cooked food you’re fine. Drink plenty of beer (it’s like 2.2% so it’s essentially safe water), be friendly and open to the way they do things, and have a blast.
(stay away from western food though. the only time I got sick was having a bacon cheeseburger at Burger King at the world’s fair. At that point we’d been in China for like 12 days or so and I smelled a bacon cheeseburger and allowed my nose to get the better of my brain)
As a psychological construct, ambiguity tolerance/intolerance is only second to IQ as far as the statistical evidence for its existence. Some people’s brains are just wired to interpret ambiguous stimuli as threatening, whereas others don’t or even desire to seek such stimulus out.
Some people’s brains are just wired to interpret ambiguous stimuli as threatening
Not sure what you’re saying there. GIT ‘IM!
I’d prefer not to.
I wasn’t aware it was that well studied. I’ve always thought of it as being risk-phillic vs risk-phobic. One of the things I noticed was certain parts of the group had a really hard time adapting to China Time, meaning, a 3PM meeting meant sometime between 2:30 and 3:30. That seemed to really throw some folks out of whack. I suppose it increased the ambiguity in an ambiguous situation.
If you say 3pm and are not going to be there within single digit minutes of 3pm, send an update.
In the US, certainly. But there, that’s not how it works. Times are…aspirational. And being able to roll with the flow is an important skill.
AT is related to risk-aversion but it’s not exactly the same thing for boring reasons I won’t get into.
Cultural perceptions of timeliness is called chronemics.
That’s why CPT is definitely a thing. 😉
I’d be interested in some resources on it that are suitable for a non-academic or junior academic type on the difference between AT and risk tolerance. I agree with your comment down thread that AT probably has more to do with success in life than IQ. And it applies to my … ah, “hobbies” as well.
Times are…aspirational.
I have always taken this to mean “Your time isn’t important. I will be busy doing what I want, and you can just wait on my convenience.”
I bet they aren’t late to meetings with the local commissar or people’s deputy or whatever. I doubt you will ever convince me that being late to a meeting, absent some intervening event, isn’t a power play. Or just disrespect and disregard for you and whatever topic the meeting is about.
Of course it’s a power play. The dude that keeps me waiting for 15 minutes every meeting is the same asshole who bullied (or was bullied by) the kids on the playground.
“You were late, you will not get the contract. Thank you for wasting our time. Good bye.”
I stopped being late as soon as a friend of mine said, “Being late is a power play” (or something to that effect; I can’t remember). But then I want to be exactly on time.
My husband thinks being 15 minutes early to anything is being on time. He’s kind of trained me so now I panic if I think I’m going to be late somewhere.
I err on the side being early to avoid being late, so that delays only end up with me being on time unless they’re catastrophic.
Inshallah, I will talk about CPT mañana.
That’s the first step in building intercultural competence.
I found the people we interact with were quite forgiving. It may also have been they were fleecing us and merely smiling at the gwai lo while they did. But we negotiated fairly hard and felt like we got good deals. I got a Rolex for $15 even. Guy wanted $90, but I wasn’t having any of it.
I got a Rolex for $15 even.
I suspect your phone autocorrected that from “Lolex”. Tagline: “Keep time very long time”
I was hoping for a Lorex.
The Lorex is for special customer only. $25!
two and a half dollars – canadian.
Did it speak for the trees?
Ha! I have it in a Watch display in my “trophy” case where I keep memorabilia to this day. It makes a good conversation piece.
My FiL had one of those that his old Army buddy got him.
I always called it his Rolodex Watch.
His buddy was the kind of guy who would send a X-Mas gift from Japan every year. Some years it was really nice (the high end espresso machine, a high end carbon steel cooking knife that was so sharp it would cut you if you looked at it wrong) or really funny (the year he sent the Fruitcake that my FiL had sent him the previous year, or the nice looking but obviously fake Rolex).
“Rolex”
When I was in Greece for a week in 1998, people warned me that as soon as vendors recognized me as American, they’d jack up the prices. But the dollar was so strong then, I didn’t have the heart to bargain them down much.
I had to buy a crisp linen blouse and skirt so I could change from slacks and enter the monasteries at Meteora. The vendor increased the price when he heard me speak (I saw him switch the price cards). but I did the math and it was $6. I paid in full, no haggling. I had that dress for 7 years.
Folks seemed happy when you negotiated. Our standard policy was to offer 10% of asking and then let them talk us up. We’d even negotiate to buy the Baijiu in the little bodegas. We’d haggle down the per bottle price then ask for a bulk discount for buying a half-dozen. it /seemed/ to go over well. Though maybe they thought we were assholes.
The finest moment in haggling I ever saw was a Kabul carpet guy telling an American Woman of Color what the price was for a nice medium sized camel wool rug. She gave him The Look and said “Aw, HELL no,” did the talk-to-the-hand and turned on her heel and stalked off. The look of astonishment on his face competed with a huge grin fighting to come to the fore. I knew the guy….so I could almost hear his thoughts (“Finally, a worthy adversary! I am so weary of these American middle aged men who think if they sit, have tea and chat they are going to get more than a perfunctory effort on my part. I am almost weary of fleecing them.”). When he pursued her (“Madame! Please!”) and managed to persuade her to come back to his shop, I knew it was a clash of titans. Some time later the sale was made. I almost asked her to write the whole thing down for me, as she recalled it.
As a young, semi-attractive young single woman in the late 90s, I endeavored to limit my interaction with European men. The worst sexists with whom I’ve ever dealt.
I also don’t like haggling, so im sure as shit not going to play a role in their little fantasy just for their personal satisfaction. I have money, you have goods. We have a deal or not? Part of the joy of buying a Tesla was going on the website, building the car options, seeing the price, and pressing “YES” on the purchase.
Amen to that
I could see the pleasure of haggling even if you don’t think you are very good at it. I think the big aversion lots of people have to it is that we want a good deal and the idea that we could have gotten better make us think that we got a bad deal.
I have a hard time with languages because I feel stupid saying things the right way.
Get drunk.
Seriously.
?
I saw that effect in e.g. HS German class. Moving to Germany for a year solved that problem real quick.
The closest I came to a no-shit anxiety attack came from being surrounded by words I couldn’t understand because they were in French.
And this was Canada, so there was a pretty good chance all the people around me spoke english.
I keep debating trying going to Iceland, where the circumstance would be similar (different main language, high english proficiency) but I worry about having the same reaction.
I took a year of HS French. I tried to speak French when we were in France and Belgium and the hardest thing I found to do was numbers. Seriously.
However, everybody was very nice once I tried to speak French, and switched to English. It was noticeably different. Stupid Americans, oh boy. Oh! She’s TRYING to speak French and being polite. Hey, no problem, we’ll speak English.
That’s because French counting is nuts.
Who the fuck starts at base 10, then switches to base 60, and then switches to base 20?
Who the fuck starts at base 10, then switches to base 60, and then switches to base 20?
The people who invented the metric system?
Mojo, Swedes will NOT allow Americans to speak Swedish! We go there, take Swedish classes, attempt to ask a clerk a question in Swedish, and they go “Oh, you’re American!” and they address you in perfect English with a slight American accent (not British). You then reply in halting Swedish, and they come back to you with English.
Even 7 Year olds speak fluent English.
Scandahoovia is linguistically odd in several ways. Norwegians can understand Swedish, and vice versa, but they speak their own. So it’s commonplace for a Norwegian and a Swede to have a lengthy conversation, each his own language, and be mutually intelligible.
Finnish on the other hand isn’t even an Indo-European language.
Ez jó hely, hogy ezt elhelyezzük.
I think one of the most useful things to learn when starting to study a new language is numbers. I knew how much I had to pay in a convenience store in Uruguay and could get rid of the coins in my pocket instead of giving a bill that would be large enough to cover the purchase and getting lots of loose change in return.
Hilarious!
I was waiting for them to throw in Basque.
UnCivilServant: I’ll let you know what it’s like. I’ll be spending a couple days in Iceland this summer.
Much appreciated.
Finnish and Hungarian are distantly related languages. Probably. We’re pretty sure they are. HM could weigh in, but he despises the Hungarian language advisability as much as PIE does.
Basque is its own thing, so it wouldn’t fit with Finnish and Hungarian. It also has a much less complicated case system.
Mojo, Swedes will NOT allow Americans to speak Swedish!
Replace perfect with (usually) light to heavily accented, and that’s Japan. You might get away with it in small interactions, but slip up or slowness and it’s insta-English.
Ja, Finnish and Hungarian are both Ural-Altaic.
I think that Basque has never been linked to any other living or recorded language. Seriously old and isolated.
Fun fact: My father’s line (Y-DNA) specific subclade is specifically narrowed to the same immediate clan as Ozti the Ice Man.
Seems that peoples from the area now known as Georgia in the caucuses migrated west and were later displaced by the more common R and I Y-DNA clades, but retreated to the mountains, where they remain to this day. In the Alps, in the Pyrenees, and oddly, in Wales.
So my old English form of my family name, Gethins, is solidly Welsh.
The Altaic language is group is pretty heavily disputed, unfortunately. Finnish and Hungarian are almost certainly related languages, but how they are related and why they, mostly the hungarians, ended up so far apart from other languages in their group is a mystery. They’re in offshoots like the Szeckley and things get even harder to trace back. I’m haplogroup C, most common in east and central Asia, but also found in Hungarians.
Daniel Pearl is unavailable for comment.
Very nice. Thanks Ozzy!
The architecture is trippy, especially the one of the three tall buildings at one intersection.
Wow, Pudong was just starting to roll when I visited in 2001. As impressive as the building up is, I find the dozen or so subway lines they built from scratch since my visit even more unreal. And the fact that this story was repeated in every large city in the country. Do they know how to “get things done” or what? Just ask Tom Friedman!
You done been jacked. While I have the time, I bring this for your viewing pleasure:
Breaking911
@Breaking911
SC voter says she is ‘terrified” of climate change.
STEYER: “I will use the Executive emergency powers of the presidency to tell companies how they can generate electricity, what kind of cars they can build, what kind of buildings we’re gonna have…”
Embedded video
1,453
11:55 PM – Feb 24, 2020
Not that he’d ever win, but it’s instructive to consider that this is what pandering consists of in the contemporary Democratic Party: assurances that you will be a totalitarian.
I think it was at Instapundit where I read someone noting that Bernie is much angrier about Bloomberg calling him sympathetic to the NRA than people talking about his fulsome praise for Fidel Castro, and what a depressing comment that is.
Needs to be read in a German accent for the full effect.
Left unanswered:
What emergency? What emergency powers? I vaguely recall a President getting slapped down for trying to do this to the steel industry.
Nixon managed wage & price controls. What would stop Steyer?
I’m sure Steyer could find some lefty judges to back him up.
I just read a tweet where Bette Midler said
“Hey, hey, #NRA! How many lives did you take today?”
Reply from Brian Cates @Drawandstrike
Replying to @BetteMidler
“Zero. Now do Planned Parenthood.”
“Zero. Now do Planned Parenthood.”
And make sure you tally the disproportionate number of abortions by minorities*, and don’t forget to include sex selection abortions. #Intersectionality
*pretty sure this is still the case.
Yup, stats back it up. Margaret Sanger cast a looooong shadow.
Bette – You should work with this Hollywood hero who has promised to make a film that will destroy the NRA.
What a mensch! (Bleah)
A reply I would make: Bette, how many armed bodyguards do you employ?
Oh come on, his praise of Commie dictators is from decades ago, its not like he was doing it in February 2020 on a national news program.
ROFL.
But did he pull a girl’s pigtails when he was 12 y.o.? That shit matters, man.
National Review dropped their ORANGE MAN BAD for a second to write up a nice little piece about how there will soon be the whitewashing of Bernies support of violent communist tyrants as “youthful indiscretion” even though this was when he was in his 30s and 40s.
assurances that you will be a totalitarian
Ruling with a pen and phone is ok if a leftist does it. They want a dictator. It just has to be “their” dictator.
Straight up fascism.
In a sane and just world, Tom Steyer would be stripped naked and frog-marched into the nearest city square. He would then be beaten until he loses bowel control from a combination of fear and nerve damage. He would then be tied to a pole and have pieces of his flesh methodically removed with a scalpel as the assembled crowd cheers with delight. This would continue for an extended period of time until he died and his remains were gibbeted as a warning to other would-be tyrants.
Alas, our world is neither sane nor just.
Seems a bit harsh. I’d be happy if he’d just eat his losses and go away.
Yeah man, I’m with El Guapo on this one.
You’ll cowards don’t even smoke crack
Etienne De La Boetie
I have the answer to that but it is too long not to put in article form.
Just like the Romans once had the death penalty for men who called themselves King, someday we will come to our senses and reserve the death penalty for anyone who tries to become President. And it will be done by hot pincers, since this is the best of all possible worlds.
Same people who impeached Trump for “abuse of power”.
Also worth noting that this stance is not different from any of the other Democrat wannabe tyrants.
Fascist totalitarian, no less.
Is that you Justin?
So, this morning we had a Two-Minutes Hate of the Yellow Peril in the comments and we follow up with this.
Loki the Trickster is the one true god.
Life is interesting when you have an open mind, innit?
Indeed. I would add that I also believe that as far as impact on everyday life, ambiguity tolerance/intolerance is more powerful than IQ as far as outcomes.
It’s funny that I dropped my simple “cockney accent” comment down at the same instant you were making a much more erudite summary up above regarding tolerance.
And yet they mean the same danged thing.
Whatever works! 🙂
Indeed. I would add that I also believe that as far as impact on everyday life, ambiguity tolerance/intolerance is more powerful than IQ as far as outcomes.
Interesting thought. I doubt it is factually correct, but I suspect it has become closer to correct over time as economies have grown increasingly interconnected. I wonder if it might be correct if you trim off the extremes of the bell curves? (or maybe I am overweighting the effects of an IQ below 85, but I doubt it)
I assumed that he meant trimming off the extremes of the bell curve, that it applies to IQ’s within and above normal.
Some of the dumbest things I have seen were done by some of the smartest people I have ever known. I am watching one play out now. It is important to make the distinction between smart and wise. They are not the same at all and the correlation between them is kinda iffy.
IQ for all of the bad press and sayings like “They are not the same at all and the correlation between them is kinda iffy.” is a tremendously accurate predictor of financial success. It has been borne out over and over in study after study. It gets dismissed or mocked as racist or ‘inaccurate’ because people are unhappy about the implications, but IQ does in fact matter.
I do find it interesting people disagreed with opening visitation to Cuba because communism, but don’t insist travel to China be banned because communism. It was the thing I agreed with Obama.
I think the travel ban to Cuba was meant to weaken the regime with the hope that it would fall. It didnt, but then they didnt want to strengthen the regime. There is no hope that it would work for China either way.
So, this morning we had a Two-Minutes Hate of the Yellow Peril in the comments and we follow up with this.
Even we are a diverse group in some ways.
“Loki the Trickster is the one true god.”
There’s much in what you say. If there is a god, he, she or it is a prankster with a malicious attitude.
I have a theory that “Satan” is a job title, on the order of Loki.
I dig the CCTV building.
Looking forward to part 3.
I keep wondering if they’ve sufficiently engineered the structure.
A lot of “innovative” architecure isn’t built for the long haul because people don’t pay enough attention to the wear of long term strain. See, most houses Frank Lloyd Wright designed. (His cantilevered rooms have a nasty habit of falling off the buildings)
IIRC, the Pants was one of the buildings carrying large (huge) smoke stains in May 2009. There were a *lot* of fires in Beijing during my 2 visits.
No mention of Shanghai is complete without recounting the legend of Morris ‘Two-Guns’ Cohen.
Did he really carry two guns or did he just have a big pecker like Two Gun Corcoran?
That Walker Colt blew up in his hand, a failing common to that model.
Once upon a time I was a tall building guy, now I like the photo of The Bund much better. It may be because I am old and my knees are bad. I also used to think it would be cool to go into space. Now I just want green grass and blue skies. Also, travel and adventure was on the list. Been there, done that. Now I just want to stay home.
I am boring as hell.
9 PM is the new midnight.
I am digging the hanging out at home thing quite a bit too (particularly because I now live in a wrinkly landscape instead of plains for the first time), yet I realize I have an itch to keep reaching for something. A new book? A project (in reference to the bookshelf diorama I want to do)? A new travel adventure?
Not ready just yet to tread water until the inevitable end.
I’m getting excited about this book diorama notion: https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/book-nook-shelf-inserts-36717254
Trying to decide whether to go with traditional 12V lighted dollhouse fixtures, or move to an LED based system of unknown description.
I’m kind of going the other way. Now that my kids are on the verge of leaving the nest, I find myself really antsy. I have always enjoyed (non-business) travel, but lately I’m trying to figure out how to structure my next chunk of life to allow more time on the road.
This is something I have wondered for a very long time re the libertarian stance.
Smog. Industrial smog. Water. Potable water.
In libertopia, would there be an incentive to reduce emissions and not dump shit in the waterways? What is to be done in a free market society when you sort of can’t boycott whatever industry is polluting the air and water. I mean, you COULD, since you’re just one person. What critical mass of people boycotting/picketing/protesting a factory would it take for a company to go, “Hey, you know, maybe we should find a better way to do this.” Or would we just walk around like folks in Beijing without a thought and boiling water like folks in Flint?
If I own the waterway, you better not being dumping in it without my permission.
What if you only own a slice of the waterway? Say ten yards of bank out to the middle of the current?
Do you count what floats by, or just what’s in your water when you extract it?
Both? you are liable for what exits your property to someone else’s , so you need to be able to pass the buck upstream.
If my dog breaks his leash and runs over to your property and kills a chicken, I should be held liable. Likewise, if I take a dump in the river and it floats downstream and gives you cholera, my ass should be held liable.
Yes, which was my point, the upstream initiator is ultimately responsible.
longer version: whenever feasible, eliminate public goods. If it is privately owned, it wont be susceptible to tragedy of the commons.
Air pollution is harder, but Coase had some thoughts on that.
What part of, for instance, the Missouri River would you own if you lived on its banks?
What part of the air?
I’m not asking to be an asshole. I really am in a philosophical quandary about this.
The part your deed covers.
In today’s world, none of it, the government keeps the waterways to themselves. In libertopia, someone would own the river. Or a part thereof.
There’s a reason why simple property ownership of waterways isn’t done. It allows the upstream owners to cut off the downstream flow.
“Water rights” evolved for a reason. I would be very reluctant to throw that away without being very sure it wouldn’t cause conflict and disaster.
Minnesota does this regularly in the summer for their fishing tourism, which drives us into drought conditions unless there’s plenty of rain.
Huh?
Minnesota dams up the Missouri River.
That would be a trick 😉
LOl Glad I refreshed before posting.
Look, they clearly float their caissons down some tributary until they reach the missouri and clog it up there.
*sigh* Now I feel stupid since this is what I was told quite a few times and never actually looked at it for myself.
First rule of Usenet: “call for references”
Well, hey, that’s what the internet is for–shooting your mouth off when you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.
That and cat videos.
You have cat videos?
Attack Minne at your (not yellow) peril!
See: half of YouTube.
Be that way
A small corner in the SW of Minnesota is in the Missouri river basin, so its not impossible.
LOL the black one with the white claws that are almost as big as he is.
That is a clear cut example of Coasean bargaining being appropriate. And transaction costs are low, as it is a 1 to 1 negotiation (although I guess Louisiana owners may have to negotiate with lots of upstream folks.
Chesterton’s fence.
Good fences make good neighbors.
Even in today’s world, you could privatize them. Form the Missouri River Corporation, grant it all land up to some high water level along both banks. It can be a non-profit, but its role is to own the river and maintain it according to its charter. It would charge enough fees for different types of access to allow it to spend on protection and maintenance.
Excellent question. We speak of the NAP and how your right to swing your fists ends at the point where my nose begins. But what if it’s literally the air we breathe? Your pollutant decisions aren’t easily tied back to the source (your venting toxins to the environment), and the impact to me is equally vaguely observable.
So by what means do we hold one another accountable for a truly collective good, such as the air and water? Such as passing a measure to prevent dumping flaming tar down Half Dome in Yosemite for a nifty night show (this was actually a “thing” and is the reason for the ugly black stains on Half Dome that persist to this day)?
It’s a slippery slope toward the “You should” from the “We must”.
Right, and so I am/was also conflicted about smoking.
Cigarette smoke is disgusting and I don’t want to smell it. I don’t want to have to walk through a cloud of cigarette smoke at the entrance to a building at all hours of business. I resent(ed) all the stupid fucking smoke breaks smokers were allowed to take, but woe is me if I (nonsmoker) cruise the internet for a minute or two. I also do not want to smell it while I’m eating in a restaurant (or stuck on a plane).
Yet people have a right to smoke and I do NOT agree with no smoking in a bar. FFS, that’s what it’s FOR!
Literally nobody owns the waterway? Create an easily defined law against dumping in a public waterway, make it well known to the public. In the absence of a regulatory/enforcement agency (preferably) to prosecute offenders, simply expand qui tam lawsuits to cover dumping in a public waterway.
This way nearly any citizen can hold others accountable through a court system on behalf of the law rather than a bureaucracy to find new and inventive ways to twist the law into new meanings and for example, justify littering in the park adjacent to the waterway as enforceable under the “no dumping in public waterways act”.
In my Libertopia, you sue them for damages.
What if you’re poor?
More to the point, what if they are poor?
You can still force them to stop violating your rights. You may not get damages. (Ask me my views about debtors’ prisons)
Now I am interested, what are your views on debtors prisons? And if they are pro how does that work in an An Cap world?
Late for a thing. We’ll talk later. Sorry, lost track of time.
Spooner went the opposite way. No debtors prisons, no bankruptcy, any unsecured debt could just be reneged on at any time whit no **legal** consequence.
The moral/ethical/social consequences are another matter.
In Libertopia, the legal system is completely revamped (long overdue). Loser pays. Lawyers don’t get to tie up suits for years on end to financially destroy their opponents (time limits for action completion). If you’re a poor you either do a class action or you find a lawyer willing to work on contingency. If you can’t find a lawyer willing to take some risk, you probably didn’t have much of a case to begin with.
One way or other some kind of rules must exist to minimize….uh….what’s the word…..I am getting old….externalities? Those rules will be made and enforced by some entity, probably govt. At the very least made by one entity and given teeth by govt. Having heard a million stories about Home Owner Associations I am not convinced that private institutions would be any better than government and probably would be worse.
HOAs can be petty, but they are limited in power and easy to move out of.
As you ascend the hierarchy, the latter becomes more and more difficult.
I have more to say about this, but it is in my backlog of article concepts, and isnt a comment size piece.
Imagine what China would have accomplished if Yang Zhu won.
It’s funny/amazing to think that the Shanghai I saw in ’88 was closer to the Shanghai of 1900 than today’s.
What do Jeffrey Epstein and Philip Haney have in common? They didn’t kill themselves.
Currently we have scheduled a forensic autopsy to be performed by forensic pathologists from
the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office. Additionally we have reached out to our law
enforcement partners in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to assist in analyzing
documents, phone records and a lap top that were recovered from the scene and Mr. Haney’s
RV. We are currently in possession of his vehicle, the firearm located at the scene, and his RV
and we will be requesting evidence processing assistance from the FBI on those items as well.
Our investigators conducted a neighborhood canvas and interviewed his RV park neighbors on
the day of the incident along with checking key areas for any video surveillance that may exist
from that time. The investigators are continuing to follow-up with the overwhelming number of
persons who are calling our office from throughout the United States asking for detailed
information on our investigation.
Unfortunately, there was misinformation immediately being put out that we have determined
Mr. Haney’s death to be a suicide. This is not the case. We are currently in the beginning
phase of our investigation and any final determination as to the cause and manner of Mr.
Haney’s death would be extremely premature and inappropriate. No determination will be made
until all evidence is examined and analyzed.
This investigation is still active and will be ongoing. No further details will be provided at this time.
Is there enough tinfoil in the world for the hats we need?
I used to scoff at this kind of speculation. Nowadays…i dunno.
Just make sure you use tin, aluminum foil magnifies the rays.
There is, but China is the largest producer of tin, making a bit of a catch 22.
The guy was engaged and was likely going to get his job back. There’s no way in hell this was a suicide.
And honestly, I think that’s why the Democrats have been so protective of the identity of
Eric Ciaramellathe whistleblower. If the roles were reversed, he’d already be dead.The guy was engaged and was likely going to get his job back. There’s no way in hell this was a suicide.
And it was initially reported that he shot himself in the chest…somehow…
While not impossible, it strikes me as unlikely.
What would be the motive?
Great stuff, Ozy!
Shanghai looks pretty cool, but, for me, big cities are big cities.
Did you ever get out into the countryside?
My thoughts! As soon as I get to a new place, I wonder what the countryside is like and how do the regular people live.
I did. I’ll include that, as well. Sorry for being a late show, I had some “other” writing that had tot get done.
Judge Napolitano goes off on the “Secret” hearing today in the Roger Stone case by Judge Amy Berman Jackson.
The judge seems not to have many neckties, unless they’re duplicates.
Judge Napolitano: This is absolutely Stalinistic!… She has gagged Stone. It is one thing to gag the defendant during a trial. You don’t want them out there talking to the press and it’s a way of communicating with the jury. There is no jury. There is no trial. He’s been convicted. He’s been sentenced. The gag serves no legitimate governmental purpose. And yet she’s enforcing it on him and his lawyers. Question: why is the Bill Barr Department of Justice not opposing this secrecy and not opposing this gag rule?
Stuart Varney: Do you think the judge might have a political bias?
Judge Napolitano: Yes.
What happened to Nap’s TDS?
Napolitano suffered from TDS as much as Amash hates Trump because of some company his parents own. People need to consider that different incentives make people take different positions, even if they seem to contradict their previous stated positions.
In Napolitano’s case, he either had to conform with Russia Fever Dreams or be fired by Fox. Remember, out of the gate Napolitano was suggesting that the intelligence community had concocted the whole Fever Dream plot. He turned out to be right in hindsight, but at that time there was an uproar from propaganda outlets like the NYT and WaPo. Fox responded by suspending Napolitano and Reason dropped his articles, because their principles always end where the NYT editorial page begins.
Napolitano never suffered from TDS, dude just didn’t want to lose his job over white liberal psychosis.
I was just about to make this same point, just less thoroughly, less elegance, and with more typos.
Mister Napolitano; he’s no longer a judge.
Adventure.
I like roadtripping, but I want to Get Where I Am Going and to do that, I try to set a land-speed record. I don’t stop along the way (unless that’s my intent) to see anything. I get gas, I get a candy bar or a SlimJim, and I’m outtie and back on the road.
I LOVE driving.
I do not wander. I don’t know why. I never leave the house without somewhere to go. Even when I had my motorcycle I found wandering to be highly unsatisfactory. I don’t get to know the layout of any city without having addresses to be at.
If I go to Europe (or wherever), I have a list of things I want to see and I will take my time seeing those things. But I must have a purpose. Wandering is just not an attractive thing to me.
I have the same natural inclination, but I actively fight it when on road trips and tell myself to see what is in between points A and B. The serpentarium in Wilmington was someplace I only found because I’d forced myself to go walkabout. It was one of the highlights of the trip. Likewise with the Schnitzel Ranch in Huntsville.
So, I get where you’re coming from, but peer around the corners sometimes.
What I will do is, if I sit down somewhere to eat, I will sit quietly and eavesdrop on all the conversations around me.
Now for some reason I’m thinking of the Blue Plate Diner (also Huntsville)
This is a conversation I overheard while at lunch one day. The participants were the salesmen for the particular medical software of a certain company which is prevalent here on the Silicon Prairie. They had just gotten sued for this.
Pretty handwriting!
Now there’s something that will never be said about me 😉
Oh thank you!
That was you?
See, when I go somewhere, I’m not happy unless I get an opportunity to be a flâneur.
Some of my happiest times were just wandering around Singapore or Bangkok and discovering things.
Can’t just use the term ‘slacker’, fancy man?
Of course not. Look at the way he’s dressed!
Looks like a slacker to me.
Some of my happiest times were just wandering around… Bangkok and discovering things.
Many people have discovered things in Bangkok…
One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble
Not much between despair and ecstasy
I love that song so much.
Oriental setting…
This is why I will never go on a tour or a cruise excursion or anything like that. I can’t imagine something worse than going to Athens and then following a herd of tourists around from photo op to photo op on a schedule. Whenever we go somewhere we just try to get a sense of some key things we’d like to see and then just kinda walk out the hotel and pick a general direction. This generally results in our never making it to the tourist things but finding a few really cool bars and meeting a bunch of locals. Nashville was great for this, as was Savannah.
My China trip was a tour group of 5 people to hit the highlights plus lots of free time to wander. Worked out pretty well, although I could have done with much fewer (zero, actually) stops at the tourist-trap “shop here” places – ugh.
Wait… you found locals in Nashville? Almost every single person I talked to had moved there from somewhere else.
And the girlfriend likes the tours/cruises, to me it sounds like those painful school trips.
A few, yeah, but also a lot of out-of-towners. One guy, who was the nicest hipster I’ve ever met, was from Denver and was contemplating a move to DC for some reason. My wife and I spent two days trying to convince him it was a terrible idea. I think he wound up back in Denver.
What’s interesting, as I think about it, is the natives were white-collar professionals, maybe the youngest in his late thirties and the oldest in his fifties, and the migrants were generally young hipsters. Not much difference aside from that, though, everyone was noticeably friendly and very laid back. I know the place gets a bad rap in TN for sucking up tax money but at least based on the people there I’ve got nothing but good things to say about the place.
I like to have a detailed plan and then ignore it.
Now THAT I can do!
Detailed pla–oooh, shiny!
Great Taste of the Midwest was the worst…or best…example. Detailed plans for what beers to drink over 5 hours. That lasted the first hour at most. Every. Single. Year.
I did stop making as detailed plans as time went on, but even my guidelines got ignored.
As Eisenhower said, “Planning is everything, the plan is nothing.”
My dream vacation has long been a train trip across the northern Rockies, down the Pacific coast, and back across the southwest with minimal stops in between. On our car trip to CO & NM a couple of years ago, Mr. GT graciously did all the driving through the pretty bits so I could gaze out the windows. (He’d been there before, but I never had.)
I’ve never been able to see much from a train.
I’m still annoyed that I couldn’t get a picture of the sheep covered hill I passed in England because the camera wanted to focus on the window grime and the train wasn’t about to stop for me to take a picture.
The highlight of our CO/NM trip was the Silverton-Durango narrow-gauge RR. We sprang for the enclosed car at the back, but we could open the windows. I was happily snapping pics the whole time. “Ooh! Look! A mountain!” **CLICK** “Ooh! Look! Another mountain!” **CLICK**
🙁 My window didn’t open.
Seriously look into the Amtrak California Zephyr from Chicago to San Fran, and return by Empire Builder. No driving, few stops, all scenery all the time. Sleep, eat (and eat WELL!! Yum!), shower, people watch, and enjoy.
“Train people”, at least those who pay for a roomette or a suite, are a wonderful and special breed. Great characters. I highly recommend it. I know you don’t drink alcohol, but a big bonus for those of us who like to partake is that there is plentiful wine, beer, and spirits on the train, and Amtrak ACTIVELY ENCOURAGES PASSENGERS TO BRING THEIR OWN. So we brought bottles of rum for Rum n Diet Cokes, wine for the 10th anniversary, etc.
Such fun.
That’s pretty much the plan, though it’s a toss-up between the Zephyr and the SW Chief, since I’ve now seen CO.
And I DO happily drink wine (or beer in a pinch.) Mr. GT is my permanent DD. : )
I’m nosing into the SW chief options. Never been on that one.
I took the Zephyr a couple years ago from Omaha to the Bay Area. We got held up for 4 hours just outside of Denver because Amtrak couldn’t be bothered to do some maintenance on one of the cars during a long stop in Denver. As a result we went through all the best scenery at night. Grrr.
Oh, man! what a bummer! I always thought it was quite cool that they go through Nebraska corn fields at night so you can drink in the Rockies during the day. Donner pass was creepily beautiful.
I would like to have seen Salt Lake City, but it was night. Since then, i’ve been to SLC more times than I care to count.
I’ll generally go with loose plans, a list of places that would be nice to stop at, and then wander. If I hit at least one of the places I’d like to see each day, I’m fine. Especially if I encounter places that I would have never found if not for wandering. Besides, going to the tourist stops means I’ll be stuck around other tourists.
There is so much good information now, it’s pretty easy to plan a trip like that. We go with a handful of must-sees and then improvise from there.
…I’ll be stuck around other tourists
Since most of our trips are off into the wild, I’ve found that two or three miles out reduces the number of tourists by about 99%.
I like to have a general plan but deviate from it as the mood strikes me. I have never just set out to wander without a destination in mind, but my favorite trips are meandering ones.
AoS has a daily art thread.
Today’s selection.
Too bleak for an office?
Just get a Klimt, you freshman girl.
https://getyarn.io/yarn-story/b309915d-683d-45af-ab2f-6a60ef4c01f2
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/a780f3e0-31e5-487e-91ff-6c9771925d9a/gif
It was great to read about Shanghai. I was impressed by the skyscrapers, too, when I was there in 2018. Here’s a picture I took from the Shanghai Tower.
If you look at the list of tallest buildings and notice when they were built, you’ll see that the West is in decline.
Or, that the utility of the “world’s tallest building” isn’t that high, and there’s a revealed preference for a less congested living?
Bragging rights for tallest building appeals to the big man in charge, but the inconveniences for the drones add up, many would rather have a suburban office park as a workplace.
I also notice these tallest buildings congregate in places and times with low personal automobile ownership.
It makes very little sense in America in particular to build super high skyscrapers. We just have so much land, and so much auto infrastructure, for both good and ill, that building 30 stories up makes little sense in pretty much everywhere outside of the urban core of about ten cities.
I think you’re mostly right on this, with a little bit of exception. There is an identified premium for landmark locations. Execs will pay for locations like the Time Warner Building or the Empire State Building.
I’ll cover this a little more later, but it’s not just about tallest buildings, which is why I mentioned the Grand Canal and the Great Wall – which I’ll cover in more detail later. It’s true of the Forbidden City, or the Terra Cotta Soldiers of Xi’An, as well. They also have the world’s largest building in Chengdu and a host of other massive building projects. They fucking build.
So, while it may be easy to dismiss the tallest building “thing” on whatever grounds you like, it’s missing the larger point I’m making about Chinese culture. As I noted above:
I was mostly answering the assertion from grrizzly of western decline based upon construction priorities. It was not an opinion on the original article.
If there are signs of western decline, it’s not in our choice of what to build.
But it’s odd because for so long in the west, particular in the US, I keep hearing about how cities are the pinnacle of civilization, no? It’s where all of the woke people and elite universities are, where the trends in fashion and music “that matter” are, where actors and other literati live, no? Wasn’t it for a long time the staple to have a place in NYC and LA?
Snark aside, large cities require building vertically. Would you at least agree that if skyscrapers don’t tell us anything directly, they might at least point to some underlying facts that at least correspond to what an economy is capable of? That’s a LOT of steel in Shanghai.
I would suggest that it says something more than you may be willing to admit, in the same way that our ability to crank out Iowa Class Battleships in WW2 said something about what we could do, too.
It says something. It says many things. And there’s a lot to be said about what that might be.
I think there’s a lot of interesting things to be said in talking about why such projects might be undertaken or not.
Ohhhhh, wait a minute, I just saw who ‘missed’ the point. Never mind. It’s you again, UCS! Somehow nitpicking a particular point, and arguing against it, while ignoring the larger point being made… in something I wrote. Weird. It’s strange how that keeps coincidentally happening, innit?
Or, side discussions happen.
Today was a side discussion.
Yesterday was a misunderstanding. I did issue an appology yesterday because I had made the mistake of multitasking.
I’ve been to Guangzhou one two occasions. It was a combination of the dense urban environment of Hong Kong and the bleak socialist architecture of Moscow.
Can’t say that I found it appealing in any way.
And the smog was brutal on a couple of days.
I’ll cover Guangzhou in a later piece.
Key California reservoir to be drained due to earthquake risk
But they have money to build choo-choos.
I really can’t figure out the resistance to doing good water management, brush control, and reservoir building.
It’s good sense, it’s not evil, not polluting to the environment, and it doesn’t eliminate gov’t jobs. What is the actual problem? The deep longing for the scent of burning martyr? Guilt at being in a lovely place?
Possibly this?
They seem to hate people anyway…
“I really can’t figure out the resistance to doing good water management, brush control, and reservoir building.”
It’s the difference between being a good conservator and steward of the land, and being a primitive nature worshiper.
If you envision a river flowing strong for hundreds of miles thanks to careful building of reservoirs, thickly lined with trees, dotted with boat ramps, parks, and campgrounds, flowing clean and with minimal debris because people are acting as guardians of a natural resource, and shaping it to be the best possible version of itself, then you are coming from a stewardship point of view.
That is the vision of my Missouri River Corporation upthread.
It’s penance for our sins.
All good commies like to play with trains. It creates the best environment for monumental graft and in the end all commies are just looters.
Well trains are the emblem of socialism, when you think about it. The trains are owned and managed by someone else. They go where a committee or state agency decides they should go, and they follow a set schedule. Nobody asks the passengers where they want to go or when they need to be there; the train goes where it goes when it goes, and if you want to be on it you buy a ticket and wait. Oh, and if the train’s late, or it’s dirty, or the conductor’s an asshole, too bad; there isn’t a competing train company. Trains are collectivized passengers run by bureaucracy.
Cars, on the other hand, are the ultimate symbol of capitalism. Which, of course, tells you something about the “green” push to get rid of cars (or driver autonomy) and their love for mass transit.
Thinking about the rain shadows of the Rustshade and Tular Guul mountain ranges has painted a new landscape in a previous unused portion of my fantasy world map. I want to use this region with its northern desert, midland savannahs and southern jungle (home to Ravamaer), but I don’t have a story to go with it. Ewald and his supporting cast is a pretty easy choice for a main character, but… plot is absent.
But how did you survive the Yellow Menace? Are the Chinamen less wily than I’ve been told?
I thought it was Yellow Peril?
MENACE I SAYS
I looked it up.
Yellow Peril
The Yellow Menace
Peril or Menace, I just wish they would get my goddamn injection molds done soon!
Ooo, Yellow Spectre. Get James Bond* on the case!
*Not Idris Elba
Lashana Lynch?
Yellow Peril: the Kaiser warns the Tsar.
“…I just wish they would get my goddamn injection molds done soon.”
Still waiting for my Valentine’s Day gift, though Mr. GT may submerge the box in bleach if it ever arrives.
Chinavirus?
I remember back when The Yellow Peril was a stripper’s name.
I thought she was saying “Yellow Pearl” but the harelip made it a little hard to understand.
Mostly through proper hand washing. Before you eat, before you toilet, if you know you will have to physically touch somebody else, etc.
Too inscrutable to tell what they were thinking!
Bull Meechum:
I don’t want you to get to know me. I like being an enigma, like a Chink. Now scram.
One of the greatest movies about Marine aviation ever made.
I did get fleeced a couple of times, but not life-changing bad – just pissed that I got myself into the situations. Otherwise, the Chinese were great to me. I’ll have something discussing that in a later piece. Chinese millennials are a fascinating demographic. I feel fortunate to have been exposed mostly to that cohort.
Are they going to turn China libertarian or create a non-Commie authoritarian state? Those are the only two possibilities, LOL.
When I think of Shanghai this is the guy that always comes to my mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_Applegate
An excellent subject for one of Animal’s manly man bios.
Seeing the new James Bond link above it is worth noting that Rex Applegate was one of if not the inspiration for the James Bond character.
They just have to turn everything they touch to shit, dont they? They cant help themselves.
Used to carry one of the Applegate–Fairbairn knives as a young soldier.
Wicked.
Great part 2. I liked Shanghai, but the new sections felt like any other city in the world. The old sections including the Victorian buildings were neat.
As far as the skyscraper discussions see what the priority is in US cities today. Very individualized apartment buildings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/432_Park_Avenue
That, and every other day I’m seeing another office building being converted to condos.
Are other office building being built (in other places?), or are there just fewer office jobs needing huge buildings?
Remote work is becoming a lot more common. Hell, Cleveland may be looking for ways to create incentives for it.
That’s sort of what I was getting at, but I was also thinking of how technology has allowed the decentralization of business. I still think for many jobs there’s value in being able to easily communicate face-to-face within smaller teams, but that lots of inter-team communication really doesn’t benefit as much, meaning that some of the advantages of urban density are being reduced.
My impression is that the conversions to condos are outpacing new construction of offices but I can’t say for sure.
Chinese Democracy will be happening any day!
So do these Chinese rich educated urbanites hate the party? That was what was supposed to happen with urbanization and trade with them.
Since you are determined to ride these hobby horses… the least we can do is give you a new one.
https://le.utah.gov/~2020/bills/static/HB0101.html
Sigh. More evidence that if a bill limiting freedom fails, they will come back again next year. This State Legislator has tried this bill for the last 3 years and this is the first year for her to get the house to pass it.
It makes holding your phone a primary traffic offense. Rep C. Moss is the “Think About The Children”est of all legislators.
I don’t want to ruin a later piece, because I want to cover the subject in more detail, but let me make a single response to the “Chinese democracy any day now!” snark from our Glibertariat: Chinese millenials are 400 million of the total 1.4 bn – so the single largest cohort of the PRC demography. They’ve been compared to our Boomers (maybe not a compliment!) in terms of their relative size and Coming of Age: better educated, entering a more urban and less rural-centric society, ‘traditions’ – and I mean things that are cultural-centric, not Commie-centric – are being challenged by technology. (Hell, the joke about the Chinese being terrible drivers isn’t a joke: it’s to be expected from a society that only had widespread automobile use by the population since the 1980s, and the latter part of it, at that. They really are still learning to adapt from being a bike/motorbike kind of society for a looonnnnnnnngggg time. You can see it if you step back and just watch – the design of the intersections and the way traffic flows is a shitshow and part of it is just shitty design. Integrating bike traffic and cars on that scale is not simply a matter of adding lanes. They’re still learning how to integrate that technology into their lives, now add in authoritarian control on top of that.)
Any way, my observation is that we shouldn’t confuse the Chinese people with the Chinese government. I always ask US friends, would you want foreigners to judge you by Trump? Do you want to be labeled and judged by how Congress in the form of Pelosi, Schumer, AOC, McConnell or (insert your flavor of political villain here)? I assure you, those are not commies.
“Chinese democracy any day now!” endless droning on
snarkfromour GlibertariatWinston.Fixed.
I don’t want to get into this too much here and I’ll ask for forbearance with the proviso that this subject will be front and center in a later piece and we can really dig into it in the comments on that one.
I mentioned a bit on this earlier as well. The idea that because China hasn’t fallen yet means that obviously our policies are failures seems short sighted and biased. It took a while for the Soviet Union to fall and it was a total surprise. in the 1970’s if you had said that the Soviet Union would collapse, without a shot being fired, in the next 20 years you would have been laughed at.
Speaking of the Soviet Union. In my mementos processing I came across a college paper my dad wrote in 1967 concerning Soviet econimics. I haven’t read it yet and he got a C+ on it, but his major was Russian history (WTF Dad) and he was a union believer who thought poverty was a virtue.
And then Carter happened.
My father told me a story about when his Father was in the Air Force and they had accidentally over payed him for several months and so just decided to not pay him one pay period to make it even. When he talked about the size of the paycheck my grandfather received i was incredulous and he said “Yeah a decade of 10% inflation will do that too you.
Voluntary poverty is a virtue (ie, a monk or hermit choosing to forgo possessions). Involuntary poverty is a tragedy.
Poverty is simply the default condition of Man. Nature doesn’t simply serve up her bounty to us without labor. Even fruit has to be picked, fish have to be caught, vegetables have to be cared for (notwithstanding what Mike! thinks about the matter). Some people seem confused by this very simple, ineluctable fact of life.
I don’t think anyone here would argue with that… save to be contrarian.
Yeah, I lived in Germany 3 years before the wall came down and nobody saw any of it coming.
I would like to point that even back in the 19th Century Americans and Europeans assumed that these things would turn Europe and America libertarian.
Do you think you have met enough of them to be sure of this?
Never said that, but wondered if the Government is a lot stronger than we thought.
Also what do you think of the whole “coronavirus might end the Chicoms” stuff? Realistic or overblown?
I don’t think that’s fair. Hang around enough, listen carefully to what people are saying underneath what they’re really saying and you can get a feel for the zeitgeist. We don’t need to go all #notallchinesemillennials
Sorry I just mean how do you know you are not in a bubble or engaging in confirmation bias?
Winston, I will simply ask you to hang around and let’s have the discussion after I write the piece in which I will discuss this. If you’re not convinced of what I say after reading what I’ve written, at least we’ll both have a common ground from which to discuss the matter. As it is now, I don’t know how much time you’ve spent in China, but I was there for about 7-8 months out of 20 from December 2016 through October 2018. I visited Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Xiamen, Guangzhou, from which I drove all the way south to Zhuhai, (walked over to Macau, then flew back to my apartment in Hangzhou), Hangzhou, Suzhou, Wuhan, Chengdu (took the train across to) Chongqing, Harbin, Mohe, and a bunch of smaller places that wouldn’t mean anything to you.
Now, I don’t know what you’ve seen, read, if you speak the language or have a degree about it, so I’m not trying to be presumptuous, but let’s just wait this one out until we’re both at least speaking from the same ‘shared experience,’ as it were, and then we can debate what that means. But I’m not a fan of shotgun-style interrogations with questions of my experience. It’s the eternal “critic” play – you get to attack what I’ve done and poke holes in it as if it’s nonsense, without ever offering up why you’re alternate reality (which is simply, “NOT mine”) has the better claim to Truth. I’m looking forward to the discussion when I put something together a little more well conceived than comment replies for you.
Sorry I don’t mean to come across as hostile. I do like that there is someone who has spent time in China and can describe what it is actually like there (at least when you were there). But outsiders may not have the whole picture. On the other hand maybe they do…
So maybe your optimism is warranted and my pessimism isn’t. Or maybe my pessimism is justified. I don’t know.
A major reason for my attitude is that I’ve been reading a lot of history of 19th Century Europe (England especially) and the whole “once we live in cities, get educated, engage in free trade and use new technology we will all be free” was a major argument among classical liberals during that time. Since these arguments proved to be not quite accurate then I wonder how accurate they are in modern China.
Also there were people who visited Maoist China and Soviet Russia who were convinced that they were wonderful places. However others visited there and realized how terrible they in fact were.
Well, I was raised to believe that all commies were bad and I joined Reagan’s military in ’87. I was also a US Marine.
OTOH, I went there on behalf of a US company to open a subsidiary and multiple licensees under a single brand; that doesn’t exactly sound “commie”. i.e. Remember when the first McDonald’s opened in Russia in 1990?
Again, do you think it would be fair for Chinese to judge the US by how Biden and Obama acted, or how many brown people the police shot last year?
Well I am judging the Chinese government, not the people, by saying that it is still a totalitarian one-party state. Westerners were hoping that this government was nearing collapse but that does not appear to be the case. Though it could still happen, maybe very soon.
Do you think the “Starbucks Fallacy” has some truth to it?
And maybe it’s also a phenomenally complicated issue given the scale and scope of China that defies trite characterizations of NeoCons in the US? Stick around and I’ll tell you about the difference of opinion I had with the CJCS on this subject. Maybe it will shed some light on all of this.
Do you have any idea of the rural-urban split and the issues involving the various Chinese regions? I mean more than just Tibet and the Uighurs.
It had just gone over 50% urban when I was there. It was announced (at least officially). A lot of people are making their way to the cities. It’s an interesting cultural phenomenon. I’ll discuss it in one of the later pieces on the SEZs (Special Economic Zones). I’ve been to all of them, I think.
Also Xi Jinping took a lot of Westerners, including libertarians (See Reason, Cato, Mises, AIER, FEE, etc.), by surprise. China was supposed to be getting its Gorbachev at any moment and Tiananmen Square was supposed to be just the beginning, not the end, of anti-Communist rebellion.
I still remember watching a family of four on a single, small motorbike in Guangzhou.
How did they stack them?
Father driving.
Young kid sitting in father’s lap; facing father; arms and legs around father.
Mother on back of bike.
Infant in between mother and father.
Mother with arms around father trapping infant in place.
I have some funny pictures of this phenomenon from my travels. My favorite was the guy careening through the streets with about 8 propane tanks strapped to the scooter. I got my phone out to try to video what I was sure would be the inevitable fireball at the next intersection. Somehow Old Man weaved his way through with honks and shouts, but no explosion.
how Congress “works”
Ozy, yet again–I love your voice and your storytelling ability. You have a lot of untapped potential.
I meant to say a great deal of natural talent that is as yet untapped.
Sounds like a need a good editor… *whistles and kicks a rock*
I like this. Thanks Ozy!