#dealing with chinese online world

[weilaverdui]

could you teach me how to use baidu cloud? I've been trying to download some books off of it but it wont let me for somereason

Ok. I actually consider making a post about this adventure of mine. So: the approach is through this page: https://login.bce.baidu.com/?lang=en Where you need to use “sign me in with sms code” option. If you are lucky, they are sending sms to your country, but even if they do, it does not always work. Also, for some reason, I finally got my messages through Whatsup. No idea why or how. They tell you there is no account with this number, register now? You answer yes, fill the capcha, get the code, you are in. Took me the longest. I do not remember if I got to set up the username here. It probably did. As soon as you managed to get in for the first time, you want to go to the user centre here: https://passport.baidu.com/v6/ucenter . Here you can set up your email. On the left, there are multiple lines that you can click to set up various stuff. You are looking for one that has 邮箱 in it, you can set up the email there. Hopefully another text will come through for confirmation. Be careful, they do not accept gmail, but they do accept, for example, outlook or yahoo (first worked better for me). Get an email set up, it will send you a confirmation code there. Next you need a password. Setting it is above setting email and has 密码 in it. Set the password. Now you should be good to go. Next. Baidu has an app through which you download stuff. I do it on desktop, it is here https://pan.baidu.com/download#pan Then you can login through it, and then the app will handle the download link properly. You can just click a button with download button. I mostly navigated the site with my limited chinese knowledge and Zhongwen add-on for pop-up dictionary, if you know the language, would be easier. For some reason I can’t copy words from interface, so to use a translator, one with OCR would be good. I do not know where you are on your journey, but hopefully it will be useful for you and others. If you have any further questions - feel free to ask.

[mewfistoe]

You find a soft sweater in Sylus’ closet.

———

You had never owned anything made from vicuña wool before. Hadn’t even known what a vicuña was until you looked it up online. Hell, you hadn’t even been able to spell “vicuña” at first, the search engine had to correct it for you when you tried to look it up.

Now though? Now you were gawking at the prices of various online listings of 100% vicuña wool sweaters in mild horror.

“It’s just vicuña wool,” Sylus had said.

“Just.”

****

You had found the sweater a week ago in Sylus’ closet when you stayed the night. You’d been looking for something comfy to lounge in his bed in, and when your hand had brushed up against this particular caramel-toned sweater, you couldn’t help yourself. It was so soft. It must’ve been one of Sylus’ favorites. He must have worn and washed it regularly for it to be as soft as it was.

Sylus had laughed when he saw you emerge victoriously from his closet with your spoils. Said you had surprisingly refined taste for someone so cheap.

You had never felt anything so buttery and soft before. Sylus doubtlessly used some very nice detergent and fabric softener. The sweater was a bit too large for you, intended to fit someone of Sylus’ frame, and the too long sleeves had felt so overwhelmingly cozy. You couldn’t stop petting yourself while you wore it.

Sylus had watched you with a smile and teased that you looked like a self-absorbed hamster grooming itself. You told him that he was just jealous that you had discovered his favorite sweater and had taken it hostage for the night.

When it came time for you to head home the next day, you were loathe to leave the sweater behind. And Sylus, dear sweet generous Sylus, had told you not to bother and to take it with you instead. He insisted. Said you clearly liked it better than he did.

You had hemmed and hawed about it at first. Both wanting, but not wanting, to steal his favorite. But you could tell by his smirk and head tilt that he knew how delighted you were with your new prize.

You had no idea that prize in question was made of one of the most luxurious textiles in the world. That it was worth over four months of rent for your apartment. That it wasn’t soft from Sylus wearing it all the time, but because it was made from the literal finest wool available on the market today.

Sylus just laughs when you call him up to confront him.

****

“Why didn’t you say anything?!”

“I didn’t think it was a big deal. It’s really not that bad, just a sweater.”

“It’s more than my rent! For four months!”

“Tch, that really says more about your meagre accommodations than anything else, kitten.”

“Why do you even have a sweater that costs $9,000 anyway?”

“$17,800.”

“WHAT?!”

“$17,800. It was custom made and I wanted a looser fit for comfort, so it required substantially more wool.”

“SYLUS!”

“Oh sweetie. It’s really not that bad. I have a rather large illegal white shahtoosh shawl somewhere that’s worth at least double that.”

“A what? A sharoo? Huh?!”

“Shahtoosh. Don’t worry, sweetie. It was a gift from a business associate trying to curry favor. And very old. Vintage. I wouldn’t buy one myself, I know how much you love animals.”

“Huh?”

“I’d give it to you, given your fondness for fine wools, but I know you’re a good law-abiding citizen so…”

“You…you big criminal! Why are even the fabrics you own illegal? Sylus? Sylus! Sylus, stop laughing at me! Sylus! It’s not funny. Sylus!!”

****

The next time he sees you, he hands you a skein of vicuña yarn.

“For my kitten to play with.”

“….”

You’ll never tell him that you do end up fiddling around with it later.

———

A/N - I know they use “Linkon currency” in the game but tbh I was too lazy to try and look up conversion rates so I just used what I know. Is Linkon money equivalent to the Chinese yuan, or no?

Sylus’ sweater is definitely extremely expensive, even for vicuña, but I’m assuming he would get the best of the best, so….

Also, apparently, shahtoosh wool is the finest wool in the world (literally. The hairs are the finest in the animal kingdom). It is made from Tibetan antelope (chiru), which are endangered, and the antelope have to be killed for the wool to be harvested, so there’s some ethical and legal concerns with it. According to wiki, it is also illegal to buy/sell/own shahtoosh, however it can still be found on the black market sometimes for exorbitant prices.

That’s all! Yay.

[piosplayhouse]

I too watched the hbomberguy video and went straight to Twitter, whereupon I found that James Somerton had mentioned danmei in one of his videos and it made everyone mad, so I went looking and. yeah here's a full transcription of his just completely incorrect coverage of cql and mdzs from "Hollywood's (Gay) China Problem" so you don't have to watch it and give him views:

"The 2019 fantasy series The Untamed, featuring an unlikely bond between a man with magic powers and a stoic prince, started an online craze over the pair's implicit romance, but the show's promotion focused on its portrayal of Chinese traditional culture, a push consistent with Chinese communist party propaganda.

The show was... Queerbait-y. But the novel on which it was based [shows a picture of the fanmade cover for The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation made by fan translator team Exiled Rebels] certainly was not. That featured a very explicit love story between the two main characters, but was self-censored when adapted to meet the censorship guidelines of the Xi Jinping government. But it didn't matter. Like so much queerbaiting before, people saw through the weak veneer of heterosexuality. They "took the bait", so to speak. The series has accumulated a total of 9.5 billion views in China as of this summer, and had also received an international release via Netflix. It was described as a global phenomenon, taking off like no BL series before it, making its way all around Asia and with the Netflix deal, all across Europe and North America as well.

Tencent, the Chinese streaming platform it originated on, saw 2.6 million new subscribers to the service when it was released. And WeTV, an app that lets you watch BL content anywhere in the world, saw growth of 250% while the show was airing. In January of 2020, the cast members planned to embark on a multi-city, worldwide fan meeting tour. Cities included Bangkok, Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, Macau, Kuala Lumpur, Toronto, Los Angeles, New York... But it was cancelled due to COVID-19.

Even the Chinese government has endorsed it. The overseas popularity of these romantic sword-wielding heroes is often highlighted in Chinese media coverage focusing on the massive overseas streaming numbers and its ability to build a growing appreciation of the charm of Chinese culture."

[madamlaydebug]

CRITICAL WARNING!!!! Radio talk show hostess, Kim Komando, did some digging about TEMU and this is what she found!

Seemingly overnight, everyone’s talking about Temu (pronounced “tee-moo”), an online shopping app that boasts deals that seem too good to be true, like $17 wireless earbuds, $1 “gold” necklaces and $23 wedding dresses.

Over 50 million Americans have downloaded Temu since it launched state-side in September 2022, after it gained traction with expensive Super Bowl ads promising to let you “shop like a billionaire.”

Today, Temu is the most popular shopping app in the U.S. behind Amazon. But most of us don’t know much about the app’s true origins. Reader Daniel Mayer asked an important question, “Is [Temu] something we should be concerned about?”

So, I did some digging. And as it turns out, yes, you absolutely should be. Here’s what I found:

Where did Temu come from?

This isn’t some fly-by-night operation. Temu is based in Boston, Massachusetts, by PDD Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq: PDD). PDD is headquartered in Shanghai, China.

PDD also owns the e-commerce platform Pinduoduo headquartered in — you guessed it — China. So, Temu is a Communist China-based app and site.

What you need to know before using Temu

First, you’re buying goods directly from manufacturers in China and other parts of the world. That’s why shipping times are often 12 days or longer. The prices are low because the goods are cheap. The pictures of what you see advertised may not be what you actually get.

Temu’s BBB rating is 2.21/5. Reviews at TrustPilot are interesting, with 38% 5-star reviews and 41% 1-star reviews.

But that’s not the worst of it.

Temu is downright dangerous.

The app is a clever, pervasive digital stalker. As you shop, Temu monitors your activity on other apps, tracks your notifications and location and changes settings.

🛑 It gets worse. Temu gains full access to all your contacts, calendars and photo albums, plus all your social media accounts, chats and texts. In other words, literally everything on your phone. This is scary

No shopping app needs this much control, especially one tied to Communist China. If you’re using Temu, delete the app from your phone ASAP.

On iPhone, Long-press an app, then tap Remove App > Delete App. Tap Delete to confirm.

On Android, touch and hold an app, then tap Remove App > Delete App > Delete.

Pro tip: If you downloaded Temu, to be safe from Chinese spies, you really need to do a full factory reset.

But wait, there’s more! Temu’s sister app was removed from Google Play because of malware.

Do not buy from this company, or use their app!

COPY AND PASTE PLEASE

[mariacallous]

US appeals court upholds TikTok law forcing its sale

WASHINGTON, Dec 6 (Reuters) - A U.S. federal appeals court on Friday upheld a law requiring Chinese-based ByteDance to divest its popular short video app TikTok in the United States by early next year or face a ban.

The decision is a win for the Justice Department and opponents of the Chinese-owned app and a devastating blow to ByteDance. The ruling now increases the possibility of an unprecedented ban in just six weeks on a social media app used by 170 million Americans.

The ruling is expected to be appealed to the Supreme Court.

Free speech advocates immediately criticized the decision. The American Civil Liberties Union said it sets a "flawed and dangerous precedent."

"Banning TikTok blatantly violates the First Amendment rights of millions of Americans who use this app to express themselves and communicate with people around the world,” said Patrick Toomey, deputy director of the ACLU's National Security Project.

But the appeals court said the law “was the culmination of extensive, bipartisan action by the Congress and by successive presidents. It was carefully crafted to deal only with control by a foreign adversary, and it was part of a broader effort to counter a well-substantiated national security threat posed by the PRC (People's Republic of China)."

U.S. appeals court Judges Sri Srinivasan, Neomi Rao and Douglas Ginsburg considered the legal challenges brought by TikTok and users against the law that gives ByteDance until Jan. 19 to sell or divest TikTok's U.S. assets or face a ban.

The decision -- unless the Supreme Court reverses it -- puts TikTok's fate in the hands of first President JoeBiden on whether to grant a 90-day extension of the Jan. 19 deadline to force a sale and then President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20. But it's not clear whether ByteDance could meet the heavy burden to show it had made significant progress toward a divestiture needed to trigger the extension.

Trump, who unsuccessfully tried to ban TikTok during his first term in 2020, said before the November presidential election he would not allow the TikTok ban.

TikTok said it expected the Supreme Court would reverse the appeals court decision on First Amendment grounds.

"The Supreme Court has an established historical record of protecting Americans' right to free speech, and we expect they will do just that on this important constitutional issue," TikTok said in a statement, adding the law will result "in outright censorship of the American people."

The Justice Department did not have an immediate comment on the decision.

The decision upholds the law giving the U.S. government sweeping powers to ban other foreign-owned apps that could raise concerns about collection of Americans' data. In 2020, Trump also tried to ban Tencent-owned WeChat, but was blocked by the courts.

Shares of Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab, which competes against TikTok in online ads, hit an intraday record high following the ruling, last up over 3%. Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL.O), opens new tab, whose YouTube video platform also competes with TikTok, was up over 1% following the ruling.

TIKTOK BAN LOOMS

The court acknowledged its decision would lead to TikTok's ban on Jan. 19 without an extension from Biden.

"Consequently, TikTok's millions of users will need to find alternative media of communication," the court said, which was because of China's "hybrid commercial threat to U.S. national security, not to the U.S. Government, which engaged with TikTok through a multi-year process in an effort to find an alternative solution."

The opinion was written by Ginsburg, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, and joined by Rao, who was named to the bench by Trump, and Srinivasan, an appointee of President Barack Obama.

The Justice Department says under Chinese ownership, TikTok poses a serious national security threat because of its access to vast personal data of Americans, asserting China can covertly manipulate information that Americans consume via TikTok.

U.S. officials have also warned TikTok's management is beholden to the Chinese government, which could compel the company to share the data of its American users.

TikTok has denied it has or ever would share U.S. user data, accusing American lawmakers in the lawsuit of advancing "speculative" concerns.

TikTok and ByteDance argue the law is unconstitutional and violates Americans' free speech rights. They call it "a radical departure from this country's tradition of championing an open Internet."

ByteDance, backed by Sequoia Capital, Susquehanna International Group, KKR & Co (KKR.N), opens new tab, and General Atlantic, among others, was valued at $268 billion in December 2023 when it offered to buy back around $5 billion worth of shares from investors, Reuters reported then.

The law prohibits app stores like Apple (AAPL.O), opens new tab and Alphabet's (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Google from offering TikTok and bars internet hosting services from supporting TikTok unless ByteDance divests TikTok by the deadline.

Apple and Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In a concurring opinion, Srinivasan acknowledged the decision will have major impacts, noting "170 million Americans use TikTok to create and view all sorts of free expression and engage with one another and the world. And yet, in part precisely because of the platform’s expansive reach, Congress and multiple Presidents determined that divesting it from (China's) control is essential to protect our national security."

He added that "Because the record reflects that Congress's decision was considered, consistent with longstanding regulatory practice, and devoid of an institutional aim to suppress particular messages or ideas, we are not in a position to set it aside."

[mxtxfanatic]

I'm not very active online socially, so I find your takes on the whole JC stans situation very helpful and interesting. It does a lot to contextualize what I see reading a lot of fanfiction, wherein I've found much MDZS fanfiction to be very divorced from the reality of the source material, both due to cultural insensitivity towards the Chinese source material, the CQL problem, and of course the ubiquitous JC apologia. I've been in equally, if not more, contentious fandoms before (the Sherlock fandom comes to mind) but, if I can be frank, to me the difference between those experiences and now is that MDZS is an actually good book! I feel like a lot of the fandom inclinations toward sanding down conflicts or exacerbating them, inventing personalities for background characters, turning all the characters into dolls and the setting into your dollhouse (which no one else may touch!) were codified for the current userbase in Superwholock, whether people realize or not. Those fandom instincts were helpful when working with source material that was shallow, inconsistent, and from the english-speaking world, but it did not equip fandom to deal with a book from a foreign culture that didn't need "fixing" for lack of a better term. It also reminds me a lot of early otaku culture in the USA, with the botched translations, weird cultural takes, and... odd characterization in fanfiction (why does Naruto need a harem???). Which, one may hope, could indicate that things will get better over time. That's just my spaghetti thrown at the wall, though.

I think it's a combination of both the quality of the book (Western fandoms are unused to having source materials with such tight storytelling where they don't have to fill in major parts of the plot with their own imaginations) and racism (Western fandoms feeling so entitled to Asian works while also not respecting their creators enough to even pretend to attempt to understand what the creators are trying to say, instead, choosing to fall back onto the orientalist "those Asians are just an enigma" stereotypes to justify superimposing their own ideas onto the text and calling it "basically the same thing").

I also believe that the sheer volume of unchallenging art that the Western world mass-produces, paired with disdain towards literary pursuits like critique and analysis, has led to a generation of "fans" who believe that the only "right" way to engage in your favorite media is to turn your brain off. "If you joined fandom to share quotes from the book and not just follow the 'incorrect-quotes-blog' and laugh at out-of-context excerpts, then what's your problem???" seems to be the consensus nowadays.

Here's to hoping one day people get over themselves and realize that just because their usual interests are careless drivel written to make money doesn't mean that everyone is writing trash stories they could care less about outside of how much money it makes them. Mxtx writes amazing stories, but you don't actually care about the story like you claim you do if everything you "love" about it can be easily just summarized in a recycled fandom trope meme.

[bjyxobsessed]

It’s one thing for CP fans to deal with homophobic idiots online… It’s another when it’s effecting them and making it EVEN HARDER to see each other 😢 This is the world they live in (that too many people have to live in)… And it’s sad to be reminded of that.

Sure, it was nice to have a giggle over Yibo being in Hengdian (where XZ was) over the holiday… But it seems to me that the guy who posted about it was more interested in getting attention from other fans than in doing what decent CP fans make a priority: protecting them.

We are continually reminded that a minority voice filled with vitriol and hate can be louder and more dangerous than those of love and hope. As much as we are always so desperate for any little hint of them being together, I really hope this was a reminder to our fellow turtles in China to be more careful… To keep the juiciest pieces of candy off main and in the group chats.

Because there would be nothing worse to me than a situation where they are forced out of the closet and all hell rains down 🥺 (Somebody that hates me but is a very good writer wrote a really good, devastatingly sad fic about a similar situation. When things like this happen and solos lash out, I always think about this fic and how potentially possible it is 😢)

It’s hard. It’s hard to watch the homophobia. And I don’t know what the answer is given the limitations of China. But I have seen progress made in the 4 years I’ve been in this fandom - in online interactions, in Chinese dramas, on social media. Change is slow - acceptance is slower. But I truly think XZ and WYB are changing hearts. And turtles are a big part of that. I just hope we can all be careful and keep them safe in the process.

[olderthannetfic]

CW: rant about "racist fetishizing" and "exotification" as a white person, etc.

One thing that particularly drives me bonkers is when antis take issue with things that are either not obviously negative or are inextricable from things that are neutral or even positive. For example, are there situations where AAVE really is "appropriated" and used in a way that takes advantage of black culture while keeping a comfortable distance to actual black people? Sure! But my gents. 1) A random Tumblr user having absorbed a ton of AAVE into their speech patterns and saying "y'all" a lot is not it, 2) absorbing language patterns from those you socialize with is an unavoidable side effect of socialization, and I don't know how to tell this to terminally online people but it is in fact a good thing. It is a good thing that African-American people are so present and their content engaged with enough that people are passively absorbing AAVE! No, it doesn't mean racism is solved or that people who say "y'all" can't be racist, but absorbing AAVE in and of itself is a good sign!

I have a similar complaint with most accusations of "fetishization" (beside the meaningless vagueness of the term), because what it comes down to is "you find people who look like this sexy and that's BAD". Even "exotification" is not in and of itself a bad thing, when removed from the context of imperialism and colonialism, because looking at someone and thinking they're sexy because they look so different to what you're used to, i.e. "exotic", is not actually inherently a bad thing! We have some amount of sexual draw to what's different - I mean, people with blue eyes apparently all have a single common ancestor who really got around, for crying out loud.

Where this attraction becomes problematic is when due to the outside material conditions (whether on the societal scale or the single person scale), the exotified person is both desirable and lacking in power, but the exact same thing is true whatever the ethnicity of the person! (A good deal of what feminism views as "predatory" behavior in men is only really predatory against the background of economic desperation in women wherein there is some material disadvantage to turning down unwanted advances, and would be considerably more harmless in a setting where everyone is equal and living comfortably, which I daresay should be the end goal of any equality and empowerment movement).

As someone with straight hair, I think curls are sexy. As someone with brown hair, I think redheads and blond people and people with black hair are sexy. As a white person, I would probably date one of my cute Chinese co-workers if I weren't so damn ace, because something about that combination of same tone or darker skin + completely black smooth hair + the general facial features (including the monolid some people get so insecure about because Western poisoning sigh) is just gorgeous to me and I'm not afraid to say it. Saying something like this should not be taboo. People of any ethnicity deserve to have people of other ethnicities gushing about what makes them look distinct and unique! I mean, shit, people gush about white skin and blond hair and blue eyes enough.

(Disclaimer: I am once again not saying that there aren't contexts where calling out racial fetishization is appropriate, or where people desire someone for their physical differences but still consider them to be subhuman. There are many such cases, I know. I would even say that, based on observations of the heterosexual world, wanting to fuck someone and thinking they have equal value as a person can be completely and utterly uncoupled from each other. But this doesn't mean that all expressions of attraction because of the physical differences are automatically suspect, and it's no wonder that so much of pushback against "fetishizing X ethnicity" reads like a pamphlet in support of racial segregation!)

Tl;dr: Thinking someone of X ethnicity is hot and being racist towards that ethnicity can co-occur but have little to do with each other. People try to fix the latter problem by attacking instances of the former, and that's stupid, and just ends up looking like "you're not allowed to thirst outside of your own race".

--

It still boggles my mind that y'all is the thing people have chosen to take as appropriation from AAVE.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Paul Blumenthal at HuffPost:

President Donald Trump and his economic team justified last week’s sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs with multiple conflicting explanations that, when considered together, make no sense at all. The administration wants the public to believe three different things, all of which are in tension. First, Trump’s tariffs are designed to launch a renaissance for American manufacturing replaced by overseas imports, bringing back long lost working class jobs and reinvigorating the blue collar middle class. Second, that the tariffs are meant to raise massive amounts of revenue to replace the progressive income tax. And third, Trump’s advisers and various online sycophants also claim that the purpose is to use the tariffs as pressure on foreign nations to cut bilateral trade deals with the U.S.

These ideas may make varying levels of sense, in that they may do what those promoting them claim if executed strategically (albeit with differing levels of pain for the average American). But put together they make zero sense. Each is in conflict with the other. It can either be one thing or the other thing, but not all three things or even two out of three. But since “Liberation Day,” the administration has flailed from one rationale to another, often with the administration openly contradicting itself within the hour. On Monday morning, the Financial Times carried an op-ed from White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, where he declared: “This is not a negotiation.” Hours later, Trump boasted online that “Countries from all over the world are talking to us. Spoke to Japanese Prime Minister this morning. He is sending a top team to negotiate!” Soon after, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reposted Trump’s comment online to note that he would lead tariff negotiations with Japan. These mixed messages were really just the healthy product of differing opinions, Council of Economic Advisors Chair Stephen Miran said on Monday. [...]

Restore American Manufacturing

The main line from the Trump administration is that these tariffs are designed to restore America’s place as a manufacturing hub by bringing back the factory jobs that have been leaving the country since the 1960s. “If you want your tariff rate to be zero, then you build your product right here in America,” Trump said when announcing his blanket tariffs on April 2. The U.S. would now “charge countries” for “taking our jobs, taking our wealth, taking a lot of things that they have been taking over the years,” he added. (Tariffs are paid by the companies purchasing the imports, not their originating countries.) This is what Trump ran on in 2024 when he called tariffs the “most beautiful word in the dictionary.”

[...] That is what the Biden administration did with its combination of tariffs and industrial policy enacted through the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS & Science Act. Those two laws provided subsidies to build domestic production of microchips, electric vehicles, batteries and various other products for the clean energy sector. To protect these infant industries, Biden imposed tariffs, largely on goods from China where the industry is more developed. The most stringent of these was a 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicles. [...] Rather than strategically designed tariffs on countries with known unfair trade practices or targeting China’s unbalanced export economy, Trump’s tariffs hit almost every country in the world, including those that export products to the U.S. that cannot be manufactured or acquired here. No one can grow bananas in the United States nor do we have vast diamond mines. [...] At the same time, Trump is doing nothing to promote domestic industries or protect American workers. He is trying to unilaterally gut or not implement the Inflation Reduction Act’s subsidies meant to build domestic manufacturing capacity in the clean energy sector, and he’s called for Congress to repeal the CHIPS & Science Act. He is also actively working to undermine workers through National Labor Relations Board rulemakings and other anti-union and worker practices. [...]

Raise Revenue To Replace The Income Tax

One of those other rationales is that tariffs will raise so much revenue that the U.S. will be able to eliminate the income tax. “Wouldn’t it be amazing to stop paying taxes to the Internal Revenue Service and have the External Revenue Service of Make America Great Again replace our taxes,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in March. The thinking, if you can call it that, is that tariff revenue will be so high that the government can eliminate most income taxes. [...]

Negotiate Better Deals

Or maybe this whole thing isn’t about rebuilding domestic manufacturing capacity or raising revenue, but instead to force countries to make deals to get Trump to waive the tariffs. “The tariffs give us great power to negotiate,” Trump said after imposing his “Liberation Day” tariffs. “They always have.” “If you take it to zero, we’ll take it to zero,” Bessent said in February. Deals, deals, deals. That’s what Trump is known for, so this rationale seems like common sense. But if you make deals with every country in the world to remove tariffs, you also undermine the other two rationales: less protection to rebuild domestic manufacturing capacity and less revenue from tariffs.

Donald Trump’s explanations for enacting his tariff tax hike are contradictory.

[beardedmrbean]

Crime syndicates behind a multibillion-pound cyber scam industry are expanding globally as governments in South East Asia struggle to contain them, a UN report has warned.

As they expand business, countries in South America, Africa and Eastern Europe are now being targeted, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said.

The networks and gangs have emerged in South East Asia in recent years, in sprawling compounds housing tens of thousands of people, many trafficked and forced into work, scamming victims abroad.

Sky News previously reported on one of these compounds, and the workers who were tricked, trafficked and forced into working there.

Even as governments in Asia have intensified their crackdowns, the gangs have moved within and beyond the region, the UNODC said.

It warned that a "potentially irreversible spillover has taken place... leaving criminal groups free to pick, choose, and move... as needed".

"It spreads like a cancer," John Wojcik, a regional analyst for UNODC, said. "Authorities treat it in one area, but the roots never disappear; they simply migrate."

Even the more conservative estimates indicate there are hundreds of large-scale scam farms around the world, generating tens of billions of pounds, the UNODC warned.

The agency called on countries to commit to a more joined-up approach to tackle the international issue.

"The regional cyberfraud industry... has outpaced other transnational crimes, given that it is easily scalable and able to reach millions of potential victims online, with no need to move or traffic illicit goods across borders," Mr Wojcik said.

South America, Africa and Eastern Europe targeted

The syndicates have moved to expand into new ground, the UN agency warned.

In South America, the networks were said to be seeking increased partnerships with drug cartels.

Zambia, Angola and Namibia in Africa, and Georgia in Eastern Europe, were also seeing an increasingly established base of scam operations.

Gangs have also diversified their workforces, UNODC said, as they recruit people from dozens of nationalities.

Citizens of more than 50 countries, from Sri Lanka to Uzbekistan and Brazil to Nigeria, were rescued in recent crackdowns on the Thai-Myanmar border.

'Inflection point'

Recent months have seen authorities from China, Thailand and Myanmar all move to crack down on the scam operations that have thrived particularly in the lawless areas of the Thai-Myanmar border.

Thailand has moved to cut power, fuel and internet to areas housing the scam compounds.

However, the syndicates have adapted and shifted their operations between "the most remote, vulnerable, and underprepared parts of South East Asia", UNODC said.

This was taking place especially in Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia, where gangs exploited jurisdictions with weak governance and high corruption levels.

In Cambodia, the industry is most visible and raids there led to it expanding into "more remote locations", including the country's western Koh Kong province, the UN agency said.

New sites also continue to be developed in Myanmar - a country gripped by an expanding conflict and recently hit by a deadly earthquake.

UNODC said the international community was at a "critical inflection point", with failures to tackle the issue properly now leading to "unprecedented consequences for Southeast Asia that reverberate globally".

A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy told Sky News: "China attaches great importance to engage in international and regional endeavours in a responsible and constructive manner to deal with this cross-border issue.

"Substantial progress has been achieved since this year. China will continue to work with relevant parties to crack down on telecom fraud and other cross-border illegal and criminal activities."

[jupiter-on-the-compupiter]

What a day man

If I had a euro for every time a fucking tourist family decided to scream at me for something I have no power or say over... (Add another euro every time an old guy makes some incredibly strange comment about me.)

Just. British tourists are fucking everywhere, and they're so, so disrespectful. Mass tourism is dreadful. I keep getting tiktoks where everyone is talking about how they're all vacationing in Spain and just. Where do we go if every building is being bought to use as a bnb?? I don't mind tourism, I just wish tourists had an ounce of respect.

A guy yesterday had the balls to tell me that he's paying a lot of money to live in Spain so that I can have this job. A month ago a guy told me "he was surprised that despite Spain being a rich country, barely anyone spoke English" and just. Spain has five official languages and you can study up to SIX in regular school (Spanish, whichever regional language you have, English, French is always available as an optional class, and if you study humanities you must take Latin and Greek classes) LIKE how many languages do YOU speak???

Other tourists at LEAST try to communicate in broken Spanish, they KNOW your average Joe doesn't speak German or Russian or Italian. But BRITISH tourists?? EVERYTHING is catered to them. EVERYTHING is for them. I'm so tired.

I'm the only person in my workplace with a C2 level in English so I have to take care of most of the talking.

Just. I'll be real and just say that I hate how English has become the lingua franca of the world. How you can't expect to achieve relevancy without speaking it. How I go online to hear about everything and anything to do with the US and then look away from my phone to deal with British tourists wearing "I <3 Benidorm/Mallorca/Madrid/Toledo/Granada" shirts.

I can barely get people to care about my first language and now I have to talk to people who don't even care about Spanish? Who don't try? Who throw an "Hola" and "Gracias" and then look puzzled when I speak Spanish? Who can't differentiate between the culture of the south, north, east and west of the country? Because I assure you, you will NOT find bullfighters and flamenco dancers and paella in proximity.

Do they know about Valencian? Catalan? Galician? Euskera? Basque? Do they know about Turrón? About the centuries we spent as Arab territory? Do they know? Do they care? Would they like to know?

Touristic cities are a paradox of being SO Spanish it's uncanny and also having not a single ounce of Spanish in them, it's all english breakfasts and italian/chinese/indian/etc restaurants and souvenir shops.

I saw a slideshow of a British guy taking pics posing next to "tourists go home" & "end mass tourism" graffiti and had to take a break from looking at my phone for the rest of the day

[maximumphilosopheranchor]

“While disinformation, fake news, and propaganda have been around since the beginning of time, today, new technologies are helping it proliferate online, often drowning out responsible voices. Nowhere is this truer than in Ukraine.

Bot technology, which was developed in the earliest years of the internet, has more recently been put to nefarious uses. Unscrupulous actors are using social media algorithms to raise the popularity of particular kinds of inflammatory content and to spread propaganda.

For more than a decade, former Soviet bloc countries have played an important and disturbing role in developing bot and troll farms. Russian and pro-Russian Ukrainians, many working for the Russian Federal Security Service, have launched well-functioning bot factories, creating chaos, distractions, anger, and fear via numerous disinformation streams that now pose an integral challenge everywhere, in countries as different as Venezuela, Colombia, the United States, and the U.K. - not just in Ukraine.

This is how it works. We are spending more and more time online, reading posts, watching videos, and consuming more information than ever. We share them with our friends and tweet about them. Many people rely on social media for all their news. In this way we have created entirely new information ecosystems outside the traditional systems that include fact-checking procedures.

Bots pretend to be a person online. They take advantage of our already established social media networks and spread like wildfire on them, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and instant messaging apps. The messages they push out are simple, precise, unambiguous, and convey a single thought. They are calibrated to produce the strongest emotions possible and elicit fear and confusion, creating havoc and causing considerable psychic damage to each of us, our loved ones, and people all over our country.

After Zelenskyy became president, it didn’t take long for him to understand how dangerous these bot farms are and the peril they posed to Ukraine: “These are the challenges of today, and we must be prepared for them,” Zelenskyy said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine in February 2020. “In Ukraine, this is now a real business, a very serious business. Bot farms are a problem, whatever they are: for white or black, there is no difference. Because those who stand up for good, such as Ukraine’s independence, in social media today may be against it tomorrow. Therefore, we must fight against such things. For the independence of the country, the independence of the individual, human rights must be fought in any way.”

At that moment, Zelenskyy was speaking more broadly, meaning that not only Ukrainians but the whole world must learn to distinguish the line where freedom of speech ends and disinformation begins. To me, it seemed a very crucial point, because if we cannot decide on what is allowed on social media now, we will be unable to deal with even greater challenges in the future.

Bot farms were used to supplement and reinforce the methods used on the oligarch-owned television networks. They helped amplify the message of pro-Russian puppets brought to power by Moscow in different countries, influencing their politics and media. For Russia, the internet has been an important source of contemporary propaganda, and its use of the internet is analogous to the methods the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebels developed in the 1930s on the radio and in newspapers. As he once said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Nonsense remains nonsense in the singular. But when someone sends hundreds and thousands of nonsensical posts and commentaries to people’s phones and computer screens, people begin to believe what they see.

Here is but one outrageous example in Ukrainian media: to undermine government land reform policies, an endless number of absurd stories appeared about Chinese people digging up and shipping out the famously fertile Ukrainian soil. The usual chauvinistic and racist Russian-style propaganda outlets promulgated and published these stories. Their purpose was to create doubt about these needed land reform measures – such as lifting the moratorium on the sale of Ukraine’s agricultural land and investing in irrigation systems – which would help rid the agricultural sector of fraud and abuse and boost Ukraine’s economy. In the same vein, other stories trumpeted that Zelenskyy was a pro-Russian president or controlled by oligarchs – anything that could undermine people’s trust in him. By repeating such garbage over and over again, some were seeking political dividends. This fake news contributed to an oppressive political atmosphere and increased Ukrainians’ disenchantment with their institutions.”

Iuliia Mendel, The Fight of Our Lives: My Time with Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s Battle for Democracy, and What It Means for the World

[darkmaga-returns]

Technocrats in China intend to automate all health care as herd management. Further, “AI hospitals can even predict the spread, development, and control of infectious diseases in a region,” meaning that the AI hospital can automatically order lockdowns when it deems it necessary. China is a testing ground for the rest of the human population, including in America. Get ready to hear “The Robo-Doc will now see you now.” ⁃ TN Editor

The world’s first AI hospital where robot doctors can treat 3,000 patients a day has been unveiled in China.

Dubbed “Agent Hospital”, the virtual facility will have the potential to save “millions” through its autonomous interaction.

Developed by researchers from Tsinghua University in Beijing, the AI hospital is so advanced that it already aims to be operational by the second half of 2024.

Six months of research and development means the hospital is nearing readiness for practical application, where it is set to transform the way doctors diagnose and treat patients.

Research team leader of the Agent Hospital, Liu Yang, said the AI hospital will bring immense benefits to both medical professionals and the general public, Global Times report.

Thanks to its simulated environment and ability to autonomously evolve, AI doctors will be able to treat up to 10,000 patients within a matter of days.

To put this into perspective, it would take at least two years for human doctors to achieve the same numbers.

Tests conducted by Chinese researchers have already shown AI doctor agents achieve an impressive 93.06 percent accuracy rate on the MedQA dataset (US Medical Licensing Exam questions).

Covering major respiratory diseases, the virtual medical professionals were able to simulate the entire process of diagnosing and treating patients.

This included consultation, examination, diagnosis, treatment and follow-up processes.

The virtual world will see all doctors, nurses and patients driven by large language model-powered intelligent agents.

The role information for the AI doctors can also be “infinitely expanded”, the report adds.

For now, a configuration of 14 doctors and four nurses are on hand to deal with the demand of patients.

The 14 doctors are designed to diagnose diseases and formulate detailed treatment plans, while the four nurses focus on daily support.

Bringing the AI hospital into the real world means medical students can be provided with enhanced training opportunities.

Proposing treatment plans without the fear of causing harm to real patients will allow them to practice in a risk-free environment.

This will ultimately lead to the cultivation of “highly-skilled doctors,” according to Liu.

When the roles are reversed, whereby the doctors are virtual and the patients are real, online telemedicine services can be provided.

According to the report, this would allow AI doctors to handle thousands, or even “millions”, of cases.

Liu adds that the AI hospital can even predict the spread, development and control of infectious diseases in a region.

Another motivator behind the AI hospital is creating affordable care for the public.

As diagnostic capabilities of AI doctors translate through to the real world, it brings with it high-quality, affordable and convenient healthcare services.

As with any new idea, however, it carries with it a number of challenges.

To ensure that AI technology does not pose a risk to public health, strict adherence to national medical regulations is required.

On top of that, thorough validation of technological maturity and the exploration of mechanisms for AI-human collaboration are also essential.

Read full article here…

[mariacallous]

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump said Sunday that he won’t back down on his sweeping tariffs on imports from most of the world unless countries even out their trade with the U.S., digging in on his plans to implement the taxes that have sent financial markets reeling, raised fears of a recession and upended the global trading system.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said he didn’t want global markets to fall, but also that he wasn’t concerned about the massive sell-off either, adding, “sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.”

His comments came as global financial markets appeared on track to continue sharp declines once trading resumes Monday, and after Trump’s aides sought to soothe market concerns by saying more than 50 nations had reached out about launching negotiations to lift the tariffs.

“I spoke to a lot of leaders, European, Asian, from all over the world,” Trump said. “They’re dying to make a deal. And I said, we’re not going to have deficits with your country. We’re not going to do that, because to me a deficit is a loss. We’re going to have surpluses or at worst, going to be breaking even.”

The higher rates are set to be collected beginning Wednesday, ushering in a new era of economic uncertainty with no clear end in sight. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said unfair trade practices are not “the kind of thing you can negotiate away in days or weeks.” The United States, he said, must see “what the countries offer and whether it’s believable.”

Trump, who spent the weekend in Florida playing golf, posted online that “WE WILL WIN. HANG TOUGH, it won’t be easy.” His Cabinet members and economic advisers were out in force Sunday defending the tariffs and downplaying the consequences for the global economy.

“There doesn’t have to be a recession. Who knows how the market is going to react in a day, in a week?” Bessent said. “What we are looking at is building the long-term economic fundamentals for prosperity.”

U.S. stock futures dropped on Sunday night as the tariffs continued to roil the markets. S&P 500 futures were down 2.5% while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 2.1%. Nasdaq futures were down 3.1%. Even the price of bitcoin, which held relatively stable last week, fell nearly 6% Sunday.

Asian shares, meanwhile, nosedived. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index lost nearly 8% shortly after the market opened. By midday, it was down 6%. A circuit breaker briefly suspended trading of Topix futures after an earlier sharp fall in U.S. futures. Chinese markets also tumbled, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropping 9.4%, while the Shanghai Composite index lost 6.2%.

[miyamiwu]

Tian Huafang, author of that Flower Vase novel which I love and hate so much, had actually finished their other unlimited flow novel entitled 魅力值满点会吸引脏东西 (A Full Charm Value Attracts Dirty Things). But back when I bookmarked this, which was before the author started publishing it, the title was 第四天灾都觉得我是万人迷 (The Unpredictable Players* All Think I’m a Heartthrob). Now that old title is being used as the novel’s one-line description instead.

*Translated from 第四天灾, which literally means “Fourth Natural Disaster.” That slang tripped me up so badly, idk if my translation’s good enough)

They also updated the summary of the novel, removing specific details which might be considered spoilers now and adding a new paragraph that hints at the ending instead (why????) They also removed the bit about the cat. I wonder if they edited the cat out of the novel too.

For reference, the full old summary is under the cut:

Disclaimer: This summary is just MTL. Sadly, I don't have a copy of the raws

---

Tang Yu is different from others. He can see the game interface on everyone's bodies. The people around him have an NPC interface; altogether, there are six attributes, and the upper limit value of the attributes is 10.

His childhood sweetheart A has three attributes at 9, his senior B has four attributes at 9, his pursuer C has five attributes at 9, while Tang Yu... Apart from charm being a 10, the rest are 5, even for intelligence. In other words, he was a flower vase.

Aside from dealing him a blow, Tang Yu never understood what the purpose of the attribute interface was, until one day, there was a *ding* in his mind, along with a mechanical voice that announced: "XXXX" countdown to server opening. 3, 2, 1... The game is starting.

Tang Yu looked up blankly and saw a group of people with a player interface happily go online.

Since then, Tang Yu's ordinary life has undergone earth-shaking changes. The place where he studied became a death high school; when he returned to his hometown, he saw a death village; the shopping mall where he worked was a death mall...

The sweetheart who likes him turns out to be a ghost capturing great celestial master who deals with the Chinese supernatural.

The senior who likes him is said to be the Cthulhu evil god's priest who deals with the Western supernatural.

The world changed too fast. Tang Yu hugged his little black cat tightly. One night, the light was too faint, and Tang Yu accidentally sat on his cat.

Then, Tang Yu saw his cat post something on the supernatural forum: The human that I'm raising

purposefully sat on my lap in the middle of the night, is he hinting at something?

Tang Yu: "......?"

—

"XXXX" is a super popular VRMMORPG. In the game, the sorting of the NPC's rank is tied to the attractiveness index. After discovering the beautiful NPC called Tang Yu, the players excitedly launched an investigation, and then subsequently saw Tang Yu's attributes.

Players: "A true flower vase, switch to another NPC to lick!"

The players heartlessly turned their heads to lick Bigshot A, A's interface introduction: A is secretly in love with Tang Yu.

They went to lick a more powerful Bigshot B, B's interface introduction: B is secretly in love with Tang Yu.

They went to lick an even more, super-powerful Bigshot C, C's interface introduction: C is secretly, deeply in love with Tang Yu.

(ps: brushing Tang Yu’s good impression is tantamount to brushing the three people: A, B, and C's good impression.)

Players: "!!!"

Players: "What part of this is a flower vase! This is obviously my long-lost father ah!"

Only a few players who wouldn’t brush the big shots’ favorability were still stubbornly not acting like a licking dog; afterward, when they were about to rank up, some people accidentally saw the evil god's interface: Cthulhu is pleased with Tang Yu.

All of the players were greatly shocked, and the spirits of licking dogs flew out of their bodies!

—

The evil god is moved, He turns into a little kitten, and very courteously crouches in front of your house's gate, meowing towards you —

*Open the door, delivering a husband*

[protoslacker]

Songs are funny things

I'm not very dumb, but not very smart either. And I'm old and I work. So there's whole bunches of stuff that's important that I'm pretty ignorant about. I am glad to be curious. As ignorant as I am, I often fall into rabbit holes.

I was thinking about songs. I want people to sing songs. There's a quote by Pete Seeger about songs which I like very much:

“Songs are funny things. They can slip across borders. Proliferate in prisons. Penetrate hard shells. I always believed that the right song at the right moment could change history.”

I was mulling over the trouble with people singing other people's songs. And thought of a lecture that Lawrence Lessig gave a long time ago. Searching for it the very first google result was a link to Leonard Lin's blog random($foo). Lin had put the lecture on the Internet and it's kind of cool to see how it was done back then. I headed over to YouTube to watch Lessig's talk at the O.Reilly Open Source Conference in July of 2002.

The talk is still worthwhile. At the time some of my creative friends thought Lessig was a sort of villain, so his talks got talked about.

At Tumblr someone I am very pleased to have encountered is Dr. Damien P. Williams. Something about meeting him at first on here is knowing what a kind and good person he is prior to discovering his deep erudition about the social implications of technology. These days I follow him on Mastodon where he pointed to an episode of NPR'S Code Switch with Safiya Noble dealing with "the complex questions that arise when algorithms and AI intersect with race."

It's a wonderful interview which really does touch on complexities, but the part that really made an impression was her background in advertising before returning to graduate school and earning her Ph.D. It put the economics of enclosure front and center in discussing AI.

I'm describing my fall down a rabbit hole and I think the next thing I engaged with was a post by Andy Baio at WAXY, Weird A.I. Yankovic, a cursed deep dive into the world of voice cloning. Songs are funny things.

After that I landed on a review of a new book by Yanis Varoufakis by Christopher Pollard at The Conversation, Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it. The book is entitled Techno-feudalism: What Killed Capitalism and will be available in print in the US in February. I listened to several interviews with Varoufakis and searched for literature on Neo-feudalism. It's certainly an idea I want to learn more about.

Back in the early oughts there was a book, Netocracy : the new power elite and life after capitalism by Alexander Bard & Jan Söderqvist. For a little while the ideas were discussed quite a lot online. Remembering those conversations I did not anticipate how incredibly concentrated the autocracy would become, i.e., how few feudal lords there would be. And I paid too little attention to Chinese technology. But Bard coined a term for a new underclass called the "consumtariat" which seems quite handy and has stuck with me over the years.

It's going to take me a long while to wrap my head around neo-feudalism. But I suspect it will be time well spent.

Wendy Grossman at net.wars has a recent post, The end of ownership. The provocation for the post is a garage door opener which among other evils forces an ad on you before you can open the garage door. Grossman points to Cory Doctorow, The enshittification of garage-door openers reveals a vast and deadly rot. I'd laugh, but it telling how fast technology and the tech-lords are enclosing us.

Who can sing songs and whose songs can we sing are urgent questions.