SeeingRed [he/him]

Honestly, I mostly just use Deepseek when trying to figure out the correct search terms for online shopping in china since my chinese is still not good enough for niche things. I used to use copilot for work because I wasn’t allowed to use other llms. I mostly used it for basic scripting for excel. Don’t work there anymore though, so haven’t touched it in a while.

新年快乐！Happy chinese new year everyone! Hope your year is full with good luck and good organizing.

Cell tower disguised as a tree in a historic site in china.

I know right! He is full of liberal brain worms. He’s not fundamentally a bad person, so I’ve been trying my best to counter his negative opinions, but it’s an uphill battle.

I had mentioned my passing desire to go on tour to the DPRK (since it’s not very far from where I am now). He had said that if given the choice he would rather be shot than visit North Korea. My response was “well that’s certainly a choice” hoping he would get how rediculous he sounded. Luckily my other friend pointed out that what he said was really dumb. I then had to tell them that they literally know nothing about North Korea and that they shouldn’t blindly fall for propoganda. The conversation moved on after that, but it was an odd thing to hear someone say.

Fascist being collectivist is outside my typical understanding of the term. The fact that they used it in that way is wild. I mostly heard this term in my phycology class where they referred to the west as more individualist and Asia (including non-socialist countries) more as being collectivist. The implication was that in the west individuals are more likely to put themselves(and sometimes their immediate family) before society, but in the collectivist mindset, the individual was more likely to put themselves after society. This typically applied to duties, behaviour, and sacrifice when it was discussed in the class.

This is something that I need to interrogate since I haven’t really thought about it for several years since I was a lib in university. My initial thought now is that socialist society engenders solidarity with your fellow workers, allowing you to see the benefit in helping other people. Honestly though, I shouldn’t speculate too much without further investigation.

The concept of geeks often felt like it was tied up with aspects of oppression. The concept of simulated ethnicity is an interesting perspective on it. This ties in with the liberal mentality that your “class” is tied up in the aspects of culture that you subscribe to and surround yourself with (e.g. the tv shows you consume and the activities you participate in define your position in the class hierarchy). It’s a false front on reality. Geeks are outcasts socially, but they still reify capitalist relations in their perceived superiority to non-geeks. Framing this as simulated ethnicity calls it out as being artificial and an attempt to benefit from the racial stereotypes without taking on the same negatives those stereotypes come with. It shows the desire to gain the perceived benefits of oppression without the actual consequences of oppression.