they’re talking out their ass.

Yes, which is par for the course.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/13/why-do-north-korean-defector-testimonies-so-often-fall-apart

What is behind the inconsistencies?

Cash payments in return for interviews with North Korean refugees have been standard practice in the field for years.

Initially, the payment was to cover the cost of meals and local transport, which was approximately $30 in the late 1990s when I first began interviewing in China and South Korea. However, the fees had risen to $200 per hour by the time I attempted to interview people from North Korea in May 2014.

A government official from the South Korean ministry of unification told me the range of fees could vary wildly, from $50-500 per hour, depending on the quality of information.

But this practice raises a difficulty: how does the payment change the relation between a researcher and an interviewee, and what effect will it have on the story itself?

deleted by creator

Making my way downtown

Don’t lie to me Walt, you sussy baka.

https://youtu.be/Ru_j8oRi-rY

Dog…

My original claim was that in none of these articles is there any evidence of Putin or Xi expressing interesting in extending their lifespan.

It’s a claim you still have yet to disprove, btw.

Claiming that Russia is not technologically advanced is a nonsequiter. Refusing to engage with a nonsequiter is not underhanded. And you’re not humouring anyone by backing down from your attempt to turn this conversation into one about Russia’s technological capabilities. You’re just backpedaling.

Again, please show me where Putin or Xi expressed interest in extending their lives.

Not even remotely related to the part I quoted and laughed at, but I’ll humour you

So how does a claim regarding Russia’s technological capabilities relate to my original comment? The only person being humoured here is you.

The way the healthy skepticism just leaves the liberal mind once a state department hit pieces comes out is laughable. You have been effortlessly oriented. Yall just eat this shit up. “Deduction”… lmao.

Again, maybe one day show me where Putin or Xi expressed interest in extending their lifespan. You won’t.

Just read your article. Nowhere in it did Xi or Putin express fear of mortality or an interest in extending their personal lifespans.

All this is is musings on transhumanism.

[mortality] haunt[s] people—especially aging tyrants who fear that the icy hand of death is upon their shoulder and want far more time to ensure both national and personal glory.

Show me where Xi or Putin expressed fear of mortality. Better yet, show me where Xi or Putin expressed interest in extending their lifespan.

Show me where Putin or Xi expressed interest in living to 150.

leaders of two of the world’s most technologically prominent countries muse on the prospects of transhumanism in front of a crowd of dozens

rabid disapproval from liberals who claim that Putin and Xi got caught on a hot mic wanting to live forever so they can rule eternally or something, idk

Seriously, the reading comprehension is abysmal in this thread. Can someone show me where Putin or Xi said they personally wished to live to 150?

Yes… that is not only possible, but likely when n=5…

Please, the original claim was “Chinese people feel coerced”, which is wrong by every metric, and there is no evidence to support this claim.

Although China is certainly not immune from severe social and economic challenges, there is little evidence to support the idea that the CCP is losing legitima- cy in the eyes of its people. In fact, our survey shows that, across a wide variety of metrics, by 2016 the Chi- nese government was more popular than at any point during the previous two decades. On average, Chinese citizens reported that the government’s provision of healthcare, welfare, and other essential public services was far better and more equitable than when the survey began in 2003. Also, in terms of corruption, the drop in satisfaction between 2009 and 2011 was complete- ly erased, and the public appeared generally support- ive of Xi Jinping’s widely-publicized anti-corruption campaign. Even on the issue of the environment, where many citizens expressed dissatisfaction, the majority of respondents expected conditions to improve over the next several years. For each of these issues, China’s poorer, non-coastal residents expressed equal (if not even greater) confidence in the actions of government than more privileged residents. As such, there was no real sign of burgeoning discontent among China’s main demographic groups, casting doubt on the idea that the country was facing a crisis of political legitimacy.

https://rajawali.hks.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/final_policy_brief_7.6.2020.pdf

Let me guess: Harvard is tankie?

Again, asking for any type of source or statistic over anecdotes. Your “observations” go against reputable polling and statistics of people in China.

Was this survey conducted in Taiwan and signed as “China” complying with “one China policy”?

No… in fact this was a Harvard study that started off with “Given how China is an authoritarian nightmare, how widespread is support for the government?”

https://rajawali.hks.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/final_policy_brief_7.6.2020.pdf

They’re in the phase where people are too scared to resist

Source?

Looks like a pretty posh crib for a disgraced Nazi.

Caterpillar: “We help our customers build a better, more sustainable world”

Caterpillar’s better, more sustainable world:

They also claimed 7 out of every 10 Nazis killed in WWII, and by all accounts at the time, contributed the most to winning the war.

Wouldn’t that count as slave labour?

Not according to the Allies at the Yalta conference.

By the late 1940s, the only people claiming that the labor enjoyed by the Soviets at the hands of captured Nazis was “slavery” - were Nazis.

By all allied accounts, using German labor to pay reparations was deemed acceptable given how the Soviets had just sacrificed 27 million people.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labor_of_Germans_after_World_War_II

The difference is that the Americans rolled out a red carpet for the Nazis and offered employment contracts. The Soviets showed up one night and kidnapped nearly 7000 nazis at gunpoint, and then forced them to work to pay reparations. Based.

Enjoy the freedom of having the likes of Meta and Google pull another Cambridge analytica. Or the freedom of having multi-billion dollar companies like YouTube aggressively push algorithms that steer people down the alt right pipeline. Or the freedom of instagram mechanically and ruthlessly instilling in children as much body dysphoria and low self esteem as possible in the name of profit.

It was literally only two years ago that Meta was got caught promoting racial violence in Myanmar. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/

Any reasonable person can look at the heinous acts carried out by western tech companies in recent years and realize that the great firewall has been vindicated.

Edit: “CCP shill”, “whataboutism”, “two things can be bad”… come on folks, its time to start thinking of some new thought-terminating cliches. These are so 2023.

Yeah the science is above my head but I believe usually after they rip out the nail (be it whole nail or a strip), they will apply a cotton ball of phenol to the bed and that is supposed to stop the nail from coming back. It failed to do so 3 times in my case, albeit on two different toes.