1bluepixel
Yep. There's a tendency to single out China's bad behavior for stuff other world powers (including the U.S. for sure) also do.
A great example is China's meddling in Canadian politics these last few years. An ex-RCMP official pointed out that a lot of other countries do it, including allies. He singled out Russia and India, but also the U.S. (I mean, how could the U.S. not try to influence their neighbors' politics.)
But China makes the headlines, every single time.
Haha, he nearly passes out when he realizes he crashed the game. That kid is amazing.
Romania is the most enthusiastic supporter of the EU and is on an economic growth spurt right now. But sure, keep treating them like second-class Europeans until they start waxing nostalgic about the days they had a friend in Russia. See how that works out.
Bulgaria is already well on that path.
It also reminds me of crypto. Lots of people made money from it, but the reason why the technology persists has more to do with the perceived potential of it rather than its actual usefulness today.
There are a lot of challenges with AI (or, more accurately, LLMs) that may or may not be inherent to the technology. And if issues cannot be solved, we may end up with a flawed technology that, we are told, is just about to finally mature enough for mainstream use. Just like crypto.
To be fair, though, AI already has some very clear use cases, while crypto is still mostly looking for a problem to fix.
We gatekeeping liking the Fediverse now?
Money. The answer is money.
I wouldn't say we speak in people's faces, but we make comments to each other about random stuff. I would never say something rude about somebody in their faces, but my spouse might go, "Can we go back to the hotel, I really need to take a shit" or something silly and unfiltered like that.
My spouse and I lived in a bunch of countries over the years. We speak Quebec French, English, and Spanish, as well as a smattering of Chinese, Bulgarian, Korean, and a few odds and ends here and there.
We basically speak whatever we think people around us won't understand. Very colloquial Quebec French in non-French-speaking countries, Chinese around white people, Bulgarian around non-white people, or even a cryptic mix of everything when we're not completely sure.
We figure anyone who understands is probably someone we want to know... Hasn't happened very often, but it does happen. So far we weren't saying anything overly embarrassing when we got caught, but we sure as hell have no filter between us because of this!
That was my experience as well. Very prevalent in Sichuan, but less so in Shanghai. Still, even in Shanghai, they were leagues ahead of Canada.
