Iraq war? Venezuela raid? Libya? Syria? Afghanistan for 20 years? And that's just some of the higher visibility cases.
If China had special forces deployed and conducting ops in random African countries it would be a massive aggression. When we do it, it doesn't even make the headlines.
I think they're referring to occasional fist fights between the Indian and Chinese deployments at the top of the Himalayas where there's a dumb territorial dispute. There were a couple of times decades ago where the forces shot at each other and the governments had to scramble to calm things down and deescalate, so somehow they've reached this gentleman's agreement to have fistfights instead.
> We're talking about this kind of thing balancing out, say, Fallujah or shock and awe over Baghdad
Nonsense. For that comparison you’d look to the invasion and annexation of Tibet. (And it’s not ancient history if it’s currently endorsed and un-apologized for.)
Ok, then we expand the US horizon back to the 50s as well. We've added Tibet, and the 1979 3 week Vietnam war to the Chinese column, plus them being involved in the Korean war and to a lesser degree the American Vietnam War. This comes with way, way more added to the American column. At least it's no longer a shutout.
Any fair look at both countries' records puts the US as doing 10-100x more military intervention, on a global rather than regional scale. It is actually a little bit "sheeple" to look at that scoreboard and start calling China aggressive. They're less aggressive than every other UNSC member without even going to a pound for pound basis.
> Any fair look at both countries' records puts the US as doing 10-100x more military intervention
Sure. I never claimed otherwise. I’m saying it would be news to anyone in Asia-Pacific (or Eastern Europe) that America is or has been the destabilizing force. That was the original claim.
If the choice is 10x or 1x, go with the latter. But that is a false dichotomy. You can be anti-invasion and annexation broadly. There is no moral high ground in choosing Chinese models; no more than a person in China choosing Anthropic or OpenAI.
The Philippines definitely have a right to be aggrieved over the south china sea stuff, but one bias I'm cautious of is "the natural norm is American hegemony in every region, so any change from this is destabilizing". Other countries have their natural interests as well.
I’d say the South China Sea island building in violation of UNCLOS text and judgement comes pretty close to American CIA-style fuckery in South America and Africa.
To be clear, American fuckery is broader. But if we agree we’re discussing magnitudes and not kind, we agree on all I’m arguing.
Because the basket of goods for inflation doesn't separate optional from mandatory consumption.
If housing, healthcare and education are outpacing the topline inflation number, a lot of marginal families will be squeezed. The cheap LG TV doesn't really make up for it.
Nevertheless if you lump those costs into an inflation number it won't be a lot higher, the Total Living Cost calculated for 2023-2024 showed 4.4% inflation vs 3% CPI. There are a lot of ways to slice and dice this, which is why people stick to the classic CPI.
If you factor in an extra 1.4% inflation per year into the numbers, you're not going to see any "real" wages growth over the 40 year period.
So the 1984 income is 60,420, if you calculate 60420 * (1.014)^40, which is assuming there's a 1.4% difference between the two disputed methodologies, you'd get about 105k. But the actual 2024 income is 83,730. Which I think means that if you take the non-CPI methodology to calculate real income growth, it's actually negative.
I'm not saying one method is more correct than the other (I don't know enough about economics to judge), but 1.4% annual difference matters a lot when you're talking about four decades.
The data shows that inflation inclusive of housing, education, and healthcare isn't that much higher than CPI, which is because CPI already includes shelter, which accounts for ~36% of CPI.
You assertion that CPI doesn't include housing is just wrong.
I'm not asserting they don't include housing. I'm saying housing is non-optional, so having low inflation on flat screen TVs is cold comfort if you're struggling to pay rent. The basket of goods isn't the same for everyone.
It's been like 5 years now of low consumer sentiment and increasing consumer debt while people who don't feel it are flabbergasted, the top line CPI number is fine, why aren't people happy?
Eh, linear algebra changes are still easy to measure correctness, it's just that you're competing with 50 years of research for most of them, less low hanging fruit.
It’s more than one thing. Yes there’s definitely some populism and maybe some astroturfing from outside groups - but actual electricity costs are going up and the average consumer can’t really get anymore efficient, so they’re indirectly subsidizing this stuff. Computers and related hardware have gone up in price. And then you’ve got all of the “AI layoffs” that also result in real-world pain.
American electricity costs a very low. What they've gone up is nothing its a drop in the bucket compared to the damage from the tariffs and middle east war. Populists settle on this issue because its malicious. They are Accelerationists
But that would simply result in Most Americans don't want AI Data Centers, which isn't the same as NYMBYism. I think many Americans see the benefits of having access to unicorn farts and may even support having more data centers. Just not in my backyard, thank you.
(Ftr. the article doesn't have an opinion on whether Americans like AI, just my take.)
DCs have a tendency to destabilize the local grid and drive up grid rates and have ridiculous water consumption requirements, both largely externalized to the surrounding community, so it's more a matter of basic self-defense than any notional populist agenda.
That's while being the world's factory, having lots of green energy, electric cars and an ACUTE motivation to reduce oil imports. Coal is a problem but at least they're not canceling half-finished green energy products when administrations change.
Sure they are building solar infrastructure. But they’re also still increasing co2 emissions. If you are the autocratic leader with almost total control of 1/3 of the worlds co2, and you believe that climate change is an existential threat, you wouldn’t be increasing co2 emissions. Xi could reduce co2
emissions with the stroke of a pen.
So he obviously doesn’t think it’s that much of a threat.
Xi could theoretically reduce GDP and associated emissions with the stroke of a pen[1], and so could most legislatures. None are doing it.
Building up alternative energy is a work in progress for anyone, they're leaders on electric cars which is good but they won't get off coal until they (or someone) figures out managing a grid with 80%+ of mostly-intermittent inputs from wind and solar.
[1] Not really, for the same reason as the legislatures, it's horrible politically. Dictatorships and especially the Chinese system have broader bases of support and political activity than most American media discourse assumes.
> Xi could theoretically reduce GDP and associated emissions with the stroke of a pen
He showed he was willing to do that during Covid. If he was really convinced climate change was a problem he could clearly do more than he is.
It’s not a prisoners dilemma issue with Xi like it is with most countries. He controls 1/3 of global emissions. He is probably the only person on the planet who can personally reduce future temperatures.
And then they ended those harsh COVID measures due to unpopularity and protests. He's not God-King.
I'd love for everyone to do more but its a little rich to hear from westerners, who emit more CO2 per person, that the Chinese should stop developing people out of third world poverty for everyone's sake. Peasants produce much less carbon than people with air conditioning.
> but its a little rich to hear from westerners, who emit more CO2 per person, that the Chinese
1. Most western countries don’t emit more per capita than China.
2. I’m not saying what Xi should or shouldn’t do. I’m telling that what he is doing indicates that he doesn’t believe climate change is an existential threat.
I also would like the Chinese to do more, but as an American waving broadly at our political consensus, I have a hard time pointing fingers. At least they're doing something.
I’m not making any argument about what China should do. I’m saying that the argument that China is ruled by an enlightened despot who “believes in science” and believes in the existential risk of climate change is bullshit.
It is, and certainly relevant (although perhaps inconvenient) considering the recent elections in China. Aren't shifting priorities a side effect of free elections?
I mean, if the American propaganda is "you are evil" and the Russian propaganda is "fuck those guys", you don't have to agree on every particular. People have nationalism everywhere.
The Russian propaganda is more along the lines of "Ukraine is an illegitimate state led by Nazis and drug junkies, they steal children's organs and sell them to the West, cook up dangerous viruses in their labs and prepared to attack innocent Russia, hence they have to be crushed, which our glorious Russian power will soon accomplish with mighty Oreshniks that have no parallel anywhere".
There is way too many mixed marriages etc. for any reasonable Russian to believe that their formerly-closest East Slavic neighbour has turned into a Fourth Reich.
The glorification of Russian military power after almost five years of static attritional war and dozens of burning refineries and ships is in a category of its own...
> There is way too many mixed marriages etc. for any reasonable Russian to believe that their formerly-closest East Slavic neighbour has turned into a Fourth Reich.
Exactly. The distortions in American public life are quite a bit more intricate and artful.
And also, not taking a side here, plenty of woke partisans valued righteousness over truth in the 2020 era. The 1619 project which was a whole NYT backed big thing had a bunch of factual errors.
The real rub is when you get into "shared facts" that Americans were all taught in high school civics but the rest of the world wasn't. If you've mostly been in America, it can seem like someone's deliberately lying about history but they simply weren't properly educated with the Correct Interpretation.
That's undefined behavior in C I thought? You're addressing the memory of a stack frame that already collapsed when it returned. I think it's ok for compilers to either segfault or work like you'd think they would for that example in C.
You can pass pointers to earlier frames in the stack, they're still active, but you can't return a pointer to an expired stack frame.
I think you're basically agreeing with the person you're replying to; they're pointing out that Solod doesn't really provide the "safety of Go" since the translation trivially exposes the user to UB that would not be present in Go.
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