@[email protected]

Engineer, Polymath, Musician and much, much more.

[@[email protected] @dvavasour]

MD5 hash of who I reckon Traffic Cone is #MaskedSingerUK c35e66050a283358de74dbbe4958e8ad generated at https://t.co/6WKUZNHTY6

[Carlos @agent_of_change]

Laura Bicker, BBC China correspondent, on the disaster at Gyirong Port on the Nepal–Xizang border: “Shocking footage isn’t being shown in China – and we know little about victims there.”

Numerous people in China have pointed out that the footage is, in fact, all over Chinese platforms; indeed, the very video in the BBC’s own report was released by the Chinese port authorities. So the sequence is: 1) the Chinese state published the clip; 2) the BBC ran the clip; 3) the BBC published a story about how the Chinese state is suppressing the clip.

@AndyBxxx has made another point worth noting: Chinese media doesn’t operate on the basis of “if it bleeds, it leads”. You won’t see grieving relatives and footage of bodies looped for 24 hours. The BBC treats the absence of disaster pornography as evidence of a cover-up rather than a different (and frankly much better) editorial culture.

The article concedes that Beijing has launched “a massive rescue operation involving hundreds of emergency workers”. Even the International Campaign for Tibet, an NED-sponsored Washington-based lobby group, is recorded here “praising the work of first responders”. Xi Jinping personally chaired an emergency meeting to coordinate it. Chinese media has provided “daily updates on the missing and the dead”, plus updates on the rescue operation and on the barrier lake at risk of overflowing. It has shown rescue teams scaling mountains and cliff faces and crossing raging rivers.

Premier Li Qiang was “quickly dispatched to the region” – a level of responsiveness from the top leadership that those of us in the West can only dream of. Compare for example the US response to Hurricane Katrina, or the British government’s response to the Grenfell disaster. From all of that, the article arrives at the phrase “muted response” 🤷🏽

The BBC reports that local CPC members have been asked to step up and help with relief efforts, and provide “emotional guidance or psychological support to affected residents”. This is predictably framed as an operation to “stem any signs of discontent”.

Our intrepid reporter finally reveals her motive with a single clause: “Tibet, which Beijing annexed in the 1950s”. A-ha. It turns out this is a story about British state media, not Chinese state media.

Tibet has been part of China since the 13th century. Taking advantage of the chaos of the collapse of the Qing dynasty, the British invaded Tibet in 1904, at which point they came up with the formula of recognising Chinese “suzerainty” over Tibet while asserting that the region was “independent in internal administration” – which de facto meant that the British could do whatever they wanted there. Incidentally, Britain didn’t abandon that formula until 2008, when it finally recognised China’s sovereignty over the region.

If the BBC is going to insist on a formulation of “Tibet, which Beijing annexed”, it should, for the sake of consistency, also refer to “Cornwall, which London annexed”, since this took place around the same time as Tibet’s absorption into the Yuan Dynasty.

The article goes on to repeat tired tropes about “the Chinese government oppressing and persecuting Tibetans”, albeit without going into the nature of this oppression, which includes raising literacy levels from 5 percent to 98 percent; 15 years’ publicly funded education; the highest per capita central government transfers in China; the elimination of absolute poverty; the provision of modern infrastructure, health care and social services; and impressive efforts to protect and promote Tibetan language and culture.

What doesn’t get a single mention is the cause of the disaster. This was a flash flood in the fastest-warming mountain range on earth, in a region where glacial lakes are multiplying and bursting. There is a genuine story here about climate change coming for the Himalayas and the hundreds of millions who depend on their rivers, but the BBC instead chooses to run with the usual anti-China rubbish.

Solidarity with the people of China and Nepal affected by this disaster, and with everyone working to save them. And shame on a state broadcaster that chooses slander over solidarity.

[@[email protected] @dvavasour]

@karakclairmont And do a cameo on The Archers.

[Hunter Biden @HunterBiden]

The disgraced former mayor of New York, Rudy (I was just tucking in my shirt) Giuliani, has threatened to sue me for defamation over an interview in which I never said his name. No one even mentioned him.

I want to apologize to Rudy. Going forward I will be certain to say his name directly.

Rudy, you worked with known Russian agents and their proxies to spread lies about me and my father. Their names are Andrii Derkach, Konstantin Kulyk, Andriy Telizhenko and Oleksandr Dubinsky and more. Kulyk handed you a dossier filled with disinformation. You flew to Kyiv in December 2019 to sit down with Derkach, then went on television with him to sell his bullshit tapes.

Trump’s own national security adviser warned the White House that what you brought back was Russian disinformation. You kept going.

Then Trump’s own Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, sanctioned Derkach in September 2020 as an active Russian agent for over a decade, for spreading the same lies you are still spitting. Four months later, on his way out the door, Mnuchin sanctioned the rest of your sources. Kulyk. Telizhenko. Dubinsky. Eleven people and four media front companies in all. Not sanctioned by me. Not by my father. By Donald Trump’s Treasury Department.

And remember Vienna Rudy. In October 2019 you, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman had tickets to fly there to collect a hard drive, courtesy of Dmytro Firtash, an indicted oligarch who has spent a decade in Vienna fighting extradition to the United States. Lev and Igor were arrested at Dulles holding one-way tickets. You canceled yours the next morning. That was way before a computer repairman in Wilmington was ever a twinkle in your eye.

So please, @RudyGiuliani. Please, please sue me. Discovery will be a joy for everyone.

[ian bremmer @ianbremmer]

the internet wins

[@[email protected] @dvavasour]

@EVCurveFuturist Remember when processing labs for photo films started disappearing from the high street?

[@[email protected] @dvavasour]

@techpoodle_priv Yes, if nobody at work is more than four foot tall.

[@[email protected] @dvavasour]

@Mysticwastelan1 @jordanbhx So like Berlin Brandenburg airport?

[@[email protected] @dvavasour]

@dspencer47 I'd rather have my data go to PRC than the US tech giants and shady data aggregators.

[Steve Hall @ProfHall1955]

The Economist, whose logo should be "wrong about everything since 1843", has surpassed its historical bungling and gone schizoid. In an attempt to chastise China for overproducing cheap goods it downplays the fact that the Western creditor class invested in China as they deindustrialised their own nations after 1980, turning the bulk of workers into baristas and shop assistants. This is a tacit admission that a Leninist government planning and regulating a hybrid state/market economy has been remarkably successful in the brutally competitive global market economy neoliberals claim to be the natural order of things that makes everyone in the world richer. Except the poor, of course, but that's their fault for making 'bad decisions'.

Inadvertantly - I say that because Zanny and the gang don't usually think too deeply - they've raised a simplified economic variant of the Hobbesian question. During the period of maximised financial deregulation 1980-2008, did our hallowed private investors use their freedom to invest wisely and bring prosperity and security to Western populations? Did they maintain and develop essential productive capacity, infrastructure and services across whole nations? Perhaps not. Principal investment targets have been privatization of existing public assets, software and IT, financial services, derivatives and commercial real estate, facilitated by leveraged buyouts, share buybacks, stock market bubbles and the sort of irresponsible moneylending that led to 2008. So who is making the really bad decisions round here?

So, is it fair to say that China, a nation in which some individual economic freedom is encouraged yet also compelled to make a weighty trade-off with a competently managed state, is producing better results for the population as whole? Without this strong keel and heavy rudder, does the turbulent economic sea tend to be dominated by opportunistic, unthinking, shortsighted, self-enriching individuals unworthy of their freedom, while the rest of us sink or swim? Were a whole line of influential economists from Quesnay, Smith and Ricardo through to extremists such to Mises, Hayek and Rothbard - who argued that the economy should function in relative freedom from governance - completely wrong?

We need to know. Sharpish, because shit is about to hit the fan.
https://t.co/1gbPULr0NE

[Glenn Diesen @Glenn_Diesen]

I cannot remember the United States ever apologising for "overcapacity" when it was the world's leading industrial power. Should Italy apologise for its overcapacity in fashion, France for its overcapacity in wine, the UK for its overcapacity in financial services, or Belgium for its overcapacity in chocolate?
*** The real challenge of our time is that centuries of Western dominance have come to an end, and there is a need to adjust to a multipolar world.

[@[email protected] @dvavasour]

@EngineerLondon I heard an interview with the CEO of Renault. He was saying (I paraphrase) that once they've engineered a compliant vehicle, as much engineering effort again goes into certifying the already compliant vehicle as compliant.

[MrRatable @MRatable]

Unbelievably embarrassing for Google that Gemini hasn’t committed any cybercrimes yet

[Boyan Slat @BoyanSlat]

This is objectively the worst word in the English language

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is what happens when you have so-called "information" organizations whose sole purpose is views, and do zero research about topics they post about.

The current in Qingdao can be notoriously dangerous and it's literally suicidal for someone to go in the water after dark. People drown there regularly.

This is why municipal lifeguards have put in place a nighttime swimming ban and have invested in these drones (src: https://t.co/PXjsMT467J): far from "big brother" watching you, it's literally a lifeguard trying to make sure you're alive in the morning 🤷‍♂️

But you of course get far more views when you make the narrative fit the audience instead of the facts...

The most depressing part is that X is setup in such a way that my correction will get a tiny fraction of the reach - which is exactly why accounts like Nexta can keep misinforming.

[@[email protected] @dvavasour]

@flightradar24 @Airbus On a plane full of passengers, what would the loos be like after that sort of time? Most of the passengers would have pooped at least once.

[@[email protected] @dvavasour]

@patrickjreddy Au contraire, the grass will come back fine. The roots are quite a way down, so the rain will need to get down there and then it will take a couple of weeks. Now is a good time to take out any weeds and rye grass while the lawn is dormant.

[@[email protected] @dvavasour]

@edzitron Thank you for plugging away, for doing interviews in the late evening/early morning to ensure the right things are talked about.

[Cait Mercer @MercerCait]

My annual post. (I shall stop when it ceases to gratify me)

[Acyn @Acyn]

GIllibrand: So essentially you're asking for literally $1.5 trillion for a war that President Trump said he already won?

[@[email protected] @dvavasour]

@edzitron Do Americans find this sort of thing entertaining?