I can read probably 1000ish kanji (maybe more), and some are super easy. Others are less so 漢 -> 汉 is … what?

I think it’s the guy obsessed with horses.

Most countries have that, no? Mount Rushmore comes to mind

A wonderful series of photo-heavy blog posts about Ashgabat, Turkmenistan can go some way to answering this question.

By slashing funding, 1100 funding announcements by the NCI for cancer research in 2023, 11 in 2026.

Enjoy your ass cancer, MAGA.

Yeah but this is round two: science boogaloo. We have a government actively hostile to science and research, throwing away where we still had a leading position.

In particular, we’re reversing the brain drain from China. If they’re becoming slightly less repressive and welcome science while we’re cutting research, cutting legal immigration, driving cuts by racism and judging research by whether the ai classifies it as “woke”, too many researchers who would have come here may no longer feel welcome

The US still holds the reserve currency, that they force other countries to use via military force. Which allows them to export their inflation, and to print money to build up the military they use to protect its usage.

I think the problem is the population got too heavy into taking in debt via this mechanism, always asking for more and more tax cuts and more social programs, and China themselves stopped buying US treasuries in 2016. Then locking Russia out of US bonds further exacerbated the issue, as its no longer seen as a neutral asset, so bond yields rise as less people buy them.

Then the tariffs and higher interest rates cause debt crisis in other countries by limiting their access to USD, which makes them attempt to move away, which is likely how gold prices nearly doubled in a single year. Its pretty wild whats happening.

You pointed out an obvious and irrelevant fact but neglected my main point. This isn’t that complicated. If there are two countries with equal technology and education levels, the larger one will have a greater scientific output. All other things being equal, bigger countries should produce more science. And the things that prevent everything from being equal are largely historical aberrations that will decrease with time.

Obviously, there today isn’t a direct correlation between population and scientific output. But that’s not what I argued. My assertion is that all other things being equal, a larger country will be able to produce more science. This shouldn’t be controversial. More people. More resources. More ability to employ scientists to do science.

Yes, there isn’t a direct correlation today between population and scientific output, but different countries have radically different levels of development, wealth, and education. But these differences tend to average out over time as the world as a whole becomes more industrialized and developed. For most of human history, China was the leading scientific and technological power. And this was largely because they were simply had the largest population able to invent and discover things. For a time, small European countries had an advantage. But that’s just because Europe got lucky and happened to be where the scientific revolution happened to start. That was never a stable position that could be maintained forever. There is no timeline where tiny England continued to control the world forever.

My point is not that, today, there is a direct correlation between scientific output and population size. You pointed out this obvious fact, but you missed the entire point of my comment. My point is that China overtaking the US in scientific output is not unexpected at all. It’s exactly what we would expect to happen. It’s a returning to the historical norm, the end of an anomalous period of history. A regression to the mean.

Look, I get not being Euro centric, but you’re just looking for grievances. Performative wokism taken to the point of farce.

The scientific revolution was a new invention. There was philosophy and rationalism before, but it’s incredibly reductive to just collapse the entire scientific method to be no different than the methods of inquiry that came before. It clearly had vastly different and more dramatic real-world consequences than the eras that came before. The Islamic Golden Age did not produce a self-reinforcing series of technological advancements that completely altered the lives of every living human being. The life of a peasant living in an Islamic country was virtually unchanged from before the Islamic Golden Age to after the Islamic Golden Age. I get rejecting imperialism. But you’re being so performatively anti-imperialist that it’s clouding your judgment.

The scientific method was something that was invented in its modern form in a particular place and time. Yes, it had precursors, but so what? Humans evolved from creatures that are a fundamentally different species to ourselves. Every invention and discovery has precursors, but that doesn’t mean they’re the same thing. You have such an anti-West axe to grind that you can’t recognize a truly remarkable discovery, simply because it happened to be invented by Europeans.

It was not normal for a tiny peninsula on the edge of the Eurasian landmass to, in a few centuries, go from being a global backwater to dominating the world. It’s a historical aberration. To explain it, you have two choices;

1. Be a racist and conclude that there is something particularly different about European genetics that makes Europeans either particularly intelligent (positive racism) or particularly evil (negative racism) that allowed them to achieve this feat.

2. Recognize that it was an accident of history and that a uniquely powerful discovery/invention, the modern scientific method, happened to be invented in Europe.

Personally, I don’t like Eugenics-based explanations. Maybe you do. But I reject racism, even for the sake of anti-imperialism. Maybe you think Europeans are just genetically evil geniuses. But my default assumption is that everyone is the same, and Europe just happened to roll a natural 20 when it came to where the scientific revolution would happen.

Sure, you can pretend that it was no different from other methods of rational inquiry that came before. But then you have to explain why the modern scientific method produced a knowledge explosion while previous methods didn’t.

Your post reads as a vapid grievance-centered view of the world.

Americans are working longer and harder for less pay and disappearing benefits, with a bleak future and risk of financial ruin of you get sick or terminated.

I mean you’re right and that’s bad; I’m just pointing out that China has had gruesome 996 working weeks (72 hours/week) for decades IIRC and i’m not sure if chinese people work that much voluntarily or involuntarily.

Oh let him have his little China meltdown, he’s got football to watch Monday.

We already saw what happens when Europe picks up pace, twice. I think they are fine with the current pace. They just need to kick Putin’s face in.

I hope African countries will have a great leap forward with everyone else busy with geopolitics, without China or the west interfering. They already have the materials, they only need innovative people to utilize it without exploitation.

That’s why it was a deadpan “Yippee”, it doesn’t show well in written form.

“Both sides” lol cope

Usually I would agree with you, but in this context, I am fairly sure China bans more book than the U.S.

It’s truely a team effort the Republicans and Democrats are the ratchet effect manifested.

The FPTP system ensures you will only get those two choices so if you want to effect change its probably easiest to do it at the primary level.

People always say ‘progressives can’t get elected nationally’ or whatever forgetting FPTP ensures things will swap back (under the assumption that one side doesn’t flip fascist before that happens, big assumption in this climate I know) because eventually people will tire of the person in power and either vote for ‘change’ or stay home.

We shouldn’t feed the trolls — this person is clearly not interested in productive, good faith discussions

Sarcasm doesn’t come through in text.