People on lemmy.ml thinking we just really enjoy Mali.
It's actually been super refreshing to, generally, be able to say I am a Marxist-Leninist and not immediately get downvoted into oblivion. There are still some of the kneejerk reactions to the CPC, but even then people seem more willing to engage on good-faith even with disagreements.
There definitely was violence on both sides, even the official counts put the casulties around 200 last I checked. Which were sadly probably preventable had the PLA been equipped with nonlethal control measures rather than...nothing.
I do credit your link as it surprisingly shows the violence both ways, a lot of modern sources like to paint it as being very one-sided. One thing I did notice even in the Esquire article you linked, they explicitly never mention Tiananmen in any of the pictures showing violence. Because, like in the account I linked, there was no violence in Tiananmen Square. Now if you said "Hey, there were outbreaks of violence around Beijing on June 4th" yes, that would be true. Even the CPC official accounts don't deny that.
Like I said, from april to the beginning of june, initial protests were fairly peaceful and the CPC engaged with them, PLA on site had no weapons initially. Which is definitely an area they messed up, as they may have been able to further limit casulties if they could have responded faster.
The fact that CIA had embedded agents in the protestors and collaborated with the mafia is not exactly a secret, Operation Yellowbird is fairly well known, and that is basically their MO to begin with.
Despite being an extremely diverse country, nobody is going to try to tell you that China has magically solved racism, they haven't. You hear stories like that horrible washing machine ad that went out, but the government also cracks down on things like that. I feel like there is a lot ignorance-based racism as opposed to malice-based racism. Still an issue, but people are usually more willing to change in the former case.
I have black friends that left the US to live in China and I can say that they definitely feel safer. To be totally fair, that's just a few anecdotes and not a wide study or anything like that. I don't think that is exclusive to China though either, I have heard nearly the exact same things from people who have come from the US to my country.
Be wary of anyone telling you that a government that has historically been horrible TO ITS OWN PEOPLE is for some arbitrary reason better than the west
The government that has lifted more people out of poverty than any other government in the world? How dare they not imprison people and force them into slave labour. There's a reason that the CPC is overwhemingly popular amongst the people.
The government that hasn't been at war with another country in over forty years, and builds railroads and hospitals instead of bombing them? Ask Laos whether the US or China has been better to work with.
It's not really arbitrary reasons, there are a lot of concrete reasons. It's not perfect, they are still working on a lot of things, but most things are constantly improving and it isn't hard to see why people might prefer it.
If you are advocating others use critical thought, I would argue the same. Step outside the "China bad" propaganda for just a second.
long look at Assange
I have never really liked talking on the phone, even before the advent of cell phones. The fact that it seems to be fading more and more as a common communication tool is something I am honestly pretty happy about. Sure it means I have like 4 messaging apps on my phone, but I don't really mind. Even work is all text via Teams.
It has probably been at least a year since I have made/received an actual audio call on my phone.
Your spouse actually calls you? I just use Line with my partner.
Can you be more specific as to what you mean? Considering Beijing has a LGBTQ Center, that's not strictly true.
I mean, there are medical centers that specialize in sexual resassignment surgery.
Rights can definitely be better, but I don't see it as being accepting of LGBTQ rights is banned.
I have been thinking about a new MBA for a while now, my laptop is secondary (I still have an Intel iMac as my main desktop) but my current one is a...2015 12 inch Macbook, so I could use the upgrade. It would actually be my first Apple Silicon machine.
However, my country's currency is really struggling right now, so I have to pay functionally $2000 USD for one of the baseline 15 inch models, which is a lot.
Most MOBAs are pretty notoriously bad, though Heroes of Newerth was definitely the worst one of those i had played.
Anecdotally, my personal worst experience was with FFXIV, which was probably exacerbated by how much praise that community gets otherwise. The Novice Network system they have is a mess, new players are put into a channel with a bunch of "mentors" that don't really want to help anyone, at least on the server I was on. They either wanted a global chat channel for their own use, or just wanted the cosmetic rewards mentors had on offer. I remember one actively trying to get new players to quit if he found out they had come from WoW. The channel is entirely self-moderated, and mentors would kick people out just for fun. It's an AWFUL first impression for newer players.
One thing WoW definitely does better with their Guide channel is giving literally no tangible rewards to guides, if somebody is opting into being a Guide it is only because they want to help new players, they get nothing else for it.
My country is exceptionally bad about this.
Buy a plastic package of crackers? It will be filled with smaller packages of crackers all wrapped in plastic with a plastic freshener pack for each one. I am not exaggerating. I am not sure I have ever bought something that didn't have at least two degrees of plastic wrap.
We did stop giving plastic bags out at cashiers unless requested, but that means shitall when everything you buy is triple-wrapped to begin with.