02/01/24 - The fact that you need a scientist to get better technology for you doesn’t mean you can’t also treat him like shit.

Feb 02, 2024

“My friend’s kid is going to the top-tier class in their primary school. There’s a dad in their class who’s full time raising his kid at home. Not only does he push his own kid, he’s carefully picked out several other families to push too. I don’t know what his criteria are, exactly.

But the whole primary school, this dad has been making plans, finding tutors, filling up every holiday and weekend. A lot of people wanted to get in and couldn’t.

Now that it’s middle school, one of these kids have committed suicide. Another one got bipolar and had to take a year off of school. The dad’s own kid is still really smart, winning all kinds of maths competitions, getting headhunted by the best middle school. But he never actually goes to school, just gets one-to-one tutoring for all his subjects at home.

I don’t know what will result from this kind of pushing.”

Comments say, “This is why you can’t just blindly join trends out of convenience. Every child is unique.”

“Some parents really are pitiful and hateable. Remember a couple of years ago when all of Tianjin shut down to reform schools because of a ton of incidents [word here used to imply student suicide] in a row?”

“Primary school isn’t too bad, but a ton of kids in middle school have depression. It makes me baffled. Do these parents really not know? I guess in a lot of cases, the parents are precisely the source of their kids’ depression…”

A tiktok video of a house that a 70-year-old Hong Kong lady has rented in a Zhejiang village for 200 RMB per month. She did have to spend 100K renovating the house herself:

Comments say, “I’m from Tonglu [the town in the video], if you can rent a house like this for any less than 2000 RMB, I will eat your house in livestream.”

“This is so fake. Such a big house, such nice furniture, for just 200 RMB a month?? You’re an influencer, how could you not know what the times are like? You think China’s cost of living is like Vietnam or something? Or do you only know China from 30 years ago?”

“I’ve also said that Chinese villages have changed a lot—it’s all clean and neat and green now. But a lot of people flamed me for living in the nightly news.”

Question: “Why did Dynastic China look down on artisans and never realised the importance of their skills?”

Reply: “You imply that modern China doesn’t look down on artisans and actually realises the importance of their skills or something.

Example 1: Engineer at Dalian Diesel Engine Factory, Lu Xindi. Won State Technology Award 7 times, won Gold Medal at the International Inventions Expo 6 times, holds 23 national copyrights, and over 100 national, state, or city-level innovation rewards. And yet, such a craftsman cannot get promoted to High Level Engineer. Why? Because his boss hasn’t been made a high level engineer yet, so he has no right to.

Example 2: Taiwan microchip magician, Liang Mengsong. A legend in the microchip industry, top-tier skills in TMSC, as soon as he got hired as CEO at Chinese Microchips International, he began shining, helping Chinese Microchips break through 28nm, 14nm, 7nm. Pretty much helped China out of its microship deadlock single-handedly. He deserved every special privilege in the world, and yet he’s still yanked around by the higher-ups who believe, “there’s endless joy in making people fight each other.” They hired his hated nemesis from TMSC Jiang Shangyi to be on Chinese Microchip’s board of directors, and forced Liang Mengsong to quit.

Example 3: The technician living in poverty, Guqiuliang. Working in R&D in Chinese Shipbuilding Industries 702nd Lab, studying underwater engineering. The first rank fitter for Jiao Long submarines. The most difficult part to the hundreds of thousands of parts that make up the Jiao Long submarine is making sure they all fit together, and Gu Qiuliang is the only person who can ensure accuracy down to 1/50th of a millimetre. If he was in Germany, he would have endless potential in his future. But in this shithole, he can’t afford his daughter’s tuition. When he thought his wife had cancer, all he could do was cry (thankfully, it was a misdiagnosis). He’s wasted half of his life living in a 30 square metre rental. There’s a champion in every industry, but once you’ve become the champion of an industry, does your life actually get better?

We’ve got tobacco post docs, gold post docs, liquor post docs, they all get their titles easily. And yet, Tu Youyou, who’s won a Nobel Prize and has a national medal cannot make their ranks.

When a bottom level employee, Zhang Xiaoping, who only made 120K a year in Sha’anxi’s Space Centre quit, it caused two rocket launch failures.

There are so many examples, I can’t cover them all.

Jiang Shangyi says that management is more important than technology. Liu Zhizhuan said that commerce is more important than technology. When have we cared about technology before we got sanctions?

If we don’t even care about artisans now, how can we be confused that dynastic people didn’t either?”

Comments say, “I mean, you’re right, but you still can’t explain why China has full production lines for every product, and yet the west has irreversibly de-industrialised.”

“I like this reply better.” [This commenter posts screenshots of another reply which reads, “You’ve missed a very important point here. Or maybe it’s a blindspot.

Valuing artisans and valuing innovation, and valuing the treatment of artisans and the environment in which innovation is made is actually not related to each other at all.

That is, the fact that you need a scientist to get better technology for you doesn’t mean you can’t also treat him like shit.

If you need an artisan to make you a legendary sword like Excalibur, there are two methods. One is to provide him with plenty of funds and manpower.

Another if to tell him that if he doesn’t produce an Excalibur by next month, you’ll kill his whole family slowly.

Both of these options gets you what you want, we just always pick the second option.”]

“How many A-list technicians are there in the whole country? Not to mention fitters, who are rare and prized, and treated not much worse than the owner himself. Back in the day, senior technicians are widely-acknowledged badasses. Not to mention, technician and engineers are two completely different jobs. You’re just full of nonsense.”

A tiktok video of…art? OP says, “I don’t know if this is art, but I definitely feel like it’s art.”

Comments say, “It’s art with a low barrier of entry. We’re all artists.”

“All the children’s art tutoring and online art classes are all doing this kind of fancy and yet entirely unartistic scams. There’s no soul in it. You might as well call it a DIY project.”

“It’s art, but it’s children’s art. It’s marble art they do in kindergartens.”

The New York post translated reports of the Chongqing murder case where a man threw his two young children out of his apartment window so he could be with his mistress. They were executed today, and a blogger compiles the comments underneath of Americans jealous at the efficiency and speed of China’s justice system:

Comments say, “Wow, you actually dare to import American news? Careful, the dogs might come after you.”

“They think 4 years is efficient? I guess I’m demanding too much from our justice system.”

“Chinese people are jealous that American police don’t muddy the waters and will just shoot people who throw a tantrum. American are jealous of China’s death penalty. That’s interesting.”

“Negotiating with people born after 95 or even 2000 is so awesome.

There’s no greasiness that comes from talking to people who are 30 or older, where you have to be on guard every step, thinking three moves ahead. I just talked with a ’95 baby about an event budget.

I asked her what her budget was (it’s my usual tactics when it comes to negotiations, just to see what kind of expectations the other side has).

And he was like, “Uh, I don’t got one. What’s your price?”

I was in a bad mood and didn’t want to waste my time negotiating, so I gave him a reasonable, slightly below market price.

And he agreed immediately and made a couple of requests, and all of them were reasonable and I agreed immediately.

The whole thing took 3 minutes.

Reminded me of when I asked my assistant, “It’s time for the factory to deliver goods and they tell you that it’s going to be delayed. What would you do?”

And my assistant was like, “I’d get angry.”

Lol.”

Comments say, “The factory can’t deliver on time? There’s plenty you can do about that. Just get out your contract about how much they have to pay in compensation is they can’t deliver on time, make them adjust their production line to do their best to meet the deadline, even if they don’t have all the products, at least ship the first batch out, and make them pay the extra shipping for all the subsequent goods.”

“I feel like the past generations, including 80s babies, are all too greasy. 95 babies are really different. Whenever I talk with my brother, I really feel like he’s just a naive little idiot with nothing in his brains, just gets emotional all the time.”

“But even 95 babies will be turning 29 this year.”

“A really pretty programmer came to my office. Like, I never thought a programmer could be that pretty. She’s tall and thin and looks really gentle even with no makeup on, and really awe-inspiring once she does have makeup on.

Such a pretty programmer obviously drew a lot of eyes. I’ve heard a lot of coworkers discussing her, talking about how she’s really good at her job, and she’s super young, and she has great manners.

At first, I was really into her. Especially after I learned she was 3 years younger than me and is an alumni from the same university as me. I really kind of wanted to do something. Like, I knew it wouldn’t be easy dating a woman like her, but I really did fall for her.

But just a couple of days ago, I heard some rumours about her yearly salary, and it’s a lot higher than mine…

Like, all of a sudden, I couldn’t get into her anymore. Honestly, the moment I heard that she worked three years less than me and yet makes more than me, all my love instantly turned.

I know I’m not supposed to think, “Is the boss into her so he’s paying her more?” or even, “Does she have something going on with our boss?” But it’s hard getting these thoughts out of my head. She really makes a lot of money, to the point that it seems more than the ceiling that she should be able to make at her age. Although a lot of coworkers say she’s really highly-skilled, but to be honestly, even a top-university Master’s Degree wouldn’t be able to get paid as much as she does. You can’t explain that with just skill.

I’m so upset. Sigh.”

Comments say, “Men really do never reflect whether they’re just bad at their jobs. They always assume it’s the fault of sexual relationships.”

“At first, you thought of her like a pet cat, so course you liked her. Then, after you discovered she made more money than you, that’s when you started looking at her like a human being, and felt like she outcompeted you, and instantly went from humiliated to outraged.”

“You thought you made a good income, so you could date her. Then you found that you don’t make nearly as much as other people, so you might as well sling some mud on her.”

“Just found a article outside the wall about the Chongqing child murder case, of someone saying that the mistress shouldn’t have gotten death penalty, only the dad should’ve, because she only suggested that he throw his kids out the window, and he’s the one who did the act.

Jesus Christ, I guess there’s all kinds in the world.”

Comments say, “Evil people need to be shot. That’s protection for good people.”

“For a lot of bad cases, you can’t settle people’s rage if you don’t kill the culprits. Like, in this case, they exchanged so many texts back and forth planning how to murder two little kids. This sort of inhuman cruelty is enough to enrage the entire public. Two innocent kids. A mother who lost her children. This kind of tragedy makes me so angry, I get shaky. Although normal people would never encounter this kind of case, once you see it, you can’t help feeling sympathy and sadness. You can’t let this kind of evil go.”

“It’s just such a bad case, with such widespread influence and societal attention on it, that I feel like they went with death penalty to make an impression on people. After the thallium poisoning case in Qinghua, there were a lot of thallium poisoning cases around the country, just because they didn’t deal with the first case properly. Or maybe they were just trying to calm the angry public.”

“Would you be willing to work this kind of job?

Work 20 days and get 10 days off, live in a remote power station, about 8K RMB a month, paid on the 15th of every month, adds up to about 100K a year.
Full insurance and social security payments, you have to pay 220 RMB into social security personally.
All your coworkers are 2000 babies, not a lot of them, nobody really likes to talk.
There’s a cafeteria to eat at which costs 300 RMB a month, but you get a 600 RMB per month food stipend.
Easy work, mostly watching security cameras, patrolling, and filling out forms.
No end of year bonus, but you get paid 13 months’ wages every year.
2-3 people to a dorm room, with hot water and AC.
No time off for Chinese New Year.
You get to go home once a month, the company will provide a shuttle to drive you back and forth.
Have to work overtime occasionally, but you don’t get paid for overtime.

Would you take this kind of job away from the big city?”

Comments say, “No. But I’ll take it if it paid 150K a year instead.”

“What kind of heavenly job is this? I’ll go right away.”

“Of course! So where’s the hiring notice? Who do I email?”

A compilation of ugly dragons around the country, put out in preparation for Chinese New Year: