What’s wrong with being a criminal in the face of unjust law? Slave rebels are criminals too.

Okay, that clears it up. I do indeed viscerally wish harm on a lot of Americans.

“The American ruling class is still American people.”

Then why not wish harm on the American ruling class?

Actually, I heard something much more dubious than him criticizing Lenin. Did he actually praise Mein Kampf? /gen

I don’t see how that contradicts me. It did cause me introspection because lately I have indeed been feeling better about myself about how I’m right and most others around me are wrong according to objective data because otherwise I’d feel suicidal out of isolation. About how that attitude may not be productive to conversion after I had already tried for so long. What I object to is that tweets first sentence. “I wish no harm to the American ruling class”. It’s not something I’d think or utter in any circumstance. And as redsails remives the binary between people and the ruling class, so to can I remove the binary and say that the ruling class, in all their power, are still the ones maintaining and benefitting from this state of affairs. We don’t exist in a vacuum. We’re not biologically attuned to this. It’s not mere human nature. We’re a product of our material conditions.

I’ll say it again. I understand wanting to vent. But I’ll say that not wishing harm on the American ruling class is totally absurd, even if you consider them synonymous with the people. Especially so. If it’s some kind of joke then firgive me for not getting it. Or maybe I misinterpret what “American people” are.

I don’t doubt it. A lot of Americans are smug jerks, including a lot of American communists I met. I don’t blame them entirely; their ruling class keeps them divided and sapped of mental energy.

I understand venting frustration, but the American people are the way they are because of their ruling class.

We have a list of additional targets.

Well, we’re on good track then. Historically “did not vote” recieves more votes than any candidate.

That I made the right call voting third party and thus providing solidarity to others. But. Applying the trolley problem, I’m still not convinced Trump was worse than Kamala even if the choice was simply between the two.

I’ve been dehumanized here before by ableists. It’s not perfect but I think it is getting better.

I’m trying to reassure myself and everyone else we made the correct decision even from a harm reduction perspective. Democrats have historically been more hawkish.

Hmm… I still don’t think we should regret our decision not to vote for Harris. If I recall, the Democrats were wanting to attack Iran much sooner.

Two hours paid break? Sounds good to me!

Damn paywall. Here you go;

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.

Tuesday marks the start of the Lunar New Year, and hundreds of millions of Chinese are home with their families, many of them enduring complaints about why they’re not married yet and the hours-long, televised Spring Festival gala.

Most people enjoy a break from work at this time. In honor of the holiday, this week we’re going to talk about China’s work culture and what the West misunderstands about it.

China’s Work Cultures

In recent months, certain corners of Silicon Valley have become obsessed with “996”: working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. Though the term originated in China’s tech industry, it was coined as a critique of an unhealthy and illegal work culture, not an aspirational ideal. The 996 trend isn’t the norm—it’s closer to China’s version of start-up culture.

On paper, Chinese law limits the workweek to five days and 40 hours, with anything more requiring union-negotiated overtime pay. But in practice, labor law is something between a pleasant fiction and a cruel joke. The rules are rarely enforced, especially for lower-status workers, and the only legal union is state-run and toothless.

China has a long history of abusive work practices. Maoism borrowed from Soviet Stakhanovism, which idealized hard labor, and introduced the social dominance of the “work unit,” or danwei. China only formalized the two-day weekend in 1995. Today, gig workers and migrant construction laborers endure punishing schedules with few benefits or protections.

Yet the idea of 996 has caught on in the West in part because it plays into stereotypes of Chinese people as inherently industrious and work-focused and reinforces perennial fears about China out-competing the West. (U.S. productivity, meanwhile, remains roughly four times higher than China’s.) The trend is more flattering than older, racist tropes, but it is still dehumanizing, reducing 1.4 billion people to tireless worker-drones.

In 15 years working in Chinese offices, from private firms to state-run media, I found the reality to be far more varied—and that work was often the last thing on my colleagues’ minds. As in any other country, Chinese work culture differs depending on the sector.

Beyond the infamous 996, there are some broadly recognizable subcultures. One notable example is found in the public sector, which employs roughly 23 percent of the eligible working population. We might dub its culture as “323”: three hours of work, a two-hour lunch break, then three more hours of work.

The two-hour (if not three-hour) lunch break is sacrosanct, and repeated attempts to change it have largely failed. During this break, some offices organize group exercise, but most people use it to nap. This was the greatest culture shock I experienced working in China. In the private sector, firms even dim office lights or have designated nap rooms to make sleeping easier.

Another quirk of the public sector is the prevalence of fake jobs—posts given out as patronage to officials’ friends, relatives, and business associates. Depending on the level of expected scrutiny, these can be “no work” jobs where employees idle at their desks, often working at another job online; or “no show” jobs. In some cases, these jobs also serve to skirt legal requirements, such as disability hiring quotas.

The intensity of work fluctuates with the political climate. In calmer times, most government employees are content to submit low-quality work and devote their energies to side hustles or hobbies. This makes them both frustrating and flexible to interact with: If you need a form stamped, the office may be closed for a long lunch, but if you’re late with that form, the official will likely be lenient.

The state’s quota-driven demands create predictable cycles. It’s common for work to be slow at the start of the year, then suddenly frenzied toward the end of the year in the hopes of hitting targets—sometimes accompanied by creative accounting.

When political winds shift, the expectations change, and many of the perks vanish. The Chinese Communist Party leadership can sometimes treat government workers as an all-purpose tool, giving them arbitrary, difficult demands. In 2022, for instance, teachers in Guangdong were told they had to register a certain number of elderly people for COVID-19 vaccination, or else their performance reviews would be affected.

Then there’s the socializing. Official life involves endless mandatory group outings—one of the few things that the official trade union organizes—that also lubricate informal corruption networks. Evenings can devolve into exhausting rituals of drinking, deference, and debauchery, where power dynamics shape all social interactions. (I spent more nights than I care to recall watching middle-aged men letting their bosses win juvenile drinking games.)

When Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first anti-corruption campaign got underway in 2013, this style of socialization became temporarily unacceptable. Many officials were grateful for the shift, as it reduced their workloads, allowed them to spend more time with their families, and spared them from associated health risks. However, the discipline faded, and old habits soon returned.

As the Year of the Fire Horse begins, Chinese officialdom once again strains to prove its worth to an increasingly demanding leader, intent on curbing corruption. If history is a guide, these efforts to reform are no more likely to last than previous ones.

Yes, that is correct.

I’ve had my own problems with this site and its westerness, but would you rather westerners congregate into fascist websites or something? Maybe westerners trying to be communist should be seen as a good thing.

I sympathize. But that’s also uncomfortable nuance. I’m told that encouraging the death penalty discourages reports because people often don’t want their family or acquaintances killed.

I knew. It’s a research point of mine. I was a victim of such abuse myself and my own familial rapist is popular and beloved.

I also know he’s nothing out of the ordinary. Most CSA is committed by family members and acquaintance, done for the sake of power and stimulation. My own parents also abused me.

Freak environment behavior is the norm. Poor sex ed isn’t a result of lack of resources, it’s a deliberate means of preventing kids from identifying abuses of power over them or what’s right and wrong. Even with the points you make, it reinforces my own that the child is a product of their environment.

The fact that we’re using “psychopath” to describe this behavior is proof we’re largely undereducated about this. You do not require a mental illness to be a horrendous, selfish asshole. The production and reproduction of power, control, and CSA is unfortunately quite normal in the US and is manifested in different ways even among the poor. I should know.