• 174 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: June 9th, 2023
  • j4k3@lemmy.worldtoWorld News@lemmy.world•China has debuted its new landing barges – what does this mean for Taiwan?English
    162·
    8 hours ago

    US intelligence has said Xi has ordered the PLA to be capable of invasion by 2027, although military experts have noted that a number of variables – including ongoing corruption issues in the PLA and the unpredictability of US support for Taiwan under Trump – could push that in either direction.

    Regardless, the PLA is now undergoing one of the biggest military buildups since the second world war. Xi has overhauled the command structure, boosted missile and nuclear stocks, and strengthened paramilitary arms including the coastguard and the paramilitary fleet of fishing boats known as the maritime militia. The different groups are cooperating more than ever on joint operations.

    Satellite images show the barges were escorted by at least two civilian ships from a nearby civilian dock, and that several other boats – including some marked as fishing vessels on their tracking ID – were sailing laps behind them, appearing to practise running interference.

    At least three more barges are under construction or in early testing. The barge design suggests they have been built to work with the roll-on, roll-off ferries that China has been repurposing or building to bring tanks and another heavy armoured vehicles across the Taiwan Strait.

    Intel announced they are relying on TSMC even more heavily and without letup in a recent investors call. This is WW3 building up. We have an atrocious auto industry that is incapable of integrated engineering, Boeing is a shitfest, and Intel that makes iterative downgrade products that are several generations behind its own products and nowhere near AMD.

    When China invades Taiwan, North Korea will invade the South at the same time. That takes out all leading edge silicon hardware instantly. We’ll have tanks that go dead when they stop and play an ad, planes that drop doors instead of munitions, and antique new computers.

  • j4k3@lemmy.worldtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Would my story qualify as dystopian? What other genres would it be?English
    3·
    6 days ago
    "Dystopian" as a concept can mean many things. One person's individual dystopia may be within a utopia.

    Generally, I consider something to be dystopian if it is making negative assumptions about the future that are rooted in speculative fiction. These are more like science fiction, fantasy, or geopolitical.

    I consider something utopian when it is unrealistic and glossing over aspects that are impossible or poorly premised while presenting them as positive.

    An example of dystopian would be the Terminator films or most films and books about AI. These fall into a trope of the machine gods. These are no more than a retelling of a pantheon like mythos of supernatural gods. The issues of future AI are unrelated to this mythos. They are also based on the fallacy of dominance caused extinction. By this logic Earth is a monoculture. These conceptual abstractions are dystopian because they are making stupid handwaving assumptions that result in a dark and grim setting.

    Depicting the messiness of reality does not mean a fictional story is either dystopian or utopian.

    An example of a utopia is something like a biblical paradise. It is premised on brutal authoritarianism that lacks any objective nuances about the true diversity of life and opinions. It is glossing over the real differences in what people want and expect out of life in an idealized story arc that harms a lot of people. When these people are sidelined as irrelevant, the true underlying dystopian reality comes into view. Utopia is always a story of propaganda-like perfection masking a terror that lies beneath.

    One can paint such abstractions on almost any story. These are not really genera even if someone calls them such.

    You mentioned your story involves massive geopolitical upheaval. This concept could be painted as dystopian depending on how you write it. Throughout history there were many underlying reasons for changes. Like in the era of Alexander the Great, the conquests of the Macedonians in that age were more due to advances in equipment and a professionally trained army in an era that primarily consisted of less formal city states and small raiding parties. The era of the Romans was mostly the beginnings of broader social cohesion and coalitions of regions. The Great War and WW2 was the era of solidifying global boarders and the role of imperialism. If you are proposing a new era of evolving change, the reason for that change and why that change is a form of evolving progress in a geopolitical sense is important if you would like to abstract a label of utopian or dystopian. Otherwise it sounds like “war fiction” IMO.

  • j4k3@lemmy.worldtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Everyday I have to block dozen of "x"-moe communities while scrolling the main feed. Is there an easier way to purge anime from main page?English
    252·
    7 days ago

    It really isn’t that much IMO. You’ll get used to blocking more. Don’t keep scrolling and just block what you don’t want while being respectful of others that do like it. I have somewhere around 300 blocked communities in nearly 2 years all for various reasons. This ain’t reddit. No one is manipulating you for retention, but no one is tailoring and babying you either. It takes a little effort to prune the list. Most if not all of this is on reddit too, but you were less targeted by it there, assuming that is where you come from. It took me awhile to adjust to this mentality. Now I am not bothered at all by simply blocking each community. There are not more than a dozen or so people regularly posting anime stuff that I can see from my account on LW.