Kevin_P
1mo ago
I don't have any statistics to prove you wrong, but this doesn't describe my experience at all. Even if you back off from "sneer at breeders" to just "actively dislike kids", my perception is that this group is still vastly outnumbered by people whose objection falls into the "too much effort" bucket.
Kevin_P
3mo ago
Not to push you into becoming the Japanese sex industry guy, but I noticed you referred to hostess clubs and girl's bars as two separate categories. I was previously under the impression that these were the same thing; any chance you could quickly elaborate on the distinction?
Kevin_P
6mo ago
Sketch engine might be the most reliable option. Use the English Trends corpus, which is basically "everything we could scrape off the web". Instructions here
It also lets you see the most common words used together with your search term, which might be helpful to distinguish programming frameworks from theoretical ones.
It's a paid service but they have a 30 day free trial.
Kevin_P
6mo ago
A few thoughts:
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Google Trends is about search traffic; content volume is a different product (ngrams). So this would be about people looking for "my framework", which wouldn't necessarily be linked to more people writing frameworks
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Possibly incompatible with the first point, but a post-AI uptick in a particular word/phrasing doesn't always translate to more discussion of the relevant concept. There are just some words that LLMs really seem to like using, and I wouldn't be surprised if "framework" was in that category
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When I think about the word "framework" I would usually associate it with coding rather than theories. So to the extent that it's really related to an increase in some activity, that could well be programming rather than theorising.
Kevin_P
8mo ago
A bit of a late reply but it includes all types of schools. If you dig into the data there's a division between academic and vocational streams. It doesn't include kids that have completely dropped out of school though, which is relevant for some countries.
Kevin_P
10mo ago
I remember a well-known poster here (Tracing Woodgrains? Not 100% sure) having the same plan, then they took longer than a traditional degree to graduate because a large part of the university experience is social pressure and the WGU experience doesn't provide that part.
I really don't like the narrative around this incident.
In particular, this:
a girl who studied economics in the U.S., with no prior medical background and minimal entrance exams, obtained an MD from China’s top medical school in just four years
.. seems completely normal to me. Lots of places have 4-year medical degrees if you start with a bachelor's. The intellectual ancestor of this forum is Scott Alexander, who did exactly that - undergraduate degree in philosophy followed by a 4-year graduate-entry medical degree.
The difference is only one less year vs a standard 5-year medical degree, and the 4-year program doesn't include compulsory courses like English, politics etc, so they're probably spending about the same amount of time on the actual medical training.
The comparison to a regular medical course as 5+3 years also seems misleading because graduates of 4-year degrees also need to do the same 3 years of residency training. It's not 4+4 vs 5+3, it's 4+4+3 vs 5+3
I'm not saying the story doesn't raise real concerns. But the thesis plagiarism and skipping two thirds of her residency are the real issues here, not graduate-entry medical degrees.
[Edit: And of course also the part where a surgeon left an anesthetized patient on the operating table for the best part of an hour while he chased after his lover. Focusing on Dong's academic credentials feels like fixing blame on the mistress rather than the actual guilty party.]
I don't think much has really changed with Chunwan. Nationalist posturing has always been part of the show, that part is nothing new, and the same thing for washed-up western celebs - Lionel Richie and Westlife haven't been relevant for decades. The robots were kind of cool but showcasing China's strength is part for the course.
On the broader point I agree that the "China is an advanced country now" narrative is working, and part of that is due to propaganda, but it's also pretty much true. If anything, attraction to Chinese culture is well behind where it "should" be if it was based on national strength.
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