sohois
14hr ago
I lived in Dongbei - well, Heilongjiang - when I first moved out to China, living mostly in Daqing (also tier 3) and a bit in Harbin (tier 2). Later on I moved down to Shanghai, and eventually met my wife, a Henanren. Her family lives in a town, still 500k people of course, though technically their original home is in a tiny farming village an hour outside of the town.
Nonetheless, short of the villages, no matter where in the country I've gone, no matter how big or small the city or town is, it really is striking just how similar they all are when it comes to architecture and design. And I'm not just talking about the communist blocks. In every place, there is always a "Computer City". Probably even with the same name. There is always a once shiny, now dilapidated mall. But the mall always has the same rows of clothing vendors and dodgy sellers as in your pictures. I originally wrote a sentence that you were just missing the plaza with massed granny dancing, before seeing you had indeed mentioned it at the bottom of your post.
I also have the same appreciation for Chinese KFCs, though in my case the far inferior version I'm comparing them to are in the UK. I assume it's mostly because KFC is still relatively pricy for China: 40-50 kuai is hardly expensive, but compared to the 10kuai you would pay for a bowl of noodles or whatever, it does position them a bit more upmarket. So they can afford to get better quality in comparison to the Western chains, who are very much positioned as the cheapest tier of food around
I get a distinct feeling of Gellman Amnesia reading a few of the recent top level posts in this weeks thread. And I wouldn't even class myself as a particularly knowledgeable person when it comes to AI, I simply keep up with the news and developments. It's really something to see the number of posters, whether here or the ssc reddit or similar locations, who confidently spout complete garbage when it comes to AI, seemingly unaware of things that happened even months ago.
And now I can't help but worry that many of the other posts on the Motte are similarly compromised. Have we become (or always been) just another midwit debate site?
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