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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • They can’t be that incompetent

    Have you seen these billionaires? They absolutely can. The myth of their competence is pure propaganda.

    Also, they like corruption because it offers many opportunities for those with enough money to pay. And they like oppression of workers because it provides a ready pool of cheap labour to exploit.

    They’ll be looking at Russia and liking what they see, because they don’t see themselves being the ones working for pennies and being sent to die in Ukraine. And they all think they’re the smartest guy in the world (“why else would I have so much money?”) so they don’t see themselves being fucked over by Putin either. For them Russia is the promise of doing whatever you want, taking advantage of whomever you want, and getting whatever you want.


  • In Chinese, affirmation is often compiled through negation:

    没错 (méi cuò) = “not wrong” = Right

    不差 (bù chà) = “not bad” = Decent

    还行 (hái xíng) = “still passable” = Okay

    没事 (méi shì) = “no problem” = It’s fine

    In English, this feels bizarre. If something is good, you say:

    Nice

    Great

    Perfect

    Brilliant

    You name the quality directly. You point at it. You own it.

    In American positivity-laden, self-marketing, businessy English perhaps. But in the UK “not bad”, “could be worse”, “not wrong”, “can’t complain”, “I’ve had worse” and so on is often as positive as it gets, or at least was for a long time. American positive-speak gets on British people’s nerves; it’s perceived as boorish, boastful and unsubtle. And “no problem” is common in English all over. British people do say “brilliant” but only when they’re being unusually enthusiastic, or fake, or sarcastic.