the liberals have indeed succeeded in their coup and have been having the upper hand since 2023.

This is wrong, there should be no narrative that this is some recent liberal coup or whatever.

China has been opening up consistently even as far back as 2021. The negative list for foreign investments for example, in 2017 the list was at 68, in 2024 this list is down at 29. Remember what happened in 2017-2020(pre-covid even) that made China accelerate the opening up?

2018-Lifting restrictions on foreign equity investments in Chinese financial firms, removing enforced partnership rules for carmakers among pledges made at Boao Forum for Asia

"China unveiled two shortened negative lists for foreign investment in December, marking the fifth consecutive year the world's second-largest economy has revised its national negative list and pilot free trade zone negative list. The number of items off-limits for foreign investors has been cut to 31 in the latest version of the national negative list, down from 33, and the number of items on the pilot FTZ negative list has been reduced to 27 from 30 in the 2020 version."

Of course we wouldn't call opening up a coup after all its the foundational principle of Dengist reforms, so why would Xi/CPC being concerned with mainstream economic policy be a coup?

They've always welcomed private capital and the online western/reddit "ML" sphere always overplayed the significance of the CPC's control over the private sector. It is significant yes but in large part only in contrast with the west, on its own they've always compromised.

BTW state media as always patting themselves on the back for checks notes defending the neoliberal status quo and getting cheers from the neoliberals at the back. Behold Great Xi standing up against checks notes populism. May as well ask CGTN if they're taking notes from the US democrats lol, was this a coup in... 2018 too?

Furthermore Xi/CPC/Dengism are not anti-capitalists and already made very clear where they stand e.g he always made apologetic remarks towards e.g "globalization". There is no understanding that these "downsides" are non negotiable for the working class, no just BS naive pro-capitalist smiley face capitalism/trade bs. They very openly pride themselves on supporting the global market and globalization. They try to wash clean the actual horrors necessary to keep the wheel turning and merely ask for more friendly talks so we can all happily work out the "downsides". As he says, none of this is something that must be fundamentaly opposed.

There are many quotes for this just two examples: 2017 WEF

2019

Xi Jinping pointed out that globalization is a historical trend, and China is one of the most determined champions and defenders of globalization, noting that the few anti-globalization movements that have emerged in the world cannot stop the tide of globalization. We should not fear problems in globalization. In face of these problems, countries should not resort to wanton use of protectionism and unilateralism, nor should they adopt a selfish beggar-thy-neighbor approach. Pointing out that the problems arising in globalization reflect the sluggishness of global governance, Xi Jinping suggested that to solve these problems, we must stick to opening up and firmly uphold the multilateral trading system, and that instead of starting something entirely new, we should improve the existing international system. On the basis of fairness and equality, we should enhance the representation and voice of emerging-market countries and developing countries in multilateral institutions to make the governance structure and benefit distribution more balanced and reasonable. Countries should show mutual respect to each other, respect other countries' social systems and development paths, strengthen communication and coordination, and properly solve disputes.

In other words, We should stick with "opening up" and "we should not seek a new system, but instead improve the current neoliberal order". He says this cleanly without shame or hesitation as if this is what actual socialists, nevermind communists ought to believe. Xi says a lot of nice things and I absolutely don't think its a baby with the bathwater situation. For China its undeniable he is a committed towards "common prosperity" as he calls it.

It is also not a coup or a sudden change that the CPC is openly committed to appeasing foreign investors and the financial markets. The CPC is now deeply anxious that the global economy and the US can't help sustain their unique growth anymore and the political consequences of the end of Xi's common prosperity.

The US put the pressure using the consumption/"EV overcapacity" narrative and the CPC believed this consensus as one of the reasons they're having bad data. So they're trying BS nonsense to boost "consumption" because there are absolutely no Marxists allowed in positions of power. I wont go yet again on the Marxist solution but they have no clue what to do except the mainstream consensus. I'm not optimistic they'll find the right solution from here, its possible but unlikely they'll go back to 2010 policies given e.g the housing crash.

They turn to neoliberal economists, bankers, the financial market for advice because these are the adults in the room, as you know its liberal academia that dominates in China not Marxism. It is absolutely not a coup at all, it implies the CPC was much further economicaly left than the reality.

The media is playing this angle because any move towards perceived normalization is bad even though this is the standard. Pretend to be enemies and then casually meet to discuss business. When the US does it is asserting dominance or ignored altogether. When the EU now does it its suddenly a crazy shift in foreign policy etc. China loves this clown circus so they're certainly never going to be the ones against it as well.

This is merely the standard, would anyone say the US is pro China when Blinken and Yellen visited regularly in the past few years? Remember Newsom's China visit?

The media is never going to be as critical as they should be if it highlights their own hypocrisy that's all. When its October 2024 and Wall Street is celebrating China's "incentives" you'll not see headlines claiming the US is suddenly reverting decades of sinophobia and turning pro-China either. You see because clearly Wall St doesn't influence Washinton at all. Its certainly not February 2025 and Wall St is once again pushing the Chinese financial market despite Trump's threats

If and when these shits actualy happen its at best the EU trying to not be as hypocritical. You know the saying those who use the propaganda as a tool and those who actualy believe their own BS. The EU libs just fundamentally believe their own BS which leads them to be in a disadvantage against the US which has no problem talking on both sides.

So the point then, how is this a split when the US is just as much into China? Its not realy, its just the EU libs for once catching up to the fact they're the idiot ones actualy believing the ideological BS while the US benefits from talking shit about China while also making their profits from doing business with China. Maybe the US would like to keep this privilege so EU autonomy angers them, either way the US will be investing in China when profitable regardless, its just EU libs missing out.

I personaly do not think there is anything to celebrate here either, if you do all you're doing is reinforcing the CPC's ideal of the end of the cold war, no conflicts and no principles just trade trade trade, with your enemies and those who continue to destroy the world and the left. Meanwhile the world burns, alliances mean nothing, the global south continues without real solidarity or a real compromise etc. The Dengist pill is great if you're living in China, for everyone else in the global south we're heading towards doom death and destruction.

I didn’t know that all Elons Musk of the world pretended to be physics-brained, but it makes sense.

Maybe you haven't seen it then but Angela is also great imo and I recommend this billionaires want you to know they could have done physics

Yeah I don't pay attention to these dorks and even through "default" cultural knowledge i wasn't aware just how literally almost all of these billionaires try to pass the image of being smart, but specialy being a physicist or knowing physics. Like yeah Musk is pretty impossible to miss now but I didn't even know how pathetic Zuck and Bezos were and that they try to do it as well, its so sad and pathetic.

She did another video on Feynman and it explains a lot I guess, the default American cultural bias towards "cool physicists" stems a lot from the old Feynman bro stuff.

7DeadlyFetishes bit but with fewer steps.

Backpack Battles is extremely frustrating RNG bullshit nonsense usual game says fu and doesn't give you anything and you lose due to cracked boards and makes me wonder why did I waste 15 minutes of my life just now.

Its also a wonderful addicting masterpiece, ranking up is a grind but also feeds that incremental reward feeling in the brain and going through history after a succesfull survival match can lead to some hilarious outcomes and matchups. Oh I've seen some absurd builds but also funny and creative.

In the first 100 maybe even 200 hours you'll always see some new and interesting build as you climb out. Helps to not be a loser and completely metagame copy paste though eventualy you'll understand the meta. At that point over 100h and by far got my money worth and the game is not even close to finished.

Of course the usual problems of PvP appears once you get up to high ladder, the usual problems of meta gaming and questionable balance. I'd say the game is very well balanced but not perfectly.

Its a very good "I got 20 minutes to waste" game that I'd give 9/10.

Yeah pretty much this, the UN only functions as a source of legitimacy and vibes for countries and leaders that want to maintain the status quo. Even if the US said yes here, its functionally irrelevant and deeply hypocritical anyway, almost an insult whichever way they vote.

Tensei Oujo to Tensai Reijou no Mahou Kakumei/The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady

About 2/3 of the way in, absolutely lovely, hard to talk without spoilers but the isekai tag seems not realy relevant at all and it would take barely a a couple of paragraphs on the whole script to remove it entirely. Its just a very solid execution on all the premises. I wish there was more like this but I also realize its tough considering this is an adaptation. 9.5/10

Kakushigoto (2020) sent me back into the Koji Kumeta spiral again. Highly entertaining writing as usual, but instead of cynical GenX political satire, it's a wholesome slice of life show about a mangaka who doesn't want his daughter to find out about it. I was not sure what to expect, but it's a great show so far. Similar in concept to Yotsuba&, but it got me hooked fast, whereas Azuma Kiyohiko's work surprisingly didn't. A+

I wrote about this some time ago, I have no problem being both the Kumeta and Akiyuki Shinbou resident shill on these boards. Kakushigoto hits specialy hard given it is very easy to imagine as a very soft alternative universe where SZS gets a happy ending or takes a few different turns on his life and ends up being someone more normal like the MC here. Personaly the fact it uses the same designs, the MC shares a bit of the same personality and H. Kamiya as lead makes it tough to not see it this way. I think its quite rare to be so successful at basically copying from one of your own work to another and still hit a compelling different story and setting, it could be shameful but imo its the best kind of fan service.

Of course no Shaft/Shinbou involved in this which makes it surprisingly excellent nonetheless. That said completely new viewers will miss out of the obvious references including the obvious VA performance callback but the fact remains Kumeta himself called this adaptation far superior to his own work and begged people to watch this instead. Its quite the endorsement even if a bit ironic and sad in a way, self-deprecating humor and cynicism being his thing.

The White House administration cannot have failed to notice the chorus of criticism that all the pressure for a peace deal is being piled on just Ukraine, not Russia. So it is possible that Trump's threat is an attempt to present itself as being more even-handed.

Wolff spent the entire last decade/2010's going around in circles over his worker co-op shit and now he is role playing as a geopolitics expert?

Not literaly but yes they're Trek libs at best.

Mike and Rich are old enough to watch TNG/DS9 etc on TV. Their hate for Star Wars is also often framed on the idealism of the OG trilogy, despite enjoying TFA as a movie, for a long time now its pretty clear the Trek/SW cynicism coming from both of these franchises for over a decade now clearly impacts them on a personal level that is very different from the gamergate/MAGA trek era that gave rise to all these other right wing YT whatever type disphits that they also seem to hate and ridicule often.

So yeah its pretty easy to point where they sit. Its sad that most people like them would gladly accept "socialism" or "communism", as with most other normal people too, just as soon as you show these concepts without the American propaganda, if they realy believe in the Trek "ideals"(yes Trek TV is also often flawed liberal slop too that is another discussion) as I think they do, its basicaly the end result of communism.

This is great, put Pelosi on a plane again and see what happens.

Either she ends up as a piece of charcoal at the bottom of the ocean or we'll see if China actualy walks the walk this time.

both sides seem to have roughly similar casualty rates

This has never been true in this war I don't know where you got that from. The best that can be argued for is some Russian manouvers and offensives specialy in urban warfare have been less than stellar and Ukrainian drones are far more successful than Russian circles would admit. But urban warfare is not the majority and at some stages if you even go back look at reports from Ukrainians themselves, the artillery discrepancy alone made the war completely lopsided, Ukrainian positions getting hammered by artillery while the best they can do is send a drone or two that maybe successfuly drops a single grande/small bomb once in a while.

That was before 2023 when Russia introduced their own new gliding bombs, if it was over before then its just unfair from that point onwards. Just not proportional in any sense.

The NDRC said the 3.4% reduction in the amount of carbon emissions per unit of economic growth last year "fell short of expectations", blaming rapid growth in energy consumption as well as extreme weather.

China is not expected to meet its five-year goal to bring carbon intensity down by 18% by the end of this year, and it has not yet announced an annual target for 2025.

Are people upvoting this based on the headline and not reading the actual article again lol. They're not meeting their targets, but its ok we can make new ones! Good on them for at least caring about it even if not clearly enough.

Its not the targets or whether they meet them or not, but the neoliberal policies that have creeped up in 2022/2023 and 2024 that should have you worried. China will meet its "target" at the same time liberalization and straight up anti-worker legislation(the retirement age increase defended with the same rhetoric as western neoliberal ghouls do everywhere else) happens, while the housing bubble happened etc.

If the US realy does go into a very quick recession over these tariffs then its even more certain bad times are coming for the global economy. Nothing to be "chad" about it.

I absolutely hate to make a point for him but I think in this context(yes his grammar is wrong I guess) he means cut off your export deals, don't renew or count on your export revenue for your long term investment plans and/or start seeking new domestic customers, renegotiate in advance if you can, something something large scale deals will be made on a first come first serve basis I guess.

Yeah its more Lulover than it has ever been at this point. The most likely scenarios at this point. Ciro Gomes is a complicated mild leftist/nationalist. Best case scenario 45% for both left candidates, otherwise maybe Ciro wins and that is the best outcome if Lula drops out to avoid embarassement.

Lula (PT): 30,4%

Ciro Gomes (PDT): 14,3%

Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicanos): 14%

Pablo Marçal (PRTB): 13,2%

Romeu Zema (Novo): 3,9%

Ronaldo Caiado (União): 3,9%

Branco/nulo: 12,8%

and

Ciro Gomes (PDT): 19,7%

Fernando Haddad (PT): 16,2%

Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicanos): 14,4%

Pablo Marçal (PRTB): 14%

Ronaldo Caiado (União): 5,4%

Romeu Zema (Novo): 4,5%

Lulover, joever, Haddover take these neoliberal demons away and eat their corpses. Of course the far-right is worse, of course, and yet all the liberal succdem does is push us to our doom anyway. Socialism or bust, more like bust. https://www.cartacapital.com.br/politica/lula-lidera-em-todos-os-cenarios-no-1o-turno-em-2026-aponta-pesquisa-cnt/

Prompt engineers.

Lula is trying to move away from BRICS and some of the most explicit anti-western sentiment.

This is a combination of domestic and foreign policy.

On domestic policy, the economic agenda by the Finance Minster Haddad has done nothing but destroy the working class sentiment and worsen material conditions. Some of the neoliberal legislation approved years ago are now taking into affect and this is pushing the government towards the most obscene austerity measures(e.g cutting benefits for the poor etc) along with more privatizations etc.

It should be obvious how this, together with the Brazilian Central Bank's priority towards absurd high interest rates only benefits foreign investors yeah? It further cements Brazil's role as a commodity exporter and rentier/financial market paradise for foreign investors, literally the highest interest rates in the world!.

On the foreign policy front, as I've repeated many times, the BRICS scam is just neoliberals and fascists who are happy to say US bad while getting closer to American interests.

So Lula recently signed the Mercosur/EU deal that historicaly took some 25 years on the table. As perfectly aligned with domestic policy this deal further stabilizes Brazil as a commodity exporter for the west. Likewise in the previous bout with Venezuela, Lula tried to push the whole "democracy" shit over the Venezuelan election because Lula/PTs current political strategy is to copy the US Democrats aka pretend everything is great and awesome because Brazil got Democracy and Freedom^tm while the working class is eating shit.

So getting close to Putin/Russia, China and Venezuela specialy is "bad" for this branding.

Absolutely do not be fooled by his stance over Israel just like absolutely do not be fooled by Supreme court judges like Moraes theatrics with Elon etc. They are all fascists and they do not seek actual confrontation with the US.

As I said earlier Brazil will have a presidential election in 2026 and Lula is currently only at 30%. He would not be re-elected unless second place "sucdem" Ciro Gomes voters all turn vote for him and that is still only 45% of the vote right now.

In short, this is part of Brazil's geopolitical reorientation away from BRICS because Lula believes it gives him better "legitimacy" with liberals over the democracy debate. I can expand further but suffice to say this is all lunacy and he deserves to be thrown back in jail for all we care.

Therefore, Trump's task is to get out of the coming war. And with yesterday's performance, Trump justifies to his electorate and citizens the reason for the US's further non-participation in the war. However, arms supplies will continue. And Zelensky knows this very well. Therefore, the Ukrainian audience interpreted yesterday's "defeat" as a victory - the deal on rare earths was not signed, but they will still receive weapons. And Zelensky played his role perfectly.

How much of this is actualy true though, surely we all observed how the US funneled an absurd amount of weapons to Israel, even participated in defense against Iran while Ukraine could barely scrape the barrel in all sorts of supplies, from air defenses to... well everything else?

The weapons they'll receive are not enough to change the path of the war, isn't this obvious for 2 years now? How would "pragmatic" Ukrainians see this as a victory? This can only be true if they believe to be winning the war or on a path towards it.

We know this is not true for years, Ukrainian Army infighting between Zaluzhny and others proved that etc. They don't even agree on a basic strategy realy.

At the same time, the US will try to take the role of an outside observer, against the backdrop of the EU being gradually drawn into the war. It is clear that the plans for ending the war include a maximally weakened Europe, capital, industry, labor and intellectual resources that have fled to the USA, plus loans for the restoration and further enslavement of the Old World. All this will act as a multiplier - one dollar for the USA will turn into many times more. In general, only advantages for America. At least at first glance.

I have to once again protest this idea that industry from EU can simply move to the US as if this is some Paradox HOI4 multiplayer session lol.

Labour moving to the US? With how the same Trump tries to push the anti-immigration sentiment are we actualy believing Americans will sit idle while some Frenchman dipshit gets a high skill/high paying job while the white poor/middle class continues to work on Wallmart?

Absolutely no. On the other hand I can agree the EU is weaker as this is quite obvious, economically though the entire world did not recover from COVID or the early '22 inflation and the recession is masked by the media regurgitating neoliberal talking points from the Fed, along with absurd "data" that is fudged for a narrative. As far as the media was concerned, if you remember, the Fed won the war against inflation. Just ask Biden how that victory tastes like.

Never forget April 2022. Russia was about to sign a peace deal, they wanted a peace deal, Ukraine also wanted a peace deal. Someone needs to ask Zelensky what made him change from his early days, he was literaly the guy begging for peace. Ask these dipshits whats different from March 2022. The difference is Boris met with the Nazi who thought he would win and then 500k-1 million people died because of it.

As usual it seems history began on February 2022 January 2025 this time around.