Redditshill

I think my experience and satisfaction with Facebook has steadily decreased in a linear relationship with how many friends I have on my friends list. My guess is because:

1) the more friends I add, the more likely I am to add that guy on Facebook. The guy who always posts very annoying political posts, or the guy who posts very smug+condescending posts.

2) I find myself comparing with my friends, especially when they post pics of them on vacation or news of some promotion.

3) I spend too much time worrying about how to curate posts and post stuff that a. impresses people and b. doesn't offend anyone.

I probably just care too much what others think, but that's my 2c.

I know it's not exactly the same thing, but reminds me of this video from a while back:

This App Turns Your Photos into Music If You Want to Do That For Some Reason: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpNgsU9o4ik

Agreed that the post length limit shouldn't be removed. However, I am fine with a limited number of tweets instead. Perhaps not by day, since some days there are so many newsworthy events that there might be a lot of possible quality tweets. Maybe a weekly limit? Just something to discourage someone from spamming.

I'm not sure how you define threaten, but I think that firing missiles over the island during election season (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Taiwan_Strait_Crisis) definitely counts as a threatening act. China has made so many threats about taking back Taiwan by force that I don't know how anybody could miss it. It's one thing to think that ROC is part of PRC (it's not), but it's another level of stubbornness to think that Taiwan is not threatened by Mainland China.

Exactly -- any claim that mainland China (PRC) has over Taiwan (ROC), Taiwan could make that same claim over China. We don't see the US making a claim that UK is part of the US, it's simply ridiculous.

Thanks for sharing that -- I think it's a good reminder to not stereotype an entire company. Also, it's also a reminder that this scandal is unfortunate for all of those at Uber who aren't like this and still have to deal with the barrage of bad press and accusations from everyone from the media to those around them (friends, neighbors).

Exactly! With Stephon Marbury getting his own statue and museum in Beijing, I really think people's mindset will change.

From my comments earlier in the thread it's pretty clear that I understand why many Chinese have the viewpoint that outside influence is bad. However, I think your viewpoint is way too extreme. China isn't some passive country now that is just sitting around being attacked by extremists/freedom fighters, but China is actively making aggressive moves towards many other countries. For example, China has threatened Taiwan many times, which is completely unacceptable in my eyes.

I agree that racism is racism, but there is a clear distinction for me between having certain preconceptions about people you've never met before versus having heavy bias against people that you encounter on an every day basis (thus heavily supporting a confirmation bias). Is one better than the other? I'm not going to try to argue that but I think it's necessary to distinguish between the two in order to better understand who you are dealing with.

Those are valid points, and I admit that having close Chinese friends have probably biased my thinking on this a bit. I still believe in my main point of the Chinese needing some time/exposure to the West in order to truly change their mindset towards the West.

Very long read. TBH I only read the beginning and end carefully, and skimmed through the middle...200? pages.

What really stuck out to me was this line that explains how racism benefits the Chinese government: "First, the Han Chinese possess a strong in group identity with a polarized and tightly defined out group. This allows the Chinese government to expect sacrifice and as well as support from the considerable majority of the Chinese people."

Perhaps a lot of these attitudes come from how in many Chinese people's eyes, their golden years were when they had very little outside influence and were able to invent some of the most useful inventions in human history (compass, paper, gunpowder). From the time that they have mixed with the West, they have had some very negative experiences, (as the report brings up, the Opium wars, burning of the palace). Perhaps their attitudes will change slowly now. In my experiences, racism is something that is slowly taught/instilled, and so I don't expect any easy reversal.

As skeptical as I am with Uber, I'm still hoping that something will come up with the investigation. It also encourages me that more people are speaking up. The more bad press they get, the more pressure they'll have to have their "investigations" result in some discipline.