amn't is absolutely a word. It's the standard contraction of "am not" in Hiberno-English. Wiktionary says it's used in Scotland as well: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/amn't
> I'm always surprised how little interest there seems to be from the international muslim community in the Xinjiang situation, given that at least parts of it really blow up over even minor anti-Islam actions by single individuals quite regularly.
You're not imagining this — Muslim countries support China. See this map of a UN vote to condemn China's treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang[1]. You'll notice that every Muslim country that didn't abstain defended China. In fact the only countries that condemned China are countries that are militarily allied with the United States.
If you look at any of the "NGOs" that push the narrative that China is oppressing Muslims in Xinjiang, every single one of them is funded either by the National Endowment for Democracy[2][3][4] (an arm of the US State Department notorious for pushing regime change in countries the US doesn't like) or the Australian Strategic Policy Initiative, which in turn is sponsored by several US arms manufacturers[5], such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, etc. — all of whom would profit massively from a war with China, for which this narrative is manufacturing consent.
Even the site that spawned this discussion seems to be associated with Adrian Zenz. A lot of the claims in Xinjiang can be traced back to his "work". He's a fundamentalist Christian bigot, is a fellow at the "Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation" and claims to have been sent on a mission by God himself to destroy the Communist Party of China. His "work" has been thoroughly debunked many times over.[6]
Frankly, the narrative is bullshit. The Muslim world that has suffered massively at the hands of US imperialism can see right through it and votes accordingly. China has never invaded or bombed any Muslim country. The US has no credibility in the Muslim world.
Check out XY Tech who build and distribute modified ThinkPads. Xue Yao, the person behind it, intends to build a motherboard that will fit into an X220 case soon, possibly this year.
I bought an "X2100" (a ThinkPad X200 with a 10th-gen Intel CPU) from him in 2020 and it's been fantastic.
China is actually interested in helping people in Afghanistan. They sent aid[1] during the winter crisis and they have called for the return of the assets of the Afghan people that have been stolen by the United States[2].
It's a completely fair question to ask what is the Chinese justification.
I found this documentary[1] by CGTN about the recent history of extremism and terrorist attacks in Xinjiang to be useful in outlining some of the context for this.
These terrorist attacks were a real problem and have resulted in the deaths of over 1000 civilians (including Uyghurs). China's argument is basically their re-education "camps" are an attempt to address the underlying causes of this, which is basically economic under-development, lack of education and job opportunities. So China basically identified the people who were involved in these groups and susceptible to radicalisation by them, and set up these schools for them which would teach them skills, including Mandarin, that would help find decent jobs that could provide for them and their families, which eliminates the underlying material basis of the support from some parts of the population that the terrorists may have had.
Having said that, there is still a huge discrepancy in what China says it's doing and what the west claims it's doing. Western sources claim that these are actually "concentration camps" and that there are as many as one or even two million Uyghurs interred there. These allegations are dubious for a number of reasons, but that's a topic for a different post.
Like I said, your question is the right question: what is the Chinese justification for this? And I think it's fair to say their answer is at least plausible on the surface of things and internally consistent. But it leads us to another question: if the claims of western sources of one million plus Uyghurs in "concentration camps" are true, then how does the west explain China's motive for that? China isn't stupid. Why would it put 10% of the population of an entire province in a concentration camp? Are they just that cartoonishly evil? It doesn't really add up to me.
> Writing my own docx parser? Sure, that will be one mythical man century of work.
I'm not sure that's actually a great example. I had a project a while ago where I needed to extract certain information from Word and Excel files, and it was less work to just write my own parser (it's just XML in a ZIP file) that got exactly the information I needed than to figure out all the complexity of using a full-blown docx/xlsx parser. It ended up being 100 lines of Haskell, and half of that was imports.
Okay, I think we can all agree this guy is an asshole, and surely doesn't represent the views of most techies in San Francisco, right?
Obviously it's fucked that so many people are homeless in San Francisco. Everybody blames us (techies with loads of money) for the homeless problem because we gentrifying the shit out of the place with all our money. And then this guy comes out and says this shit, and that only reinforces the narrative that we're the problem. And that's shit for us.
But why don't we do something about it? We don't want to be seen as the cause of the homeless problem, and surely we don't want assholes like this speaking for us. But people are right that we are rich compares to most people. Why not use this as an opportunity to show people that we can be part of the solution? Being rich doesn't have to make us evil, and anyway what's the point of being rich if we can't use our wealth to help the people who need it?
And it's not just our wealth: what about our skills? Take Homes Not Jails, for example. They're one organisation off the top of my head that does work that directly houses homeless people. They're renowned by squatters all over the world for the work they do to get homes for homeless people in San Francisco. But I just checked, and it looks like their website (http://homesnotjailssf.org/) is down? Surely one of us techies could get in contact with them and offer to help fix their website, or even just pay their hosting costs and domain name renewal for a few years? I've been involved in organisations like that and that kind of stuff can be a real hassle.
I'm sure there are countless grassroots organisations like this that are already working to help homeless people that probably don't even have proper websites and shit, that desperately need money. Fuck this guy, it's not worth wasting our time arguing over his stupid words. Let's show people that he doesn't represent us with our actions!
> If you want real understanding of music in a useful way for real people, I recommend Bob Snyder's book "Music and Memory: An Introduction" which was actually written to teach creative artistic people about how music actually works rather than how aristocratic European music notation works.
Thank you! I've long been suspicious of so-called music theory for exactly the reasons you outline. I always wanted to learn more about music and why it "works" as you say, so I assumed what I wanted to learn was music theory, but then when I tried to learn it it didn't seem to explain any of the things I was looking for. I'll have to check out that book.
Communism is not the opposite of individualism, that's nonsense. Have a look at "The Right to be Greedy: Theses on the Practical Necessity of Demanding Everything". Greed in its fullest sense is the only possible basis for a communist society.
No, not at all. I would argue that one implies the other. Historically, and still to this day in much of Europe, the term "libertarianism" is a synonym for anarchism, i.e., libertarian communism.
I completely agree, except I am advocating shoplifting. I also wish there were more hackers who would use their lockpicking skills for more than just recreation. I feel like the idea that “hacking” can only be motivated by pure curiousity, and not by anything political or in any way threatening, is an idea that serves the interests of the people in power. They don't want us to think about or analyse our political situation, or to try to change it; they would rather divert our attention and our abilities towards solving rather pointless puzzles, which at best are inconsequential, or at worst just make them even more money.
Shoplifting can be a bit of an art. I agree with you that the “hacking” thing is overused, but I think it makes sense to call something like booster bags a “hack”, for example. There are lots of “hacks” for shoplifting.
Could you explain to my why being “anti-GMO” necessarily implies being “anti-science”? What definitions of “GMO” and “science” are you using to make that proposition true?
I actually am anti-science, in the sense of “science-as-religion”. The comment I originally replied to is a good example of what I'm talking about: being anti-science is blasphemous, it's heretical. I'm against this kind of nonsense. Not that I think it necessarily is, but so what if being anti-GMOs is anti-science? What's the problem with that? We should be able to have a frank discussion about the merits of GMOs and indeed of science, but we can't, because science is a religion, and you get denounced as a heretic if you criticise its underlying assumptions.
My own position on genetic engineering is that I'm not inherently against it in an abstract way, but I'm against almost all of “actually existing” genetic engineering. Most of the debates about genetic engineering focus on whether or not genetically engineered crops are safe, or whether they provide better nutrition, but I think these are distractions from the real issue. The issue is about control: whether farmers save and choose their own seeds, or whether they must get them every year from a corporation.