SeeingRed [he/him]

Definitely interesting to see. I’d be curious how this compares to the total wheat trade between the two countries and other trading partners, how that’s changing over time, and why it’s specifically happening now. Is this due to old agreements being unnecessary due to increased domestic production? Is this due to the global market favouring wheat purchases from other countries? Is there just less demand due to some other reason? There is the throwaway line about China being able to source from others, but no indication of who or why.

Obviously this is just Bloomberg so they’re not going to dig into these sorts of things as they only care about the changes in prices for the sake of investors.

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I noticed the odd way that online language learning experts called for CI but rarely talked about how to get there with only side comments on graded content. Especially the ones that profess no formal study or flash card use is needed to gain a foothold. There being a dialectic is probably the best way to think about this. CI seems like it’s good in principle, but it would be useless if you can’t find perfectly targeted content (which is hard to do before having a strong understanding). Incredibly put together post!

I’m still in the early stages for my own journey and am working primarily on gaining the vocab and grammar (reading the hanzi because I was being overly reliant on pinyin). I really need to work more on listening. I tried a tone listening test and failed spectacularly, and I thought I was doing ok.

Anki is great, but it’s usefulness is limited. It’s great for cramming words into the brain in a way that sticks well (hanzi, basic meaning, pronunciation, tone) but it’s terrible at learning context without a lot of other work (sentence mining is apparently good, but similar to CI needs significant prior understanding of the language, and it’s not trivial to undertake the work). I’ve found some really great decks to provide variety to the study, but Ive found having too many decks becomes daunting and stressful.

It’s so nice to read these missives. They are so inspiring and the positive messages feel so genuine. The challenges are acknowledged, but they are not used in a decisive way.

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This is a great resource. Definitely saving this for later.

It’s interesting to see the World Bank data with increasing share of income for the poorest segments of their society.

The data older than 2010 though shows the trends were not always so positive. Glad to see that they were able to make a turnabout and are on a good pathway right now. Long way to go, but their plans have paid off and things are on the up.

The Soviet Union saved one of my Great Uncles from a concentration camp. Not quite the same, but I appreciate them none the less.

I attended one of the many rallies for Palestine today. The turnout keeps growing and the language more revolutionary.

This is also to say nothing of the selling off of large amounts of Ukrainian assets at an accelerated rate as well. Which will directly and indirectly impact the lives of Ukrainians for a very long time.

They say the quiet part under the auspices of satire. Truely doing good work.

I genuinely recommend reading the book, it won’t take you that long.

Key points I got are:

1. Summary of the US policy toward Russia post USSR up to present

2. There is a history of NATO moving east, and also a history of US weapons testing near the border and backing out of nuclear and arms treaties.

3. Preliminary integration of Ukraine military and economy prior to any admittance into NATO, effectively making them an arm of NATO without formal admission

4. A bunch of other history which contextualizes things. Seriously good extra context if you are not familiar with the history.

5. Ultimately, the US and NATO are far more at fault for the tensions that led to the current crisis.

The only thing I could think of would be him trying to get Ben’s visa revoked. China has pretty strict non-criminal record requirements on their visas (at least on work visa, not sure about other types).

It’s incredible and depressing how the “no difference” category has shrunk over time. Shows at least the poll takers are unable to see any alternatives.

The image shows data from April.

In may Germany entered Recession: https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/germany-enters-recession-2023-05-25/

While the G7/EU other countries may have mostly technically avoided recession, they have only done so barely so far.

The gun is a metaphor for, among other things, US backed coups. Sanctions against Cuba are another example.

This is an old meme format where the foreground character shoots the background character, then blames the flaws of the background character on something unrelated to being shot.

Goodbye Petrodollar, history will not miss you.

It’s a ways to go still, but this is a promising sign.