Link Choi

"In the days after the war, the Captain and his company travelled from place to place. They put on shows they didn't like, for people who didn't care." #sketch #workinprogress #picturebook

@JoshuaLisec I saw your post yesterday, now I see that syntax everywhere.

The reason we hate this particular tell of A.I. is the template goes like this: “It’s not just [this vague thing it obviously is]; it’s [this other vague thing it obviously is as well].” No new information is being conveyed.

@MTGraveStudio That premise is stone cold! Can't wait.

Most horror films are about surviving something. EXILED is about what happens when no one acknowledges you in the first place. No screaming. No chase. Just a community deciding you don’t exist. And the consequences of that choice. I’m making this film independently, building it piece by piece. If that idea hits something in you, you might want to follow this closely. Email subscribers get early access, exclusive content, and a chance to step inside the film. Sign up here: mtgravestudio.com

@MTGraveStudio @mikeastahl Congrats!

@mikeastahl I'll be 38 directing my first feature in October

George Miller was an ER doctor when he made Mad Max. He was 32. He took emergency calls when he wasn't shooting. John Singleton was 24 when Boyz n the Hood got him an Oscar nomination. He holds the record as the youngest person ever nominated for Best Director. Ridley Scott was 40 when he directed his first feature. Your age doesn't matter. You start when you start.

@cremieuxrecueil That's a great explanation of striverism. Really makes me see a familiar thing in a fresh and clear way

Hear, hear. I think this whole debate is irksome and I won't be wading into it except to make some clarifications. --- 'Asians aren't strivers, they're actually just better. The evidence? They do more sports and other extracurriculars, too.' This does not indicate being better or a lack of striving. Everyone knows that schools look at criteria besides your grades and test scores, including extracurriculars, so striver students invest in those things, too. If you need any proof that these are not an invariant comparison, look at the data from SFFA v. Harvard: despite their allegedly higher rates of engagement in athletics, Asians were accepted less on athletic scholarships. So, either they do worse in sports, they do different sports, or Harvard was discriminating in sports, too. The truth is likely about mix and discrimination (although there's no race interaction apparent in the data). Asians stereotypically participate in sports that are less lucrative for schools, but which are good for resume-padding, such as tennis. They are also often pushed to play an instrument, like the violin or piano, and this usually doesn't result in anything impressive, but it is another element of resume-padding. Noting these things does nothing to militate against the notion that Asians are involved in perpetuating grindset culture. --- 'No one hates on Tom Brady or Michael Jordan for being obsessed with the game. People are just being anti-Asian.' Tom Brady and Michael Jordan were at the bleeding edges of their respective fields. Their striving pushes the quality of the game along, it is not zero-sum in the same sense that striverism is. Striverism has to do with the zero-sum competition that happens in education, where people are working towards a fixed model of perfection rather than innovating. Striverism is not synonymous with 'trying hard/harder', it is putting your nose to the grindstone when we all already know the epitome of achievement. Think of it this way: Feng Zhang is obviously Asian, and he innovated at the bleeding edge. Do people revile him because he strived for excellence? No. They recognize that sleeping in your lab to discover CRISPR is not the same as memorizing your textbook for ten hours a day. People do not hate innovators or people who are just generally committed in their studies and work, they hate people who seek to achieve a set norm and are competing in a necessarily completely zero-sum way. --- Absolutely no one is saying Asians are bad because they work hard or because they succeed in their studies. That's a red herring and it distracts from the genuinely valuable things that can be said in this discussion, the real criticisms and defenses of potentially stifling, striver cultural values and the ways they impact the world (which are often very bad! See: Gaokao cheating; academic fraud rates; etc.). Let's remember some ancient Chinese wisdom on this topic: "Those who write today write solely for examination success, without any concern for moral principle." - Han Yu "I urge Heaven to rouse itself again and send down talent without fixed patterns." - Gong Zizhen "The examinations select officials only for their ability to memorize phrases and passages." - Huang Zongxi "The imperial examination system poisoned the Chinese spirit more deeply than anything else." - Lu Xun "The eight-legged essay is worse than the book burning of Qin Shi Huang and his burying alive of 460 Confucian scholars." - Gu Yanwu "A healthy society cannot come about when people study not for the purpose of gaining wisdom and knowledge but for the purpose of becoming government officials." - Ye Shi "Virtue could not be assessed by examinations." - Cheng Hao (Side note: though exams are our only generally unbiased tools for comparing students, if they're gamed, they become biased. Relatedly, see: cremieux.xyz/p/what-happens…) There are many more quotes like these from scholars like Wang Anshi, Su Shi, Cheng Hao, Zhou Jin, Fan Jin, and even the Qianlong Emperor (Hongli). Though the keju was fair, it promoted a type of scholar that people disdained, a type of scholar who strived to ace the exam and to showcase that they could do all of the things generally expected of them, rather than to be truly excellent and exceptional. --- I hope--in futility--that people will not make such weak points or misrepresent people's views on this topic any longer.

@SoCalJalepeno @ScottAdamsSays @ZiaErica @OwenGregorian @MarcelaMarjean @SergioInTucson ☕

“The universe has been here for 13/14 billion years and you were lucky enough to be alive at the exact time that the simultaneous sip was invented” @ScottAdamsSays @ZiaErica @OwenGregorian @MarcelaMarjean @SergioInTucson

@MsMelChen Agree with your point. I'll add that in the new perfected Hong Kong SAR, anything coming out of SCMP should be seasoned with a grain of salt and then thrown in the trash.

There needs to be a reckoning of this crazy idea that, prima facie, doesn't even make sense until you realize that it is borne out of actual Western ethnocentrism and wishful thinking: that as a nation achieves economic growth and modernization (through industrialization, urbanization, education, and wealth accumulation), they naturally progress toward democratic governance. The scandal isn't that it was wrong. The scandal is how the hell it became so embedded in Western intellectual and institutional frameworks that it became taken as true and remained completely unquestioned for 70 years. I knew better, but it wasn't because I was smarter. The reason I was early in NOTICING and sounding the alarm on the true face of the CCP since 2018 was because I grew up in Singapore where I saw GDP per capita skyrocket in my lifetime, with no resulting changes in political freedoms. I also knew that the Eastern cultural mindset was distinct as it prioritizes different values and desires than the West does. In other words, this orthodoxy, which undergirded Western foreign policy for GENERATIONS, was a result of the West projecting its own cultural norms, values and experiences as if it were universal. It presumed, erroneously, that people everywhere fundamentally value individualism, democratic governance, and market-driven progress above all else. In reality, other societies prioritized different things like stability, order, collectivism, religious authority, tribal loyalties, or historical grievances. America's foreign policy establishment proceeded to pursue actions that were based on the false premise that promoting economic liberalization was an effective tool to fostering democracy. Economists, political scientists, policymakers, business leaders and journalists were all steeped in the same myopia. This mind virus was super-spreaded globally via organizations like the World Bank, IMF, and OECD. These bodies conditioned loans and aid on market-oriented reforms (e.g., privatization, deregulation), assuming political liberalization would follow as a byproduct. Universities lionized them, think tanks kept inviting them to speak, and to date, the same institutions that imposed shock therapy on Russia, structural adjustment on Africa, and “China will become like us” fantasies continue to face no reckoning when their predictions spectacularly failed and led us to this mess. Will the architects of this strategic disaster pay at all? Probably not. For the sake of all of us though, we need to understand who they were, and how this blindspot became so tacitly accepted as the truth without any proof whatsoever. More disturbingly: how we were able to hinge such consequential decisions on nothing more than a hypothesis about how the world works? This is by far, the most profound miscalculation of the 20th century. And we're now in the 21st living with the consequences of it. It turns out that liberal democracy's survival depended more on wealth than its emergence from growth alone, and that authoritarian regimes adapted to use markets for control rather than yielding to liberalization. It was easy for communism to collapse when it had to deal with its own internal contradictions. Now, we have rich commies, and their youth reject what the West is selling. The West only has itself to blame.

@prestonstew_ How are they affording to make these?

700+ munitions fired by Russia into Ukraine overnight. The volume here is staggering and increasing by the week

@erikdstebbins @louperez Insult to injury

@louperez Icing on the dumpster cake is the tagline for Sky at the end.

Did anyone know they were remaking Amadeus? Did even the cast and crew know?

@aniobrien It's reassuring to see adults in the house. Great speech.

Today Casey Costello used general debate to call out Benjamin Doyle for his “insulting” final speech. It’s worth s watch.

@CrazyVibes_1 That man IS changing the world 👍👍

"I witnessed this sanitation employee return a trash can to the side door of an elderly lady's home this morning. After speaking with her, I learned her mobility is limited and this man does this for her every week. It may seem so insignificant to you or me, but to her it's greatly appreciated! Small acts of kindness, such as this, will not change the world, but it changes her world. I didn't get your name sir, but you are awesome!" 💙 Credits: Teresa Headley

@kevinlee_gate Households do it too. The point of the tape is not to prevent breaking but to reduce flying glass IF the pane gets hit. Probably less relevant now because of better glass and less debris. Not sad, just folks in a typhoon prone area trying their best to live.

Shops taping their windows for typhoons... That is Hong Kong for you. Is it useful? Absolutely not. Is it stupid? Well, not as stupid as it sounds, but it is a classic psychological fallacy. 👉 There are only two possible outcomes: the windows break, or they do not. 👉 There are only two possible actions: tape the windows, or do not. So there are only four possible combinations: 1️⃣ You taped the windows and they did not break => Maybe it worked, maybe it did not. 2️⃣ You did not tape the windows and they did not break => Maybe the typhoon just was not strong enough. We will never know. 3️⃣ You taped the windows and they still broke => Well, guess we did our best. 4️⃣ You did not tape the windows and they broke => I TOLD YOU SO, SEE, YOU SHOULD HAVE TAPED THE WINDOWS, I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU DID NOT FOLLOW THIS TOTALLY SCIENTIFIC UNPROVEN METHOD LIKE EVERYONE ELSE. So if you tape the windows, you have a 100% certain chance to avoid blame. If you do not tape them, you risk getting screwed over. It is risk aversion at its finest: not about being right, but about not being accountable for being wrong. It is not stupid. It is just sad. Perfect middle-management mindset. For the rest of you, stay safe in Hong Kong!

@AdameMedia Seek Jesus

Romans 12:21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

The people who join Internet mobs to punish “Karens”… …are Karens.

@BridgetPhetasy It's like listening to an 18-year old who discovered Communism yesterday and can't wait to tell you all about it.

You can criticize American recovery programs without handing it to the Taliban.

My favorite thing is showing videos of podcasters who have gone insane to my husband @justjeren and watching his reaction

@jimthegiant @KonstantinKisin @triggerpod Good on you, Jimmy. 👍👍👍

Yo @KonstantinKisin I had some time to reflect on the whole @triggerpod thing

@realMaalouf What do the scissors mean?

Syrian Islamists in Germany CELEBRATE the massacres of Druze and Christians in Syria. Over a thousand Druze and Christians have now been murdered in the most barbaric ways: children were beheaded, the elderly burned alive, women kidnapped as sex slaves. Europe has imported one million of these Islamists as ‘refugees’.

@aniobrien I hate the media blob who keep half of the country in fear and anxiety with their lies. x.com/XVanFleet/stat…

Looking at images of "No King" protests across America and I am struck that they are dominated by a particular demographic: older white people. Why does Trump's own demographic appear to hate him more than everyone else?

@AlinejadMasih Get well soon!

I recently underwent surgery for a women’s health issue, and unfortunately, post-operative complications have made the recovery far from easy. Although I had already shared the news on Instagram, many of you continued to reach out with concern and I’m deeply touched. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who checked in, sent messages, and offered their kindness and empathy. Your love and support have helped me get through these incredibly painful days. I truly feel the power of your presence, even from afar. With gratitude, always. ❤️🌻

@i_am_semesta @creepydotorg Every time! It'll be a prequel with the cannibals gangster as the hero.

I would trade the entire ‘Fast and Furious’ franchise for just a part two of this movie. Who’s with me?