In Domino Theory, Mark Simon (ex-Apple Daily) gets polemical on Beijing’s problems with foreign (and domestic) women leaders…
In recent decades, the CCP’s leadership and propaganda machine have unleashed misogyny against female leaders, from the Philippines’ Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, and especially Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文). The latest target for what I call the “Archie Bunker treatment” — after the bigoted TV patriarch — [is] Sanae Takaichi, who was elected leader of the Liberal Democratic Party earlier this month and is poised to become Japan’s first female prime minister.
China’s domestic politics offer no counterbalance. Women are scarce in high government roles, with CCP leadership resembling a 1950s Klan rally in its uniformity. While a few women rose in the last two decades, today no female heavyweight graces the Politburo, a stark regression from even token representation. This cadre of unenlightened men, steeped in authoritarianism, fuels a propaganda apparatus that sabotages goodwill with foreign counterparts.
More for fans of AI skepticism, from Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing and ‘Enshittification’ fame…
…the AI bubble is driven by monopolists who’ve conquered their markets and have no more growth potential, who are desperate to convince investors that they can continue to grow by moving into some other sector, e.g. “pivot to video,” crypto, blockchain, NFTs, AI, and now “super-intelligence.” Further: the topline growth that AI companies are selling comes from replacing most workers with AI, and re-tasking the surviving workers as AI babysitters … AI cannot do your job, but an AI salesman can 100% convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can’t do your job, and when the bubble bursts, the money-hemorrhaging “foundation models” will be shut off and we’ll lose the AI that can’t do your job, and you will be long gone, retrained or retired or “discouraged” and out of the labor market, and no one will do your job. AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society and our descendants will be digging it out for generations…
The only thing … that we can do about this is to puncture the AI bubble as soon as possible, to halt this before it progresses any further and to head off the accumulation of social and economic debt. To do that, we have to take aim at the material basis for the AI bubble (creating a growth story by claiming that defective AI can do your job).
A (paywalled) WSJ column quoted in the piece says…
The windswept town of Ellendale, N.D., population 1,100, has two motels, a Dollar General, a Pentecostal Bible college—and a half-built AI factory bigger than 10 Home Depots.
Its more than $15 billion price tag is equivalent to a quarter of the state’s annual economic output.
The artificial-intelligence boom has ushered in one of the costliest building sprees in world history. Over the past three years, leading tech firms have committed more toward AI data centers like the one in Ellendale, plus chips and energy, than it cost to build the interstate highway system over four decades, when adjusted for inflation. AI proponents liken the effort to the Industrial Revolution.
What’s interesting is that Ms. Takaichi isn’t particularly viewed as “one of us” by many Japanese women. She’s seen as a “Trump-like” demagogue-in-(designer) sheep’s-clothing who could very well set back any gains women or any other marginalized group made in Japan against misogynistic, societally stunting policies and the culturally entrenched men’s club mentality.
She’s basically there to put some lipstick on the LDP pig and as a vessel to move an agenda, much like Trump is nothing but a temporary burden for the Project 2025 gang who want to see the (not United) States become an all encompassing “Christofascist”, white supremacist nation in the mold of turn of the 20th century America.
Hemmers, it’s not just Cory Doctorow, Bloomberg had a flowchart today that could have been copy-pasted from the Ed Zitron blogpost that you shared recently. FT also has been making rumblings about AI bubbles. It may be too late for HK to be an AI bubble-hub if they dont get building.
PS I am sure Broom Head would volunteer to be a female heavyweight up north if given the chance
Is it just me or does the fragrant Japanese politico, Ms Takaichi, bear an uncanny resemblance to Mr. Spock?
I am aware that some of the more sensitive amongst you might regard my question as misogynistic, but it is what it is.
Red Dragon–I’m one of the more sensitive souls hereabouts, and you’re right. You’re talking pure physiognomy. No harm, no foul. Can’t quite see her ears, though.
Alternatively a younger Madame Macron
@Chinese Netizen
I figured that Takaichi is another Margaret Thatcher. I’m not sure if that’s better or worse than Trump, though both are known for being right wing assholes.
What you lay out in the second paragraph does indeed sound like the playbook however.