• turgidanklebrace [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    3 days ago

    https://asiatimes.com/2025/11/chinas-people-are-on-a-grueling-treadmill/

    He is truly just mad about Hasan having a good time in China and representing it in a positive light to people in the west. Because, of course, his neoliberal project is threatened by exposure to people living well elsewhere.

    I do think it’s remarkably telling the tone shift he makes between his shitty articles and tweets. He can’t help but implicitly frame Hasan’s visit in sexual terms once he’s no longer bound by editorial review. Does something about the charismatic, himbo muslim disturb and anger the slopconimist?

  • space_comrade [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 days ago

    I absolutely love how mad Hasan’s trip to China made people. My twitter feed for the past week or so has been filled with blue checkmarks pissing and moaning about it non stop.

    • miz [any, any]@hexbear.net
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      3 days ago

      such bad faith bullshit. his whole argument gets destroyed and his response amounts to “everyone is a sexpat but do you really think someone could believe in something?”

      • alexei_1917 [mirror/your pronouns]@hexbear.net
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        3 days ago

        I mean, I’m not into guys, so I really can’t tell when a guy is hot, but, like, why are all the commies hot? Every historical revolutionary leader (I don’t understand the thing about young Stalin, but I can objectively admit that in the post Great Patriotic War period, he looked like someone’s dad in the most handsome and huggable way), and nowadays guys like this.

      • VOLCEL_POLICE [it/its]@hexbear.netB
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        3 days ago

        The VOLCEL POLICE are on the scene! PLEASE KEEP YOUR VITAL ESSENCES TO YOURSELVES AT ALL TIMES.

        نحن شرطة VolCel.بناءا على تعليمات الهيئة لترويج لألعاب الفيديو و النهي عن الجنس نرجوا الإبتعاد عن أي أفكار جنسية و الحفاظ على حيواناتكم المنويَّة حتى يوم الحساب. اتقوا الله، إنك لا تراه لكنه يراك.

        volcel-police

  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    3 days ago

    Oh passport bro means something like sex tourist?

    Is China even known for sex pest tourism? I know Hong Kong is, or it used to be. I mean I’m a dumb western doofus but I’d imagine the sex pests going to Asia are mostly going to Thailand and the Philippines, not China.

    • Also clueless Westerner, but I don’t think so. I think this is equating being horny for women in a country as the main cause of “going native” as the imperialist narratives go. Usually a lot of sex tourism involves exploiting relative desperation and poverty. Which isn’t the case for most of modern China.

      • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        3 days ago

        This is anecdotal but the only Amerikkkan I know who emigrated to China for ideological reasons was Ian Goodrum, and he ended up working for the English version of China Daily. Every other Amerikkkan seems to go there because they think they’re going to get rich off making phone apps or whatever.

        In fact people moving to different countries for purely ideological reasons is probably the rarest type of expatriation

        • alexei_1917 [mirror/your pronouns]@hexbear.net
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          3 days ago

          This is funny in a historical context, because a lot of Western folks went to the USSR for ideological reasons back in the day. And if it still existed, that would absolutely still be happening.

            • alexei_1917 [mirror/your pronouns]@hexbear.net
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              3 days ago

              At most it gets written off as “well, women’s rights in the US were terrible, the USSR promised women better despite that being debatably actually true, most of those people were just American women fleeing the conditions of almost every country at the time, they wouldn’t have done it if they were men and the US economy wasn’t in a once in a lifetime crash”. Without ever talking about the other Western countries people fled to the USSR from. Or the men who went in similar numbers, at least when we consider only the people who went because they were socialists and wanted to contribute to building socialism. (I’m absolutely willing to believe Western women who weren’t communists went to the USSR simply because they were told by socialist women that it was less patrarchical, or at least trying to be, than any Western country at the time.)

              And then we look past the 20s and 30s surge as the first Red Scare spiraled out of control, to the end of the Great Patriotic War and the Cold War truly beginning in earnest, and… You hear every story of folks from Warsaw Pact nations defeating to the West. But the stories of all the people who defected to the Soviet Union? You don’t hear a single one. It happened, but you don’t hear about it.

            • alexei_1917 [mirror/your pronouns]@hexbear.net
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              3 days ago

              Honestly, so would I. Part of me really doesn’t want to just show up on some foreign communist party’s proverbial doorstep and take advantage of someone else’s revolution, you know, but in the context of an on-going Cold War and siege socialism, I’d be fighting for it the same as anyone else there, and for some weird reason, I’m theoretically a lot more comfortable showing up on the USSR’s ideological doorstep than anywhere else that ever claimed to be socialist.

  • sewer_rat_420 [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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    3 days ago

    Also, I imagine they are talking about Hasan, but how is he a “passport bro” in this scenario because don’t many other countries have 90 day visa free stays with China but America does not?

    • spectre [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      3 days ago

      I think they recently started to allow it

      Nonetheless Hasan travels like once a year, so I guess “passport bro” === “bro who possesses a passport”

      • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        3 days ago

        Oh really? I’ve been meaning to visit China again but it was a little intense the first time, and that was pre-covid, in 2018. Having an easier time visiting China sounds like a dream.

        • miz [any, any]@hexbear.net
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          3 days ago

          the only visa free waiver for amerikkkans right now is the 10-day transit waiver, but you have to fly out on a segment to a different country than you came from (not that hard, but means a layover).

          p.s. I apologize for implying you might be amerikkkan if you are not amerikkkan

          • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            3 days ago

            I am unfortunately a Yeehaw but I’m doing my best. Each day I salute a portrait of Lenin.

            Well since I am Amerikkkan I have very little vacation time anyway, so maybe 10 days would be enough? I could maybe fly back through Mexico or Canada.

            I just wanna visit China again, it’s so chill. Shenzhen is one of my favorite places on earth.

            • miz [any, any]@hexbear.net
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              3 days ago

              depending on where your USA airport is, I would recommend a stop in Tokyo on the way back instead of stopping in North America. lots of flights and it’s a great place for a quick food-focused layover (especially if you can land and take off in Haneda which is much closer to the city). 20 mins from Haneda you can be eating top tier ramen

  • miz [any, any]@hexbear.net
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    3 days ago

    one of the most empty-headed assholes on twitter. (a very high bar to clear). is either paid CIA or bourgeois enough and brainwormed enough to do it for free

    • WokePalpatine [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      2 days ago

      He’s a failson that keeps falling upwards. He was pretty disliked by the other teachers at Stony Brook (SUNY) that he somehow got an assistant professor job in the business side (and tellingly not the economics side). Somehow got a job offer to do an opinion column for Bloomberg (again, tellingly not actual economics reporting, but just his feeling on them). I wish I bookmarked the public goodbye letter he left for the school faculty when he got this job offer to Bloomberg. Says the right things to keep failing upwards, I guess, since there’s no punishment for being a wrong economist.