he locked up a lot of people during the cultural revolution sometimes for quite arbitrary reasons
He was not the one who signed arrest orders or ran trials though, a lot of different people were involved in that. You can’t blame Mao as an individual for stuff that other people did. You can’t run an entire state with just one person.
the backyard steel and culling of the sparrows
Nobody in the 60s knew about the importance of sparrows in agriculture. Not even in the West. I think it’s easy to say “oh well duh of course don’t kill the sparrows” but who here among us is an actual farmer? Who here knew that sparrows ate more bugs than grain before it was told to them? I can barely grow a plant, I have no room to judge others when it comes to growing food.
I just didn’t find it to be very relevant to me
I’m an adult in Europe and I find Mao’s writing to be both relevant and applicable. But there is Mao the general and Mao the chairman. By the end of his life he was definitely saying some stuff that I don’t think even he believed in. But theory is an all encompassing body, and that is true in all fields. One couldn’t read one physics paper about gravity and then say “now I know how to launch a rocket to the moon”. I opened up my copy of the red book randomly and here’s one:
“Take the ideas of the masses and concentrate them, then go to the masses, persevere in the ideas and carry them through, so as to form correct ideas and leadership – such is the basic method of leadership”
It makes perfect sense to me, but that’s also because I have the associated baggage to understand what he means there and how that fits in not only to more of Mao’s writings but also in regards to other figures, the ‘best practices’ if you will of organizing.
I also found it really interesting that deepseek would refuse to answer any questions on Mao
The deepseek devs want it to be mainly used for math, coding, and other STEM applications for lack of a better word. There’s nothing wrong with that, in fact personally I think people should stop using LLMs as oracles so much and focus them on tasks instead. Deepseek produces great results (and all for free with no rate limits) if you give it some code to start with, because it needs proper framing of the project to avoid trying to overdo it. I usually start with chatGPT, have it do the first working version of the code, and then switch it to deepseek to finish it, and it works almost perfect on the first try.
I just recently learned that Methyl anthranilate, the artificial grape flavoring, also repels birds and is used heavily by the agro industry nowadays. I imagine because of all the other products they also use they don’t need the birds around anymore.
You can also use old cd-roms tied to a long-ish string btw, the sparkling makes birds stay away.
Meh environmentalists were dismissed and often persecuted in communist countries and generally not taken seriously, sorry I’m not giving them a pass here. Modern China is much better though.
Even if Mao didn’t sign all the arrest warrants and didn’t know what’s going on that doesn’t really absolve him in my eyes.
It’s cool that you find Mao relevant I don’t but that’s just my personal opinion and not a dismissal of the man himself. I forgot the dudes name but there is an American who was in China for most of the revolution and he knew Mao and said there was a huge difference between young and old Mao he definitely became more authoritarian and closed minded as he grew older. I read the little red book 14 years ago so I can’t remember much of it,I just remember not finding a lot of it to be applicable to my life at the time, maybe if I read it now it would be different.
I don’t use LLMs and I don’t code so I never use them. I was just more interested in what deep seek had to had to say about Mao and was suprised it wouldn’t even let you broach the subject. If I ask deep seek to tell me about bill Clinton it will give me a response, if I ask it to tell me about Mao or any Chinese leader for that matter which I find interesting.
Anyways out of all the 20th century revolutionaries Fidel was more my guy but that’s just personal preference I guess. IMO what is worst for socialism is socialist parties being unable to allow themselves to be criticised this was sadly often the case in communist parties.
He was not the one who signed arrest orders or ran trials though, a lot of different people were involved in that. You can’t blame Mao as an individual for stuff that other people did. You can’t run an entire state with just one person.
Nobody in the 60s knew about the importance of sparrows in agriculture. Not even in the West. I think it’s easy to say “oh well duh of course don’t kill the sparrows” but who here among us is an actual farmer? Who here knew that sparrows ate more bugs than grain before it was told to them? I can barely grow a plant, I have no room to judge others when it comes to growing food.
I’m an adult in Europe and I find Mao’s writing to be both relevant and applicable. But there is Mao the general and Mao the chairman. By the end of his life he was definitely saying some stuff that I don’t think even he believed in. But theory is an all encompassing body, and that is true in all fields. One couldn’t read one physics paper about gravity and then say “now I know how to launch a rocket to the moon”. I opened up my copy of the red book randomly and here’s one:
“Take the ideas of the masses and concentrate them, then go to the masses, persevere in the ideas and carry them through, so as to form correct ideas and leadership – such is the basic method of leadership”
It makes perfect sense to me, but that’s also because I have the associated baggage to understand what he means there and how that fits in not only to more of Mao’s writings but also in regards to other figures, the ‘best practices’ if you will of organizing.
The deepseek devs want it to be mainly used for math, coding, and other STEM applications for lack of a better word. There’s nothing wrong with that, in fact personally I think people should stop using LLMs as oracles so much and focus them on tasks instead. Deepseek produces great results (and all for free with no rate limits) if you give it some code to start with, because it needs proper framing of the project to avoid trying to overdo it. I usually start with chatGPT, have it do the first working version of the code, and then switch it to deepseek to finish it, and it works almost perfect on the first try.
I’m a farmer and in my country people use fireworks to scare sparrows away to this day, some even shoot them.
I just recently learned that Methyl anthranilate, the artificial grape flavoring, also repels birds and is used heavily by the agro industry nowadays. I imagine because of all the other products they also use they don’t need the birds around anymore.
You can also use old cd-roms tied to a long-ish string btw, the sparkling makes birds stay away.
Meh environmentalists were dismissed and often persecuted in communist countries and generally not taken seriously, sorry I’m not giving them a pass here. Modern China is much better though. Even if Mao didn’t sign all the arrest warrants and didn’t know what’s going on that doesn’t really absolve him in my eyes.
It’s cool that you find Mao relevant I don’t but that’s just my personal opinion and not a dismissal of the man himself. I forgot the dudes name but there is an American who was in China for most of the revolution and he knew Mao and said there was a huge difference between young and old Mao he definitely became more authoritarian and closed minded as he grew older. I read the little red book 14 years ago so I can’t remember much of it,I just remember not finding a lot of it to be applicable to my life at the time, maybe if I read it now it would be different.
I don’t use LLMs and I don’t code so I never use them. I was just more interested in what deep seek had to had to say about Mao and was suprised it wouldn’t even let you broach the subject. If I ask deep seek to tell me about bill Clinton it will give me a response, if I ask it to tell me about Mao or any Chinese leader for that matter which I find interesting.
Anyways out of all the 20th century revolutionaries Fidel was more my guy but that’s just personal preference I guess. IMO what is worst for socialism is socialist parties being unable to allow themselves to be criticised this was sadly often the case in communist parties.