Comments by "dixon pinfold" (@dixonpinfold2582) on "serpentza" channel.

  1. Retch = heave as though about to vomit. Wretch = unfortunate or miserable person
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  2. The US, running behind SA: "Wait up! Hey, wait for us!" The same forces are in play.
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  3.  @rharris4736  What do you expect when you kill off the educated people? Surely around 98% of Chinese people's great-grandparents and 95% of their grandparents were absolutely illiterate peasants who simply worked others' farms from youth till old age.
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  4. Yes, especially considering that China's birth rate means its population will be plummeting later this century (beginning pretty soon, I think). Plus there's quite a lot of emigration and will never be immigration. These things would tend to suggest a possibility that household sizes will go down further (i.e. family members will move out and get their own places); also that in some cases, two or more apartments could be combined to make one. If the government allows it, there will be creative adaptations. Perhaps I'm uninformed: Maybe there's pent-up demand owing to large family households which people would love to move out of as soon as they can afford to. (E.g. multiple generations crammed in under one roof.) Or maybe a baby boom that few expect could come along. So although it looks like a waste and seems like fodder for economic ruin, maybe it'll turn around or at least be mitigated. It's certainly interesting anyway. Edit: Oh, why am I trying to be nice? These buildings and cities are like a financial, environmental and probably a political noose.
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  5.  @yangfan66  The government is your dad, and you have to watch him beat your mother. Then he brags to everybody how smoothly the household runs. I wish improvements for you soon! Good luck, friend!
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  6.  @garethwest9069  Unfair and vicious of you. He didn't really understand where she had gone in the first place. She disappeared not just from his life but from her job as well. And he had feelings for her, so when she reappeared he was vulnerable to her charms. I feel sorry for the people in your own life, actually. If any. Have a nice day.
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  7. Yeah, it's weird. I don't know. In no particular order, my thoughts are that maybe: The bureaucracy is slow and unresponsive, that stopping the system would punish influential US companies too much for their tastes, and it takes years to get anything through Congress. I suppose even corruption is possible, since you'd think a lot of big US companies must be mad as hell about it, and US companies are supposed to boss Washington around, aren't they? My final guess is that there are numerous secret side deals in US-China trade, informal ad hoc agreements to smooth the waters in private. It is always possible for each to agree to overlook one or two of each other's violations for the time being. Only a limited amount could be done, but I suspect they co-operate in this one way, almost a bit like the prisoner exchanges in the Cold War. From what I gather trade treaty flexibility is a thing. Both sides get something out of it.
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  8. My Chinese girlfriend and I had broken up and were weeks away from our new separate apartments when I landed an excellent new job, complete with nice car. She immediately begged me to get back together. I said no thank you.
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  9. Amazon: The China Storeᵀᴹ
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  10.  @gildedpeahen876  Few of those several trillion dollars "made" by billionaires (if that's a valid figure) were made as profits. You must understand this important fact.   Their wealth gains came as a result of asset price inflation: the things they owned, largely stocks in companies but also real estate and other items of all sorts, went up sharply in value. This was primarily a result of (1) the government flooding borrowed money into the hands of the people, who quickly sank it into the stock markets or real estate, just as quickly bidding up prices; (2) the central banks rapidly creating money out of thin air.
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  11. She said "roll". It's a mistaken attempt at "rofl" of course.
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  12.  Ho Chi Wang  Oh, so if it's someone else's culture, we must respect it? God, you're a dumbass. This is what someone thinks if they've been to ten countries, and it reassures them that they're enlightened and sophisticated. (They're not.) Then unless they insist on remaining eternally in early adulthood, by the time they've spent time in dozens, it dawns on them that a lot of things in a lot of cultures are not cool. (Various cruelties, crudenesses, barbarities, stupidities, corruptions, filthinesses, etc.) Grow up. "Judge not" is for religious fools and the callow of all sorts.
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  13. They don't have to be brought up in China either. My Chinese ex-girlfriend, who grew up from a pre-school age here in a Western metropolis, was entirely like the young woman you describe. Except for the money obsession part, I didn't know she was just being Chinese. Thank you, Serpentza.
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  14.  @ellee2937  That is confused. He dumped her when he fully and finally realized what her values were. It was after that that he met his eventual life. As for meeting his wife when she was married (if I am to take your word for that), it is not immoral to have a married friend. It is only immoral to pursue a relationship with her. The fact that they ended up marrying does not show that he did so.
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  15.  @JohnnyBot71  Feckless means ineffectual.
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  16. And yet a number of unwisely trusting Americans are investing in BYD. They're following in the footsteps of Warren Buffett, confident in the BYD company reports that they're kicking Tesla's butt in China. Those are even backed up by the Chinese govt's monthly registration counts by company. So how many are really being sold? No doubt only a handful of BYD and govt. insiders know. Oh, how I hope Buffett gets his butt kicked on BYD shares.
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  17.  @Gokusaiyan.  In some cultures the gold-digging aspect is stronger than in others. (Which just means your odds depend on background. However, people are individuals, not just outgrowths of their prevailing culture, so you can find just about any type of person anywhere.)
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  18.  @gildedpeahen876  Actually, although the pandemic was a wealth transfer, it wasn't the kind you think it was. It was a transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor, or at least the less rich. Who do you think paid actual money for all those bonds the government issued to pay for all the cheques it was writing to regular people? Certain regular people lost a lot, to be sure. Anyone who lost their job or their small business, for example. But median after-tax incomes actually rose, and so did median savings rates and median net worth. And if those bonds are ever retired rather than being rolled over, it will be the rich who are repaid, but likewise it will be the rich who pay the taxes that make the repayment possible. The wealth gains by billionaires were a transfer of wealth of a sort, as they tend to dilute or debase the wealth of those less rich, primarily through various mechanisms of inflation. But then, a lot of those gains can easily be reversed, and we somewhat appear headed in that direction. At least there's no prospect of a tax cut for them.
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  19. Yeah, but we wash our socks and underwear together. So it kind of evens out, in a "you are right from your side, I am right from mine" sort of way. (See Winston's Chinese home laundry video.) Come to think of it, Japanese people think it's incredibly gross to just get in a tub without scrubbing yourself in the shower first. Also, Germans wash all their garbage, basically.
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  20.  @victorhopper6774  Yes to both. 👍  (I could've sad 'A few very key shared factors are in play.')
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  21. Ah, but the inspectors know perfectly well what's going on, surely? Come on. They merely want to collect their bribes with relative peace of mind, knowing that they'll have a sort of plausible deniability: "Mr. Regional Inspector-General, I did my inspection. I found that everything was in order, sir. Here, see this video I took from the van!" Then, much more quietly, passing a plain envelope: "Part Two of my written report, sir. It will be to your liking."
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  22. Unjustified blanket statement about EVs. I don't know about Chinese EVs, but in the US the NTSB tracks car fires and reports that EVs catch fire vastly less often. For example, Tesla reports 5 car fires per billion miles driven, compared with 55 fires per billion miles driven in gasoline-powered cars. Source: Politifact. Do your own search such as "do EVs or ICE cars catch fire more often." You'll quickly see the stats.
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  23. Cuddly Panda China is gone and we now have its jingoistic replacement. Now that they've been well-off for a few decades they're like the Americans of around 1976 who went abroad and sought to have lunch at McDonald's. Maybe it's not just the form of government (although I think that has to have a lot to do with it), maybe it's just that a few decades of runaway capitalism wreck the character of half the population.
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  24.  @sliwka621  Of course it's biodiesel and I'm sure he understands that perfectly and approves of it as environmentally wise. He's only pointing out that it's inappropriate for the food system.
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  25. Says a guy who can't even spell his own name. It's Ian Barmy , obviously.
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  26.  @ianbalmy6992  Thanks for your reply. That's a mess of a rejoinder, my dear fellow. Little old Oxford Dictionaries has the idea that balmy means "pleasantly warm". Who doesn't know that anyway? The same humble lexicography outfit defines barmy thus: "Mad; crazy; extremely foolish" As for my screen name, take your best shot. Only a man secure in his staff-stoutness is going to cheerfully risk choosing one like it. (Since you brought it up, it comes from eponymous characters in Kingsley Amis (_Lucky Jim_ Dixon) and Evelyn Waugh (_The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold_.) Ya know, your original comment doesn't bug me so much now. On the whole I'd agree he ought to knock those things off his face. I guess I took a comment seriously because I found it struck me as serious itself. I mean I thought you were trolling him. Cheers.
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  27.  @brucemarsico6  I'll remember that. Terribly interesting, so thanks.
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  28. I don't get the video title. I thought I was going to be shown a Chinese online advertising trick that would illustrate an aspect of Chinese life, culture, or character. I did learn about those things---and in a pleasant and somewhat interesting video---but he did not expose any clickbait trick. So the only clickbait was the video title itself! Wtf gives? Please don't mislead us. Not cool.
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  29. 2.1k dislikes, courtesy of the Wumao brigade of Government of China paid Internet commenters. Western social media is crawling with them. Nice, eh?
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  30. Thanks for this. You should certainly be proud of yourself. I'll definitely keep coming back as long as you keep posting videos.
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  31. The West doesn't have ghost cities but there are major similarities in inflated property prices, low interest rates and to a lesser degree in unoccupied new apartments (many of them owned by Chinese investors, in fact!). Maybe a key difference besides the ghost cities is where the debt is. Here I think it's all in the unit buyers, whereas in China the message seems to be it's in developers who are now teetering on insolvency. Anyway, this was illuminating. So glad to hear about it from someone who's actually had a good, long look at the situation in person. 🤩
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  32.  @MegaBanne  Hey maybe they can be made into prison towns for Party members once the CCP gets outlawed. I can dream.
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  33. @Moonlight Including Muslim Asia?
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  34. Cuddly Panda China is gone and we now have its jingoistic replacement. Now that they've been well-off for a few decades they're like the Americans of around 1976 who went abroad and sought to have lunch at McDonald's. Maybe it's not just the form of government (although I think that has to have a lot to do with it), maybe it's just that a few decades of runaway capitalism wreck the character of half the population.
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  35. Front loaders are far more efficient---and effective: they get your clothes cleaner. They're quicker, too, because less time is needed for filling and draining. Top loaders eventually disappear as countries get richer. And a really good thing about dryers is that they remove lint, a lot of which is actually dead skin particles that never make it down the drain of the washer. Who wants to walk around with that big grey clump of stuff spread out all over your clothes?
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  36.  @ellee2937  But I can indeed take your word for it and it doesn't reflect poorly on him at all. I repeat, there is nothing wrong with a man knowing a married woman. You may feel differently, which is of course your perfect right. It's only correct that you should obey your moral sense.
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  37. I bet they're throwing you in the smelly back of some van if they catch you doing that now.
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  38. Remember: China is intent on putting manufacturers around the world out of business, and preventing new companies from emerging anywhere. And make no mistake, it's all about strengthening the Communist Party of China. Just start buying less Chinese stuff. For clothes and shoes you can easily go down to 0%, and practically all other categories of goods are available from other countries. Check the labels. Retailers respond quickly to sales patterns.
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  39.  @adw6894  What? Which words of mine were you reading? I'm baffled.
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  40.  @huwhitecavebeast1972  Then I beg you to do me the service of pinpointing where my confusion is. EDIT: Here waiting patiently.
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  41. I guess I'm like Winston. When I go somewhere I'm not very interested in compiling a laundry list of tourist activities which I dutifully tick off at maximum speed in order to say I've done this and that and build a photo album to show people later and then stick in a drawer. I just want to experience the place as do the people who live there. As residents, they never do this touristy stuff themselves.
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  42. Promise them $1000 and then send $1. When they complain, send a screenshot of when you entered $1000 (prior to Confirm). Keep it up for a while, asking them over and over to check if they have your $1k. Don't accuse, just plead. When they finally get mad, apologize for being so stupid and try to start all over. Send them another $1 and say "Why does this keep happening?" Have as much fun as possible. Make them read boring texts about your life. Ask one dumb question after another. Up the ante and say "Maybe $2000 will work." At this point you've had tons of entertainment for $2. Plus you know you're doing society a favor by tying them up.
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  43. All quite understandable. Somewhat guilty as charged. Which is exactly why so accusation and rebuttal should be a part of the interaction between world civilizations. (Cf. Bob Dylan: "You are right from your side, I am right from mine" ---One Too Many Mornings, 1963) However... Cuddly Panda China is gone and we now have its jingoistic replacement. Now that they've been well-off for a few decades they're like the Americans of around 1976 who went abroad and sought to have lunch at McDonald's. Maybe it's not just the form of government (although I think that has to have a lot to do with it), maybe it's just that a few decades of runaway capitalism wreck the character of half the population.
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  44. Btw, when I posted that comment, it instantly showed up broken, abridged, and scrambled. I had to re-post. Apparently the Party's reach is long.
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  45. @Harry Zhang I'm guessing by your name that you're a (civilized) Hong Konger, or at any rate someone who ranks in the top percentile or few percentiles of quiet diners worldwide. So you would find people at table acceptably far from noisy only in a handful of the world's jurisdictions, and then only in select restaurants and homes. I say this knowing that, fortunately for them, many people in the former British territories and colonies have come through the past century more English than the English. (Victorian or Edwardian English, that is. So you may find yourself more at home in Auckland, Ottawa, Melbourne, or Hamilton, Bermuda etc. than elsewhere.) May fossilized old Britishness endure. Cheers.
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  46. She complains about the lack of a schedule on vacation. lol That makes her a pretty typical Chinese woman having little capacity for spontaneity. I hope that's wearing well on you over the years, Winston. Yet another good video.
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  47. Two and a half hours is too long. I'll come back and have the leftovers later. It'll still be good.
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  48. This is green-screened, presumably in his home. Surely he's trying to fool us, either: I think practically everyone can tell and I think he knows it.
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  49.  @zecoya8298  Ahhh-ha! U got me!😂
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  50. Years back my government warned the country about buying Chinese coffee mugs, as testing had revealed that there was leachable lead in the ceramic glazing. I've never trusted Chinese manufacturers since and always prefer other countries' products.
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  51.  @cpnstbn1266  Being stuck in the past, no matter how understandable one may think it, does have problems with it, if that's what you're mean to point out. Almost every person would agree with that. Nevertheless, if you're going to drag a foot behind you in time, 1997 is hardly the worst time to choose. You could say the people and the culture and the times were stupid and awful, but of course they always are.   The fact remains that they were less stupid and awful. The class grade for humanity in civilization is always and will always be well below a even a borderline F. When you realize that, it becomes the thing that makes the distinction between (in a manner of speaking) 30 out of a hundred and 35 out of a hundred such a precious one.
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  52.  @vakuumhuvud  Strong talk. Was it preceded by thought?
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  53.  @ianbalmy6992  The real point is, though, that Serpy is quite solid, isn't it?, and so as followers of his acct we're both in some sense anyway on the right side of things. :)
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