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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • Dirty Westerner, but from polls and outside forms of public sentiment I have seen, public support of the government in China is extremely high, due to the large, until possibly recently, economic growth and decades of constant improvement in people’s material conditions.

    Cuba it is not as strong, as the US blockade has prevented the strong growth China has experienced. But there is still majority support due to the Batista regime still being in living memory and the various improvements in literacy and education, medicine/life expectancy, and various forms of local democracy. There are organic and legitimate critiques, but anti-government protests are usually dwarfed by pro-government/M-26-7 protests. And usually, though this is often misrepresented by pro-western sources, the dissatisfaction with the current government is more pro-reform rather than in favor of reversion back to capitalism. Though this is one of those things that polling or any way to quantify public sentiment can very easily be twisted with framing.

    Vietnam, I have less knowledge of and cannot give a summary off the top of my head with any trust in my own knowledge.










  • There are probably other suggestions that are better. But I noticed getting a lot more coordinated after starting to rock climb. It involves a lot of very focused and timed body movement, keeping track of your center of gravity(balance) and how forces and movement travel through your body. Things like dancing and bodily awareness became a lot more effortless after climbing.


  • Under crisis or perceived pressure, there is obvious distrust in the current system. And the desire for a strong leader comes out of a hope of the decisiveness and concentrated power will allow them to “cut through the red tape” and dislodge entrenched stakeholders preventing change. Additionally, if the political and economic system is really complex and have difficult problems that are very systemic and don’t have clear and immediate causes, this simplifying of the politics to all power being concentrated in an individual becomes desirable (this is Joseph Tainter’s idea that social systems that have become too dysfunctional will create “Caesarism”, his name for desiring a strong man leader).

    The other major consideration is that a popular leader that has ties to multiple groups can paper over or avoid conflict between multiple stakeholders or polarized factions in a political system. This is why so much veneration and executive power was given to Washington in the US post-revolution, because that got around a lot of arguments and factional issues between North and South and other colony’s conflicting interests. Both Napolean Bonaparte and Loius Napoleon had this as their main opening for power in the post-Revolution chaos and conflicts in the Second Republic, respectively.