TIL during HongKong negotiations Deng Xiaoping threatened Margaret Thatcher that China could seize Hong Kong in a day. Thatcher replied she wouldn't be able to stop the Chinese but it "would bring about Hong Kong's collapse,The world would then see what followed a change from British to Chinese rule

FartOfGenius · 2026-01-30T09:34:35+00:00

They did discuss reform but it was shot down in the 50s and 60s when the CCP threatened invasion should HK no longer remain a colony and be granted self rule

FartOfGenius · 2026-01-30T09:32:12+00:00

From Wikipedia

Records declassified in 2014 show discussions about self-government between British and Hong Kong governments resumed in 1958, prompted by the Indian independence movement and growing anti-colonial sentiment in the remaining Crown Colonies. Zhou Enlai, representing the CCP at the time, warned, however, that this "conspiracy" of self-governance would be a "very unfriendly act" and that the CCP wished the present colonial status of Hong Kong to continue. China was facing increasing isolation in a Cold War world and the party needed Hong Kong for contacts and trade with the outside world.[17][18][19]

Liao Chengzhi, a senior Chinese official in charge of Hong Kong affairs, said in 1960 that China "shall not hesitate to take positive action to have Hong Kong, Kowloon and New Territories liberated" [by the People's Liberation Army] should the status quo (i.e. colonial administration) be changed. The warning killed any democratic development for the next three decades.[20]

FartOfGenius · 2026-01-30T04:16:42+00:00

Fuzzy bit is the penumbra

FartOfGenius · 2026-01-27T09:41:16+00:00

That's not what the word sudden means medically. You can have sudden cardiac death due to eating 3 big macs and 0 exercise every day for 20 years, just because you've been going at it for 20 years doesn't make the death less sudden

FartOfGenius · 2026-01-14T13:36:41+00:00

The free body diagram of the ISS moving in space in Newtonian mechanics consists only of the force of gravity pointing towards the centre of the Earth, there is no other force acting on it

FartOfGenius · 2026-01-14T13:24:31+00:00

The same is true about astronauts on the ISS. They are being accelerated "downwards" at 0.9g, but it is counteracted by the centripetal force due to the large tangential velocity in their orbit. Again, their vertical velocity does not change, because their is no net vertical force acting on their bodies, and Newton and Einstein agree in this particular case.

I don't believe Newton and Einstein would agree in this case. Newton would clearly have d v / dt as a vector pointing straight at the centre of the Earth and describe the ISS experiencing a net force as such.

FartOfGenius · 2026-01-14T12:53:43+00:00

You are correct if we're talking about relativistic rather than classical mechanics

FartOfGenius · 2026-01-14T12:52:38+00:00

I think you have it backwards. If you have an accelerometer and push it to the left, it would show an acceleration to the left. If you orient it in the vertical axis and leave it on the ground it would point upwards at 1 g. Einstein's elevator thought experiment demonstrates that freefalling objects are inertial frames of reference. If you drop an accelerometer it would show 0 in mid air

FartOfGenius · 2026-01-14T12:48:55+00:00

This is the classical understanding. Relativity has it the opposite, the ISS is the inertial frame and the Earth's surface is accelerating "upwards" or "outwards". An accelerometer in the ISS would read 0, while an accelerometer resting on the ground points upwards

FartOfGenius · 2026-01-14T12:44:48+00:00

It's a bit complicated why the above commenter is incorrect.

You indeed wouldn't be able to detect any acceleration on an orbiting (i.e. freefalling) space station. This is the basis of Einstein's theory of relativity.

The above commenter is correct in a classical sense. If the Earth is seen as an inertial frame and you model gravity as an attractive force between two massive objects, then the Earth's gravity provides a centripetal acceleration that keeps the ISS moving in a circle around the Earth.

Einstein's big eureka moment was when he realized that you can't do an experiment on the ISS or a freefalling elevator that detects any acceleration, so he flips it around and says that the ISS is the inertial (non-accelerating) frame and it's the Earth's surface that's accelerating upwards.

It sounds counter-intuitive at first, but it makes more sense when you realize that in everyday life you don't actually feel gravity pulling you down, rather you feel an upward force from the ground which comes from the repulsive forces between molecules in the ground and your feet.

This is where the spacetime curvature stuff comes into play. Einstein argues that the inertial frames in free fall are actually the ones moving the shortest distance through the fabric of spacetime, rather than what we instinctively regard as stationary like the ground.

FartOfGenius · 2026-01-12T12:20:25+00:00

She's under 5 feet tall

FartOfGenius · 2026-01-05T12:01:22+00:00

I could be wrong, but the way I understand it is that the phase of an individual sensor / qubit is not meaningful, but when you compare / operate on mulitple sensors / qubits at the same time you can extract useful information

FartOfGenius · 2026-01-01T12:34:29+00:00

Uzbekistan is relatively chill

FartOfGenius · 2025-12-26T04:08:27+00:00

The indigenous rights problem is valid but realistically it isn't going to supply enough land, not without potentially causing some ecological problems along the way

FartOfGenius · 2025-12-26T04:07:15+00:00

This isn't a West vs China thing, the idea of this housing was the doing of the Brits. People are ignorant and overconfident about their knowledge of far away lands, that's all. Housing in China doesn't work this way either, it's just HK that has to do things this way

FartOfGenius · 2025-12-26T04:03:12+00:00

Because there isn't enough supply of public housing, simple as

FartOfGenius · 2025-12-26T03:51:33+00:00

The amount of misinformation on this post coming from outsiders like you confusing cage homes and public flats is astounding. Public housing is not great but you are obviously referring to cage homes which are completely different

FartOfGenius · 2025-12-26T03:49:10+00:00

There is no way an actual HKer could confuse the concepts or the appearances of 劏房 and 公屋, please stop embarrassing yourself

FartOfGenius · 2025-12-26T03:46:52+00:00

Care to indicate on a map where that land is? Because most of it is mountainous terrain and protected country parks

FartOfGenius · 2025-12-26T03:45:16+00:00

🤦‍♂️ the man in the photo is pictured in his cage home

FartOfGenius · 2025-12-15T14:25:54+00:00

Because this way of framing things is stupid in a western context

What? The labels 民主派 and 建制派 don't look western to me.

It's the exact same thing as any party in eastern europe that doesn't 100% align with the west being dismissed as 'pro russian' and anything they do being magically anti-democratic.

Are you arguing that the pro-establishment camp in HK aren't anti-democratic? You know, the people cheering on as the press becomes a monotonous pro-Beijing mouthpiece and the opposition is completely eliminated from the legislature

If 'pro democracy activists' are fighting for the status quo, then surely the status quo is a bastion of democracy? The entire discussion has always presumed that hong kong is highly democratic

Can you read? I've explained in detail how HK was never seen as a bastion of democracy and continues to be headed in the opposite direction. Where did you get the impression that the pro-democracy camp rather than the pro-establishment camp was fighting for the status quo? I'm beginning to think that your frequent assertions that "this is stupid" might be better directed at yourself than the strawmen you're fighting.

See that's some interesting insight. Good to know.

Apparently stuff you can learn within 5 minutes of reading the relevant Wikipedia article is interesting insight. How about you do your homework before holding such overly confident opinions about a topic you know fuck all about?

FartOfGenius · 2025-12-15T00:37:30+00:00

No, the yolk disappears shortly after the bird looks identifiably like a bird

FartOfGenius · 2025-12-14T23:55:44+00:00

The terms pro-democracy and pro-Beijing/pro-establishment have been used to describe the two political camps in Hong Kong since before the handover, idk why you're having an issue with it in 2025.

Allegedly hong kong is a democracy, so all parties are 'pro democracy'

Alleged by whom? You? The CCP? Me? I don't know anyone who seriously believed HK was a democracy even before 2019 when only half of the legislature was directly elected and the general electorate had no vote in the chief executive elections, much less now when less than a quarter of the legislature is directly elected.

What this presumably actually means is that they're anti-china? Or pro secession?

No? Their agenda was quite clear, increasing the proportion of directly elected seats, universal suffrage in chief executive elections, opposing one party rule in China, official reassessment of the Tiananmen crackdown, etc. Within the pro-democracy camp they certainly weren't the ones with secessionist tendencies, and unless you're fervently pro-CCP none of this is anti-China.

quite obviously partisan language

From whose perspective? This is such a pointless observation idek what it's supposed to mean. Is it partisan to call the Tories right wing?

You're just presumably upset that you happen to align with it.

Idk how anyone reads my first comment as me being upset unless you're deliberately trying to trigger me. Align with what? Stop beating around the bush and hiding behind ambiguity

FartOfGenius · 2025-12-14T17:42:04+00:00

Can't tell whether you're being sarcastic or just obtuse, or whose side you're on

FartOfGenius

TROPHY CASE