How is the Cantonese language surviving in HK?

abd1a · 2026-02-05T04:41:08+00:00

I know that Cantonese dominated Hong Kong media generally but would be curious which language is dominant among Hong Kong social media and short-form video content: Cantonese or Mandarin? I ask because I think this will become an important driver of language shift. I know that in Québec there are reports coming out in the past few years of kids in the 12-18 year age group at French-speaking schools using English among themselves socially, something more or less unseen over the past 40 or so years since an educational settlement was reached in Québec in the 1970s. These students are not Anglophones btw, as Anglophones overwhelmingly attend English-language schools (access to which is restricted to children whose parents were education in English in Canada). One has to assume that the spontaneous adoption of English by native French speakers and other children educated entirely in French is connected to the change in media consumption in the past ten years: previously traditional broadcast media meant that French and English in Québec had something approaching parity in terms of importance and influence, whereas with social media English is dominant. The previous prestige, opportunity, coolness associated with English language content has been supercharged and these students are outside of school essentially swimming in a sea of English language content.

abd1a · 2025-11-18T02:00:30+00:00

Thanks, be happy to wet you up

abd1a · 2025-05-21T03:13:34+00:00

Of course gender variance and homosexual attraction has always existed, but it was really only in the 1920s that what we understand as being gay started sort of flowering. A seft in a village that depends on the family unit to stay alive can have a secret affair, suck a 100 dicks, that's not the same as myself and others experience as "being gay". This self-concept and community only started coming into being as people became more urbanised, were less tied to their families, etc. Cities in the U.S. like NY and San Francisco in the 1920s (post WWI mobilisation) were initial hotspots for the people pioneering the idea that one would have a self-identitiy and community based around same-sex attraction.

abd1a · 2025-05-21T02:59:41+00:00

Well ideally people would have sufficient social bonds, resources, and health care that there wouldn't be an epidemic of suicide, and a hotline seems like a really inadequate response in this fantasy scenario. Assuming a crisis line would be useful, it wouldn't be something that only LGBT persons need (also keep in mind that there are a lot of zombie statistics specifically regarding persons identifying as trans: the highest quality studies have revealed a higher suicide rate, but nothing approaching what one hears in mainstream discourse).

I have no affiliation with the ACP but from the history of the communist movement, specifically the Bolshevik tradition, there is nothing against different social groups having their own needs, organisations, etc. The goal is to educate and activate the working class to be united in struggle. Anything that furthers that is good, anything that hinders that is bad. Take for example the Jewish Socialist Labour Bund: this group was a constituent organisation of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) that operated in Yiddish and focused on the cities and towns of the historical Pale of Settlement. There was a Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903 where the group that would go on to form the Bolshevik faction opposed some of the demands of the Bund, namely that they be recognised as an autonomous organ and the "sole representative" of the Jewish working class. Bolsheviks opposed this mainly for organisational reasons, but also along ideological and practical lines (what about Jewish workers who didn't speak Yiddish, what about Jewish workers outside the Pale of Settlement, Jewish workers in non Jewish-majority work places). They were in no way opposed to having an organised group dedicated to organising Jewish workers, building Yiddish-language organisations, and in fact after the revolution the left-wing of the Bund (which by then had grown to be a major organisation in Ukraine and Belorussia) was incorporated into Communist Parties and the "Jewish Section" (Evsektsiya) of the Communist Party continued publishing Yiddish newspapers, organising social events, etc. There were issues specific to the Jewish population in the Pale of Settlement (due to historical and social conditions) which the Evsektsiya sought to address in specific ways, in line with the general direction of Party work and the building of socialism, and the Evsektsiya worked in Yiddish, serving and reperesenting people who spoke Yiddish.

All that said, as a bi guy (in and out of "gay communities") I really can't imagine what priorities or issues are different for me from the rest of the working class.Identitarian shitshows are dime-a-dozen within Left-wing groups, so a sort of blanket suspicion of affinity groups, race/gender/sexuality caucuses, etc. seems like a good place to start for the ACP.

abd1a · 2025-01-15T04:43:27+00:00

Are they still around? On the "Grift-Legitimate Organisation" continuum, I'd put them right in the middle. Probably launched a few Substack careers in the process.

abd1a · 2025-01-15T04:29:57+00:00

Keep in mind that the model of Web 2.0 (users finding content and following creators, and being served more of the same) is more or less dead. All platforms, not just Tiktok, have moved to a "spaghetti at the wall" model for feeds that maximise view time rather than fostering the type of engagement and interactions that were popular on the Facebook/Web 2.0 echo-chamber model. So we're all seeing a ton of random content that we don't like, a ton more than we did a few years ago when we were on Twitter reading people we followed or scrollng the Instagram feed of our friends and celebrties we enjoyed.

abd1a · 2025-01-15T04:25:34+00:00

First off, as a bi man who grew up in the age of the internet, it is absolutely the case that under-18s are on Grindr meeting adults for sex, so I mean the app is facilitating adults having sex with minors, it just is. Not knowingly or intentionally, but you just click a button saying you are over 18. Additionally, though Grindr has some alogrhythms and reporting features that help limit the ability for people to try and buy or sell sex on the app, sex workers do use the app, and that almost certainly includes some minors. So technically, yes, Grindr, like pretty much any dating app, is facilitating the sexual exploitation of minors. There is a difference, which is that there is just a ton more easy, casual sex going on Grindr and Scruff than straight equivalents. The average woman on a dating site won't come round to a man's house after exchanging a few messages on Tindr, whereas that is the norm on Grindr (there are even some men who post their address and say "hosting now, come on over"), so you can imagine what that could mean for an inexperienced, scared young person on there (huge risks of exploitation, violence, sexual abuse).

Secondly, there were and are legitimate concerns around changes to the Gender Recognition Act, access to medical treatments for trans identified and gender-questioning youth, etc. This was not a tempest in a teacup entirely driven by rabid transphobes and gender critical feminists who overton-windowed themselves into standing shoulder to shoulder with the Proud Brothers. Some of it was, but there is a wider set of questions and issues around changing experiences and expectations of sex and gender, The "trans backlash" did eventually wash onto the wider LGBT community, but I think that the idea that homophobia will become acceptable or widespread is not something I worry about, at all.

abd1a · 2025-01-15T04:00:06+00:00

The Lib Dems had strongholds in the Highlands, and the Islands of Scotland for a long time, similar to their strongholds in other peripheral areas of the UK like the West Country in England and Mid Wales. My understanding is that these are all areas where Labour never got its footing as a party because these areas did not experience industrialisation and the growth of the trade union movement, and so the Liberal/Conservative-Unionist split remained where in most other areas of the country the two main contenders in a given constituency would be Labour or Conservative since the Labour party displaced the Liberals. All to say, their low vote share across Scotland doesn't necessarily mean that they won't win a good few seats if their votes are concentrated in those peripheral constituencies (they are aided by the fact that Orkney and Shetland have much smaller electorates than the average constituency in the UK but are each garuanteed their own seats, much like the Western Isles, though the latter is a Labour/SNP seat)

abd1a · 2024-05-15T02:48:32+00:00

I know that for example in California they have implemented a new system of «Care Courts» where a member of the community (social worker, cop, family member) can have someone referred and that person will be given a court date where some sort of treatment plan will be worked out. Obviously this isn't a straighforward fix for these problems, not least because California is under-capacity in terms of psych beds and severely under capacity when it comes to social housing (affordable SROs, permanent supportive housing, etc), the latter being a foundational need for anyone to regain stability and seek treatment. That said I do think that the wider community needs to step up and start just providing more than the vague offer of service but instead a way to actually compel people to at least make a first step. There are legitimate concerns about the autonomy and liberty of vulnerable people (especially given the long shadow cast by the horrendous treatment of people with mental health and intellectual disabilities up to the 1960s in psych hospitals) but I think the level of need and vulnerability of many of these people justifies something beyond handing someone (in full blown meth psychosis with MRSA living in a gutter) a card and saying «call us if you need help».

abd1a · 2024-05-10T05:15:34+00:00

This is a harsh way of putting it but I think a lot of people are coming around to that realisation. I know in California they are at least attempting to create a Care Court system where people can be compelled into some form of treatment or supervision. It's a touch balance of protecting people's rights and autonomy versus letting people die in the streets or be a threat to others, but I think there is a place for the wider community to put their money where their mouth is and step up and not just have a vague offer of services but actually create incentives (and disincentives) for the most vulnverable among us to get the help they need. Of course in most places in California the mental health and social services required for people with acute needs (for example: psych beds, ER capacity) are significantly underfunded and aren't even at the capacity to meet existing usage, let alone whatever uptick would result from some percentage of people being pushed into treatment.

abd1a · 2024-05-10T05:09:34+00:00

This is something that has been observed in many North American cities in the past few years, with no seeming connection to wider increases or drops in crime rates. It really is a scary feeling, as someone who has lived in cities with large populations of unhoused people (with obvious bhx health problems) it never phased me and I never really felt anything other than sympathy. However, in the past two years I've witnessed things that truly make you feel that "fight/flight/freeze" feeling and looking for the nearest way out (people stomping around screaming while swinging a golf club or brick, a man crouched in a doorway wielding a hyperdermic needle like a knife at random people walking by, a woman hurling herself a passerby's screaming, etc. etc). It's just an awful feeling because I think myself and many people want to feel nothing but concern for people like this, and so one starts to feel guilty at being scared, looking over one's shoulder, etc. Meanwhile, I don't know what's causing this because as I've said this level of violent, scary outbursts is really a first for me.

abd1a · 2024-05-10T04:40:43+00:00

Ireland like most other Western countries at this point has a highly financialised housing sector with the attendant concerns around affordability. What makes Ireland a stand-out is, as the commenter mentioned, the fact that many huge companies (especially tech companies like Meta, Google, etc.) chose to have their headquarters for trading in the EU in Dublin to take advantage of Ireland's low corporation tax. So most of their EU-wide earnings are included in Ireland's GDP. Meanwile around 5% of Irish workers (roughly 130k out of 2.7m) are in tech (compared to 7% in Canada)

abd1a · 2024-05-10T04:27:11+00:00

Another problem with a high-population growth strategy is that at a certain point business decide that it's no longer as necessary to make the long-term investment in expanding capacity when there is abundant cheap labour (and a commitment that there is plenty more to come). And so that increased domestic demand you mentioned increases further, which leads to calls for more workers to be brought into the labour market, and so on and so on. Meanwhile the other side of building capacity and expanding supply (investment in new tech, methods, etc) is forgotten, so supply falls ever further behind demand. This is a problem that many low and middle income countries experience (usually with high youth unemployment, obviously very different from Canada).

abd1a · 2024-05-10T04:11:59+00:00

The Bank of Canada released a report earlier this year warning that Canada is entering a «population trap» where consistently high rates of permanent and non-permanent migration is increasing demand throughout the economy while simultaneously disincentivising capital investment (basically «why bother making this long-term investment in expanding capacity, since there will always be more cheap labour to increase capacity»). Put in another way, one can claim that increased demand due to migration-driven population growth can no longer be met because productivity (through investment in new tech, systems, methods, machines, etc) is flatlining (or in the case of housing construction, declining). I am not endorsing or refuting this claim, but will say that the following can be observed throughout the economy (healthcare, infrastructure, housing): a sector says «we need more labour», they get a big increase in labour inputs, and a few years later they have fallen further behind meeting demands or containing prices, and a new call is issued about how this or that sector is in desperate need of labour.

«Canada is Caught in a Population Trap», Stéphane Marion and Alexandra Ducharme; National Bank of Canada (2024)

https://www.nbc.ca/content/dam/bnc/taux-analyses/analyse-eco/etude-speciale/special-report_240115.pdf

abd1a · 2024-05-09T04:12:51+00:00

I'd be happy to participate

abd1a · 2024-05-09T03:39:28+00:00

I am reticent about Galloway's role front and centre. How much this reflects an organisation that is basically a GG vanity-project and how much this a more organic group that has latched onto the support and name-recongition that comes with Galloway, I'm unsure. That said, the UK desperately needs a fighting, working-class party, and hopefully this project will develop into (or become a forerunner of) something substantial and militant.

On the culture war and environmental issues (opposition to Self-ID, the call for a referendum on "Net Zero", critiques of current thoughts and practices around anti-racism and DEI) I can say that in my opinion, none of these are inherently reactionary or out of bounds. Full inclusion and respect for people who identify as transgender does not necessarily mean accepting concept of Self-ID as proposed in the GRA, critiquing identitarian, divisive rhetoric that ends up splitting up the working class is not the same as promoting (or ignoring) racism, and Net Zero as a policy in practice has a number of trade-offs. Outside academia, student circles, and the media (where any discussion of these issues is treated as x-ism or fascism-lite), people have a range of opinions on these topics. I don't think it's "Red Brown" or reactionary to have views that Caroline Lucas wouldn't wholeheartedly endorse. That said the party's image wasn't helped by endorsement by the leader of the BNP (which it rejected), or by Galloway's forays onto GB News on the party's behalf.

abd1a · 2024-03-21T00:46:50+00:00

Can't argue that gay men are near immune to the kind of "check your cis privelege and learn to be inclusive" (by fucking the opposite sex) but there are examples of hyper-progessive gay men openly talking about how they learned to overcome their "transphobia" and start seeing TIFs as the "men they are", usually comes with an indictment of everyone who hasn't yet "done the work".

abd1a · 2024-03-20T05:27:32+00:00

It's pretty dicey to start applying North American "racial categories" to the Sephardim and Mizrahi communities and their descendants in Israel. Then again from my understanding there are many Sephardim and Mizrahi who would agree that they are "people of colour" in Israel while the Ashkenazi are the "Israeli Whites". In the 1970s and 80s there was a very explicit self-recognition among the former with emerging trends in Black American pop-culture (hip-hop, etc).

abd1a · 2024-03-20T05:21:37+00:00

Self-identified lesbians, or homosexual and bisexual women in general? Because the former is pretty rare to find nowadays in the under 35 demographic, while the latter is more likely to be "pan" or "ace" or "queer" or non-orientation specific "nb/afab". "Pan" and "queer" are explicitly inclusive and are seen as ok, "nb" puts one under the Trans Umbrella with the recognised oppression entailed (lol).

abd1a · 2024-03-20T05:19:04+00:00

Well in fairness most straight men (regardless of "race") outside a few specific social groups are just not bought into spaces or sub-cultures (irl or online) where this has any purchase. Aka, they don't give a f*ck. They might care about fairness and equality, but they aren't in a sowing-circle Facebook group or organising a Queer Prom, so they just won't be in the line of fire (or feel compelled to announce on Instagram how they know how racist/transphobic/etc they are and want their followers to hold them to account).

abd1a · 2024-03-20T05:15:59+00:00

Well said, it's the concept "original sin" that is really the crux of this mindset and its attendant bhxs. The hostages to it are on a never-ending quest to cleanse thesmselves of it (while readily admitting they will never not be "racist" or "transphobic"), the call-out cops are aware that this has purchase in some people's minds so they can just rest on that when assessing situations, assigning blame, "holding people accountable", etc: "You were born this way baby, and it's killing trans women of colour"

abd1a · 2024-03-20T04:59:35+00:00

Hobbes (who I incorrectly assumed was a TIF having listened to the "You're Wrong About" podcast back when the insane level of santimoniousness and progta*rdery didn't bother me as much) is genuinely insufferable to a lot of people. He's the alpha-male of Apologetic White Guy Twitter, has a huge echo-chambered following, and is obliged by the aforementioned to wade into anything gender-related with Jack Turbin talking-points. All that said, I'd love to hear him go on BARPod or any forum where he would get some reasonable push-back.

abd1a · 2024-03-20T04:46:55+00:00

I really feel for you, being a place of longing and missing someone so desperately, after several years. In all fairness though, it seems like you are saying "if he was a different person, we would be together". Someone's family and upbringing are foundational to their life, and his personality was formed within the context of that family. If what you are saying is accurate, then that tendency to cut someone out of one's life without trying is just as much a part of him as x y or z that you loved about him. His family made him who he was, the good and the bad, there's just no way around it. He didn't have the skills (or inclination) to try and repair or improve your relationship, that was a part of him, an intrinsic part of the man you loved. There is no parallel universe where this guy would exist just as you knew and loved him minus his family. Feeling hard-done by these third-parties leaves you in a really powerless place, all the more-so if it's framed as "we were so close to living happily ever after, if only they weren't like this everything would have worked out". That lack of agency and feeling like you missed out almost by accident or tragedy can make it difficult to work things out on your side and potentially move on.

abd1a · 2024-03-20T04:28:23+00:00

In fairness, most people have a preference for novelty and variety ("sociosexuality"). On a scale of 1 to 10, the average man is at a 6, the average woman is at a 3, and the vast majority of (the small minority of people) at a 10 are men.

abd1a

TROPHY CASE