I’ve been using my Mastodon account as a way to share various links around the web that I found. However, social media can be ephmeral, so I thought I will consolidate what I share here in Linkblog issues.
I like curating articles and blog posts about social media, Indieweb, geopolitics, Chinese and Malaysian culture, cute cat videos or anything funny I find online.
I also share links in the “Weekend Tales” of my Substack newsletter, Tai Tales. The newsletter is geared towards Chinese and Malaysian culture.
China and AI
Interesting view. No wonder discussions in English speaking spaces feel uncomfortable. It feels very black and white, ideologically driven. People who dare to stray from the narrative of left- or right- discourse around AI face excommunication.
In Asia, people are more practical about AI, and the discussions, while optimistic, doesn’t eschew the negative aspects of AI.
Chinese New Year, Spring Festival Gala, Flower Deities
The “Celebrating Flower Deities” has everything I love about Chinese culture: dances, poetry, beautiful hanfu, Chinese drama actors…but it also uses AI a lot.
As I said before, discussions around AI in the East does not have the tang of doomerism like in the West. Instead, every industry seemed eager to find ways to in incorporate and use it to improve the industry. The entertainment industry is no different.
Rather than seek to replace humans with AI, the Chinese are asking: How can AI make us produce more, create better?
“The Chinese society, from a world-renowned auteur to the hundreds of millions watching the Gala, is broadly, strikingly optimistic about AI. The reflexive existential dread so pervasive in Western discourse is largely absent.”
I’ve always said, conversations in Asia about AI are different than the West’s. This newsletter proves it.
When I grow too heavy from the doomerism that pervades AI discussions on Western, English social media, I escape to Xiaohongshu where people share their AI short dramas and talk about the latest techniques and developments with LLMs.
China & being Chinese
Diao Daming: the costs of studying China at a distance
Far too true. The inability of viewing China without injecting their own ideals, biases is holding these “China researchers back. On top of that, viewing China as an adversary also limits the possibilities of the relationship.
Why Modern Chinese is Just ‘English with Hanzi’
I remember a time when books opened from left to right, not the way western books are: from right left.
Chinese characters were also written top to bottom, columns are from right to left.
It’s now in the Western style.
I can’t remember when it changed 🤔
Chinese Room Syndrome: a cautionary tale on becoming chinese
“Real Chinese people will continue to be Chinese. They’ll bear the consequences of appearing Chinese as Western narratives continue to dominate and restructure the way China is perceived.”
For the life of my I don’t understand this trend. I wrote about this in Tai Tales as well: Weekend Tales #12: Please don’t be Chinese at this time of your life
Funny stuff
Jimmy O thinks Malaysian Cantonese is weird.
Wait till you hear Malaysian Hokkien. 👇
We have so many varieties of it in Malaysia alone we misunderstand each other all the time.
Elizabeth Tai 
Leave a Reply