I don't disagree with that, but I want to point out that this is one facet of hedonic adaptation. People will always complain about of what they don't have. For instance, most inmates in inhumane prisons would love to have the life you describe if they could enjoy some degree of freedom as a result.

Korolev's story comes to mind instantly. Not only his of course.

I once (>20 years ago) had luch with our sales representative in ... was it Malaysia or the Philippines? In his custom made blue suit, he told me in perfect Oxford English how his grand father had to kill several fighters from enemy villages in order to be allowed to marry his grand mother...

I don't know how exagerated that was, but yes sometimes things go fast:)

I think that’s the beauty of storytelling—it turns 'nothing new under the sun' into something deeply personal and hit us differently.Thank you for sharing that connection， it makes the world feel a lot smaller.

It was also a Cold War. My father-in-law and mother-in-law were both gifted mathematicians and mainframe programmers. She also designed CPUs. She is a sweet sweet person and a major badass. She is my hero. She’s in her 80s and was more accomplished in her 20s than you and I put together will ever be.

China made its first computer in 1958 and its first 1 megaflop computer in 1973, so yes, their nascence of computer programming preceded the Cultural Revolution, about 10 years after the West.

The so called Cultural Revolution was certainly programming, just not of the computer variety and at massive human cost.

I could believe it, the timespan should be 1966-1976, so maybe in late 70s. I know a lot of automation software was being written in my Eastern European socialist country in assembly language around 1974. I think mostly for 6800-based chips like probably MOS 6502.

> I am reminded that the only real power comes from violence

Rather from numbers in my opinion. "Divide and conquer", or its modern equivalent "confuse and manipulate", is what makes violence effective. It is always striking to compare how much people are similar, even in our divided society, versus how much dissimilar they think they are. I'm used to help organize long boat trips with all kind of people from various backgrounds, and it's funny to watch.

In the past it was easy to convince people that "the other" was strange and dangerous, due to physical distance. Today we achieve the same with social media.

What is this „Chat Control in the EU“ ?

The Netherlands in 2025 is a decadent country were everyone can do whatever the hell they want.

But a gay man growing up in the 1950s in a rural village was plenty oppressed. It's actually quite fascinating how in the 1960s/70s we had a Cultural Revolution of our own that ended a thousand years of religious oppression! And we didn't even have a Mao.

But never forget we are always one bad week away from sliding backwards.

Whenever people start talking about things called "the rise of fascism in the US" as if its a foregone fact rather than a highly fringe opinion, it's unfortunately rather easy to assume that the person doesn't have a good ability to tell fact from "story they heard online from a web post".

It's fine if you want to argue that there is a rise in fascism in the US, but you need to actually pose that argument, not just talk about it as if its true and that everyone agrees with you.

Also, there is not currently any martial law in South Korea. That was a brief event that lasted a matter of hours from when it was announced and when it was repealed. It's an open question if any actions were actually performed under the guises of it.