this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2026
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I have a YouTube account that I use only for Spanish language videos (to help learn Spanish), and saw this. Translates to: "China is already living in 2050 but, at what cost? This is Shenzhen, the city of the future."

I really need to get started learning Mandarin and hope to god "at what cost" isn't a thing there too

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[–] Dort_Owl@hexbear.net 26 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

The argument that China is always watching you with cameras loses impact when western social media collects and shares peoples biometric data every chance it can.

[–] Elysia@hexbear.net 11 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

As a proud American I want to pay a Ring subscription for the police to spy on me, my neighbors and anyone passing by! No government handouts! frothingfash

[–] Dort_Owl@hexbear.net 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

You'll give your jizz sample to the private market and you'll like it!

[–] RNAi@hexbear.net 6 points 4 days ago

And you'll bet on Kalshi about its sperm cell/microplastic ratio

[–] SummerIsTooWarm@hexbear.net 20 points 4 days ago

Isn't UK the place with the most cameras deployed by the government? And in the US it's done by private companies like Flock and Ring. Not even to speak about the giant privacy invasion done by social media

[–] JoeByeThen@hexbear.net 16 points 4 days ago

At what cost? solidarity How are we going to pay for it?

Club 'No one gives a shit.'

[–] CarmineCatboy2@hexbear.net 11 points 4 days ago

In my experience the right-wing anti-china people in lat-am are so focused on crime that they are, if anything, pro surveillance. It is the achilles heel of the ambient US worship engineered by the jakarta method as applied to our hemisphere.

[–] WhatDoYouMeanPodcast@hexbear.net 9 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

"At what cost?" is the English version of ですね (desu ne). It's a sentence stopper with a little Chinese-accusatory inflection at the end. It's a tense in American English. You have the cop violence tense which is ascended passive tense. Then you have Chinese-accusatory tense which is jealous present tense.

The US has like a military and private panopticon by the way. They use one to see if you'd make a good mass shooter and the other to sell you things the moment it looks like you're sad.

[–] RNAi@hexbear.net 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)
[–] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I've learned Spanish on my own I really want to do Mandarin next but man is that a daunting one

[–] RNAi@hexbear.net 12 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

It's a good way to avoid doomscrolling, like any other hobby. I still manage to do both tho

(My comment is a word by word translation which is most likely unnatural/incorrect but that's the joke)

[–] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Yeah for sure. For a while I did nothing but watch Spanish videos during all my free time. I'm gonna take an exam in the next year or two hoping for C1 level and if I get that I will really start looking at Mandarin.

I'd definitely be doomscrolling 小红书 and calling it language study though lmao

[–] Vampire@hexbear.net 2 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Spanish and English are only kinda-sorta 'different languages'

[–] moss_icon@hexbear.net 14 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Not really. English is a Germanic language whereas Spanish is a Romance language. They borrow some words from each other but overall they’re quite different both in translation and structure.

[–] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 8 points 4 days ago (1 children)

English is weird because even though it is a Germanic language it has such a huge lexicon borrowed from Romance languages which can definitely help when learning one from the other. But yeah beyond that they are very different.

[–] Saymaz@lemmygrad.ml 17 points 4 days ago (1 children)

English is a bastardized language. It has everything. Just like the British Museum.

[–] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 10 points 4 days ago

I mean, compared to Mandarin for sure. But they're still quite different and it takes years for a speaker of one to learn the other.