When China’s prodigious tech influencer, Naomi Wu, found herself silenced, it wasn’t just the machinery of a surveillance state at play. Instead, it was a confluence of state repression and the sometimes capricious attention of a Western audience that, as she asserts, often views Chinese activists more as ideological tokens than as genuine human beings.

  • @atzanteol
    link
    English
    610 months ago

    TBH I had trouble getting past

    As an example, here she is comprehensively breaking down the capabilities (or lack thereof) of a high-tech filtration mask in a manner which is likely to be beyond your understanding

    Just… Why?

    • Deebster
      link
      fedilink
      English
      110 months ago

      It depends on whether you read it as meaning that it goes into more depth than people understand, or are capable of understanding.

      I know that most people don’t understand how HEPA filters work. In a nutshell, they’re not just tiny sieves, but work via different methods: impaction, interception and diffusion (and sometimes electrostatic attraction). This means that e.g. a 0.3 μm N95 mask is better at filtering 0.1 μm virus particles than larger 0.3 μm air pollution because they advertise the size at which it’s worst at filtering.

      This isn’t particularly difficult science, but hardly anyone knows it. I think that most people are capable of understanding the concepts behind it, like Brownian motion, but then most people I meet are fairly smart so I’m not the best judge.