User profile: alienew

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Forums > Food & Drink > Ground Coffee

Wicker Basket does sell ground Hani Coffee in 3-4 different roasts, as well as a couple of other local brands (one is Aini), but I don't know if the others are also ground.
Brooklyn Pizza sells beans at different roasts, perhaps also ground.
Salvador's sells beans, perhaps also ground.
You can buy a cheap grinder and grind the beans yourself, fresh.
I'd leave Starbuck's alone.

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Forums > Living in Kunming > Is this fake news or not?

Can anybody come up with a clear definition of 'fake news'? My proposed definition is: 'Conscious attempt to use media to manipulate others into believing something that you yourself think is false'. Doesn't require outright lying, but obviously would include most advertising and PR, and one hell of a lot of political speechmaking.

Exceptions would include artistic products in which the observer is clearly invited to be a willing participant (i.e., 'suspension of disbelief' in theatre, literature, etc.) - usually only a temporary state of consciousness.

Happy to hear someone improve on my proposed definition. Note that, with my definition, we are all surrounded, in modern society, with 'fake news' - a branch of dishonesty - most of the time.

It is all a matter of treating other people as objects rather than as subjects, by getting inside their heads under false pretenses.
Note that, among other things, you can make a lot of money this way. This is sometimes referred to as a legitimate form of 'success'. Also good for starting wars.

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Forums > Living in Kunming > Is this fake news or not?

@Mengna: No, Cloudtrapezer doesn't present the WMDs-in-Iraq story as an invention of the mainstream media - we are all, roughly, aware of where it came from, and why, and how.
Your last sentence above is certainly correct, but I think it's a lesson they, as professional journalists who are not totally naive, might well have picked up over the past several hundred years of journalistic coverage of government blather, informed by several thousand years of historical reflection on what government is about and on what governments do and what kind of people like to run them and why.
It's fine to report what a government says; it's ridiculous to present it as fact; if governments were the only source of information and if their analyses (or pretended analyses) were the only ones available, we'd be in even more serious trouble than we are.
Back to the OP: yeah, some good questions - better than the ones all over front pages as the US visibly, month after month, built up its forces in preparation for expanding its ME occupation, which had been advancing since the first Gulf War a quarter of a century ago, if not before.

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Forums > Living in Kunming > Is this fake news or not?

cloudtrapezer's got it once again. I must learn conciseness.
Note that the WPD excuse for invading Iraq appeared across the media spectrum, at least in the US, including in both what some contributors here want to call 'liberal' or even 'left' (e.g., NYT) and 'conservative' or 'right' (which some want to pretend is objective or honest or something - you know, like Fox News) outlets.
As I've pointed out, I think the term FAKE NEWS!, which, I admit, has sort of a nice simplistic ring to it, ought to be defined a bit more carefully, as we consider the question of better alternatives, which may put greater demands on the reader.

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OK. but I think.I'd use 'they', for accuracy' - 'we' is too simple and too vague, besides which it seems to speak primarily to US and Chinese posters.

Anyway, note that, for the US military and government, the China theatre was considered the least important of the various theatres of WWII in which US military personnel were engaged, whereas for the Chinese it was, obviously, the most important.

TK2018: Yes, I agree. Very nice writing, not just of the place but also of the experience. I envy the author this one. In reading the article I found myself remembering a few experiences I've had in similar mountain country decades ago (I hope this doesn't sound like boasting) and thinking the author and I had attained more or less the same plane, something we could share if we met - I could identify. Not everyone can express it this well.

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I'm not a health foody but the few meals I've had here have been really good and, yeah, I'll be happy to go back alone to sample all the rest of them. It's also not a bad place from which to people-watch the street below.