perestroika

That's not an honest comparison.

You have chosen the police-reported number of protesters (338 K) instead of 2 M reported by other sources.

You have also made a false comparison between Hong Kong (~10 M people) and the entire population of China. I recommend to use percentages. Up to 20% of the local population showed up to protest. More were dissatisfied.

What number of Chinese would show up to protest if a hot topic would appear and the regime would seem weak for a moment, is unknown.

The cops were likely doused with ABC powder by their fellow cops, and got away with light burns (heavy clothing helps). Lee Chi-cheung seems to have been hurt badly. The protester with a stick and swimming board was saved by surgeons (the bullet missed his heart).

A side note: some HK brutality was outsourced to the "white shirts", whose allegiance could be denied. (In HK, a black shirt meant you were a protester, while a crowd of young men in white shirts with sticks - was usually associated with triads doing a favour to the city government. Their most publicized "feat" was the mass beating at Yuen Long subway station.) Overall, Hong Kongers seem to have done their protest with "comparatively little violence" (relative to their total number).

When mass protest occurred in Chile, I was busy and missed the news. I managed to register what was happening, but no details.

An example of the cost of a very severe protest which stopped short of a war, would be the Maidan events in Ukraine. The cost was 108 civilians and 13 police killed. A big number for a protest - mostly bullet wounds - but a small number compared to what is taken by a war.

I observed the events keenly. Regarding numbers. As always, in a situation like that, police will under-report the number of protesters, while protesters will over-report the number of protesters. Journalists will try to make sense of it. Two examples:

While police estimated attendance at the march on Hong Kong Island at 270,000, the organisers claimed that 1.03 million people had attended the rally, a number unprecedently high for the city.

A protest on the following day had almost 2 million people participating according to an CHRF estimate, while the police estimated that there were 338,000 demonstrators at its peak.

The spread is rather large, 10 times difference. A survey of mobile phone operators to get their statistics likely would be able to tell how many really participated, but I'm not aware of one, and besides it's all under Chinese control now.

Now, one of your claims sticks out - I need to ask for your source. You write:

the Chinese government took extreme cautions not to appear brutal, even when protesters murdered several cops and counter-protesters

This claim appears to be entirely false. Can you tell, where did you get the information? In retrospect, and in agreement with daily news as I recall them, according to Wikipedia:

Two died during protests and clashes,[11][12] 13 committed suicide.[13][14][15]

Report about death 1

[12:55] Student Union appeals: All Hong Kong citizens put down what they are doing at 1pm and observe a moment of silence for Mr. Chow.

12:30 A government spokesperson said in response to media inquiries that the HKUST student fell in a car park in Tseung Kwan O on the morning of November 4 and died after undergoing surgical treatment at the hospital.

Report about death 2

A 70-year-old cleaner outsourced by the Food and Civil Supplies Department was hit in the head by a brick opposite the Northern District Hall in Sheung Shui during lunch the day before yesterday. Police said they had arrested suspected persons involved in the case.

You are correct, it didn't work.

HK was economically dependent on China already, so their last struggle occurred too late, under the implied threat of the Chinese army moving in. The city government found ways to bring in Chinese police (or interior ministry troops) to overcome and outlast the protests.

To my knowledge, a US police department was sieged and damaged with fire (somewhat short of getting burnt down) during the rioting that occured after killing George Floyd. The officers had firearms, but because of a mix of reasons did not start indiscriminately shooting at over a thousand people. Perhaps out of enlightened self-interest.

It is definitely worth noting that HK didn't have firearms in civilian circulation, but on a few occasions, police did use their guns to shoot a protester. I recall an incident of a kid with a swimming board and stick being shot in the chest while fighting against cops.

To narrow down the frame a bit further - the situation in HK involved incredibly large mass protest. At least a quarter of the population was on streets on certain days. Young and militant protesters were just the outer edge - most participants were not militant at all. In such a context, police generally do not want to provoke outrage, because they're in a very deep minority.

Much depends on what protesters really want. Every person ultimately has their own ideas, but in broad categories:

• do protesters hope to intimidate / persuade the government?
• do protesters want to block government action, but lack offensive intent?
• do protesters intend to defeat and overthrow the government?

Different behaviours will follow depending on goals.

a) Intimidate: showing maximum numbers becomes an important goal. To show maximum numbers, a protest has to be peaceful, so retired people and kids can join. A peaceful mass protest may be a pre-stage for a less peaceful action later, if demands are ignored. It serves to bring people together and bring them into contact with each other. No special gear is required, at least from most participants.

Peaceful mass protest can succeed if a government is frightened of numbers and backs down. It typically works in a democracy.

b) Block: in such situations, protesters often construct roadblocks and barricades around points they care about, and crowd around those points, supplying them - while laying siege to opposing bases, preventing movement by constructing barricades, sabotaging vehicles or slashing tires, denying access to communications, surveillance data, fuel, electricity, heat, water or even sewage.

Blocking a space without offensive action may prevail if a large majority of people do that, against a government which is exhausted, demoralized and has low legitimacy. In the former Soviet block, "velvet revolutions" often involved people persuading soldiers to disobey, offering food, beverage and psychological support to ignore orders, and dissuading cops from showing up at work. This won't work if an opponent has lots of ruthless people willing to kill, who cannot be approached for mass discussion and negotiation. Blocking and persuading will work better if the opponent doesn't feel threatened. If you want someone to defect, you don't approach them with a gun, even if you have one as a backup option. You approach them with beer, preferably a whole crate. :)

c) Defeat: now this is something that usually ends badly. Regardless, it's possible for protesters to defeat a government if the military refrains to act. Revolutions where protesters defeated law enforcement and overthrew a government have typically involved scores of people getting shot. It seems almost a rule that protesters will only win if they escalate fast and cut off law enforcement supply lines. It will help them if an another branch of government is ready to step in and replace the offending one (e.g. parliament is ready to dismiss the president, similar scenarios). If they are slow or can't break supply lines, they'll be defeated or the situation will devolve into a civil war.

I'm saying you didn't read the article. :)

You brought the topic of Luigi and egg-throwing here for some reason, but I cannot fathom why. The article is not about Luigi or egg-throwing.

Last I checked, there was a phenomenon named "concern trolling" which vaguely resembles your style, but I'm not quick to judge. Maybe your concern for egg-throwers is genuine. But how did you arrive at it?

The article was about democracy, law, whether law is worth following, and what determines if a strategy could win.

Among its most worthwhile parts, the article said:

If the defenders of democracy cannot offer anything more inspiring than a return to the previous state of affairs—the one that caused this catastrophe in the first place—they will lose, and they will deserve to lose. It will take a more ambitious and far-reaching vision to defeat oligarchy.

Your post does a poor job of conveying your point.

"Someone throwing an egg may get killed" - sure, and irrelevant from the viewpoint of evaluating whether Trump's career might end with an impact (which is not the topic of the article, I should note). For a meaningful evaluation of that different topic, I recommend reading about Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and Mossad's venture to end his life.

They are correct to note:

It was the rules of the previous game that created this situation. Wanting to go back a single step in history, to the previous stage of the process, is foolish, because that was the stage that led us directly to this one.

Defense against tyranny better be multi-layered, with some using methods intended to get "one step back" while others use methods that lead elsewhere. CrimethInc is stressing the importance of anarchist methods, and that is good.

Meanwhile, people who can work via courts, should keep obstructing Trump in courts. I would even encourage them. For federal employees, time to choose will come - will they take orders from the government or courts? I would encourage them to choose the latter.

For members of the Congress, a choice will come at some point (likely after 2 years): will they impeach or tiptoe along party lines? For members of the Secret Service, another question is constant: will they diligently protect their client, or get disillusioned and let him down?

Grassroot methods of resistance are a more gradual process. They can start right now, and run along everything else. At first, nobody will notice them, but if they work, later nobody can stop them.

It's hard to predict what will work in the end.

My only solid advise to Americans is: just try to avoid a civil war, because then almost everyone loses.

I think they're aiming for storing and transporting a large amount of energy (e.g. enough energy for the whole winter). Which you conventionally do as fuel.

It's making syngas (mix of hydrogen and CO).

So it begs for a next step. Syngas on its own is not a practical fuel. Unlike methane, it can't be liquefied (hydrogen does not liqefy under economically feasible conditions). Due to free hydrogen, it makes metals brittle. Due to CO, it's poisonous. And like most fuels, it's flammable - I think we can't blame a fuel for that. :)

The next step is hydrogenation of carbon monoxide. I've browsed literature and read my fair share via Sci-Hub, and this step tends to have various issues: reactivity, selectivity, catalyst cost and catalyst lifetime.

Reactivity: often, you have to raise either the pressure or the temperature to levels which complicate industrial production. Directly reacting CO2 with H2 faces those issues, but the catalyst (Cu + ZnO) is cheap.

Selectivity: suppose you want to get methanol, the simplest alcohol. Unfortunately your catalyst gives you a mix of methane, methanol, ethane, ethanol and buthanol. To build an industrial process, you need an extra step to separate them. If you get too much byproducts, your fuel production plant could become considerably bigger and more costly. So you definitely want good selectivity.

Catalyst lifetime: suppose that 1 kg of catalyst manages to produce 100 kg of fuel. That's nice in a lab, but clearly unaccepable in industry.

Catalyst cost: for example, you better not need appreciable quantities of rare metals (e.g. rhenium, nice catalyst, but 2500 euros per gram).

Recently, much has been written about hydrogenation of CO in its liquid phase (at high pressure, not low temprature). For example here. The catalyst is manganese (price OK) and the "total turnover number" (representing catalyst lifetime) is 12 000, which I'd describe as "good enough to go out of the lab, if cheap enough". In the summary, I can't find their batch time. In another study about CO + H2 via manganese, people used a batch time of 8-12 hours. So there is a reactivity issue present, but maybe it can be overcome.

To add bits and pieces to the "digital camouflage" article:

• if for some reason, TOR doesn't fit your needs --> I2P is a network and software (computers running I2P "routers") where addresses are cryptographic keys, much like .onion addresses on TOR

https://geti2p.net/en/ , http://i2p2.de/en (different mirrors, same content)

• another good VPN service: RiseUp VPN

• a note about e-mail: in careless hands, e-mail can blow up in your face, but used strictly (access remote inbox via TOR, only upload and download GPG-encrypted messages), e-mail can be used securely

From my perspective, slrpnk.net is occasionally very slow to respond... and then, after 5 minutes, fast again.

Basing on what I read on the "support" chat channel via XMPP, the server recently had major hardware trouble. I would guess that everything isn't fully set up yet.