[Jakarta, 12/24/23] Some say I’m so hateful and insane, I hear voices. Today, I must come clean. At my $13 a night room at Oyo 101 Apple Platinum, sounds so fancy, I do hear a small, tinny voice inside my bathroom, and it always utters just one word, “Hello.” At first, I thought it was coming from the hallway or the next room, but then I’d hear it at 3AM, noon or around midnight, and it’s always this same, timid greeting reaching me from hell, heaven or outer space.
"As things get nasty, there will be more crime and less sharing, simply because there may not be enough to keep one’s belly full. That said, it’s better to be among those who aren’t so disgusted by their fellow beings. Societies already filled with angry narcissists will suffer the worst strife and mayhem."
With the US handlers succeeding in turning fellow angry narcissists against each other, it will be an easy thing to make this entire shebang implode.
The old woman pulling plastic bottles out of the trash puts me in mind of a few similar sights in Taipei. It is indisputably a largely prosperous, clean, and safe city. But paying closer attention, I have seen that the rising tide has not exactly lifted all boats. I have seen the cardboard grannies there, too.
They are worn-looking old women (or maybe just prematurely aged?) slowly pushing wheeled hand carts three times their size, piled high with cardboard for recycling, for which they get a pittance. My wife recently told me that one of these we used to see, along with her adult daughter, had both died not too long ago. After what had to be a hard life, a truck struck them one day, killing both of them.
For some reason, it is the tired old women that I noticed most when I would watch the pedestrian traffic through a window while riding by on the local bus. Life in Taiwan was not easy for many people in the decades after WWII, and you can see it in their faces, their stooped postures, and the way they walk—they look sad and bone weary.
Some of the old and/or misshapen who look one step up from beggars, some claiming to be veterans, can be found near the MRT station peddling odds and ends from trays on their wheelchairs, or sitting on the sidewalk with their candy or chewing gum in a basket in their lap. I am told that the vast majority are controlled by gangsters, and they will not be allowed to keep whatever you give them. They will not take food, only money—they get scolded or beaten by their minders if they do. How long until the US makes the full transition to this?
Yuval Noah Harari is the guy that is always talking about how AI will soon render most of humanity obsolete, and wonders aloud what we are going to do with “all those useless people.” Yet another article just yesterday on this subject quotes the WEF, run by Harari’s good buddy Klaus Schwab, as claiming that “around 44% of skill sets will become obsolete by 2027, and 42% of business related skill sets will be replaced by AI.“ But the most ridiculous quote was the following: “Quickly, more and more human domains once thought impossible to replicate – art, music, emotion – fall prey to advancing algorithms until all uniquely human talent and purpose dwindles in the face of superior robotic counterparts. Soon your very existence becomes trivial…unnecessary.” Among other things, this seems to overlook the fact that all real art is created as much for the artists themselves as for those consuming it. And in a world where humans are finally dispensed with, we won’t need art any more anyway.
Perhaps they will have digital neural nets who will algorithmicly appreciate art and produce the right kind of emotive language or gestures one finds uttered or muttered or stuttered by those who say they appreciate art?
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year Linh. Your observations of ordinary people are always refreshing and kind. We stay away from the rich and decline to participate in their disorders.
In my encounters with evangelical American Christianity, those who follow the Calvinist theological interpretations of "total human depravity" are the most vicious yet the ones most apt to smile in your face and tell you that Jesus loves you; unless, unless, unless... Many conditions to what I was raised to believe was supposed to be unconditional love.
I was "prayed out" of a group once for letting on that I didn't believe in a literal, anthropomorphic Satan. They didn't appreciate that. It was scary.
Regardless, Merry Christmas in it's most humane aspects Linh!
I think that the big struggle that we face here in the West, is to look past the material wealth which is plainly just a factor of this life, and focus on our eternal souls. Whenever we do that, we automatically, I believe, revert to form (namely the way we were when we were children). We look with wonder at the world around us and value our mere presence here as participants in this natural pageant. I also believe that we have an innate moral sense, that expects justice and fairness in our earthly dealings. Where does that sense come from? The evil that has overwhelmed the Western world in recent times is a product of our abandonment of our immortal souls (and religion, I suppose) in favor of self gratification and long life (whatever its demented condition). Jesus told us that only the poor man has a pathway to heaven. The rich man? He is doomed to his secular fate. The conundrum of this rich poverty-laden landscape of people happening their way through this earthly tangle, that you describe so well, Linh, is that I am sure they would jump at gaining the riches that fall into our laps in the West, and they would destroy themselves (and their immortal prospects) in the process. What a lesson you teach us with your artful observations of those earthy souls (and I do mean "souls" in the broader and best sense of that word) who make a laughing stock of our withered "culture" over here. Their t shirts say it all...
Ah, yes. Americanisms on t-shirts. What could be more "American" than that?
What you might inform your Indonesian friends -- and people from all countries for that matter -- is that America is not for Americans.
America is for the capitalist owner 1%. I, and other members of the "working class" laboring for $15, 12 or even a paltry $7.25 an hour, don't count.
That's just the hollow facade the owner class puts forth for the world to see. (That America is for Americans.) And they do a good job of it, too. Why, many of my wage-slave neighbors still believe this is "their" country. even as the only domicile or dwelling they can purchase or rent on their paltry wage is a broom-closet size room in a criminally over crowded house in the bad section of town; for $1,200 a month.
Don't like sharing the kitchen with your swinish, poorly educated house mate who labors at screwing the caps on tubes of toothpaste eight to ten hours a day? Too bad.
You can always go live under a cardboard box down at the park. And when you grow weary of the rain and sleet dripping down your shirt collar you can move in with the blue tarp people down by the freeway underpass. And don't complain! As an American you've got nothing to complain about! Why if you don't like it you can just get on that freeway with the infinite quantity of cars wizzing over your head (as you huddle under the freeway overpass)... and go somewhere else! Anywhere!
Just don't be a sore loser and complain. Nobody likes a sore loser. At least not in America.
And just where was that small voice saying "hello" coming from, Mr. Dinh? Now that is creepy!
You can't convince most non whites that America is not a promise land. It is a dream like Heaven. Unlike Heaven people in other lands see immigrants to America sending back money to the home country.
It was smart of Jews to flood the US with immigrants from places like Mexico, Guatemala and India. Unless you are upper caste in your home country, America will likely always be better than from wherever you came (except in the imagination of Fred Reed and other gringos in Mexico) so it gives Jews a lot of room to work at destroying the middle class and normal culture.
As much as I complain about the United States (myself having been a "loser" at the bottom of the working class when I was in the work force. I am now retired.) it is objectively, although not the best, one of the better countries in the world to live in. Especially if one is lucky enough to have been born more or less middle-class or above.
My parents were middle-class having benefited from American society under FDR's New Deal progressive policies. I was among the first generation of Americas to do less well (much less well, economically) than my parents. I was never paid enough to buy a home or much of anything for that matter. (Those of a conservative cast of mind put the blame on the individual for "lack of character" or " not working hard enough" but I know the failings of society when I am immersed in them.)
So, although I often complain about my country of birth, I recognize the basic goodness and decency of her people and institutions; it's just that I always came out on the short end due to a long string over the years of misfortune and bad luck. For example I was homeless in California for over a year through no fault of my own [other than that I did alienate my entire family through my arrogance]. At the time I had not been able to save money because my job payed so little; I had no access to unemployment insurance because my job hadn't paid into the fund, and upon being let go from my job through no fault of my own (layoffs) I lost my apartment and was on the street. A distant acquantance found me homeless and he rescued me from my prediciment, he, himself having an elaborate network of friends and acquintances which I did not have. After he helped me get housing we joked that I was the only person with a four year college degree and a graduate degree (a J.D. in law) in the state who was homeless. Some people (like me) are just not likeable.
Linh, your perspective and experience of the US is different, at least in tone, than the many other Asians I have met. Asians like most other immigrants come to the US to make money (or get welfare at least). They see many of the things you write about but don't care because they are doing well financially and their overall lifestyle is superior, they feel, to what it would be if they returned home once they made their pile of money.
Asians will talk privately about black crime but they are well aware that doing so publicly is taboo in America thus hurting their ability to make money so they don't do it. Besides once they move up the economic ladder they just move away from blacks just like most whites and Jews. I think it was Sam Francis who wrote that most White liberals live their lives like they are members of the KKK. Some Asians even understand the role of Jews but rather than condemn it they are more likely to try and learn from it to replicate that success for their tribe.
You are different because:
A. You are an artist and not driven primarily by money (although I am sure you would like to have more of it).
B. You notice and are driven to state what you notice.
Reality is that America is more of a marketplace than a country or culture these days. Being honest about what is happening gets in the way of making money and an easy life so in the Home of the Brave and Land of the Free most people train themselves to live in a fantasy world because reality is too dangerous and a downer.
"Some Asians even understand the role of Jews but rather than condemn it they are more likely to try and learn from it to replicate that success for their tribe."
But they are less likely to kill, maim, poison, cheat.
The problem now is that white libs have learned to behave that way. "Western Civilization" would have been a good idea, but now it has become a 'non secateur'.
“Here’s to much reverence, gratitude, humility and patience in all our lives as we face dark days ahead!”
I am not an adherent to any religion. I acknowledge Christmas very minimally, and by osmosis. This year, it is next to impossible for me to voice the expected "good cheer rhetoric". You reply to "Merry Christmas". I may as well say, "Happy bar mitzvah".
Great statement of your findings. Funny thing about Harari. I somehow got to his general history of humanity in English before it was published here. It’s a good general anthropology, an account of the species, what I trained and taught. At the end it turns out that he sees the direction and purpose of our kind is capital. It’s a point of view. I understood it as his statement of the evolutionary that institutions grow to average risk. But no, it turns out to be Satanic. Not only in intent but in accomplishment. The man has a legion of the damned following him. He is an epikoros in Jewish terms, a dangerous heretic in terms of the church. When we stopped burning people for that the modern world emerged, whoops. I have one good thing to say about him. His dissertation book is a fine and only study of special operations soldiers in Renaissance Europe. They cared about each other and didn’t kill civilians, whatever else we may say about them. Just wonderful. Best wishes for the holidays -
Bro, they had a Hamas shirt for sale on the street here in KL. Was going to buy it for you but it's far too small for both of us and Jwn won't wear it! I'll keep hunting for one while I am here, they are becoming popular!
I’m on the lookout for a Palestino (Chilean domestic football/soccer shirt) or a Palestine national jersey will do. I want to wear it in airports and see how many oversized noses I disjoint.
I was driving near Emory in Atlanta and I saw a homeless woman walking on the sidewalk in front of a string of row houses that started at $1 mil. I wanted to roll down my window and jokingly tell her to get a job and she only needed a million bucks to get a home the lazy bum. The world we've made is so farcical.
hey Linh, saw the same with the t shirts in Mexico; very original quotes and cute sayings in English, but couldn't find their source. Must be doper expatriates! Cuernavaca was eternal spring in December`and no muslims!
"As things get nasty, there will be more crime and less sharing, simply because there may not be enough to keep one’s belly full. That said, it’s better to be among those who aren’t so disgusted by their fellow beings. Societies already filled with angry narcissists will suffer the worst strife and mayhem."
With the US handlers succeeding in turning fellow angry narcissists against each other, it will be an easy thing to make this entire shebang implode.
That Cristoforo Borri was one sick fuck.
Merry belated Christmas to you, Linh.
The old woman pulling plastic bottles out of the trash puts me in mind of a few similar sights in Taipei. It is indisputably a largely prosperous, clean, and safe city. But paying closer attention, I have seen that the rising tide has not exactly lifted all boats. I have seen the cardboard grannies there, too.
They are worn-looking old women (or maybe just prematurely aged?) slowly pushing wheeled hand carts three times their size, piled high with cardboard for recycling, for which they get a pittance. My wife recently told me that one of these we used to see, along with her adult daughter, had both died not too long ago. After what had to be a hard life, a truck struck them one day, killing both of them.
For some reason, it is the tired old women that I noticed most when I would watch the pedestrian traffic through a window while riding by on the local bus. Life in Taiwan was not easy for many people in the decades after WWII, and you can see it in their faces, their stooped postures, and the way they walk—they look sad and bone weary.
Some of the old and/or misshapen who look one step up from beggars, some claiming to be veterans, can be found near the MRT station peddling odds and ends from trays on their wheelchairs, or sitting on the sidewalk with their candy or chewing gum in a basket in their lap. I am told that the vast majority are controlled by gangsters, and they will not be allowed to keep whatever you give them. They will not take food, only money—they get scolded or beaten by their minders if they do. How long until the US makes the full transition to this?
Yuval Noah Harari is the guy that is always talking about how AI will soon render most of humanity obsolete, and wonders aloud what we are going to do with “all those useless people.” Yet another article just yesterday on this subject quotes the WEF, run by Harari’s good buddy Klaus Schwab, as claiming that “around 44% of skill sets will become obsolete by 2027, and 42% of business related skill sets will be replaced by AI.“ But the most ridiculous quote was the following: “Quickly, more and more human domains once thought impossible to replicate – art, music, emotion – fall prey to advancing algorithms until all uniquely human talent and purpose dwindles in the face of superior robotic counterparts. Soon your very existence becomes trivial…unnecessary.” Among other things, this seems to overlook the fact that all real art is created as much for the artists themselves as for those consuming it. And in a world where humans are finally dispensed with, we won’t need art any more anyway.
Perhaps they will have digital neural nets who will algorithmicly appreciate art and produce the right kind of emotive language or gestures one finds uttered or muttered or stuttered by those who say they appreciate art?
There’s a lot to be said about ludditism.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year Linh. Your observations of ordinary people are always refreshing and kind. We stay away from the rich and decline to participate in their disorders.
In my encounters with evangelical American Christianity, those who follow the Calvinist theological interpretations of "total human depravity" are the most vicious yet the ones most apt to smile in your face and tell you that Jesus loves you; unless, unless, unless... Many conditions to what I was raised to believe was supposed to be unconditional love.
I was "prayed out" of a group once for letting on that I didn't believe in a literal, anthropomorphic Satan. They didn't appreciate that. It was scary.
Regardless, Merry Christmas in it's most humane aspects Linh!
I think that the big struggle that we face here in the West, is to look past the material wealth which is plainly just a factor of this life, and focus on our eternal souls. Whenever we do that, we automatically, I believe, revert to form (namely the way we were when we were children). We look with wonder at the world around us and value our mere presence here as participants in this natural pageant. I also believe that we have an innate moral sense, that expects justice and fairness in our earthly dealings. Where does that sense come from? The evil that has overwhelmed the Western world in recent times is a product of our abandonment of our immortal souls (and religion, I suppose) in favor of self gratification and long life (whatever its demented condition). Jesus told us that only the poor man has a pathway to heaven. The rich man? He is doomed to his secular fate. The conundrum of this rich poverty-laden landscape of people happening their way through this earthly tangle, that you describe so well, Linh, is that I am sure they would jump at gaining the riches that fall into our laps in the West, and they would destroy themselves (and their immortal prospects) in the process. What a lesson you teach us with your artful observations of those earthy souls (and I do mean "souls" in the broader and best sense of that word) who make a laughing stock of our withered "culture" over here. Their t shirts say it all...
Ah, yes. Americanisms on t-shirts. What could be more "American" than that?
What you might inform your Indonesian friends -- and people from all countries for that matter -- is that America is not for Americans.
America is for the capitalist owner 1%. I, and other members of the "working class" laboring for $15, 12 or even a paltry $7.25 an hour, don't count.
That's just the hollow facade the owner class puts forth for the world to see. (That America is for Americans.) And they do a good job of it, too. Why, many of my wage-slave neighbors still believe this is "their" country. even as the only domicile or dwelling they can purchase or rent on their paltry wage is a broom-closet size room in a criminally over crowded house in the bad section of town; for $1,200 a month.
Don't like sharing the kitchen with your swinish, poorly educated house mate who labors at screwing the caps on tubes of toothpaste eight to ten hours a day? Too bad.
You can always go live under a cardboard box down at the park. And when you grow weary of the rain and sleet dripping down your shirt collar you can move in with the blue tarp people down by the freeway underpass. And don't complain! As an American you've got nothing to complain about! Why if you don't like it you can just get on that freeway with the infinite quantity of cars wizzing over your head (as you huddle under the freeway overpass)... and go somewhere else! Anywhere!
Just don't be a sore loser and complain. Nobody likes a sore loser. At least not in America.
And just where was that small voice saying "hello" coming from, Mr. Dinh? Now that is creepy!
You can't convince most non whites that America is not a promise land. It is a dream like Heaven. Unlike Heaven people in other lands see immigrants to America sending back money to the home country.
It was smart of Jews to flood the US with immigrants from places like Mexico, Guatemala and India. Unless you are upper caste in your home country, America will likely always be better than from wherever you came (except in the imagination of Fred Reed and other gringos in Mexico) so it gives Jews a lot of room to work at destroying the middle class and normal culture.
As much as I complain about the United States (myself having been a "loser" at the bottom of the working class when I was in the work force. I am now retired.) it is objectively, although not the best, one of the better countries in the world to live in. Especially if one is lucky enough to have been born more or less middle-class or above.
My parents were middle-class having benefited from American society under FDR's New Deal progressive policies. I was among the first generation of Americas to do less well (much less well, economically) than my parents. I was never paid enough to buy a home or much of anything for that matter. (Those of a conservative cast of mind put the blame on the individual for "lack of character" or " not working hard enough" but I know the failings of society when I am immersed in them.)
So, although I often complain about my country of birth, I recognize the basic goodness and decency of her people and institutions; it's just that I always came out on the short end due to a long string over the years of misfortune and bad luck. For example I was homeless in California for over a year through no fault of my own [other than that I did alienate my entire family through my arrogance]. At the time I had not been able to save money because my job payed so little; I had no access to unemployment insurance because my job hadn't paid into the fund, and upon being let go from my job through no fault of my own (layoffs) I lost my apartment and was on the street. A distant acquantance found me homeless and he rescued me from my prediciment, he, himself having an elaborate network of friends and acquintances which I did not have. After he helped me get housing we joked that I was the only person with a four year college degree and a graduate degree (a J.D. in law) in the state who was homeless. Some people (like me) are just not likeable.
Thank you for your honesty.
That makes you very likeable.
Linh, your perspective and experience of the US is different, at least in tone, than the many other Asians I have met. Asians like most other immigrants come to the US to make money (or get welfare at least). They see many of the things you write about but don't care because they are doing well financially and their overall lifestyle is superior, they feel, to what it would be if they returned home once they made their pile of money.
Asians will talk privately about black crime but they are well aware that doing so publicly is taboo in America thus hurting their ability to make money so they don't do it. Besides once they move up the economic ladder they just move away from blacks just like most whites and Jews. I think it was Sam Francis who wrote that most White liberals live their lives like they are members of the KKK. Some Asians even understand the role of Jews but rather than condemn it they are more likely to try and learn from it to replicate that success for their tribe.
You are different because:
A. You are an artist and not driven primarily by money (although I am sure you would like to have more of it).
B. You notice and are driven to state what you notice.
Reality is that America is more of a marketplace than a country or culture these days. Being honest about what is happening gets in the way of making money and an easy life so in the Home of the Brave and Land of the Free most people train themselves to live in a fantasy world because reality is too dangerous and a downer.
"Some Asians even understand the role of Jews but rather than condemn it they are more likely to try and learn from it to replicate that success for their tribe."
But they are less likely to kill, maim, poison, cheat.
The problem now is that white libs have learned to behave that way. "Western Civilization" would have been a good idea, but now it has become a 'non secateur'.
“Here’s to much reverence, gratitude, humility and patience in all our lives as we face dark days ahead!”
I am not an adherent to any religion. I acknowledge Christmas very minimally, and by osmosis. This year, it is next to impossible for me to voice the expected "good cheer rhetoric". You reply to "Merry Christmas". I may as well say, "Happy bar mitzvah".
Great statement of your findings. Funny thing about Harari. I somehow got to his general history of humanity in English before it was published here. It’s a good general anthropology, an account of the species, what I trained and taught. At the end it turns out that he sees the direction and purpose of our kind is capital. It’s a point of view. I understood it as his statement of the evolutionary that institutions grow to average risk. But no, it turns out to be Satanic. Not only in intent but in accomplishment. The man has a legion of the damned following him. He is an epikoros in Jewish terms, a dangerous heretic in terms of the church. When we stopped burning people for that the modern world emerged, whoops. I have one good thing to say about him. His dissertation book is a fine and only study of special operations soldiers in Renaissance Europe. They cared about each other and didn’t kill civilians, whatever else we may say about them. Just wonderful. Best wishes for the holidays -
a great and different place the far east is what's written on your blog is the real stuff
as opposed to glossy magazines forever telling lies
Quite enjoyable. I've often said and or observed the same thing myself, even if infinitely less traveled.
Bro, they had a Hamas shirt for sale on the street here in KL. Was going to buy it for you but it's far too small for both of us and Jwn won't wear it! I'll keep hunting for one while I am here, they are becoming popular!
I’m on the lookout for a Palestino (Chilean domestic football/soccer shirt) or a Palestine national jersey will do. I want to wear it in airports and see how many oversized noses I disjoint.
The Arabic in this photo says:
GEORGE MIKHAIL
Beard Engineering
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50837861057_1a337c630b_b.jpg
I was driving near Emory in Atlanta and I saw a homeless woman walking on the sidewalk in front of a string of row houses that started at $1 mil. I wanted to roll down my window and jokingly tell her to get a job and she only needed a million bucks to get a home the lazy bum. The world we've made is so farcical.
hey Linh, saw the same with the t shirts in Mexico; very original quotes and cute sayings in English, but couldn't find their source. Must be doper expatriates! Cuernavaca was eternal spring in December`and no muslims!