[Kracheh, Cambodia on 10/22/23] Tired of Heng Heng’s erratic wifi, I’ve moved to Heang Kanha. For $12.50 a night, I get a room with AC but no TV, which I never watch anyway. I’m also a block away from the Mekong, so no predawn exercise while staring at that liquid dragon as it, too, steels itself for another day. Our world is ending.
When I read the line Bernie Sanders interviews Cardi B, I thought so clever, what a card that Linh is. But a quick check on YT informed me that this surreal pairing has been going on for 5 years. Here I was wondering how the average Dem might be able to rationalize such a debasement of their last candidate w/ a shred of dignity and serious Marxist concern about the plight of the underclass, when it's no snarky right-wing fantasy at all. It's a done deal. Say goodbye to old school liberals. Bernie's hip. Cardi's a pundit. Ain't that something else, my niggaz?
Billy, I've sent you a shirt and a letter. You've been so thoughtful and open with me while I've allowed my tongue to be tied for too long. I want you to know that I think of my radio silence with shame. As Richard "Dimples" Fields said, "If it ain't one thing, it's another". I forget that free expression is not just an American right but a moral imperative and source of joy. It feels as though chunks of sky keep falling to earth, but I've become a hen-pecked old man who is just yelling at clouds. Instead of paying attention to my fellow fowl who are also being battered and abused.
The sky has always been falling or at least full of taxpayer funded geoengineering particulates. Unless I'm to shoot down the planes or bomb the 5G towers, I should do more than gawk and drown with drops in my beak while staring up uselessly, an irradiated version of Stalin's chicken. The metaphors have their limits...
I'm really sorry. Forgive me. I think of you, your wife and plight often.
Also I read something about Sanders recently that was on the, ahem, aquiline nose. It went something like 'Bernie is a socialist the way Edir Macedo is an ascetic'. That wasn't quite it, though I can't find or remember the exact phrasing but that was the jist.
Also Linh, I love you. Forgive me for the hijacking of your comment section with my blathering. Americans might be in a sense cautiously ending self-imposed stints in our own lonely versions of room 666. Perhaps feeling amorous, having now 'bated solo for 247 years and some change, watching murder after murder take place from our couches or wheelchairs, slowly being goaded into psychopathy or sociopathy.
Atomization for you, I suppose. A hell of a drug administered by a Munchausen mother in the isolation of our own homes, or at lonely diners with the touch of a remote.
We have forgot there are other people, be they witches or devils, in the same hell though down the hall, through bricked-up North doors.
Happy Halloween, all fellow Linh lovers and deeply feeling, sensate beings. In my unsolicited opinion we are not devils or dybbuks but have been poked by them. Very contagious, you see? Be sure to wear your plague masks as the Red, White, and Blue Death continues. A masquerade of course, but enjoy the party while you can.
There should be more studies about what the Internet, and more recently and perhaps even more overwhelmingly, social media and smartphones have done to people in society. While social atomization was already going on for a while, and not just in America, these new technologies increased the phenomenon much more.
The Covid period was an experiment into a society where we only see each other through screens, and it was awful, terrifying really. Perhaps part of the solution is getting rid of our phones or limiting their use in some way. Incidentally, I don't see many people just looking at smartphones in your pictures, although I am sure that is as common there as it is in the West.
I agree with your sentiment, Tom. Problem is your getting into Constitutional issues of the right to free speech and so forth.
I believe in China children are strictly limited by government in the amount of time they are allowed to spend on the Internet. To me it sounds too much like "Brave New World" meets "1984" but that's just me.
Yes, this is true. I don't much like the Chinese top-down approach. I think this should come more from a religious authority, as a sort of moral guidance but not mandatory, but since religion or at any rate Christianity in the West is pretty much dead, I don't see how to do it. The Amish however, appear to do well establishing their own rules.
I don't really know, because those types of social studies are hard to do or replicate, but, for instance, there are quite a few studies showing that pornography affects the brain negatively, also the "mouse utopia" experiment was interesting. I think if there was some interest in studying also the negative aspects of these technologies, there would be some research on that, but there isn't and the money to fund it probably isn't there.
I so agree, Dorsey. Painfully real people who are being slaughtered by utter nihilists who don't even regard Palestinians as human. Upside down world, for sure.
The truly pernicious aspect of the mediated world we live in is that it has corrupted the most innate windows within the human experience... Not just the eyes, of course, but all perceptive mechanisms. People are constantly binging on all things "sensorial" and don't even know it... Sitting in the "presence" of most often feels like listening to a series of radios all tuned to a different station.
Secondly, "Nighthawks" reminds me of many scenes from the movie "The Equalizer"... Considering what Denzell Washington's character represented, I don't think it is an accident, and a not-too-far-removed evolution of the message conveyed by the original painting.
A deep, deep, multi-dimensional dive into 21st century reality, Mr. Dinh. Scholars more perceptive than I will be mining your work for decades in order to understand wither goes the course of our current civilization.
One can't help but think of "Trimalchio's Dinner" in the Satyricon as a somewhat analogous satirical look into a society in decline.
Two more contemporary works come to mind: Oswald Spenglar's "Decline of the West" written as Germany was being defeated in World War One and (oddly) Ray Dalio's 2021 book "The Changing World Order" in which Dalio outlines America's economic decline. Incongruously enough, Mr. Dalio is a hedge fund manager who has made billions for his clients anticipating market declines.
Dinh and Dalio: two Cassandras who could foresee the future. And it ain't bright.
Oh, and Frito is Spanish for fried so that's Fried Stupid (Frito Pendejo). Mike Judge was another necromancer.
I agree, Mr. Herzog. I am not familiar with all those titles but I am reading 'The God That Failed' by John Q. Publius, which might be similar. I have also absorbed a lot through Linh and his works. Theory and practicality are forever rivaling one another - there is so much to understand, but the application of that knowledge is daunting. Like a brilliant chemist who can't light his own beaker.
Can I ask you a question? What do you think 'Cassandra with a lisp' means? Came across it in the context of this article:
"The unsigned article accused lesser children’s authors of being “forced by a literary trend to play Cassandra with a lisp. We have no idea what, good or bad, will come of introducing futility so near the dawn of life, but it was only last week that our little nephew, waking from an anxious dream, stirred and sighed and said, ‘Oh God, another day!’"
Publius was the pen name that Hamilton and Madison took when they wrote "The Federalist Papers". (I don't recall if John Jay, the third contributor, used that name.)
Hamilton was the archetypal American empire builder. Ironically he wasn't even originally from the U.S. He was of Scottish ancestry born on an island in the Caribbean. So it goes in America.
Israel Zangwill in the grave rejoicing that the melting pot is bubbling over, par for the course I suppose in an increasingly cross-pollinated and globalized world.
Also I assume 'Cassandra with a lisp' as a phrase denotes a subpar/derivative psychic? Sorry to harp on it. You had mentioned "Dinh and Dalio: two Cassandras who could foresee the future. And it ain't bright." It reminded me of something I read and hadn't understood. Leaning not on my own understanding, I'm becoming a pedantic cripple.
Pedantry (but certainly not pederasty!) is one of my many vices. Along with sloth. Although I have nothing against that timid creature by the same name.
On this increasingly lonely planet, there are still oases of raw, unmediated vitality. We must hope it will spread. That’s why I like you Linh (your delusional lunacies aside). Simple declarative sentences, mediated with reassuring doses of humble hopefulness. Exactly what this aching planet needs.
Not only a replication of the jpg of the painting but words enough to describe it. Not only the link to the scene itself replicated in bits through a 'Tube, but a repasting of someone' s lurid description to force a mind to imagine and populate the scene...
Reading about the pornographic, all this play with the ooze we humans peruse, is an odd place from which to judge the depraved without indulging our own fluidity.
Me? I love it and use alcohol for rubbing on hands, not drinking. Cleanliness is next to sodliness.
My royalties are negligible. I can't count on them. If you want my Seven Stories Press books, it's probably best to buy them from the publisher's website:
When I read the line Bernie Sanders interviews Cardi B, I thought so clever, what a card that Linh is. But a quick check on YT informed me that this surreal pairing has been going on for 5 years. Here I was wondering how the average Dem might be able to rationalize such a debasement of their last candidate w/ a shred of dignity and serious Marxist concern about the plight of the underclass, when it's no snarky right-wing fantasy at all. It's a done deal. Say goodbye to old school liberals. Bernie's hip. Cardi's a pundit. Ain't that something else, my niggaz?
Billy, I've sent you a shirt and a letter. You've been so thoughtful and open with me while I've allowed my tongue to be tied for too long. I want you to know that I think of my radio silence with shame. As Richard "Dimples" Fields said, "If it ain't one thing, it's another". I forget that free expression is not just an American right but a moral imperative and source of joy. It feels as though chunks of sky keep falling to earth, but I've become a hen-pecked old man who is just yelling at clouds. Instead of paying attention to my fellow fowl who are also being battered and abused.
The sky has always been falling or at least full of taxpayer funded geoengineering particulates. Unless I'm to shoot down the planes or bomb the 5G towers, I should do more than gawk and drown with drops in my beak while staring up uselessly, an irradiated version of Stalin's chicken. The metaphors have their limits...
I'm really sorry. Forgive me. I think of you, your wife and plight often.
Also I read something about Sanders recently that was on the, ahem, aquiline nose. It went something like 'Bernie is a socialist the way Edir Macedo is an ascetic'. That wasn't quite it, though I can't find or remember the exact phrasing but that was the jist.
Also Linh, I love you. Forgive me for the hijacking of your comment section with my blathering. Americans might be in a sense cautiously ending self-imposed stints in our own lonely versions of room 666. Perhaps feeling amorous, having now 'bated solo for 247 years and some change, watching murder after murder take place from our couches or wheelchairs, slowly being goaded into psychopathy or sociopathy.
Atomization for you, I suppose. A hell of a drug administered by a Munchausen mother in the isolation of our own homes, or at lonely diners with the touch of a remote.
We have forgot there are other people, be they witches or devils, in the same hell though down the hall, through bricked-up North doors.
Happy Halloween, all fellow Linh lovers and deeply feeling, sensate beings. In my unsolicited opinion we are not devils or dybbuks but have been poked by them. Very contagious, you see? Be sure to wear your plague masks as the Red, White, and Blue Death continues. A masquerade of course, but enjoy the party while you can.
Great to hear from you again. I'll write an email. Much to say.
There should be more studies about what the Internet, and more recently and perhaps even more overwhelmingly, social media and smartphones have done to people in society. While social atomization was already going on for a while, and not just in America, these new technologies increased the phenomenon much more.
The Covid period was an experiment into a society where we only see each other through screens, and it was awful, terrifying really. Perhaps part of the solution is getting rid of our phones or limiting their use in some way. Incidentally, I don't see many people just looking at smartphones in your pictures, although I am sure that is as common there as it is in the West.
No doubt one of Herr Schwab's minions is preparing just such a "study" explaining to us why this is actually a good thing.
I agree with your sentiment, Tom. Problem is your getting into Constitutional issues of the right to free speech and so forth.
I believe in China children are strictly limited by government in the amount of time they are allowed to spend on the Internet. To me it sounds too much like "Brave New World" meets "1984" but that's just me.
Yes, this is true. I don't much like the Chinese top-down approach. I think this should come more from a religious authority, as a sort of moral guidance but not mandatory, but since religion or at any rate Christianity in the West is pretty much dead, I don't see how to do it. The Amish however, appear to do well establishing their own rules.
Hi Tom,
Can you elaborate on what you feel a worthwhile study would look like?
I don't really know, because those types of social studies are hard to do or replicate, but, for instance, there are quite a few studies showing that pornography affects the brain negatively, also the "mouse utopia" experiment was interesting. I think if there was some interest in studying also the negative aspects of these technologies, there would be some research on that, but there isn't and the money to fund it probably isn't there.
GAZA is where humanity lives. Bless Palestinians.
I so agree, Dorsey. Painfully real people who are being slaughtered by utter nihilists who don't even regard Palestinians as human. Upside down world, for sure.
The truly pernicious aspect of the mediated world we live in is that it has corrupted the most innate windows within the human experience... Not just the eyes, of course, but all perceptive mechanisms. People are constantly binging on all things "sensorial" and don't even know it... Sitting in the "presence" of most often feels like listening to a series of radios all tuned to a different station.
Secondly, "Nighthawks" reminds me of many scenes from the movie "The Equalizer"... Considering what Denzell Washington's character represented, I don't think it is an accident, and a not-too-far-removed evolution of the message conveyed by the original painting.
A deep, deep, multi-dimensional dive into 21st century reality, Mr. Dinh. Scholars more perceptive than I will be mining your work for decades in order to understand wither goes the course of our current civilization.
One can't help but think of "Trimalchio's Dinner" in the Satyricon as a somewhat analogous satirical look into a society in decline.
Two more contemporary works come to mind: Oswald Spenglar's "Decline of the West" written as Germany was being defeated in World War One and (oddly) Ray Dalio's 2021 book "The Changing World Order" in which Dalio outlines America's economic decline. Incongruously enough, Mr. Dalio is a hedge fund manager who has made billions for his clients anticipating market declines.
Dinh and Dalio: two Cassandras who could foresee the future. And it ain't bright.
Oh, and Frito is Spanish for fried so that's Fried Stupid (Frito Pendejo). Mike Judge was another necromancer.
I agree, Mr. Herzog. I am not familiar with all those titles but I am reading 'The God That Failed' by John Q. Publius, which might be similar. I have also absorbed a lot through Linh and his works. Theory and practicality are forever rivaling one another - there is so much to understand, but the application of that knowledge is daunting. Like a brilliant chemist who can't light his own beaker.
Can I ask you a question? What do you think 'Cassandra with a lisp' means? Came across it in the context of this article:
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/how-the-story-of-ferdinand-became-fodder-for-the-culture-wars-of-its-era
"The unsigned article accused lesser children’s authors of being “forced by a literary trend to play Cassandra with a lisp. We have no idea what, good or bad, will come of introducing futility so near the dawn of life, but it was only last week that our little nephew, waking from an anxious dream, stirred and sighed and said, ‘Oh God, another day!’"
Publius was the pen name that Hamilton and Madison took when they wrote "The Federalist Papers". (I don't recall if John Jay, the third contributor, used that name.)
Hamilton was the archetypal American empire builder. Ironically he wasn't even originally from the U.S. He was of Scottish ancestry born on an island in the Caribbean. So it goes in America.
Israel Zangwill in the grave rejoicing that the melting pot is bubbling over, par for the course I suppose in an increasingly cross-pollinated and globalized world.
Also I assume 'Cassandra with a lisp' as a phrase denotes a subpar/derivative psychic? Sorry to harp on it. You had mentioned "Dinh and Dalio: two Cassandras who could foresee the future. And it ain't bright." It reminded me of something I read and hadn't understood. Leaning not on my own understanding, I'm becoming a pedantic cripple.
Pedantry (but certainly not pederasty!) is one of my many vices. Along with sloth. Although I have nothing against that timid creature by the same name.
On this increasingly lonely planet, there are still oases of raw, unmediated vitality. We must hope it will spread. That’s why I like you Linh (your delusional lunacies aside). Simple declarative sentences, mediated with reassuring doses of humble hopefulness. Exactly what this aching planet needs.
Such erudite comments! Thanks to you Linh!
Not only a replication of the jpg of the painting but words enough to describe it. Not only the link to the scene itself replicated in bits through a 'Tube, but a repasting of someone' s lurid description to force a mind to imagine and populate the scene...
Reading about the pornographic, all this play with the ooze we humans peruse, is an odd place from which to judge the depraved without indulging our own fluidity.
Me? I love it and use alcohol for rubbing on hands, not drinking. Cleanliness is next to sodliness.
Hawkeye is a painting that perfectly catches loneliness glad many think the same
Linh,
What is the best way to buy your books? aka which gives you the biggest cut? Thanks
Hi J.G. Carbone,
My royalties are negligible. I can't count on them. If you want my Seven Stories Press books, it's probably best to buy them from the publisher's website:
https://www.sevenstories.com/authors/245-linh-dinh
Linh
Much appreciated Linh. Keep up the good work
I think the view out of your window is far more likely than that of James Stewart. Although I have seen neither...