Been a student. Been a clerk. Been a salesperson. Been a manager. Been a teacher. Been an expatriate. Am a husband, father, and chronicle.

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Joined 2 年前
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Cake day: 2023年7月4日

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  • This may be anecdotal, but it may also be a canary in a coalmine.

    I have seen a civilian population tear down its president and vice-president. Peacefully, and just before an election. It took months of activism. Weeks of protest and a 1-day general strike.

    Look up Guatemala, 2015. Otto Perez Molina. #noletoca.

    This was underreported, I think. Three presidents later, therr is Bernardo Arevalo. He is a president whose legacy hearkens back to before their Civil War, after WWII, and before US intervention.





  • They know that Israel is at the eye of the global shit storm. Iran might close the strait of Hormuz, and the Yemenis are definitely going to take shots at ships heading for Bab-el-Mandeb (Gate of Grief). Iran may start boarding ships as well.

    This is a business decision.

    The rest of this post is bullshit. If it comes true, well, then, I’m an unprofitable prophet.

    Goodness knows how this is going to go once the NATO-backed EU sanctions on Israel hit in mid-July. US will try to sanction/tariff their way around that, an attempt to support their pals, but, surprise! Domestic unrest will force the felon’s hand.

    That frees up some space for more integrated transport across Europe, Canada, and emerging markets across north and west Africa, quelling some of the decolonial “unrest” in Mali, Burkina Faso with offers of “trade.”

    The wedge in the anglosphere will widen, and the US will be more isolated. They’ll either attack Canada or suffer Civil War by November, about the time people start to realize they can’t pay for their heating this winter and can’t even afford “2 dolls instead of 30” this Xmas.



  • If I said yes, I’d caveat that by saying, “we’re not special.” There’s no interaction, quid pro quo or otherwise, with whatever presence, energy, or overmind that I would conceptualize as a deity.

    Not an architect. Not a creator. Omnipotence and omniscience defy temporality. There are, similarly, no subdivisions of the deity; there are no places that it is present, and others that it is absent. No underboss gods, angels, demons, heavens, hells, or purgatories.

    The deity, in my understanding, is simply a unity: An answer to paradoxes, a solution to the incomprehensible, a layer beneath and above all other measurements, concepts, and capacities. A holographic whole that encompasses and inhabits every possibility. It is older than the universe and beyond our feeble attempts to comprehend it, let alone write its character and tell its story.

    A bearded white dude who impregnated a virgin, hates masturbation, holds vendettas, destroys cities, sends plagues, and permits humans to hide from “HIM” in the garden of good and evil… it is all just silly by comparison. At that’s just from the tradition I was raised in.

    I mean, a burning bush? Or tests of faith?

    We, people and all other organisms that are aware of one another, need to get on with finding ways to coexist. Biodiversity is the scorecard.

    /rant


  • The metric is biodiversity.

    How many kinds of life are there, and are they thriving? What are the bottlenecks and boundaries for species that slow or stop their progress?

    Well, as a living, all-consuming, extinction-level event, I’d say we are making the experiment more impossible. We are a confounding factor, a bias most foul, and the primary flaw in the experimental design.

    If only there was guidance in terms of balancing our biological impact and capacity for sustainable development. If only there were some models that have and had worked for millennia. If only there were living groups who could share their wisdom.

    If only.

    So, for now, plunderous expropriation rules: violent, resource-heavy, rational modern warfare; apathetic, resource-heavy, throwaway consumer culture; and ignorant, resource-heavy, industrial machinations.

    What could go wrong?



  • IIRC, the food, therefore the word, was introduced to Korea. It is a transliteration. Like “tae-kwon-do” is a transliteration from the Korean 태권도 (taegwondo).

    Note: Korean is not my first language. It is first non-English script I’ve managed to learn to read and write and makes me happy every time I interact with it.

    My read/spoken Korean is atrocious and barely functions.