fritztastic's comments

Between the inflexible authoritarian way my parents were, and the coping mechanisms I used to make it through the years I lived with them, it was a many-years-long journey later on in my adult life (and still ongoing) to work back through the layers and shift the foundations from where they were involuntarily built to where I wanted them to be.

I have a particular grief, for the time in my life I could have been more like who I may have been had it not been for abuse and trauma. The years of lost experiences and mistakes that may have been much less arduous had it not been for the coping mechanisms I adopted for survival. When you say you don't know how to complain- I think it may be more accurate that you may have trouble with communicating with/relating to other people, or you can't find the proper way to articulate how big of an impact or determine at what point something is really part of you or a mindspace you find yourself in.

I spent a long time trying to deal with it on my own, but where I really started to make traction was talking to a professional and actually being honest, painfully so when it came to my dysfunctional way of dealing with intimacy. After some years I was able to begin admitting where I was the source of my own anguish and forgiving myself but also taking accountability of putting in the work to change what I could so I could live life more functionally and really be able to experience things without that weight I hadn't realized I had been carrying all along. To an extent I had become attached to it and it became an extension of me, a part of my identity.

My family in general was (in some ways still is) incredibly problematic, and I've come to realize a lot of the problems started with a desire to be validated and/or accepted by the parental figures. Not saying this is the case for everyone, but it is possible to forgive people (and still love them, if you wish) who caused a lot of harm, and work to heal. You deserved better, and future you can find what you yearn- it's not an easy road working through all that but there is hope to be found in the process which may not have felt feasible otherwise.

At least, at this time, with current interpretation- "the Supreme Court has explained that people must have notice of the possible criminal penalties for their actions at the time they act" [2] (See also Weaver v Graham[3])

This might be subject to change.

[1]https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S9-C3-3-...

[2]https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S9-C3-3-...

[3]http://cdn.loc.gov/service/ll/usrep/usrep450/usrep450024/usr...

It is possible to be outraged by all these things at the same time. No one has to pick between different types of exploitation and only be mad at one thing.

Interesting read. I was hoping they'd mention suspended animation and studying how some people managed to survive or be resuscitated after accidentally being frozen for lengths of time thought to be impossible to come back from.

Personally, I think if there is a way to bring about immortality it would look more like transferring/uploading consciousness than reanimating a whole human body. Besides which, wouldn't people want new bodies anyway, especially depending on what caused their deaths. (which reminds me of the head transplant that was supposed to happen) There are a lot of different issues also involved with this, besides the ability to succeed, which I find fascinating to think about and discuss.

Perhaps both these options will become possible... maybe neither.

From his Istanbul post:

>Because being an addict here is an ugly and gross rebellion against a town that feels like a single massive mosque. A place that is welcoming, humble, peaceful, and sublimely beautiful. It is like pissing on an alter. A gross, ugly, and rebellious act that will bring scorn and shame. Both in the physical and spiritual world. US cities by comparison have all the ethos of an office park. Drab, soulless, and endlessly competitive, where selfishness is rewarded. Being an addict there is like pissing on the drab shrub at the edge of a massive parking lot. It doesn’t feel that wrong. It even feels a little right. Especially if your a tad depressed. A tad isolated. A tad lonely. And many people are."

There is an issue here with this attempt at documenting people but without taking the time to learn and understand how to do it respectfully, ethically, and with consideration to the people he's observing. I want to believe his motivation comes from a good place, that he wants to bring attention to people's lives... but the way his writing reads sounds more like the fetishization of the marginalized and elitism over exceptionalism. It sounds like "yes I'm privileged but unlike those other privileged people I talk to the poors", because rather than centering the voices of the people he claims to "inhabit their tiny slice of the world"(while claiming his goal is "to better understand how they see the universe and their place in it") he dishes out his value judgements. The hubris that all you need to get an idea of how people live is to... show up. He does write that he sees traveling as fiction with the plot written in real time- evidently with him as the MC. He seems to want to change for the better though, and I hope he learns to invest a little more time into figuring out how to look at people's lives more respectfully than as entertainment.

Astounding.

As someone who grew up in the global South, this reads to me like a person from a privileged background trying to relate to the everyday people in other places and the marginalized- but it comes off sounding like a lot of projectionand assumptions- it would read much better if the conclusions were accompanied with dialogue from people, maybe explanations of where those statements are coming from.

>I don’t travel like most people do I would think most travel is done by a wealthy few, but most travelers aren't wealthy- if that makes sense? It sounds like the "travel" being referred to here is "flying somewhere and being a tourist" but in fact to many people "travel" means taking the train/bus to another city, staying in a hostel, wandering around. Most people who go to see a wonder of the world do it because this might be the one time in their life they can afford to visit NYC, a place many people dream of seeing, and so they want to experience those things that are iconic there. I guess it really stands out to me, this writing sounds like "I'm not like those other stereotypical tourists" and the stereotypes are those behaviors associated with privileged westerners- which isn't really an accurate representation of most travelers.

From the Istanbul post:

>Most Turks are not secular though, and neither are they religious nuts like them Arabs

He considers education by traveling as sufficient, which I believe is not the best approach. Might be a good idea to read up a little about the history and cultures of a region before going.

There is a lot going on with his writing that comes off ethnocentric, uninformed, insensitive. I'm not going to dissect it, but I'll just say I recommend familiarization with cultural geography, anthropology, and ethnography if the topic of understanding people in different places interests you- because this blog is rife with problematic bias and some really broad generalizations that are prejudice at best, racism at worst.

I find it really interesting in this tunnel there are lifts for cars, because the entrance/exit points are vertical drops to the tunnel.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a144161...

I'm not saying the US, and/or proxies of the agendas of the powerful who stand to gain from exploitation and meddling, aren't involved. I would expect they are very much involved, and I would be very skeptical of any claim they aren't.

What I'm saying is simply that despite this, people in those places could conceivably be independently fed up- and their dissatisfaction with their regimes stands on its own and is valid. There is a lot of nuance and a lot of different intersecting motivations and interests at play.

I just think, in my personal opinion, that those things people fight and risk dying for (freedom from persecution, personal safety, to be able to put food on the table, to care for family, etc) aren't only happening because of outside factors and political reasons, these are human concerns. People in Iran, Saudi Arabia, anywhere else, aren't just pawns susceptible to propagands- they understand there are all sorts of players trying to gain dominance over their lives. A lot of people in the US have these broad ideas about people in entire regions, as though they're monoliths- like people in Iran/Saudi Arabia were content and would have been obedient if not for foreign involvement, which I think is simplistic and I disagree with this assumption.

People in an uprising and nations in upheaval are especially vulnerable to external groups swooping in to manipulate the situation to their interests- this much is true, and it can also be true that people would have been rising up regardless. How this plays out over time is yet to be seen but unfortunately the most likely scenario is some other despot will step in to further their personal agenda at the expense of the people, whether they align with US interests or otherwise... like anywhere else, those in power will fight to maintain and gain power and control, no matter the human cost and devastation- this is true everywhere.

It also fails to account for the autonomy of the people there. Is it really so hard to believe that they are rebelling against authoritarianism?

Even if there is an interest to empower the people to oust the regime, wouldn't it be fomenting on already existing unhappiness?

Interestingly, the same can be said of unrest anywhere- undoubtedly the agendas of several states will always align with weakening their competitors/adversaries.

When you consider the things everyday people care about and strive for, it can be argued that any party interested in destabilizing another nation would play to those aspirations in such a way as to further their control- this is true of almost everywhere, it is not exclusive to any one people or any one institution, and it can be seen in every region. In any given place, if you take a close look, there are varying levels of influence from foreign powers- often with the goal to secure economic goals or obtain natural resources.

This goes without saying, but this isn't exclusive to AlQaeda. Using video editing to convey a strong message isn't enough reason to conclude there is a link to foreign intelligence. Most likely they were just trying to be direct and convey a message (a statement to the regime that the people are tired of and angry about the oppression/violence)- none of what you mentioned to explain your association to AlQaeda makes any sense- "musical tribal message"? Are you inplying AlQaeda is controlled by a foreign agency? Which agency?

Really makes it sound like you have a very vague understanding of the region, alongside a very strong bias.

> They didn't, which mean they are fine having ethnic groups

Or, they just didn't deem the issue relevant enough to spend the resources to deal with it. China is a large country, some of those ethnic groups exist in remote locations, some very difficult to reach- it has been the case numerous times when a natural disaster occurred and aid was slow to reach those regions because of logistical difficulties.

Perhaps it wasn't that they are fine with the ethnic groups, but that they were indifferent and/or deemed them unimportant unless they had sufficient reason to think they warranted the attention/involvement.

Mind that just because they didn't want to lower their numbers, doesn't mean they have no issue with those groups, or that they wouldn't have issues with them if the situation and their perception of them changed.

Enforcing the birth of children and sending people to camps are two very different issues.

The content not being HD could be explained by them using less detectable drones. I would imagine that flying a military or HD drone over sovereign territory would be dangerous and an act of aggression, so it's within the realm of belief that someone, perhaps covertly, used a drone less likely to draw suspicion, not easily detectable or traceable to foreign interests.

Moreover if you watch the Frontline (the same source you cited above) documentaries about Iraq, you'll find they present people working in intelligence at the time explicitly told officials Zarqawi was sketchy and that the information he presented was not supported by the intel they had.

I'm not saying it's a certainty without doubt that the camps are everything what some sources allege them to be, but it's also not certain without a doubt that they aren't.