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DISCLAIMER: This is a very long post, it is the length of a novelette. I've edited the post to break it up into sections, hopefully that makes it easier to get through.
Hanoi:
It was 11pm, and my sister and I had just exited the airport into what felt like a more spacious, open-air version of Kowloon Walled City. The noise and chaos at the exit was palpable, and rows of people stood in front of the doors clutching handwritten placards bearing names of loved ones or clients they hoped to meet, all while touts amassed just outside, aggressively pitching taxi rides to any unfortunate travellers who wandered too close. Intense humidity pressed down on us, and a thick, choking smog permeated the air, almost as if cigarette smoke were blanketing the entire city. We had made it. At long last, after several flight delays and a long layover at Tan Son Nhat international airport, we were in Hanoi.
We booked a Grab to our hotel. The app gave us a vehicle number, but finding the actual car was another matter entirely, since the road outside the airport was a churning sea of cars and motorbikes. Our driver sent a photo of his location, and after several minutes of weaving between vehicles, clutching our backpacks and trying not to get flattened, we finally spotted his car. As we slowly pulled away from the airport, we noticed him quietly tapping out a message on his phone, and a moment later he ran it through a translator and handed it to us. It was a request in Vietnamese to cancel the ride in the app and pay him directly, presumably so he could avoid Grab's commission. We declined so as to not give up the reassurance of the app’s tracking, at least not five minutes into our first ride. He said nothing in response and drove us across the Red River, past rows of shacks and eateries, and into the winding alleys of the Old Quarter, where he finally dropped us off at our hotel. We collapsed onto the bed in our room upon arrival.
This was our very first proper experience in Vietnam, and it is probably the most intense culture shock I have ever felt. It goes without saying that travelling here without the help of a guide to arrange things on your behalf can be very stressful, and if you are sensitive to smells, sounds, crowds, heat, humidity, have terrible executive functioning or are generally easily made overwhelmed and uncomfortable, Vietnam is not for you. It's by far the craziest travel experience I have ever had - in both good and bad ways - and I certainly don't recommend it for anyone looking for a typical relaxing vacation. If anything, you'll need a vacation to relax after your vacation. But if you're willing to stick through the intense sensory overload, you'll see and do some of the coolest things you'll ever experience, stuff that you will be talking about for years after you've done them.
Hanoi has a storied history as the capital of Vietnam. In 1010, Emperor Ly Thai To relocated the capital from Hoa Lu to the location of the modern-day city, calling the new city Thang Long ("Rising Dragon"). It has remained the capital throughout Vietnamese history, excepting a brief period in the late 18th to early 20th century when the Tay Son Dynasty moved the capital south to Hue. During French rule, Hanoi was the capital of all of Indochina, and it has a large concentration of historic Vietnamese and French-style architecture as a result, as well as many spectacular and eclectic amalgamations of the two architectural styles. The city has developed over the years into an anarchic mish-mash of churches, temples, shacks and skyscrapers that barely seem to fit together, but somehow work to create a coherent and characterful urban fabric.
The Old Quarter is probably the most famous and recognisable part of the city, taking all of these aspects of the city and turbocharging them to an extreme. Established during the very inception of Thang Long, it is a historic district of 36 streets where craftsmen from villages around the city would assemble to sell goods, and even now each street is still named after a specific trade or guild, often starting with the word "Háng", the word for "wares" in Vietnamese. Many of these bustling streets continue to specialise in the same crafts they did centuries ago, but the area has modernised in a wonderfully haphazard way. Ancient temples packed with priceless relics sit shoulder to shoulder with crumbling French colonial facades, wedged between quirky little shops and cafes that look like they’ve been stacked on top of each other with zero planning. The Old Quarter practically invites you to check out every little nook and cranny, and large trees festooned with colourful lanterns cast some much-welcome shade over the pavements and roads while you wander around the maze of craft streets.
Of course, exploring is easier said than done. Sidewalks in Hanoi are virtually unusable - not only will restaurants and cafes arrange dinky little plastic tables and chairs on the pavement as an unofficial extension of their seating area, people will park their mopeds in rows on the sidewalk and even do their washing there while watching the world pass by. As a pedestrian, you're forced onto the very sides of the roads, alongside a veritable cornucopia of motorcycles and cars and bikes and rickshaws that endlessly jostle for space while honking loudly at each other. There is a lot of honking, too, since the road is so crowded that people honk not necessarily out of irritation and impatience, but simply use them in the same way one would a bicycle bell to let others know where they are. Crossing the road is much like playing a real-life version of Frogger - no one will stop for you, not even at pedestrian crossings; you just have to pick your moment, step out with confidence, and trust that the swarm of motorbikes will weave around you as you go (note: wait for cars, they will not stop). This can raise your blood pressure to dangerous levels at first, but you get used to it; by the second day I found myself crossing the street without stressing too much. There is always a base-line sense of anxiety, though - it's possible to encounter a motorcyclist that will not bother to move aside or account for where you're going, and things can occasionally get terrifying. If in doubt, just shadow a local. They move through the street with the nonchalance of someone who's done this a thousand times - because they have.
On our first day, we mainly just passed through the Old Quarter's buzzy streets while on our way to the complex of sites in and around Ba Dinh Square, the place where Ho Chi Minh first read the Declaration of Independence. Probably the most recognisable of these sites is the HCM mausoleum, a grey granite structure that serves as the resting place of the famous revolutionary, with his embalmed body entombed within a coffin inside a marble chamber. It's a hilariously extra thing to do, especially considering that his wish was to be cremated and to have his ashes placed within three urns in the north, centre and south of the country, but they preferred to follow in the footsteps of the USSR than honour the wishes of their beloved leader I suppose. The entire complex and much of the city surrounding the mausoleum can only be described as a weird communist fever dream, with screens playing videos of revolutionary material, big posters of "Uncle Ho" plastered everywhere, propaganda shops selling pamphlets of his face and viciously anti-American slogans meant to promote his surreal cult of personality, and so on. They’ve even enshrined the cars he used. I'll grant that the mausoleum itself is quite impressive, though we didn't do much in it - we basically stood in a line and moved slowly towards the mausoleum under the watchful eyes of soldiers, saw the embalmed body of the man himself, and left. Nearby we also visited the bright yellow Presidential Palace and the stilt house in which he lived from 1958 to 1969, yet another closely guarded relic which we were allowed just enough freedom to examine for less than a minute.
Frankly, it is such a weird place to be. We left with the strange sense that Ho Chi Minh was more than just a leader; rather, the man was the equivalent of Vietnamese Jesus. What made it even more uncanny is that there are apparently rumours that the body inside the coffin might not even be real, and some who were inside the Vietnamese military report that the actual body looks a lot less spry than the possible wax figure contained inside the mausoleum. I don't have an opinion on this, but I recommend it just for what a fascinating look it is into an extant modern-day cult of personality; one that's still in the process of being shaped.
We popped into a cafe outside the mausoleum and grabbed a coconut coffee (which was excellent, by the way), then moved on. The next place we decided to hit up was the ancient Temple of Literature, a Confucian temple founded by Ly Thanh Tong in 1070. It's a historic site of serious importance in that it hosted the country's first national university, one that continuously ran for 700 years straight and educated many bureaucrats, nobility and other elite members of Vietnamese society. We entered the temple through a beautiful white stone gate, and passed through five exquisitely landscaped courtyards filled to the brim with Confucian statuary and historic turtle steles honouring those who passed the royal exams. The temple was bustling with both tourists and graduating children when we visited; I suppose there's an informal tradition of bringing those who have passed their exams here to honour them.
We then headed northeast so we could visit the remains of the Thang Long imperial citadel, established during the very founding of the city in the 11th century. It was built on the former remains of a Chinese fortress dating back to the 7th century and was the seat of the Vietnamese court for centuries before it was moved to Hue. Initially, it was built in three concentric circles consisting of a defensive fortification, an imperial city, and an inner forbidden city. The Ly and Tran court expanded and renovated the complex year upon year, and after the Le Dynasty expelled Ming China from Vietnam they renamed it Dong Kinh and ordered repairs to the citadel. Even after the tumult of the Mac Dynasty and the lengthy civil war between it and the Revival Le Dynasty, the structure of the citadel was largely preserved. After the destructive war between the Nguyen and Tay Son, Gia Long (the founder of the Nguyen Dynasty; more on him later) ordered a large-scale reconstruction of the Thang Long citadel, rebuilding much of it in their own syncretic Vauban-inspired style. Much of the extant structures in Thang Long date to this period, though we found not too much left when we visited since most of it was razed during French colonisation to make space for barracks. The remaining major structures were the impressive Doan Mon Gate, the Flag Tower, Hau Lau palace and the North Gate, with much of the site being an archeological complex containing many remnants from the previous dynasties. Large amounts of ceramics and other artefacts have been found during archeological digs, spanning many centuries of Vietnamese history. We visited all of the main areas, as well as a small museum within the complex meant to showcase some of the finds and describe the storied history of the former imperial centre.
After seeing the citadel, we walked northwards towards the West Lake and passed a scenic concentration of French-style architecture on our way there, including one of the most important and beautiful Catholic churches in Hanoi: Cua Bac Parish Church. It's a large custard-yellow church built in front of the North Gate, designed by French architect Ernest Hebrard in eclectic style with strong hints of art deco decoration. He also incorporated traditional Vietnamese stylistic elements into the design of the church, making it a fascinating example of French-Vietnamese syncretic architecture. It's situated in a nice tree-filled lane that's absolutely covered from top to toe with gorgeous villas; so much so that it almost feels like walking in a Wes Anderson movie.
There are a good number of important historic temples dotted around the shores of the West Lake. The first one we visited was Quan Thanh Temple, a relatively quiet 11th century Taoist religious site featuring a mammoth 9-tonne bronze statue of Tran Vu cast in 1677. It's a monumental piece of Vietnamese artistry; in my opinion the altar is the most spectacular one in Hanoi and it's my single favourite religious site in the entire city for that reason alone. The next temple we visited, Tran Quoc Pagoda, was a famous Buddhist temple situated on an island in the middle of the West Lake with a history dating back to the 6th century, making it the oldest temple in Hanoi (though, most of the extant structures date to the 17th century). It boasts a spectacular 11-story stupa that's 15 metres in height, with each story containing a gemstone statue of the Amitabha Buddha.
On our second night in Hanoi, we visited Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre. It's a theatre that specialises in water puppetry shows, a traditional Vietic performance art that boasts a history stretching all the way back to the 11th century. Such shows were originally conducted in wet rice farms, involving small groups of performers who moved beautiful lacquered puppets through the waist-deep paddies while musicians played Vietnamese orchestral music and sung chéo operatic folkstories, and these performances can still be found throughout the country in pagodas and theatres. For our part, we were highly impressed by how these performers used the watery setting to its fullest extent, complete with very creatively designed puppets capable of floating and bobbing through the pool and even spitting water out at each other. There was a small English audio guide to the show which we paid for, though in retrospect I don't think it was very necessary - the folk stories are mostly told through the puppetry itself, and the plots are simple enough that one can usually grasp it on their own. Most of these stories paint humorous and whimsical pictures of rural Vietnamese life, and unless you're a total cynic I think it's impossible not to be at least a little bit charmed by it.
We woke up the second day and ate complementary breakfast in the top floor of our hotel, then left to explore the Old Quarter properly. It quickly became one of my favourite places in Hanoi - there’s always something interesting to find within these streets, and it’s very worth ducking into little holes in the wall to see what’s inside. When we were there we visited many quiet temples nestled within the urban sprawl, the oldest of which was the 11th-century Bach Ma Temple, its gilded, dimly-lit halls still perfumed with the sweet aroma of incense. Other times we found charming little outlets like a cafe hailing from 1946 which was the first cafe to serve Vietnamese egg coffee, a strong Robusta coffee made sweet and rich with a whipped cream topping made from raw eggs and condensed milk (as an aside, Vietnamese coffee is generally amazing, unsurprisingly so for a country that produces so much of it). There were also many historic residences hidden within the scrawl of shacks such as 87 Ma May ancient house, a well-preserved Hanoian house from the late 19th century complete with a traditional store and household altar. I was pleasantly surprised by the Old Quarter, really; I've heard Vietnamese call it a "tourist ghetto" but it's popular for a good reason - there's a bottomless depth to these old craft streets that's truly unparalleled. It feels like you could live here for years and still keep discovering new things within it.
At the south end of the Old Quarter is Hoan Kiem Lake, a natural freshwater body surrounded by leafy, tree-filled lanes. According to a Vietnamese legend, Emperor Le Loi (the rebel leader who defeated Ming China and established the Later Le Dynasty, the longest running Vietnamese dynasty in history) was granted a magic sword by the Dragon King, which he used to wage his wars and reclaim Vietnamese sovereignty. Later on, a turtle god from the lake acting on behalf of its master asked for the sword back, which he graciously returned, and from then on he renamed the lake to its current title, which means "Lake of the Returned Sword". There are many towers and temples in and around the area, the most recognisable being Thap Rua (Turtle Tower), an iconic structure in the lake that's been rebuilt many times ever since its construction in the 1400s, with the current structure built in 1886 in honour of Le Loi.
There's also Ngoc Son Temple, a delightful little religious site on an island with a bright red bridge leading to it. It was built in the early 19th century and originally devoted to the Three Sages, but soon the Vietnamese national hero who repelled the Mongol invasions, Tran Hung Dao, was incorporated into the temple as well. We entered through a colourful gate that guarded the entrance to the complex, which led to a small but atmospheric collection of golden-red buildings with scenic views of the lake. There are many parts of Hanoi that are very beautiful, and they're like calm oases within the sheer chaos that typifies most of the city, though they can get weird at times. In one particularly strange temple hall, we managed to find the preserved remnants of giant turtles from Hoan Kiem Lake, meant to pay homage to Le Loi's heavenly encounter.
In Vietnam, it's never possible to get too comfortable: when walking around the lake there we came across a number of pushy touts that tried to sell us cyclo rides. This got irritating quick, but it was also interesting since I did notice they were not uncommon on the streets - they've long been phased out in many rapidly-modernising Southeast Asian countries where they're mostly considered a relic of the past, but apparently not in Vietnam - I suppose traffic in many Hanoian streets remains so congested and slow that using a rickshaw is still a viable method of transport, though it seems to be something tourists primarily use at this point. In general, we dealt with them by ignoring them and walking away; they'll take the hint and won't bother you after a short while.
However, an unpleasant aspect of Hanoi that's much harder to ignore (at least for those who are sensitive to noxious smells) is the at-times intense air pollution. Your experience probably depends on the time of year you visit, but it can get bad, and towards the end of our second day we were feeling very faint and needed to pop into Lotte Tower just for the filtered air. Seriously, if you can't take that, I suggest skipping Hanoi, or at most spending one day in the city just to see what it's like. There's a lot of beautiful historical buildings and artefacts in it as well as many charming streets, but the dense smog that often blankets the city can make one feel like all these priceless relics and bits of culture have somehow been cast into hell. So consider where your comfort level lies and decide accordingly.
Ultimately, my experience with Hanoi was one of blistering contradictions; it's a city that's packed to the brim with intoxicatingly rich heritage and culture, run by a highly propagandising communist government (on paper at least) that seems intent on promoting an intense cult of personality, but in spite of that the city itself can feel hilariously overwhelming, polluted and anarchic, without regard for any concept of "collective good". It’s almost like a Vietnamese version of Victorian London, except even stranger because it feels like a bunch of wet-rice farmers have been unceremoniously thrust into industrial modernity; many habits like washing dishes on the cramped sidewalks and using motorcycles as an automated extension of bikes seem to be directly cribbed from village culture, except they’re doing so in an overcrowded metropolis absolutely not suited for these practices. I have no idea how anything gets done in this ant farm of a city, but Vietnam is the fastest growing economy in Southeast Asia and has managed to monopolise a large amount of world manufacturing so clearly they're doing something right. I really wonder how they’ll continue to modernise as time goes on.
We returned to our hotel once we were done sightseeing (the sheer overload was seriously tiring us out by this point) and climbed into a bus booked for us by our accommodation; the driver promptly took us out of the crowded streets of Hanoi and turned into a country road that led deep into the rice farms of rural Vietnam. The ride took about two hours, and it was maybe the most bumpy and loud ride I've ever had on any vacation. Our driver drove into the night, all the while honking at motorcyclists and cars as he went, speaking loudly on his phone, and rolling down his window to talk to random people - at one point he stopped and repeatedly yelled something at us in Vietnamese; we had no clue what he was saying. He continued on to our destination anyway and we heaved a deep collective sigh of relief. When you're in the Southeast Asian countryside, you certainly don't want to be left stranded on the side of the road.
He stopped the car in an isolated, unpaved road in the middle of nowhere, and we stepped out into the darkness. A slight drizzle had begun, so we ducked into a small complex of lakeside bungalows and asked for our room. The man at the counter was very welcoming to us - maybe the first person in all of Vietnam so far that hadn't been completely and utterly incomprehensible - and made some friendly conversation before handing us the keys to our room and showing us how everything worked. We ate some food at the small dining area they provided, then hunkered down in the cosy wooden room and got ready to sleep. Before we turned off the lights in the bungalow, we heard an animal crawling on our roof.
Trang An:
The next morning, we woke up with sun shining on our faces; pulling down the blinds revealed large limestone peaks reflected in a shallow lake. We were now deep within the Trang An landscape complex, a stunning karst-filled region of the Red River Delta that looms large in the country's history, having been continuously inhabited for 30,000 years straight. Bowls of chicken pho came to us as soon as we sat down at the dining area, though it featured very light broth that was barely spiced.
Once we were done with breakfast we called a Grab car, which slowly made its way through a maze of bumpy, poorly maintained roads to drop us off at the entrance to Mua Caves, a site that's much more famous for its breathtaking lookout over the limestone mountains and rice paddies than it is for any of its caves. This is a popular site to visit, and the area around the mountain contains some overpriced amenities meant to gouge exhausted tourists. The route to the top involved a steep climb up 500 steps, and we did the trek in suffocating heat and humidity that made us feel like we were going to drop dead at any second - the final section of the climb leading to a dragon sculpture at the top of the mountain involved an unfenced scramble up steep rocks in blazing sun, it was so precarious that I'm surprised it hasn't killed someone yet. Though the views were well worth it; as we climbed the panoramic view over the landscape complex became ever more beautiful, and we witnessed a number of wild goats climbing the steep cliffs along the trail we were following. Upon reaching the bottom of the mountain we grudgingly dragged ourselves into one of these overpriced stalls and grabbed a drink. We were so parched that even after leaving the site a man in a shack hollered at us selling sugarcane juice and coconuts and we happily accepted. He hacked apart coconuts on the side of the road for us, which we polished off with gusto.
Note that very few Vietnamese restaurants or cafes have air-conditioning at all - they mostly just give you a cold drink and turn a fan on you, which is not sufficient to deal with the blazing heat and humidity that the entire country experiences in early summer. I can't imagine how it would feel during the hottest part of the year; according to one of our Grab drivers North Vietnam reaches 40+ degree temperatures at the height of summer, which would be absolutely debilitating especially considering how muggy the country is. We found ourselves soaked with sweat every single day of the trip, and it was necessary for us to grab a drink or two after every stop if we didn't want to collapse from exhaustion.
After recovering we grabbed another car to Thai Vi Temple at the south end of the landscape complex. It's a 13th century temple that was built on the site of the former Vu Lam Palace Complex, a military base constructed during the Tran Dynasty to prepare for attacks from the Mongols. The temple pays homage to the old Tran kings, and it's a serene, minimal complex with a front gate flanked by two stone horse statues. The courtyard is surrounded by symmetrically placed tropical ponds and bell towers, and it looks out to a main hall supported by many carved stone pillars. Its interior features many gilded idols of Vietnamese royalty, and when we visited there was an old man inside playing a traditional instrument that granted the temple a tranquil atmosphere. Thai Vi is not the most important temple in Vietnam nor is it the one with the most impressive artistry, it's in fact one of the smaller temples, but in a country where there are shrines around every corner this was one of the most atmospheric ones.
We walked out of Thai Vi on foot, past small little shrines and graves nestled deep within the limestone hills, and grabbed a coconut coffee as well as some spring rolls from a roadside cafe with a bucolic view of the paddy fields. This didn't satiate our hunger, so we also got ourselves a northern style banh mi from the nearby town of Tam Coc (it was tasty and enjoyable enough after a day of exploring, but was rather plain; as is most Northern Vietnamese food). After that we made our way to Bich Dong Pagoda, a set of cosy Buddhist temples nestled into a mountainside with a history dating back to 1428. We walked through a path that passed through a large gate surrounded by rainforest, leading into a series of lovely cave temple halls with a large array of Buddhist statuary tucked behind the stalactites and formations. I enjoyed this temple a lot as well; it was very ethereal and offered views of the forested limestone hills as we climbed up to the caves. The Trang An landscape complex in general has some of the most alluring temples in all of Vietnam, and Thai Vi and Bich Dong alike are no exception.
The next day we decided to take a boat tour around the rivers and waterways of Trang An. We got into a line to board the boats, and were surprised at the sheer insanity of Vietnamese queues - there was no sense of personal space whatsoever, and said queue felt less like a line and more like a competition to see who could cut in front of others the most successfully. To get anywhere in the queue, we had to be very aggressive, and even then it wasn't a smooth or quick experience. There was a woman behind me holding a child, and she stood so close that her kid was kicking me in the back. Every time we moved she would walk ahead so that the tip of her shoe was touching the back of mine; I attempted to compensate by placing my right foot far behind me but eventually just let her through the queue because I was so fed up with having to watch where I stood. This kind of Molochian tragedy of the commons is something that seems to be common in many parts of Vietnam, and while it's fascinating to witness it's also endlessly frustrating and isn't the easiest thing to get used to. Vietnamese aren't stupid about it either; they keenly understand that it isn't ideal, and many of the people we talked to mentioned these as problems.
Things were much more manageable once we actually went on the boat tour; the crowds dispersed and we had space to ourselves. Everyone went in groups of four, and since we were a bit apprehensive about what being in a small boat with Vietnamese would be like we picked up some foreigners for our group then climbed into a rickety boat with a local man who would be rowing us. He immediately tapped me on the shoulder, then passed me - the only guy on the boat - an oar. Apparently, I paid for the coveted experience of doing half (realistically less than a third) of the work of rowing myself, the guide, and three other women to our destination.
So we put on our lifejackets and I got to work. Some other members of the tour intermittently participated in rowing, but I was doing so for almost the entire three hours of the tour, to the point that my arms felt like they were going to fall off. The landscapes we saw were worth the effort, though; we rowed through lush little waterways flanked on each side by towering peaks, ventured into sinuous half-flooded caves decorated with small formations, and visited stunning isolated temples that could only be reached by boat. The Temple of Cao Son was the first one we came across, and what greeted us when we clambered onto shore was an impressive wooden three-story temple hall, complete with gold finishings and a towering statue of Cao Son, the god of the mountain. There were also many ancillary halls nearby, the most spectacular of which was festooned with intricate golden canopies and had a gleaming pagoda-like structure at its very core. Every single one of these temples were framed by breathtaking views of mountains and rainforests, and we spent so much time there that it irritated our guide, who firmly told us "Temple, 10 minute" once we got back into the boat.
We eventually stopped again at a picturesque pagoda jutting out from deep inside the waters of the channel, where he pointed at our cameras and said "Photo". The two French women who were accompanying us on the boat ride snapped a shot, and when it came to our turn we tried to say it wasn't necessary. In response he just turned the boat in a more favourable direction and pointed again. Throughout the tour he treated the entire affair in a doggedly prescriptive way, like he was ordered to check off items on a list; you will stop at this site and you will take the approved amount of time and you will take a photo. It's frankly a bizarre way to treat tourism, and one gets the sense that any kind of remotely responsive customer service culture does not exist in Vietnam at all. Again, it feels like a bunch of rural rice farmers discovering that tourists exist and you can make money off them, but without any real idea of how to cater to them. I'm actually inclined to say it adds to the authenticity of the experience.
The next place we docked at was Suoi Tien Temple, a tranquil complex with an elegant two-story main hall dedicated to Quy Minh, a god of land and water that features in Vietnamese legend. Conscious of how long we were taking this time, we timed ourselves while exploring the temple complex and even managed to grab a few pictures despite the time limit, though the deeper chambers of the temple containing heaps of sumptuous folk-religious Vietnamese artistry did not allow photos. We got back to our boat, without objection from our guide, and ventured into yet another narrow waterway shadowed by mountains.
Our last stop was the Vu Lam Royal Step-Over Palace, founded on yet another section of the Tran kings' military base when they were preparing for the Mongol invasion. This is one of the most picturesque sites in Trang An and is probably the largest temple complex we saw while on the boat tour. The many halls of this site enshrined many statues of what I believe to be Tran Dynasty monarchs, as well as large protector deities that stood guard at the temples' entrances. Probably my favourite temple interior of the whole trip was situated at the very back of the complex, featuring a colourful room with multiple ornate maroon and blue canopies draped around an idol. I can't find too much information about the history of the current modern-day complex, but I'm guessing it's not too old; there's Quoc Ngu writing on a number of the temples so it's likely these temple halls were built in commemoration of the old military base. I wouldn't imagine that wooden structures would persist very well in the muggy Vietnamese climate anyway; even stone and concrete tends to suffer damage quickly when exposed to these tropical conditions.
Once we left the boat, we bought some tea, desserts and pomelo from a shop nearby the ticket office. They offered us a small bag of spice and salt to dip the pomelo segments into, and eating it like that made it far more of a savoury affair. It's interesting! I'm actually not sure why this method of eating fruit hasn't caught on more outside of Southeast Asia, it scratches a strange itch I didn't even know existed. We polished off our meal then jumped into yet another Grab car which took us to the Hoa Lu Ancient Capital, the site of an early Vietnamese cultural, political and religious centre during the late 10th century which played host to some of Vietnam's first independent imperial dynasties; the Dinh, founded by Dinh Tien Hoang, and the Early Le, founded by Le Dai Hanh.
So, some historical context: Dinh Tien Hoang was born as Dinh Bo Linh in Hoa Lu, where he became a military leader at a young age. He saw the establishment of the first semi-independent Vietnamese dynasty (the short-lived Ngo Dynasty), but it was an unstable state, simultaneously unable to gain recognition from the Chinese state and unable to subdue its own regional chiefs. This led to a situation known as the "Anarchy of the Twelve Warlords", where all the regional Vietnamese warlords in practice ruled their own autonomous parts of the Red River Delta with the Ngo kings themselves holding little real power. Dinh Bo Linh effectively conquered his way through each regional warlord's territory one after another and paved the way for the first truly independent unified Vietnamese state, establishing the nation of Dai Co Viet and setting the capital at Hoa Lu. The mountainous limestone topography of the area was strategically chosen so as to make the capital impregnable to attack, with any gaps between the mountains covered by earthen walls ten metres high and fifteen metres thick. Some sections of the wall still exist, and have been excavated by archaeologists.
In 979, Dinh Tien Hoang and his son Dinh Lien were murdered in their sleep by Do Thich, a eunuch attempting to usurp the throne (subsequently, his body was cut into small pieces). After this, it seemed the natural successor would be his surviving six-year-old son Dinh Toan. However, Dinh Tien Hoang's wife and now empress dowager to Dinh Toan, Queen Duong Van Nga, wanted the regent Le Hoan (posthumously titled Le Dai Hanh) to become emperor instead so that Dai Co Viet could have an emperor capable of withstanding the Song invasion, who were trying to take advantage of the political tumult in Dai Viet to reassert control over the area (note Duong Van Nga later became his empress). So in 980 Dinh Toan was deposed and power was transferred from the Dinh clan to the Le clan, marking the beginning of the Early Le Dynasty. In early 981 Emperor Taizong ordered general Hou Renbao to advance into Dai Co Viet, who scored some early military victories over the Viet armies due to their overwhelming manpower, but the Song were decimated by malaria and started infighting. Le Dai Hanh staged an ambush at Chi Lang and managed to capture Hou Renbao and eradicate half of the remaining Song armies, forcing a retreat. Upon return, they were executed in Kaifeng for their military failures.
While all this was happening, Paramesvaravarman I of the southern Hindu-Buddhist state of Champa was also trying to capitalise on all the tumult. On the advice of Ngo Nhat Khanh, an exiled former Vietnamese warlord that ruled during the Ngo dynasty, he sent an expedition into Vietnam in late 979, but it was scuttled by a typhoon; Ngo Nhat Khanh drowned along with the fleet. After repelling the Song invasion, Le Dai Hanh attempted to send envoys to Champa, but Paramesvaravarman I detained them, which incited retaliation from Dai Co Viet. The Viets invaded Champa in 982, killed Parmesvaravarman, and sacked the capital of Indrapura, seizing much territory for themselves. Frankly, it's comical just how tumultuous and eventful Vietnamese history is. It reminds me of that gameplay/lore meme: Vietnam gameplay; rice farming. Vietnam lore; basically Game of Thrones.
We pulled up to the site of the ancient capital and noted there wasn't much left of the old political and ceremonial centre; most of what there was to see on the site were extant 17th century temples dedicated to Dinh Tien Hoang and Le Dai Hanh, along with their tombs (constructed later as well), which I would say is still of some historical interest. The temples had a particularly solemn vibe to them; Dinh Tien Hoang's temple was framed by a unique obelisk-like gate and featured a monumental stone pedestal of a royal throne at the front of the main hall. His tomb was situated on a hill which we had to climb, something that was excruciatingly unpleasant in the hot muggy weather. Le Dai Hanh's temple was just a short walk away and it was decorated with small courtyards and rock gardens, with stately banyans framing many of the temple halls. Behind Le Dai Hanh's temple stood a small and most importantly mildly chilly museum displaying some remnants from the old dynastic capital. There was a fenced-off hole in the floor showcasing an archeological site with some brickwork from what used to be a massive palace, which is pretty much all that's left of the original structure. Outside of the temples there were women aggressively marketing hand fans and hats to people, they came up to us and tried to offer products to alleviate the heat. It was boiling, so my sister actually did buy a hand fan which she used throughout the rest of the holiday.
That night, we visited the largest town in the area, also named Hoa Lu. We entered a janky local restaurant and ordered some bun cha and banh cuon, which came out in no time at all. The local style of bun cha featured cut up blocks of rice vermicelli, which we paired with some herbs and grilled pork and dipped into a zesty sauce. It was good, but we preferred the banh cuon, which used soft flat rice noodles instead and just had a better texture. After that we went for some che, a broad category of Vietnamese coconut milk-based dessert soups - the style we got included large heapings of durian and jellies and it was divine. We also had some durian crepes, which were unbelievably light and fluffy.
The next stop in Hoa Lu was the Ky Lan lake park, a series of walking streets centred around a lake festooned with glowing lanterns. There were many stores in the area selling snacks and paraphernalia, and while it was definitely tourist-oriented we didn't really mind. In the middle of the lake there were a number of modern pagoda-style temples full of intricate relief carvings which were crawling with people, and interestingly enough despite their recentness and lack of traditionality there were many people using them as active religious sites; I saw many locals standing in front of the idols and briefly praying to them. I think this is a fairly fun short excursion in Hoa Lu at night; it's not a main attraction but it's a buzzy and festive part of the town with some pleasant things to see.
We spent our last day at Trang An visiting Bai Dinh Pagoda, one of the most substantial Buddhist temple complexes in Southeast Asia. The old part of the temple is located 800 metres or so from the larger new temple, and features a collection of shrines dating back to the 11th century. The new part of the temple was built in 2003, and boasts multiple records such as the largest gilded bronze Buddha in Asia, the tallest stupa in Asia, the largest arhat corridor in Asia, and so on. It was built in traditional style by artisans from nearby craft villages, and it is gigantic. We travelled around the complex with the help of some electric buses, and it still took us the entire day to explore the whole thing. At some point, we were offered a herbal foot bath, which... involved us soaking our feet in warm herb water for twenty minutes; it did make our feet feel softer though I'm pretty certain the herbs had basically no effect. Probably my favourite part of Bai Dinh was the ancient pagoda towards the back of the complex - we entered the old temple through a gate surrounded by forest and walked up a large flight of stone steps towards two cave temples decorated with a large array of Buddhist statues. One of them contained a subterranean lake surrounded by carvings of dragons and draped cave formations, filled with smoke and incense and wreathed in a warm glow. It was very dreamy, I quite enjoyed my time there.
At this point we were rather templed out, so we returned to our accommodation. Our Grab driver took us past the limestone hills of Trang An one last time, stopping every now and then as cattle crossed the road, and when we got back we boarded a transfer which took us all the way past the centre of Hanoi to Noi Bai airport. We stayed for the night in the airport in a VATC sleep pod which was barely large enough for the two of us, mostly consisting of a bunkbed, a bedside table and an air conditioning unit. Every single time either of us needed to relieve ourselves, we had to take the keycard out of the slot and head to the airport toilets, which cut all power to the sleep pod and meant air conditioning, lights, etc would be shut off for the sibling who remained in the pod while the other was taking a piss. This was not a problem when both of us were awake, since we could leave the keycard in the pod and just knock on the door to get back in, but in the dead of night when everyone was asleep this wasn't a particularly good solution. So the pod would just be left without power, getting hotter and hotter by the second until the other member returned. This was probably the most claustrophobic accommodation we had the entire trip and I'm not sure I fully slept that night.
Phong Nha:
The next morning we boarded a flight to Dong Hoi in central Vietnam, and as soon as we landed we were picked up by a vehicle we'd arranged for beforehand. As we drove out of the city, the narrow strip of coastal plain that characterised most of Central Vietnam gradually gave way to dense, mountainous terrain near the border with Laos; along the way we passed seemingly endless streets lined with worn, crumbling stalls. Eventually our driver pulled into a small cluster of shacks along a tranquil river, framed by towering rainforest-covered peaks. Without a word, he left us there. We were now in Phong Nha, and this was the point when the trip transformed from "extremely fascinating if a bit jarring" into "once-in-a-lifetime experience". This place is one of the highlights not only of Vietnam, but of all of Southeast Asia.
In spite of its isolation, Phong Nha has a very tumultuous history. During the Vietnam War it was a staging point for the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the supply line that kept soldiers supplied with personnel, weapons and food in the US-occupied South Vietnam. Supplies would be stored in the caves of the area and reloaded onto vehicles or bicycles for the trip south below the DMZ; some of them were even used as hospitals, such as Phong Nha Cave which doubled as a hospital and munitions store. PAVN soldiers would spend a few weeks of final training at Phong Nha before heading to the front. Due to its critical nature for the North Vietnamese forces, the US conducted aggressive aerial bombings of the area and defoliated it with tons of Agent Orange so as to strip the trail of natural cover. Hell, it might have even been the most heavily bombed area in the entire country during the war, which is saying something considering just how much damage Vietnam generally suffered. Russia and China only amplified this chaos by supplying anti-aircraft artillery to counteract the American aggression. Unsurprisingly, this area contains some of the highest concentrations of unexploded ordnance in Vietnam.
Just from looking at the town now, one would never guess that anything at all had happened here (unless you wander into places like Bomb Crater Bar, which is exactly what it sounds like). For the most part we found a sleepy, picturesque hamlet with a main street that looked more like a cluster of shacks than any kind of town centre; most of the shops were basically deserted. We spent the first day in Phong Nha doing nothing but hopping between cafes in the area. Our first meal featured coconut coffee, mango smoothies, and tomato tofu, which we devoured at a table overlooking the Son River. As we ate, boats drifted by lazily, dwarfed by the towering mountains on either side. Later, we stopped at a small, tranquil restaurant for cocktails and smoothie bowls. To our surprise, it was run by a Latvian man who handled the bar while his Vietnamese girlfriend handled the kitchen. He was friendly and talkative, sharing stories of his travels through countless countries and his time with a circus, and at some point he opened a bar in this quiet corner of Vietnam. He admitted he wasn’t sure if the business would succeed, since it was still early days.
As we walked through the town, we encountered cattle randomly lazing in the sun and chickens pecking their way through the weeds near the streets. Children returning from school rode home on bikes and waved at us as they passed. Not a single trace of the sheer carnage that transpired here seemed to remain. We slept soundly that night in a small cabin surrounded with the sounds of crickets, rather winded from all the travel we'd done.
The next day, we were picked up from our accommodation by Oxalis Adventures, our adventure tour operator that would bring us deep into the jungles and caves of Phong Nha. In order to even be accepted for the tour, we had to describe our trekking history, send photos of ourselves on a trail as proof of prior trekking experience, provide documentation that showed we were able to run three kilometres in thirty minutes by means of a fitness app, and more. Before going to Vietnam, we were scrambling to buy the required apparel, which included items like quick-dry long-sleeved T-shirts and pants and socks, as well as shoes that would be able to dry out easily once submerged in water (so, no Gore-Tex).
We climbed into their bus, and inside was our Vietnamese tour guide, some safety professionals and six other people who were also going on the tour. They dropped us off at their office, where they ran us over the basics and provided us with backpacks, helmets and water bottles as well as waterproof containers which our phones, power banks, etc were supposed to go into every time there was a wet section. In addition they also provided us with a blue bag where we could place anything we needed for the campsite, so items like extra clothing, toothbrushes and so on would be put inside the bag and left in their office, and porters would separately carry them to the camp for us (we later learned that, before they came to Oxalis, these porters were actually ex-smugglers who transported illicit goods across the Vietnam-Laos border). After the briefing was over, we assembled at the entrance of their office and introduced ourselves to the rest of the group. Everyone there was a couple except for us, and almost everyone (save for one person) was German. I won't share everyone's names, instead I'll refer to them by their jobs - the relevant people involved were Male Statistician and Female Therapist, Male IT Project Manager and Female Art Curator, and finally Male and Female Chemical Biologists. This would be our group for the next two days.
Having completed all the preliminaries, we were then taken deep into the jungles of the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park. Our tour guide pointed out various points of interest along the way and told us a bit about the history of the region - according to him, there was a point in time where Phong Nha was bombed for twenty days straight by the US. Later on in the drive he pointed out a barren patch on one of the mountains where an American plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile; it turned out that the plane was full of concentrated Agent Orange and from then on nothing had grown there. He also offered some facts about the ecology and climate of the area, and took some pains to illustrate to us how severe floods were during the wet season - we passed over a huge bridge suspended dozens of metres above the forest floor which he said could get fully submerged at certain points of the year. In addition, he also noted we would not be able to come here on our own without a permit, since the VCP engaged in covert activities within the jungle, the nature of which nobody really seemed to know. Our driver pulled up at an unassuming point on the side of the road, and we grabbed our backpacks and headed into an untamed jungle alongside a tour guide, some safety professionals, and a cadre of ex-smugglers. A jungle that played host to classified Vietnamese government operations and was likely filled to the brim with unexploded ordnance.
The first sections of the trail leading to the mouth of Nuoc Nut Cave were rather leisurely. It was flat and shaded with rainforest, and there were little white butterflies fluttering everywhere along the length of the trail. It looked a bit like a scene from a Disney movie. Our guide stopped at the base of a large trunk he called "sau"; it's a tree in the Dracontomelon genus that produces sour fruit, which the Vietnamese pair with sugar and use in drinks and desserts during summer. I spoke a bit to Male Statistician during this leg of the hike, from whom I solicited opinions on academia, the peer review process and the replication crisis.
After approximately 40 minutes of walking, we made our way across a dry riverbed and climbed around some rocks to reach a gaping cave mouth, with a spread of food laid out on a blanket inside the cavern. We clustered around the blanket to see what they were offering; it was make-your-own spring rolls and banh mi. I took a thin piece of rice paper and stuffed it with herbs and meat and tomatoes, taking care not to overfill, and ate it with some sauce. The group discussed over lunch where they'd come from, where they were going to in Vietnam next, their prior travel experiences before this, and what they did as a job. I liked these people a lot. They were quite an interesting bunch; talking to them didn't make my brain want to shut down like it usually does in group settings where the level of conversation gets dragged down to the lowest common denominator. I felt like pretty much all of them actually touched on topics I wanted to hear about, the conversation at one point even delved into CRISPR-Cas9 and pharmaceutical research because of Male Chemical Biologist.
Once we'd finished eating, we ventured deeper into the cavern. Getting any further than the massive cave mouth required us to crouch down and crawl our way through a relatively tight passage; according to our tour guide you could at one point walk into the cave but floods had clogged the deeper passages with debris over time. The ceiling was covered in small mucus tendrils from predatory larvae, which we were told was a relative of the Australian Arachnocampa glow-worms, except these ones did not emit light. Eventually the passage opened up into a sizeable cavern dominated by rimstone and flowstone formations, and on the ceiling of the cave there was a small opening which only let in a trace amount of light; it had mostly been filled in by rocks ever since its formation. Our guide stated that this might be the original entrance to the cave, since it was the highest known entrance and the cave would have formed from the top down.
We clambered further into the cavern over fairly easy terrain. At one point, we turned off all our headlamps just so we could see how utterly pitch-black the entire cave actually was; it looked the same regardless of whether our eyes were open or closed. Then we progressed to the wet section of the cave, where we moved our phones, chargers, and power banks into the waterproof case, and eased ourselves into the cold water (which was a welcome break from the heat). I braced myself for the shock of submerging my entire body in the water, then proceeded to swim through the dark flooded passage with only my headlamp illuminating the water ahead. There were a couple of these wet sections, they were extremely fun to navigate. I'd never swam in a cave before this, and I can easily say that I would do it again.
Troglofauna seemed to be everywhere in Nuoc Nut Cave. It wasn't just the "glow worms"; cave crickets scuttled under our feet and bats could be found in many chambers. We had been told about a specific cave-dweller that locals called the "Hairy Scary Mary", a species of cave fauna that predated on spiders within the cave and possessed the body of a centipede atop the legs of a spider, and at some point apparently some members of our group did see it. Our guide also pointed out a fern that had been swept into the cave months ago, and in spite of the lack of light or nutrition in the cave it was still green; slowly dying, but somehow still green.
Eventually we reached a remote chamber deep within the cave, where a waterfall cascaded into a secluded pool, and the guide invited us to clamber down the rocks into the water. I removed my slingbag and carefully made my way down, trying not to slip. And... I swam under a cave waterfall. I've travelled through four continents, and out of everything I’ve done in all my years of travel, this moment stands out as the biggest rush I’ve ever experienced.
Somewhat giddily, we climbed out of the pool and ducked into a crawlspace, where we had to crouch down and sometimes pull ourselves through crevices in the rock. This led to the most extensive wet section of the cave yet, which required us to swim against the current of the subterranean river through a series of sinuous passages; we eventually found ourselves in a chamber with a massive vertical opening we would have to climb out of. So we strapped on harnesses, connected it to a rope via carabiners, and began climbing out of the cave on slippery, water-eroded rocks. There were a number of times I almost lost my footing doing this, and I think if we had tried to do it unassisted it would have been a disaster. Even with the security of a harness there was always a way to slip and hit an unprotected part of our heads on a large slab of rock. Worse, there was the lingering fear that we would accidentally disconnect ourselves; we were provided with two carabiners (one red, one black) and we were only supposed to disconnect one at a time when trying to progress to a new section of the rope, but there was a yellow clasp further down the line that could disconnect both carabiners from the harness at once.
Our group pulled ourselves out of the cave and were met with the sight of a campsite. The porters were waiting for us alongside the blue bags we'd left with them, and we quickly stripped off our wet clothes. We enjoyed some tea around a warm fire and made casual conversation as the chefs cooked up some dinner at a portable kitchen, and after our journey the aroma of the food was almost overwhelming. As soon as the dishes were laid out, we crowded around the table and dug in.
After dinner, we returned to the site of the campfire and made conversation until nightfall. These little white butterflies from earlier were absolutely everywhere in the day, but things got even more picturesque once it got dark. Since it was approaching their mating season, fireflies started making their way into our camp, their small flashing lights occasionally zipping through the air around us as we talked and enjoyed platters of peanuts and roasted sweet potatoes around the fire. It was a very cosy experience, surprisingly so considering where we were.
Probably the most interesting campfire stories came from our guide himself, who talked about how Oxalis' tours developed - it seems most of their existing process accreted through trial and error. They originally didn't use to have toilets, rather, they invited visitors to dig a hole in the ground and cover it up once they were done. But Westerners weren't able to Asian-squat, and so they often fell into the hole and ended up sitting in their own poop. In order to rectify this, Oxalis provided sticks that visitors could hammer into the ground so they could hang onto it while squatting, but too often people didn't hammer them in deep enough and the sticks would get yanked out of the ground, which sent them tumbling into the hole anyway. It was a Belgian guy who first proposed that they introduce toilets at their campsites, and he did so because he was sitting in his own shit. He sent them mockups of toilet designs once he was back in Belgium, it appears it haunted him so much he had to rectify the problem no matter what.
The changing rooms were yet another part of the tour they had to iron out early on. Their tours involved a lot of campsites inside dark cave chambers, and so they offered a light for use within their changing rooms. However, it turned out that when they switched on the light their naked silhouette would be visible to everyone. On one particularly memorable trip to Son Doong Cave, there was a woman who turned on a light inside a changing room - one that happened to be situated right in front of a cavern wall, causing a massive silhouette of her body to be projected onto the side of the cave. The second this happened, everybody fell quiet in an instant. Suffice to say that when we were there, they were no longer providing lights.
Our guide also shared stories from his time in Northern Vietnam, particularly around Ha Giang, where he discovered that they eat extremely weird shit. Almost literally shit, in some cases. There's a culture in northern Vietnam, the Nung, that eats half-digested poop cut out of an animal's small intestine. He once ate it unknowingly and noted that it had a bitter taste; after learning what it was, he lost his appetite for days. With a laugh, Female Chemical Biologist joked about how so many of these bizarre tales always seemed to involve things like poop, bodily functions or nudity.
The next day, we changed back into our still-damp clothes and descended through the same narrow opening we had climbed out of the day before, using our harnesses. If anything, going down that infernal fissure was even more difficult than the ascent. It felt far less controlled, since moving with gravity made it easier to lose footing and slip. At long last we all made it back down to the cave floor, and headed into another part of the cave known as Va Cave through a cramped, waterlogged passage. We all stopped to rest in a large room with many flowstone formations draped from the ceiling, with water surging around the small outcrop we were standing on.
Once we had regained our energy we pressed on further into the cave, through waist-deep water and some precarious scrambles. Eventually, we reached an enormous, multi-tiered flowstone formation that seemed to stretch endlessly upward. We were informed that we needed to climb it. So we connected ourselves to the rope provided, and began to precariously scale the formation, which was extremely vertical and offered little in the way of hand- or foot-holds. The most effective method of traversing this formation turned out to be leaning back, letting the rope hold our weight, and carefully shimmying along the slick wall using only our feet. If any of us had accidentally disconnected the carabiners at this point, we would have fallen quite a long distance to the cave floor. After that technical climb we had to undertake an arduous walk on the top of rimstone terraces, which was caked with mud that made it easy to slip.
We made our way to the lip of one of the terraces, and beyond that we could see a surreal forest of ghostly tower cones, each one the size of a human. These formations, by the way, are extremely rare and exist only in two caves in the world (the other one being in Thailand). They're not stalactites and aren't formed by dripping water, and it's not exactly clear how they form - the current working theory is that the standing water within each terrace pool creates small calcite rafts which sink as soon as they become too heavy, and the accretion process over time forms cones about as high as the lip of the pool. Climbing over the lip of the terrace, we found ourselves in the midst of these cones, standing solemnly in the darkness of the cave like a natural terracotta army. Special ladders and metal steps had been placed across the interior of the terrace so as to not disturb the fragile cones, and we followed them to two platforms where we could get a good look at these formations. It is by far one of the most otherworldly things I have ever seen in my life.
At this point we were all exhausted, so we retraced our path to the campsite again, performing three climbs along the way. We ate lunch, then walked back to the bus through a much tougher path through the forest, which involved us scrambling over a hill that seemed more like a tangle of roots and soil - at one point Female Chemical Biologist got a photosensitivity-induced migraine during an aggressively difficult part of the scramble and needed to stop. But eventually we reached the bus which took us back to the Oxalis Adventures office. Every member of the group was granted a medal for finishing the adventure tour (which grants a discount for any other Oxalis tour), and we took a shower at their office so we could scrub off all the muck and grime from our caving expedition. It was from there that we took our transfer to our final location.
Hue:
Our driver continued deep into the night. He dropped us off at an alley where we walked to our homestay, and it was here that we were greeted by a friendly-but-overly-effusive woman behind the counter who gave us some passionfruit juice. She presented us with many maps of Hue and provided a huge number of recommendations on where to go. Initially we thought she might have received commissions from the places she was recommending, but later it became clear she really just wanted us to see her city. We politely nodded at everything, then went to our room (which we had to walk up four flights of stairs to reach) and collapsed.
Hue is a city that has perhaps seen even more carnage than Phong Nha, having been the site of a massacre perpetrated by the Viet Cong and PAVN during the Tet Offensive; 5-10% of the entire population of Hue was killed via methods like torture and entombment, and mass graves continued to be found around the city for years after. It's considered the worst massacre of the Vietnam War, and it happened during a mere four-week period where they occupied the city - it's honestly incredible to me that Hue isn't more of a hellish shithole after an event like that. Central Vietnam has repeatedly been a border zone throughout the country's history and as a result many of the cities and towns there have rather tumultuous stories. It's also a city that experienced an unexpected ascendancy during the late 18th century, becoming the very last imperial capital of Vietnam before the Viet Minh intervened and forced the last emperor of the Nguyen Dynasty to abdicate.
So, some later Vietnamese history: During the 18th century, the Later Le Dynasty was in a tailspin, with the Le kings only holding a ceremonial role. The Trinh lords of the north, who ruled from their capital of Thang Long, and the Nguyen lords of the south, who ruled from Hue, fought for control of the country. These lords were referred to in Vietnam as "Chua"; a title comparable to that of Shogun in Japan, and they played similar roles as de facto ruler of their respective territories. Eventually a peace was brokered between the two families, and a treaty was drawn up formally establishing the Trinh and Nguyen territories... which was broken by the Tay Son peasant revolution. The years leading up to it had been characterised by natural disasters, famines and the collapse of foreign trade, which led to a major social crisis and lots of instability across Dai Viet. The Nguyen lords were forced to abandon some of their southwards expansionary conquests by the Siamese king who launched a war to regain control of Cambodia, and there were several political crises within the Nguyen court during the time as well. Heavy taxes and local corruption during this period spurred three peasant brothers in Central Vietnam to self-style as champions of the people and incite a rebellion against the Nguyen lords. The Trinh saw that the Nguyen were weak, and entered into the affray; it ended with a massacre of the Nguyen lords. One nephew, Nguyen Anh, managed to escape into Siam. The Tay Son then conquered the Trinh, and consolidated their power over all of Vietnam, the capital of the newly unified country now being Hue.
Meanwhile, Nguyen Anh had seen his entire family be killed by the Tay Son and was amassing power in an attempt to reclaim his lands. He rebuilt his support base in the south and befriended a French bishop, Pigneau de Behaine, who believed that supporting Nguyen Anh in his retaliation might help him gain concessions for Catholics in Vietnam and help its expansion in Southeast Asia. Pigneau helped him assemble additional French forces, and Nguyen Anh eventually managed to gain control over Saigon. When the most notable of the Tay Son brothers died, he took advantage of the situation to attack northwards, and gained support from the Qing state (who were reacting to a Tay Son massacre of ethnic Chinese). He quickly conquered all of Vietnam in the early 19th century, overran the Tay Son, and in an act of sweet revenge murdered the surviving Tay Son leadership and their families. Nguyen Anh crowned himself emperor of the newly established Nguyen Dynasty, under the reign name Gia Long, and built a large citadel in Hue on top of the old city used by the Tay Son. As I said, Vietnam gameplay; rice farming. Vietnam lore; basically Game of Thrones.
On our first day in Hue, we made it a priority to visit the city's historic citadel. As our Grab car made its way through the streets, we saw that much of Hue was still enclosed by the original Vauban-style walls and moat (note: apparently this citadel has an absolutely mammoth perimeter of 10 kilometres), with motorcycles and cars having to pass through the original fortress gates in order to gain access to the inside of the citadel. Inside lay the old Imperial City, which we were planning to visit. We stepped out of the car and walked into the grounds of the citadel, where we were greeted by a spectacular gate that marked the entrance to the imperial city. It was called the Ngo Mon, or Meridian Gate, and it was very visually striking; an elaborate red-and-yellow pavilion stood above a series of gigantic stone arches that seemed to tower over virtually everything else in the area. We bought our ticket at a small office just outside of the imperial city, and walked through the imposing gate.
Within the walls of the imperial city lay a stunning palace complex filled with landscaped ponds and frangipanis. We were staring at a courtyard that led straight to the historic Thai Hoa Palace (Throne Palace), considered the pinnacle of Vietnamese imperial architecture. It was a single story building designed in traditional Asian style, boasting a roof adorned with intricate filigreed artwork and finely wrought sculptures of dragons. Inside lay a red-and-gold throne hall, wreathed in endless golden canopies; the walls and pillars were covered with carvings of Vietnamese poetry alongside depictions of dragons and clouds. Hue possesses by far the best historic architecture in the entire country, and the citadel is probably the most recognisable and famous of these sites.
The Imperial City was massive, and we traversed it until we were worn out and couldn't explore anymore. We visited big red temples dedicated to the thirteen emperors of the Nguyen Dynasty, saw elegant rock gardens framed by bonsai and graceful wooden pavilions, and more. There was even an original Vietnamese royal theatre within the complex (Nguyen Dynasty court music is still played there to this day, but unfortunately they weren't performing when we visited the citadel). To the back of the complex stood the reconstructed Kien Trung Palace, a stately palace built in a mix of Vietnamese, French and Italian Renaissance styles. Its overall architectural structure almost looked like something one might find in Europe, except it was covered from top to toe in intricate mosaics in the shape of dragons and other Asian iconography. Much of the architecture in the city does this - it syncretises traditional Vietnamese aesthetics with French elements, and forms quite a unique style I can easily say I've never seen anywhere else.
Outside the city, we grabbed a ridiculously sweet and fresh pineapple on a stick (yet again we were given a spice mixture to dip the pineapple into, this time we opted not to use it) and made our way to the Hue Museum of Royal Antiquities. It featured many artefacts from the Nguyen Dynasty, from ceramics to thrones to artwork. The museum was fairly small and we were absolutely exhausted by this point, so we took a Grab to a restaurant in downtown Hue where we were served some great food. We ordered some bun thit nuong (vermicelli and grilled pork with fish sauce), banh khoai (seafood pancake wraps) as well as banh bot loc (tapioca dumplings) and found them to be very tasty - in general we tended to like Central Vietnamese cuisine far more than we did the food in the North. The North seems to have a tendency to underflavour things, perhaps this fits Western palates more but as Southeast Asians ourselves who are more used to heavily spiced flavour profiles we found it to be a bit plain.
We found walking around Hue a bit more relaxing than Hanoi. There were an unbelievable number of temples in the city, with every street seeming to have at least one, and virtually every dilapidated shack we came across possessed small altars for people to pray to. It's not like there were no jarring parts to it - it was still Vietnam, motorcycles were still common, but the air was much better in this city, and crossing the street was far less hassling (apart from one time we accidentally stumbled into a firework display celebrating the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon; motorcycles were clustered in the street there and it was insane). People also seemed nicer and less cold to us in Central Vietnam in spite of all the shit that had happened to them in recent history, sometimes to the point of being a little overbearing. One thing that didn't change - there were still touts around downtown Hue who would pester us to take their rickshaw rides; it seems this occurs in all of Vietnam. Ignoring them continued to be the best policy.
On our second day in Hue we hit up the mausoleums of the Nguyen Dynasty emperors, situated south of the city centre. The first mausoleum we visited was the Mausoleum of Emperor Tu Duc, the last and longest-reigning pre-colonial emperor of the Nguyen Dynasty. It was built in 1867 and is considered one of the best examples of a royal tomb in Vietnam; it used to be a palatial retreat for the royal family, and its construction required so much corvee labour and extra taxation of the populace that it formented a coup. Upon entering, we were welcomed by a leafy, landscaped pond teeming with koi fish and adorned with many elegant pavilions; I thought this was a very finely wrought garden that rivalled virtually any other in East Asia. Situated up a flight of stairs was a simple temple complex, and to the north of the gardens and temples was the site of the actual mausoleum. This section was the most striking, with a grand stele housed in an ornate pavilion, flanked by statues of mandarins and elephants. Behind the stele stood a gate that marked the entrance to Tu Duc’s tomb where his sarcophagus lay.
Just 11 minutes' walk from the Mausoleum of Emperor Tu Duc was the Mausoleum of Emperor Dong Khanh, which I actually liked even better than Tu Duc's. It was a smaller complex, but it was far less touristed and actually possessed even more spectacular architecture, at least in my estimation. The interior of the Ngung Hy Dien, the main temple hall, was decorated in red and gold architecture similar to that of the Imperial City's throne room - but it also had colourful stained glass windows which filtered all light that entered the temple. The tomb site was incredible as well, featuring many gates and stele pavilions decorated with intricate mosaics. I do think anyone who visits Tu Duc's tomb should also visit Dong Khanh's tomb, I wouldn't recommend doing only one. They're very close together and they complement each other very well.
After visiting both these mausoleums, we were rather fatigued from the perennial heat and humidity in Hue - the city seems to have awfully bad weather even for Vietnamese standards, being deathly hot in the dry season and flooding often in the wet season. So we took a break and ducked into a number of cafes where we grabbed some salt coffee, and visited a restaurant that served us a spread of traditional Hue cuisine; the banh beo (steamed rice cakes with shrimp and crispy pork rind) in particular were amazing. We spooned some fish sauce over it and ate it as is.
The next stop was the Mausoleum of Emperor Khai Dinh, which was the smallest mausoleum we visited that day, but also the most unique and spectacular. It's also by far the most recent of these mausoleums, having been built over a period of 11 years from 1920-1931 by two monarchs that reigned during a period of French indirect rule, and it used modern construction methods to achieve a traditional feel. The architecture is a strange syncretic blend of Vietnamese and French influence that seamlessly incorporates the two styles into something completely unrecognisable, and it is incredible to witness. We pulled up and gawked at the exterior of the tomb, which was a multi-level structure made from darkened, weathered concrete in a surprisingly Gothic manner, but it would only get stranger from here. Once we entered the interior of the tomb we found an explosion of colourful ceramic mosaics and canopies, alongside an impressive painted ceiling featuring iconography of dragons and clouds. In the very centre of the tomb stood a gilt-bronze statue of Khai Dinh, with his actual remains interred eighteen metres below the statue. It's really something. Many of the historic sites in Hue represent the best 19th and early 20th century architecture I've seen anywhere in the world (feudalism lasted for a long time in Vietnam), and if you are ever in the country and are interested in history or architecture at all you can't skip Hue.
Finally, we ended our day at the Mausoleum of Emperor Minh Mang, probably the most accomplished of the Nguyen emperors aside from Gia Long. He expanded Vietnam's borders to its greatest extent in history, annexing large parts of Cambodia and Laos as well as completely extinguishing the southern Champa kingdom (really Vietnam owes much of its current borders to the Nguyen). His mausoleum is probably the most simple and elegant of all of them, with all the monuments aligned on a east-west axis surrounded by large landscaped ponds. There's a lot of finely wrought pavilion architecture in this one that's framed by large frangipani gardens and yawning courtyards, I enjoyed it a lot but unfortunately his actual tomb to the back is blocked off from the public. Still, there's a lot there to chew on.
We were a bit mausoleumed out by then, so on our final proper day in Vietnam we decided to visit some of the traditional garden houses and temples north of the Perfume (Huong) River running through Hue. We took a Grab ride to An Hien Garden House, built in the late 19th century for a daughter of Emperor Duc Duc. The entrance to the garden house featured a small gate that framed an intimate forested path; it led to a tranquil house fronted by a tropical pond covered in water lilies. There was a small Asian orchestra on the site playing traditional Vietnamese music in a pavilion, and we sat and listened to them for as long as they would play - it was a very peaceful vibe. Once they finished their performance, we tipped them and left the garden house for our next destination.
The streets north of the Perfume River are probably the most pleasant part of Hue. As we strolled along the banks of the river, we came across endless temples and garden houses - there is really no shortage of temples in Hue, but even in a place filled to the brim with them this part of the city had a uniquely high concentration of historical and cultural sites. At one point, we saw a small ceramic museum along the road, called the "Huong River Antique Pottery Museum", and decided to pop in. Inside, we saw yet another old garden house adorned by tropical plants, complete with many household Buddhist and ancestral altars. We visited the museum towards the back, and saw lots of small rooms and hallways filled with antique ceramics.
In a gesture of hospitality, we were offered tea and a selection of cookies (apparently all homemade using traditional recipes). The man who operated the pottery museum joined us for a friendly conversation. As it turned out, his grandfather was a mandarin from the Nguyen Dynasty, which explained how he had come to inherit the garden house. The pottery found in the museum had all been dredged up from the depths of the Perfume River, and at some point an archaeologist had visited to date and catalogue all the items they had discovered. We then asked him what he thought the best places to visit in Hue were and what his favourite royal tombs were, and he quickly responded "Gia Long Mausoleum". Now we absolutely had to go there. After enjoying most of the tea and cookies, we got up to head to our next destination. Before we left, he invited us to take the remaining cookies with us for the road.
We walked further west to the next stop: Thien Mu Pagoda. This pagoda, built on a small hill overlooking the Perfume River, actually predates the citadel itself. It was established in 1601, built on the spot where a legend states that a "celestial lady" appeared and asked the local lord to build a pagoda to control underground forces and dominate the region. The most recognisable thing about this temple is the Phuoc Duyen, an imposing 21-metre seven story tower built in the 1800s which we saw as soon as we approached the temple complex. The pagoda also had a pretty stripped-back main hall where a monk was striking a big bronze bowl, juxtaposed against very ornate and lush rock gardens populated with koi. Probably the most unexpected thing we found in the temple was the enshrined car of Thich Quang Duc, the monk who self-immolated in protest of Ngo Dinh Diem's anti-Buddhist policies; it was just sitting there innocuously in a small alcove within the temple.
Our final stop of the whole trip was Gia Long Mausoleum, located in the countryside to the far south of Hue. It was initially built for his first wife Thua Thien, but eventually was expanded after his death to include Gia Long and other family members of his. The complex was huge and rather empty when we visited, and most of it looked like a scene from an impressionist painting - big green rolling hills draped around a landscaped lake, dotted with obelisk-like pillars, monolithic stone monuments and incense-filled shrines. It was a highly surreal place to be; it just did not look real. The tomb that contained Gia Long and his wife featured an absolutely mammoth stone pedestal surrounded by statues and adorned with a whole flight of dragon-lined stairs; walking inside revealed an austere and minimal complex centred around two sarcophagi. This is a very dreamlike place, and would have been even more so if it weren't so hot. I think this is probably my favourite mausoleum alongside Khai Dinh's.
We woke up the next day and went to a small island in the middle of the Perfume River known for com hen (baby clam rice). It was served to us in a dirty shack with plastic chairs and tables that were far too low for comfort, alongside a bowl of clam soup made from the water it was boiled in. The com hen itself was tangy and light, whereas the soup was surprisingly strong and packed a lot of seafood flavour. Good stuff, in my opinion. Once we finished, we made our way to the airport nearby and prepared to fly off from Vietnam. Our flights had been moved around and now we had a very long layover at Tan Son Nhat airport in Saigon, so we took the opportunity to try some Southern Vietnamese cuisine. Taking a Grab to the city centre, we tried some Southern Vietnamese banh mi and... yeah, this was it. Much better than the one we had in Northern Vietnam. It was juicier, tastier and displayed a far greater variety of fillings. It was also noticeable how much more modern Saigon seemed compared to the rest of Vietnam, and there was a lot less chaos on the streets, unfortunately we couldn't spend too much time there since we were on a time limit. We returned to our airport, went through customs, and boarded our flight back to Sydney.
Conclusion:
That was a long post, it was probably quite rambly at points, so thanks for sticking through to the end. I'll provide some concluding thoughts here for people who didn't bother to read it all - do I recommend Vietnam? It depends on your level of comfort. If you can tank some overwhelm and discomfort, you'll find a lot to like as long as you are willing to take the good with the bad. Would I travel to Vietnam again? The answer's "absolutely yes, but not soon". Vietnam is a place that boasts a large amount of rich history and culture, as well as some very impressive natural sites that offer many opportunities for once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Hell, even the roughness and the abundant culture shock is an element that gives it its character - it's very fascinating to see a country in the process of transition from a largely agrarian society to industrial modernity, and to see these two worlds rub up against each other in strange ways. But it can also be jarring and overwhelming, and it takes a lot out of you when you travel there. It's a country that doesn't offer a smooth experience and doesn't try to, and in that sense, it's not a manicured tourist trap; it feels like a real, raw place where people live and sleep and shit.
To close off, I'm reminded somewhat of the Fun Scale, a metric developed by the mountain climbing community to describe their trips: Type 1 fun is stuff that's fun in the moment and fun in retrospect, Type 2 fun characterises experiences that are not enjoyable in the moment but are fun to recall afterward, and Type 3 fun is stuff that's not enjoyable at all, not when it's happening and not in retrospect. I feel like in Vietnam, I experienced all of the above at different points on the trip.
You will, however, come away with a fuckton of stories, that's a promise.
Hey folks, there's a space on X where people are doing live reactions for the Starship launch this morning. Come join if you're curious.
This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from around the world. Feel free to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the Ukraine War, or even just whatever you’re reading.
Argentina
Paging @DaseindustriesLtd
Argentina opened the first of its three rounds of elections on Sunday; the main three way election will happen on October 22, and if no one gets a majority (very likely) then the two top ranked candidates will go to a runoff November 19. To the surprise of everyone, the largely fringe turbo-libertarian Javier Milei won unexpectedly, placing him as the front runner for October, and making him suddenly the talk of the town in international press. Milei’s party, La Libertad Avanza, performed terribly in recent municipal and regional elections; his own polling at its best was mixed and his ideas polled much worse than himself a man. So his 30% results in the primary genuinely surprised most people. The results look even more impressive at the provincial level, where Milei won 16 of 24 provinces, with remaining provinces divided between the other parties:
[Milei’s] ultra-liberal discourse was imposed, as was foreseeable, in urban centers with more middle classes, such as the cities of Córdoba or Mendoza . But the electoral surprise was greater when the scrutiny revealed that the leader of La Libertad Avanza also reached the poorest districts of the country. ..
As happened in Chaco and Jujuy, Milei was the candidate with the most votes for the PASO in most of the poorest districts in the country, according to the survey carried out by Infobae .
These poorer areas are the traditional stronghold of the Peronists/Kirchnerists, so their switch to the libertarian is quite the sea change. ¿Quien es Milei?
Javier Milei is a former economist and Congressman who’s built up a huge media presence in the past year. It’s a little like if one of the weirdo right wing internet influencers we sometimes discuss here became a major party candidate, down to the fact that he rages about leftism while also being kinda libertine and degenerate, partial to the occasional threesome, moonlighting as a tantric sex instructor, and running with a VP who I guess does cosplay. Otherwise, socially he’s a grab bag of right-wing culture war talking points, generalized hatred of the elites (whom he calls “the caste”), banning abortion in all cases including rape and incest, the right to bear arms, climate change is a hoax, etc - plus a few out there ideas, like the novel proposal that people should be able to sell their own organs or children on the free market.
But really Milei’s support is behind economics, because there’s nowhere that the establishment parties have failed more manifestly. The ruling party, Unión por la Patria (previously Frente de Todos), is the Peronist/Kirchnerist left mega-populist party which set the institutional tone for Argentina’s stagnation since the 30s. Their opposition, the center right Juntos Del Cambio, was originally elected to do what Milei says he will - utterly reform the broken system the Kirchnerists created. And to their credit they did oversee some significant reforms, but most critically failed to address Argentina’s central ill of inflation (partially because it would have conflicted with their other campaign pledge to balance budgets). After a brief upward surge in the economy after they took power, ultimately they left it as they found it, in shambles.
With both parties dropping the ball so horrifically on inflation, Milei has made the centerpiece of his campaign a highly controversial plan to switch from pesos to dollars. Surely this would address inflation (just by keeping it at US rates) but the transition would be remarkably painful. Supposedly about 60% of voters actually oppose the plan and it’s not actually clear Argentina can physically, literally do this - many people apparently think they genuinely do not have sufficient reserves to convert their existing money base entirely into dollars. There’s also the risk that it would hurt competitiveness by inflating the value of Argentina’s exports relative to the region; this was one of the big criticisms of the 90s peso convertibility. Even so, possibly this is still preferable to nonstop runaway inflation.
Milei’s “chainsaw plan” also includes: “eliminating 11 government ministries, reducing government spending by 15% of the country’s GDP, and privatizing or closing down state companies and agencies, among other austerity measures. A potential Milei administration would also eliminate free state schools and healthcare, and replace them with a “voucher system” designed to subsidize whoever needs them, according to his government plan.” I couldn’t really comment on how useful Argentina’s government ministries are, eliminating them could actually be disastrous, especially for their pension system - but it should be said that currently Argentina funds its government expenses with the money printer, so if inflation is ever going to be addressed spending does have to curbed (though perhaps the medicine doesn’t need to be quite that extreme).
To be clear, the election is still anyone’s contest. Milei pulled ahead of the establishment parties only by a hair, and this with neither of them formally unified under a chosen candidate. Also, 30% of the electorate abstained (voting is mandatory in Argentina so this means more than it would most places) and almost half of the ballots were left blank or null. LA’s poor performance in municipal and regional elections also indicates that his party may be less popular than he is, and if he wins with a minority there’s no chance his zanier ideas will be pushed through (and with no provincial governments under LA control he loses a major route to reduce spending). Still, it certainly represents a population extremely weary with their governing parties.
China
The whole world seems to be talking about China’s economy starting to corrode, as economic activity slows down and deflation has begun to set in:
China's National Bureau of Statistics announced Wednesday that consumer prices dropped annually in July for the first time in two years, dipping 0.3%, just slightly better than median estimates for a 0.4% decrease . . .
Year-to-date, China's exports are down 5% compared to last year, while imports have dipped 7.6%
Manufacturing activity has contracted for four straight months July exports declined at the sharpest rate in three years, at 14.5% annually
Doomsaying about how China’s overleveraged, ponzi scheme-esque real estate sector will spell the end have been going on forever without materializing, though now maybe they finally are. Various pundits have already started asking if we’ll soon look at China the way we now do Japan - confused that we ever considered them a serious economic rival. This seems a little premature to me, but I also don’t follow China closely and would be interested to hear from others.
Japan
Speaking of which, Japan grew at a remarkable 6% this quarter, more than doubling expectations. Aside from one crazy quarter in 2020 this is the highest rate they’ve had in a very long time. BBC reports that Japan’s tumbling currency, down 10% relative to the dollar, has actually been a boon for exports, which coupled with an influx of tourism has given their stagnant economy a little boost:
Profits at the country's car makers - including Toyota, Honda and Nissan - have been boosted in recent months as they saw increased demand for exports. While a weak currency makes what the country imports more expensive, prices of commodities on global markets, like oil and gas, have fallen in recent months. That has resulted in a drop in the value of imports, down 4.3% from the previous quarter, which EY's Nobuko Kobayashi called "a major culprit for GDP growth".
Japan's economy has also been helped by a rise in tourist numbers after the government lifted border restrictions at the end of April. As of June, the number of foreign visitors to Japan had recovered to more than 70% of pre-pandemic levels, according to the country's national tourism authority. Spending by tourists is also expected to give the country's economy an even bigger boost from this month after China lifted a ban on group travel. Before the pandemic Chinese visitors accounted for more than a third of tourist spending in Japan.
I’ve reported previously on Japan and Korea ending their trade war and normalizing relations following the comfort women/forced labor lawsuits. Japanese PM Kishida, Korean President Yoon, and Biden will now hold their first ever standalone meeting on Friday to “institutionalize their trilateral ties”. This will mean holding yearly summits like this, strengthening security cooperation, training, and intelligence sharing against threats from China and North Korea. “The three leaders are also expected to signal deeper cooperation in areas such as cybersecurity, supply chain resilience and fighting economic coercion.”
Ecuador
Following the assassination of a mayor, which put two of Ecuador’s provinces under a state of emergency, and the assassination of a candidate for the Presidential election, which put the rest of the country under a state of emergency, a third politician has now been killed - all of this in under a month and barely a week away from election. Pesto Briones was a local leader in the Esmeraldas province for the democratic socialist Revolución Ciudadana, party of the previous presidents Rafeal Correa and Lenín Moreno (the latter of whom later left/was expelled), and the current leading party in the polls for the upcoming election. This has been a remarkably violent period for Ecuador. Beyond the political violence overall homicides in 2022 were 4600, double the previous year, and 2023 is on pace to exceed that number still; so far there have been reportedly been 3,568 murders compared with 2,042 at the same point in the year during 2022.
Six Colombians have now been arrested in the murder of Fernando Villavicencio. Details are sparse but the Colombian drug trade is intertwined with Ecuador’s, and Villaviencio had been threatened by the cartels. Reportedly Villavicencio’s family has accused the Ecuadorian government of neglecting to provide sufficient security, lacking armored/bulletproof cars, leading him through public entrances and exits rather than established side routes, etc. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, in a message offering condolences for the assassination, made explicit the comparison between this and the group of Colombian mercenaries who assassinated the Haitian President Jovenel Moise.
South Africa
Former President Jacon Zuma has now been released after only two months of his sentence, reportedly due to a program to reduce prison overcrowding. Zuma was the previous leader of the ANC, and the central opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, has accused the move of political corruption (supposedly the overcrowding reduction measure was passed shortly after Zuma was sentenced). The far left Economic Freedom Fighters, who in part started as the anti-Zuma block of the ANC till they were expelled, have switched their tune and have been trying to pull away Zuma supporters from the ANC (Zuma and current President Ramaphosa are rivals), so are likely to be supportive.
The economy overall looks staggeringly bleak in advance of their election. Official unemployment has hit 33%, with observers suggesting the real rate may be as high as 42%.
When it comes to youth unemployment, the rate is 61% of 15- to 24-year-olds, according to official statistics, and a staggering 71% if you again count those who are no longer trying . . . it equates to 24 million adults out of a population of 60 million who are either unemployed or not involved in any economic activity and barely surviving . . . South Africa’s GDP needs to grow by 6% a year to start creating enough jobs just for the 700,000 people who enter the workforce every year…South Africa’s growth hasn’t approached that much-needed figure for more than a decade. Its economy — which grew by 2% last year — is expected to grow by less than 1% this year and between 1% and 2% for the next five years.’
Ethiopia
Less than a year after the war in the country’s northern Tigray region ended, Ethiopia’s military is battling an ethnic militia in the neighboring Amhara region in a part of Africa already ravaged by conflict.
The Amhara are the historic ruling group of Ethiopia, previously unseated by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, who after they were unseated in turn, later helped fill the ranks of the Tigray secessionist group from last year’s war. Current President Abiy Ahmed is a half-Amhara, half-Oromo who holds both ethnic parties within his Prosperity Party coalition. However, he’s been blamed for some attacks on the Oromo (or for not doing enough to stop them) and is accused of leaning towards his Amhara side, at least by the Oromo secessionist groups which the government has also had to deal with.
This makes it somewhat ironic that Amhara forces are now turning against him as well. His post-war project has been to consolidate the different ethnic militias into a formal security force, just as he (somewhat) did by forming the ethnic political parties into one ostensible party. The Amhara militia Fano, which played a major role in fighting for the government during the Tigrayan War, has balked at this attempt to strip away their autonomy and (supposedly) leave them less secure to other ethnic attacks, and fighting has broken out. For now the government seems to have gained the upper hand and regained control of the areas taken by Fano, but the conflict is certainly not over. Ethiopia is straining right now under the weight of Sudanese refugees, so hopefully the conflict does not escalate.
One of the ways I pass my free time is to scroll through Twitter or Reddit looking for interesting or controversial articles to read. Occasionally, I only make it a paragraph or 2 in before I decide that I don’t trust the author, and that I can’t take anything they write seriously. This can happen even if the article is taking a position I already agree with. Sometimes there’s just something about the article’s style that seems like it can’t be trusted. I was originally going to write a post that contained all the pet peeves that would cause that to happen. However, after I got part-way through, I decided that if I included everything, then this entry would be too long. So instead, I’m writing about each one separately. Pet peeve #1: Portraying your opponent as a caricature.
The thing that inspired me to write about this topic was an article I saw on twitter. It’s an article about a proposed regulation that would force companies to make cancelling subscriptions easier. More specifically, it was about those companies’ reaction to it.
Companies Think Their Idiot Customers Will Accidentally Cancel Their Subscriptions if It's Too Easy
It begins:
The Federal Trade Commission’s recent proposal to require that companies offer customers easy one-click options to cancel subscriptions might seem like a no-brainier, something unequivocally good for consumers. Not according to the companies it would affect, though. In their view, the introduction of simple unsubscribe buttons could lead to a wave of accidental cancellations by dumb customers. Best, they say, to let big businesses protect customers from themselves and make it a torment to stop your service.
Those were some of the points shared by groups representing major publishers and advertisers during the FTC’s recent public comment period ending in June. Consumers, according to the Wall Street Journal, generally appeared eager for the new proposals which supporters say could make a dent in tricky, bordering-on deceptive anti-cancellation tactics deployed by cable companies, entertainment sites, gyms, and other businesses who game out ways to make it as difficult as possible to quickly quit a subscription. The News/Media Alliance, a trade group representing publishers, tried to refute those customers in its own comments to the FTC. The Alliance claimed its members actually receive “very few complaints” about cancellations. Consumers, according to the Association of National Advertisers, may actually benefit from annoying cancellation friction.
To be clear, I absolutely hate difficult to cancel subscriptions. I also hate so-called “free trials” that bill you if you forget to cancel. Some cancellation processes I’ve encountered were so difficult that they certainly seemed criminal. When I first heard about this proposal, I thought to myself “Finally, someone is going to do something about these predatory practices!”
I agree with the with the article’s apparent position on the proposal. The new rule is a good idea, and it’s needed. Even so, something about the article still managed to rub me the wrong way. Even before I started reading the article, I already disliked it just from the headline alone. By the time I had finished it, I was already trying to find out how the article was deceiving me.
The first sign of trouble was the headline:
Companies Think Their Idiot Customers Will Accidentally Cancel Their Subscriptions if It's Too Easy
This reads like a headline from the onion. You can tell just from reading it that it’s caricature of what they actually said. Companies don’t call literally their customers “idiots” like this. At least, certainly not out in the open.
The article continues:
In their view, the introduction of simple unsubscribe buttons could lead to a wave of accidental cancellations by dumb customers. Best, they say, to let big businesses protect customers from themselves and make it a torment to stop your service.
Again, this message is nothing like what you’d expect a large company to put out. Large companies don’t openly insult customers like this. Large companies also don’t refer to themselves as “Big Business”. This passage even has a little of embedded argument in it. It tells you that it’s a torment to stop your service. Nobody embeds counterarguments in their statements just so you can use it against them. This is supposedly based on what the companies said, but it’s been warped in obvious ways, and it’s hard to tell what the actual statement probably was.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. The article is full of this kind of thing.
Caricature itself isn’t bad if your audience already knows the subject matter, but it’s not a good way to introduce your audience to an opposing position. A caricature, by definition, distorts it’s subject by exaggerating it’s most ridiculous attributes. A caricature of someone’s argument is an exaggerated version of the most ridiculous parts of that argument. In their real statements, there may or may not be nuance and context that make the argument work, but if there is, I can’t expect to find that nuance and context in a caricature. Including it would undermine the idea of caricature itself.
A caricature of a statement is more than just a Straw Man, it gives a sense that the author doesn’t think it’s worthwhile to even check for context. Perhaps they don’t even think context can matter.
Some authors try to weasel their way out of such straw-man accusations by telling you “it’s just a joke”, even though they’re clearly trying to persuade you. A humorous poorly-reasoned argument is still a poorly-reasoned argument. If you have to fall back on “it’s just a joke” in order to defend it, then your point might not be on solid ground to begin with. Saying “It’s just joke” might as well be outright admitting that your argument is without merit.
If you want to actually be convincing, then you should instead, steel man your opponent. Essentially, you provide the best version of their position that you can. Include the nuance and context that makes it work. Then, you can explain why it is wrong.
This way might not feel very good. After all, why help out your opposition by presenting the best version of their argument? But doing so is actually helpful for you. It shows confidence in your own position. If it looks like an argument a real person would believe, then it doesn’t trigger as much skepticism. Perhaps more importantly, it protects you in case your reader learns the real argument from somewhere else. Learning your opponent’s real position won’t sway them as much because you’ve already told them about it. It gives your argument more sticking power.
You can still joke around about the opposing position. Just make sure that I know what that position actually is first. I don’t want to have to guess what their real position probably is.
About Half-way down the article, the author finally included an actual quote,
“If sellers are required to enable cancellation through a single click or action by the consumer, accidental cancellations will become much more common, as consumers will not reasonably expect to remove their recurring goods or services with just one click,” the Association said in a statement.
But at this point, it was too late, the distrust had already started to creep in. The author had already shown that he didn’t care very much how the companies’ actual statements worked.
I looked a bit further into it to figure out what the companies’ real statement was. The quote above, comes from a statement made by the Association of National Advertisers Their full statement can be found here.
This is the part where they talk about “click to cancel”
Requiring “simple” cancellation is a difficult standard for businesses to implement, as there is little detail provided to guide them to understand its meaning and how to comply with this ambiguous requirement. If sellers are required to enable cancellation through a single click or action by the consumer, accidental cancellations will become much more common, as consumers will not reasonably expect to remove their recurring goods or services with just one click. Such accidental cancellations could cause consumers to miss out on essential deliveries of food, water, or medical products, and could create the inconvenience of requiring the consumer to register again for a service they did not intend to cancel in the first place. The possibility of accidental cancellations could be greater in the mobile environment, which may be less optimized to manage complex processes such as account administration. Consequently, in many instances, it may be reasonable for sellers to require some form of customer authentication, or redirection of the consumer to a medium that best facilitates account administration, before processing a cancellation. As a matter of public policy, permitting reasonable customer authentication prior to cancellation helps to minimize mistaken or fraudulent cancellation actions, which lead to customer frustration and undesired lapses in the provision of needed goods or services. Several state-level negative option laws permit reasonable authentication procedures prior to cancellation,17 and the proposed amendments to the Current Rule should similarly allow companies to verify consumer identities prior to effectuating a cancellation choice.
This statement does make some reasonable points about why you might not want a literal 1-click cancel button. If I click a “Cancel” button in the navigation, at minimum, I would expect to see a confirmation page first. One that says “Do you want to cancel your subscription?” and a button that says “Confirm Cancellation”. That’s at least 2 clicks, one to get to the cancel confirmation page, and one to cancel. If my account was cancelled out of the navigation bar, that would be very surprising to me. Something like that really would lead to unintended cancellations. It also makes total sense to force users to log in, in order to cancel. I don’t want some random unauthenticated person messing with my account settings!
There is, however, one major problem with this statement. The proposed rule doesn’t actually require you to make a 1-click cancel button. “Click to cancel” is just a nickname. The actual requirement is a cancellation process that is at least as simple as the sign-up process, and through the same medium:
The proposal also requires sellers to provide a simple cancellation mechanism through the same medium used to initiate the agreement, whether, for instance, through the internet, telephone, mail, or in-person. On the internet, this “Click to Cancel” provision requires sellers, at a minimum, to provide an accessible cancellation mechanism on the same website or web-based application used for sign-up. If the seller allows users to sign up using a phone, it must provide, at a minimum, a telephone number and ensure all calls to that number are answered during normal business hours. Further, to meet the requirement that the mechanism be at least as simple as the one used to initiate the recurring charge, any telephone call used for cancellation cannot be more expensive than the call used to enroll ( e.g., if the sign-up call is toll free, the cancellation call must also be toll free). For a recurring charge initiated through an in-person transaction, the seller must offer the simple cancellation mechanism through the internet or by telephone in addition to, where practical, the in-person method used to initiate the transaction.
This rule requires a 1-click cancel only if you had a 1-click sign up in the first place. If a company requires authentication in order to sign up, then they can require authentication in order to cancel. If it takes you more than one click to sign up, then it can take more than 1 click to cancel. I sure hope these companies don’t have literal 1-click confirmation-less signup buttons, and I certainly hope they aren’t signing you with no authentication either!
But then again, maybe I shouldn’t be too hard on the The Association of National Advertisers for this oversight. The author of the Gizmodo article apparently didn’t catch it either. That would have been quite a good opportunity to make fun of the original statement, and it would have addressed the real statement too.
I’m not very forgiving when it comes to deceptive tactics. Once I get the sense that you’re trying to deceive me, I become suspicious about the whole thing. After all, if the author has already revealed that they don’t care about informing me accurately, how can I trust anything they say? Even if I already agree with their position, I can’t use it as a source. It’s just too unreliable; the people I’m citing it to would, rightly, mock me for it. It’s just not very useful, and mostly makes me dislike the author and maybe even their publication.
This is essentially a followup to the last meta post.
Big scary updates are done and seem to be fine, but our volunteers have been going absolutely mad with minor updates. Which is great! We have a bunch of people contributing tons of valuable tweaks and fixes and improvements to the codebase, thank you, I literally could not do this without you.
I'm just gonna repost this again because it worked the last time:
Are you a software developer? Do you want to help? We can pretty much always use people who want to get their hands dirty with our ridiculous list of stuff to work on. The codebase is in Python, and while I'm not gonna claim it's the cleanest thing ever, it's also not the worst and we are absolutely up for refactoring and improvements. Hop over to our discord server and join in. (This is also a good place to report issues, especially if part of the issue is "I can't make comments anymore.")
Are you somewhat experienced in Python but have never worked on a big codebase? Come help anyway! We'll point you at some easy stuff.
Are you not experienced in Python whatsoever? We can always use testers, to be honest, and if you want to learn Python, go do a tutorial, once you know the basics, come join us and work on stuff.
(if you're experienced in, like, any other language, you'll have no trouble)
Rules Changes
Thank you for discussion on the rule proposals! Here's what we ended up with.
Courtesy: Keep to a single account
We strongly discourage people from making alt accounts without good reason, and in the absence of a good reason, we consider alt accounts to be bannable on sight. Alt accounts are almost exclusively used for mod evasion purposes and very rarely used for any purpose that helps the community; it makes moderation more difficult and it makes conversation more difficult.
If you do feel you need an alt account (most commonly, if you're a well-established user who wants to post something that can't be linked to their public persona), please ask the mods.
If you don't want the mods to know about it either, be aware that there's a good chance we'll find out about it anyway.
Content: Post on multiple subjects
We occasionally have trouble with people who turn into single-issue posters, posting and commenting only on a single subject. We'd like to discourage this. If you find yourself posting constantly on a single subject, please make an effort to post on other subjects as well.
This doesn't mean you need to write megaposts! This can be as simple as going to the Friday Fun Thread once in a while and posting a few paragraphs about whatever video game you last played. But this community is fundamentally for people, and if a poster is acting more like a propaganda-bot than a person, we're going to start looking at them suspiciously.
This rule is going to be applied with delicacy; if I can find not-low-effort comments about three different subjects within your last two weeks or two pages of comments, you're likely fine.
These are still prototypes, if you have objections they can still be changed, without objections they'll get added to the Official Rules probably in a week or so.
Private Profiles
Again, thank you for discussion! I refined the planned system a bit (original plans: "remove private profiles".) The current system is that private profiles are available to established users or on request. We're leaving "established" intentionally vague, but it's basically a measure of how much you've been contributing. If the system considers you established, the checkbox will be in your settings; if the system doesn't consider you established, it'll be there, but grayed out and have a link to contact us.
(This is using roughly the same standard as our filtering system, but with much bigger numbers.)
We've also grandfathered in everyone who had a private profile, even those who don't meet the bar. This was definitely a carefully-considered decision! It has nothing to do with me not wanting to write the SQL query to revert profiles.
That said, if you're a newbie account that gets yourself banned, don't be surprised if a mod also resets your private flag.
Long Comments
A while back there was a meta post where I proposed relaxing the comment character limit. I came up with a proposal, people on the dev discord convinced me to relax it even further, then it just sorta sat there and moldered in the Issues queue for a bit because it wasn't the priority. Then I wrote an effortpost and said "shucks, this is over the limit! Okay, I'm going to just go and implement that long-comment request now so I can post my megapost for the good of the community. Aaaaand also so I can post my megapost."
Then one of our volunteers, without any knowledge whatsoever of the above decision, sniped it out from under me and implemented it, like, two days before I was going to sit down and do it.
Anyway, it's in now! The new limit is . . .
. . . a little more complicated.
The new limit is 50,000 characters if you don't want to be filtered. Are you okay with your comment being filtered as if you were a new user? Well, good news, the new limit is 500,000 characters. Yes, this is literally enough to post an entire novel, albeit a short one, as long as you're OK with the mods seeing it before the rest of the userbase does.
This is experimental; if it gets abused, don't be surprised if this gets changed.
This is now a general-purpose feedback post. Let me know how things are going!
This is a weekly thread for people to talk about foreign policy, current international relations events, or chat about IR history. Generally I start with a series of updates on different countries but the format here should be pretty free form / whatever people are interested in. To demonstrate that I want to have a special thread on less-remembered wars. Feel free to share your own (no need for it to be this long), or to talk about something completely else!
The Libyan-Turkic War
It’s pretty easy to understand why the 1911 Libyan invasion isn’t on anyone’s radar, being dwarfed by the size and devastation of World War 1, but I think it gets short shrift. After all, for Turkey and Libya this conflict might as well have been the start of World War 1. From Libya onwards Turkey is in constant war up until the conclusion of the Greco-Turkish war in 1922. For Italy the vast sums they spent on this war had significant repercussions for their performance in the war of 1914 and their political situation afterwards. Beyond putting World War 1 into a broader context, this is also a unique and interesting war in its own right. One historian, Sean McMeekin, described it as the last of the nineteenth century style wars on colonial conquest as well as the first of the twentieth century style anti-colonial guerilla wars. It also featured some of the first instances of modern technology, including the first use of a plane in a battle, and the first instance of a plane getting shot down in a battle.
The Italian Position
So what drove Italy towards this war? Basically a desire to join the ranks of the imperial powers. Italy had only been formed in 1861 and fully consolidated in 1871. Like Germany, they were late to the ranks of European nation states aspiring towards empire, and felt the need to catch up for prestige by snatching Somaliland and Eritrea. When I say the Libyan invasion was mostly about prestige, I feel like it sounds odd because nowadays it’s obvious why Libya is important to control. But oil wasn’t discovered until 1959 – back then it’s basically a patch of desert with a few slums. It mostly remained as part of the Ottoman Empire because the other, more powerful European colonizers didn't think it was worth conquering as they snatched up the other North African provinces.
At the 1878 Congress of Berlin France took Tunisia and Britain took Cyprus; to get Italy to sign off they soft promised them Libya. This was further cemented by a secret deal between France and Italy in 1902 for the French to respect an Italian invasion, and another deal in 1909 for Russian recognition of Italian Libyan in exchange for Italian recognition of Russian Bosporus.
In 1908 this started to build into a huge sort of nationalist movement centered around Libya, with articles in the press, wonderful propaganda posters, politicians drumming up support and so forth. The main opposition to the war effort was the Italian Socialist Party. In fact, socialists had been tenuously supportive of centrist Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti at the time, who had been courting them by expanding the right to vote and cinducting nationalizations, but the Libyan War was a major cleavage that drove them away from the coalition. The divide between the right and the left in Italy would never fully heal and only grow more violent in the buildup towards fascism. Itonically, one of the loudest voices against the invasion at the time was the young Benito Mussolini, back when he was still a leading luminary in the anti-war socialist movement and before he had decided that war and imperialism were actually hella sick. This is just one of the countless fascinating ways this conflict acts as a hinge between completely different eras.
The Ottoman Position
Meanwhile, on the other side, well, people debate on exactly where Turkey’s fall begin, but suffice it to say they had been taking Ls for a very long time. From the Crimean War onwards they had been giving successively more privileges to the European powers, giving up more of their control of their own finances, and watching as their provinces softly secede themselves away, like Egypt, or get gobbled up by Europe, like Tunisia and Morocco.
This instability, coupled with the repressive absolutism of Abdul Hamid II, had led to the famous Young Turks revolution, bringing forth the government that would famously later cause the brutal Armenian genocide. After their revolution in 1908, this conflict three years later will be their first major test – in fact they literally hold their first congress at the exact same time the invasion is launched.
Things Go Down
On September 26 the Italians extend an ultimatum to the Ottoman Empire to hand over Libya in a trustee-style relationship like Britain had for Egypt, where the Ottomans were technically in charge on paper but the Europeans called all the shots. Indignity of indignities, the Ottomans said no. The game is on.
The Italians were less prepared than they had hoped due to socialist opposition, but they still started rallying an army of 34,000 to go against the under 5000 Ottoman regulars in Libya. The Ottoman Empire was in a particularly difficult position for shoring up their own position because they had no direct land access to Libya – British Egypt was in between Turkey and Libya and the Anglos refused to allow the Ottomans to move their troops over land. This meant they had to pass through disguised as Arab civilians or advance over sea, but the Italians had significant sea dominance. Mustafa Kemal, the future future leader of the republic of Turkey, has to sneak in on a Russian ship disguised as a journalist. In time the Turkish forces would also grow to includes thousands of Bedouin guerilla fighters.
In the initial phase of the war the Italians basically just sailed up and 1500 sailors took Tripoli in a handful of days. Another 20,000 troops and a few more days and Italy soon had all the other major cities as well: Benghazi, Derna and Tobruk.
On November 5, only a month later, the Italians declare conquest over Libya. They technically only control the coast but it’s not like there’s much inland anyway.
...One Year Later
But things swiftly moved from a more standard war to one of guerilla resistance. Despite holding the population centers, the Italians couldn’t penetrate even a few kilometers in land. Arab cavalry encircled the cities and attacked any soldier who strayed too far, Libyan civilian volunteers attacked troops digging trenches, Bedouins stage sporadic attacks from the desert. It only took a month for Libya to assert control over the major cities but the guerilla resistance proved fierce, a whole year later Italy was still nowhere near pacifying these sporadic attacks. The Italian troops have increased from 34,000 to 140,000.
The other European Empires had greenlit this specifically because they thought it was gonna take, like, a day, and here we are a year later at stalemate. Feeling a little frantic Italy asks for and receives permission from them to expand the naval fight – in August 1912 they begin attacking the Turkish Dodecanese islands. They begin shelling the forts on the Dardanelles themselves, making to slip on through the straits to the Sea of Marmara and attack Constantinople itself. This leads to the panicked Ottomans to close off the straits entirely, stretch steel chains across the opening, and fill the water with mines.
The Balkan Bananza
Suddenly this pointless colonial war has become an existential threat for the Russian Empire. Half of Russian export trade moved through the Dardanelle Straits and promptly dropped by a third; the straights were also their imports access to the components they needed for their heavy industry, which “nearly ground to a halt.” Their balance of payments felt to zero and they began to convene emergency meetings.
Now, while Russia was the protector and sometimes co-agressor of the Balkan states, it didn’t necessarily want them growing too strong or independently sweeping Tsargard Constantinople Istanbul without Russians there. The current Russian position had been that a weak Ottoman Empire could be preferable to none, but suddenly the dangers of a weak Ottoman empire became extremely real. The Balkan nations had been chomping at the bit to attack the Ottomans while they were distracted in Libya, and Russia would hold them back no longer.
In September Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece declare war on the Ottoman Empire and the first Balkan War has begun. All of the difficulties of the Libyan War, such as carefully and secretly moving their troops though Egypt or the Mediterranean, is now doubly difficult for getting those troops back to the Balkans. Stuck on the other side of Egypt Mustafa Kemal is powerless to help as the Balkans raid his hometown. His rage goes stronger.
Unable to fight both fronts simultaneously, In October, the Ottomans ultimately establish an armistice with the Italians and Libya is signed over.
Italian Aftermath
Italy had established themselves as a serious colonial power and had restored Rome’s rule across the mediterranean, but at what cost? Quite a high one actually, with expenses running in 500% of what was estimated, and lasting way longer than expected. In fact, it didn’t end when the Ottomans signed the Treaty– guerrilla resistance continued and was put down brutally over what we politely call the “punitive pacification campaigns,” which lasted all the way til 1931, a full 20 years after the Italians had declared victory.
The expenses of the Libyan pacification left Italy in a poor financial position when World War 1 actually broke out – not to mention that it still had to commit a significant number of troops to the punitive campaigns. To finance the war effort debt quadrupled to about 180% of GDP by the end of the war. The struggles of managing this debt sent the economy into turmoil, discrediting the ruling liberal government, and helping to pave the way for the fascists, who made renegotiating the debt with the US and UK a priority and established some of their early their credibility by doing just that in 1925.
Libya remained an Italian province until their defeat in World War 2.
The European Aftermath
Italian attempts to foster nationalist movements in the Balkans also caught the ire of the Empire of Austro-hungary, which was especially concerned about nationalism in Greece and Serbia. Relationships between the two nations suffered significantly. Though nominally allies, Italy didn’t inform Austria or Germany of the Libyan invasion before beginning it, and when Austro-Hungary issued its ultimatum to Serbia it did not consult Italy, helping to drive the Italians to the entente.
Furthermore, the balance of power was ultimately massively thrown apart by the dissolution of the Ottomans and the birth of the fractious Balkan nation states, whose conflicts of course eventually set the spark that started the fire of ww1.
To quote the Serbian diplomat Miroslav Spalajković on the events that led to the First World War "all subsequent events are nothing more than the evolution of that first [Italian] aggression."
The Ottoman Aftermath
Throughout all this conflict the Ottoman Empire had been wracked by internal instability. The Libyan war threw gas on the fire of this power struggle which saw a 1912 coup and ended with the Young Turks crushing all of their opposition in 1913. The period following is called the age of the three Pashas, so named after the triumvirate of tyrannical leaders who restored absolutism to the Empire and launched the great genocides.
In fact, from the Libyan War onwards the Ottoman Empire is never not at war – they go straight into the First then Second Balkan Wars, then World War 1, then the Greco-Turkic War which only finally ends in 1922. This eleven year stretch of constant battle has been nicknamed the Ottoman War of Succession, as the Empire splintered apart and spewed forth nation states, until it finally became one itself under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal, who first attained his military prestige in where else but the Libyan war.
Tldr: Write an effortpost on the subject of human intuition by February 10th, we will pick the winner by poll, I will donate $200 dollars to a charity mutually agreed upon with the winner
I've been thinking a lot about the subject of intuition lately, due to some life events. What do we know without knowing we know it, what can we communicate without knowing we communicate it. When I'm thinking a lot about something what do I want to do? Read a bunch of Mottizens thinking about it too! So, on a whim while thinking about the fact that great works like the Oresteia, Frankenstein, and Rousseau's best work were the result of competitions; I've decided to launch my own little essay competition and see if anyone bites.
The basic rules are thus:
-- Write an effortpost on the topic of Intuition. Standalone or in the CW or side threads; only rule is effort. Intuition can be as broadly or as narrowly defined as you like. Effortpost we define informally, but I'd say it must be at minimum 2000-4000 characters that is substantially your own original work. No ripping off another post, of your own or someone else's. An original summary/condensation or retelling of someone else's thesis is fine. How will we be able to tell? I'm kinda counting on the crowd here, especially if we get a little competitive fire going. I wouldn't count on slipping anything by the peanut gallery here.
-- On February 12th, as long as we have at least three entries, I will publish a poll, and we will select a winner. If anyone has a suggestion for a better method of picking a winner, I'm open to it. I'm thinking a poll would be better than just raw upvotes, but I'm open to other possibilities.
-- Once a winner is selected, I will work with the winner to select a charity, and I will donate $200 to that charity. I say I will work with the winner, I'm not donating $200 to NAMBLA or Mermaids UK or the StormFront Charity Fund just because somebody wins a poll. I will do my best to be reasonable, but there are some lines I'm not gonna cross here, and IDK there might be legal issues in some countries. I will post some kind of digital receipt in all likelihood, unless it's something like give the $200 in cash into the collection bin at church or to a homeless man or something. I'm sure for most here, the bigger thing will be winning, and being acknowledged as the winner.
So why? The mood just sort of struck me. And how do you know it will really happen? You don't, except that I spend way too much time hanging around here so you can figure I'll probably stick to my word. And anyway, you'll get even more motte street cred for being the guy who got welched on than you would for being the guy who got $200 donated to mosquito nets or whatever.
I'm curious to see what a bit of direction and effort could bring out, or maybe we need chaos. We'll see if we get three.
Please bring up any questions, or rules I haven't considered.
Naturally prompted by the current Twitter situation, I've come to the point where I just have to write down my thoughts.
I have no doubt that Elon Musk is a genius, both of thought and action. He can formulate visions and execute them. He has two truly epic feats under his belt - starting a viable car company from scratch (the first since the 1930s) and bringing about the next generation of space technology and exploration, after a long, long winter. This is definitely not the work of an "emerald mine heir, just investing his money."
He is however not an infallible genius, which is particularly noticeable in areas outside of his core expertise. And that includes social networks. In some sense, it might be the kind of venture least amiable to an engineering, top-down approach. The product is made of a fickle, unpredictable human mass and there are no good instruments or levers to make it do what you want.
The first thing about the whole Twitter situation which really gave me a pause was the fact that Musk had apparently waived due diligence as a part of the $44B takeover bid. This is completely incomprehensible to me. From an M&A perspective, it's like a story of someone who picks up a skank at a seedy dive bar and proceeds to raw-dog her. Incredibly irresponsible. Are you sure you don't want to use a condom? Things might seem easier in the moment, but the potential for future regret is rather alarming! The rebuke I've heard was that Dorsey had already told him all the important stuff anyway, but that's just not how the process works. For one, the due diligence could have given him a way out of the bid (and boy, wouldn't that turn out to be handy...) It's not guaranteed, but rare indeed is the DD that doesn't uncover some sort of irregularity or dubious representation that could have served as ammo in the lawsuit. Secondly, the DD would have mapped out the exact internal structure, external relations, responsibilities and exposures. Even if (or rather precisely because) the plan was to mow through the ranks, this would have been extremely useful to have. If you're going in with an axe, you should at least have a map of the areas you intend to clear-cut. The whaling system deployed by Musk might have been effective at selecting for a combination of competence, drive and vision alignment (and/or desperation) - but that's not the same as critical institutional knowledge. Twitter is vast and something like 80% of the people who knew what went where and why are gone. The sole irreplaceable value of Twitter is in its existing user network - but this is inextricable from the pulsing, living IT snarl containing the accounts and their connections, which is in turn inextricable from the human apparatus building it and maintaining it. With cars or rockets, as long as you have the tech packages, you can always just bring in new competent engineers to continue the work. But there isn't any objective singular blueprint of Twitter. No single person has the whole picture. It's dubious whether it can even be successfully cold-reset. It's just... why go about it that way? Why not put on the condom?
The second incident was the checkmark fiasco: 1. Blow up the old and opaque verification system 2. Concoct an $8/month pay-to-play scheme 3. Discover why the verification system had been there in the first place 4. Clumsily return to a variant of the old opaque verification system. I'm sure the advertisers were thrilled. How am I not looking at an impulsive, poorly though-out spiteful action here? There are people stuck with GIANT PENIS handles to this day...
The thirds aspect is Musk ostensibly sleeping over at Twitter HQ, wildly coding into the night with the bros. The problem is that either his ethos of "You can't put in less than 80 hours a week and expect a thing to work." is wrong or Tesla and SpaceX are getting the shaft here. And the stock price sure seems to indicate the belief in the latter. More than half of the value gone, YOY, as of the time of this writing. And heaven knows what's happening to Neuralink or the Boring Company. Precisely to the degree that Musk is an irreplaceable genius, the Twitter stunt is coming at the expense of projects he himself considers vital for the survival of human consciousness. What are the priorities here?
The further unmentioned elephant in the room is stimulant abuse and, even worse, the attendant lack of sleep. At this point, it would take a lot to persuade me he isn't up to his gills in some Chinese designer hyper-opti-MegaAdderall regimen, which just appears as both the likeliest cause and result of his recent actions and decisions.
The historical parallel I'm most reminded of is Napoleon. Certainly no rando of middling qualities - but also somebody who, past his initial bout of success and innovation, slumped into the belief in his own brand of unerring radical decisions, with well-known consequences.
So I'm out. Not that it should matter to anyone in any practical terms, but my confidence in Elon Musk's process and vision is gone. At this point, it mostly looks like the driver's seat is occupied by erratic hyperconfidence. I'm not expecting Twitter to disappear any time soon, in fact I still consider it somewhat more likely than not that the company will ultimately stabilize. It's not that any single action had caused irreparable damage - but the series of unforced errors, starting with the bid itself, isn't inspiring any future confidence in me. I will not be getting on that rocket to Mars, thank you very much.
None of the explanations makes a lot of sense to me. Either there was a very weird and unlucky combination of things that created an accident or accidents or someone took an action that doesn't make a lot of sense IMO, or someone stepped up and managed to pull something off that would seem beyond their capabilities.
Ships and aircraft of various countries were near the area at times before the explosion but that's pretty meaningless. The Baltic has a lot of civilian and military traffic it isn't some obscure patch of distant Ocean that no one really cares about.
Theories -
1 . Russia did it -
They certainly had the capability. Wouldn't even need to put a ship or sub or aircraft anywhere near where the explosion happened, they could transport explosives through the pipeline. They could of course just turn it off (and in fact had done so for Nord Stream 1 (2 was shutdown on the Germany side). They were not getting any revenue from the pipelines anyway. OTOH that was partially their choice (they shut down #1) and while there prospect fro revenue in the future was dim, it wasn't zero so you would think they would hold up some hope. A 10 percent chance of many billions is worth a lot of money. Why would they do it? Well they might avoid liability for not meeting contractual obligations. Could be a "burn your ships" or "burn your bridges" type of action showing contempt for the west and internally making an internal political signal that there can be no backing down. Could be a threat that other important pipelines and at sea infrastructure are vulnerable. Could be an attempt to make people think the US did it to try to sew division within NATO. Could be an attempt to block the Germans fro musing the part of the pipeline in German waters for an offshore LNG terminal.
2 - Anti-war Russian saboteurs did it -
From a perspective of motivation this perhaps makes the most sense. Perhaps an anarchist anti-war and anti-government group, trying to harm Russia. But they are the least likely to have the capability. I doubt they could pull off getting to the site of the damage with a large explosive. Maybe they had people working in Gazprom and sent explosives through the pipeline? That's possible but it seems unlikely they would have that access.
3 - Germany did it -
All the theories seem unlikely to me (although it did off course happen, so something unlikely happened) but this perhaps the least likely. Like Russia they could destroy it through the pipeline without needing to get close to the area of the explosion. But Germany while they decertified Nord Stream 2, actually wanted to continue to get gas from Nord Stream 1 for a time. Also they might use the parts of Nord Stream 2 in German for an offshore terminal (not sure if the plan was to use 1 or 2, but eventually both could have been used). Why would they do it? The government could have thought that they may face pressure to open up Nord Stream 2 this winter, and didn't want to go back on their decision to close it so they closed off that possibility. But than why also blow up Nord Stream 1. Some faction in the intel services or some saboteurs who worked for Nord Stream AG? Not impossible but it also seems one of the least likely answers.
4 - US did it -
Why would they do it? Well there could have been a thought that Germany would cave on allowing Nord Stream 2 operations and this closes that option. Maybe 1 was hit as well because the Russians could always decide to send gas that way and the Americans didn't want the Germans buying Russian gas? Also the US supplies LNG, while currently the exports are at capacity since the Freeport terminal explosion, there may be the thought that NG prices generally and specifically LNG would go up with an exploded major pipeline, and/or that Germany would be more locked in to buying US LNG in the long run. But it would require an extraordinary amount of willingness to take serious diplomatic risks, for a pretty modest gain.
5 - Ukraine did it -
It would lock out the possibility of Russia receiving funds from selling gas through the pipelines. Also maybe they could hope Russia would be blamed. Still this seems one of the least likely possibilities. Russia wasn't getting any revenue through those pipelines at the moment and it seems unlikely they would ever get revenue through #2. Ukraine would seem to have less ability to pull it off than the other countries listed, they aren't near the pipeline, and their countries resources are going in to the war effort. And the risk would be enormous. There is a good chance it eventually would get out and some chance it would get out quickly, which could devastate support for Ukraine within Germany and harm support elsewhere, and that support is very important to them. The gains would be very small compared to the potential harm.
6 - Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania or Poland did it -
They have easy access to the area and a strong dislike for Russia. But while their downside isn't as large as Ukraine's it still seems too reckless. I can see them taking the risk for an action that would at one stroke mean Russia's defeat (if any such action existed) but not for such modest potential Russian down side. It doesn't really impact Russia's war.
7 - China did it -
Maybe they wanted to make things even crazier for Europe and hoped the US would be blamed? This is another one of the least likely possibilities IMO.
8 - Some other country did it - Who? Why? Can't think of any scenarios that seem to make much sense.
9 - It was an explosion caused by underwater live munitions from previous wars. Apparently there were such munitions near the Nord Stream 2 breach. But what would cause them to shift to where the pipeline is and blow up now? Also it seems a Nord Stream 1 breach was not near any known location of underwater munitions.
10 - Methane Hydrate plugs - See https://thelawdogfiles.com/2022/09/nordstream.html
Such plugs are apparently more likely to form when the gas is sitting in place, like it was in Nord Stream. And they could cause pipeline ruptures. But both pipelines at pretty much the same time? Also unless there was more than the normally very low level of oxygen in the pipelines (which is monitored to avoid corrosion and at higher levels combustion risk) that would allow for combustion I don't see how you would get explosions as large as those that were detected.
11 - Other - Different causes for each pipeline (different countries sabotaged each one, or one was an accident and one was sabotage), eco-terrorism (would they have the ability and would they want to release that much methane), aliens, etc. No real reason to seriously consider any of these without some specific evidence. They are all a bunch of wacky theories, that I'm not taking seriously. Something I haven't even considered? Well of course that's possible but what?
I'm sorry HighSpace, I love you, I really do, but something about this project has been calling my name.
It all started with an idea for a decentralized recommendation engine in the vein of stumbleupon.com (I posted about it, but I think it got sucked into the vacuum of that database stroke we suffered a while back), but it has since took on a life of it's own. Originally the idea was to collect all the content I'd normally click “like” on, across various platforms, and present it as a curated feed of cool stuff I saw. The decentralization would come later on, as other people would hopefully join in, and we'd aggregate the results, and present them to each user according to their preferences. I wasn't convinced it's that great of an idea, so it languished for a while, until I remembered an old setup I had with Miniflux and Nitter that I'd use for keeping up with some people I followed, without opening a Twitter account. I thought Miniflux would provide a nice scaffolding for what I wanted to make, and Nitter would be a good start for a source of recommended content.
Nitter's dead, long live Nitter!
As we've all heard Nitter is dead, or is it? At one point I saw someone here link to privacydev's instance and after the core Nitter team gave up, I was using it every once in a while. It sure got slow, and it sure got unreliable, but not unreliable enough for me to believe the core functionality is completely crippled. I suspected it's a question of them not having enough accounts to make all the requests to Twitter, to serve all the people using the instance. Lo and behold, turns out I'm right, even though guest accounts are gone, you can still use it with a regular account, and there's even a script for fetching the auth tokens necessary to make nitter run. So I set the whole thing up, at first mostly just to have a Twitter frontend that's not absolute garbage, and it works like a charm! It's probably a good idea to add a few more accounts to avoid rate-limiting, but I've been using it on a single login without really running into issues.
Nitter's fine and well, but one of it's annoying limitations is that you have to look up an account directly. Timeline support is on it's roadmap, but they never got around to it, and it looks like now they never will. But what they do have is an RSS view, so you can add all the accounts you're interested in, and put their tweets together into a single timeline. For this, as already mentioned, I've used Miniflux. This has a lot of advantages that I really like. First, the tweets are in chronological order, and you can use an “unread” feed to only check the stuff you haven't seen yet. I find it much better than Twitter's “slotmachine” feed that shuffles tweets, lies to you about new content being available, and promotes people you haven't even followed. Secondly the tweets are automatically archived. Some people delete their spiciest takes, and even on Elon's Twitter accounts get occasionally yeeted, but since you're storing the content locally, all their bangers are safe with you. Thirdly - searchability. Twitter's search isn't even that bad, but what's missing for me is the ability to search the stuff I followed or liked. My memory is decent, but vague - “I saw that in a tweet I liked around X time”, “someone I followed used a phrase Y”, etc. Limiting the search to only people I follow, or to bookmarked RSS entries helps a lot.
I also had some issues with the setup. Miniflux only renders the titles of tweets, not their content. On the other hand, for some reason, Nitter renders the whole Tweet in the RSS entry title, which you'd think is a solution to the previous problem, but if you add a feed from non-nitter source, you end up with inconsistent rendering - you can read the tweets without clicking on each entry, but you have to check every entry from other feed types manually. So I made some adjustments! Nitter only renders basic info in the title (tweet author, who they're replying to / retweeting) and Miniflux actually renders the entire content on it's feed pages. The commit also includes the script to get the auth tokens. You can now happily scroll through all your content.
But wait, there's more!
So as I was happily using this setup, it occurred to me that images are quite important in the Twitter ecosystem. Sometimes people post memes with very little comment, sometimes they post screenshots of articles, sometimes they post images of text to get around the character limit. That's not an issue, it all renders fine, but since archiving is an important feature for me, I thought I need to do something about the images in case of banger deletion / account yeeting. So I made further adjustments! When the RSS entries are downloaded, their content is scraped for image tags, and they're automatically saved to Miniflux' database.
But that's not all! Since search is also an important feature for me, I thought “what if someone posts one of those wall-of-text images containing something interesting, and I'll only remember a phrase in the image, but nothing about the text of the tweet or it's author?”. Don't fret, another adjustment I made was to use gosseract, a Golang (which Miniflux is written in) OCR package, to automatically scan and transcribe the images, and to extend the search feature to look up the transcriptions as well! No spicy screenshotted headline will be able to hide from you now!
We're quite far from the original “p2p recommendation engine” idea, but I'm quite happy with the result. Back during one of the dotcom booms there was a saying to the effect of “just make an app you'd want to use”, and by that criterion I feel like I struck gold, so I thought I'd share it. There's potential to develop it further, both Substack and Youtube (still) offer RSS views of their content, and both have relatively-easy-to-access transcriptions. Automatically downloading audio or video content might be a tall order storage-wise, but it definitely will help with my chronic “I know I heard this on one of the several 5-hour long podcasts I listen to daily, but don't know which one" problem.
Now, if you're thinking, "that all sounds nice in theory, but I fell asleep reading the README of the repositories you linked to, and there's now way I'll bother setting any of this up" - you're in luck! For my next performance, if anyone's interested, I might set up a demo server.
If you want to take a stab at setting it up for yourself, and need help, I'll be happy to assist.
The term conspiracy theory is wielded as a pejorative, alluding to on-its-face absurdity. But the vocabulary we use has a serious ambiguity problem because conspiracies are not figments of the imagination. There is a tangible and qualitative distinction between plain-vanilla conspiracies (COINTELPRO, Operation Snow White, or the Gunpowder Plot) and their more theatrical cousins (flat earth theory, the moon landing hoax, or the farcical notion that coffee tastes good), yet a clear delineation has been elusive and it's unsatisfying to just assert "this one is crazy, and this one isn't." Both camps involve subterfuge, malevolent intent, covert operations, misinformation, orchestrated deceit, hidden agendas, clandestine networks, and yes, conspiracy, and yet the attempts to differentiate between the two have veered into unsatisfactory or plainly misleading territories.
What I'll argue is the solution boils down to a simple reconfiguration of the definition that captures the essence of the absurdity: conspiracy theories are theories that assume circumstances that render the titular "conspiracy" unnecessary. This is what I'll refer to as the Overkill Conspiracy Hypothesis (OCH). Before we dive into this refinement, it's helpful to explore why traditional distinctions have fallen short.
The section on differences in The People's Pedia showcases some of these misguided attempts. For example, conspiracy theories tend to be in opposition to mainstream consensus but that's a naked appeal to authority — logic that would have tarred the early challengers to the supposed health benignity of smoking as loons. Or that theories portray conspirators acting with extreme malice, but humans can indeed harbor evil intentions (see generally, human history). Another relies on the implausibility of maintaining near-perfect operational security. This is getting better, but while maintaining secrecy is hard, it's definitely not impossible. We have actual, real-life examples of covert military operations, or drug cartels that manage to operate clandestine billion-dollar logistical enterprises.
There's still some useful guidance to draw from the pile of chaff, and that's conspiracy theories' lack of, and resistance to, falsifiability. Despite its unfortunate name, falsifiability is one of my nearest and dearest concepts for navigating the world. Put simply, falsifiability is the ability for a theory to be proven wrong at least hypothetically. The classic example is "I believe all swans are white, but I would change my mind if I saw a black swan". The classic counterexample could be General John DeWitt citing the absence of sabotage by Japanese-Americans during WWII as evidence of future sabotage plans. There is indeed a trend of conspiracy theorists digging into their belief in belief, and dismissing contrary evidence as either fabricated, or (worse) evidence of the conspiracy itself.
I won't talk shit about the falsifiability test; it's really good stuff. But it has limitations. For one, the lack of falsifiability is only a good indication a theory is deficient, not a conclusive determination. There are also practical considerations, like how historical events can be difficult to apply falsifiability because the evidence is incomplete or hopelessly lost, or how insufficient technology in an emerging scientific field can place some falsifiable claims (temporarily, hopefully) beyond scrutiny. So the inability to falsify a theory does not necessarily mean that the theory is bunk.
Beyond those practical limitations, there's also the unfortunate bad actor factor. Theorists with sufficient dishonesty or self-awareness can respond to the existential threat of falsifiability by resorting to vague innuendo to avoid tripping over shoelaces of their own making. Since you can't falsify what isn't firmly posited, they dance around direct assertions, keeping their claims shrouded in a mist of maybe. The only recourse then is going one level higher, and deducing vagueness as a telltale sign of a falsifiability fugitive wherever concrete answers to the who / how / why remain elusive. Applying the vagueness test to the flat earth theory showcases the evasion. It's near-impossible to get any clear answers from proponents: who exactly is behind Big Globe, how did they manage to hoodwink everyone, and why why why why why would anyone devote any effort to this scheme? In contrast, True Conspiracies™ like the atomic spies lack the nebulousness: Soviet Union / covert transmission of nuclear secrets / geopolitical advantage.
Yet the vagueness accusation doesn't apply to all conspiracy theories. The moon landing hoax is surprisingly lucid on this point: NASA / soundstage / geopolitical advantage. And this unveils another defense mechanism against falsification, which is the setting of ridiculously high standards of evidence. Speaking of veils, there's a precedent for this in Islamic law of all places, where convictions for fornication require four eyewitnesses to the same act of intercourse, and only adult male Muslims are deemed competent witnesses. The impossibly stringent standards appear to be in response to the fact that the offense carries the death penalty, and shows it's possible to raise the bar so high that falsifiability is intentionally rendered out of reach.
The moon landing hoax might be subjected to these impossible standards, given that the Apollo 11 landing was meticulously documented over 143 minutes of uninterrupted video footage — a duration too lengthy to fit on a film reel with the technology available at the time. Although only slightly higher than the Lizardman Constant, a surprising 6% of Americans still hold the view that the moon landing was staged. At some point you have to ask how much evidence is enough, but ultimately there's no universally accepted threshold for answering this question.
So falsifiability remains a fantastic tool, but it has legitimate practical limitations, and isn't a conclusive inquiry anyways. Someone's refusal to engage in falsifiability remains excellent evidence they're aware and concerned of subjecting their theory to scrutiny, but their efforts (vagueness or impossible standards) will nevertheless still frustrate a straightforward application of falsifiability. So what's left?
We're finally back again to the Overkill Conspiracy Hypothesis, where the circumstances conspiracy theories must assume also, ironically, render the conspiracy moot. The best way to explain this is by example. Deconstructing a conspiracy theory replicates the thrill of planning a bank heist, so put yourself in the shoes of the unfortunate anonymous bureaucrat tasked with overseeing the moon landing hoax. Remember that the why of the moon landing hoax was to establish geopolitical prestige by having the United States beat the Soviet Union to the lunar chase. So whatever scheme you concoct has to withstand scrutiny from what was, at the time, the most advanced space program employing the greatest space engineers from that half of the world.
The most straightforward countermeasure would be to task already existing NASA engineers to draft up totally fake but absolutely plausible equipment designs. Every single aspect of the entire launch — each rocket, lunar module, ladder, panel, bolt, glove, wrench — would need to be painstakingly fabricated to deceive not just the global audience, but the eagle-eyed experts watching with bated breath from the other side of the Cold War divide. Extend that to all communications, video transmissions, photographs, astronaut testimonies, and 'returned' moon rocks. Each and all of it has to be exhaustively and meticulously examined by dedicated and highly specialized consultants.
But it doesn't stop there, because you also need absolute and perpetual secrecy, as any singular leak would threaten the entire endeavor. The U.S. was well aware Soviet Union spies had successfully snagged closely-guarded nuclear secrets, so whatever countermeasures needed here had to surpass fucking nukes. Like I said before, secrecy is not impossible, just very difficult. I suppose NASA could take a page from the cartels and just institute brutally violent reprisals against any snitches (plus their whole families), but this genre of deterrence can only work if...people know about it. More likely, though, NASA would use the traditional intelligence agency methods of extensive vetting, selective recruitment, and lavish compensation, but now all measures would need to be further amplified to surpass the protective measures around nuclear secrets.
We're talking screening hundreds or thousands of individuals more rigorously than for nuclear secrets, alongside an expanding surveillance apparatus to keep everyone in line. How much do you need to increase NASA's budget (10x? 100x?) to devote toward a risky gambit that, if exposed, would be history's forever laughingstock? If such vast treasuries are already at disposal, it starts to seem easier to just...go to the moon for real.
OCH® has several benefits. It starts by not challenging any conspiracy theorist's premises. It accepts it as given that there is indeed a sufficiently motivated shadowy cabal, and just runs with it. This sidesteps any of the aforementioned concerns about falsifiability fugitives, and still provides a useful rubric for distinguishing plain-vanilla conspiracies from their black sheep brethren.
If we apply OCH to the atomic spies, we can see the theory behind that conspiracy requires no overkill assumptions. The Soviet Union did not have nukes, they wanted nukes, and stealing someone else's blueprints is definitely much easier than developing your own in-house. The necessary assumption (the Soviet Union has an effective espionage program) does not negate the need for the conspiracy.
Contrast that with something like the Sandy Hook hoax, which posits the school shooting as a false flag operation orchestrated by the government to pass restrictive gun laws (or something; see the vagueness section above). Setting aside the fact that no significant firearm legislation actually resulted, the hoax and the hundreds of crisis actors it would have required would have necessitated thousands of auditions, along with all the secrecy hurdles previously discussed. And again, if the government already has access to this mountain of resources, it seems like there are far more efficient methods of spending it (like maybe giving every congressman some gold bars) rather than orchestrating an attack and then hoping the right laws get passed afterward.
It's also beguiling to wonder exactly why the shadowy cabal would even need to orchestrate a fake mass shooting, given the fact that they already regularly happen! Even if the cabal wanted to instigate a slaughter (for whatever reason), the far, far, far simpler method is to just identify the loner incel kid and prod them into committing an actual mass shooting. We've already stipulated the cabal does not care about dead kids. Similarly, if the U.S. wanted to orchestrate the 9/11 attacks as a prelude to global war, it seems far easier to load up an actual plane full of actual explosives and just actually launch it at the actual buildings, rather than to spend the weeks or months to surreptitiously sneak in however many tons of thermite into the World Trade Center (while also coordinating the schedule with the plane impact, for some reason).
Examining other examples of Verified Conspiracies demonstrate how none of them harbor overkill assumptions that render the conspiratorial endeavors moot. In the Watergate scandal, the motive was to gain political advantage by spying on adversaries, and the conspirators did so through simple breaking and entering. No assumptions are required about the capabilities of President Nixon's security entourage that would have rendered the trespass unnecessary. Even something with the scope of Operation Snow White — which remains one of the largest infiltrations of the U.S. government, involving up to 5,000 agents — fits. The fact that they had access to thousands of covert agents isn't overkill, because the agents still needed to infiltrate government agencies to gain access to the documents they wanted destroyed. The assumptions do not belie the need for the conspiracy.
I hold no delusions that I can convince people wedded to their conspiracy theory of their missteps. I don't claim to have any idea how people fall prey to this kind of unfalsifiable absurdist thinking. But at least for the rest of us, it will remain useful to be able to draw a stark distinction between the real and the kooky. Maybe after that we can unearth some answers.
—sent from my lunar module
Happy 20 TTs guys.
I’ll be trying something new with this one and changing the format so the top level post only contains an explanation of the thread, like we do with Wellness Wednesdays and Fun Fridays. The country-specific coverage will be placed in separate comments where people can respond to them directly, or start their own threads as separate comments. This is part of my hope that long term this will become more of a permanent thread that sustains beyond me, because I likely won’t be around long term. In the short term as well, I’ve been trying to produce a lot of the user content but there will be weeks where I'm too busy, and it would be nice to have a stickied thread where people who want to can still chat foreign policy without me.
So:
This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum might be interested in. In the past I've noticed good results from covering countries that users here live in, and having them chime in with more comprehensive responses. In that spirit I'll probably try to offer more snippets of western news (but you'll still get a lot of the global south). I don't follow present day European politics all that much so you'll have to fill in the blanks for me.
But also, no need to use the prompts here, feel free to talk about completely unmentioned countries, or skip country coverage entirely and chat about ongoing dynamics like wars or trade deals. You can even skip the present day and talk about IR history, or just whatever you’re reading at the moment - consider it very free form and open to everyone.
Primarily relevant to here through the discussion of what people claim to find attractive vs. choose, but also considers various other measures of attractiveness. I dont agree with all these analyses but think its worth posting simply for considering the topic in a lot more detail then Ive previously seen.
A couple people had expressed interest in this topic, and I have a bit of extra time for a couple days, so here goes:
Bona fides: I am a former infantry NCO and sniper, hunter, competitive shooter, reloader, hobby gunsmith, sometimes firearms trainer and currently work in a gun shop, mostly on the paperwork/compliance side. Back in the day, was a qualified expert with every standard small arm in the US inventory circa 2003 (M2, 4, 9, 16, 19, 249, 240B, 21, 24, 82 etc.), and today hang around the 75th percentile of USPSA classifications. I've shot Cap-and-Ball, Trap and Sporting Clays badly; Bullseye and PRS somewhat better and IDPA/USPSA/UML/Two-gun with some local success. Been active in the 2A community since the mid-90s, got my first instructor cert in high school, and have held a CPL for almost twenty years now.
I certainly don't claim to be an expert in every aspect of firearms, there's huge areas that escape my knowledge base, but if you've got questions I'll do my best to answer.
Technical questions
Gun control proposals for feasibility
Industry
Training
Wacky opinions
General geekery
Some competition links (not my own) just for the interested.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=U5IhsWamaLY&t=173
https://youtube.com/watch?v=93nEEINflXE
https://youtube.com/watch?v=utcky0zq10E
The move from Reddit to a dedicated forum is a huge opportunity to mix things up. We should take advantage. Never let a crisis go to waste, etc.
One thing I would suggest (if technical limitations allow) would be the addition of a two-tiered voting system, somewhat like what LessWrong has implemented, where users can vote both on the quality of a post, and separately on whether or not they agree with it. I think this could have really positive effects for the kind of community and discussion the Motte was created to promote. The Motte's raison d'etre is to promote discussion and debate with people you disagree with. Separating voting on quality from voting on agreement would promote that goal in a couple different ways. Fundamentally, there is a tension between upvoting a post you think is well-done, and downvoting that same post because you disagree with its content. I think the Motte wants to be a place that encourages outsider or minority views, and separating the "quality" vote from the "agreement" vote would help promote this. From what I have noticed in this community, despite our commitments to encouraging debate and discussion with people you disagree with, posts coming from a more liberal/left-wing/social justice/woke viewpoint tend to get downvoted, even when their quality is equivalent or superior to other posts.
I'll also quote from the reasons given on the above LessWrong post about this feature, because I think the reasons given are good ones.:
I personally feel much more comfortable upvoting good comments that I disagree with or whose truth value I am highly uncertain about, because I don’t feel that my vote will be mistaken as setting the social reality of what is true.
I also feel very comfortable strong-agreeing with things while not up/downvoting on them, so as to indicate which side of an argument seems true to me without my voting being read as “this person gets to keep accruing more and more social status for just repeating a common position at length”.
Similarly to the first bullet, I think that many writers have interesting and valuable ideas but whose truth-value I am quite unsure about or even disagree with. This split allows voters to repeatedly signal that a given writer's comments are of high value, without building a false-consensus that LessWrong has high confidence that the ideas are true. (For example, many people have incompatible but valuable ideas about how AGI development will go, and I want authors to get lots of karma and visibility for excellent contributions without this ambiguity.)
There are many comments I think are bad but am averse to downvoting, because I feel that it is ambiguous whether the person is being downvoted because everyone thinks their take is unfashionable or whether it's because the person is wasting the commons with their behavior (e.g. belittling, starting bravery debates, not doing basic reading comprehension, etc). With this split I feel more comfortable downvoting bad comments without worrying that everyone else who states the position will worry if they'll also be downvoted.
I have seen some comments that previously would have been "downvoted to hell" are now on positive karma, and are instead "disagreed to hell". I won't point them out to avoid focusing on individuals, but this seems like an obvious improvement in communication ability.
Would this be a doable change? And would it be a good one? I am strongly in favor, but open to reasons why I'm wrong.
The recent conversation on anime inspired me to write this review of the best one I've seen so far, not just in terms of Anime, but truly one of the best written stories I've ever seen. I often thought of it as prophetic, but looking back on it for the Nth time, I think a lot the phenomena and trends it talks about were already underway, they just didn't seem so prominent at the time, and so made a good premise for a fanciful sci-fi show.
Spoilers ahoy, although I'm not going to go beat by beat for each and every episode.
Psycho-Pass is set in a post-cyberpunk future, where Japan developed technology capable of looking into our very souls. Thanks to remote brain scans and big data analysis, a hyper-advanced computer system (often referred to by name as the Sybil System) can guide everything, from individual lives to the sociaty as a collective, towards it's optimal path. Various components of the scan form the titular Psycho-Pass (as in: passport) which determines your standing in society. We mostly see the world through the eyes of Akane Tsunemori, a young police inspector, fresh out of the academy. The first 3 episodes are a sort of "tutorial level" for her, where she learns the ropes of police work, and we get to see the basic mechanics of the Psycho-Pass, and how it affects people.
We meet Akane as she's running late for her first assignment: a normie white collar worker got flagged by a street scanner doing a "hue check" - a low resolution vibe check that gets translated into color for readability. The suspect has been determined to be doing a bit too much wrongthink, and was directed by a drone to go to therapy. Not only did he refuse to comply, he grabbed a passerby, took her for a hostage, and ran off to a ghetto full of the homeless and other undesireables. All of this is explained to us by Akane's work partner, inspector Nobuchika Ginoza. Just as he's done with the briefing, they a see a police van arrive, and the rest of the supporting cast disembarks:
The people you're about to meet cannot be considered humans like us.
Their Crime Coefficients all exceed the safety limit. They are people of bankrupt character.
Normally, they would be completely isolated as latent criminals, but they're allowed into the outside world for the sole purpose of flushing out criminals just like themselves.
They're hunting dogs. They're beasts used to hunt beasts. They're what we call “Enforcers”.
They will be your subordinates.
The Crime Coefficient is another component of the Psycho-Pass that measures an individual's propensity towards crime. It's a high resolution measure, that requires specialized hardware, and significantly more compute than a basic Hue Check, so they are not done routinely. Instead, law enforcement are the only ones handling such scanners, which conveniently come attached to a gun called a Dominator, which make the police work rather simple:
- Anyone with a Crime Coefficient below 100 is considered a law-abiding citizen, and is not a subject for any enforcement action. The trigger locks automatically when the gun is aimed at them.
- Values between 100 and 300 mean that the suspect is considered a "latent criminal", and they should be taken into custody. The gun fires in "paralyzer mode" to help facilitate this.
- Above 300 the suspect is subject to a summary execution, and the Dominator switches to "eliminator mode".
- Independently from the Crime Coefficient, there's also a "decomposer mode", which is activated when law enforcement are facing a significant threat, and really need to blast something to kingdom come.
Perhaps I should have said it's the judicial system's work that has been simplified, rather than that of the police, since the police still have to apprehend (and/or execute) criminals, while the entirety of the due process has been replaced with a Crime Coefficient scan. The system is responsive in some ways, but appears very rigid in others. On one hand, we do see update based on incoming data. When they first try to arrest the suspect, it turns out he took stimulants that countered the paralyzer. That act of defiance cost him is life, as the system responded by authorizing his execution. Similarly the hostage moves up and down the scale. First, the trauma of the entire ordeal makes her Crime Coefficient go up to the point where she's considered a latent criminal, and will placed under arrest. Then, upon witnessing the execution (which is done in a particularly gruesome way for no apparent, or explained in-universe, reason) and thinking she's next, she makes a break for it, which causes the Coefficient to go even higher, now authorizing her to be executed as well. Finally, as the resident naive newbie (and young woman), Akane insists on showing her mercy, successfully talks her down from going out in a blaze of glory, and thus the system updates once more, this time downward, and she's merely arrested.
On the other hand, everyone, with the exception of Akane, is acting like once you pass a certain threshold, your life is over. Before he's killed, the kidnapper has a little "what's the punishment for being late?" monologue explaining his actions:
Up until today, I did everything by the book. I spent my whole life walking on eggshells, trying my hardest not to upset or bother anyone.
And yet, I get flagged by one little detector and boom! They already treat me like I'm a criminal.
This is it for me.
Now that it's come to this, it's all over. I'll never be able to get a job, get married, or anything else.
Well, fine then. I've restrained myself all this time. So now, I'll just do whatever I want. I'll take whatever I want. I'll kill anyone I don't like!
You might think maybe he's just an unstable man, failing to see that the system isn't as rigid as he claims, and his life was never over, but even the hostage thinks she's boned, when she's shown her Psycho-Pass. What's more Akane's decision to go easy on the hostage is portrayed as extremely unorthodox. Everyone treats her like she's crazy, and her actions can only be justified by being naive and inexperienced. She spends a good deal of the second episode fighting doubts about her decision, and trying to justify it in the case report*. Luckily for her the hostage ends up improving after being given therapy in custody, but that outcome is implied to be so rare, that the unorthodox nature of her actions are seen as a plausible explanation for it, so she gets to claim it as a justification.
*) You might be thinking "huh, it's a rather ruthless society, if you have to justify not killing a suspect", but "the decision" in question was less about showing mercy to the hostage, and more about shooting one of the enforcers (in paralyser mode) in order to prevent him from carrying out the execution (only has himself to blame, that's what he told her to do). There's also the "blaze of glory" aspect of the situation, where Akane would be putting herself and her subordinates in danger, if things didn't go her way.
The rigidity isn't even limited to the Crime Coefficient. After the kidnapper has been dealt with, the following day Akane meets up with her friends for coffee, and in the course of the conversation it turns out that in the Psycho-Pass universe, Akane has a super-power - the power of choice. One of the blessings of the Sybil System is it's ability predict how well suited each individual is for a given job, and Akane was found to have (top!) aptitude for jobs at all thirteen ministries and agencies, and six companies. Faced with so much choice, she also faces doubts like "what is my purpose in life?" which everyone else finds extremely annoying. One of her friends does manual labor, and the other is an IT worker, and neither has any prospect of ever doing anything else in their lives. Later on she also has lunch with one of the enforcers - Shusei Kagari - who's situation is even more dire. Enforcers are nothing but convicts with aptitude for police work, and Kagari was declared a latent criminal when he was still a child. His only choice in life was to either rot in prison, or work for the Public Safety Bureau in return for better living conditions, and a sliver of freedom (enforcers can even leave the PSB compund as long as they're accompanied by an inspector).
Another one of Akane's "superpowers" that's briefly mentioned, is that her Psycho-Pass tends be good. Why that is, is initially a matter of some speculation, and finally spelled out in the later episodes, but it seems to boil down to her stoic life philosophy. In any case, she seems to be unaffected even by events that would mess other people right up, while everyone else, who isn't already a latent criminal, goes through life stressing out trying to manage their "Hue". The third episode, possibly the first mission outside of the "tutorial level" explores that - and how it can go horribly wrong - a bit more. Akane's division is assigned to investigate suspicious deaths in a drone factory. Originally all ruled accidental, their mere frequency raised suspicions. No direct evidence of foul play is found, but the investigation reveals disturbing dynamics between the workers. For security reasons the entire factory is completely cut off from the interwebs, and they have to make do with what they have around for entertainment, which is not a lot. So, as is perhaps not uncommon in male-heavy environments, the workers as a group tend to periodically pick a victim and bully the shit out of him to blow off some steam. The director of the factory is aware of this, and allows it, as it's good for collective morale. When any particular worker gets bullied too much, and their Hue gets too messed up, he rotates him out and lets another schmuck take his place. However, no one's been rotated out in quite a while, as the most recent designated whipping boy's Hue seems to periodically recover on it's own... and the times of the recovery are curiously aligned with the times of his coworkers' deaths. Plot twist! Turns out the whipping boy has been blowing off some steam of his own.
One of the fascinating aspects of the show is the blurry line between what is meant to be a statement about the impact of technology on society, and what is an allegory for how society already operates. In interviews the show's creators often hint at most of it being the latter, and it makes sense. Psycho-Pass was written in 2014, AI was still a distant dream, and many technologically mediated social trends it talks about were still in their infancy, if they even can be said to have come about at all. Information revealed in later episodes even makes it clear that the Sybil System isn't exactly an AI in-universe, and shouldn't be interpreted to be about the impact of technology on society, at least not exclusively. We'll cross that bridge when we get there, but for now, since the story is leaning in the AI direction, and since so much progress has been made in the field IRL, it's hard not to dwell on it a little bit.
I've had my fair share of rants about Rationalists and how they get AI wrong, Psycho-Pass is how I think you get it right. Stop worrying about agentic superhuman conscious intelligences, and start worrying about systems for mass surveilence and control. Worry less about existential risks coming from misalignment, and more about existential crises people will face when you sucked all humanity out of their daily lives. Remote brainscans might seem fanciful, but between SocMeds, smart watches, and smartphones, do we even need to scan brains to get something like the Sybil System? China already has their Social Credit System that doesn't seem all that different from Sybil, Europe seems like it would like to have one as well, along with a uniquely identifying digital identity, or a (state manged) digital currency And in case we do need to scan brains to get something like the Psycho-Pass, well it's not entirely out of the question. Every time I rewatch the show I end up thinking it's scary how relevant it is.
The conversation between Akane and her friends always makes me smile, because I had one eerily similar to it ages ago, with an old friend of mine facing a similar choice dillema, who ended up pining for a Sybil System to come into existence! "Wouldn't it be great", she said, "if there was a machine that could tell you what job you'd be good at, and would enjoy doing?". It's another thing that I think we're more likely to get than an AGI, and it's a good question if we really want it. The idea that people prefer to have a "human element" in a system instead of everything being decided by a machine has been a trope in sci-fi for a while, but despite being the resident Luddite, I'm starting to wonder if this is true. We're not even that far up the AI tech-tree, and I'm already hearing "but ChatGPT said..." as an argument enough times to make me want to pull my hair out. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that it's healthier for people have such a human element, as demonstrated by the growing collective unhappiness, the more exposed to technology we become.
Other than all the food for thought, the show has some great character development. Since these are the introductory episodes there's not much to write home about yet, but here's the general run-down.
Akane is still inexperienced and is constantly wrecked with doubts, but over the course of the show we see her grow in skill and confidence. A fairly common trope in anime, but depressingly rare in western storytelling, and it ivariably makes me shake my head to think how much drama about Mary Sues we could have been spared if Hollywood copied a few notes from Japan.
Although I haven't mentioned his name yet, the other main protagonist of the show is enforcer Shinya Kogami, the poor bloke that got shot by Akane in episode 1. He's one of these dark and broody types with a quest for vengence, and set up as the counterpart for the story's main villain (to be disclosed). Though the thing I find interesting about him is his skepticism, if not quiet resentment, of the Sybil System, and how he chooses to process it (in contrast to the currently undisclosed villain).
Inspector Ginoza is dark and broody in his own way, and seemingly disdainful of the enforcers (he's the one that delivered the little speech about them not being entirely human), but it turns out his motivations are understandable, and his intentions relatively noble. We get to see some of the setup for his arc in episode 3, as Akane discovers there's some tension between him, and enforcer Tomomi Masaoka, which is apparently a touchy subject for both. It has a very moving resolution by the end of the show, but that's another bridge we'll cross when we get there. As for Masaoka, he's an "old dog" detective, with his own interesting backstory of how he became a latent criminal.
I already mentioned enforcer Kagari, he's more aloof and tends act like a goofball most of the time, but has these nice moments of depth, like his conversation with Akane that I mentioned above.
The final enforcer of the team is Yayoi Kunizuka who... well, doesn't really do that much, but gets a pretty good backstory episode later on. And last but not least is analyst Shion Karanomori a somewhat manic superhacker that supports the team back from HQ.
To be continued...
The next day, we start off with a Yechuan-style breakfast with the party member aunt. I'm not quite sure how to differentiate it from other styles; the food is starting to blur together. Too much new stuff all at once. I don't even crave Western food exactly; what I miss is the Western-style meal structure where I pick personal choices and eat them all myself. This might be less the case if I were more able to participate in conversations. The Chinese style is way more conducive to talking while eating, which is why meals last for at least an hour.
Every meal is a kind of frantic context-switching between grabbing food off the lazy Susan, responding to toasts, and talking with neighbors or the whole group. Somehow, aunties universally find time in this frenzy to insist you eat more, invariably when what's available to grab is jellied duck tongue or intestines. I power through, though. They mean well, and it's more a lack of hunger after spending six hours a day at a meal table than the food being unpalatable. My wife is understandably pretty exhausted, and the translations come less frequently. My sister-in-law is picking up some of the slack.
Next, we stop by the Nanjing Museum. Not too much to say about the museum itself. If you've been to a museum, then you can guess what to expect. My sister-in-law and I got the English digital audio tour, everyone else Chinese. The voice is text-to-speech and quiet but good enough. I use this time to relax a bit; it's been nonstop all week. One thing I'll mention is that mainland Chinese people are comfortable bumping into each other and having very little personal space. The museum is packed, and you'd never get near any exhibit if you weren't comfortable with boxing people in or being boxed in.
After the museum, it's lunch again. This time, the baijiu is a green bean variety. We're seated next to a cousin who was at MIL's grandpa's ceremony. I didn't have an opportunity to talk to him much then. He's a few years older than us. He reportedly was TikTok famous for workout videos and now sells used cars through TikTok. According to him, the Chinese used car market is only about 20 years old, and there are big counterfeit and fraud issues.
After lunch, we head to the Confucius Temple. One shouldn't confuse this with a Confucius temple, which may have something to do with Confucianism. This is a very large shopping and amusement district. Supposedly, at one point, it also contained the red light district. My wife spent the first eight years of her life before moving to the US a few blocks from here. MIL claims she took her through the shopping district every evening to calm her down before bed.
We take a quick detour to Laodongmen, or the Old East Gate, at her parents' insistence. It's much the same market-type district as the Confucius Temple, but the architecture is from the Ming and Qing dynasties, and they go to great lengths to keep it that way. Everything is ornate dark wood or carved stone. The storefronts are impressive, but the merchandise is not very compelling. It's all the same baubles from Yu Gardens, and this is much the same as we get back to the Confucius Temple area.
We run into kids in the same uniform as the top school in China again at the market, furthering doubt that this isn't some universal high school uniform. The party member aunt independently confirms their identity as the number one school. It starts to rain, and there is some confusion about what our actual plan is. The party member aunt has some connections, and it's not clear we've actually paid for any of the attractions we've been to since arriving in Nanjing. We take separate lines, plausibly for lack of Chinese ID.
After the sun sets and some confusion, we end up in a museum dedicated to keju, or the merit-based test originally established during the Sui Dynasty circa 600 AD, which spiritually survives today in the form of the gaokao that consumes the childhoods of many Chinese people. There was a small section dedicated to the military version established a century later, where a man would need to pass several tests, including archery and the ability to deadlift a stone. They had some stone examples available, but to my disappointment, there were no opportunities to try or even a standardized weight listed.
The test apparently was originally a series of essays written over three days. I only got vague answers as to what the actual questions were—something about understanding Confucius' ideas or writing about proper government structures. But when asked how cheating and corruption were combated, answers came readily. Your essay was to be transcribed by an official before being judged to prevent handwriting from being used to allow bribes. It was administered every three years in tiers, starting locally and then finishing in the imperial exam, in which only 300 people got top marks.
FIL answered a question I'm sure many have had: What's up with those weird hats with wings on either side? He claims it's to keep officials from being able to whisper to each other in secret, making it one of the earliest pieces of anti-encryption technology. The Chinese surveillance state has deep roots.
After we finish the exhibit, we go straight to another. This one is a lantern festival at the actual Confucius Temple. My wife's feet are hurting, so she sits down, and I wander about without translation aid. There's not much to say about the lanterns; they're impressive in large numbers but really just paper or cloth over lights—very similar vibes to a Christmas light display.
We don't stay long, and next up is a boat tour on the river. It's nice, and there are some displays about a drunken poet that normally I'd be amused by. There were huge advertisements for some baijiu that nearly entirely obscured one statue of him. But we're a little burnt out on sightseeing at this point. My wife recounts a quote by her mother that after a proper trip, one should collapse in misery at the end of the day, and I'm starting to think she wasn't exaggerating.
The boat tour ends at 10 p.m., and we were told to expect a light dinner. So we spend a mere two hours in a nearby restaurant. No baijiu, fortunately. The next day, her parents are going back to visit both grandmas, giving our generation a free day.
We plan to hike Zijin Mountain, the same one with those mausoleums, with Syracuse and his technically-not-girlfriend. She pulls up in a green Jeep analogue with "TANK" written on the back in block letters. She brought her dog Dan-Dan, or Egg-Egg, a one-year-old English Sheepdog. Despite all these signs, she seems to get along well with our nerdy cousin. The two gifts he got her were makeup, which was a mistake. It's an understandable mistake—girls use a lot of makeup, and it can be expensive. Boys, buying a girl makeup is like her trying to buy you a video game without consulting you or having any idea what makes a game good or in your tastes. Just don't do it. She's merely annoyed with him.
The hike up is relatively uneventful; the path is nearly deserted. Hiking doesn't seem as popular in China as other activities. At the top, we stop for KFC. They have hamburgers and grilled chicken but no actual fried chicken—a sad state of affairs that may have cost them their lives in the States, but it is still crowded. The burgers were... weird, kind of loose and almost wet.
On the hike down, we talk about what to do for the evening. I suggest goinf to a Chinese bar, pub, or basically any Chinese drinking establishment that isn't a club. These are probably not the right people to ask but the suggestion turns into a plan. Syracuse has never seen the inside of a bar anywhere, and his girl acquaintance doesn't seem to understand the question. But nothing else is suggested and no one comes up with anything better.
Dinner is another lazy Susan with Cantonese-style roast duck and a birthday cake for Syracuse, as he'll turn 29 American and 30 Chinese the next day. In China, you come out at one year old. He makes a wish, and the girl says she already knows what it is: to finish his PhD. He comes back with, "That is one of my three wishes." From the reaction, he won the exchange. Chinese people generally think everything in America is too sweet, and their cakes tend to be lighter and covered in fruit.
After dinner, we reiterate anything but a club. We make our way to a place they found online. It's up an elevator, and as soon as we arrive, we confirm that it is indeed a club. Without a reservation, they only have a back table with a 1,500 yuan cover. I might have been willing to eat the cover even though we only planned to be out an hour or two, but even the waitstaff is giving me the stink eye.
We make our exit, and part of me wants to just cut and hang out at the hotel, but they're committed. We end up finding our way to a James Bond-inspired cocktail bar with a vibe that I would describe as schizophrenic. The lights are dim with what seems to be essentially a random playlist of Western songs that go from upbeat country to emo while The Big Bang Theory, subtitled in Chinese, plays on the back wall. Despite the relative clown-show nature of the bar, the bartenders could not be more serious, adopting severe expressions and using exclusively the English names of the cocktails. I don't think it was representative of the Nanjing drinking scene, but I approve of it nonetheless.
After we get into our first round, the mood improves. My wife tells stories of her patients. We find out Chinese working people get practically no paid time off—five days a year to start—but are able to take unpaid time off without too much hassle and have longer holidays.
We have to be up early for our train back to Shanghai the next morning, so we head back to the hotel at midnight. The parents have retrieved a few more gifts for us while we were out. We now have a thick silk quilt with a long list of prohibitions that are surprisingly similar to how one should treat a Mogwai in order to avoid creating a gremlin, along with a number of trinkets and a pair of little red books. I'd have preferred to find them myself but accept the help.
In preparation for reading Trump's executive orders, I started reading Biden's. I think I just finished the backlog.
My goal in this report and subsequent reports is to get at concrete actions that are happening in government, rather than the emotional reactions and grandiose rhetoric on either side of the media. I'm looking for significant actions with long-term consequences which are under-reported along my axis of interests: competence in government, environmental regulation, science funding policy, AI, and other existential threats.
This means I will skip a lot of the rhetoric. If something is very likely to be challenged in court, I will note that and then wait for the courts to have their say.
Outgoing executive actions of the Biden administration
January 14, 2025: Proclamation 10881 "Establishment of the Chuckwalla National Monument"
This Proclamation goes on for five print pages about the history of a region in "southeastern California, where the Mojave and Colorado Deserts intersect," then declares (under the Antiquities Act) that the "objects" described in these pages need to be protected, "to ensure the preservation, restoration, and protection of the objects of scientific and historic interest identified above and to advance renewable energy in Development Focus Areas (DFAs)".
The area to be protected is five claims totaling 624,270 acres, between Joshua Tree National Park and Chocolate Mountain Aerial Gunnery Range.
I don't know anything about this region, but skipping all the rhetoric, the plain text of the Proclamation doesn't make sense to me. In my mind, either you preserve an area, or you develop it, but not both. Preserving "to advance renewable energy" is weird, unless this is the watershed for a hydroelectric dam.
January 15, 2025: Executive order 14141 "Advancing United States Leadership in Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure"
This executive order has eleven sections on more than 20 print pages, so I will summarize each section as a unit.
Section one: Preamble: "This order sets our Nation on the path to ensure that future frontier AI can, and will, continue to be built here in the United States."
Section two: Policy: Agencies should support AI development for national security and economic leadership, and energy development for such, as long as it doesn't raise energy prices. (How can using more energy not raise energy prices?)
Section three: Defines terms. Not too many surprises here, except that fossil fuel power with 90% permanent carbon capture falls under the definition of "clean energy."
Section four: (1) Three sites on Federal land will be leased to AI data centers and their supporting energy infrastructure by 2027. This section defines consideration and process for the Secretary of the Interior to do so, announcing sites by March 31, 2025, soliciting bids by June 30, 2025. (2) Five regions will be designated as "geothermal regions" for power generation and "thermal storage." A program for streamlining geothermal projects on federal land will be established by July 2025. (3) Construction of AI infrastructure is to begin by Jan 1, 2026 with full-capacity operation by December 31, 2027. This seems like slow timelines for AI. (4) These sites are to be secured within one year.
Section five: This whole section is about how the DoE should work with states to report on the impact of data centers on consumer energy prices. I predict this will slow AI development.
Section six: Requires electrical transmission providers to let the Federal government know about their remaining and planned capacity, and makes arrangements for agencies to power the three AI data centers of Section four. This is a good thing insofar as it is seeking to find underused infrastructure for placement of data centers. On the other hand, isn't this what price signals are for, and isn't it dangerous to have all this information in a single place which will undoubtedly be hacked by China?
Section seven: Requires agencies to do all the permitting quickly. Ex. EPA review is 30 days.
Section eight: Instructs the Secretary of Energy to include frontier AI data centers in its previously-scheduled nationwide energy and transmission needs analyses. Instructs agencies to who make infrastructure loans to inform the developers who win bids for AI related infrastructure on Federal land about loan and loan guarantee opportunities.
Section nine: (1) Plans to make a plan for promoting development of nuclear power. (2) Mandates a report on supply chain risks for data center components. (3) Develops model contracts for distributed energy. (4) Evaluate existing nationwide permits to see if they can be used for AI data center construction, and write new ones.[?] (5) Hold a voluntary "grand challenge" for power efficiency, computational efficiency, and water efficiency in data centers.
Section ten: Coordinate with geopolitical allies to build "trusted AI infrastructure" abroad.
Section eleven: Don't violate existing laws while doing any of this.
January 15, 2025: Executive order 14142 "Taking Additional Steps With Respect to the Situation in Syria"
This Executive Order (EO) modifies a 2019 (Trump) EO which declared a National Emergency in order to seize assets of individuals who had "directly or indirectly engaged in" "actions or policies that further threaten the peace, security, stability, or territorial integrity of Syria", but limited to "Turkish officials" who had sought to "obstruction, disruption, or prevention of a ceasefire in northern Syria".
Biden's EO strikes language which keeps it narrow to "in particular the recent actions by the Government of Turkey to conduct a military offensive into northeast Syria," and removes all clauses limiting enforcement to representatives of Turkey.
I read this seeking to allow sanctions on non-Turks who threaten the stability of Syria. Maybe Syrians, maybe Isrealis?
January 14, 2025: Notice 2025-01312. "Continuation of the National Emergency With Respect to the Situation in the West Bank"
This notice extends the national emergency of a previous executive order for one year, until Feb. 1, 2026. The previous executive order appears to sanction people involved in supporting violence in the West Bank, and prevents them from immigrating from the US. Not sure if it referrs to Israeli settlers or members of the Palestinian Authority.
January 15, 2025: "Continuation of the National Emergency With Respect to the Widespread Humanitarian Crisis in Afghanistan and the Potential for a Deepening Economic Collapse in Afghanistan"
The administration issues a declaration to extend a previous national emergency by one year. This national emergency allows freezing the assets of "Da Afghanistan Bank" held by US financial institutions, to keep the Taliban from using these assets.
Given that the asset freeze has been in place since February 11, 2022, this isn't a big deal.
January 16, 2025: Executive Order 14143 "Providing for the Appointment of Alumni of AmeriCorps to the Competitive Service".
This EO gives Americorps alumni with 1700 or more hours of service a fast-track to Federal employment, by making them elligible for "Non-Competitive Eligibility", for one year following their service. This gets them out of merit-based competition in federal hiring. This affects a population of about 80,000 people.
January 16, 2025: Executive Order 14144 "Strengthening and Promoting Innovation in the Nation's Cybersecurity"
This EO has a lot of parts, and each section was likely written by a team of subject-matter experts. There is no way I can do it justice.
Section two requires Federal contract software providers to submit "machine-readable secure software development attestations; high-level artifacts to validate those attestations; and a list of the providers' Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agency software customers." It also provides that the government establish "practical and effective" security practices to require when it procures software," and implement "supply chain risk management programs" into their own enterprise software.
Section three requires federal agencies to implement security practices used in industry, then goes into protections (encryption) for the civil space system and space ground systems.
Section four requires "strong identity authentication and encryption using modern, standardized, and commercially available algorithms and protocols", including Border Gateway router security, Route Origin Authorizations, and DNS traffic encryption. I'm skeptical of digital identity documents, but if they were more privacy-preserving than physical documents that would be impressive.
Section five seeks to "Combat cybercrime and fraud" by requiring the implementation and use of "mobile driver's licenses", "remote digital identity verification using digital identity documents" which can be used on any "standards-compliant hardware." The focus seems to be on public benefit programs. Thankfully, there are provisions for "do not enable ... surveil and track presentation of the digital identity document" and "ensuring only the minimum information required for a transaction."
Section six directs DARPA to open a program using AI for cyber defense, and for other agencies to implement the program within a year or so.
Section seven is about making sure that IT systems introduced by agencies can be audited for security compliance. Mostly transparency and automatic attestation.
Section eight is about securing national security systems.
Section nine amends a previous executive order, enabling sanctions on foreign hackers and cybersecurity threatening entities named by the Secretary of the Treasury or Secretary of State.
This is an extremely technical EO, and I have no doubt it was written by several teams of specialists. This also means it is almost impossible for the layperson to evaluate. Implementation will take years, with many sequences of delays built in for agencies to develop and implement processes.
January 16, 2025: Memorandum: "Orderly Implementation of the Air Toxics Standards for Ethylene Oxide Commercial Sterilizers"
Ethylene Oxide is used to sterilize medical devices, but it also known to cause cancer when in the air. This Memorandum establishes a process for considering requests for exemptions to new EPA rules on EtO release.
Whether this is good or bad seems like it will depend on the implementation. The deadline for the process development here is two years.
January 15, 2025: Memorandum: "Extending and Expanding Eligibility for Deferred Enforced Departure for Certain Hong Kong Residents"
"I have determined that it is in the foreign policy interest of the United States to defer for 24 months the removal of any Hong Kong resident, regardless of country of birth, who is present in the United States on the date of this memorandum, except for those [who have returned to the PRC or been convited of crimes.]" This seems like a good thing.
January 19, 2025: Executive Order 14145 "Helping Left-Behind Communities Make a Comeback"
This executive order directs several agencies to coordinate to support local economic development and make it easier to find resources about economic development programs which may be useful to "covered communities", which are defined as "economically distressed" regions, "Community Disaster Resiliency Zones", rural communities, and regions served by existing regional development programs.
This doesn't look controversial at all, unless the communities in question are selected in a partisan manner.
January 19, 2025: Executive Order 14146 "Partial Revocation of Executive Order 13961"
This is a very short but cryptic executive order. "Sections 1, 3, 4, 5, and 7 of Executive Order 13961 of December 7, 2020 (Governance and Integration of Federal Mission Resilience), are hereby revoked."
Executive order 13961 is about continuity of the US government during emergencies. Section 1 establishes "the policy of the United States to maintain comprehensive and effective continuity programs that ensure national security and the preservation of government structure under the United States Constitution," and mandates that agencies must be able to continuously perform "National Essential Functions": mostly security, defense, health, and emergency services. Sections 3, 4, 5, and 7 establish a "Federal Mission Resilience Executive Committee".
I'm very confused. It looks like Section 2 (not revoked) defines the Federal Mission Resilience Strategy, and is untouched. So this EO is abolishing an Executive Committee.
While searching around to try to figure out what was going on, my search for Strategy document of Section two revealed a January 20 2025 Trump EO "Organization of the National Security Council and Subcommittees" which defines a National Security Council.
I'm going to guess this was some kind of parting shot by the Biden Admin, and it doesn't really matter because Trump's day 1 EOs overwrote it. But this last one leaves me just very very confused.
This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).
As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.
These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful. Here we go:
Quality Contributions in the Main Motte
- "Book Review: Men Trapped in Men's Bodies"
Contributions for the week of February 27, 2023
Identity Politics
Contributions for the week of March 6, 2023
- "For the most part, verifying that a prosecutor has met their Brady obligations is near-impossible."
Transform and Roll Out
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."
Identity Politics
Contributions for the week of March 13, 2023
Identity Politics
Contributions for the week of March 20, 2023
- "Becoming Radicalized by the Hugos"
- "I'm more pro-Sad than anti-Sad, though I'm also pretty heavily anti-Rabid. To give as neutral a summary as possible..."
FiveHourMarathon Gets a Hat Trick
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"1000th Comment: On The Value of Conflict or if we want to Make America Great Again we need to start raising kids with values we don’t intend them to keep"
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"Feminism knows that a sexual past can be a problem, but can’t imagine a realistic solution."
Contributions for the week of March 27, 2023
- "Recently, someone sent me a video about GamerGate made by BreadTuber Ian Danskin in 2021."
This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).
As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.
A few comments from the editor: first, sorry this is a little late, but you know--holidays and all. Furthermore, the number of quality contribution nominations seems to have grown a fair bit since moving to the new site. In fact, as I write this on January 5, there are already 37 distinct nominations in the hopper for January 2023. While we do occasionally get obviously insincere or "super upvote" nominations, the clear majority of these are all plausible AAQCs, and often quite a lot of text to sift through.
Second, this month we have special AAQC recognition for @drmanhattan16. This readthrough of Paul Gottfried’s Fascism: Career of a Concept began in the Old Country, and has continued to garner AAQC nominations here. It is a great example of the kind of effort and thoughtfulness we like to see. Also judging by reports and upvotes, a great many of us are junkies for good book reviews. The final analysis was actually posted in January, but it contains links to all the previous entries as well, so that's what I'll put here:
Now: on with the show!
Quality Contributions Outside the CW Thread
@Tollund_Man4:
Contributions for the week of December 5, 2022
@problem_redditor:
Sexulation
@problem_redditor:
Holocaustianity
Coloniazism
Contributions for the week of December 12, 2022
@Titus_1_16:
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"This is the sense in which, post-2010s, all marriages are gay marriages."
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"Oppression makes brutes of a people, and the oppressor ends up riding a tiger."
@YE_GUILTY:
Contributions for the week of December 19, 2022
@To_Mandalay:
Robophobia
Contributions for the week of December 26, 2022
Part 1 – The History of Transgenderism: r/theschism, r/BlockedAndReported, themotte.org
Part 2 – the Causes and Rationalization of Transgenderism: r/theschism, r/BlockedAndReported, themotte.org
Part 3 – How Transgenderism Harms Women And Children: r/theschism, r/BlockedAndReported, themotte.org
Part 4 – How Transgenderism Took Over Institutions And How Some Women Are Fighting Back: r/theschism, r/BlockedAndReported, themotte.org
Part 5 – Conclusion and Discussion: r/theschism, r/BlockedAndReported, themotte.org
I had said in my last post that I wished to review a book that promised to be more red meat for the people here. But I had not expected to be posting this so soon, I thought I might find my book of choice boring enough to last me a month. Instead, I found myself engaged so deeply that I binged the entire work in a few days.
Helen Joyce is an Irish journalist and executive editor for “events business” at the Economist. She’s currently on sabbatical to do some work for Sex Matters, a UK non-profit that advises the public on the importance of biological sex as a category when making policy. In July of 2021, she published Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality. It purports to be a general book about the history of transgenderism, trans activism, and the issues that trans women pose to cis women.
It is the first one that we will focus on this post.
The Girl From Denmark
For Joyce, the story begins with Einar Wegener. Wegener was a Danish man born in 1882. He was an artist and married to Gerda Wegener. As the story goes, Gerda was convinced by Anna Larssen to have Einar take Larssen’s place for some modeling because the latter was running late. Wegener’s modeling for his wife was kept a secret for years. “Hardly anyone knew that Gerda’s sultry, sloe-eyed model was her cross-dressing husband,” Joyce writes. Eventually, the couple moved to Paris, but Einar was not the only person involved now. A new figure, named Lili, began to introduce herself as Gerda’s sister.
It was, you may have guessed, Einar. Over time, he seems to have grown weaker compared to the “woman in this body”, suggesting a battle in the mind over which identity was the real one. Doctors at the time diagnosed him as mad or homosexual. But this did nothing to resolve the conflict, and Einar was determined to either make Lili a reality or simply end his own persona.
In 1930, that opportunity would come at the hands of the Institute of Sexual Science in Berlin and its founder Magnus Hirschfeld. Hirschfeld believed that people were all bisexual, but not in the sense that they were attracted to both, rather that they were both. This was naturally attractive to the ailing model because it allowed for the possibility that you could move from one sex to the other with enough work. He was willing to operate on Einar.
The surgeries were grueling and saw the removal of testicles and penis, then insertion of ovaries, and finally the construction of a “natural outlet”. This last part is not necessarily clear as the Nazis burned the institute’s records in 1933, leaving only Lili's memoir Man Into Woman. it would probably have been a neovagina or attempted womb transplant.
In any case, Einar ceased to exist in the operating room, and Lili was manifested into reality. Things could not have been better after the surgery, it seemed. The King of Denmark gave Lili a new passport that defined her sex as female and annulled her marriage to Gerda. She went on to get engaged to an art dealer.
Sadly, Lili would die before the marriage in September 1931 due to heart failure. But she wrote that she had found her 14 months of life as Lili to be a “whole and happy human life”.
Joyce commends Hirschfeld for his forward-thinking nature and willingness to support franchising women and supported decriminalizing homosexual relationships between men (he was himself gay), but excoriates his views on what it means to be a female. She suggests that his views had a conspicuously shaped hole named Charles Darwin. For Joyce, Darwin had conclusively demonstrated that there was no meaningful definition of sex apart from that about reproduction. She accuses believers in Hirschfeld’s model as being sexist and simply accommodating the existence of women scientists, poets and leaders by claiming they were simply being less womanly.
Lili does not get off scott-free either, Joyce relates passages from her memoir that suggest some unconscious sexism in her mind. Lili believed her validation as a woman would come about by having a child. She self-described as the character opposite to Einar: thoughtless to his thoughtfulness, illogical to his ingenuity, superficial to his sagacity. The last fulfilment of being a real woman, according to Lili, was to have a “sterner being, the husband” to protect her in life.
Lili's importance to this topic will become clear eventually, I promise.
“What American Woman Wouldn’t Be Happy?”
Following this lengthy account come yet another, this time about Christine Jorgensen, formerly known as George Jorgensen. Jorgensen was a 26-year-old New Yorker who went to Europe in 1950 to get treatment for “men like him”. The 1930s and 40s had seen the rise of synthetic sex hormones and antibiotics, with some doctors now claiming it was possible to move males to the female end of the spectrum. Jorgensen would return in 1952 having undergone castration, penectomy, and plastic surgery for his external female genitalia.
Crucially, however, the doctors who treated him did not regard themselves as making him the opposite sex. They saw him as a man so beset by “transvestism” as to be unable to live without presenting as a woman. Christine was the one who claimed to be a woman to the media (the title of this section is a paraphrasing of what she told reporters). The media that covered the story, and their readers, ate it up. They praised the results and cast no doubt on Jorgensen’s claims about what sex was or about her own intersex condition.
But for all the many requests that the doctors who did the operation received, all were turned down. Instead, Joyce argues, an enterprising fraud and German endocrinologist would take up this task. That man’s name? Harry Benjamin.
To be clear, I don’t see any evidence that Benjamin didn’t believe what he said, and Joyce doesn’t directly argue this either. But the references to his quack background seem chosen to imply as much.
In any case, Benjamin was an outspoken advocate for using hormones and surgery to treat “transsexualists” as opposed to most doctors of the time who would have use electric shocks or mega-doses of the original sex’s hormones to “cure” the desire. In 1963, he took on a patient named Rita Erickson and transitioned her into Reed Erickson. Erickson was grateful and funded him for several research symposia. Erickson also went on to fund the Erickson Educational Foundation, which primarily focused on funding studies into transsexualism, as well as the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic.
In the following decade, other major medical centers would open up programs of a similar sort. Thus began a slow but continuous effort by doctors and researchers who would go on to be authorities and gatekeepers. They did their best to accommodate their patients. In 1979, they would all get together and found their own professional association, the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association.
Or, as you may know it after 2006, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.
Putting Your Money Where Your Benjamin Is
The history of transgenderism cannot be explained without talking about the man who coined the term “gender”. John Money was a Harvard psychologist from New Zealand who popularized the sex-gender distinction that people use even to this day.
Briefly, Money is the reason we talk about gender at all and make the distinction between sex and gender. For him, a woman or man was defined by taking on certain roles, which they were socialized (taught by others) into accepting. But some people were atypical for their sex and took on the roles of the other sex more easily/naturally. In other words, gender was what your roles were, and sex was your body.
Joyce describes their meeting as a moment when the stars aligned. You had Benjamin on one hand who believed that sex was a spectrum and people could move between the two ends, and Money on the other who believed that men and women were defined by what roles they took on, not by their bodies. Combined in a manner akin to Dragon Ball Z’s Fusion Dance, they created a powerful new theory of what caused cross-sex identification, what it meant, and what to do about it.
This can be found in Bejamin’s work The Transsexual Phenomenon. In it, he gave Hirschfeld’s depiction of a sex spectrum and described transsexuals as people suffering from a mind-body mismatch. He would also nod to Money’s ideas about “gender feeling” (a collection of feelings, attitudes, and desires). If this feeling was settled and mismatched to the body, then the body had to give.
We will discuss Money, his work, and his impact in a later post.
Handling Edge Cases
I mentioned previously that Lili Elbe had been granted a new passport by the Kingdom of Denmark that stated her sex as female. But, as Helen Joyce asks, what did this really mean to the people who made such decisions?
She relates the case of Corbett v. Corbett as a telling example in far more detail than really necessary. Arthur Corbett wanted his marriage to April Ashley annulled on the grounds that she was a trans woman. Corbett did not look totally good in this case, to be clear, as he was someone who broke up his previous marriage because he was obsessed with Ashley and only demanded an annulment when she started asking for the deeds to their house. The judge in that case delivered the following remarks (somewhat paraphrased) to a devastated Ashley.
Intercourse using the completely artificially constructed cavity could never constitute true intercourse…the respondent is not, and was not, a woman at the date of the ceremony of marriage, but was, at all times, a male.
Joyce characterizes the response by officials and governments in the first half of the 20th century as trying to resolve some small number of anomalous cases with varying amounts of compassion and logic. The British government of Ashley’s time (the 1960s) believed that no operation could change sex, so even if the NHS would perform sex-change operations, it would not allow the recipient to go about being treated as a woman by the government.
But why said governments went about it how they did is an important question, and Joyce attributes this to two factors: the rise of bureaucracy and the shift in what defined womanhood.
Firstly, there was always a legal significance to being a man or woman: voting, inheriting, or even controlling money was dependent upon this. But no laws defined sex because it seemed pointless. Everyone could just see and make an accurate assessment, and the few who cross-dressed or passed as the other sex could be seen by their naked body.
This obviously changed with Lili Elbe, who would not appear male under nudity. But the less obvious influence was the rise of government documentation that listed sex. If you showed these, they would count as proof that you were a man or woman. To someone who was trans, these documents were sought after as another bit of proof to help get society to validate the new identity. Persuading bureaucrats was now a useful goal.
Secondly, what it meant to have womanhood, or be a woman, changed significantly between Jorgensen’s return in 1952 and her death in 1989. For doctors, journalists, and lawyers who were involved with this topic, it was no longer about having a body that could under normal circumstances get pregnant. Now it was about being able to “receive” in heterosexual sex and an inner sense of being “female”.
At first glance, this does not sound too bad, but without reference to reproduction, Joyce argues that being a woman became more individualistic over communal. Reproductive service was about your role in your species, sexual service was about your role to your husband.
This, she argues, was the birth of “gender identity”.
The Role Of Leftist Thought
Joyce, surprisingly enough, does not really delve deeply into the role played by broader left-wing ideology in supporting and even promoting transgenderism. She does spend some effort to address what she calls “social justice” or “applied postmodernism” (AP). As she tells it, AP rejects objectivity, logic, and reason. Here, language prescribes instead of describes, meaning oppression springs from discourse. The focus on letting individuals reign supreme in defining themselves fits mind-body dualism perfectly, since it means being a man or woman can never be gatekept.
But to convince others of this, you have to deny the objectivity of sex and instead insist that gender identities are the real thing. Judith Butler, described as the most influential gender theorist, has argued that sex and gender are not distinct and are both socially constructed. Tellingly, Butler defines transness as the mismatch between what society tells you to act as and what you know about yourself (notice the framing of society oppressing individual expression). Doctors, she argues, engage in performance when they register a baby’s sex, changing social reality by their very words.
Joyce discusses the terms AFAB/AMAB (assigned female at birth, assigned male at birth) and argues that they deny any argument that man/woman might be gender and male/female can be kept for sex. Instead, she argues, TRA ideology takes these terms to mean you are female or male should you define yourself that way.
This was a bold claim to me. I had even recently argued, among other things, that I did not know how many TRAs (trans rights activists) believed that a trans person was by nature the sex they identified as. Joyce would tell me that my definition of “sex” includes immutability, and I think that it a good definition of my position. I do not think we should define sex as anything other than what your natal body’s reproductive pathways are, but I remain open to arguments to the contrary.
With that said, I think Joyce has pointed to a gap in my own thinking. I had assumed that when terms like AFAB and AMAB are used, TRAs understood sex mostly as I did. But if they follow ideas like Butler’s, then sex and gender are both malleable to the extent that yes, TRAs would tell you they are actually the same in terms of body as people of the sex they identify as.
As for how widespread this idea is, I’ve found the following.
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Here are 3 studies published in 2017 and 2018 that use male/female as one would traditionally use man/woman.
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Wikipedia defines trans women as having a “female gender identity”.
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A 700 person Twitter poll from 2018 where about 50% said that trans women are female.
There is more, of course, but I think these at least suggest the idea sex and gender are to some people mutable. I’m still not clear on how prevalent this view of sex is, but I think it is at least not insignificant.
I’m a bit frustrated that Joyce doesn’t go further into the role of left-wing thought in the intellectual and ideological support for transgenderism. I think it would be worthwhile to discuss what drove, and arguable drives, left-wing support for glorifying all forms of individual expression. I myself covered one such motivation here.
That’s all for this post. Next time, we’ll go over the harm Joyce attributes to the version of pro-trans ideology that has come to define what it means in 2023 to be supportive, and maybe some other stuff as well. I hope you enjoyed!