- If I am ever on a quiz show, my telephone joker will be the dude who wrote Wikipedia.
- Suki Kim has done impressive undercover reporting in North Korea, fooling both her employer, by pretending that she was a devout Christian, and of course the North Korean government.
- The resulting book is Without you, there is no us: my secret life teaching the sons of North Korea’s elite.
- If I had listened to all the well-meaning advice I ever got, I would lead a boring life.
- “Oh, your Spanish is very good,” people all over Latin America tell me. I thought it was a personal compliment until I realized that my Bolivian accent makes me sound more refined.
- After my trip in South America, I have an unused but not generally useless package of anti-malaria medicine to give away.
- On the other hand, thanks to climate change, malaria flies will soon badger us in Europe.
- In the 18th century, Catholic clergy in Mexico tried to christianize the Nahuatl god Quetzalcoatl by arguing that he was in reality the apostle St Thomas, who had come to the New World before the Spanish to deliver the word of God to the Indians.
- Colombia has neo-Nazis, too.
- These cyber attacks can be really bad. I wonder when we will return to analogue record keeping.
- Superstition brings bad luck.
- Whenever someone talks of bitcoin and blockchain, I just hear “bla bla bullshit bla bla”.
- Foucault’s Pendulum reads like a satire of The Da Vinci Code, only that the former was written before the latter.
- Thanks to Silke Wahle for sending me Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny – Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.
- In all of Saudi Arabia, there is only one cinema.
- The scary vision of all-encompassing social scores is becoming reality in China.
- Nobody is normal.
The Happy Hermit 
Bitcoins is good for Black Market as well black money! Neo Nazist are church of Greece! as well. and all I am interesting what you do not believe in God :) Because I have same problems
Well, if you would have invested in Bitcoins, the value of your assets would have gone up more than 1000% two weeks ago. You would only have to be careful to watch the market and leave before the value would start to drop again.
That sounds like a bubble.
Yes, indeed. Currently Bitcoin gets very popular in China and Japan. A friend said, she wouldn’t consider Bitcoin being a bubble if you consider the fact that China has quite a number of rich people investing in this currency, the value of Bitcoin might stay on a higher level. Nonetheless, I would not invest all my money in Bitcoin, just a extremely tiny bit. Also, you have to watch it carefully and leave when made a little plus after a few days. You have to resist the instinct of wanting more and more.
A bubble inflated by Chinese millionaires is still a bubble.
True
That’s a good point re Foucault’s Pendulum and Da Vinci Code.
Actually, I read FP first, as I was already a fan of Eco, and I loved it.
Then I started DVC, just to see what all the hullaballoo was about, and it was so bad I couldn’t finish it – which is really rare for me.
Eco is an amazing author – I can never make up my mind which is better, Name of the Rose or FP.
I am really glad I finally read it.
I could finish the Da Vinci Code and I found it a good page turner, but maybe it was because I didn’t know Foucault’s Pendulum yet back then. Or my taste in literature hadn’t developed yet. I tried a few other books by Dan Brown, but didn’t get beyond the first chapters.
I sometimes read Umberto Eco’s columns about politics, society, philosophy and also found them quite interesting.
I assume you’ve read The Name of the Rose?
Honestly, no. :-(
I have only seen the film.
The movie is not bad, but it is nowhere near the book. It really is a must read.
Reblogged this on AirGap Anonymity Collective and commented:
Colombia has neo-Nazis, too & Whenever someone talks of bitcoin and blockchain, I just hear “bla bla bullshit bla bla”.
I think, it is a bit ignorant and naive not taking phenomena like Blockchain and Bitcoin into account. Financial concepts like that might become more common in the future.
Also, there will be companies lead by AI in the future functioning wirhout employees. It sounds scary and futuristic but it is not out of this world anymore.
So far, I am not too impressed by artificial intelligence. It always seems way more artificial than intelligent.
Why does superstition cause bad luck?
You are not supposed to question statements concerning good or bad luck. That in itself brings bad luck. :P
I didn’t suppose you to be superstitious and authoritarian. 😂
But I try to limit the authoritarianism to my own blog. ;-)
Well, concerning this assumption you are just wrong.