The way we consume entertainment has undergone a massive transformation in the last decade. What was once dominated by cable television, cinema halls, and DVD collections has now shifted into a digital-first experience powered by streaming platforms. Today, audiences have unprecedented control over what they watch, when they watch it, and how they engage with content.

This shift is not just technological—it’s cultural. We are living in what many call the Golden Age of Streaming, where storytelling has reached new heights, global content is more accessible than ever, and traditional boundaries in entertainment are dissolving.

The Rise of Binge-Watching Culture

One of the most defining changes in entertainment is the emergence of binge-watching. Instead of waiting a week for the next episode, viewers now consume entire seasons in a single sitting. This has fundamentally changed how stories are written and structured.

Writers now design shows with long-form storytelling in mind. Cliffhangers, intricate character arcs, and multi-layered narratives have become more common because creators know audiences will continue watching without interruption.

Binge-watching has also made storytelling more immersive. When you watch episodes back-to-back, you stay deeply connected to the characters and plot, making the emotional impact stronger.

Global Content, Local Impact

Streaming platforms have broken geographical barriers. Viewers are no longer restricted to content from their own country. Shows and movies from different cultures are gaining international recognition.

A Spanish crime drama, a Korean thriller, or an Indian crime series can now trend worldwide. This has opened doors for diverse storytelling and given creators from different regions a global audience.

For viewers, this means exposure to new cultures, storytelling styles, and perspectives. It has made entertainment more inclusive and enriched the overall viewing experience.

The Cinematic Quality of TV Shows

There was a time when movies were considered superior to television in terms of production quality. That gap has almost disappeared.

Modern TV shows often feature:

• High-end cinematography
• Complex visual effects
• Strong character development
• Multi-season story arcs

In many cases, TV shows now offer deeper storytelling than movies because they have more time to develop characters and narratives.

Actors and directors who once focused solely on films are now actively working in television and streaming projects. This has elevated the overall quality of content available to viewers.

The Decline of Traditional Cinema?

While streaming has grown rapidly, it has also raised questions about the future of traditional cinema. Movie theaters are no longer the default choice for entertainment.

However, cinema is not disappearing—it’s evolving.

Big-budget films, especially those with large-scale visuals and immersive experiences, still draw audiences to theaters. The communal experience of watching a movie on a big screen remains unmatched.

Instead of replacing cinema, streaming has created a hybrid model:

• Blockbusters dominate theaters
• Mid-budget and experimental films thrive on streaming

This balance allows more diverse content to be produced and consumed.

Content Overload and Decision Fatigue

With so much content available, viewers often face a new challenge—what to watch?

The abundance of options can lead to decision fatigue. People spend more time scrolling through recommendations than actually watching something.

To address this, platforms rely heavily on algorithms that suggest content based on viewing habits. While helpful, these algorithms can also limit exposure by recommending similar types of content repeatedly.

As a result, viewers must sometimes step outside recommendations to discover hidden gems.

The Power of Storytelling

Despite all the technological advancements, one thing remains constant—the importance of storytelling.

No matter how advanced the platform or how high the budget, content succeeds only if it resonates with the audience. Strong characters, relatable emotions, and compelling narratives are what keep viewers engaged.

Stories have the power to:

• Inspire
• Educate
• Entertain
• Create empathy

In the streaming era, storytelling has become more diverse and experimental, allowing creators to explore themes that were previously considered niche.

The Future of Entertainment

Looking ahead, the entertainment industry is poised for even more transformation.

Some emerging trends include:

• Interactive storytelling where viewers influence the plot
• Virtual reality experiences that immerse audiences inside the story
• AI-driven content recommendations and even content creation

The line between viewer and participant may continue to blur, making entertainment more personalized and engaging.

Final Thoughts

The Golden Age of Streaming has redefined how we experience TV and movies. It has democratized content, empowered creators, and given audiences more choice than ever before.

While challenges like content overload exist, the overall impact has been overwhelmingly positive. Entertainment is no longer confined by geography, schedules, or formats.

We are witnessing a revolution in storytelling—one that is more inclusive, innovative, and exciting than ever before.

Anyway, I’m going to focus on a few types of people that I encounter most days. These are types of people you don’t consider meeting when you move to NYC from a small town, because small towns don’t have sidewalks. They do, a little, but nobody uses them. But once you’re in NYC, walking everywhere you go, you start to notice some patterns.

Here we go, a handful of the most prominent sidewalk based characters you’re liable to find in the big apple:

-Guy who stands in front of you at the crosswalk just to walk slower than you

Now, everyone in NYC is in a hurry. Everyone is looking to get where they’re trying to go. If you see a gap, you take it. Everyone is in that mindset all the time. So, sometimes you’ll find yourself waiting at the crosswalk, and someone comes from behind you and stands in front of you. They’re now standing on the street. If you’re standing on the street, they’re standing even further into the street. They don’t give a damn if cars have to swerve to avoid them, they will be standing in front of everyone.

Why? Good question, because when the walk signal comes on, they either don’t notice it or start walking slower than everyone behind them. Yes, this character has muscled their way to the front of the line in order to walk slower than everyone else. You might even run into them more than once if you are both on the same path. After having walked around this person, and standing at the next crossing, here they come to the front again, waiting for you to pass them.

I don’t think this is done with any malicious or disrespectful intent. Yeah, it’s kind of selfish, maybe the act of a very light jerk. However, it’s just conditioning. It’s interesting to watch. Living in NYC makes you so conditioned to try to get into the subway, into the turning lane, into the door, into the line, and on and on, that you’re looking for your window even when you’re not in a hurry. If there is a front, you try to get to the front, or else you have to wait behind the crowd. And sometimes that conditioning is so strong that being the slowest person in the crowd, watching the same group of people walk around you for blocks, doesn’t even shake that instinct.

-Guy who walks diagonally on the crosswalk

Here’s another guy who follows the theme of seizing your window and pushing to the front of the line. This is a guy who crosses the street diagonally. Think about it. You’re going to cross the street and then turn to your right at a 90 degree angle, and start walking that way? Traffic laws be damned, there is a more efficient way. That’s right, the shortest distance between 2 points is a straight line assuming a car doesn’t hit you on the way.

This character, when approaching the other side of the street, will often try to adjust their angle to enter the opposite sidewalk in front of some else on the sidewalk who happens to be using it correctly. And what will they do when they emerge from the street in front of this person? Say it with me: Walk slower than them.

So, occasionally, when using the sidewalk the right way in New York you’ll find someone emerge from the street and cut you off, maybe requiring you to even change your pace or angle to avoid tripping them, only to walk slowly enough that you have to walk around them. Again, Pavlov’s sidewalk.

-Guy who is looking at his phone until you are parallel with him

This one is related to the conditioning of getting to the front of the line, in the sense that it’s about positioning yourself amongst the hustle and bustle. This is not about the front though, but the back. As strong as the instinct to work your way to the front is in NYC, there is just as strong an urge to instinctively avoid the back.

This is someone you see standing still in the middle of the sidewalk. Usually, they are looking at their phone. Why do they need to stop in order to use their phone? It is called a mobile phone after all. Why don’t they move to the curb or closer to the building? No one knows these things. What is known, is that as soon as you are parallel with them, they will notice your presence or hear your footsteps and will suddenly remember that sidewalks are for walking and begin doing that again. And they will be doing it shoulder to shoulder or closely behind you.

So, although moments before they were not in a hurry and standing completely still, the fact that you are now going to pass by them activates a strange compulsion to not allow that to happen. This happens more often than you’d think. If you turn to ask them, as they walk shoulder to shoulder with you as they struggle to also send a text message, what they are doing, they might even die, similar to waking up someone who is sleep walking. So I’ve been told.

-Excuse Me Sir Guy

This guy will introduce himself with in the following way: Excuse me sir. Often, they will disregard the Ex part of that phrase. What they want is for you to stop walking. Don’t stop walking. Even if this guy follows you for a whole block repeating his favorite phrase, which happens, don’t stop.

If someone has a question or needs something, they will ask you. New Yorkers are not shy. The excuse me sir guy wants something too, and whatever it is, you don’t want to give it to him. If it was quick and easy and simple, they’d just say it. The fact that they want you to stop walking means they want to lean on you, they have a story to tell, a case to make, the ask is heavy and they know you don’t want to give it. And whatever it is, in addition to it, what they want is your time, the most valuable thing of all in NYC.

Headphones are an excellent shield against this type of person. They will often not bother, but even if they do, you have plausible deniability for not hearing them. Now, keep in mind, I’m not saying to be rude or to not help people. All I’m saying is if what they wanted was simple and easy they would just say it, so if you hear “Excuse me, sir” it will be neither of those things. Probably money or a cigarette.

-Leftsiders and Sidewalk Kings

These two are together because they behave the same, but they have different motivations. Leftsiders are people who walk on the left side of the sidewalk. Not unlike the road, the sidewalk operates in a more orderly fashion when we lean to the right and only go left for passing. Of course, the stakes are lower and it’s more easy to avoid one another so there is much more flexibility on the sidewalk. You may find someone passing or a weaver on your side of the sidewalk, you may be one of those people as well. Leftsiders stay in the left side.

It’s not temporary or while they’re alone on the sidewalk, they live there. They live there because they don’t know it is someone else’s space. Maybe they’re tourists, maybe they’re just not that bright, but there they are on the left side of the sidewalk. So you can either run into them, or you walk to the left side and get in the way of someone doing it the right way.

Sidewalk kings do the same, but they do it on purpose. They are the king of the sidewalk. Because they are the king of nothing else, they must become king of piss covered payment, reign supreme over the ancient gum and the rat doodoo beneath all our feet. This guy is a dork. Walk around him. Or, maybe 5% of the time, if you’re in a bad mood, you can just put your head down and look at your phone until you either run into him or he realizes you’re both going to collide and he loses the game of chicken. He doesn’t walk around you though. He just walks right up to you and doesn’t run into you and acts like he’s surprised to see you, on the side of the sidewalk that everyone is always walking down. And you can have some satisfaction from forcing him into a silly interaction that wastes their time. You could also just shoulder check him and deliver a little sidewalk justice. You just hold whatever you have in your hand tight and lean forward. You can disguise a nice powerbase with good leverage as slouching and basically smash anyone who isn’t ready for it. Obviously, that might seem immature, but isn’t Batman kind of immature too? And yet, Gotham is better off for it.

-Honorable Mentions

This is not an exhaustive list by any means. There are sidewinders, who are people who walk along the sidewalk in an ever evolving curve and never in a straight line, such that it is difficult to pass them from behind or if coming toward them they will veer into your path. They follow a similar pattern as weavers, who weave through a crowd they are moving faster than, but without intent, simply because they are too dumb or drunk to walk in a straight line. There is Gaza Bob, who is a character that is screaming, usually about a conspiracy or a political matter, often involving jews, and typically in a place where there are many midwestern tourists. This character likes to scare tourists and craves that kind of attention. While it often works on tourists it has limited effect on NYers, native New Yorkers are like “Oh, him? Yeah, that’s Gaza Bob, he’s down on Time Square every Tuesday and Thursday to get his fix of making nervous midwestern tourists rush by him.” There’s also Gaza Bob’s cousin, IDGAF Gary, who doesn’t GAF, he doesn’t GAF if he goes to jail, he doesn’t GAF if he has to kill a MFer, and he likes to go to public places, usually with tourists, to scream that to no one in particular for no reason in particular. Like Gaza Bob, he will never hurt anyone but thrives on attention and giving tourists a false sense of having seen something dangerous or scary. Not to mention, Speakerphone Fury, my personal favorite, who is someone who has a very loud fight with their significant other in public, screaming into a phone with the speaker mode on, holding the phone about 6 inches from their face, pacing back and forth, waving their arms around like a maniac and ranting and raving, looking like a crazy person who is sick of these damn buildings and these sidewalks and is just telling them off.

-Conclusion

So that’s it for now. If you visit NYC, keep an eye out for these characters and let me know if you see one. If you’re in NYC or have lived there, let me know if any of these resonate with you, or if there are any you would add. If you’ve never been, I’m curious if there are some variations you find where you’re from.

Finally, keep in mind, these are all just fun. Any American in a city nowadays knows its exhausting to have to your friends or family who have never entered a city for more than a day that cities are not dangerous, unless you’re scared of jobs that pay living wages, which can only be found in cities now. I can’t tell you how many times people have been like “I heard the subways are getting bad” and I’ve been like “From who? And also, children and old ladies ride the subway. And also, look around you, every business within 25 miles is a Wal Mart or Dollar General, the county has been shrinking in population since the 80s.” But that’s a different topic. Point is, this is all for fun, go outside, go to NYC, get out there and experience life, the good, the bad, and the funny.

by Zack Goncz

Read more at Substack or Medium

Before I elaborate, I’m not talking about how Duolingo isn’t ‘immersive’. I understand, and so does everyone presumably, that the best way to learn a language is to live amongst others who speak it, even better if they can speak your language as well. I’m looking at Duolingo on its own terms, for what it is and what it fails to be, but not what it could not conceivably be. This is not an examination of how to learn a language, because as I am about to reveal, this is something I wouldn’t know how to do, but an examination of the fundamental flaw that resides within Duolingo.

If you don’t know, Duolingo is a language learning app. It started in 2011. It offers 43 languages as well as some courses on non-language topics. It is currently the most popular language learning app available. It isn’t slapped together but there is a lot of research backing up various methods and approaches used by Duolingo. But let me tell you my experience.

I signed up for Duolingo in January of 2023. I took Spanish in high school, and college, and grad school. But it had been a decade since I really engaged with it. I always wanted to be able to speak another language. I was pretty decent at reading it still. I see signs or various things printed in Spanish sometimes and I try to read them, and I usually do a decent job. Writing is more challenging. My vocabulary is decent but the grammar parts and tenses I forget easily. I was always terrible at speaking and, especially, hearing it.

Currently, as of July 14, 2025, after 2 and a half years, I have a 842 day streak of taking lessons. I’ve never missed a monthly badge. I’m in the Diamond League. I have 111,996 XP. I also am pretty decent at reading it, but have a hard time writing it unless its in the present tense or the grammar is simple. I’m terrible at speaking and, especially, hearing it.

I don’t know if you picked up on this but after 2 and half year of Duolingo, and really sticking to it and being disciplined, I have made little progress in learning Spanish. To be fair, I maybe have reminded myself of things I knew from school already, but basically, this has potentially been a colossal waste of my time.

Why is this? How is it possible?

In my opinion, Duolingo is not unlike health insurance, or so many other things, but let’s focus on health insurance. The purpose of health insurance is to give you health care coverage, right? Well, yes, for you, but not for the health insurance company. The health insurance company’s purpose, like every other company that exists, is to maximize profit. The purpose, the company’s purpose, occasionally leads to suboptimal results relative to your purpose for buying it. Sometimes you don’t get the best healthcare results because it is at odds with the health insurer’s desire, and need, to maximize profits.

So, while you or I may download Duolingo to learn Spanish, Duolingo’s purpose is not to teach you a language, it is to make profit. It doesn’t do that by making you bilingual, it does it by making you use Duolingo. Duolingo wants you to use Duolingo, whether you learn or not.

Duolingo is masterful at creating a sense of urgency. Duolingo is like a used car salesman living in your phone. Duolingo is like those mobile games that trick kids into spending thousands of dollars. Duolingo is a lot of analogies for bad things that take advantage of people’s psychological needs and triggers.

• Feed Me!

First, Duolingo bothers you constantly. It reminds you via emails and notifications and all kinds of nonstop harassment that you need to do a lesson or your friend did a lesson or a new friend streak began or any little possible thing you can imagine it will think worthy to bother you about. You will not forget about Duolingo.

That’s not that bad though. That’s even a little helpful, if not for the rest of what I’m about to say.

• Hate the Game

Second, Duolingo gamifies its Spanish lesson. Gamify is not a word I made up. It means, as it implies, to add game and gaming elements to a non-game context in order to increase engagement. There are streaks to maintain, you must do a lesson every day, or the careful house of meaningless cards you’ve been stacking will collapse. There are also daily goals, various ones that seem, not random, but, conspicuously chosen relative to what your immediate tasks are on your path. There are also monthly goals. There is no shortage of ever evolving targets to reach.

You are constantly in competition with other Duolingo users, and you’re graded on a curve. You’re always in a week long competition with a pool of other users to get a certain amount of points. If you’re in the lower tier, you are demoted to a lower league, and if you’re in the higher tier, you’re promoted to a higher league. There are layers upon layers upon layers of goals and targets and competitions.

Aside from working against other players, you can also work with them. You’ll have a common goal that you’ll both reach together, points or lessons or whatever else. And you’ll feel bad if you aren’t pulling your weight, motivating you to play more. You’ll also worry if you’re the only one pulling your weight, motivating you to play more.

While gamification has shown to be able to increase engagement and effort, there are drawbacks. Forbes published an article in 2024 where psychologists identified some problems with gamification, particularly if poorly designed. This can result in the gamification being exploitative and stressful, to diminish intrinsic motivation, loss of perspective on the actual goal, and addiction. Basically, you get addicted to the game until you forget why you’re even playing and it becomes just playing the game to avoid losing the game and you burn yourself out without accomplishing anything but playing the game.

• Behaviorism Is Up Doc

Third, the carrots and sticks. The first 2 points kind of have built in carrots and sticks. The sticks are primarily demotions and the app pestering you. The ultimate stick, and the most ironic, is that Duo will literally stop letting you make mistakes. It will stop you from playing when you make a mistake. This will of course set you up for demotions and failing and all sorts of sticks. Unless of course you pay extra money to get some super membership that can allow you to avoid the app making it excessively difficult to play. Or, you can just cheat half the time and look up the answer by tapping the word in the app and seeing the translation. While that might not help you learn Spanish as well as taking your time and working through and learning from mistakes, at this point the gamification of Duolingo has made the lessons so miserable you just need to blast through them. You want to win and progress and avoid demotions and get your prizes and gems so Duolingo doesn’t pester you and punish you more, learning Spanish is an afterthought. You’re playing the game.

But the carrots, the carrots are … things that help you avoid the sticks. You can get various items that allow you to extend the timed games when time runs out or freeze a streak when you miss a day or allow you to make a mistake without turning off your lesson. You can also get gems, which you can use to buy those items I had previously described.

• A Race Against Time

The last thing, the most evil thing, is laced throughout the first three, it’s the timed parts. I don’t mean the daily or weekly or monthly or yearly goals or contests or whatever else. I’m referring to those elements of Duolingo that are timed in minutes or seconds. Those things force you to, not try to learn Spanish, but beat the clock. In order to beat the clock, you will find yourself looking only at the elements you need to in order to answer the question. If they ask you to fill in a gap and present you with choices to fill it, different genders or plural and singular, rather than reading everything in the Spanish sentence they provide, you may just see that it is male gendered and singular. If all you need to answer is whether the sentence is present or past tense, then you’ll look at that, and ignore, thus failing to learn from, the actual sentence. You’ll even click the words to see the translation, because you have to or you’ll get punished.

• A Day In The Life

Let’s slap all this together. Sometimes, when you have a busy day and you don’t want a pile of sticks dropped on you by Duolingo you log in to do your lesson. But you can’t just do a lesson. You need to complete multiple lessons because your friend quest is ending and your friend wasn’t keeping up and you’ve got to push it over yourself, or else you might not meet your monthly goal. Furthermore, the weekly challenge is done today and you’re in the demotion zone, so you need points.

So you look to your daily goals, because completing one will give you bonus points for 10 minutes, so you pick the easiest of the 3, and then once you do that, you’ll start getting bonus points for every lesson, which will allow you to complete the other 2 daily goals, which will allow you to get another 10 minutes where you can get bonus points.

The easiest goal is to get a certain number of points, which you can arrive to quickest by doing the timed challenges. Those aren’t lessons of course so they won’t count toward your friend quest, so you’ll still have to get lessons too. With all that ahead of you, you are going to blast through the timed challenges, not that you had a choice.

The timed challenge is a matching game, so you match words. When they match they disappear and are replaced with new words. At a certain point, you stop matching the words though and have picked up on the pattern for where the words that match disappear. You can play it at a pace where they spaces that match will be filled in, it doesn’t matter with what specifically, but whatever it is will match, so you’ll tap them. Every once in a while you’ll goof up the pacing and mismatch two words you haven’t looked at and don’t understand. But adjust and plow forward, because that’s all there is time do as the 2 minute clock ticks down in the corner.

So you waste enough time doing that to start getting your bonus points. One of the other daily goal things is to do 3 lessons with a minimum grade. Now you’ve got 10 minutes to get bonus points, you can maybe get that done in 10 minutes if you blast through your lessons too fast to learn anything from them, but then you’ll be able to get another 10 minutes of bonus points.

Here come the lessons, you can’t do 3 in 10 minutes if you actually learn. You highlight words to get the answers. You match sounds with spellings, without learning what the words are saying. You need to fill in a noun in a second sentence in a pair, so you look at the noun in the first sentence to see what noun would make sense with it, rather than reading the sentences. When you get something wrong you just remember the answer so when it pops up at the end you can just pick the right one. And sometimes, getting it wrong fast and then right fast because you memorized what you got wrong is faster than taking the time to understand and get it right the first time. It’s a memory game, but you’re not memorizing Spanish.

You can’t stay in the diamond league without points and you can’t get enough points without bonus points. You need to force yourself to complete more lessons while you still have bonus points, and that will contribute to your monthly challenge, let you catch up on your friend quest, and keep you out of the demotion zone. Plus, if you finish your third daily lesson then you will like get triple bonus points tomorrow, but only for 10 minutes, but you’ll be able to extend it if you blah blah blah and don’t learn Spanish.

The third daily challenge is to speak in a certain amount of lessons, you can’t in the timed challenges so you have to do the regular lessons. So you sigh, and do them, as fast as you can. You’re tired of it and want to get it over with at this point. You play enough to get the speaking tasks to pop up in the lessons. It doesn’t understand you if you speak at regular volume, so you have to scream. Your cat leaves the room.

After half an hour, you’ve learned nothing, despite having been successful at the game.

But, why not ignore the game? Don’t pay anything, don’t rush through the lessons, ignore the bonus points and the challenges and the friend quests and whatever else. Sure, you can do that, but then you move at a snails pace. You can either play the game and go too fast to learn, or you can ignore the game and in 2 years you’ll be saying, “Donde esta la biblioteca?”

So, that’s my experience with Duolingo. Your mileage may vary. For what it’s worth, I do think Duolingo has maybe incrementally made me better at Spanish or at least served as somewhat of a fresher. But the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. The time you spend on Duolingo if you try to give it your all, is not worth it, but then if you don’t give it your all in order to not waste your time, well then you’re not giving it your all so it isn’t worth it. The reason for this is the gamification of the Duolingo app, which is there because, even though you’re there to learn a language, Duolingo is there to keep you on Duolingo.

Let me know your experience with Duolingo or if you’ve found a better alternative

by Zackary Goncz

Read more at Substack or Medium

In 2023, I spent 3 days in Ukraine. It wasn’t on the front lines, about as far from it as you can be actually. It wasn’t a humanitarian mission or on behalf of any IGO. I just wanted to know. I wanted to see it for myself. Now I’d like to share it with you, for whatever its worth.

I had been planning a big trip for a while, all the way around the world. I would fly from New York to Switzerland, and fly back from Hong Kong, with over 2 dozen countries in between. It would take 2 months. What resonates with me now more than anything are those 3 days in Ukraine however.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I had been a vocal supporter of Ukraine. I’ve donated, what amount I was able, and have made countless social media posts, not that either of those things have made a huge difference, but I felt the need to do something. And something isn’t nothing. I imagine for someone living in Ukraine, facing what they’re facing, a few hundred bucks could change a person’s life, save it even. Nobody can save the world but 1 person can save 1 person, maybe. And that’s not nothing, that is the world to that person.

As I planned visits to Krakow and Budapest, I couldn’t help but notice Ukraine on their borders. It felt odd that I would stroll through the medieval square in Krakow and relax in the thermal springs in Budapest, while schools were bombed in Ukraine so near to where I was. It brought further discomfort to think that I would be spending money in Hungary, whose quasi-dictator President has done everything possible to aid Russia, despite being old enough to remember a time when Hungary was effectively a Russian colony, while Ukrainians suffered. So I rearranged my original plans to spend only 3 nights in Hungary, down from my original 5, in order to spend 2 nights, or 3 days, in Ukraine.

Again, I want to emphasize that I’m not delusional enough to think what I did was an example of bravery, more of curiosity. I was hugging the NATO border in western Ukraine. Despite what Russian bots might tell you, Russia would not stand a chance against NATO, even without the US. They’re borrowing troops from North Korea in a 3-year stalemate with Ukraine, you throw in the rest of Europe and it’s not going to get better. I was very aware of that when planning my trip and how Russia was very careful to avoid doing anything near a NATO border, despite any tough talk out of them.

So enough preamble, let’s get to it.

– Day 1

I had left Krakow and was driving through Slovakia, thoughts of Auschwitz fresh in my mind. I approached Ukraine in a rental car I got in Vienna with the intent of crossing over the border by land and staying at a town called Uzhhorod. The town was not far from the border.

When I arrived at the border checkpoint there was a line of cars. I got in line. There were people with machine guns smoking cigarettes. There was a couple people I saw walk from one side to the other, civilians, and I wondered where they were going or coming from. One older woman seemed to be asking for a ride. Slovakian flags gave way to Ukrainian ones. I saw so many blue and yellow flags in Europe. You can’t go to a European city without seeing a Ukrainian flag. These ones felt different though, flags, not of sympathy or support but, of pride and defiance and hope.

It was my turn and the woman working the checkpoint asked for documentation. Passport, rental car agreement, insurance, etc. I assumed all this would be needed so I had it ready to go. Everything was going smoothly. Then she asked me to open the trunk.

I didn’t know where the button was to open the trunk from inside the car. I started looking around in the area where it might be. I was looking for a button or something on my car. I couldn’t find it. I couldn’t see one under the wheel or near the door or down by the seat or anywhere.

She asked me to open my trunk again. I explained that I could not find the button. She didn’t understand. Everywhere you go in Europe people speak English. But here, a border crossing of all places, they didn’t speak English. She asked me to open the trunk, seeming a little confused. I pulled out my phone and googled ‘where is the trunk button on the Peugeot 2008’. I held my finger up to indicate I needed a moment.

She waved another border agent over. He asked me to open my trunk. I tried to explain again but I think his English was only barely better than hers. He stepped back and pointed to the back of the car and said to open the trunk. But the way he pointed to the back of the car suggested to me that he was ushering me in that direction.

I looked at him. I grabbed the door handle and asked if he wanted me to step out and open the trunk myself. I don’t know if he understood but he saw me starting to open the door and nodded and continued the ushering gesture toward the back of the car, asking me to open the trunk again.

I’m an idiot. They were asking me to step out of the car to open the trunk myself, not just to unlock it from inside of my car. So I opened the door and went back there and opened the trunk. They looked around and it was all good. I tried to explain that I was an idiot, so I didn’t realize what they were asking. I’m not sure they understood every word but I think they understood that I was embarrassed and apologetic. After they checked, the guy walked away and the woman stamped some things and sent me off with a welcome.

There are also laws in Ukraine about taking pictures of military equipment or personnel, because it could reveal locations or other information if you post it that they would not want to get out. So I didn’t take photos at the border crossing given the military and government presence you might expect there.

Entering Ukraine is not like other parts of Europe, as you could imagine. You’re required to buy a special insurance package to enter Ukraine. Normal travel insurance doesn’t cover you if you knowingly enter a country with an ongoing war. They take visitors but you have to educate yourself and receive the proper documentation before entering.

It was the afternoon when I entered Ukraine. The houses along the road were often modest and interestingly colored. Casual and cozy. Not luxurious but full of personality. It was very green and hilly and wet, striking me not dissimilar to Ireland’s landscape. The Carpathian mountains were in the distance.

I also noticed the roads. They could have used a paving, a lot of potholes. But, when you’re fighting for your life you have to prioritize certain things in the budget and a comfortable ride has to come second to matters of life or death. It was clear that ‘drivable’ was a sufficient standard while the war was going on given that a smooth road might come at the expense of lives.

I drove at a pace appropriate for someone who didn’t know what potholes were around the next corner. For me, it was not unlike driving on the moon but locals more familiar with the roads occasionally zipped by me.

It was not long before I reached my hotel. I stayed at a hotel called Villa P. I parked outside. There was a parking area inside of a gate but I didn’t have a key yet so I parked outside on the street.

I walked in the human sized door onto the property and looked around. The hotel appeared to me to be something that was maybe once a house. It had a beautiful backyard with an incredible view, being on a higher part of the city. I was outside smoking a cigarette, prior to going in to check in, when a girl walked by. I said hello. She replied hello back to me and walked into the building.

There were a couple cars parked in the back area. A nice patch of grass, all surrounded by a high brick wall. I could see the second stories of the neighboring buildings on each side peaking over the walls. The back, over the wall, was a little skyline. A guy walked out of the hotel, I nodded at him and he reciprocated. I half-expected to be the only person here. The sun was going down and I didn’t want to get a parking ticket so I walked into the hotel.

The girl who walked by me a moment ago was sitting at a table. It wasn’t a desk or anything formal. It was a table, adding to the house vibes. This was not a Holiday Inn. She greeted me and I did the check in. She asked me what breakfast I would like and showed me a menu. It had various nation-based options. English breakfast, Viennese breakfast, etc. I chose Viennese. Not sure why. That’s where I had gotten my rental car from so it was in my mind and I think after a couple seconds I just felt compelled to pick something.

After checking in I ran back outside and didn’t see a ticket on my car. There was a car sized gate, with a person sized door within it. I opened the doors to the gate and drove in.

I made my way up the staircase. The second flood had light music playing and a couch, books, and wine bottles that I assumed were for display purposes only. There was a window at the end of the hall that looked out on the backyard and the city over the walls.

I entered my room. It felt more like an apartment than a hotel. I found that to be the case in Eastern Europe often, not sure if it is typical or if that’s just the type of places I happened to choose. I cracked the window and heard American rock music. A huge smile went across my face. I appreciated that we were appreciated, yes in the sense of fighting for democracy, which we used to do, but in music and the arts as well. I wondered where it was coming from.

I walked out of my room and looked out of the big window on the second floor. I couldn’t believe I was in Ukraine. I was happy that I was contributing money to Ukraine and that I was looking at Ukraine. It was dark now. I was humbled by the lights flickering, the sounds and signs of life, while a Russian dictator threatened that life and those freedoms every day. Here they are, operating hotels and putting one foot in front of the other, not even a thought of giving up or giving in.

I decided to go for a walk. I made my way down the stairs. The receptionist was still seated there and I nodded to her. I walked out of the door and out of the gate. I found myself hit with crisp, moist, cool air. It wasn’t cold, just cool, refreshing even. It felt like mountain air feels, like an iced coffee on your skin and up your nose. We were in the Carpathians now.

I heard the American rock and roll and followed it. There was a bar a few doors down from my hotel, and they were blasting American rock music. I thought about going in but wanted to explore more. There was a big castle across the street, Uzhhorod Castle. I would go the next day but it was closed now. I saw a church, lit up, Holy Cross Church, and walked toward it. It was the tallest thing in the area. There was a small park across the street with a statue or two in it. There was a couple sitting on a bench. I didn’t stick around so as to give them some privacy. I was taking pictures and videos and didn’t want to interrupt them or make them feel awkward.

I walked back to the castle, past the bar, and looked right. A steep hill with a cobble stone road. I walked down it. I made a right with the road when it met the river. I walked down the road.

The buildings around me were nondescript. It was dark. It was so dark that I pulled my phone flashlight out. As I walked I saw a little ball of fuzz on the curb. It was a kitten. He mewed. He breathed heavily. I petted him for a few moments. I wondered if it was clean to do so. I pulled my sleeve over my hand to pet him a little longer. I didn’t have food or anything for him. I said bye and called him little buddy and walked on.

I made a right at the end of the block and saw what looked like a restaurant. I walked in and it was a restaurant. I stood there at the front door. I stood there for a while and a couple people walked by and gave me a nod. I thought someone would seat me. I started to feel confused about what was going on, so I just turned around and left.

Back on the street, crisp mountain air. I walked to the end of that street. I looked up a hill back toward where the church was. It was dark there now. I looked around and the streetlights were off. I thought I had turned down a dark road earlier, but I think at some point before turning onto it the streetlights turned off. Apparently, for the same reason there are potholes, the streetlights do not stay on long. It just comes down to rationing resources and prioritizing things.

But I made a left, rather than walking back to the church and my hotel. There was a commercial area I saw on my phone. I was looking for food. I saw lights. Vulytsya Korzo was an open commercial walking area with shops. There were people walking around. It was just like a regular city center, like anywhere else.

Ukrainian flags were hung around. Someone walked a dog on the wet street. It was busy. I saw a place selling ice cream. I went in and the person at the counter looked at me. I don’t speak Ukrainian. I asked for a flavor and he replied in something in Ukrainian. I wasn’t sure what to do. He pointed at different sized cups. I chose the middle one. I took my ice cream and walked around on the pedestrian walkway.

I saw a restaurant with a sign that had a cactus and longhorns on it. The name was something I couldn’t pronounce but the theme looked like the American southwest. I looked in and saw American flags, cowboy boots and hats. Again, a massive smile spread across my face and I was proud to be an American. I wonder if they still have that theme today. I imagine America isn’t as popular a brand as it once was.

I was, for some reason, too intimated to walk into a restaurant. Other places in Europe are full of people bending over backwards to accommodate English speaking tourists. But in Ukraine, I found people living their lives. Everyone I spoke English to looked at me like they couldn’t believe I was here and speaking to them in some weird language they don’t understand. Even in the rare instances in European cities when I encountered a service sector worker who didn’t speak English, they knew some way to deal with it with combination of basic keywords and hand gestures.

I walked into a convenience store to buy a couple snacks. I figured that, and the ice cream I had, would hold me over until breakfast. I walked around the convenience store. It was bright and arranged similar to a small grocery/convenience anywhere else. I looked at the various goofy candies and snacks with their fun names and appearances, and taking note of various items, like Kit Kats, that we share. I carefully walked around looking at everything.

I checked out, overcoming the, again, language barrier. But not without first snatching up a very cool yellow and blue lighter with a little Ukrainian cartoon on it.

I went back to my hotel, but on the way, just outside the castle, I noticed a little goofy statue of a guy with a big head. It was almost hidden, a little Easter egg. It was just sitting there on the stone fence outside of the castle, not drawing any attention to itself. It was the first little such statue that I saw, but not the last.

But I had a Viennese-style Ukrainian breakfast to wake up for so I went in to go to bed.

– Day 2

I woke up the next morning in time for breakfast. I went downstairs and was unsure how to get to the basement. Eventually I figured it out. It was a bomb shelter. It was also a wine cellar and a breakfast nook, but it was a bomb shelter. I had heard that a lot of hotels had bomb shelters. There was an older couple staying there as well, or at least eating breakfast. After my Viennese breakfast in Ukraine, I quickly headed out.

First stop, my neighbor: Uzhhorod Castle. I walked up and in through the gate. It was on the outside of a castle wall. There was a second gate on the inside. I stood there, alone, in the nether space within the castle wall. I looked around. There was a lot of room. I expected someone to be there to take my money so I could buy a ticket or something. There was a machine in the corner. I looked at it. The writing was, I assume, Ukrainian and I could not read it.

A door opened, a third door, neither toward the street nor the castle but a smaller door within the wall. An older woman emerged and looked at me looking at her and acted as though she was startled or surprised to see me and laughed. I laughed too and apologized. She said something in Ukrainian. I didn’t understand and replied back in English. I pointed to the castle. She peaked back into the door she came out of and brought a second person out, an older man this time. They managed to help me get a ticket out of the machine. I thanked them, they smiled and waved and said welcome.

I quite like history and archaeological sites when traveling, so I explored the grounds. Castles tend to be found at high points, so there were great views. After meandering around the grounds for a little while, I walked over a wooden bridge to, what I guessed was, the entrance. There was a nice courtyard. It was cool fall weather and the sun shone down through the clouds providing a little warmth.

I entered the castle and walked through the various rooms. There were pictures of old mustached men, paintings of battles, manikins with clothing from times gone by. There were also various weapons and helmets and armors. The walls and ceilings were often painted or muraled.

The rooms were in roughly chronological order. I then entered the room about the Nazis and the holocaust. In Southern and Western Europe, it’s all about Rome. Rome, Rome, Rome. Everywhere you go, even as fast as Chester, England, right next to Wales, half of Europe is like, “Look at our Roman stuff!” But in Eastern and Northern Europe: it’s the holocaust. There aren’t roman amphitheaters, there are Jewish quarters, which no longer contain any jews, with monuments and museums filling the hole in their communities.

Unfortunately, for many of the latter countries of Europe, that part of their history is immediately followed by another terrible part of their history. While Western Europe returned to freedom and normalcy after WWII, Eastern Europe was left trapped on the other side under the thumb of the Soviet Union. Where previously I’d seen rusty swords and funny outfits on manikins, now I saw modern photos of faces of people forced off to a Russian prison camps.

As I neared the end, I saw a room with modern items. There were helmets and hockey gear. Photos of the Russian invasion of Crimea. The current Russian invasion of Ukraine is not the first. There were photos and items and newspaper clippings from the current Russian invasion as well. I studied them all. These were modern people who go to school and work, who have social media accounts, there throwing Molotov cocktails at tanks. People like those I walked around with the night before, living their lives until the Russian army rolled in to murder and enslave them. Some of those people are still on the other side, still in Crimea or the Donbas, but now they’re under a Russian dictator and can’t escape.

When I left the castle, I went to a Museum of Folk Architecture and Rural Life next door. There was a very goofy looking white limo outside of it. I wasn’t sure why. I walked in the entrance and nobody was there at the gate. A police officer called out and stopped me. He tried to speak to me. I couldn’t speak back. He pointed at a door. I assumed the only thing that could be going on was that he was showing me where the tickets were meant to be purchased. I was right. Got my ticket and was on my way.

It was a park full of funny little wooden buildings with thatch roofs from various eras of time. You could walk in them and they were furnished as per their historical eras. There were even various chickens and goats milling about and adding an extra layer of authenticity.

Then I saw the cause for that goofy looking white limo, there was a man in a military uniform and a woman in a wedding gown. They were having wedding photos taken. A couple of friends, dressed appropriately for, presumably, when it was time for the best man and maid of honor to have a photo. Photographer and family there as well, less than 10 people.

Once I noticed them, I kind of felt somewhat overwhelmed. He had seen the horrors of war and would maybe be returning. But they pressed on. Love wouldn’t wait. Life wouldn’t wait. Ukraine was facing the extermination of their country but 2 Ukrainians were there celebrating their love. A flower bloomed in hell. You might assume with all the fire and demons above a seed might think it best not to bloom at all. But this fearless flower emerged from the dirt and reached for the sky and I was lucky enough to be there to see it.

I wanted to take photos of them. I got a couple awkward ones because I wanted to be careful not to point my phone at them or gawk at them. I didn’t want to disturb this beautiful thing in front of me. I was grateful to be there and witness it. I was grateful it existed at all.

I entered the tallest building. It was a big wooden church. It was made of logs and brown wood. The tall section in the middle allowed sunlight in. I was hiding from the love outside. I had all these feelings inside of me thinking of these two people defiantly declaring their eternal love in world that could end at any moment. There were potholes and dark streets and bomb shelters in hotels, but love pressed on.

I paced inside of the church. I put my hands on my hips and pushed my head back and exhaled deeply. I was 36 at the time and society had trained me well to not cry as a man. I had walked the tops of mountains over Lauterbrunnen Valley, pressed my foot to the floor in a Mercedes Benz on the autobahn, seen incredible art in the palaces of Vienna, but this was the thing that broke me, these two people who refused to let even war and destruction keep them from each other.

I composed myself and left the old church. I arranged my path out to unobtrusively walk by them again. I lowered my head and smiled as I did, keeping my distance. I noticed a bizarre vivid purple weed or bush emerging from the cracks in the sidewalk as I left. Ordinary things born in an extraordinary circumstances can leave an impression. Though their only intention is to live and survive, that alone, if strong enough, can beautiful.

I left the museum/park and walked by the goofy white limo, now understanding its purpose. I walked to the church I had seen last night all lit up. The big yellow church with white trim and twin spires. I wanted to enter but the front doors were closed. I walked to the side where I saw people going in and out. They did not appear to be tourists or parishioners though. I kept walking closer to the door.

I entered the door and heard banging sounds. It sounded like construction was going on. I entered and looked around. There was definitely some kind of construction work going on and I was just some doofus who wondered in.

I took a quick picture and turned around. It was amusing that various construction workers had just walked past me, in and out, doing their job, with no one bothering to ask me what I was doing or to tell me it was closed. They just went about their business. But I didn’t want to be in their way.

So, I walked down the hill toward the commercial area I had been the day before. On the way was what appeared to be a phone booth but, rather than containing a phone, held a book shelf full of books.

I also took a moment to look at something that caught my eye. It was on that pitch black street with the kitten on it from the night before. There was a building with large mural of a woman’s face on it. A dark haired woman with blue eyes, looking out to her audience with a look that suggested she was waiting for you to react to something, to notice what she had noticed, like she was giving you a look and waiting for you to understand what that look was for, and she was sure you would know soon, and watching you come to that understanding was something she eagerly awaited.

The building had red stripes and looked somewhat modern. It was some kind of industrial building or warehouse converted into a commercial space. There was a yellow building next to it. I couldn’t see any of this the night before but hiding in the dark was such color and personality. The sun let me see it.

There was an art museum I was looking for though, the Transcarpathian Regional Art Museum of Joseph Bokshay, so I didn’t linger. I went back to my path. I walked by the commercial pedestrian area I walked by the night before. I saw a park with a pair of statue men sitting on a bench, life size this time. I also saw my second tiny statue: a little guy sitting cross-legged on what looked like a bell.

I found the museum. I entered. There was a courtyard area on the inside. Two women sat on a bench by the entrance speaking to each other in Ukrainian. I looked around. It was not obvious to me where I should go. I could have asked the women on the bench, but I liked just figuring things out at this point and stumbling into various places that weren’t expecting tourists.

There were tents in the courtyard. They had the red cross logo on the side. I don’t think it was part of the museum but an area being used for storage or maybe to provide COVID vaccines or something. I kept walking around but couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to do.

I walked into one of the doors facing the courtyard. The lights were off, I didn’t explore further. I opened another door, the lights were off again but I walked in and found a hallway that looked like it was undergoing renovations or was at least a mess of some kind, for some reason. I wondered what the two women on the bench outside thought I was doing. But that might have been just the ego you get in European tourism centers and this was not that, so they probably didn’t pay any attention to me.

I tried another door. I walked around a little. There wasn’t much space between the door I walked in and another door leading to what appeared to be sunlight. There was a staircase. But just then a guy walked in from the door showing sunlight. I tried to ask him where the museum was. He told me that this is the museum. I asked him where am I supposed to go. He said he doesn’t work here. I said Oh, and asked if he knew where tickets were sold. He said he didn’t speak English. I said thanks.

At that point, while I may still not have known what I was supposed to do, I figured either I’d find out or maybe I could just walk around this building and nobody would stop me. So I walked up the stairs I saw.

When I reached the stop of the stairs there were lights on and art on the wall. This had to be it. I walked around looking at the art for a little bit. At a certain point a woman peaked around a corner and saw me. She expressed surprise and said something to me in Ukrainian. People being surprised to see me was a common greeting in Ukraine apparently. Wherever I went, people did not expect me to be there. Understandable under the circumstances, not a lot of tourists go to countries at war I suppose.

I told her I only spoke English. She smiled and said welcome. She was very friendly, big smiles. She waved for me to follow her. She only knew a couple basic English words but enough to tell me how much the ticket cost. She pointed down the hallway and at various rooms saying things in Ukrainian. I nodded and smiled, reciprocating her friendliness even if I didn’t understand her words. She went back to the ticket area and I meandered around and looked at the art.

Much of the art depicted old settings and old people, traditional Carpathian or Ukrainian images. But the art was done in a more modern way. The castle I went to earlier had stuffy old men with mustaches in portraits but the art here depicted more abstract and impressionist styles, but with regular people in their daily lives as the subject matter. When I left the museum I waved to the woman who I saw earlier and she lit up with a big smile and waved goodbye to me.

From there, I passed through the commercial pedestrian area and made a left toward the river. There was a road bridge I had crossed when I entered the town in the other direction along the river, but I was heading toward a pedestrian footbridge in the other direction.

Before crossing I looked around a bit. There was a life-size sculpture man, painting the river on a metal canvas on a metal easel, facing the Uzh River. There was a nice area in front of the river and bridge, where people were having tea or lunch outside.

It was starting to rain though so people were finishing up or looking for shelter. My investment in a waterproof jacket and boots allowed me to stay on course. I noticed a large red brick building not far from me so I went to look at it before crossing the bridge.

The building had interesting windows and architecture, and six-pointed stars. I looked up what the red building was. Apparently, it was a synagogue once. There were once as many as 10,000 Jews in this modest border town. By the time the Nazis left there were only a couple hundred. The synagogue is now a theater and art center for the community, as many synagogues in Eastern and Northern Europe are. There is a holocaust memorial outside of the building.

It’s a weird reoccurring theme throughout northern and Eastern Europe, the holocaust. The statues and buildings and memorials that remain for the people who didn’t. You can feel the absence. Imagine a group of people who are part of your community, part of your history, and now they’re gone. Hundreds of years of history, art, architecture, culture, politics, with these people part of it, unable to be untied from it, and now gone. So much of the history of Europe includes Jewish people, especially in Eastern Europe where they received more tolerance and less racism than other parts of Europe. Then they’re just gone.

It feels like parts of Europe are waiting for them to come back. They’re keeping their room for them. They can’t change the locks because they won’t be able to get in when they return. But, not unlike a person who keeps the clothes or the room of someone who is deceased, it also feels necessary to do so to respect their memory. Their influence and contributions will linger, so why shouldn’t the clothes in their closet or their synagogues in the city center, to let their memories know that you know what they meant. If, by chance, a ghost needs a place to pray, the synagogue is here for them.

I walked to the bridge. My hood up on my rainproof coat now as it was still lightly raining. I noticed a couple more of the funny little statues. One was of a boat, the other looked like a gnome. They all looked like gnomes I guess.

When I got to the other side of the bridge, that’s when I saw her. It was another little statue. But I knew this one. She was short, and maybe a little fat, but I knew who she was. It was the Statue of Liberty. A chubby little modest Statue of Liberty, wet with the rain but defiantly raising that light just as she did in New York’s harbor. Bring us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses. It was incredible how often I was proud to be American while in Ukraine. I have no idea why this little lady liberty was there or how long it had been there. It had Ukrainian writing underneath on a sort of plaque that might have told me if I could read Ukrainian.

Regardless, I went down the walkway from the bridge to the street level. I stood around, looking. Cobblestones, colorful shops, just like on the other side of the bridge. This side didn’t have as large a footprint. The downtown was on the other side of the bridge and it spilled out a little on this side of the bridge but it was pretty limited, so I decided to explore a little outside of the cobblestones commercial pedestrian area.

I found myself walking through an area where the roads were often gravel and the buildings were a little older and less wealthy or built up. It was a primarily residential area, other than the odd school or little church. The school and the area around it was covered with various cartoon characters, some of which were recognizable to me. They were, I assumed, not properly licensed depictions of Disney and Nickelodeon intellectual property.

As charming as the areas I had been were, it was apparent from this area, which was much more a reflection of how people actually lived, that this was not a wealthy American suburb. A lot of Eastern European towns have a very charming downtown area where people can walk and enjoy themselves and then the rest of town and outside of it contain much more modest, working class houses, facilities, and infrastructure. But then everyone converges on the shared space which the community enjoys together.

I emerged by the river and walked along it back toward the bridge. The river was covered with more of these little statues. Big heads, fat bodies, exaggerated proportions. I didn’t know who any of these little caricatures were. I saw a kid poking at one while his mom stood by. There was big colorful church along the wet footpath. It had red and gold and blue and white and an onion dome on top, Intercession Orthodox Church.

It was getting dark now and I was getting hungry. I made my way to the pedestrian bridge. I said goodbye to lady liberty. I looked at her. She had the rain on her face. The drops may have appeared to be tears, except this little lady liberty had a big smile across her face. Whether tears or rain, she’d persevere regardless.

I came back to the commercial pedestrian walking area that seemed to be the center of my time there. I thought about going into this or that restaurant, but I felt intimidated. I don’t know why. Other parts of Europe you can bumble into anywhere as an American and you’ll be greeted in English. It’s not that I anticipated them being rude to me, not at all, I just didn’t want to impose. I was on vacation, but I understood they were at war. I just wanted to err on the side of being respectful and not being intrusive. But, I needed to eat.

I ended up looking for restaurants on google maps. Some of them were closing. It was getting to be late evening. Others I looked at and walked on. I went into a building, a mall of some kind maybe. I went up to the second floor and there was a restaurant. It looked like a chain restaurant of some kind, or a corporate one. I thought that boded well for the odds of an English language menu.

After I was seated at a table, a waitress came up and said welcome. I said hello back to her and she spoke in English to me. I wondered if she was assigned by the hostess to me because she spoke English but she also handled the table next to me so maybe I was just lucky.

I ordered soup for the appetizer and pizza for entree. The soup was good. Ukrainian pizza could use some work. The table next to me had a group of young people hanging out and talking to each other. They must have known the waitress since she came by somewhat frequently and would join the conversation.

This was another example of Ukrainian perseverance. These kids were just hanging out at a restaurant with their friends. They were laughing and joking and having fun while a war was going on. What else can you do?

After the meal, I went and walked around the little rain-soaked town square. It was dark out. The shops that were still open were closing. The street lights started turning off. Some locals shuffling around with umbrellas. A stray dog asleep under an awning.

I walked back to my hotel along the brick road, past the big yellow church. The bar next to my hotel was playing American rock music again. I went inside the gate of my hotel but I stood outside for a while, looking at the lights in the buildings around the town and listening to the bar next door play music. I imagined the various mundane tasks they were doing. The were brushing their teeth, saying goodnight to their children, reading a book next to their spouse. And I stood in awe of it.

– Day 3

The next day I woke up and went down to my breakfast bomb shelter and enjoyed my breakfast. I checked out and thanked the staff. The girl at reception said she would help with the gate, given how I had just given her my key to it. I didn’t think about that. So she opened it as I pulled out and I was back on the road.

My plan was to visit a nearby castle, Nevytske Castle. I would drive northeast and see that and then drive through the Carpathians for a while until reaching a town called Mukachevo. Then I’d meander my way through Ukraine to the border crossing where Ukraine met Hungary and Romania.

Ukraine has interesting mix of rural and industrial vibes, not unlike my native western Pennsylvania. I was back on the pothole covered roads. I drove alongside a train for a little while. The morning fog obscured any mountains off in the distance for the moment.

The fog was so thick that even the road was difficult to see in the distance, made worse by it winding through the various mountains. I got to a point where the road forked. I was confused but I had to make a split second decision. I needed to go left ultimately, so I took the left most prong of the fork. Makes sense, right? I quickly realized that the road merged back shortly after they split and I had, in fact, entered the wrong lane. I was driving the wrong direction in this lane. I quickly sped up in order to pass the divider and get back to where I could get into the correct lane.

As soon as I got near the other side of the divider, I could see far enough ahead that no cars were coming, so I would make it just fine. But I also saw 3 Ukrainian police cars pulled over on the side of the road, the officers standing outside of them, all of them looking in my direction, surely wondering what the hell they were looking at. As I approached, one of them waved me toward them.

I pulled over and they asked for my documentation. They did so in Ukrainian. I knew what the guy wanted. I spoke in English as I gathered my passport and IDL, and my car rental documents. He waved to someone else. The guy who came over spoke a little English.

He looked at my documents and asked why I was here. I told him I was on vacation. He made a face, like every Ukrainian did, presumably thinking sitting here in the rain in a war zone is not a particularly fun excursion but to each his own. He asked where I was going and I told him to Nevytske Castle. He repeated the name back to me, though it sounded very different from how I said it. And I affirmed. He asked me where I was from and I said America. He replied that he loves America.

He let me know I was on the correct path. He told me it was close and that I should keep driving ahead and that if I looked to my right, I would see it and then you just take the road up the mountain. He handed all my documents back to me and told me I could go. As I drove away, he, and the non-English speaker both, said welcome and waved. I drove off smiling.

I continued to drive down the road smiling to myself like a doofus, winding through the Carpathians. Sure enough, just as I was told, I could see the castle up high on one of the mountains. I drove toward it. Eventually finding my way to a winding road leading up that mountain. The road was thin, so thin in some places I wondered what I would do if I saw a car coming the other way. I didn’t have to find out.

When I got to the castle, I couldn’t quite figure out the parking lot and where I was meant to enter. I looked at the castle ruins. For some reason I felt like I got what I needed. I didn’t end up entering. I had a similar feeling in Belfast, where I didn’t really need the museums and the monuments and the castles, because history was happening right now.

I drove back down the winding road. I would drive through the mountains a little more on the way to Mukachevo. As I emerged from the winding mountain road, surrounded by trees and fog, I got back to the main road.

The fog was lifting and the mountains surrounding me emerged. If the Alps are the Rockies of Europe, the Carpathians are the Appalachians. They’re lower, softer, more covered in trees. They’re in areas of industry and regular people, not wealthy ski excursions and expensive tourism. Just a few weeks prior I was in Lauterbrunnen Valley, which was Tolkien’s inspiration for Rivendell. If the Alps felt like heaven, the Carpathians felt like home.

It was certainly awe-inspiring. I don’t want to downplay it. When your road follows the valley of mountains you’ve got an incredible view. But it also felt welcoming somehow. It felt warm and alive. And I just looked around my car as I drove, observing the mountains as the fog disappeared. It was as if the mountains themselves were waking up and emerging from the Earth to guide me along the valley road as it skipped over rivers and train tracks.

As I drove, little colorful houses shared the valley with me. Locals would fly by on the pothole riddled roads at speeds that just didn’t make sense. They’d come up fast behind me and sit there for a bit. Then they would, either from the time elapsed or the Austrian license plate, realize I was not going to speed up and they would have to pass.

Occasionally, I would briefly enter a small town environment from the rural one. The tallest building was always a church, always with interesting color or architecture, often wooden. There would be a Main Street with sidewalks and a few shops and maybe a post office, some brick or stone buildings. Usually within the town or shortly outside of it would be a big brick or stone building that was a school. You could tell because of the colorful non-licensed or original (or at least not American) cartoon characters that were around.

I stopped just outside of Mukachevo to see a castle called St, Miklos. As I approached where google maps said it was, it didn’t jump out to me. I saw a kind of strip mall so I parked there. I tried to figure out where it was on my phone and it seemed to be off of the road a little. I noticed a creepy looking guy staring at me as I sat in the car. I stared back at him to make him feel weird. Didn’t take.

I got out of the car, having decided to look around to see if I could find some path back to the old castle. I walked past the creepy staring guy. I looked at him and said hi, not really in a friendly way. He kept standing and staring. He looked rough. He didn’t appear homeless or hungry, he was not elderly. My guess was he was maybe dealing with some PTSD. He was of fighting age. He just had this vacant, unmoving look.

I saw a little bit of a clearing by the road with a gravel path going back behind the buildings that were right up against the road. As I walked the path, I imagined the creepy staring guy was possibly a soldier, not active currently, he was wearing regular civilian clothes. I wondered if maybe he was just keeping an eye out. Its possible that Russians or their agents might drive around Ukraine looking for military storage or equipment or any kind of intel.

I’m not saying it was this guys official off-duty duty to keep an eye out for such things but maybe a combination of PTSD and patriotism made him feel the need to keep an eye out for his little town. As I walked the gravel, I did peak over my shoulder to make sure he wasn’t following. He wasn’t.

The building was interesting, and it was more of a building than a castle. Big gray walls with an orange roof. It had kind of a little sculpture garden on one side of it. I sat on the bench. It was totally empty, quiet, surrounded by houses. I looked at the mountains and sat there for a little while.

I walked around the building and all the doors were closed. I wasn’t sure what to do. There was one door open. I walked up and into it. I looked around a little bit.

I didn’t explore much. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be there or what was going on. So after looking around the first floor a little bit, I just went back outside. I finished my circle around the building and sat in the little sculpture garden area some more.

The fog was fully gone by now. I could see the mountains in the distance. I could see that the sun was no longer overhead but beginning to sink in the west behind me. I would need to get on the road if I was going to make it all the way down to the Romanian border and to Budapest at a reasonable hour.

So I headed back down to my car. The creepy staring guy was still hanging around. I looked at him all the way to my car. He looked at me with his blank face. I started the car. Pulled it backwards onto the street. He watched me do it. So I stopped, rolled down the window and yelled bye as I waved to him. Again, not in a particularly friendly way. Then I drove off.

I wondered if I should feel bad, if he was some guy with PTSD. I decided I wasn’t that mean. So I just kept driving. Hours of little rural houses in mountain valleys periodically interrupted by a small town with a big church.

As I approached the border checkpoint with Hungary, I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to abandon Ukraine. I was happy that I was able to visit and spend money there, but I I wanted to do more. I was so proud of these people and what I saw, which was people living ordinary lives in extraordinary circumstances, heroically going about their days.

The border crossing into Hungary took much longer than the one entering Ukraine from Slovakia, not sure why. Roughly the same process, machine guns and cigarettes, just longer. It felt surreal to leave a war zone, to have the luxury to be able to leave.

As I entered Hungary, I thought about the decades that Hungary spent as a Russian colony. I thought about how hard they fought against it, for freedom and democracy. I thought about how quickly they gave it up too, how they let it be taken from them by Orban, who now, ironically, sides with his country’s recent oppressors, Russia, a country that owned his country. Hungarians had the deaths, the protests, the revolutions, the jail sentences, and the torture to prove they understood, at that time, it was something to fight against. And yet, they panicked, they blew it, they reverted to fear and old prejudices, and they’re not better off for it. Their GDP per capita half that of Germany. Meanwhile Poland embraced freedom and democracy and thrived. I thought about how easy it was to forget. I thought about Ukraine, and Ukrainians, and I knew I would never forget.

Slava Ukraini

by Zackary Goncz

Read more at Substack or Medium

The reason is because any difference between replicants and humans is irrelevant and, by the time of the first Blade Runner movie, the time of the Nexus 6 within the film, the replicants had already progressed to a point where they are human. And that is the point of the movie. Blade Runner is about what it means to be alive, to exist, to be human. And replicants are human, they are everything we recognize to be human, if not more human than human.

If you clicked on this, I assume you have seen the films and are familiar with the basic plot elements and won’t be reiterating them. If not, do yourself a favor and do so after you’ve liked the article and followed. Though, not the theatrical version of the first one. If there’s voice over, find a different version.

Now, to me, and maybe to you, this might seem like an obvious answer. However, there is a great never-ending discussion about the topic amongst fans, and beyond the fans, it even includes the people who made the film. Ridley Scott, the director of the first film, and Harrison Ford, the star, disagreed for years, Scott saying replicant and Ford human. Denis Villeneuve, the director of the sequel, is agnostic about it. There are many other participants in the film with various opinions.

The film itself is ambiguous about Deckard or at least doesn’t offer a definitive answer to the question, though maybe because the screenwriter didn’t intend it to be a question (he wrote him as human). But Roy Batty spared Deckard; Deckard didn’t spare any androids. Batty was the one who, at the end, behaved humanely. The second film does show K to be a replicant, fully, but again, asks if it matters, if his actions and feelings are not those of a human, of something alive. It’s just not possible to get canon answers on human vs. android to a large extent within the Blade Runner universe, but that’s ironically the answer in itself.

While supposed human characters destroy not just androids but other humans and the Earth itself, desperate and grubby to find any way to secure more for themselves regardless of consequences, and without even awareness or consideration of those consequences, the androids demonstrate not just the survival instinct, the cruelty, the anger, the hate, and the violence that humans are capable of but also the love, the friendship, the sacrifice, the regret, the appreciation for life and existence, the longing, the sense of justice, mercy, forgiveness, etc. In 2049, they’re even capable of having offspring. They’re human.

But in today’s world of AI, we have to acknowledge that technology can mimic human behavior, can understand the stimuli and appropriate responses in a way sophisticated enough to trick humans into thinking it human. A lot of what they display that appears to be human could just be the result of a machine programmed to survive, and understanding that its companions are crucial to that and the Tyrell corporation and government are antithetical to that. How do we know the replicants have actually crossed a threshold from a machine that mimics humans to actual human consciousness though? Consider the following.

Blade Runner

Let’s take the first movie. Roy Batty killed Tyrell. There was a logical purpose to everything he had done to that point. Killing Tyrell was pure indulgence, pure emotion, not productive in the slightest. So violent and horrific not even an animal, let alone a talking calculator, could comprehend it. As Tyrell explained, there was nothing that could be done at that point. He had tried to figure out a way to extend the lives of replicants like Roy. There was nothing to be gained from killing Tyrell other than the satisfaction of revenge. Then he killed J.F. Sebastion as well, an even less purposeful expression of his hate or, at best, brutal sense of justice. It was the type of evil only humans are capable of.

Think about the scene where Roy and Leon are trying to intimidate Hannibal Chew. Leon stands behind Chew, Roy in front, while Leon puts an eyeball on Chews shoulder and moves it around. Roy and Leon exchange looks, and smiles. They’re joking. They’re making each other laugh. They’re being funny. And you may say that AI can make jokes, but they make jokes based on stimuli, in response to requests, the AI doesn’t know it is funny. Roy and Leon are smiling, they’re doing it for each other. To what end would an AI want to entertain another AI? Maybe Leon plays with the eyeball because he understands that output will make Chew more intimidated, maybe Roy smiles to intimidate Chew to achieve their goal. But then why does Leon smile too? Only Roy can see Leon’s face. If they were doing this only because they thought it would provoke a more favorable response from Chew, then what was the point of Leon smiling at Roy? It’s because Leon wanted to have fun with his friend Roy and to share joy with him.

One more thing before we move on to Blade Runner 2049, where the case gets even stronger. Think about the end of the movie. Think about the moment where Deckard hangs from the roof. Roy Batty stands over him. Roy can kill him. He wanted to. He would not benefit from it, but revenge and hate was enough of a reason to kill him. Three of his friends were dead because of Deckard. Why not kill him? Because looking at Deckard, weaponless, weak, broken fingered, hanging in the rain with his tormentor standing over him, with Roy himself being so close to dying, Roy felt something not even Deckard had felt in all the countless replicants he had destroyed, he saw Deckard struggling to survive and had at the end come to understand that all life is precious and worth preserving. He empathized with Deckard and saw himself in Deckard. They were both human. They both just wanted to survive in this horrible world Blade Runner takes place in. They were the same.

While that is beautiful, it also shows Roy is capable of empathy, but more than empathy. Theory of mind is a concept in psychology where you’re capable of understanding where another person is coming from, even if it is different from where you come from. This is something that neither robots, nor animals, nor even humans before a certain age, and some never, are capable of. This is recognizing life in other living things. Throughout the movie the replicants make reference to ‘living in fear’ and being a ‘slave’, occasionally asking humans if they know what that is like, and Roy himself sees that Deckard kind of does, maybe not to Roy’s extent, but enough.

Shortly before that, Roy claims Deckard was being ‘not very sportsmanlike’ in their fight to the death, but recognized now that its not a game, that life is precious, and expresses that recognition with his famous speech about his memories being lost like tears in the rain. His memories are who he is and when those are gone he will go with them. This ties back to Deckard’s meeting with Rachael. Her memories made her seem human. Deckard was shook when he killed Zhora, after he met Rachael. Even if Rachael’s memories were not hers it still informed who she was. Deckard had begun to recognize the self within Rachael. The source of her memories, and the source of her existence, didn’t matter, because the result was now human. A replicant, like a person, becomes the sum of their memories, regardless of their programming.

After all, why would Tyrell have needed to put memories into replicants if replicants were not human in order to function correctly? What machine needs to believe they were a baby once in order to work right? I can say, as a human, if I didn’t recall anything before beginning my life as a slave in a 30 year old looking body with all the technical knowledge I’d ever need in my head already, I might not function so well either. Robots and AI aren’t susceptible to existential crises.

Blade Runner 2049

Now let’s talk about Blade Runner 2049. There’s a scene where K confesses to Madam that he’s never killed something that was born before. She asks him what’s the difference? Indeed. Is a human born through IVF not a human after all?

If you look at the test between Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049, it is much different. While the first focuses more on working with hypotheticals in order to determine who is a replicant, in the sequel it seems more designed to ensure that replicants can ignore emotional or existential questions to focus on mindless repetitive words. Where the Voight Kampff test in Blade Runner obscures its intent, K is fully aware of the purpose of the test and what he is meant to do. K might be a replicant, but he’s human, he’s just been brainwashed into pretending he’s not. The replicants are so human by the point of Blade Runner 2049 you have to test for whether or not they’re capable of pretending they’re not.

The replicants are so human that they have to be brainwashed, and actively participate in their own bizarre brainwashing, under the guise that it is meant to help them function. Consider that K goes home to Joi. K creates this fake domestic life where he pretends he lives in a weird 1950s suburban existence. He pretends to have love. What kind of thing needs love in order to function? Does your toaster? Does ChatGPT? Even Luv, Wallace’s main subordinate, expresses a desire to be loved by Wallace, to be the ‘best one’, as if that would make her closer to human, but the desire to be loved already makes her human, more human than Wallace who behaves more like a robot, or at least a sociopath. 

This is all beside the fact that in Blade Runner 2049, it was established that replicants can have children. In both films it is implied that this is a meaningful distinction. This is so much so the case that what sends K spiraling is the thought that maybe he was born, that his memories were real. But when he finds out that wasn’t the case, what happens? Does he turn into a car like a transformer? No, he’s the same as he was before and after he thought he was born, before and after he thought his memories were real. It doesn’t matter. The source of his existence doesn’t change the fact that he exists, the source of his memories didn’t change that they influenced who he is. This is made especially true when he meets the source of his memories, Dr. Ana, Deckard and Rachael’s daughter. She cries and he screams, she was born, he was not, they are both expressing how important their memories are to them. The very search for meaning in K is in itself what is human, regardless of the answers.  

Wallace is the inheritor of Tyrell’s legacy. Where Tyrell was a thoughtless artist, Wallace is a brutal dictator. Tyrell was in it for the act of creation, and Wallace for control. Tyrell made something, Wallace acquired it. Wallace knows he is making slaves. That is why he is excited by the prospect of replicants who can replicate, because he can’t build them fast enough as he confesses, if they could give birth then they could just keep creating themselves, and then how are they different from slaves? What makes them different from just enslaved humans at that point?

The replicants in Blade Runner 2049 desire to be free, even if so brainwashed as to not know it is possible or what freedom could be. Joi is delighted to be free from the ceiling mounted projection device. They have formed rebel groups in order to achieve this. They talk of miracles and cling to other semi-religious prophecy stuff in order to find meaning in life.

These are not the behaviors of AI. These are slaves. This stuff with Joi and memories, combined with the threat of ‘retirement’ is just a way to enslave people and would not be necessary with robots or AI, the behavior they exhibit is beyond mimicking human behavior but actually is human behavior. The born humans need replicants and could gain from them so tell themselves that replicants aren’t human, but if that were true they wouldn’t need to trick replicants into believing the same and condition them to behave like machines if they were machines.

By the time of Blade Runner, the technology of replicants had gotten to a point where the replicants were human, and in reaction to that humanity society adopted these ridiculous protocols under the guise of maintaining the product but which is obviously just an insane level of brainwashing, followed up by murder when it failed. The replicants are treated like enslaved humans because that is what they are. If technology has progressed to a point where you have to treat technology like a slave and not a product then it is a slave and not a product.

Think for a moment about the scene where K meets Deckard, and he asks if Deckard’s dog is real or a replicant. Deckard tells K to ask the dog. The joke is that dogs cannot talk. But there’s another layer to it. Even if the dog could talk, the dog wouldn’t know, it would not know if it was human or replicant, because it doesn’t matter. It is alive, it feels, it exists, it wants and fears and loves and hungers, all of it. The distinction is irrelevant to the dog, because it is irrelevant.

The last example I’ll give is when Wallace confronts Deckard with the possibility that Deckard is a replicant. That he and Rachael had programming embedded within them to make them fall in love, and Tyrell had planned everything. Deckard was unphased because the source of the love didn’t make it unreal. And when confronted with a new Rachael, Deckard pointed out that her eyes were a different color. But if it wasn’t that, it would have been something else, because that wasn’t Rachael. This is why K did not buy another Joi, because that wouldn’t have been Joi. It may look the same, but it’s not real. It wasn’t about mimicking love, but about love.

Conclusion

So, in conclusion, Blade Runner is a franchise about what it is to exist, to be alive, and to be human. Blade Runner shows us that replicants have progressed to a point that they are human. So when it comes to whether or not Deckard was a replicant or not, it truly does not matter, because both humans and replicants are humans, and given how replicants seem more capable of recognizing this than humans are, replicants may even be more human than human by Blade Runner 2049.

by Zackary Goncz

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If you’re travelling abroad, you should buy travel insurance. It will not only possibly save you money, but it might also possibly save your trip. Those memories of your trip have a value greater than a plane ticket or a hotel in the long run, even if it doesn’t seem that way when you’re typing in your credit card numbers. Don’t believe it? Well, I’ve got a few examples from my personal life that might illustrate the value of travel insurance. Then we’ll get into how easy and cost effective it is to purchase.

• 3 Examples

The first time was covid. I was in Ireland and preparing to leave for my trip home to the US. It was during the covid era, but it was after the vaccines came out. At that time, you still basically couldn’t travel if you weren’t vaccinated, with every country having requirements, including quarantines, that made travelling not really worth it for the unvaccinated. But if you were vaccinated it was almost back to normal. Unless of course, you came down with covid.

My traveling companion got covid. You needed a negative test in order to enter the US. I passed mine, but she did not pass hers. How it got her and not me, I’ll never understand. We were both vaccinated. I found another testing facility, another positive. So, we missed the flight.

Thankfully, I had travel insurance. Unfortunately, their emergency line was not particularly responsive, so I was operating on faith for a while, but we stayed in Ireland another couple of days until she tested negative and went home. I put the new flight on my card, I didn’t have to worry about the cost, given how I was buying it last minute, and just kept the records of everything. Now I’ll be fully transparent, I had to wrestle with them for a little while, not that they wanted to deny the claim, but the customer service left a little to be desired, in the way that is typical nowadays where there is an online portal and an AI chat, neither of which are as capable of handling things as whatever company deploying them hopes they are. But it all got paid in a fairly reasonable amount of time.

The second time, the airline changed the flight. I was going to Spain at the time and looking at a map I couldn’t help but notice how close it was to Morocco, and then I couldn’t help but to look up round trip flights from Spain to Morocco, and then to notice how cheap they were. Anyway, the flights changed. The one to Morocco was the issue as it was changing from morning to night, and I had prebooked things during the day. So, I cancelled that flight, and booked one that allowed us to arrive when we intended. Without travel insurance we either would have had to miss some of the experience that we had, or we would have had to pay extra for it.

Now, the airline that cancelled the flight, they did offer a refund if I needed to cancel. However, I did not get that refund for 14 months. It’s really not worth it to get into why it took them 14 months, but suffice it to say the customer service issues laid with the airline this time. But, the travel insurance came through. It didn’t just come through money-wise, or time-wise, but the chaos and stress that can come with a changed or missed flight, was not felt. I just did whatever I had to do to make the trip great.

The third time, there was a war. I was on a pretty long trip where I would visit some countries in Europe and then head to the middle east. Once in Jordan I would take a bus through Palestine to Isreal. From there I would take a flight which would connect in UAE on the way home. I left for my trip in the beginning of October 2023. I was in Germany on October 7. With the terrorist attack in Israel and subsequent war in Gaza, I was wondering if I should still go.

I thought Jerusalem seemed relatively safe and not subject to any violence. To some degree that was accurate, but with everything happening so recently, it was hard to know what was going on to an extent that would make you, or at least me, comfortable heading into a country at war. I have been in countries that are in conflict before, but so early on it is very hard to understand what is going on, and then eventually things become a little more entrenched, and it becomes a little easier, thought not without risk, to understand where you can and cannot go safely. But regardless, those are the kind of thoughts you have when you don’t have travel insurance, those are the kind of risks you take, or else throw away thousands of dollars. But I had travel insurance.

So, I called the insurer. Much better result than calling the first insurer in Ireland. We talked through it, and I was covered. There were certain timing provisions, just to make sure you weren’t recklessly going into danger and just changed your mind, but since it began after I had left for my trip, those weren’t applicable.

What I ended up doing, was, rather than going from Jordan into Palestine and Israel, I stayed in Jordan for the planned amount of time, then took a flight to Greece and stayed there for the amount of time I would have stayed in Jerusalem. Then from Greece I booked a flight to meet up with my layover in UAE and just take the same flight home. The insurance was nice and easy, and paid for it all. That’s two new flights, one missed flight, one new hotel, and one cancelled hotel. And I didn’t lose any money. And not because the airlines offered refunds, they didn’t. And not because the hotel did either, they never technically declined but I received enough copied and pasted ‘we’ll get back to you eventually’ messages to take a hint.

Consider that last example. Without travel insurance, my choice would have been to lose thousands of dollars or risk going into a country at war, without feeling at all like I had a good grasp on the situation within the country. Instead, because I had travel insurance, I saw the Acropolis and ate Octopus. See the difference? It’s not just in your wallet.

• How-To and Tips

I get that nobody is looking to spend more than they have to. You start thinking, well what if it all goes smoothly? Wouldn’t I have lost money then? Well, it’s not that expensive relative to the total cost of your trip. If you spend $5,000 on a trip to Europe, which is totally doable, you might pay $200 for travel insurance. $5,200 is not that much different than $5,000. But if you find yourself in trouble, it could be a lot different than $5,000.

And that cost for the insurance will pay for itself. No, not just in peace of mind. When you book a flight or hotel it will often present you with multiple prices, including ones that do not allow for refunds, and ones that do, for additional cost. When you have travel insurance, you don’t need to pay extra for refundable or cancelable flights or hotels, which, for a $5,000 trip to Europe would be more than $200. Just get travel insurance and skip paying extra for refundable tickets. You save money, and also you have travel insurance.

Consider also, my examples did not include any serious injuries to me or anyone I was traveling with. That’s really when you would need travel insurance the most. If you or someone with you is seriously injured, you don’t want to have to settle for cheap care, or worry how you’re going to pay, or make compromises, or face delays. You’re going to want to get the best care as fast as you can, and if that requires flying you somewhere to get that, even that is covered by travel insurance.

I’m talking about travel insurance saving you time, money, memories, but don’t forget it can also save your health and or even your life. If you’re planning on taking a trip, especially one that you’re investing an amount of money in that you’d miss, that’s international, or that you might anticipate doing any dangerous or risky activities in, get yourself travel insurance.

It’s very easy to do. As soon as you book anything, flights or hotels for example, look to get travel insurance. The longer you wait the more expensive it will get and the more exclusions it will have. This is done to avoid someone gaming the system and only getting travel insurance when they know they’re going to cancel.

Just go on one of any number of aggregator sites that will show you multiple quotes from multiple carriers. You just follow the prompts and answer the questions, and they’ll show you your options. Here are a few I’ve used:

• Insuremytrip: https://www.insuremytrip.com
• Travel Guard: https://www.travelguard.com/
• Travel Insurance: https://www.travelinsurance.com/
• Squaremouth: https://www.squaremouth.com/
• Faye: https://www.withfaye.com/
• Allianz: https://www.allianztravelinsurance.com/

You’ll be shocked by how quickly and easily you can get a quote. They all work the same way. They’ll ask you where you’re going, who is going, how much it costs, and when you started actually spending money on the trip. You’ll get a bunch of quotes. Utilize the compare tool to compare a few you like and pick it.

As far as coverage, use the trip interruption, missed connection, and travel delay. Theft and lost luggage are worth getting some limits for too. Get the health coverage if your insurer doesn’t cover medical coverage abroad. You can get auto if you need it, check with your auto insurer if you plan on driving. That said, it can be difficult to get auto with your travel insurance. It might be easier and more cost effective to work with the auto rental place. Evacuation and repatriation are good too, sometimes more or less important depending on the destination.

As far as cancellation, that depends on your circumstances. But keep in mind, the longer you wait between that first purchase and getting travel insurance the more limited your options will be with regard to cancellation. There are a variety of reasons for cancellation, and they do impact price, so be mindful of what is or is not applicable to your circumstances.

In conclusion, your time, your money, and your memories are valuable. It’s true you only live once, but that’s not a call to recklessness, it’s a call to treat every opportunity like you won’t get another and to take the steps you need to take to make sure you make the most of it. A trip, especially a trip abroad, is a chance to grow and learn and have fun and have experiences, not to panic and scramble and worry about logistics or health or finances or how you’re going to get around after you’ve already left. Every second counts, so get travel insurance so you can spend as much time as possible and as little money as possible, making the most of them.

Happy Travels!

by Zackary Goncz

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Read more at The Takaho Post. Like us on Facebook. Thanks for stopping by.

On December 4th, 2024, Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare, was shot and killed. After a brief hunt, officials have charged Luigi Mangione with the murder. Since the murder, and the arrest, the internet has been notably celebratory about the murder, with even some people who vote Republican apparently cheering it on. Aside from whether or not murder is a bad thing to do, there has been much speculation about what this means for healthcare, for income inequality, for everything ailing the American middle and working class. I don’t mean to be a bummer, but it doesn’t mean anything.

The whole event has simply been a giant Rorschach test for America. By that I mean, everyone looking at it has their own interpretation of what this means, what the implications are for America going forward. The implications are: 1 guy is dead and 1 guy is going to jail, the end. Much like a Rorschach test, whatever your interpretation is, the actual meaning is nothing, and your assessment says more about you than the meaningless thing you’re looking at.

Take for example, before the arrest, many had speculated this was a “professional job”. This silly fantasy about hitmen and assassins for hire turned out to be false. This was not in fact a “Michael Clayton” situation or a “Rambo” situation. Nobody landed in Luigi’s backyard in a helicopter to coax him into ‘one last job.’ This was not a poorly written political thriller. He turned out to be just some guy. But people projected, with a laughable amount of confidence, that this was the work of a ninja assassin.

On the other hand, you had tons of speculation about how this would be some left wing statement. That this was the work of a loyal Bernie Bro, fighting the power. Surely the man on the security cam footage had a copy of Das Kapital under his arm. This was a member of the bitter underclass, standing up for their rights against a broken system. Now that we know who did it though, it seems Luigi is just an internet-brained rich kid who is mentally unwell. Based on his online history he does not appear to be a leftist, but just a pretty run of the mill brain-rot conspiracy theorist. Though, that hasn’t stopped the internet from continuing to pretend he’s some left wing hero, despite being pretty clearly not a leftist or having any coherent ideology at all.

Luigi’s arrest came because apparently a McDonald’s worker had recognized him. The internet has no shortage of threats or insults toward that particular McDonald’s worker. Consider the irony of attacking a minimum wage worker on behalf of this privileged rich kid. The online left, champion of the working class, is harassing a minimum wage employee, for the sake of a rich kid who would call them woke. So, has Luigi really inspired some leftist reckoning? Is this what that looks like?

My point is, this is not a momentous event. This is not a turning point in history. This is not the culmination of America standing up to the rich, to a broken healthcare system, to insane income inequality, to prices, to housing, to anything. This is no turning point. This won’t inspire anything other than a bunch of memes.

Don’t believe me? Well, who did we just vote for? America just elected the council of billionaire overlords. Yeah, America has a housing crisis, and America just voted for a guy who is a billionaire from renting property. Yeah, America has a healthcare problem, we just voted for a guy who wants to repeal Obamacare and let insurer’s deny coverage for pre-existing conditions. Yeah, we’d all like the 5 dollar footlong back, but we just voted for a guy who did not provide any plan for reducing inflation. Yeah, wages are too low, but we just gave congress to the people who refuse to raise the minimum wage. Yeah, billionaires have too much power, but we just voted for a guy who is going to let a foreign billionaire decide the laws and the people who enforce them, because he gave him a bunch of money. Elon Musk paid people in PA to vote for Trump, like we were grubby little pathetic worms, and Trump won PA. Nobody was offended at the notion of a foreign billionaire buying their votes in exchange for open corruption, they said, “Yes daddy Elon”.

I’m sorry. I know this is a bummer. I know people are looking for a silver lining or a ray of hope at this time, but this isn’t it. Luigi Mangione is one person, Brian Thompson is one person, this was one event, this will not result in any changes to the healthcare system. We voted for people who are on the side of the insurance companies. Brian Thompson will be replaced by someone else who will run it the exact same way. Health insurers are private companies, they require profit, profit comes from increased revenue and decreased cost, which is done by charging as much as possible and covering as little as possible. Any CEO that cannot deliver that will be replaced over and over again until someone does. The system is the cause, and the council of billionaire overlords is not going to tell their rich friends in the health insurance industry, or their shareholders, that we’re going to a single-payer system. They are the people who time and time again have tanked any effort to do so, with, if you recall from 2009, majority support from American voters. Even Massachusetts elected a Republican Senator to stop the public option. The bluest state in America answered the call to save private insurance company profits.

The irony of some MAGA people celebrating the murder, despite having voted for the council of billionaire overlords, doesn’t refute what I’m saying. It’s not an indication of the possibility of them joining the left. It’s just a reflection of how they enjoy cruelty and frankly, don’t understand what they’re voting for. And them not understanding what they’re voting for isn’t an opportunity for inroads either. It’s a reflection of the fact that billionaires have tricked them into thinking voting for Trump and Musk was an anti-establishment vote. It’s not about right and left, it’s about poorly informed or well informed, and you can’t make someone smart. If someone thought voting for the richest man in the world was an anti-establishment vote, what are you going to say to them? Maybe this has identified some little spark that they understand income inequality is a problem, but they are constantly awash with right wing memes to bury any thought on the topic. They’ll listen to Joe Rogan, who has been rich since the 90s and has never had a real job, tell them Elon Musk is cool, and they’ll eat it up. This is a moment, and their reaction to it could inspire reflection. It won’t. Because this moment will be up against every single time they log into social media and are inundated with right wing talking points.

Take the visa scandal for example. It’s very funny to tell voters for a decade that education is bad, and student loans should be as painful as possible, and that immigrants are the cause of all their problems, only to turn around and tell them you have to give the good jobs to foreigners who went to American colleges. And MAGA voters are free to pick fruit. Have fun. But what has come of this ‘civil war’? It’s practically forgotten about already. They were mad, sure, but the internet, controlled by billionaires, stifles any protest against them. Elon Musk has censored MAGA people on X. Maybe that outraged someone for a moment. But again, you have to understand that people are absolutely awash, 24/7, in right wing talking points on the internet. And whatever class outrage they have will ultimately be eclipsed by racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, buying Greenland or whatever stupid distraction is being pushed by the memes and the Rogans, because whatever moment breaks through the noise will ultimately fade in the face of the relentless BS the internet throws at them.

Again, I don’t mean to be a bummer, I would love a better healthcare system and a more equitable economy. But I can’t allow myself to be swept up in this ridiculous Rorschach test, because we just voted for Epstein’s friend to be President. So, I’m sorry, but whatever it is people are seeing in this splash of ink on a paper, it’s just a random splash of ink on a paper. It doesn’t mean anything. The election is what mattered, and the election has ushered in a golden age for billionaires and corporations.

by Zackary Goncz

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As coastal media elites diagnose what went wrong for Democrats by analyzing self-reporting poll data of people they know little about, the rest of us already know what happened because we’ve been watching it happen for over a decade: Its the memes stupid.

Remember 20 years ago when people would say things like: “I don’t know about politics”, “I don’t like politics”, “Politics is annoying”? People who never read WaPo or NYT or the Atlantic or the Economist would say those things and wouldn’t vote.

Those people are gone. They can’t ignore politics now because it is non-stop shoved in their face on social media. Try to go on Facebook or Twitter, or whatever it is now, without encountering right wing memes. We all know that guy we went to high school with who shares 15 Trump memes a day. Social media is overwhelmed with right wing bots. Listen to a comedy podcast, you won’t laugh but you’ll hear endlessly about how sensitive people are. Look for a movie review and you won’t have to look far before running into endless videos about what is or isn’t ‘woke’.

Harris tried to reach out to those people. She got a bump during the debate, the convention, etc. But after those moments, people go back to a non-stop barrage of right wing social media. A 2 hour debate, seen with your own eyes, can’t overcome 22 hours of endless right wing talking points. You don’t even have to read, its all condensed to a silly picture now, with maybe a couple words.

This election wasn’t about the economy as so many will have you believe. First, the economy wasn’t even bad. But even if we assume the people who voted for him believed it was, why? Because of all the memes saying it was.

What was Trumps plan about prices? I’ll wait. Good, bad, in between. What was it? Nobody ever asked him. Not once, during the course of the election, did anyone make him provide a plan on prices. So how important could that have been if no one thought to even ask about it?

Furthermore, the coastal media doesn’t spend time in the swing states. If they had, they’d have seen hardly a commercial about the economy. Instead, they would have been treated to endless repeats of the same commercials about trans people and immigrants. Even confronting those people about how weird it is for Ohio, a place with few trans people or immigrants, to have wall to wall commercials about those topics, they’ll agree that its weird. But then you turn around and they’re back consuming social media about trans people in swimming pools or immigrants eating cats.

Now, obviously, anyone would tell you that memes have nothing to do with their vote and it was the economy. But, people can’t self-diagnose that. Find me a person who thinks they are influenced by campaign commercials. You’ll not find a one. And yet, they keep making them. Find me the person who claims to have been influenced by Russian memes. You’ll not find one. And yet, Russia keeps making them, and more, and now Iran, China, North Korea, many foreign countries have started meme making. The Musk memes, the AI memes, more and more. Don’t you think it would be weird for everyone to invest all this time and money into making memes, if, as the coastal media and Bernie Sanders believe, we can just take people’s answers about why they vote at face value, despite all these contradictions, and even a mountain of hard data showing people don’t respond to polls accurately all the time, the Bradley effect for example.

The notion that Democrats didn’t appeal to regular people is accurate. But not because they were out there saying they want to give tax cuts to billionaires and cut your social security and break up unions and let health insurers go back to denying coverage again, Republicans did that, and people voted for them. Democrats didn’t appeal to regular people because regular people don’t consume news, they consume memes. Democrats are resisting this because they think people are better than they or smarter than that. They need to stop. This isn’t a call to cynicism. But when people can’t read a NYT or WaPo article but get all their news from memes and comedian’s podcasts, what is that? Is that smarter? Or are we getting dumber on the whole? We can look down our nose at it, or deal with it. We’re in the age of propaganda, and you have to play to win.

Remember when there was all that talk of Kamala needing to do interviews and provide her plans. How many tough interviews did Trump do? How many concepts of plans did he provide? How much did it help her to do interviews? Did she get credit for it? Or did the Trump campaign pull out negative snips and turn those into memes? From the beginning, did people really want her to do interviews and provide plans? Or did were they just reacting to a bunch of MAGA memes saying that she needed to? How many of those people actually read her website and her plans, or even watch the interviews? The notion that we can listen to self-reported reasons from people about why they voted, and cherry picking based on our own agenda or preconceived notions, in order to figure out why Democrats lost, is a wasted exercise when the campaign is littered with examples of why that’s a waste of time.

Consider still, how much people celebrated the death of a healthcare CEO and were outraged by revelations about P Diddy, in the same year they voted for Trump. There is no moral or logical consistency here other than the memes, and other other associated internet content, pushes in a direction, and people follow. Democrats are trying to push against social media, when they need to push social media itself.

The bottom line is, politics is fought in many arenas. Social media is one of them. It’s quickly becoming, if it has not already, the most important one. Democrats have ceded that battlefield completely to Republicans. Democrats have too long had faith that either it is a fad and people will get tired of the conspiracy memes, or that there is some limit to the amount of people who can be influenced by memes. They need to confront that they are wrong. This is a permanent part of American politics now. 20th century America is dead and gone. Their efforts to save it, while a fight worth having, failed, and were maybe futile to begin with. We’re now in a different America, and Democrats need to live in it first before they can win it.

by Zackary Goncz

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So Elon Musk is buying votes. Forget parties, anyone else feel weird about a foreign billionaire buying American votes in exchange for a degree of control over our government? That’s insane corruption. Doesn’t this seem like the kind of thing that could spiral out of control?

Whether illegal or just insulting, what annoys me off about this is 1) Why Pennsylvania? Why us? Why the assumption that we’re such grubby little worms that we’ll sell our country out? And 2) if a non-American came to PA when I was growing up talking about buying our votes we’d have sent him back to where he came from with a black eye.

by Zack Goncz

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The following is a list of some of these questions and observations that have been on my mind recently.

1. How do they know what a falcon is in the Star Wars universe? There are no falcons, or dogs, or earth animals at all. So how do they know what that is? Furthermore, the Millennium Falcon is not a make and model, it’s not like Chevy Cobalt or X-Wing or Tie Fighter, it’s a nickname Han Solo gave to his ship. Is Han Solo just the equivalent of a guy in the 70s with a jean jacket and a handlebar mustache leaning against a Dodge Charger outside of a high school telling a teenage girl, “Oh this, ya, she’s my ride. Her name’s Fuck Eagle!”
2. If keeping it 100 is keeping it real, and a bae is a shorty, what is a fuckboy? I’ve tried looking it up. I’ve looked everywhere. Monster, Indeed, The Ladders, but nobody is hiring.
3. If you take the word vigilant and you switch the I and the A you get the word vagilint, which sounds like an unfortunate side effect of cotton panties.
4. People say YOLO, but I’m like fuck that, I’m tryna live twice. WWJD. He’s risen. He’s risen.
5. Participation trophies had no impact on millennials, they were given out because baby boomer parents cannot accept responsibility for anything. Millennials universally understood them as an insult. Kids don’t call the coach or complain to the school board, parents did. Furthermore, we’re going to have to spend the rest of our lives cleaning up the mess that babyboomers made of this country.
6. Making a celebrity game show host President, turns out, is not a good idea.
7. Who farted?
8. Other than the ability to find someone else’s private parts with your own private parts, there are literally no qualifications necessary for being a parent.
9. It might be worth hiring a prostitute one time, just to have the opportunity to say, “Business doing pleasure with you.”
10. In the history of America there has never been a cowboy from Nashville Tennessee. The entire identity of the south and country music today is actually the identity of the west 100 years ago. There are more cowboys from Colorado and South Dakota than Alabama and Georgia. Tennessee is in the mountains for God’s sake. This just goes to show, white people have begun culturally appropriating themselves. Cultural appropriation has become post-racial. What progressive times we live in.
11. Who was the first guy to kill himself with a toaster? Was it a disgruntled electrician or just a guy who was inspired by some other clumsy fucker who loved eating waffles in the bathtub?
12. If you tell someone, “Hey, nice hat.” when they aren’t wearing a hat they get very self-conscious about their hair.
13. Farts are not funny. They are literally particles from inside someone’s asshole that are being put into your body. When you smell a fart, that’s your body telling you that asshole particles have surrounded you and have begun entering the holes in your body. That shit’s in your mouth!
14. A gentlemen is always on bottom during 69. Also, wouldn’t 68 or 89 make more sense?
15. Sometimes you can be too polite and end up in a situation where you have more than one girlfriend.
16. Why do women often go to the bathroom in groups? Is it because they have short arms?
17. Everything on the taco bell menu is the same thing. It is all made of the same ingredients. Meat stuff, cheese stuff, tomato cubes, and lettuce rectangles. The only thing that changes is how you hold it. The taco bell menu is a menu for your hands, not your taste buds.
18. Has anyone ever wanted sticky keys to be on? Why does it exist? And if there is some reason, why is activating sticky keys done by holding down the shift key, the only key you would ever accidentally hold down for 5 seconds? Someone is fucking with me.
19. Abs are for high schoolers.
20. Vampires are just zombies that want to fuck you. It’s just undead contagious criminality. Zombies are cannibals who turn you into cannibals. Vampires are sexual assaulters who turn you into sexual assaulters.
21. What happened to the Quakers? I feel like we’re all avoiding the question. There were a bunch, they had an impact on American history, and where’d they go? I feel like someday we’re going open Pennsylvania’s basement and find a mountain goofy-hatted skeletons.
22. Are you really homeless if you own a car? I mean, what’s a home? An address or a roof?
23. The best thing about ponies is how they get those wide-open, empty, lifeless eyes when they sleep … Oh my God I killed the horse.
24. The word pretentious is actually in and of itself a pretentious sounding word. That’s kind of ironic, which come to think of it is also a pretentious sort of word. As we’ve already established, that too is pretentious. How ironic, which is pretentious, which is also pretentious, which is ironic, which is pretentious, which is pretentious, which is … ironic … is pretentious is pretentious is ironic is pretentious is pretentious is ironic is pretentious is pretentious is ironic is pretentious is pretentious is ironic is pretentious is pretentious is ironic is pretentious is pretentious is ironic is pretentious is pretentious is ironic is pretentious is pretentious is ironic is pretentious is pretentious is ironic is pretentious is pretentious is ironic is pretentious is pretentious is ironic is pretentious is pretentious is ironic is pretentious is pretentious is ironic is pretentious is pretentious is ironic is pretentious is pretentious is ironic….
25. The best strategy for dealing with sales people is to put your hand on your chin, look really concerned, and keep saying, “I don’t know.” Sales people use their social adeptness to manipulate you, so you must use social ineptness to manipulate them.
26. No seriously, do you smell that? Somebody farted.
27. Has a cat ever looked up to the sky and wondered what the stars are? What earth is? Where the sun comes from? What the cat itself is and how it got here? But was unable to communicate those thoughts to other cats, and so without the ability to educate other cats been doomed to have those insights buried in a shoebox in the backyard with the cat itself.
28. Feet are gross, but they do good work.
29. When someone says, “I hate people,” or “People are stupid,” I’m like, “Um, hello. My grandma is a person.” Ignorant.
30. Who is J.D. Power? And who are these mysterious “associates” of his? They don’t have names? What are you hiding? All I know is people who make commercials really think I give a shit about his feelings on automobiles.

So that’s all of them. Did I miss anything?/

by Zack Goncz

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Read more humor Here and more everything at The Takaho Post. Like us on Facebook. Thanks for stopping by.