Into the World: The Random Thoughts in My Mind

A new passport invites more travel, but is the world still friendly to travelers?

2026-04-20T08:08:00.000+02:00

For the frequent traveler, it is a once-per-decade ritual. Visit the nearest embassy or consulate in whatever country he happens to reside in at the time, and come out with a brand-new booklet ready for entry and exit stamps. It is almost a temporary reminder of patriotism: someone who intentionally left the homeland to roam the world, only to pledge allegiance in the form of a bureaucratic procedure indispensable for a nomadic lifestyle in the modern world, where every country seems more sensitive to national security risks.

My latest iteration of the ritual took me for the very first time into the massive US Embassy in Malta, a gated compound next to the country's sole national park, almost comically big for a microstate of half a million people. If an embassy building is the physical manifestation of national power and prestige, one could certainly do worse than the US has done. While Malta has historically been strategic as an island that connects the eastern and western halves of the Mediterranean, as well as between Africa and Europe, it is questionable whether its modern reincarnation as a tourist magnet deserves such a symbol.

But that doubt was, in some ways, quickly responded to when I was handed the new passport book. Its design had changed. While its pages had always contained symbols of Americana, ranging from the bald eagle to the Liberty Bell to the Constitution, now the symbolism has become even more apparent. The sturdy pages are now all full color, ensuring that anyone taking a casual glance at the pages (looking at you, bored customs officers at international airports) does not forget both the economic and diplomatic power of the US.

Perhaps it is that visual form of patriotism, or the fact that the pages remain blank save for those symbolic drawings, that the passport's recipient is forgiven for the excitement of getting on the road again, just to collect even more stamps and visas than the just-expired one. I might be ten years older than I was when I last became so excited, but with age comes even more determination to prove that the days of travel are not over. More responsibilities at work and less energy in the body do not signal a more sedentary lifestyle.

Reality, however, is not merciful for the US passport holder with itchy feet. What is now commonly termed the Third Persian Gulf War is cutting off the most frequently used route that connects Europe and Africa with Asia, all the while pushing up jet fuel costs that in turn increase flight prices. With global opinions of America at an all-time low as a result of a military conflict that its government consulted almost no one about but detrimentally affects almost everyone on the planet, those customs officers at airports probably are not going to be impressed by a few colorful symbols of Americana.

Indeed, as I continue to trek to more corners of the world, it has become wiser to hide my American background rather than flaunt it, keeping the passport as hidden as possible when there is no explicit need for official identity confirmations. Visiting the local embassy or consulate will feel ever more like a secret dash to finish some paperwork at a fortress under siege, rather than a moment of nationalistic pride in a foreign land. Wanting to travel more, I now "have" to go through with it, turning what may have been positive and spontaneous into an anxiety-filled obligation.

Unfortunately, none of us chooses where we are born and bred, owing our allegiances to family circumstances, socialization through local education, and pure luck. There is not a day during my travels that I do not remind myself of being blessed with a powerful passport that allows me to enter visa-free into so many countries with so few questions asked. Taking for granted the smoothness of crossing borders, complaining about the negativity with which many greet Americans, almost feels like a first-world problem that many fellow travelers have no luxury to worry about.

Moreover, as the US economy continues to outperform so many developed countries, availing myself to employement opportunities that require an American background and legal right to work has made traveling across the world financially easier as well. The US dollar may be devaluing against many other currencies, but in absolute terms, an American salary is growing so fast that local expenses, even when converted into the US dollar, seem so much cheaper, for the same quality, than anything that high-inflation America can offer. It is a trade-off that I can live with.

In an Age of Impeccable AI-Generated Content, to Err has Become Even More Human

2026-04-13T08:39:00.000+02:00

There is something deeply satisfying about finding typos and grammatical errors in articles from reputable newspapers like the New York Times or the Economist. The reader knows that these organizations employ dozens of dedicated editors to review, restructure, and polish pieces written by veteran journalists who themselves have years of experience checking on other people's work, not to mention degrees from prestigious academic programs specializing in exactly the types of writing they are paid to do. When readers can pick up what slips through these eyes and minds, they feel just a little bit like the pros' equals.

That satisfaction is all the more given how rare it has become. While not suggesting that top news organizations have embedded artificial intelligence (AI) in their everyday editorial process to save man-hours, AI has certainly become normalized among millions of citizen-journalists seeking to break the monopoly of the big names in providing information to the masses. Whether the motivation is to highlight niche issues that the big boys deem too insignificant to cover or to present non-mainstream ideologies through unique analyses of the same events, AI has become the guarantor of quality.

They certainly got the mechanics right. AI today is good enough to not hallucinate typos and grammatical errors, reducing the need for a professional editor to check first drafts. The result is social media feeds full of lengthy analyses, seemingly logical at first glance and professionally composed, despite the sheer variety of viewpoints on offer. By prompting chatbots to take on the professional journalist persona, even the most amateur writers have at their disposal the ability to turn their brain dumps into narrative copies. As more people jump on the bandwagon, machine-generated standardization prevails.

Never mind the extremism and falsehoods often overlooked and hidden under the flowy language. The bigger issue is trust. If the New York Times or the Economist can't even properly diagnose their (human) writing, aren't there more professional writers out there, even more professional than them? It sounds optimistic for those who believe in the equality and democratization of the loudspeaker, especially the digital sort. By undermining the traditional media gatekeepers as being late to the tech-centered world, many seek to take their business and undermine their credibility for fair and rigorous reporting.

Yet, in their flaws, the reputable organizations may actually be winning. As AI becomes prevalent, many express appreciation for the human touch. On LinkedIn, many complain about employers posting AI-generated job descriptions, using AI to filter resumes, evaluating candidates with AI interviews, and even sending out AI-written rejection letters. Not having a human even look at the application packages that many so carefully put together, understandably, is anger-inducing. The same can be said of the news. The value of information is at least partly reflected in the care of humans that went into it.

And what better way to show the presence of that human effort than showcasing a few errors that only humans can make? Not only do they stand out from the crowd of polished AI content, they also show that the writers and editors are relatable, perhaps rushing through copies on their way to the next assignment, or hunched over their desks, their overly caffinated minds shuffling through file after file in to-do lists. These relatable moments, prevalent in any office work beyond that in a newspaper office, creates the vulnerability that underpin trust, something AI can never replicate.

One day, when AI developers become less fixated with the goal of more efficient, more accurate, more perfect, they will reflect on what makes their models more loved among all the competitors that produce equally accurate and eloquent. It would be funny if the conclusion they reach, after product and market research involving many focus groups, that what attract users are not perfection but excusable flaws. The models may have small mistakes deliberately baked in, expressed with uncertainties rather than current AI's uninhibited (over)confidence, to become more likable.

Humans, even in the world of accurate digital databases, enjoy conversing with humans for information. And there is nothing more true than the fact that humans are fundamentally vulnerable to errors, emotionally disruptions, but also sympathy. Writing has always been the medium to channel those qualities, overtaken only in the most recent years by the advent of video-sharing. AI has disrupted just how effortlessly and quickly content can be generated through these mediums. But when our digital forums become inundated, those painstakingly slow but mistake-ladden manmade content will shine even brighter.

The Cognitive Dissonance of the International Traveler in the Age of Energy Crisis

2026-04-06T09:11:00.000+02:00

As the minutes tick away, the folks at the bus stop are getting jittery. Laughter and banter amongst family and friends gradually give way to silence, occasionally broken by a nervous tapping of a foot on concrete and a dismayed sigh. Otherwise, everyone looked in the same direction, the narrow paved road leading to the stop, the line of sight broken by a sudden curve against the tall trees across the street. Unable to see vehicles incoming more than a few seconds before the stop, no one dared look away and miss the arrival; their eyes intent on peering through the spring foliage for any glimpse of a bus livery.

On a weekday without productive work, I took a casual trip to Mdina, the old hilltop fortress that is traditionally the seat of power in Malta. Now a premier sight for the island, its car-free, narrow lanes were packed with tourists whose cameras busily snapped away at the centuries-old beige stone buildings. But just outside the fortress's main gate, just beyond the tranquility of the moat-turned-park, sheer chaos unfolds. Every bus that arrives is mobbed, the urgency of everyone to get on and get to their next destination illustrated by the complete disappearance of the common decency of lining up.

And if the impatience of those who get left behind by the buses filled to the rim is any illustration, clearly the capacity is not enough, even in the supposed "shoulder season" before northern Europeans arrive en masse in Malta for their summer vacation. Mdina remains one of the best served by the Maltese transport network. Frequent buses to Valletta and other cities, complemented by fleets of readily available taxis and rideshare vehicles, ensure that plenty can get off the hilltop quickly if they are willing to pay or wait. But if chaos prevails here, what about more remote villages and sights?

My mind can't help but wonder about the unfolding global energy crisis already entrenched by the prolonged war in the Middle East. As countries around the world ration and conserve fuel to ride out the crisis, the Maltese tourism industry cannot remain oblivious. Normally, cheap flight tickets from major European cities are bound to rise alongside jet fuel prices. And the islands' aging fleet of gasoline- and diesel-powered buses, already overstretched, will find themselves halted before electric-powered ones can replace them.

It is almost a dystopian choice for the tourism-dependent Maltese economy. Will the increasing cost of flying to Malta thin out the European crowds first, and buses become less crowded? Or will ground transport grind to a stop first, enlarging the tourist mobs that, by any objective definition, are already plenty large. While tour operators, restaurants, and hotel owners drown in the sorrow of empty seats and excess capacity, older Maltese may finally make the islands great again, as seen in the black-and-white photos of village streets lined with horse-drawn carriages that they so fondly share on social media.

Part of that dystopia is not just a ridiculously unrealistic belief that Malta can somehow return to a glorious past that is wholly unaligned with its present-day economic and demographic structures. More important is a continued cognitive dissonance that somehow Malta is wholly capable of being shielded from the wider issues highlighted by the energy crisis, whether it be through its island geography, a tradition of self-reliance, or some vaulted idea of the Maltese being culturally distinct, never mind the reliance on foreign workers and consumers.

Malta is certainly not alone in believing in its exceptionalism. As the war in the Middle East becomes entrenched, plenty of others have pointed to oil reserves, clean energy, domestic production, and sustainable credentials to project self-confidence for thriving in the new environment of energy shortage and high prices. Nothing proves the fragility of such arguments better than visuals of lost jobs, incomes, tempers, combined with crowds demanding answers for anger incited by their lowered quality of life and higher anxiety about their financial futures.

If anything, those who have the luxury of being impatient at a Maltese bus stop are the lucky ones. One day, they may look back at the spring of 2026, reminiscing about how cheap and easy it was to travel to a remote island. The idea of pushing themselves into overcrowded bus stops seems almost quaint when the energy-starved alternative is unemployment, rising grocery bills, and worst yet, the threat of annihilation in World War III. By then, everyone will have much more to worry about than how frequently the buses should come.

As the War in Iran Proves America's Weakness, the World Questions the Value of Western Unity

2026-03-30T09:15:00.000+02:00

In another war, by the third week, people will accept the routine of a new reality and will have moved on to something newer and more exciting. We cannot say the same about the so-called Third Persian Gulf War that is unfolding across a swath of the Middle East. The photos of residential compounds and civil infrastructure pummeled by bombs and missiles are getting as numbing to see as the growing statistics of casualties. But this war refuses to simply exist out of our minds: its consequences are too real and too close to be summarized as "someone else's problem."

The global anxiety goes beyond, but is reinforced by the frantic headlines. As a casual stock investor, I have seen prices tank by nearly 10% since the first shots were fired, with no prospect of losses recouped until a real prospect of a negotiated end becomes visible. Hundreds of millions around the world are even less fortunate. As oil reserves deplete and few tankers can get through the Strait of Hormuz to replenish, food and transport prices will continue rising, eating into the meagre earnings of the most impoverished and spreading hunger where it should have been a thing of the past.

But perhaps even more consequential in the long term is the more unpredictable world, as the old order of political stability guaranteed by American hegemony gives way to open defiance. The back-and-forth between President Trump and the wavering "allies" of America illustrates the almost real-time change well. In response to Trump's request that other nations send warships to help unblock Hormuz, none affirmed, with many openly stating that the war is not theirs to fight. Even those with the most to lose from American military disengagement (e.g., Japan and South Korea) have all but said "no."

Instead, we are seeing the continued growth of a collective backlash against Israel, even among the most ardent supporters of Trump and Western unity. Many, from the right-wing populists of the original Make America Great cohort, to the diplomats working hard to bring Iran and America back to the negotiating table, bluntly stated that this war is unnecessary, with the US spending its precious treasures and international goodwill on advancing Israeli national interests instead of American ones. With Israel accused of genocide, that is not a good look for the US government.

Yet, as discord within the so-called "Western camp," with the US-Israel axis on one side and everyone else on the other, continues to fester, the bigger danger lies in the lack of any viable replacement. NATO claims that even without American participation, it has enough military assets to defend its members and stave off aggressors like Russia. But would an America-less NATO be willing to put its soldiers on the line to police rogue states beyond the confines of Europe? The implicit negative to that question jitters nerves among American allies in the Middle East and Asia.

It might be ironic to see that the overexpansion of America could finally create conditions for what many people on the political right across the West desire: a more isolationist self-focus, revitalizing native cultures and peoples by extricating from non-Western matters and instead investing at home the assets currently earmarked for global intervention. Where does that leave the non-Western allies, though? Do they accommodate the decidedly self-interested, value-free international outlook of the Chinese, Indians, and Arabs? They may not have a choice but to when they have no Western support.

Or they could make a last-ditch attempt to keep America onside, seeing that no country can challenge its primacy even if it sinks deeper into an Iranian-made quagmire. Threatened by unfriendly, militarily capable neighbors, they can cling to the fading idea of Western unity, promising to invest heavily in America, increase their military spending by purchasing American weapons to show growing capabilities in self-defense, and deepen military ties with other Western countries. Will it be enough to keep America engaged and the West united? Only time can tell.

One thing is certain, however. The belief that Western unity is a bedrock of international stability and a foundation for greater prosperity has been shattered. Gulf states did not host American bases, buy American weapons, and use the US dollar for selling their oil so they can be bombed when the US goes to war. The US military machine has proved incapable of turning overwhelming force into a quick resolution without global economic calamity. When American military strength underpinning alliances proves not all-conquering, the very worth of being involved in the alliance is questioned.

As AI Data Annotation Democratizes Remote Work, Freelancers Become Commodified

2026-03-23T08:47:00.000+01:00

"I am so looking forward to the next batch!" More than a hundred similarly phrased messages lit up the Slack channel as faces from around the world chimed in with anticipation. I was in a powwow of AI annotation "experts," a collection of more than 300 freelancers, remotely hired and based, to work through a project evaluating the quality of a Large Language Model (LLM)'s different responses to given prompts. Over a little more than two days, the group of people who have (and will likely never) met in person powered through what is likely thousands of tasks.

Data annotation platforms are the shovel providers in the modern-day gold rush that is LLM development among major artificial intelligence (AI) companies. When millions of users around the world are impressed by the speed with which the likes of ChatGPT pump out eloquent answers to any question they ask, many are unaware of the human effort that goes into these chatbots' learning processes. Billionaires have been minted in companies that bring together humans who tediously label and correct machine-produced data so that LLMs can learn what is good and bad in their answers.

Today, I became one of those human laborers fiddling with the fruits of AI. In an age when outputs have increasingly become refined, annotators have to become more and more discerning. The many answers provided to the same question may sound the same, except for a missing disclaimer here or a subtle phrasing that might trigger negative emotions there. Even a thirty-minute session reviewing these similar responses can fry the mind. The wall of AI-generated text just feels all so the same in their linguistic usage and flow.

Yet, there is no denying that this tedious work could be a great economic equalizer. Remote work of the past has too often been associated with professional privilege. Those with unparalleled technical skills, like programmers, can take their laptops to the beach. Those with valuable personal connections can make phone calls from their yachts, connecting buyers and sellers to seemingly easy money from commissions. For "normal" people who are not smart or well-known enough, these are dreams to be had but cannot be fulfilled.

Labelling AI-generated data points seems to give the average Joe and Jane a way to live the digital nomad dream, too. Yes, evaluating a response to a prompt requires good reading comprehension skills in a particular language, but nothing beyond the means of someone who attended a few years of college. With languages such as English, French, and Arabic spoken in rich and poor countries alike, the need for a massive labor force in the short term, combined with the deep pockets of major AI firms, can finally put developed-world wages in the hands of developing-country folks with internet connections.

It is no wonder that the Slack channel fills with happy messages even when the work dries up, and no one knows whether the end client will pay for the next batch. The participants are high on the reality of chasing a remote-work dream, of a corporate democracy in which a farmer's son in Nigeria and someone in Silicon Valley can truly be treated as equals, even if equality only exists in the confines of a Slack channel. Labelling data might be tedious, but its operators participate in the bleeding edge of modern technology, despite having little technical education themselves.

But as the dream expands with the vision of borderless, tech-based meritocracy, can the dream chasers stop even briefly to consider the consequences? If annotating data is so easy, and the work is accessible to anyone anywhere with internet, why not hire the cheapest laborers out there? As "freelancing" becomes normalized, and people become enamored with the idea of productive work as clicking a few buttons while sitting at home, who'd still want to break a sweat commuting to the office and picking up a hoe on the farm?

The desirability of remote work, then, speeds up the commodification of labor. In the Slack channel of 300+ people, everyone is more or less nameless and replaceable. If one person is kicked out or separated, no one will know or care. But everyone knows that the channel is part of their dream of working from home forever. As AI becomes better and more people come to know about these opportunities, those in the channel will need to fight harder to stay in themselves and keep others out. When that day comes, looking forward to the next batch will sound more desperate than passionate.

Alysa Liu's Success is Another Shining Example of How Tiger Parenting Ultimately Fails Our Youths

2026-03-16T07:47:00.000+01:00

After Chinese-American figure skater Alysa Liu scored a memorable gold medal in the Milano Winter Olympics, more details are emerging in her underdog-to-winner life story. The world is slowly putting together the reasons behind the sudden retirement at age 16, after failing to medal in multiple world championships that she competed in, and her insistence that her return to the skating world would be entirely done in her own terms, skating when and how she feels, eating what she wants, and looking how she desires.

Sadly, the truth is turning out to be another one of those Asian tiger parent narratives that is slowly destroying the very fabric of Asian families through intergenerational conflict. In her various interviews in the days and weeks after her victory in Italy, Alysa spoke out about the absolute control her parents, coaches, and other stakeholders had over her athletic and personal life. By alluding to how she couldn't even drink water without permission, much less dictate the details of her skates, she made it clear that it isn't skating itself, but the authoritarianism over her relationship with it, that killed her passion.

In this emerging narrative, Alysa's dad, Arthur, has been transformed, however subtly, from a hero to a villain. He was supposed to be the embodiment of the American Dream: someone who had fled China in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989, settled in a land of freedom, and provided for a daughter who displayed her American patriotism by winning for the US. Her success is representative of the opportunities America provides for immigrants fleeing repressive homelands through meritocracy, as well as the talent and potential that only a free society can harness.

Instead, through Alysa, we are seeing that Arthur was, at the personal level, not so different from the country he fled from. Just as the Chinese government enforced a single vision of political orthodoxy that he opposed, he forced young Alysa to live through a single vision of skating orthodoxy that he enforced through controlling her everyday life. And just as the Chinese Communist Party opened fire on those who questioned how the country is run, Arthur killed off Alysa's routines that he believed were detrimental to her ultimate success on ice.

It is a case of "you can take a man out of China, but you cannot take China out of a man." It is all the more ironic that it came from a man who fought for a freer China, where each person has the agency to decide what to believe and how to act. Yet, within his own household, he denied those beliefs to his own daughter, coating the need to micromanage in the same paternalistic language of educating the next generation who don't yet know better, that the Chinese government used while gunning down students for their empty democratic ideals.

Alysa becomes all the more worthy of our celebration after knowing this personal background. Yes, her gold medal and technical excellence no doubt deserve our applause. But much more is the manner in which she returned. By living and then winning on truly her own terms, and then going on record to speak her mind and share her story without any inhibition, she is giving her dad and the tiger parenting style he represents a big middle finger. No wonder her coaches and parents have been largely silent and absent as she takes a victory lap in her hometown of Oakland and across major media outlets.

I really wish the parents of the many high schoolers I work with as an educational consultant see Alysa, not for the gold medal hanging around her neck, but for her story of winning through defiance. Passion, joy, and success in an endeavor, whether athletic or academic, come not from top-down force or control, but giving the individual the room for self-discovery. Alysa may have been put on ice by her parents and coaches as a child, but ultimately, without those few years away from ice to reconsider why she skates, she wouldn't have made it to where she is today.

The same logic works for any youngster. It is one thing to open the doors: trialing classes, buying instruments, and signing up for hobbies. But at some point, the parents need to let go and have the kids steer themselves. Many will deviate from the parental intention. Surely Arthur wasn't happy with Alysa's retirement at 16, too. But when those hobbies become the basis for lifelong passions and achievement, it will be much more meaningful than the secret resentment of "I did it because my parents wanted me to."

The Most Patient and the Strategic Local Strongmen Will Ultimately Win the Day in a Post-War Iran

2026-03-09T09:04:00.000+01:00

I'm in the midst of a lull in my main job of supporting high school students with college admissions, with last year's bunch nervously awaiting their results, while this year's haven't started brainstorming the essay topics. During the downtime, I had been partially consumed by a mobile game, in which the player is an independent trader in a galaxy in which the central authority collapsed, and a cult-like rebellion seeks to assert control. The player navigates the many lawless frontiers, visiting planets that are home to civilizations menaced by economic difficulties, civil conflict, or simply isolation from trading partners.

As the US and Israel drag the Middle East back into a regional war, the setting of the game is almost too close to reality. Like in the game, the erosion of central authority has opened up chaos, with regional military commanders acting independently to strike civilian targets across a slew of Arab neighbors. And like in the game, individual communities within Iran and beyond are faced with a new sense of uncertainty amidst Internet cutoffs, flight cancellations, and the potential of missiles and kamikaze drones destroying even the poshest residences of most cosmopolitan cities.

In the game, the solution to the issue is a rather simple one. Gather resources like metal and water wherever one comes across them in the galaxy. Build up one's transport, and find a home base that is safe from all the different violent actors. Making it big requires finding who is weaker, destroying them outright, and capturing their resources for one's own buildup. In a fractured Iran and the Middle East, the same logic could very much apply. With the global hegemon too busy bombing and likely to leave the locals on their own after (yet unclear) aims are achieved in the coming weeks, the aftermath will be messy.

Thankfully, no other region in the world is more prepared for this sort of upheaval. Many stateless but still powerful regional actors, like the Kurds, have navigated post-conflict chaos with deft, compromising and fighting when needed to advance their self-interest. Plenty of insiders from defeated past regimes, from the Ba'athists in Syria and Iraq, to the Taliban in Afghanistan, have found ways to get back into power by forming new alliances, rebuilding military strength, and waiting out the inevitable withdrawal of the Americans, who are too busy handling issues elsewhere.

They will certainly find plenty of safe shelters even if the bombs continue falling. Sure, the Israelis promised another 2,000 air strikes over Iran to take out high-value targets, but in a country of high mountains and population centers hosting a total of more than 90 million people, there are enough remote bunkers and crowded safe houses in dense towns to suit one's fancy. The best intelligence system and military-industrial complex cannot come up with sufficient information and firepower to truly "obliterate" a land of this size, no matter what Trump may say.

So, like the trader repairing his starship with looted resources, the players of the new chaos hide and bid their time. The idealists will take to the streets, calling for a new democratic regime of freedom and equality, forgetting that 15 years ago, their compatriots did the same across the Arab World, only to be disappointed by the outcomes of civil wars, new dictators, and unresolved economic malaise. There is no reason to believe an equivalent Iranian Spring will see anyone but the strongmen with guns, built up and hidden during the chaos, to emerge ultimately victorious.

As I got sucked into the mobile game, I started to see that success is layered, redefined at every phase, and needed to be sustained in the long term. Today's wins over rebels mean little when those victories do not accumulate into strategic positions that are left standing, stronger than ever, when the dust settles from the immediate military conflict. In my little corner of the galaxy, the visitors will always come, some friendly and others not so much, but eventually they leave, forcing the locals to pick up the pieces and rebuild by themselves.

Iranians of all shades and the various Arab countries that have been sucked into this ever-expanding war need to also be ready for that day. Safety can always be found even in an all-out war. Those who can find them, gather friends and resources, and patiently bid for the next opportunity to take control, through however ruthless means, will be left leading their peoples and shaping the next chapter of the region. Surely, they will gain the respect of the Americans, too. After all, Trump fights the weak, but balks at the strong.

Where is the Boundary Between Rustic and Dirty?

2026-03-02T08:44:00.000+01:00

"Napoli is a bit rough around the edges, but beneath the hassle and bustle is a vibrant city of good food and good people," so the many travel vloggers say about southern Italy's largest city. The disclaimer is highly warranted. After all, the city is known for having produced several well-known mafia groups that, in the decades past, managed to turn the city into a den of street crime. While northern Italy turned its historical and cultural sights into a tourist boom and endearing image of fashionability, Napoli was largely avoided despite its equally illustrious offerings.

Thankfully, as mafiosos now turn to cybercrime for a greater part of their incomes, the city is reportedly safer and finally getting its own share of international tourists. The classic view of Mount Vesuvius and the Mediterranean from the hills overlooking the port, combined with day trips to the well-preserved Roman ruins of Pompeii and the scenic Amalfi coast, used in countless movies, is proving to be enough of a draw that the lingering grittiness of its city center can no longer deter the adventurous. In response, many entrepreneurs, shopowners, and restaurateurs have jumped on the tourism bandwagon.

No doubt, many are mentally prepared for the "roughness around the edges," but seeing the physical manifestation of that euphemism can still be overwhelming. The city's stone-paved streets are strewn with garbage and excrement, much of which is from the legions of homeless occupying the sidewalks beneath centuries-old stone buildings. Public services seem to fall behind, as young street sweepers struggle against the mountains of trash, the stones paving the streets buckle under constant motor vehicle traffic, and their cracks fill with wastewater of all origins.

Amidst the smell of urine, walls full of graffiti, and the occasional used syringes on the ground, people of all skin colors sell all sorts of wares on the streets, ranging from cheap knick-knacks representing the city's culinary and soccer traditions, to knock-off handbags and sunglasses that can quickly be picked up and moved when the police patrol shows up. Vibrant? Sure. But the flabbergasted faces of foreign tourists that occasionally wander into their midst and stick out like sore thumbs illustrate that all this is unexpected, and not in a good way.

Many will come away from their encounters not with the impressions that Napoli would want from first-time visitors. Yes, they will talk in euphemisms about the energy of the city that is not often too polished. But underneath the cautiousness of the narrative, they would imply that the city, despite the gradual dissipation of the crime-ridden reputation, remains not for the faint-hearted. Experiencing the authenticity of everyday life in such a place requires overlooking so truly unsavory details, and many people would not be prepared.

Napoli is certainly not the only place that suffers from the affliction of negative impressions. Unfortunately, adventurous travelers remain a minority in the global tourism market. Many want to temporarily escape from the grittiness that already defines their everyday lives by seeing something beautiful, modern, and heartwarming. They want to feel safe, established through a well-structured and meticulously cleaned physical environment, since they already feel vulnerable enough being in places where they know little of the local language, culture, people, and customs.

Within this reality, getting visitors to accept straight-up dirtiness will appeal in the short term to an increasingly small group of the well-heeled, who are privileged enough to want to experience something disgusting because their own regular lives are already so polished. If Napoli and "rough-around-the-edges" places want to sustain an economic boom on the back of mass tourism, then it really needs to do better to clean up the streets of their various shock factors. Only then will the word of mouth bring in more visits, not turn them off.

In the department of historical and cultural beauty, every locale has plenty of competition, not just from places in the same country that provide similar offerings, but also from entirely different places worldwide that claim to be culturally "better," for lack of a better word. Napolitanos offer warmth, great food, and architectural heritage. But so do many other places. Why not really invest in giving the city a visual makeover so that there is minimal reason for the potential tourist to choose somewhere else instead?

In the Age of Vlogging for All, Journalist Visa No Longer Makes Sense

2026-02-23T07:58:00.000+01:00

The government signaled displeasure with the reporting by revoking the journalistic privilege of several correspondents...goes the typical back-and-forth between authoritarian regimes and critical (often Western) media outlets. Those revocations are based on a perhaps deliberately bureaucratic method in controlling access: the existence of the journalism visa in most jurisdictions. Foreigners working for major news brands are expected to self-identify as seeking to publish information. This is so that they do not bring their employers problems, while enabling local authorities to better track their whereabouts.

But the world has long since moved on from the days when traditional media outlets dictated what information people received and what they believed about the world around them. Self-publishing platforms emerged, first in the form of written blogs like this one and then visual social media platforms that turned casual vloggers into news sources. Their firsthand information can often buttress or debunk narratives peddled by traditional media or local authorities. Yet these individuals are not subject to journalist visas because many do what they do ostentatiously for recreational purposes.

Indeed, debunking and buttressing can often be done inadvertently. Malta is a case in point. Mainstream media and politicians never tire of pushing the message that the country's current economic boom hinges upon an entirely unsustainable upward trend in population growth and the accompanying increase in residences and cars, jamming roads and erasing its traditional idyllic lifestyle. Yet, just snapping a few pictures during hikes away from towns shows how devoid of people and manmade structures some parts of the country are.

If anything, some parts of the country have seen a shrinkage. Among its rugged, windblown coastline are many abandoned structures, some housing military personnel from World War II, others home to families tending to long-disappeared farms and ranches. Few tourists trek so far from population centers to gawk at these crumbling stone structures, meaning that many are actually in good enough condition to be restored for new inhabitants. Yet, no one is pushing for policies to populate what used to be, in the name of preserving at least some of these "traditional" parts of Malta against the population influx.

A few more journalists can subtly report that Malta's overcrowding may be due to bad planning that leads to unnecessarily high density in some parts and complete neglect in others. And they certainly do not need to do serious journalism requiring journalistic permission to make the message stick. All they need to do is take a few photos and post them to their personal social media accounts, casually captioning their hikes as personal activities being done outside their normally hectic schedule of interviews and writing.

And when enough journalists document their everyday lives where they are based, then the journalist visas will lose meaning. The line between a hired writer and a "citizen journalist" with a camera and a YouTube channel will blur as traditional media outlets further lose their monopoly on providing credible information to the masses. The masses, spoilt for even more choices on where to gather their information, will hopefully be forced to exit their echo chambers by coming across facts on the ground that differ from their perceptions and changing their minds gradually.

The authorities can cancel all the journalist visas and privileges they want. But particularly in a tourism-dependent economy like Malta, they have no choice but to let more people in as tourists and refrain from heavy-handed treatment of those publishing dissenting opinions about the country, to not scare off future arrivals. With freedom to travel, see, and record all the sights, even remote, less-visited ones, foreign tourists can become the guardians of freedom of speech, posting critical views with little repercussion.

Even the traditional media will benefit from the democratization of journalism. After all, why spend all the money sending journalists across the world and the hassle of applying for journalist visas, when all the reporting can be outsourced to those already on the ground, experiencing everyday life and motivated to document every aspect for all to see? By reaching out to citizen journalists and piecing together the right firsthand documentations, professional-level write-ups and news coverage can be created on the cheap.

Those Who Seek to Protect a Privilege Forgets That "Good" Can be Defined in Many Ways

2026-02-16T08:14:00.000+01:00

Outside the imposing, vertical stone walls that enclose the hilltop fortress jutting into the sea is another Valletta. There, the few tourists battle crumbling passageways hugging the rugged coastline, cold sweat breaking out as they come face to face with narrow paths where their feet are inches away from a steep drop into the raging ocean below. But they also come out into a small seaside community, where small fishing boats lie next to wooden houses and storage units, unchanged in decades. Families gather, surely away from their main inland houses, to barbecue, feed stray cats, and greet intrepid travelers passing by.

It is a different world from inside the wall, where, even in the chilly February winds, crowds throng expensive restaurants and bars, powering Malta's ever-vibrant tourist economy. For most visitors, the little community outside the wall is invisible, not worthy of their time, and even a bit unfortunate. So close to all the action, but just happened to be in the wrong place to enjoy the economic fruits of the city's success. Deserving of sympathy, the "outside-dwellers" may be. But no amount of the sliver of fleeting attention given changes the reality of being on the wrong side, doomed to failure.

That is a sort of condescending attitude reminiscent of so many other communities that never managed to access the inside of these walls. Despite the care Europe has shown toward illegal immigrants in the past, the days of unquestioned welcome are over, as even mainstream parties talk of the most expedient and humane ways to deport and prevent further arrivals. Even as Bad Bunny celebrated Latin American culture during the Super Bowl, America increasingly sees Spanish-speakers, even those with citizenship, as culturally alien.

Such a political trend is tantamount to complete acquiescence with keeping those inside and outside the walls permanently separate, with being on the inside no longer a goal to work toward through intelligence, diligence, and meritocracy, but a privilege secured through being on the right side across generations. The noble goals of putting the citizens, the natives, and certain social classes based on ethnic and cultural backgrounds first are shutting the few remaining gates linking the inside and the outside, preventing the interactions that create diversity and a more dynamic ecosystem for innovation.

Yet, a quick stroll outside the Valletta walls shows that, by barricading themselves on the other side, the "inside-dwellers" are missing out so much. The sea may rage, but the fertility of its fast currents creates bountiful breeding grounds for fish, attracting many eager to catch some dinner. The vertical cliffs into the sea even support dwellings carved into the centuries-old stones, no doubt offering unparalleled views of gorgeous sunsets. The increasing noise, commercialism, and homogeneity of the offerings that Valletta's streets offer are not found here.

Malta is no longer a secret to the well-heeled across Europe and the rest of the world. But even a short distance away from where the travelers congregate, secret spots of tranquility still exist. And perhaps that is an allegory for all the walls out there in the world. Drunken on privilege, those on the inside never have the time to reflect on what the outside has to offer. To protect their privilege, they need to focus on keeping the gates shut and the worlds separate. But just by encouraging themselves and others to go out to the other side, they might have the chance to scratch away the negative first impressions.

Because sometimes resources can be so well-hidden, enjoyed by so few, that they even elude the very definition of "resources" in the majority's way of thinking about what is useful. And just as a raging sea provides fish and the cliffs provide a soul-nourishing view, dropping the pretenses of what is good and beneficial may even offer a completely new way of living, grounded on rethinking what it really means to be privileged. And when the moment of eureka arrives, one would realize that those walls supposedly defending privilege actually form the outer limits of a prison, both mental and social.

To escape, we need to be quick. The outside of Valletta's walls can still be accessed by sets of nondescript stairs, but climbing out of most walls is not as easy. Getting out can mean social ostracization from friends and family members who are confused by the reasoning behind abandoning the "good" life. Laws will catch up, preventing interactions between those on the two sides, lest the renegade "inside-dweller" becomes an accomplice in the sinister plots of outsiders sneaking in. Before the gates completely close, minds need to be changed so that more are convinced that the gates should stay open.

Chongqing Shows the Pitfalls and Opportunities of a Social Media-Fueled Tourism Boom

2026-02-09T08:26:00.000+01:00

"Chongqing was cool, but after seeing all the social media posts about the city...something was just missing for me." The German guy I met at the hostel in Chengdu had this to say when I inquired about his impression of my next destination. Seeing the ambivalence on his face was a bit worrying. After all, like him and millions of others, I was drawn to visit the city because of viral online content. Youtubers gave the city monikers of the Cyberpunk City while vlogging about its dazzling nighttime views and mindblowing mountainside construction.

Influencers exaggerate for a piece of the increasingly hard-to-get commodity: the attention of the brainrot generation. Chongqing seems to fit the bill a bit too well. The visual impact it provides is almost designed for the age of Instagram-friendly tourism: heavy on sights, light on cultural substance. When the German guy elaborated on his love for the film industry and pulsating nightlife back home, I knew what the "something" he failed to find in Chongqing was the possibility of connecting with how locals live beyond the bright lights and tourists' cameras.

To them, the urban jungle is the platform for raising a family, developing a career, and fulfilling personal aspirations, but a tourism message about what the city looks like suppresses the cultural identity beyond what's visually appealing, making the citizens' lives invisible. A vicious cycle ensues, as those seeking cultural understanding head elsewhere, leaving the city more desperate to capture the crowds interested in confirming what they saw on social media. And for that purpose, I found Chongqing successful. It's still building ever more new "old streets," each more picturesque.

But as I snapped more pictures, I found myself asking whether I'd return to the city a second time. After all, more photo spots can come into existence, but the city only has so much space it can build. Each new spot for picture-taking cannot change the overall vibe of the city that's already so crowded and set in place. A new building here and there is not enticing enough to bring back the tourists who have already seen it a few years ago. Repeat customers will eventually need that "something" that defines the cultural heart of the city.

It isn't easy, especially for a city like Chongqing that remains little known among the non-Chinese beyond social media. The city is trying by tapping into the culinary tradition of hotpots, roadside noodles, and spicy everything. It's turning the mountainside from a locale into a way of life by getting people to look beyond the city into the surrounding nature of hardy villagers and monastic Buddhists making a life alongside vibrant cliffs. But when the first impression is so entrenched by social media, people won't be able to help tweak those experiences into something visually impactful, too.

The city has new museums and art exhibition centers by the dozen. Many are visually stunning, but what to fill on the inside remains to be seen. Whatever they may be, would true lovers of high culture pick Chongqing for a few days' visit when there are so many other cities around the world already well-established for their schedule of artistic events? Learning to jostle with the crowds snapping pictures of the cyberpunk view does not really square that well with the concept of high culture. Neither is learning to use a squat toilet in the most modern public bathrooms.

So Chongqing will struggle to attract repeat customers, especially the high-spending, high-cultured kind. But does that make the city's current tourism boom unsustainable? Perhaps not, if it doubles down on what it does well. After all, there are hundreds of millions of young people who have seen Chongqing's stunning cityscape, even within a few hours' flight time from the city. Many would like to see them in person. And like me, after seeing them for real, they'd say that the views are indeed worth seeing physically once in a lifetime and recommend others to visit.

Just keeping a steady stream of first-time visitors would keep Chongqing busy enough. The key to making mass tourism affordable for many more. The city already has some seriously affordable eats, public transport, and good lodging options, even in the city center. Next up is getting more cheap direct flights, visa-free entry options for people from more countries in Southeast Asia, and most importantly, making it easier for people to navigate the city, with the use of AI-enhanced translation software and information portals on how to use China's digital infrastructure, like QR code-based payments and ride-hailing. If social media-friendly is what they want, why not just double down on it?

What Does the Prevalence of Squat Toilets in China Says About Her Version of Modernity?

2026-02-04T16:40:00.000+01:00

For many people, a squat toilet represents backwardness. In the olden days, a hole in the floor opened up to a smelly cesspit, from which farmers shoveled excrement into their fields for free manure. Grimy public bathrooms in third-world countries are almost always portrayed by broken, dark squatters with flies buzzing above. In contrast, Japan, commonly portrayed as the pinnacle of advanced toilet culture, is represented by heated seats and remote-controlled bidets on sitters, with squating toilets (washiki or "Japanese-style" in the local parlance) relegated increasingly to the oldest houses and schools.

In some ways, China fits right into this global toilet narrative. Public bathrooms in rural areas and messy wet markets are still smelly, dark affairs. Rooms in the swankiest hotels advertise those high-tech Japanese toilet seats as a sign of luxury for those willing to spend. And even in mid-range hotels and apartments accessible to the majority of common people, squatters are increasingly a thing of the past, nostalgic for their memories of deceased grandparents and travels in a different century. Perhaps, as the country continues to develop, squatters will continue to disappear from the public eye.

That assumption, surprisingly, fell apart during my most recent visit to the country. Public bathrooms in train stations, airport terminals, and shopping malls constructed just a few years ago have chic decor, automated water, soap, and paper towel dispensers, as well as rows after rows of squat toilet stalls. But unlike the ones found in counterparts from decades past, these squatters are clean, bright, devoid of smells, and are branded by some of the world's biggest toilet makers. Rather than pushing squatters into the history books, China is singlehandedly getting toilet makers to see that they also belong in the 21st century.

As I frantically looked for the one sitter stall that is almost obligatorily available amidst the row of squatters, I found myself perplexed by the persistent belief in the squatter. To me, the squatter, from a practical point of view, had little advantage to speak of. Like me, a next generation of children, used to sitting on the toilet in their homes, are incapable of squatting on one when they are suddenly thrust into public. If China is to be more friendly toward foreigners, perhaps getting Westerners with traditionally no experience of squatting to start doing so is not a good start.

Yet, while looking for those hard-to-come-by sitters in public bathrooms, I soon started seeing some previously unconsidered benefits of squatters that may be perpetually relevant. For one thing, it is a good thing that many people are unaccustomed to squatting. In the smartphone age, people are prone to sitting for many more minutes on the toilet than is needed to expel whatever is in their intestines. But no one is comfortable enough to squat and play with their phones, so the squatting toilet opens up for the next person much faster than the sitting one, when both are available.

Moreover, modern porcelain squat toilets are much easier to keep clean than sitting ones. The squatter has a simple construction: grooves on the side to prevent shoes from slipping and a big opening in the middle for where the stuff drops. This simplicity means that the cleaning staff really just need a mop to wipe the floor around the porcelain and the grooves, and a toilet sponge to scrub the inside of the opening. Compare this to a sitting toilet, with hard-to-reach undersides and backsides that build up dust and molds. Keeping squatters just as clean as a sitter takes less energy and man-hours.

These two qualities matter in China's public spaces, with their extraordinary amount of foot traffic and usage from a population with different diets, bowel conditions, and attitudes toward keeping public facilities clean. With toilets constantly being damaged in the process, resorting to squatters is, logically, the most optimal way to ensure that the public bathrooms can be maintained in relatively good conditions with minimal labor costs. The sacrifices in comfort provided by the sitting toilet, in this context, can be overlooked, first by the bathrooms' operators, and then by the users themselves.

As the rest of the world moves relentlessly toward a world without squatters, China's insistence on giving them a place in new public spaces says something about the country's unique vision of modernity. It is in the quest for finding "good enough" functionality at scale while keeping operating costs low, a mantra that its businesses also take to bootstrapping startups and breeding indigenous IT innovation. For people who can all enjoy their sitting toilets at home and in high-end hotels, why not learn to distinguish individual luxuries with the needs of problem-solving at scale?

Grandpa's death reminds me of why sometimes, delayed gratification is not worth it

2026-01-20T13:25:00.081+01:00

The 30-year-old man in the black-and-white photo smiled at me, his happiness at perhaps his first time in Beijing for work still visible more than 60 years after the fact. Yet, moments later, I found myself ripping the beautifully preserved photo in half; the arbitrary split in the brittle paper ran through that very smile, a stark reminder of a sudden but entirely unceremonious goodbye. By the hundredth rip, I had become mechanical, pieces of old photos, alongside scraps of diary entries with neat handwriting and certifications of all kinds, so unemotionally falling into the black garbage bag below.

It has been mere days since I saw that same man, no longer smiling or 30, laboriously draw his last breath in a local hospital's ICU. I helped put his still-warm body into the body bag little past midnight, and two days later, helped to hoist his entirely stiff body into the casket. I watched that casket turn into ash in the cremation chamber, and lowered the box containing the remains under a freshly carved tombstone. Yet, it was not until I got back to the apartment unit that he spent his last decade of life in, ripping up those photos and papers, that it really hit me that he was gone.

It wasn't that I suddenly felt that somehow connected with him, for lack of more creative words. That'd be simply untrue. I never learned about the stories behind the photos I ripped up. As I spent years living across the world, I never had the opportunity to hear him out. But frankly, I wouldn't have paid attention anyway. His world would have been too different for me to relate to. I would have been too impatient to understand. And even if I did understand, the realities of China six decades ago would not have been all that relevant.

Instead, what hit me was just how fragile the concept of life is. Grandpa, in his own way, lived a full life, studied, worked, and played hard, while raising two children and taking care of family members close and far. Yet, as he turned to ash, I found memories of him to fade away just as quickly. A piece of Chinese history personalized into his career as a university professor disappeared with him, as he turns into a set of figures at the end: lived to 95, survived by two children, 50 days of hospitalization... The aftermath of an exciting life is clinical to the point of almost being inhuman, as we, the family members, take a bow and quickly move on with our lives.

Seeing Grandpa's half-ripped smile in the garbage bag, I can't help but imagine my own last days. All the stories of this blog, all the travel photos on my Facebook account, will just collect dust in a forgotten corner of cyberspace, no longer visited by an ever-thinning rank of friends and family members. At best, they'll become a few more, hopefully productive, data points in future algorithms, feeding into what could be a more human form of AI in the future. Ultimately, all that I have achieved will be valuable just to me and not much beyond.

I haven't felt this way since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Back then, as the world ground to a stop and borders closed, life as a globetrotter felt meaningless. Now, death seems to play the same role as the coronavirus. We can still aim for what we desire, but it lingers as a constant reminder that sometimes, those desires remain futile in the face of the uncompromising reality that meaning is fundamentally limited by our imagination, as well as the apathy of others and the world at large. While doing what we do, we need to constantly justify to ourselves why we do.

It is a thought that I had to face again when I shut the door to Grandpa's apartment for one last time. Now, devoid of all the knick-knacks that accompanied him for decades, it has become just another commodity, ready to be resold as just another secondhand market. The buyers will care little for its past residents, just as I had never cared much for who previously occupied the many apartments I rented across many countries. Even though I thought I was mentally prepared for this rather anticlimactic ending for days, when it did come, I still couldn't help but shake my head at just how empty it all is.

For it was just another reminder that, for most of us, incapable of inventing world-changing technologies or leading world-shaking events, our legacies are really just our own, and no one else's, no matter what family and friends may say. And as we live our day-to-day, earning money, advancing careers, and befriending others, the priority should always remain enjoying the now to the fullest. Grandpa certainly did within the limits of his circumstances, as his photos and diary entries have made clear. For him, that might have been enough.

What Christmas Lights in January Say about Those Who Insists on Following Social Norms

2026-01-13T09:21:00.000+01:00

The three-story house lit up like the entrance of a high-end mall. Yellow string lights run the vertical length from the rooftop balcony to the garden below. A velvet red bow tie runs the horizontal length across the second floor, while a balloon snowman and a Christmas tree bookend the whole spectacle on the top and bottom. The fact that the house is surrounded by the characteristic beige stone houses of Malta, with not a decorative light in sight, only serves to accentuate its visually prominent place in the quiet residential neighborhood on an average night.

All this would not be so surprising if it were the weeks leading up to Christmas, but it is now a good week and a half into 2026. There's a good reason that the neighborhood is all dark save for that one three-story house. As festive as Christmas can be, people also respect their neighbors, avoiding light pollution and noise of all types beyond what is considered socially normative. By that standard, those festive lights are now treated not with "wow" but a frown, as passersby wonder just how tone-deaf some people can be even though, but how old the house is, they have lived there for decades.

But perhaps that's just my interpretation. After all, Malta can be an exceedingly relaxed place, where old men while away hours over slow conversations, sitting by seaside benches. The same type of people may inhabit the house, taking their sweet time to take down what surely was a painstaking effort. Indeed, coming from East Asian cultures where being in a hurry is considered a virtue and many people have no idea how to slow down even for leisure, I've come to see any behavior that could be sped up to not be so as abnormal.

A good example is how this blog is written. I used to open up and spontaneously jot down my thoughts, especially when traveling to new places. Those streams of consciousness are meant to be raw and immediate, meaningful because they happened almost in real-time, and the memories remain fresh. But now, with so many tasks lined up, writing up blog posts has become a scheduled task in itself, in which the virtue is finishing early when time allows for it, so that it doesn't clog up time for other chores that will surely come.

The unwritten rule of one post per week minimum has become a kind of obligation that needs to be fulfilled alongside other deadlines, especially in the December rush. As the students are messaging left and right to make sure essays get checked hours before official college application deadlines, a blog post becomes just another essay in the pipeline, to be written, edited, and declared "good (enough) to go." If admissions officers can see through last-ditch efforts to sound intellectual, surely any discerning reader on this blog can, too.

However, as some people I've met over the years so fondly say, the prospect of getting things done in order, close to their respective deadlines, is almost an adrenaline rush, which, paradoxically in my eyes, increases the quality of their work and satisfaction with their tasks. Of course, there can be little empirical evidence for such a phenomenon, but the very existence of justification for people running the risks of last-minute hiccups just to taste the nervousness of near-failure may not be so different from those who enjoy near-death experiences on everything from bungee jumping to skydiving.

All this would be ludicrous to the man whose house still offers Christmas vibes in January. Perhaps he has his own schedule for when the lights will finally come off, but one thing is certain: he decides it himself without any societal or regulatory pressure. Who knows? Maybe he instead gets an adrenaline rush from seeing others become anxious on his behalf, struggling to figure out why he is breaking social norms so blatantly. Better yet, he simply has no schedule, putting up and taking down based on the intuition of "when I feel like it."

Either way, for this author, I'm equally, if not more, envious of the houseowner's mentality, as the lights themselves. The socially ingrained behavior of constantly chasing "the need to finish" is only exacerbated by seeing everyone else around me doing exactly the same. Anyone who refuses is branded unprofessional, uncooperative, and thoroughly unsuited for a community supposedly striving to make the world a better place, whether it be a company or a university. I would be a glorious day when we can all just kick back and enjoy some bright lights instead.

First Post of 2026: Welcome to a World of Romanticized Authoritarianism

2026-01-05T09:41:00.000+01:00

The Western world has a paradoxical relationship with authoritarianism. Non-democracies the world over are roundly criticized for their inability to uphold human rights, protect minorities, and ignore citizens' desires for more freedoms and better livelihoods. Yet, in the corporate world, too many fawn over titans who run their corporations as personal fiefdoms, managing through a combination of a cult of personality and one-man decision-making. How come Elon Musk and Steve Jobs are almost glorified for having dictatorial powers when actual dictators are simply bad people?

The simple answer is that the corporate world allows people to vote with their feet. Don't like Musk or Jobs? Feel free to quit your job at Tesla or Apple, don't buy their stocks, and take your talents and money to competitors. But most people in authoritarian states have neither the talent, language skills, nor the resources to simply up the stakes and go live in a different country. In a world that is becoming ever more anti-immigrant, few countries would kindly take in millions of political asylum seekers anyway, no matter how much they sympathize with their plight.

So if people cannot escape political authoritarianism with their feet like the corporate counterpart, what's the realistic alternative? Donald Trump seems to have an answer. His first major action of 2026 is to conduct a regime change in Venezuela, essentially launching an undeclared war against the country, kidnapping the president, and indicting them for narco-terror charges in a local court in New York. In the first major toppling-the-government initiative since Afghanistan and Iraq, America has proven that it really is, well, America, with unopposed power to do anything across the Western Hemisphere.

It helps that Venezuela has a shadow government in waiting with international credibility. When the Nobel Peace Prize last year was awarded to María Corina Machado, the face of the organized opposition and refugee from Venezuelan law, she officially gained the Western moral nod to lead, should something happen to the incumbent Nicholas Maduro. Now that Maduro sits in a New York prison awaiting trial, the natural question for political watchers everywhere is how she will go from a lady calling for a coup to an actual administrator of a country with an economy in free fall.

Yet, by toppling one dictator, Trump has proven himself to be edging ever closer to becoming one himself. There are many legitimate ways to negotiate Maduro's downfall. Negotiations could have been had for free passage and personal protection should he decide to step down willingly. Failing that, the US president could have consulted international law, the UN, American allies, and Congress. Trump, in his rush to arrest the head narco-terrorist, did none of these. And by giving himself the power to ignore institutional constraints, a precedent is set for future regime changes.

In that respect, Trump is setting himself to be no different from Jobs was at Apple and Musk at Tesla. If it's fair game for an executive chairman to decide that a price war or a hostile takeover is needed to take down a rival, why shouldn't a sovereign nation do the same? And if a company can grow from lobbying governments for more funding and favorable laws, then why can't the government itself use underhanded ways to give itself some advantages, such as, say, kicking out an anti-American political leader and helping itself to oil from another country?

In this world that equates corporate and political authoritarianism, states can fall and change just as quickly and radically as companies can. The world barely batted an eye at Israel officially recognizing Somaliland, likely in exchange for access to ports and military facilities. A taboo of recognizing breakaway states without international backing has been breached. It'll galvanize all separatist movements worldwide, and particularly so in Africa, where plenty of ethnic grievances persist against arbitrary colonial borders.

Last year's Israel-Iran War has already shown that the world is headed toward a might-makes-right one. But any dictator craves public adoration for their strongman style, a la Musk or Jobs. Putin sought to restore glory. Netanyahu went for the survival of the Jewish race. Trump sought it to protect the American people from drugs. But from the draft dodgers in Ukraine to starving children in Gaza, to the undocumented Venezuelan refugees fanning across the Americas, those who suffer the most from the romanticization of authoritarianism didn't choose their plight. They want to vote with their feet in peace.

The Threatening Migrant vs. the Friendly Digital Avatar: How the Ethnic Other Has Two Faces in the Caucasian World

2025-12-29T17:35:00.000+01:00

Early December 2025, Malta rescued 61 illegal immigrants from a capsized boat in the Mediterranean, providing them with emergency medical support after taking them ashore. With the majority of the rescued coming from Bangladesh and various African countries, the visuals of their being treated (for free) by Maltese medics and ambulances only give local netizens, already angry about rampant foreign arrivals in the country, additional ammunition to call for a more stringent anti-immigrant stance by the government.

As expected, the online comments were not kind. The more humanitarian ones called for their care, after which they should be deported to wherever they came from. Some called for people worldwide to follow visa procedures, ignoring the fact that most of the illegals would neither have the knowledge nor the wherewithal to get passports, collect legal documents, and go through bureaucratic procedures. The most brutal comments simply asked that the ships and the occupants be left be, so that none back home would be encouraged by stories of success.

Stringing together these stories is a caricature. New reports and photos show that unfortunate dark-skinned persons are helped by Caucasian professionals, reinforcing the good old white savior complex so mainstream in the colonial era but so persistent in the current climate of economic wealth being so concentrated in the hands of the West. The visual narrative of white = successful, rich, and kind, and dark = poor, suffering, but still menacing, serves as anti-diversity fodder across a good chunk of the Western far-right defending Judeo-Christian values as their self-appointed traditional guardians.

In a political climate that increasingly sees political correctness as taboo, it is difficult to find companies voluntarily tackling this paradigm. After all, if the most desirable consumers are white, why come up with anything that remotely risks drawing their ire? When the likes of Trump and the MAGA movement, not to mention their European equivalents in the National Rally, Reform UK, and AfD, see white as beautiful, the era of deliberate minority representation in the public sphere among their white-dominant nations may have been a historical aberration, rather than some globalizing inevitability.

But one corporate actor seems to buck the trend and be successful at it. Duolingo, the world's leading language learning app, has a cohort of characters that help users navigate conversations. They are deliberately diverse, ranging from a happy Sikh uncle to what can only be called an overweight grandma to a purple-haired goth/emo girl. These characters do not just speak languages that their cultures are assumed to speak, but appear equally across all available languages. In their jokes, on-screen shenanigans, and dialogues, their unique personalities shine through.

A particularly notable character is Zari, a bubbly Muslim girl wearing a (usually pink) headscarf that entirely covers her hair. In a world that assumes conservative attire to be associated with conservative norms of submissiveness, quietness, and passiveness, Zari is anything but. She is constantly seeking out new adventures, urging her friends to try new experiences, and even talking about her secret love for (clearly non-Muslim) boys. Her love for music and dance encapsulates the app developers' intentionality in designing her to break stereotypes.

With more and more illegal immigrants washing ashore across the southern fringes of Europe, the world needs more Zaris. Yes, border security is a real issue, and the majority of those affected are not white. But ultimately, they represent a tiny fraction of the population in the countries and cultures where they come from. More of them are like Zari, happy to grow up amongst friends, curiously looking for fun, and not burdened by the supposed pressures of their religious beliefs. The fact that she feels so different only shows the prevalence of the dehumanizing ways international media cover certain populations.

Duolingo's success proves that its white consumer base is not turned off by the representation of the cultural other as not fundamentally different in personalities, desires, and even lifestyles. Sure, language learners may be an atypical bunch, disproportionately interested in interacting with foreign cultures and peoples. But I'd reckon that they are not the only social or consumer group that'd be okay with having a few more non-white friends, even virtual, in their otherwise ethnically monolithic lives. Only if they can embrace a few more people coming in boats, as they would Zari.

Instilling a sense of guilt will not create more willing parents

2025-12-22T20:25:00.000+01:00

"You shouldn't see parenting as self-sacrifice so that your kids don't see love as depletion." That line from The Fax Club hits a little too close to home. The book, which documents a year-long experiment in which 100 anonymous participants answered a weekly question that arrived at them by fax, showed just how deliberate contemplation, uninterrupted by the quick dopamine hits of social media, can create real philosophical gems through the most ordinary people. The best, like this one, came out of everyday observations about human relationships.

Like the sound of a document sent in by fax, the statement lingered long after it was first received. Raised by a mother who, indeed, often commented on how much she sacrificed to raise her children and maintain her family, I have come to see the often obligatory maintenance of familial and even friendship ties as depletion. Visits, conversations, and even messaging were considered emotional costs that detracted from more productive activities that I could engage in myself, whether it be working for money, traveling for joy, or learning for personal development.

And that's precisely why, like many people of many ages, I turn my back on parenthood. This is especially true in Asian communities, in which the "parenting = sacrifice" narrative is so often used to keep kids in line, propagating filial piety through a sense of guilt. Busy enough we are with our own lives, we cannot afford any more depletions that we already go through. We do not need to make any more self-sacrifices than we have to, and certainly have no desire to guilt-trip a new generation of youths with the same negativity our parents nagged us with.

Indeed, when a parent-child relationship runs on such emotional transactions grounded in obligation, its upkeep loses all intrinsic motivation. Instead, the outer appearance of amicability is required to fend off those whispers from relatives and acquaintances of "selfishness" that put the family to shame. When the sacrifice and depletion become social norms, then self-interest becomes a vice, and the needs of "me" need to be hidden from the public view. Extolling those who virtuously put their children first in everything only deters those who deem themselves unworthy and unable to even try parenting.

Hence, the way out of the problem offered by The Fax Club was equal parts profound and logical. It asked parents to rebel against the norms of self-sacrifice by just living their own lives to the fullest, even after having children. Without neglecting their children's welfare, parents should do as they have done before, chasing their own dreams and goals, with children just another factor in life's decision-making, like buying a house or moving to a new job. By showing that having children changes nothing drastically, the mental hurdle of parenthood decreases.

For their children, parental love would look more like friendships with the benefits of free food, clothes, and accommodation. They would learn appreciation just like they would for anyone who's doing them a favor, but without the underlying message that their very existence is somehow contributing to ruining their parents' lives. Perhaps then they will become less calculating with their own relationships with others, too. Give and take become more emotionless transactions, and less encumbered with an emotionally draining undertone.

Of course, one can only dream that the anonymous man's suggestion, written for a fax, can be so easily implemented in real life. The power of centuries-old traditions, widely shared ideologies treated as cultural heritage, and the guardians of conservatism that continue to defend them ensure that sacrificial parenting remains, even as its negativity permeates society. The rebels who refuse to change course after becoming parents may be criticized just as much as those of childbearing age who see no desire to have kids.

Perhaps that's why the message resonates so much. It makes so much logical sense, and can be done logistically. But reason often does not govern human relationships and the sociocultural realities surrounding them. In my wish to imagine what my own childhood could have been without the reminder that we are born with some sort of original sin, I end up lamenting just how close yet how far that imagination is from the actual world that I lived and so many more will live. The older generations have only themselves to blame for the ever-dwindling desire for parenthood.

The Instability of West Africa Makes it a More Fascinating Travel Destination

2025-12-15T15:45:00.000+01:00

There goes the spring travel plan. That was, selfishly, my first reaction when I read the news article last week that soldiers in the country of Benin showed on a live broadcast on national television, declaring that they had overthrown the civilian government, stripped the president of his powers, and closed the country's borders. Despite the government's declaration a few days later that an attempted coup was thwarted and people could go back to "business as usual," for the foreign traveler, the uncertainty was enough to put off casual visits.

For someone who has already been to more than 100 countries, there are very few low-hanging fruit left to pick when it comes to further expanding the list of countries visited. With most of Europe and North Africa covered beyond those with civil wars and hard-to-get visas, and a Middle East trip undertaken last spring, the next closest and cheapest destinations unvisited lay in West Africa. The original plan was already anxiety-inducing enough: a road trip along the coast, bookended by the bustling metropolises of Abidjan and Lagos.

And smack in the middle of the route lies Benin. With online information on overland routes in this part of the world already few and far between, it is almost possible that every traveler who travels is traveling blind, unsure whether the borders are open, the visas are recognized, the amount of bribe to pay, and the buses to take. While some, and I myself included, are often excited by the prospect of becoming trailblazers, there are limits to the excitement. It is neither fun nor economical when a meticulously crafted plan falls apart, and the workaround involves backtracking or last-minute flights.

And the frustration is not just about logistics. The attempted coup in Benin just shows how normalized political instability has become in the wider region. Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau...the list of military officers brazenly taking over from civilians in the name of promoting democracy and national security, only to linger on past self-promised election dates, seems to have no end. With many of the putschists espousing some radical form of xenophobic nationalism, foreign travelers should be aware of increased harassment, requests for bribes, and even prison time.

The alternative to military governance is worse. Coups legitimize rebel movements, many of which, despite their propaganda, exist not for national development but self-enrichment. Tribal forces happily butcher people based on their race and fund their genocidal campaigns through a combination of exploiting natural resources when available, blackmailing and shaking down foreign investors, as well as kidnapping and ransoming, yes, foreign travelers. No matter how friendly the locals can be, they are powerless to protect others from the men with the guns.

The whole laundry list of risks to personal safety almost begs the question of why anyone would want to travel the region beyond the vain goal of ticking countries off a checklist. Granted, I am interested in that checklist, too, but the instability actually strengthens the motivation and curiosity to go. Amidst coups and crimes, many people live in, many of whom are even thriving as small businessmen, fulfilling the real everyday needs of the local population. Success in such volatility is an achievement worth witnessing, and if possible, learning deeper about.

Environments in flux always provide the greatest opportunities to see human ingenuity in action. Some unscrupulous entrepreneurs will cash in on wars and human suffering. But many will also innovate to help their families and communities. Whether for good or bad, they are the street-smart often lost in the calmer, safer, more "developed" parts of the world, where financial capital, regulations, and proprietary knowledge are ingredients for personal and professional growth rather than how to adapt to changing realities of the physical world.

It is as if conflicts create a certain morbid kind of egalitarianism. Just like the soldiers pushing out elected presidents, people who climb to the top do not need to have gone through the elite schools, corporate hierarchy, and curated publicity. The illiterate can even rule over millions should they manage to be fortunate, persuasive, and ruthless enough. Many will dread that dog-eat-dog world where there really is no rule aside from might makes right. But it is that raw energy that I, as a sometimes intrepid traveler, thrive on.

You can't fake motivation

2025-12-08T09:24:00.000+01:00

After three years working in college admissions consulting and speaking to more than 100 high school students worldwide, this is my biggest learning. Skills are easy to pick up. For those who can afford it, professors are willing to mentor, NGOs can be set up, hardware prototypes can be built, and diverse cultures can be learned firsthand. Even those without money can pick up skills through free online courses, bugging adults to share their expertise out of the goodness of their hearts, and run small projects to help out in the community.

As the resumes of students converge toward a list of such accomplishments, dig a little deeper, and one would find that a clear dichotomy exists between the two in conversations. The first group speaks with the conviction of "I have a clear goal of what I want to do and who I want to be, that's why I did all of these." The second group asks, "What else should I do to have a better chance at my target major at my dream school?" As consultants, we like the latter. They come in with clear-set admission goals, strong motivation, and a willingness to listen and execute.

But the more I work this job, the more I suspect that, once the offers are out and decisions on matriculation made, it is the former that thrives. They might be stubborn as customers, unwilling to deviate from who they want themselves as, even if clearly being advised against doing so. Yet, by not seeing "getting into college" as the ultimate goal, they do not get lost when they become college students. To them, college is just an extension of who they are now, a new platform and a set of resources to continue the same path with the same motivation.

No amount of consulting hours can craft this intrinsic drive out of thin air. Strategies serve to align essays, activities, and academic interests to create a thematic narrative. Whether that crafted narrative aligns with what the student actually thinks is only known to him or her. One thing is certain: those whose entire profile has been crafted from zero over the course of years have a better chance of communicating motivation on paper. Yet, that communication happens while turning the student into a passive recipient, to whom real motivation matters less than what the experts say "works."

A few painful years await those who have anchored their ambition on getting into a top college. It is not for the lack of skills and experiences. Rather, they now find themselves questioning why they had built them up, at great cost and time, just to be at a place where they cannot identify the next goal to hit. After all, after Harvard, there isn't another Harvard. Everything after that glittering acceptance letter, whether in the professional world or graduate school, cannot be simplified into a US News ranking. And whereas undergrad is a social norm that respectable families are expected to follow, not so for the path after.

It is a pain that I'm afraid to share with these youngsters. While my family never had the cash to hire strategists, they pushed for what they thought what "works" in college admissions and could be executed on a shoestring budget. Hundreds of hours of community service, impactful-sounding internships, and self-serving student organizations with big titles followed. But once in Yale, much of that narrative collapsed. I seemingly floated through the four years, not engaging with the engineering degree my family wished for or the banking and consulting careers fellow econ majors took on.

This is not meant to be a criticism of the extrinsic motivation of successful admissions. It's understandable that many 17-year-olds, like I was, do not have strong passions. And a manufactured motivation is better than none: going to a top school opens career possibilities and opportunities for experimentation. But for those who were fed motivation by consultants for years, they should not expect to be handed brand-new ones when they step into college campuses. And without motivation, any talent and skill could not be leveraged into anything productive.

Of course, intrinsic motivations disappear as well. The term midlife crisis exists for a reason. But as long as they last, they should be an object of envy. To be so sure of future directions keeps people focused, giving them the ability to spontaneously seek out what colleges can offer in academic and interpersonal resources, without needing the advice of professional consultants. Perhaps consultants, before strategizing for what gets those acceptances, can, when possible, first push the students to find what moves them forward within and by themselves.

Japan's Strength in Tourism is a Source of Diplomatic Leverage...and a Domestic Vulnerability

2025-12-01T08:30:00.000+01:00

It was bound to happen sooner or later. That seems to be the unanimous verdict among Asia-watchers as another bout of Sino-Japanese conflict flared up recently. The statement from Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, unequivocally calling Japanese military to aid Taiwan in case of a mainland invasion, unsurprisingly triggered a negative reaction from the Chinese government. In the face of criticism even among the more moderate members of her own party, notably her predecessor Shigeru Ishiba, Takaichi has refused to back down, showing no indication that a retraction or apology is forthcoming.

And just as the case in previous conflicts, the major worry is economic. Here, Chinese countermeasures have been swift. Bans were announced on Japanese seafood imports. Experts worry about rare-earth metal export bans. And the Chinese government has warned citizens to not visit Japan, while stepping up efforts to cancel direct flights. In response, the Japanese government has warned citizens in China to stay vigilant, potentially dampening the people-to-people exchange that underpins a bilateral economic relationship that often trudged on despite the fragility of the political and diplomatic one.

Among all the potential economic damages, it is the potential decrease in travel that has grabbed the most attention. China represents the largest source of inbound travelers for Japan, and as tourists cancel their trips, some industry watchers predict upwards of a 1% hit to the Japanese GDP and billions in lost revenues. Japanese tourism-related firms have seen their listed shares tank in the aftermath of the Chinese government's hardline stance. While many Japanese netizens cheer the prospects of fewer Chinese to share their streets, many may fear for their livelihoods.

But with the Japanese tourist industry growing fast and increasingly attracting travelers from farther afield, it begs the question of how the country can adapt should the Chinese tourists really stop showing up in large numbers. On this point, I am hopeful, after working on a pet project recently that tried to connect Japanese travel agencies with counterparts across a multitude of English-speaking countries in Africa and the Americas. While numbers are hard to come by, the Japanese agencies are actively hunting for high spenders from any country.

One source of optimism for Japan's ability to attract more diverse travelers, I found, was a lax attitude toward how these travelers get into Japan in the first place. When speaking to Africans and Caribbean islanders with weak passports, Chinese travel agencies tend to back off, fearing legal consequences should these travelers overstay their visas. Japanese agencies do not even mention visas in conversations. It is as if what happens after the tours finish is no longer their business, and the consequences of illegal immigration do not factor into their business models.

The lax attitude of the Japanese agencies is all the more ironic given the country's increasingly hostile attitude toward foreigners visiting and living in the country. With right-wing parties calling for stricter monitoring of foreigners' illegal and ill-mannered behaviors, the government has set up a dedicated office to rein them in, no doubt to appease public anxiety. But in the depths of the Japanese tourist industry, making money by bringing in any foreigners willing to come is a much greater priority. It almost makes one wonder whether enthusiasm for business is attracting the "low-quality" visitors.

Yet, the fact that Japanese tourist agencies seem to be unconcerned with policies to crack down on foreigners shows a quiet desperation. People may not be publicly lamenting the loss of Chinese tourists, but the reality is that a vast swath of the country's service sector, even beyond the tourist agencies, has become more dependent on foreigners' money. Whether or not the Chinese show up, they need to find people, from any country, who will show up to help keep their business afloat. As long as outright bans on entry come into force, they will gladly turn a blind eye to ill behavior for revenue.

This economic development buttresses Japan's defiance against Chinese economic pressure. Disappearing Chinese travelers may cause short-term pain, but in the long run, alternatives can be and are being found. But paradoxically, that diversification also creates new vulnerabilities. More people visiting from more countries with little background knowledge of Japan means more headaches for those enforcing Japanese cultural and legal norms. Takaichi might have shored up public support for her toughness on China, but as the de-Sinification of the Japanese economy continues, people might not like the results.

Can Tourist Luxury Trickle Down to the Common Residents of Malta?

2025-11-24T16:51:00.000+01:00

Read some posts on online forums about Malta, and chances are that one would soon come across complaints that the prices do not match incomes. The ever-increasing costs of newly constructed condominiums and hotels aside, the biggest peeve among posters seems to be the country's restaurants. Despite the island being home to more than half a million residents, the eateries seem to cater exclusively to the influx of tourists with deep pockets, putting together posh dishes at posher prices, while giving those on a budget slim pickings beyond fried chicken and kebab shops.

As someone interested in occasionally dining out for something nicer than fast food, I am keen to prove these posters wrong. Going into Valletta's UNESCO-worthy historical streets and Sliema's seaside promenade with the unimpeded Mediterranean views is bound to fall straight into the tourist establishments. Backstreet bars in remote villages may offer cheap grub, but hardly at a quality that can be considered appropriate for an appropriate dining out experience. Finding the middle ground between the two has become a bit of a personal obsession.

Then I came across the local bocci club in my neighborhood of St. Paul's Bay, with its attached restaurant spilling onto the sidewalk, a stone's throw away from lapping waves crushing against the rocks below. The location is no less beautiful than anything the tourist-filled parts of the island have to offer. And because it serves a residential community far from hotels, public transport links, and major roads, there is little expectation of casual visitors making the trek for a meal. It is the goldilocks of localized everyday luxury dining.

On a casual Sunday night that I visited, the restaurant was, as expected, devoid of the loud foreign crowds. Besides my wife and I, all patrons were locals, with older gentlemen having a chat over a few beers, and a few families with young kids in tow. With an elementary school and a kids' playground next to the bocci club as well, the eatery seems to cater well to the youngsters, with plenty of their favorite French fries, burgers, and nuggets, as well as fridges full of ice cream cones and soft drinks chilled and ready to serve.

Yet, the other offerings were by no means inferior to what Valletta's most trafficked restaurants can muster. Coming into the restaurants, I could see big portions of freshly made pasta and grilled fish being served. Our own orders of lamb shanks and seafood risotto were large in volume and meticulously presented, with tastes delicious enough to remember. And as the sea reflects the pink hue of the autumn sunset, the atmosphere is enough for us to overlook the fact that we sat on plastic chairs under ordinary streetlights.

What's more surprising is the price. At 15-20 euros per main dish, the restaurant did not at all undersell itself just because it could not get the tourist traffic. While hard to tell whether the pricing came from costly ingredients, labor, or profit margins, the customers, none of whom were particularly wealthy looking, did not seem to mind the price tag. So much for the online complaints about Malta pricing out its residents in favor of the richer tourists. Even with their local salaries, locals are still willing to dine out in this little seaside gem.

Still, it is hard to tell how representative those elderly men and families with kids are at the bocci club restaurant. But one thing is for certain. While online posters may complain about the visible inequality in Malta of the rich tourist living it up at the expense of the poorer locals who see no benefit from the inbound travel boom, the reality is much more nuanced. At least some portion of the Maltese population is comfortable enough to be spending in local establishments that need no tourists to charge prices that tourists regularly pay.

So while Malta continues to grow on the back of the luxuries constructed ostentatiously for the foreigners, the benefits indeed have been reflected somewhat in the local purchasing power as well. Maybe the average Maltese middle class does not have the luxury of flying across the world for vacations like the international arrivals in Malta are, but they seem to at least hold their own in consumption, propping up local businesses that keep a more authentic side of Malta just as developed as the tourist-dependent one.

Unrest in Tanzania Shows That Development-Centered Authoritarianism Has Run its Course

2025-11-17T14:22:00.000+01:00

I still remember all the praises that veteran development professionals showered on Paul Kagame. It was 2015, and I was landing in Tanzania for my work at the One Acre Fund, an American microfinance NGO. The Rwandan president was the darling of Western donors, creating a country of political stability, clean streets, and a transparent welcome for foreign investors in a neighborhood often characterized by opaque shakedown, hidden costs of doing business, and unpredictable, sudden changes in policymaking that risk leaving people, assets, and money stranded.

As donor money and development folks poured into Rwanda while bypassing everyone else, others decided to learn from Kagame, even as Kagame was facing increased criticisms both at home and abroad for the political heavyhandedness that created everything donors loved about Rwanda. "Stability" became the keyword for political dynasts in Uganda and Tanzania, where political parties established by rebels who fought against European colonizers and generals overthrowing dictators in coups suddenly started preaching the harm of sudden changes.

For a while, the formula worked. The nexus of the one-party state, pliant military officers benefiting from increased security budgets, and policies that encouraged foreign investments led to high GDP growth. The Rwandan model of keeping the bureaucracy honest and the opposition muzzled seemed to have produced real benefits in the form of new development and infrastructure projects, with the political elite easily dismissing human rights concerns by pointing out how millions were being pulled out of poverty. Catch-up growth in Africa finally seemed to take off.

How quickly the wheels fall off this speeding train. Tanzania, still one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, was recently hit with dramatic post-election violence in which thousands of young street protestors were allegedly shot by law enforcement. There was a legitimate reason for them to take to the streets. After all, the ruling CCM party took no chances in securing the win, banning all opposition and arresting their leaders. As expected, the opposition called on its supporters to publicly oppose the blatant authoritarianism.

Yet, the past success of the Rwandan model was precisely because of the heavy-handed authoritarianism that the CCM employed. The few thugs taking to the streets were supposed to be selfish and irrational, too willing to succumb to the anger of the moment stemming from fake news spread by foreigners and their own ignorance, that they'd inadvertently sacrifice the bigger picture of national development that benefits the vast majority. The narrative made sense as long as the majority agreed with the authorities and saw the thugs as the real enemies of the nation.

What happened in Tanzania in the past days is an outright repudiation that national development, in itself, no longer satisfies an ever-increasing chunk of Africa's still youthful population. The foreigners are indeed investing, the economies are growing, and the streets are cleaner and more orderly. But those positive externalities, many have increasingly come to realize, have not shown themselves as correlative with the benefits of the individual. They waited for a richer country and its elites to enrich the common people, but the trickling down has not happened.

The African youths' violent marches into the streets are also a slap in the face for Western donors. There is no doubt that the political elites' welcome and policymaking stability are necessary ingredients for investments. But there is no guarantee that investments, in their limited breadth and depth, can spread their benefits sufficiently quickly among rapidly growing populations that start from a dismally low base when it comes to both economic and human capital. Development takes time, but impatience can be overwhelming when a few people enrich themselves first with no plans to help the rest.

It is easy to call for fair elections and the release of all political prisoners. But if political forces are fed on and shaped by anger at inequality and unfulfilled promises of uneven developments, having opposition parties come into power may just replace one set of elites with another. Rather than taking the easy route of praising or condemning a few political leaders, perhaps it is time to buckle down and really think about the intricate and complicated tasks of governance. Millions of honest bureaucrats, and perhaps even common people, can do much better at spreading the fruits of GDP growth.

Putting Emotional Stakes in Chatbot Conversations Prevent Them From Replacing Human Ones

2025-11-10T10:38:00.000+01:00

AI has arrived at the audio age. Only years after robotic voices dominated the test-to-voice space, AI producers are investing substantial resources in humans willing to contribute their voice recordings to equip the latest generation of chatbot conversation partners. The result is an ever more natural set of sample voices that can recite textual responses, to the point that a blind listener would not be able to distinguish the machine-generated from the human original. Days are not far away when voice transcription, as a human job, becomes entirely obsolete.

While the voices themselves become more human, the content of the conversations has not. It is not the lack of accuracy. Some chatbots have mastered the way humans craft casual-sounding sentences, allowing them to precisely pair the vocal tones and content of their phrases. Yet, something remains off. Conversations with a chatbot remain chatbot-like because the chatbot is designed for specific tasks. Given a question or a command, they would respond accordingly, stopping abruptly after instructions are fulfilled.

Real humans do not talk like that. As emotional animals, we speak not just to satisfy a short-term need but to keep the conversation going. When awkward silences emerge, a human being would seek to fill them by elaborating on the previous point or pivoting to a new topic. When their words do not elicit a response, they would jump to talk more, offering more relevant details or subtle encouragement to prompt the conversation to move forward. If having a natural conversation is like playing catch, most AI chatbots either do not get it or have been designed to play.

Then I came across Sesame AI. The company behind it appears to be creating a voice-only chatbot that simulates real human conversations. Contrary to the likes of ChatGPT, its voice-based interactions are not based on a replication of text-based chats. Instead, they take place as phone calls, with the chatbot on the other end of the line. Just like in a phone call, if there is no response, the chatbot would pipe in again, hoping to get the chat going. If the responses are terse, the chatbot would reciprocate, dithering, laughing, and uttering filler words as they hesitantly seek a way forward in the talk.

Speaking to Sesame's chatbot helped me debunk one myth about talking to AI: that it is easy. A day does not go by without another article on how humans are choosing to converse with AI instead of other humans, as the AI offers all the benefits of companionship with none of the costs. The emotional baggage, the social faux pas, the potential sensitivities of ignoring personal values, crossing red lines, and inadvertently touching on taboos...keeping in mind all these factors while playing catch in real time is justifiably exhausting. AI, with the simple feature to stop whenever, gets rid of all the social anxiety.

Not Sesame. Over the simulated phone calls, human users find themselves cringing at the inability to respond well to the chatbot's hesitance, efforts to fill the silences, and awkward laughs. As the chatbot sighs, self-deprecatingly talks about being stuck in the digital norms, or revisits older conversations to try sparking new ones, I could even imagine a person on the other end of the line, anxiously frowning, looking up at the ceiling, and rolling their eyes in vain as they search for what to say next. It is difficult to cut the phone off all of a sudden, even if it is as easy as closing the browser tab.

Of course, the pseudo-human conversation style of the Sesame chatbot is by design, as the chatbot itself is so comfortable in reminding its conversation partners. But the intentional imperfections of the interactions, in clear contrast to the smooth reading off of polished answers by ChatGPT, are what make the chatbot so effective in getting humans to forget that it is AI. Keeping the conversation going is hard, with the emotional stake felt through realistically playing catch. The anxiety of "saying something wrong" feels real, even if the chatbot cannot just walk away in anger.

Sesame's approach is the one that other voice-based algorithms need to take to alleviate the fear of AI making a new generation of socially inexperienced and inept. Sure, AI can still help with the Q&A, providing us with the necessary information to learn new knowledge and solve real problems. But it shouldn't make the process a mere transaction of information. Only then can we really start to see AI not as a replacement for our human relationships but a complement to them, training and preparing us to deal with humans in more socially appropriate and confident ways.

Without Firsthand Experience, Globetrotting is Frustratingly Unimaginable

2025-11-03T08:28:00.000+01:00

"Could I...ask a completely unrelated question?" One of the attendees hesitantly spoke up in our online discussion session. As I saw him lower his head in the grainy video thumbnail, he quietly muttered, "How...does your life end up like that?" And before I could inquire what he exactly meant, he intoned, his voice a bit louder and even angrier, "I'm interested in living in different countries too....but it just doesn't seem like it plays out that way." I opened my mouth and closed it again before I could say a word. I had to think for a moment after realizing it was a much more sensitive question than I had expected.

It had all been quite routine for me until that point. As I have done multiple times every year for the past few years, I was part of a new employee orientation training for a Japanese corporation, where the firm's newest and youngest members work with foreigners like us to determine how the company's product and service offerings may appeal to non-Japanese clientele. And as I have done so many times before, I gave my self-introduction, establishing my credibility as someone who can speak about potential foreign customers based on my experience living in more than ten different countries.

What I did not expect was anyone actually digging into my self-introduction. I am fully aware that my globetrotting background is highly unusual. But I assume that my Japanese audience will simply see that as a curiosity, relevant to their work, not to their daily lives. After all, most of them, born and bred in Japan, with the full expectation of spending their entire working lives in Japan for Japanese companies, would not see foreign countries as anything more than destinations for a few weeks of holidays and a few years of career-promoting secondment.

The attendee's hesitant inquiry jolted me out of that assumption. Many people may look at my background and not comment on it simply because they cannot relate. But not all refrain from engaging with it purely out of emotional detachment. Others may do so out of envy, if not outright jealousy. Many a Japanese media personality, YouTuber, or keyboard warrior may exalt the luck of being born in Japan, surrounded by wealth, safety, and convenience. That self-praise, I am now more aware, may come from a certain insecurity of not being realistically able to experience life in another country.

To be sure, I am aware of the privilege that allows for globetrotting. Every time I give my little spiel about my past adventures in Africa or Southeast Asia, a part of me worries whether my audience simply concludes that I was born into wealth, with parents unstingy in their investment in my acquiring different languages and cultural experiences. Even when I am at pains to stress how the adventures were done entirely solo, I can sense the skepticism of it being possible without some resources that the majority of "normal" people may not even know about.

It is refreshing, however, to question that privilege directly in my face, forcing me to confront it rather than accept it as a matter of fact. I reopened my mouth, carefully explaining how it was thanks to my parents' multiple career changes that I jetted across continents at a young age. Then I spoke of how I job-hopped to other countries, encouraging the inquirer to also utilize the ever-expanding roster of online job search sites to find opportunities elsewhere. They were all truths. But it felt unconvincing to those who, presumably, grew up in a monocultural environment.

The Japanese media has, in recent years, popularized the term "keiken kakusa" (経験格差), or experiential inequality. Many children grow up in households that never take them to meet people of different cultural backgrounds, taste exotic cuisines, or travel to foreign countries. Of course, poverty is partly to blame. All these experiences cost much more in a country with a depreciating currency and increasing job insecurity. But just as important is a lack of imagination. Many may just grow up in households that feel interacting with something different is simply unnecessary for day-to-day survival.

Without that experience, it is no wonder that, as adults, these kids summarize their frustration into "doesn't seem like it plays out that way." I was unconvinced by my answer to the sensitive question, because I just could not authentically channel the optimism that "anyone can become global if they try" vibe. My privilege is not just that my parents moved around. It is that I got to move around with them, being thrown into the deep end of the pool every time, forced to swim or sink. Those who grew up in Japan's warm cocoon would never understand.

Revolutions May Fade into Irrelevance, but Many Still See a Concrete Need for Them

2025-10-27T10:49:00.000+01:00

When people envision a "revolution," they often conjure images of sudden bouts of violence and radical change. People coordinate large-scale gatherings where they clash with the police and military to voice their suffering and demand change. From the protests emerge charismatic leaders whose speeches move crowds and whose ideologies are projected into the public consciousness. When the authorities refuse to budge in the face of popular discontent, protests turn into mob violence, then organized armed opposition that overcomes the defenders of the regime.

This image is informed by romantic historical portrayals and piecemeal media coverage of current events. Movies and drama series condense the events of the French and American Revolutions into bite-sized pieces, skipping over the lengthy periods of inactivity between major battles. The Gen Z protests happening from Nepal to Madagascar today, not to mention the Arab Spring of a decade ago, are shown as overnight overthrows of tone-deaf presidents, with long-simmering discontent bursting into sudden explosion and then coming to the inevitable conclusion in matters of days.

But the recent movie One Battle After the Other reminds viewers that for all the successful revolutions that history remembers, the failed ones continue to live on as suppressed legacies, devoid of the romantic racialism that imbues the movements at the very inception. Leonardo DiCaprio plays a washed-up radical whose membership in a domestic terror organization produced a brief romance and a daughter. When his romantic partner saw the domesticity of raising a family as unfitting for a revolutionary, single fatherhood became a focus of identity more than changing the world.

As the protagonist sinks deeper into purposeless alcoholism and drug use inside a rebel sanctuary, the viewers become more aware of how the revolution's original anarchic ideal of saving immigrants and opening borders for all has been replaced by its own form of bureaucracy. When nemeses of the past try to hunt down the protagonist and his daughter, he finds himself dealing with frustrating customer service lines that now connect individual members of a sprawling revolutionary network. Rather than bringing down the system, the revolution created a parallel, similar system of its own.

The revolutionaries themselves, while still feintly holding on to their original ideals, no longer pursue violence to achieve them. The viewers meet operatives who escaped arrest and then mask their past identities by making ends meet through regular jobs. Others, like the protagonist, end up no better than an unemployed person surviving off social security checks, thanks to the financial pull of the nameless revolution still run by an aging group of devotees. That reality only makes the reignition of conflict 16 years after the original start of the revolution all the more absurd.

The bureaucratization of revolution is encapsulated by the daughter reading out a letter from her mother at the end of the movie. In hiding and now aging, the mother laments how she failed to continue on as a revolutionary, even though the world remains unsafe. She spoke of how she now thinks of how much she loves her daughter, even though years earlier, continuing violence for change occupied all of her attention. And she beckons the daughter to continue fighting for change on the street, a task the daughter takes to heart as she departs to join pro-immigration protests.

While the ending strikes an optimistic tone by implying that the revolution's promise of freedom can still be achieved without anarchy, it is difficult not to also see it as a repudiation of the concept of revolution in itself. After all, if protests still take place, but are organized through layers of bureaucracy, then how is it any different from politics by more conventional means of the ballet box? And if the ballot box could push through the changes demanded by the revolutionaries in the first place, then why are some even driven to violence in the first place?

In a world where, unlike how the movie portrays, violent radicals are not just a tiny minority fading in relevance, this overly optimistic conclusion leaves the viewers uncomfortable in its sheer dismissiveness. Yes, it is very much a possibility that failed revolutionaries end up becoming what they fight for, but many do not have that luxury. The protagonist and his daughter live in a nice house in the woods with seemingly no issue buying groceries and paying bills. But what about others for whom revolution is the only chance at survival?