John > Recent Status Updates

The Nimrod flip out is another brilliant story. Unfortunately, the next several fall off quality.

Fyi, I came across a story written by a Palestinian author. The title was “a short story writer who doesn’t follow army orders“. It was hilarious. The premise was that a Palestinian writer would drop Etgar Kerats name to get past Israeli check points. Alas, it didn’t work all the time.

Reading this just because my last two weeks I’ve been so depressing! This was recommended on Reddit by one of the funniest writers in Israel. Ditto the book by Kishon I am reading.

The first story is very promising… Fatso is absolutely surprising, funny, sweet.

Throughout, this book has really pinned the forced organ harvest trade on CCP. But I do recall that, even before this was widely known organized crime, particularly from India, was kidnapping and stealing organs all the time. So while this practices is industrialized in China, I don’t think you can blame communism so much as /authoritarianism.

I wanted documentation and then got the chapter 5, which delivered it in detail.. It also shows how seriously international institutions and the US Congress takes these charges.

Pretty hard to believe…. Wish he cited UN docs and international sources. So far not super footnoted, though maybe I’m just reading past the notes. This is horrifying if true.

In chapter 11… I’m really wondering how the Chinese state hasn’t gone after the protagonist for her interest in such a forbidden subject as the Tianamen massacre…. Of course that might reveal my misunderstanding of how policing works in the PRC.

Is this truly a novel, or a surreptitious way to educate the young generation about the Tianamen massacre? A few years ago I met a Chinese PhD who literally had never heard of the events in Tianamen and didn’t believe me or others when we told her about it. She would have benefitted from this book. In fact, I’m learning a lot of new things myself.

Monod on contraception, continued: “Those who oppose you and ignore the hard reality, the tragedies, the mutilations and deaths, carry a heavy responsibility. No one should have the right to sacrifice the happiness, the health, or the life of another human being to their own personal principles, however sincere and noble they may be”

Monod on contraception prohibitions: Opposition to birth control was based on religious and political ideologies. The scientists could not abide any laws that placed ideology over science and personal freedom.

One thing that’s bugged me about biology for years is the lack of direct observation of processes. I always thought the textbooks were missing proof, or maybe it’s just I was getting a second rate education at community college. But now I see from Monod’s story how science is often just conjecture that is validated (not proved) by experiment.

“the process of science does not consist in explaining the unknown by the known…it aims on the contrary to give an account of what is observed by the properties of what is imagined. To explain the visible by the invisible. And it is…through an appeal to new hidden structures, with hypothetical properties, that science proceeds.”

Third thought before diving in: is there a newHSK OUT YET, with the updated vocabulary? Better check…

Second goal for 2026: take some HSK tests. At least HSK1&2, but maybe 3 too!

Ok, so I really like this book but haven’t studied it for ages.

New Year’s resolution is to finish it as soon as I’m done with HSK1.

Ok, so I have had this in my inbox for God knows how long with little progress, even though I almost finished the book a few years ago. Now I’ve probably forgotten most

New Year’s resolution: study every day and record the sessions here!

Let’s hope this resolution lasts

Christianity “postpones to a point beyond the span of history the cure of evil and murder,” he noted, while Russian Communism justified terror and murder and crushed freedom in the promise of some far-off workers’ utopia. For Camus, “real generosity to the future lies in giving all to the present.”

What Camus could not abide were ideologies that sacrificed life in the present, the one fundamental value above all, for some promise of future justice.

The first philosophical secret of life for Camus was the recognition of the absurd condition. This instinct for positive rebellion—against death, oppression, suffering, or injustice—was the second secret of life, and a path to humanity.

Among the many contributors to the rise of terror, Camus suggested that one overriding factor was the emphasis on doctrine and bureaucracy over human dignity.

By the end of the chapter the people was the body heat of “the masses” stationed at the Hujialou intersection in Beijing, in May 1989. 10k were gathered to stop troops from proceeding to Tianamen square. It was same at every other intersection in Beijing! Has this been published in Beijing? Forbidden knowledge!

Glanced ahead at other words. Can’t wait to get to Bamboozeled. A very American meaning

This is gonna be a fun read. Read the first chapter, 人民= Rénmín=the people. Describes the evolution of the the word’s meaning in the author’s head. During the cultural revolution the people = Mao, and the reverse was also true.

If it were presented to them, some would undoubtedly respond as Barbara Bush did, when ask about the Iraqi dead, “ why should we hear about body bags and depths.? It’s not relevant. so why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that.

Presented with proof of injustice, the majority human reflex is to act against it.

Chapter 6: craft

Omar is quite angry at “the west,” which really should be defined as the white west. More particularly the hypocrisy of the white west’s liberals. He is angry because they (we) have let him down so badly in Gaza… and so many places before, but especially Gaza, now. Can’t blame him, given the violence he describes which we fund and which our govt supports unquestioningly.

(But is the 3rd world citizen so self-righteous and innocent? It’s easy to blame the ppl who overthrew the Hawaiian govt or Chile, or who built their country with innocent slaves. But prior to the latest aggressors were and are equally oppressive native rule. And a system that sold their own into slavery, or sacrificed them even to the sun god. Shouldn’t the real villain be Man, not western man, or German man)

It are the 3rd

44:32. C1
“For members of every generation there comes a moment of complete, and completely emptying, disgust when it is revealed there is only a hollow, a completely malleable thing whose primary use is not the opposition of evil, or administration of justice, but the preservation of existing powers”

Then the cynical discovery of empire by the occupied.

But the blind eye that “the west” has turned tothe suffering of Gazans has put us on an equally despicable footing as the depots. But is this fair? Is the west responsible, or should we blame Biden and the Democratic Party establishment, and the other cowards who reflexively align with Israel out of political fear?

The wests big failure is to fail to live up to ideals that the autocrats never feign to adopt.