Uselessly amazing

After reading this I suddenly realized that some pieces of information can be jaw-droppingly amazing and yet utterly useless:
"The time between Biden's birth and Lincoln's presidency is less than the time between Biden's birth and his own presidency."
Wow! And yet...Who cares?

One word

If what you want to say
can be said in one word,
say it in one word.

The group delusion

Political, economic or religious groups don't exist in the real world. They're a product of our minds.
Of course, even though these groups are not physically real, they are treated as such, leading people to identify as members of one or more of them. These individuals do exist—they are real—and as they declare their affiliation with a group, we also assume the reality of the group itself.
That's where the delusion starts, but it doesn't end there. We profile groups, therefore we have a pretty clear idea of a set of characteristics associated with each one of them. As a consequence, we tend to attribute that set of characteristics to all the group members, as if they were not unique human beings but just repetitions of a certain pattern. A procedure that would appear unacceptable if it were applied to us, is light-heartedly used to simplify the rest of the world.
This might be fine under certain circumstances. However, we need to keep in mind that hardly any of those group members will be correctly described by that specific set of features. In fact, the majority of them might not showcase most of those attributes at all.
This distinction is not just important; it is fundamental. The consequences of this mental trap can lead to social disaster.
Groups can be very useful as conceptual tools. Be extra careful not to take them too seriously though.

Amen

I don't count on it much, but if the afterlife really existed, between heaven and hell I would choose the latter.
It must be a place full of souls that have fun, chat, yell, drink, smoke, get high, fuck, dance, sing, read irreverent literature, listen to tempting music, think, doubt, cry tears of emotion, laugh with delight.
Fire does not scare me, it's just a symbol: it represents warmth, joy, dance, love.
How about heaven instead? What a drag that must be. Those ashen faces, the haughty smiles, the straw-white skirts. The sad, political victim like look of the doorman, good old Peter, would be enough to sink me into the most oppressing form of depression.
Honestly, I prefer the carnival style, the cheekiness and the mocking grin of Satan.
P.S. I almost forgot: Amen!

Borrowing from abstract art

These are two very famous abstract art paintings.
I'm not an art expert and I'm not gonna talk about art here. Yet I find art an extremely good tool to visually convey counter intuitive ideas, even those that have nothing to do with the artworks themselves.
I will use Kandinsky's "Composition VII" (the first one) to represent reality. Rothko's "No. 4, two dominants" (the second one) on the other hand can be thought to represent a polarized simplification of that same reality.
Now imagine trying to understand the complexity inherent in the first representation by using the second one as a model. Ridiculous, right?
Worse still, consider how stupid it would be to operate on the complex reality by using the polarized model.
Well, as absurd as it may seem, that is what many of us do every day, when it comes to pretty much everything we can think of.
In my opinion this is one of the main tragedies of our times.

High tech Buddhism: how to get out of the infamous video-scrolling-loop

The debate over the effects of smartphones on society and human mental health has been ongoing for quite some time. 
The situation has obviously gotten worse in the last 2-3 years. Buses and trains are full of people who seem to be staring hypnotized at the screen of their phone, swiping their finger on it now and then, just like zombies. 
New techniques, such as continuous video scrolling loops, have been introduced. They target some well known weak points of our psyche and they promote the production of some hormones that give us pleasure. If you feel guilty after having wasted hours watching some silly videos non-stop, well do not worry: it's not your fault. You're being manipulated like a lab mouse. Fortunately (maybe) we're not mice, and we do have methods to preserve our mental independence, if we want to. So if you are happy with your hours of trance like state you can ignore the rest of this post. But if you want to get out of this mental trap you might find what follows useful. 
The solution is actually grounded in some very old ideas. Good old Siddhartha Gautama, aka the great Buddha, had a very similar insight when he was trying to find a way out of our obsessive thinking about past and future, that distracts us from the only moment that matters: the present one. That solution is called MINDFULNESS.
Let’s clarify the problem first. 

Expectations and reality

If the expectations you had
were never actually met,
you'd better exit virtuality
and start to manage reality.

MILAN DERBY IN PATTAYA

All of the dancers
got off the stage:
a cool lighted volume,
like a transparent cage.
Two foreign tourists
wearing football kits
climb on the cubo
and start to feign fits.

Black hole of delight

A bottomless bottle of vintage champagne
that I want to eternally inhale and taste.
A carnivorous flower, a colorful bait
right on the fulcrum of a luscious face,
devouring my senses, my mind and my code
till my skeletal self spills out fossilized.
A prison of breath, of words, of lust,
my ecstatic fantasies behind carnal bars.
Rubber-like flesh, like a child I torment:
I bite, I press, I roll, I smack.

HAPPINESS

Oh yeah, dancing is good!
Fuck tariffs, fuck Greenland, fuck Zelensky, fuck Putin and fuck XiMaoXiaoPing or whatever he's called too.
I'm an old man, why would I give a shit?
Just give me dance music.
And lots of booze.
And give me some Viagra too.

TOO SWEET FOR ME - Bangkok, Thailand

Everything here is
sick-making pink,
the walls are wainscoted
with pink teddy bears.
Just fluffy toys,
all of them pink,
it's like eating honey
with sugar on top.
This is too cute,
sweet kind of cute,
I'm feeling noxious,
I'm about to puke.

Boozy lingams - Bangkok, Thailand

on the shelf of a loud pub
where they only play k-pop
a file of glass cocks
filled up with sweet shots
of colorful fluids
by lasers x-rayed
are about to e.j.
with some sort of b.j.

PARALLEL - Bangkok, Thailand

...dozens of glasses
on the table top
the dj spins techno
trance and hip hop
the fine tuned vibes
send the mood glide high

Recipes against unhappiness, chapter 2 - Children

This chapter is about what NOT to do, rather than what to do, to make people less unhappy in life.
One of the most despicable things that humans can do is brainwashing their own children. This is done when they are growing up and learning, when they are most vulnerable and need the support of the adults that surround them, those same adults they trust with their own safety and security. That’s exactly when they get betrayed and permanently damaged. The aim of this subjugation procedure is to install in the youth’s mind functional narratives such as religion, nationalism, patriotism, ethnicity, culture, even preposterous tribal totems such as sport fanaticism and traditional cuisine. It has always been done, and it’s still done nowadays, even where a great emphasis is placed on children’s rights.

Recipes against unhappiness, chapter 1: sphere of direct control

This recipe against unhappiness is quite easy, and it has ancient roots. The concept is simple, its logic unassailable, for it is very basic. Yet few people follow it. The others, almost everyone, spend their days at work, at the restaurant, at the bar or at home, arguing about topics they actually know nothing about; matters that are not directly connected to their lives. And they do it with such a zeal, as if they were defending what is dearest to them.
Let's try to make this point clearer.
You come across a theory, a hypothesis, a suspicion of a global nature. Let's say in the geopolitical, financial or social context. Okay, may be that theory is correct. Or maybe not. Can you confirm it or deny it without leaving your sphere of direct control? If the answer is yes, then confirm it or deny it. If the answer is no, I'm sorry, but by insisting on supporting it you are only wasting time and energy, and you are probably making a fool of yourself on top of that.
Let's take an example.

Developing country? - Bangkok, Thailand

When disabled passengers enter any station of the Bangkok SkyTrain system (BTS), they are accompanied by an attendant to the right platform and assisted while boarding the train. The arrival station is then informed of the relevant train, car, door and seat numbers. When the passengers reach their desired destination, an employee will be waiting for them in front of the specified door and will accompany them to the station exit.

Khaosanroadsunrise

All of a sudden an incandescent blob
has popped up right at the end of the road,
it might be a nuke test, like in Alamogordo,
but only a fat tourist here is called gordo.
A few seconds later we can breathe again,
the overweight guy can return to Spain,
the light is still there but this is not Nagasaki
and the noise we've just heard is of an old Kawasaki.

Economics

I am walking down a busy sidewalk and I badly need to pee. I remember that at the end of that narrow alley on the right there is a public toilet. I rush. When I get there I am reminded that to unlock the toilet gate you need a 10 baht coin. I don't have any. There is no one around who can give me change.
My nearly exploding bladder is enhancing my resourcefulness: I have an unexpected idea. I remember seeing a nice lady with a radiant smile squatting on the floor at the alley entrance, begging the passersby for some spare baht. Hadn't I been distracted by my body needs I would have already dropped a coin in her bowl. I grab a 20b note out of my pocket. For most people this note is worth double a 10b coin. And that, of course, includes the lady with the lovely smile. However, I want to pee now, and I need the 10b coin, which I don't currently possess, and that makes it priceless for me, no matter what's worth for you or anyone else.

Modern slavery

Modern slavery is not imposed,
no weapons needed, nor nets or chains,
the enslavers operate like fishermen:
they drop a bait that the slave will bite:
it could be an iPhone, a BMW or a penthouse,
the slaves will wake up at 6am,
suffocate for hours in the morning traffic,
sacrifice their eyes for the sake of a report,
arrive home late more sleepy than hungry,
wake up at dawn more drowsy than horny,
watch TV programs that promote mental numbness,
scroll over fake posts that help them feel real.

The last days of Socrates - Plato

All we know about Socrates was handed down to us by his pupil Plato - one of the most important western philosophers - as we have already seen when talking about the Symposium.
In this book Plato tells us about the end of Socrates' life: his trial, his imprisonment and his death by poisoning (not really a suicide, as this was actually the court sentence).
Socrates typical argumentative method is exemplified in four different sections.