Chris Arnade 🐢🐱🚌 Profile picture
Mar 13, 2023 3 tweets 1 min read Read on X
Look. I love NYC. Lived there 20 yrs, but anyone who tells you it hasn't changed in last three years, largely for the worse, is crazy.

My morning going from Rockaways to Port authority was filled with navigating filth and broken, dysfunctional, & disruptive people.
It's sad for the obvious moral and human issues. But it's also frustrating to see hard working people, just trying to commute to their jobs, have to deal with or navigate around, people who are angry, mentally ill, tweeking, or being confrontational just because
The contrast between what you see in NYC, a very wealthy town in a very wealthy country, versus what you see in Taipei, or Hanoi, or Istanbul, is damning to the US.

We are doing something very wrong.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Chris Arnade 🐢🐱🚌

Chris Arnade 🐢🐱🚌 Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @Chris_arnade

Jan 27
Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan) is one of the most unique cities I've walked. Almost zero tourist, because very few people even know it exists.

I wouldn't recommend it for someone looking for a relaxing vacation, but if you want to really feel your in a different place, a bit detached from the rest of the world, it's safe, inexpensive, and interestingImage
Image
Image
Image
About ten miles outside of Bishkek is a 3 square mile market, built, lego like, from shipping containers.

Almost entirely self-regulated, it started after fall of USSR as a place to swap goods -- where they came from, and how, nobody asked, or cared

Slapped down in the middle of an otherwise bland neighborhood of mud roads and single homes it's now Central Asia’s largest marketplace.

A complex of stores inside freight containers selling anything and everything you want: Toys, TVs, Jeans, Bras, Bikes, Spices, Trinkets, X-mas decorations, Tools, Gas Masks, Hijabs, Watches, Wall clocks, Slippers, Shampoo, Stuffed Animals, and on and on.

All of it imported from China, Russia, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, South Korea, India, Iran, etc. Carrying on, in a very modern way, Kyrgyzstan’s Silk Road tradition.

It’s a microcosm of our very material global supply chain world. A visceral picture of how our world of stuff works. How the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the things that fill our homes, come from all over, shipped across the globe in rectangular metal boxes.Image
Image
Image
Image
It has it's own restaurants, a mosque, and keeps expanding.

Traveling to places like Bishkek has helped me understand history better. Not from going to museums, or historical sites, but from seeing how people physically live, especially those without a lot of money.

The marketplaces of Bishkek, or Istanbul, are not that removed from the marketplaces of ancient Rome, or Paris in the middle ages. They are crowded, loud, busy, colorful, communal, and self-organized. Or to put it simply, messy.

When you go to a historical monument, like the ruins of an ancient building, or a preserved cathedral or mosque, you get the entirely wrong image of the past. You see quiet, dignified, empty, sterile spaces. Places where you are scared to touch something. Places where people walk around in hushed voices.

That’s nothing like what the past was, and you can see that in the present in places like the shipping container market.Image
Image
Image
Image
Read 7 tweets
Dec 6, 2023
Update on this: I went to eye-doctor, & no I don't have cataracts. The doctor did mention, almost all her customers now complain about same thing, to extent some have completely stopped driving at night.

The primary offender is newer cars with very bright headlights -- Tesla's are particularly bad, & with them, it's not about the height, but only strength of beam.

There's also less awareness on when to use high beams, especially with younger drivers.

The combo of it all is, driving at night, especially in rural areas, has gotten dangerous. It's not some silly annoyance thing, but a real problem.
Limiting beam intensity, is an example of what competent Government regulation is supposed to be about -- curtailing selfish individual behavior, with limited benefit, that's directly dangerous and harmful, in a clear physical way, to the larger community.

Even hard core libertarians can get behind this one.
we'll be up against the Big-Beam-Industrial Complex. But think of bugs life. We can overcome!
Read 4 tweets
Nov 5, 2023
Living his best life #Mongolia
Image
Image
Living his best life #Amman Image
Living his best life #Hanoi Image
Read 7 tweets
Apr 1, 2023
'These deaths are caused by external causes — overdoses, gun violence, dangerous driving & such'

All of these are "reckless behaviors", simply forms of slow suicide

Thing you more likely to do if you feel your life is without hope & is meaningless

ft.com/content/653bbb…
Why is this happening? Spend more than one week, not visiting, but residing, in any big city poor neighborhood, or in a depopulating mid sized city anywhere in US, and you will get it.

Unless you have the strongest ideological blinders on
Pundits need to add Anomie to their list of buzzwords.
Read 7 tweets
Mar 17, 2023
This was the best Odd Lots & if you want to know what happened with SVB, you have to listen.

Two points
1) Lev was too polite to say it, but SVB specific regulators failed. As he said, an older generation of Regulators would have been shocked by SVBs balance sheet
2) Everyone kinda thinks of high tech as sophisticated investors. Well, in finance, they are anything but sophisticated

One customer (Roku) had 500mm sitting in a bank account earning almost nothing. Lol.

3) that lack of sophistication is partly why SVB thrived, until it didn’t
I thought the bigger issue (they briefly touched on) is that as banks got more complicated (in 90s), banking regulation changed, and in trying to keep up, switched to a more quantitative style. Which resulted in regulators not really knowing their bank.
Read 4 tweets
Mar 5, 2023
My fortune (?) from the temple of Mazu
Which google translate says is this

(Ps. Google translate app is pretty amazing. Although this is a tough ask)
Speaking of google translate. You wonder how long until majority of language differences will be mitigated by technology.

Doesn’t seem very far off.
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(