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ɖʀʊӄքǟ ӄʊռʟɛʏ 🇧🇹🇹🇩 Profile picture
ɖʀʊӄքǟ ӄʊռʟɛʏ 🇧🇹🇹🇩
@kunley_drukpa
ʟᴇᴠᴇʟ-ʜᴇᴀᴅᴇᴅ ᴘʀᴀɢᴍᴀᴛɪꜱᴛ || 𝗜𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗝𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁 || འབྲུག་
Apr 30 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
>swiss think immigration is too high
>propose referendum to limit immigration
>government accepts proposals
>holds referendum to limit immigration
>limit immigration vote wins
>government limits immigration
>central issue of C21st western politics instantly solved
>it’s that easy x.com/polymarket/sta…Image This is not vote to ‘instantly kill all newborn babies that increase the population to 10,000,001’, more ‘take policy steps to ensure the population does not increase inordinately’ ie de facto reduce immigration. Referendum will be big test for migration restrictionists in Europe
Apr 29 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Very normal thing for an American to care deeply about with no ulterior motives. Instantly joins the pantheon of ‘Most American Quotes Ever Made’ by the great American political figures Image A great American tradition Image
Apr 29 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Sounds like I am making this up but I remember sitting under the tree the Buddha attained enlightenment under and realising in my head that because of many of my experiences in India (and elsewhere) I had been radicalised into having a much more pessimistic view of ‘human nature’ Image About giving up on ‘Star Trek Liberalism’
Apr 29 • 4 tweets • 8 min read
THE INDIAN TRAVEL EXPERIENCE 🇮🇳

Few years ago now when I was India I used to use public transport to travel the long distances between cities - buses, trains etc. Was rarely a pleasant experience because there was always some kind of low-level of dysfunctionality but it was still mostly tolerable if you didn’t mind pissing into a bottle. Occasionally would have bad trips though, worst was between the holy city of Varanasi (where Shiva established the cosmic centre of the universe) and the holy city of Bodh Gaya (where the Buddha attained Enlightenment)

Had been in Varanasi, by the Ganges, for a few days. Depending on who you ask the Ganges is either the embodiment of the Goddess Ganga or a de facto open sewer where burnt corpses and human waste wash over the worshipers who wade into the river to pray and bathe. (Seeing actual human corpses being burnt in front of your eyes on the ghats is a strange experience, can talk more about that another time though. Won’t forget the sight anyway - didn’t expect human bodies to burn quite like that ie extremities first, torso last)

After I left my hotel had a bumpy 30 minute tuk tuk ride through honking, swerving traffic to an intersection near the bus station where a flyover had recently collapsed, trapping and crushing many people. A lot of people dead. Driver stopped near the rubble and said oh you have to walk 2 minutes down this road to get to the bus station. It seemed a lot with a heavy bag but still doable. Turned out I had to walk 20 minutes along a dirty roadside and of course there were loud honking horns, people shouting at me etc along the way. Was very hot, really wanted to punch someone

I get to the bus station sweating, agitated and tired and ask “Sasaram, Sasaram”. (City where I wanted to go first.) People just shake their head. Walk around for 15 minutes and people keep saying no, no. Eventually a tuk tuk driver comes up to me and asks if I need a tuk tuk. I ask if the Sasaram bus is nearby and he says other side of town, back the way I came. We go back down exactly the same road, even driving along the road right next to the hotel I had stayed. Another 15 minutes to get to a muddy field where the buses go to Sasaram. Note - reason I wanted to go to Sasaram and not Bodh Gaya directly is Indian state boundaries mean buses don’t go directly there. Varanasi is in Uttar Pradesh and Bodh Gaya is in Bihar. Sasaram is right on the border of Bihar, when you get there you have to take further transportation. In theory you can drive Varanasi to Bodh Gaya in 5 hours, which is long but not ‘long’ long

Wait in the muddy field for 30 minutes for whatever reason then finally we go. Driver starts driving into oncoming traffic before building up enough speed to accelerate over the raised pavement that separates the two road directions, was about 5 minutes of driving on the wrong side of the road in all. He took the raised pavement to hop back to the correct side like it was a ramp in Mario Kart. Nobody cared. 3 hours later, crammed in the bus in the dark we arrive in the grimy and in that a way a little intimidating Sasaram. The city and surrounds were visibly very very poor, there is litter everywhere etc

At the bus station they say there is no bus onwards to Bodh Gaya, I must go by train. Concept of a bus to a major nearby city seemed confusing for some people. And apparently the train was the same train I could have caught in Varanasi anyway. I have to walk out the bus station, down a dark, creepy-looking track past some slums and then across live railway lines to get to the station. Here they only have general standing tickets available, so I pay 65 rupees (>$1) because no other alternative. Was hungry but the only food available to buy anywhere near the station was biscuits so I had biscuits and coca cola for my evening meal. It was dark now too so I went to sit under the one working lamp on my train platform. Would still need to wait 90 minutes for my train to arrive

[1/3]Image Waited, bored but naively expecting the train to arrive on time. Of course this is India and karma for my hubris soon caught up to me when a teenager I was talking to (actually he was very nice and helpful - he said Sasaram had once been the proud capital of the ‘Sur Dynasty’, also he was sleeping in the station until 6am to catch his train assuming it was on time. Actually the station was full of Indians sleeping on the floor overnight for similar reasons, must have been at least 50 people there) told me the train would be 30 minutes late. Ok... annoying. 30 minutes later, oh it comes in 30 more minutes. 30 minutes later, oh it comes in 30 minutes. Finally it arrives, 11:30pm - hours after its scheduled arrival time. Except it’s full, it’s a complete crush inside… not desperate to get in something like that in India

He says, oh wait 15 and there is another better one - the one that left Varanasi four hours after the train that had just arrived was due soon, almost on time. That is, because it hadn’t been delayed it would arrive only 15 minutes after the first train. It arrives and I take it, finally on the train. Train has a little more space available but the tiered shelf-seats in basic class are still otherwise stacked like a warehouse, plus it’s dingy and dirty too. We set off but the train keeps stopping for a long time at every station along the route. Finally, after about 90 minutes (1am) it stops at Rafiganj, a small village maybe 40km from Bodh Gaya. I wait, expecting it to move soon

30 minutes later it still hasn’t moved so because it is stifling, smells of BO inside I go outside on the platform for some fresh air. I wait 30 more minutes. Nothing. Nobody speaks English. They just shrug. I am tired and angry, at the end of my tether. Phone battery almost dead. A group of men walk past, they have a little English. They say oh, signal failure, maybe the train will leave at 5am (so 6am I think). Almost crying. I ask if they have tuk tuks outside the station? At this point would pay for an overpriced taxi just to get to bed and sleep. He says no, this is a village and the countryside around it is very dangerous, there are many bandits here so nobody will drive me until morning. I am trapped

Had given up but then thought to ring my guesthouse in Bodh Gaya to ask them to send a taxi. While they nominally spoke English they didn’t really seem to understand the words I was saying, it took them a while to understand the concept of sending a taxi out to collect me that I was trying to convey. Eventually though they seemed to understand and said they will check if it was possible. I wait 15 then phone them up and they said the driver they normally use wasn’t responding, probably he had fallen asleep. Sorry. Suddenly someone says the train will leave again in 10 minutes. I said to the receptionist I might call him back, he said not possible because he was going to sleep. I wait 20 minutes and finally, at almost 3am, the train leaves. Takes another 30 minutes to arrive at the edge of Gaya (city within which Bodh Gaya is located) and then 30 more in a tuk tuk to get to Bodh Gaya (overpaid but was really late so didn’t care - also made throwaway comment the driver lectured me in a genuinely angry tone about; my mispronouncing Rama in a British accent: Ram-a not my Rar-ma), where my guesthouse is. Exhausted. Arrived 12 hours later than intended at 4am

[2/3]Image
Apr 29 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Aaaaahhhhh these western books depict such full and carefree lives aaahhhh I’m so deeply resentful and jealous ahhhhh I can’t stand these western books anymore ahhhh their dreams and aspirations are so real and tangible I can’t stand it I can’t stand ittt I’m goinggg insaannnneee When I first read Dino Buzzati’s ‘The Tartar Steppe’ I was so violently sick that my family had to call an ambulance. I spent a week in a hospital bed on a drip recovering
Apr 28 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Voicenotes are default mode of message app communication for most non-WEIRD groups. Can measure exact point at which a former WEIRD Western country becomes non-WEIRD via migration with the ‘VOICENOTE INFLECTION POINT’ ie when at least 50% of people prefer using voicenotes vs text Image Britain is one of the world’s most voicenote averse countries - which should be a huge source of patriotic pride for British people everywhere. Ontologically speaking as long as Britain remains comparatively allergic to voicenotes it is still fair to say that it ‘remains British’ Image
Apr 27 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
APATHETIC MUSEUMS IN AFRICA 🇧🇼

Interesting to think about what ‘returning Botswana’s artefacts’ ‘to give them meaning’ would look like in real life - especially since they would presumably be returned to be displayed in the country’s national museum. Presumably…

Remember visiting Botswana’s ‘National Museum’ some years ago because had the expectation that a country with interesting geography like the Kalahari desert and the Okavango delta or peoples like the Tswana or San must be able to produce a ‘fairly interesting’ museum about itself. Actually even though Botswana does not have a large population it is comparatively not ‘that’ poor so you assume there would be no real obstacles to it creating engaging displays

Unfortunately Botswana National Museum was one of worst museums I have ever visited. Space was a small dome building with a single main room decorated with a few low resolution print outs of ‘typical scenes’ of Botswana life. Mud huts in a village etc. Some traditional pots had been haphazardly placed around the ‘exhibit’, bunched up against each other according to some strange internal logic and often unlabelled. There were some traditional chairs (?) and carpets displayed in a similar way too. There were several other artefacts on podiums but they were also sparsely labelled. This was the extent of the ‘artefacts’ on show. The museum featured no panels with photos or expositions of Botswana’s history or anthropology

The second floor featured ‘artworks’ about Botswana by local artists. Most of the artwork looked like a souvenir you would buy in a tourist shop while on safari or from a tout sat selling his wares on a large sheet on the pavement; ie Pinterest-type paintings of elephants or black women. You could see everything in the museum in about fifteen minutes. I did not felt like I learned anything about Botswana from the visit. There were no other visitors at the timeImage ABOUT THE BOTSWANA ‘HYPE’

(PICTURED: Second floor of the Botswana National Museum) Image
Apr 27 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Need to remember when you critique ‘Multicultural Britain’ in many people’s minds that looks closer to ‘Pink Pantheress Britain’ than the ‘Yookay’. Below is much closer to what they think you’re attacking, many will be baffled and reject critique out of hand because it seems mean Image Partially they believe this because many people are just docile and unobservant but also partially there is a kind of ‘Ordeal of Incivility’ where ‘certain kinds’ of people struggle to ‘be mean’. Taken together you can pick and choose the good, not weird parts of multiculturalism
Apr 24 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
Reform should have branch of party with a mission statement to become increasingly esoteric, they should lean into and embrace arcane and recondite candidate selection, policy and publicity materials. Impossible to garner negative press if you put Tibetan wizards up for election Image Reform over past year seem to have moved away slightly from the ITV-2 aesthetic that they went in big for circa 2024. This is sign of a professionalising party but also a shame insofar as it is an amusing, playful aesthetic. Could have a lot of fun with it with a skilled PR team Image
Apr 21 • 12 tweets • 7 min read
REVIEWING SÃO PAULO TODAY 🇧🇷

São Paulo is the biggest city in the Americas and the main driver of Brazil’s economy yet it somehow has little to no cultural impact outside the country. São Paulo has great bars and restaurants but overall it can often feel underwhelming

Thread 🧵 Image São Paulo is the biggest city in the Americas - it has a greater population than Mexico City and New York. Fair to say though it punches far below its weight culturally, really has (unfortunately) little to nothing to show for its size. I am trying not to be too harsh on it here, I say this more because I am curious as to why this is the case. I think you spend some time here you can sort of ‘feel’ it doesn’t have the spark it needs to elevate itImage
Apr 20 • 5 tweets • 4 min read
THE SEX LIVES OF BRAZILIANS 🇧🇷

Common stereotype about Brazil is that they are obsessed with sex. People are obsessed with sex everywhere you go of course (is normally impossible to scroll the X feed without some kind of softporn appearing) but Brazil how to put it… you know it’s like they say the Inuits have over 50 words for snow - in the same way Brazil has a lot of words for sex and relationships. Country has a reputation to effect of everybody there has the same level of sexual self-restraint as an average gay man, I don’t think this is quite true but it probably is true that there is at least a subset of hyper-promiscuous Brazilians and then importantly here that some of their behaviour is attributable to aspects of Brazilian culture. Qualifier is obviously incel culture and its variants exists in Brazil too but there is nonetheless (seems to me) an important kind of hyper-liberalness in Brazilian mores

Can’t say why exactly could be a few reasons, could be the special, open nature of lusotropical society, could be the average IQ of the country, could be less social stigmas, could be the weather could be all or none of the above. Brazilian once mentioned to me offhandedly that politicians in Brasilia were known for ‘having a lot of sex parties’. Said “isn’t that something quite scandalous?” and got told no not really because it’s not considered remarkable here. Same way that there is supposedly less of a stigma around using a prostitute in Brazil, many Brazilians don’t really think anything of it. Some Brazilian men, within you know five minutes of meeting them they’d be pulling up the Instagram of a woman they were fucking or wanted to fuck and say “ahhh isn’t she hot I am fucking her / want to fuck her” and often she was but to the point, they would do this very quickly after meeting them, they were very forward about this with strangers. Nice to meet you too. Again this is all heterosexual and normal but overall impression you get is that for at least some Brazilians ‘sex culture’ is ‘more open’ like the stereotypes would have it

As I say Brazil has a lot of unique terms for sex and relationships just as Inuits have terms for different consistencies of snow - think more evidence to the thesis, here are some examples:

‘Pegação’ - has several meanings but one of main ones is it refers to act of ‘making out’ with a lot of people. So at carnival or just on a night out you cruise around and you try to kiss five, ten people. The kissing of lots of people, you ‘get off’ on this a bit presumably. You ‘taste them with your mouth’ and then you move on? I don’t understand why you don’t just try to seal the deal for the evening at that point but it’s something some people enjoy doing

‘Ficante’ - this is basically just a situationship, having someone in your roster or harem and you don’t want to commit to them but maybe you text them and invite them over to bang once every week or so. Also though it’s a designator, you identify as a ‘ficante’, you can introduce yourself as a ‘ficante’ to someone

‘Cafuné’ - this means something like ‘to tenderly caress or stroke’, especially the head when lying with a partner. There is a specific word for this. Actually women would tell me Brazilian men are bipolar ‘lovebombers’ who yo-yo from incredibly sweet and tender and loving and romantic to hysterical and clingy to cold and distant as their mood takes them. Very expansive emotional ranges and this term belies that. “Brazilians have attachment styles like a manhole cover, they are very jealous and needy - but then also they all cheat too” one woman said

‘Beijeiro / Beijeira’ - ‘Kissing Bandit’ or thereabouts, someone who smothers you with kisses. To same point above, common enough that there is a term for it

‘Talarico’ - slang for a person who romantically pursues another person’s partner, particularly too if they are a friend. Means something like ‘homewrecker’, again common enough archetype that there is a term for itImage Spot the pattern
Apr 17 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Sneako inexplicably being indulged by world leaders like the Prime Minister of Malaysia now - as well as major third world thinkers and personalities. Like it or not Sneako represents a unifying force in the Ummah, the Ummah love him. Sneako could become leader of a new Caliphate Image This is the spectrum of Sneako-ist Thought
Apr 16 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
This is kind of law Bukele needs to keep enacting to take his game to the next level - from boring competent technocrat to full on classical platonic Philosopher King. Ban random hairstyles, ban certain musical instruments, genres of art, forms of poetry etc ‘for the public good’ Image My advice to Bukele recently has been he needs to level-up, he can’t just sit on his laurels. One of main problems here is the human capital problem. Can you de-choloify a country just by banning a certain kind of goofy haircut? Lots of work still to do
Apr 15 • 11 tweets • 7 min read
REVIEWING RIO DE JANEIRO TODAY 🇧🇷

Rio is such an attractive city because it has an undeniable energy. A host of factors conspire to suck that energy away though (the poverty, the crime etc) - and while they half-succeed they have not quite yet fully succeeded

Thread 🧵 Image Going to complain a lot in this thread but want to preface the complaining by saying I really enjoy spending time in Rio. I love it, Zona Sul (Leblon, Ipanema, Copacabana, Leme) especially - I don’t think there is a more magical stretch of city on the planet, it’s a Final Fantasy locationImage
Apr 14 • 4 tweets • 4 min read
THE THIRD WORLD STRIKES BACK 🇧🇷

Easy somewhere like Brazil to live in a bubble despite the obvious problems the place has. It’s possible with a modest amount of money (especially if your income is foreign) to almost totally avoid the country’s third world aspects barring maybe the occasional homeless person you have to sidestep on the street

Have said this before but third world living can be very easy if you’re relatively rich by local standards. Actually had been melting into that bubble for a while, a few months… was having a really nice time. You might drive past some favelas in an uber occasionally but once you do that a few times you sort of ‘get over’ their favela-ness and it doesn’t faze you so much. Or it becomes background noise at least, you forget you are in the ‘third world’

One day I thought I would get intercity bus because the flight between cities would cost an extra $350 (since there are few low cost airline carriers travel between cities in Brazil via air is disproportionately expensive. See also eg Canada here). Also don’t mind long road journies - trip would supposedly take about 11 hours, not the end of the world, Brazilian buses aren’t terrible, nice to rest and gaze out the window…

Sat down by window seat. Suddenly a large family of indigenous-looking people gets on. I’m not sure exact indigenous group they were… Guarani, Tupi… could have been Bolivian even… All very stout, very pre-Columbian features. Maybe you’ve seen that meme image of mexicans where all the mexicans look like Shrek and Fiona (ogre form), you know rotund bodies and jeans and hair fades and gold chains - kind of like this

They’d bought up several rows of tickets for themselves including in rows with single passangers. First thing they did when they went to sit down was set up a circular encampment all turning inwards to face each other, immediately beginning to talk loudly among themselves in a large ring formation around the aisle that took up a third of the length of the bus. This entire area became ‘their space’, a whole comunidade established; kids would run up and down and it squealing, food and luggage and bedding was passed along it

They would eat obnoxiously stinky food constantly too. All kinds of packages being ripped open; the smell of milho frito em óleo de sarjeta, capybara coxinhas etc perpetually wafting into your face. Tinny music played over phone speakers, voicenotes recorded in shouting tones, babies wailing and not being disciplined… constant chatter for most of the trip

Was remarkable how unfazed they were by the concept of the bus being a kind of shared space, you could have been at a village quinceañera for all intents and purposes. Yeah we’re on a public bus with all these strangers it’s reunião de família time. Was surprised they didn’t bring a goat on board… look I’m being a bit crass here I don’t want to be too crass but you try not noticing this when it’s happening right next to you on long bus journey

Real nightmare ride in all, was close to losing it for a while before I did my breathing exercises. Okay obviously I know these behaviours exist, they’re very common, have written about this many times before this is just what certain kinds of people ‘are like’ but as I said thing for me was I got lulled into a false sense of security despite knowing all this, having experienced it many times. Had nice lifestyle for a few months - it makes you drop your guard. Forgot this could happen, almost would have paid the extra money to avoid it all it was that unpleasant. Because you are not in contact with ‘it’ you forget ‘what things are like’, the hate does genuinely leave your body, you feel yourself getting more liberal again as experience of ‘what people are capable of’ fades in your mind. But then place yourself in an environment like that and it comes rushing back and you think “oh yeah”. Don’t want to draw too many comparisons to people’s priors vis-a-vis their political preferences here ofc…Image Here’s some audio of wailing noises on the bus. Just variants on this for hours on end
Apr 13 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Isn’t that London is now a hellhole, actually it is very nice in many parts - is more that it is undergoing a process of (avoidable) ‘enshittification’ where quality of life on certain metrics gets slowly worse over time. So easy to tolerate but things are still worse than before Image London in the summer, wow. And maybe even you man clapping some naija or argentinian or punjabi ting you don’t even mind the real big change you’re having too much fun and who can blame you! But fact remains many QoL metrics degrading even if people often too hysterical about it!
Apr 12 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Orban loss leaves Czech Republic model of right wing populism the most sustainable populist model in Visegrad. You may not like it but this is what sustainable Euro-populism looks like Image 🇨🇿
Apr 8 • 4 tweets • 5 min read
MEETING A BRAZILIAN ‘YOOKAYABOO’ 🇧🇷

One of nice things about being somewhere like Latin America if you’re British is that there is a significant lag between British culture as it is today and British culture as it is perceived by locals. If you say you are British your culture is normally understood as Harry Potter, Ed Sheeran, The Beatles, maybe Jane Austen etc - all big soft power so-called assets nostalgically harkening back to a slightly more ‘British’ Britain. Have written before that haven’t really met anyone hugely aware of ‘Yookay’ culture - there are a few people aware of mass migration to be sure but not met anyone who ‘stans’ the new country as such…

Recent experience probably first time have ever encountered a real bonafide ‘Yookayaboo’. This woman was what Yookayians would call a ‘lightskin’ - you know (as they conceive it) one of these ‘classy’ mixed types who maybe went to school in the Home Counties and who can also ‘code-switch’ as a situation calls for. In a Brazilian sense while she wasn’t from the favela herself she was very effusive about favela-adjacent culture, samba and funk and so on, hated Bolsonaro and loved Lula. Held to the idea that that culture is the real expression of the authentic lusotropical volk, more real than Brazil’s lusophone imperialist implant culture so-called. Made multiple disparaging comments about European colonisation and to scene-set some more at one point showed me some pictures of her friends and they all had tattoos and nose rings etc. For balance though she was otherwise quite a sweet and pleasant person

One of first things she said to me when she found out I was British was “I’m a huge fan of British culture, I really love it. Actually that’s partially why I matched with you”

Because she looked a bit alt was thinking ok not a straight-laced ‘Teaaboo’ but this is Bowie, Oasis, Pink Floyd etc this is going to be easy to riff off

“Let me show you, I have this huge playlist of UK rap. I really love British rap.
Central Cee, Dave, Skepta… these guys are so cool”

Did a mental double-take. “You like Central Cee?”

“Yeah I love him his sound is so good, so authentic”

“You like grime and drill then?”

“Yeah I listen to it a lot. I think it’s becoming more popular in Brazil too”

Didn’t seem to me that it was ‘becoming popular’ with the more European Brazilians but thought about it and maybe I could believe it was becoming more well known among other types of Brazilians

Told her that Britain had a big immigrant population now and a lot of this music was mostly being produced by these people. Asked her if she knew about these changes. She said she did and that actually what was happening in Britain was ‘so cool’ and that it was really nice the country was transforming like that. She said she wanted to move there too if she could, London was her ‘dream city’

Didn’t really know what to say. “Yeah Britain is really diverse these days, it’s changing a lot. Actually the change is really polarising a lot of people, I think it’s the main issue in British politics at the moment”

“Yes I heard about Brexit, it was sad. And you have, I think his name is Nigel Farage? He’s like the British Bolsonaro”

“In a way”

“In Brazil luckily we got rid of Bolsonaro but it was a crazy period”

“We have this meme in Britain, it’s called ‘Yookay’. Have you ever heard of it?”

She obviously hadn’t. Decided to show her the Yookay Aesthetics (@MythoYookay) page to see how she would react. Didn’t tell her I ran it obviously. She thought it looked cool. “I like it looks so unique and interesting”

Anyway, didn’t keep pushing it

Got in her car later and she put the UK Rap playlist on for us. Strange to hear it in a Brazilian environment. She did genuinely know all the rappers too and I know because I’ve ended up learning them all

For better or worse probably there’s a certain kind of constituency for Yookay soft power even if it doesn’t always overlap with the constituency for British soft power…Image
Image See Also:
Apr 3 • 4 tweets • 5 min read
‘AFRICAN TIME’ AND WAITING FOR AFRICAN BUSES 🇲🇼

Bus stations are probably best place in Africa to experience ‘African Time’ - or at least the version of it where there is a sort of endless waiting for something to happen. What is important here is that in Africa many buses won’t leave until they are completely full. If you ask a bus driver “what time is the bus due to leave?” the answer will be “when it is full” and often in a confused tone as if the question was conceptually difficult to understand. So a lot of the time when you go to take a longer distance bus you have to go off vague hearsay that “it normally leaves about 6am”. Then you have to go to the ‘bus station’ - usually less a bus station more a busy dirt yard with a few Coca Cola vendors and corrugated shacks - a bit before that alleged departure time and sit down on the bus and wait the hour or two for it to fill. Reason you don’t go later when it is probably more full is that even though 80% of the time it fills up slowly the other 20% of the time it fills up quickly and then it leaves and then you miss the only bus of the day. Very time consuming way to travel, wastes a lot of time

Wanted to travel by bus with friend between two cities in Malawi once so went to the dirt yard where the buses were. There was one bushvan bus heading to where we wanted to go but it was mostly empty excepted two people. Just had to suck it up because that’s how buses in Africa work. Go and sit down - an hour passed, two hours, three. No AC and hot sun sat in the dirty shantytown station. Bus was filling up at a rate of about three people an hour. After eight or so people had gotten on the original two people who had been sitting inside the bus since the beginning suddenly just got up and left. An African woman said they worked for the bus drivers pretending to be customers so that when customers were deciding whether to invest several hours to sit and wait for a bus to fill up they could look inside and see their bus was ‘already’ half full. Then when the fake passengers did get up and leave the real customers would have wasted so much time in the bus already that, sunk cost, it would be better just to wait a little longer instead of leaving and investing the time in finding another. A uniquely African kind of scam

Wasn’t even as simple as the bus seats being full here either. As soon as the main seats were occupied the driver started putting down stools and trying to cram extra customers onto the bench seats. He wouldn’t leave until the bus was completely full. Told the driver that we would pay him the cost of a couple of extra seats if he left without waiting for the bus to fill up completely since it was taking so fucking long. He seemed enthusiastic about the prospect of taking more money but the concept of leaving without a full bus seemed to confuse him - as in he genuinely did not understand what we were asking. Unsure what he thought we were going to pay him for but the promise “we will pay for extra seats so we don’t have to wait until the bus is full until you leave, you can just leave” and “being able to leave without every seat full” was like trying to square a circle in his mind

As it turned out we spent so long explaining the concept of ‘leaving without a full bus but you make the same amount of money’ to him that more customers entered during the time it took and it ended up being redundant. Of course he was still expecting the money so we had to explain why we weren’t going to pay him anymore. But he didn’t understand that concept immediately either and it ended up being even more of a waste of time just to convey the point

[1/2]Image Had been waiting in the bus for five hours at this point and were almost about to leave but there was still one more problem. A lot of African bus syndicates had touts who officially were supposed to roam around the ‘bus station’ so-called and try to convince customers to get in their bus. If they did this successfully they would receive a commission for all the people they brought aboard

Whenever we looked out the window while we were waiting the touts would all be sat on plastic chairs, smoking and playing cards together on a plastic table. Nobody was trying to find customers, they could not care less. Commented on what the fucking point of them was to each other multiple times and joked about doing the tout job ourselves since it would probably be quicker

When the bus did eventually fill up there was another delay when the driver went over to the touts and told them they weren’t going to get any commission since they didn’t bring anybody aboard. Immediately angry shouting, then a physical fight broke out between the driver and one of the larger, more aggressive touts. Huge crowd materialised out of nowhere to watch, a bit of staring milling as a large circle of people suddenly formed around them. They wrestled for about a minute before some other Malawians broke the fight up. Then about another half hour more of shouting before the driver, visibly in an angry huff, climbed into the van and finally started the ignition

[2/2]Image
Apr 2 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
The moon is the natural indigenous land of the Anglo. Anglos got to moon first, Artemis mission is pure Star Trek Liberalism - the Anglo fantasy brought to life of the Anglo in space the final frontier at the head of a rainbow coalition of all the races: Black, Woman and Canadian Image Can’t get more ‘Anglo’ than putting a black man in space. Infact the Artemis II mission might be even more ‘Anglo’ than the Apollo 11 mission even though there are less white men this time specifically because it involves a black man and a woman. Pure ‘Star Trek Liberalism’
Apr 1 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
With America’s hispanicised future now increasingly ‘locked-in’ it’s possible that even if the US does continue with a space programme that that space exploration might also become increasingly hispanicised too. Not impossible the moon bases of 2076 look something like this Image See: