JW Consciousness Stream - 19 November 2025
This entry represents something like my stream of consciousness for Wednesday, 19 November, 2025. This is basically like a journal entry that I work on throughout the day and then don't go back to correct errors.
Originally published as: https://deliverystack.net/2025/11/18/jw-consciousness-stream-19-november-2025-2/
Yesterday, I ran across the Letters to Our Sons project:
I don't necessarily want to participate, but I find that there is no limit to the number of topics about which I want to talk to or write to my sons.
It's a good thing that I don't try to make money off my blog, because the traffic is really dismal and seems to be declining. I get different numbers from google analytics and WordPress itself, but they're both remarkably low. Strangely, google shows most of the traffic coming from China, where WordPress shows none from China. I'm sure they identify bots differently. I assume that China and everyone else are training their AI off everything that it can find. I don't know what possible value my content could have to an AI...
I've started getting calls from AIs, but they tend to just trail off. Apparently even the technology for scams isn't ready yet.
I was already familiar with this maxim, but triggered by something that I saw online, I posted the following to LinkedIn. Partially since almost nobody will ever see it there, it seems potentially worth repeating here. I think that it's generally better to write in public and then promote on or even copy that to LinkedIn rather than writing directly on LinkedIn, which generally isn't worth promoting elsewhere.
Poe's Law
"Poe's law is an adage of Internet culture which says that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, any parodic or sarcastic expression of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of those views."
--Some Wikipedia editors
"Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake for the genuine article."
--Nathan Poe
I talked to Namneung a bit this morning. I often cannot understand her English, and she cannot understand some of mine, but I understood that she is supposed to study AI for two hours at school each day. I have serious concerns about AI, especially for children and in education, and particularly for people that don't speak English. I asked her what AI is and she said she didn't really know, other than that it is "fake". I am not sure what advice to give, where she would understand it, or whether she would follow it.
Namneung is eleven and I have similar concerns about my daughter Wendy who will turn six this month. Cultures like Lao have opportunities but also huge disadvantages. It's hard to predict whether AI will be a net benefit or drawback for people and education here. AI has significant potential, for example in teaching English, but also presents great risks, especially for people that don't understand it and children that use it without supervision. It would be unrealistic to expect teachers at Namneung's school to monitor her activity, especially if she uses the AI in English.
It's almost 9:00. I've spent a couple of hours writing, mostly about my life 2010. I also posted some things about politics and such to LinkedIn, but I won't duplicate that here. The more I write about my life, the more memories come to mind - it's actually hard to jot down notes about everything that I want to write. I have no idea how much of it might be entertaining to any reader or what else they might get from it. I'm mostly doing this for myself I guess, partly to process the memories. While some of it might be disturbing, I hope that my children read it some day. My boys might learn from it, and my daughter could use it to get a better idea of who I am, since I haven't been able to be present for more than half of her life.
Kham is making breakfast. She really puts a great deal of effort into preparing food for me, and I appreciate it. Cooking seems to be one of her favorite things to do. She's pretty good at it, but generally makes Lao food with lots of rice and vegetables. I often want foods from other places and with other ingredients, such as bread and cheese, which are relatively rare and expensive here.
She really does want to make me happy. We are not exactly partners, but I find that many people want their partner to be happy. Unfortunately, she (like many others) wants me to be happy with the things that make her happy, not with separate things that make me happy.
It's 10:50 and I published this:
I also started watching The Last Man on Earth, a 1964 black and white movie starring Vincent Price. From too many years of processing textual information at relatively high speed, it's difficult for me to give something like this my full attention, so I sometimes do other things and then find myself frustrated for missing something an important or interesting moment in the film.
11:45 - The movie is good, but I found that I wasn't paying enough attention - even when lying in front of the TV I found myself checking my phone and missing parts. I've actually been reading books on how to focus and concentrate, but that doesn't seem to help me for video without enough dialog.
I'll try collecting some songs again.
- Laurie Anderson: Sharky's Day - Peter Gabriel did some work with her on the Mister Heartbreak album, where you can hear his voice. During college, I actually saw her live once.
- Laurie Anderson: Sharky's Night
- Bauhaus: Bela Lugosi's Dead: Watching Vincent Price probably brought this to mind.
- Bauhaus: She's in Parties: I thought this was about making porn, but now I think it's just about making a movie. "It's in the can" is definitely a reference to filming something.
Kham just told me that she will take Wendy and Namneung to Kham's mother's village over the Christmas break. Yes, Christmas is a thing in Laos - they will celebrate almost anything - and much of Southeast Asia. I will be in Thailand or the USA at this time. Things in the capital of Laos, Vientiane, are hard enough for me, but the villages can be really uncomfortable. Just getting to Kham's mother's village is like driving down a rocky dry river bed for a couple of hours, though there are places where the vehicle has to cross small streams. The farms are beautiful, including Kham's mother's pineapple farm, where I ate absolutely the best pineapple that I've ever tasted.
I like some aspects of the villages, such as being surrounded by peace, quiet, and chickens, as well as bathing in the nearby stream (also used for agricultural and probably not exactly clean). It's relatively clean compared to the city. The poverty is extreme; people seem to use barter more than cash. The people are friendly and somewhat communal. The children don't have much education, which doesn't lead to the most interesting adults. There are not many toys and not much to do. Being half Caucasian (I've heard white is now the PC term), relatively good looking, better educated, and speaking English, Wendy will stand out, which is good and bad. She enjoys herself with things like swings that hang from trees, but I know she doesn't like it there.
Kham's mother's house does not have air conditioning, which can be uncomfortably hot. Bathrooms here are basically big showers. They bathrooms in our house are tiled, but I think the bathroom in her mother's house is exposed concrete. Our bathrooms have sinks, spray nozzles that work like bidets, and even water heaters, but Kham's mother's house does not have running water. One needs to bring water into the house in buckets, for example to poor down and hence flush the toilet after use, or bring a hose into the house for things like cleaning. Food options are also limited, though Kham's mother runs a store out of the house, which sells things including packaged snacks that most children don't get much chance to consume.
Some time ago, Kham and I donated a statue of a Buddha to the temple nearest to Kham's mother's house. Here's a video of this event here, which gives some idea of what life is like there, although this was a relatively special occasion:
This was really a great experience for me, although I generally don't like being a guest of honor. In addition to seeing if you can spot Wendy, Namneung, Kham, and Kham's mother, one thing you might notice is that there are many women but relatively few men other than the monks, and no children other than ours. This seems to be the case at all temple events, but could also indicate that the men were working and the children were in school (or working) at this time. I was reading some notes in Bhagavad-Gītā As It Is recently that said that traditionally, women are kept busy with things like temple to reduce their potential for infidelity. In a sense, Buddhism derives from Hinduism, although Lao Buddhism incorporates older Lao traditions such as animism. Buddhism is basically different wherever I go, which is always interesting.
Well, it's 1:30. The more I focus on my life story, the less I seem to have for this consciousness stream effort, so I'm going to push this one out as done for today.