markjgsmith

Removing the bullets on all posts on the website worked pretty well. The text has a lot more space now. As suspected though it’s a bit difficult to tell the difference between notes posts and blog posts. I’ve made a quick start on both possible CSS based solutions I mentioned, namely putting all posts inside a sort of grid, and adding a colored left border to notes posts. It’s been a bit tricky making sure all the right CSS classes are in place so the CSS rules work their magic. I might have something to see today.

I’m thinking to add the bullets back for the 'Today’s Links' in each day because I quite like having that section look visually distinct to make them easier to find on the page when you are scrolling. I need to mess around with the underlying CSS classes so it’s easier to style those sections independantly from the other items on the page.

That’s the development plan. hopefully I’ll make some progress, but I’m already getting harassed.

The old woman that stop starts her motorbike and keeps alternately talking quiet then loud and saying 'president' over and over is right on front of me as I type this paragraph doing her anger goading thing.

Earlier this morning 'hey, go home' bloke passed by on his motorbike. He seems to be a new re-occuring harassment character. He zooms past and shouts in an overly jolly manner 'hey, go home!'. It’s just more anger goading but will likely turn into something else more involved.

As soon as I put my headphones in and started listenning to music stop start weirdo lady drove off, annoyed that she could no longer annoy me.

There were some red noodle packages left on the ground this morning, so likely some noodle based anger goading and harassment at some point. #

Notes on the question of the meaning of life

A few nights ago I was approached by a young man who was perhaps in his 20s. He sat near me, seemed very agitated. He started asking me questions about why I was here in Vietnam. We chatted for a while, though I left him to do most of the talking because that seemed like the most prudent thing to do.

He had spent time in northern Europe, and spoke pretty good english. He seemed to be perhaps having some issues with friends or family. He said he had previously had anxiety issues. I've been through that age and it sure can be confusing at times. I listenned and suggested a few things, I can’t say I gave the best of advice over and above 'live your life'.

Towards the end of the conversation he asked me what I thought was the meaning of life. Quite a big question, one of the biggest. I didn’t have a very good answer. The context in which he asked it was a little strange. After hearing about my situation, how I’d gotten stuck here during COVID, he had asked me if I needed any help. I said yes, but the how is the less obvious thing, I’m open to ideas but I’ve found it’s rare that people are actually able to help.

Anyway, he said his question was his gift to me. I’m really not sure how exactly his gift was supposed to help me. Seems like it would just distract me even more than I already am by this crazy world, taking up even more of my time which I can never get back. But it is an interesting question that I haven’t spent a whole lot of time thinking about properly. So I did spend a short while pondering it, and made a few notes. I’m publishing them here, because though it’s not something I want to spend a lot of time on right now, perhaps in the future I will, and I’ll have this post to return to. And who knows maybe it will spark some ideas in others.

• Last night’s what is meaning of life bloke
  • What does ‘meaning of’ mean? Is it more than just the dictionary definition of a word?
  • Are we saying meaning of a specific life or life in general?
  • Isn’t it a strange question to ask? You don’t ask what the meaning of a table is do you?
  • His answer: pussy, because dick and pussy make life
  • So does ‘meaning of’ mean ‘leads to’
  • Lenses to interpret the question
    • Philosophical - the purpose of life, how do you know what anything means. When a particular set of events happen we often say, such and such happened, and this other thing, so that means this other situation is likely going to happen. Eg predicting the direction of the tech scene. How big can these collections of events get. Could they be increased in size to an entire human life? Can a human life have a theme / a purpose? Would it be different for everyone? Would there be a common higher level quality that all lives share in this respect?
    • Scientific - What is the purpose of life from the perspective of the universe? cells, RNA, DNA all arguably examples of life who’s purpose seems to be to create higher and higher complexity life systems. Is human life the final stage, or does there exist an even higher life form that human life is creating, or on the way to create. Are we trying to figure that out? Maybe that is our purpose right now?
    • Comic - dick and pussy

His answer was that the meaning of life is pussy, because dicks and pussys create life. Presumably the meaning of life for a woman, in this paradigm would be dick. I think he’d gotten this from someone in his entourage. I suggested to him that perhaps they were joking.

I’m not totally convinced by his argument, but there is a certain simplicity to it that is quite refreshing. For me the whole question of the meaning of life has always seemed like something much more grandiose, and I’ve tried to jot down some of the thoughts that occurred to me. I like that there is this simple paradigm, but also that there could be much more to it.

To be honest it was kind of a weird situation, but I feel like it merited at least a short blog post. Might be something worth thinking about if I ever get unstuck from this terrible situation I am in. Having to figure it out right now is a big ask.

As for the young man in question, I wish him all the best on his journey.

Take it easy everyone :) #

I don’t want to go into too much detail but following this morning’s strange harrassment incident by the stop / start motorbike woman, where I eventually started listening to music on my headphones, and she left, my headphones mysteriously have started malfunctioning. As far as I am aware I didn’t drop them or damage them in any way, and I don’t think I left them unnatended anywhere.

There was an incident earlier where cafe shop staff seemed to be parodying an incident that happened to me when somebody asked me the meaning of life. While they were doing this, one of them was repeatedly setting off the flash on the phone camera. Well as it happened, the start / stop woman ended up being in a selfie I took that morning. The shole situation feels like some form of intimidation, especially since the regular camera on my phone stopped working in similarly strange circumstances.

This evening, back at the location of the harassment, there was a whole cascade of 'yellow' based harassment situations, some of which felt very manufactured.

I certainly hope the selfie camera doesn’t end up mysteriously breaking. It’s really bizare that the headphones have, the day I used them to politely and non-violently push back on what seemed like pretty clear harassment, something which the stop / start woman has done several times before.

It’s worth mentioning that I have had several headphones stop working like this as part of escallations. They have all been regular old school phono plug in-ear headphones. #

The meaning of life bloke just passed by again. He seems to have gotten it in his head that the thing to do is to ask me questions and drive off. This time it was less grandiose: What is Tam?

I’m missing an accent on one of the letters. I don’t know what tam is, it’s usually used alongside the word 'com'. As in 'com tam', and it means something like 'rice dish'. You can have different variations of it, pork, chicken etc.

Anyway, I don’t know for sure what it means, it’s a bit like Banh, when you think about all the things it is used for, it kind of doesn’t make sense. But I just don’t worry about it, and get on with my day.

I expect this is all part of a bigger story arc because I’ve been gifted in the past couple of days both com tam and a banh mi (sandwich), which likely means it might get turned into an anger goading, where I’ll just be gifted plain rice or something. That’s the sort of thing that usually happens. #