It's the year of elections, with the EU having just had their big election event, the UK about to have theirs in July, France at around the same time, and there's also the US. Elections are happening everywhere it seems. I'm usually not that interested in elections, but for some reason this year I have been. I think that's because the dynamics are genuinely quite exciting at the minute, with big shifts in opinion, economic conditions and ongoing wars causing geo-political forces to be very strained.

It's also been the first real EU election that didn't include the UK. Ironically enough, I think that's also caused many in the UK to become more intetested in the politics happening across the waters and througout the continent. I've learnt really quite a lot about central and eastern europe just reading round ups of what's been going on in each country. It's rather fascinating, no less because the EU is so big these days.

But the other big thing that's changed in recent years is that podcasting has become very popular, almost mainstream. People are able to have access to a much broader set of media sources, much of it created by non government groups or independants. I've been listening to politcs discussions all throughout the Bitcoin scene on podcasts like What Bitcoin Did, Crypto Voices and Bankless, the Peter St Onge Podcast and of course great discussions and interviews on the All-in podcast. But also, more recently on podcasts like the Rest is Politics and the Rest is Money. It feels like a genuinely different environment than back when Brexit happened.

The other big change is clearly the AI and LLM revolution that's happenned over the past couple of years. If the rise of podcasting has significantly changed the environment, and in my opinion it has, then how different will things be after a few more years of exponential advances in AI tech?

In the Uk, some pundits are predicting that the Conservative party will have their biggest election loss in over 100 years. That's pretty massive, but it's even more massive considering that the rest of the EU has been going in the total opposite direction, with the political right and extreme right gaining huge ground.

What a strange time for this to be happening. It occurred to me earlier that such a big election defeat, at the very moment powerful AI tools are being democratized, could be a lethal blow to the Conservatives. What if they never recover?

When I arrived in asia, I guess it's somewhere close to 10 years ago now (how time flies), many fellow non-asians that I met on my travels said to me that you'll never really be accepted in asia. You might end up living here etc, but you will never really be integrated. You will always be a foreigner. At the time I didn't think much of it.

The thing is, now that I've been here for a long time, I totally see what they were saying. These were folks that had been here for years, and I heard it from people in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and maybe more places. There really is underneath it all an us and them vibe that permeates everything. It varies from place to place, it's pretty bad here in Vietnam IMO, a bit less so in Thailand for instance, but still pretty bad.

I've been thinking about back home the past few days, because of the EU and UK elections. It occurred to me earlier how utterly alien this whole idea, that you will never really be accepted by a place, was to me. The entire time I grew up in the EU, it was the complete opposite. There really was a sense that you could eventually fit in, feel at home and integrated. My impression was that both the people arriving and the natives actually wanted this, and it was almost a matter of pride that it was something that was possible, something to strive for.

That's not how it is here at all. There are likely a lot of reasons for this, like the fact that many places in asia are such huge tourist destinations, and it's totally possible that I was simply not exposed to some of the darker aspects of immigration back home. I saw some racism and hostile behaviour here and there back home, but it's on a completely different scale and level here. You don't see it until you stay for longer. They are of course very nice to all the tourists, and to a certain extent the expats too, but many wear two faces, it's almost ridiculous and certainly shocking at times. And once again it's not everyone, but generally speaking it is the norm. It sort of feels like it's a group thing, that doesn't manifest so much on a 1 to 1 basis, like it is in some way structural, it's possible many are not aware of it.

Maybe things will change, I hope so, it can be a great place, but it's definitely not plain sailing most of the time.