Gutted: my favorite Chinese restaurant was playing AI Christmas music the other day instead of their usual Mandopop covers :(

The weird musicality, uncanny backgrounds, and “jiddy up” instead of “giddy up” gave it away

Adventures in reverse culture shock:
Saw a mosquito bc the door was open and almost flipped—then I remembered we don’t have dengue

Almost said សុំទោស twice at HEB

May have said “I-latte” because the baristas keep getting confused

I only know how to do the Khmer palm down “come here!” gesture now

One of the small but incredible things about Cambodia is that "modern" dancing at weddings is basically just 60s/Beach Boys style surf 'n' twist etc with a touch of the 80s. I have no idea why

If we thought “powerful men broke their brains on social media” is bad… wait for the generation of ipad kids to run for office

There’s a global crisis in masculinity/manliness and nobody seems to be contending with the issue in full—just bits and pieces. Lil’ Larry Summers pickup artist emails here, lil’ male dropout rates in the developing world there, lil’ Groyper lore over yonder…

cambodianess.com/article/stud...

Information Minister Neth Pheaktra confirmed the attack in Prey Chan village, Banteay Meanchey province, stating the incident occurred Wednesday amid escalated tensions over the Cambodia-Thailand boundary

Reading the wikipedia advice article on spotting AI and it's noticeable to me that the major tells for AI also smack of "undergrad cramming a paper in by midnight":
"LLM writing often puffs up the importance of the subject matter [to talk abt] how arbitrary aspects... contribute to a broader topic"

Carly Rae Jepsen releases four new songs and a couple remixes of “Run Away With Me”…

Best album of the year

Ugh her MIND 😩

Every night I crawl into bed covered in blood not my own…

the mosquitoes out here are nasty!

The Thai side cleared Cambodian villagers’ agricultural land, where barbed wire had been installed encroaching on Cambodian territory, in Prey Chan village, Banteay Meanchey province.

The most challenging part of Peace Corps is seeing the daily horrors humanity faces that Americans get to paper over so easily. And if you’re a certain special type of stupid volunteer (me), you get to ride along for some of them too...

Curtis Yarvin: man is destined to live under a monarchy!

*finger on a Bejeweled Monkey’s Paw curls*

Long live House Swift 👑🫡

This is what I point to anytime someone suggests it was in Cambodia’s interest to “start the war” with Thailand. A whole appendage of the Cambodian economy was cut off basically overnight—not sure how that “bolsters” anybody…

🇰🇭🇹🇭 Cambodia PM: Thailand initially supported the Malaysian Prime Minister’s proposal for a ceasefire but later reversed its position. The key to resolving the current conflict is Thailand’s acceptance of the ceasefire.

Step aside everyone—white boys online whose only experience with Thailand and Cambodia is [redacted] have *opinions* on the war

BREAKING: #Cambodia has officially requested the United Nations Security Council to convene an emergency meeting to stop Thailand's military aggression.

There’s a lot of useless, overwrought advice for Peace Corps volunteers out there but the one they don’t ever address for is: what to do when it’s raining IN YOUR ROOM

Another Peace Corps DOGE update that might be useful: they truly don’t know what they’re doing.

So initially they froze our grants from USAID—today they froze our crowd funding ones too.

This means DOGErs are doing everything piecemeal. They’re pecking at Leviathan one line of code at a time.

Doomer report from abroad: I’m in Peace Corps and my cohort’s group chat is freaking out about the foreign aid cuts bc 1) the diversity committee can’t do stuff and 2) PCVs doing gardens for their secondary projects will need to switch. If this is what Resistance2.0 looks like, we’re done for.