We talk about a bad book, then take a trip to Puerto Rico to talk about the new Bad Bunny album but really just use it as a vehicle to talk about modern colonization.
Show Notes:
Heavenly Tyrant by Xiran Jay Zhao
Show Notes:
Heavenly Tyrant by Xiran Jay Zhao
Bad Bunny - DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS
- BAD BUNNY - DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS (Short Film)
- BAD BUNNY - BAILE INoLVIDABLE (Video Oficial) | DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS
- BAD BUNNY - PIToRRO DE COCO (Video Oficial) | DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS
- Unpacking Bad Bunny's personal and political 'DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS'
- Fabiola Méndez: Tiny Desk Concert
- El Laberinto del Coco: Tiny Desk x globalFEST
- Genius
- Official Website
- Data Vampires: Going Hyperscale (Episode 1) - Tech Won’t Save Us
- Coquí - Wikipedia
- Radio Menea
Chapters:
- (00:02) - Cristian takes an L
- (05:08) - Heavenly Tyrant by Xiran Jay Zhao
- (19:02) - Bad Bunny - DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS
Creators & Guests
What is Voxels?
A podcast on Art and Culture by Sadiq Saif and Cristian Colocho.
Hi, I'm Sadiq. And I need to admit that I was wrong about something. All right. I'm Cristian.
I'm not gonna forget my name this time. But so, you know, I'm problematic sometimes. And I can
own up to that. Right? I think that makes us human. I was wrong for saying we should give
threads a chance. Yes! Oh! Big L. I'm gonna just take it. I take that L. I take that L. I take it.
I stand on it. I stand on business. I stand on that L. I was completely wrong about giving threads
a second chance. I respect you taking this L publicly on the podcast. That's... Yep. I've
deleted once again my Facebook and threads and Instagram accounts because... Look, I'd like to
say I have some pretty simple lines. You know, I'm a freedom of speech guy. Okay. Okay. I just
threw up a red mouth. Nope. Nope. Nope. But to get to be a little more serious, right? So I think
there are some very clear lines on that trans people are real people. We should not be able to
have permissible speech in social platforms that trans folk... That the claim that people who are
trans or queer or whatever have some kind of mental illness or that they shouldn't exist.
Or frankly, that speech for people who look like being a tattic that are,
you know, we're thugs or whatever coded language you want to use because you can't use slurs.
But yeah, the stuff that that shouldn't be permissible, I think, is a pretty simple line,
even if the popular discourse calls for it. I mean, there's a lot of things that people like
to say that I think are... That we're okay saying that's not allowed. For example, the r slur.
Right? I think that's a pretty simple line that even though I'm sad... You probably hear it in
public sometimes. You might know one person. I know one or two people that I don't really talk
to that much, but I know them or interact with them that call things the r word. Right? And I
think it's pretty... We can all agree that that is something that you really shouldn't say because of
how ableist it is and the history of that word. So when known Hawaiian colonizer... And this is
gonna be my segue into some stuff we talk about later. But when known Hawaiian colonizer Mark
Zuckerberg says that, you know, it's not... We need to stay in touch with the popular discourse.
That's really just code for... We need to make the whites happy again, because we're not making
enough money off the queers. And in this new era we live in, I mean, what? Canada's fucked too.
I heard your man resigned. So everything's all fucked there. But yeah. So basically,
download a podcast app. Stop using YouTube Music or Spotify for podcasts. Pocket Cast is free.
I know it's supported by Automatic and Matt is a dickhead.
Matt is a dickhead. But...
With all the WordPress shit. It's still open source. Pocket Cast is still an open source
project. So I think... There are other podcast apps on Android that are less
polished. But I'm not saying they're good. I'm just saying like...
They're not really that great. If you want to cross the vice option, Pocket Cast really is
the best one. And iOS, they have Overcast, they have other options. But still, whatever. Use it.
Our assess reader. I know Reader is great. If you want to pay for it, there's a couple of free ones.
They don't have cloud syncing. You can run your own server for it. If you wanted to do that. If
not, you don't necessarily need cloud syncing if you only read from your phone. So there's options
for that. On iOS, there's Net Newswire, I believe, is one of the apps. Net Newswire is an old school
feed reader on Mac OS and iOS. I heard it's... Yeah. That is free, open source. There is Reader,
which is paid but supports iCloud syncing. So you have to pay for a syncing service if you use
Apple products. So there's still various options there. So really, it's 2025. This year is going
to be shit. So I use a Fediverse client. I don't care if it's Mastodon or Webfinger or whatever the
kids are doing these days. But I think now is the time really to say, "I think the Linux users are
right." Just a decade off. To everyone who uses Gen 2 and Arch Linux, you know what? You're my
people. People are going to clip that. People are going to clip that and use it against you.
I'm just saying you shouldn't have said, "Those people are right," because now they're going to be
idiomatious. Listen, how in the future are the people back in 2009 on IRC who are doing all
this shit already? They're technically in the past, but they were really in the future.
So when you think about it, the people... Oh, I forgot his name. You remember that one guy who
used to just do nothing but refurbish old ThinkPads for fun? Yeah. Sansui350A. Yes.
How the fuck do you remember that? First of all, if you're still out there and use that handle,
please add us on social media. I'd love to catch up with you. Genuinely speaking,
you were a cool person. I hope you did not turn out shitty, but at least that you were a cool
person. Yeah. They were a person who refurbished. They were on this week and the next IRC channel
where Christian and I and several other people in our friend group met, which is a weird thing to
think about meeting on a Linux YouTuber's IRC channel, but that's how those years were. But
yeah. Now we're going to talk about... I don't know how to segue this, actually. Speaking of
shit, things are bad. Going from good media and distributed apps to centralized media,
that might not be great. We have a book to talk about. Okay. That's an awkward segue, but
we're going to talk about... I'm going to talk about, I suppose, you haven't read this and you
really should not read this. Listen, I want to say before we talk about this book, I volunteered.
I'm like, "Should I read it for the podcast?" You said, "Brother, no." No, no. Absolutely. Nobody
should read this. This book should have stayed in drafts. So the book I'm talking about is Heavenly
Tyrant by Shiran J. Zhao. And this is the sequel. We may have messed up their name. I do want to
say we both spent 10 minutes trying to find a pronunciation. So we think it's Shiran J. Zhao,
but I don't. If it is incorrect, please, one, let us know. But not trying to fuck up someone's name.
Yeah, absolutely not. No. But yeah, the pronunciation wasn't clear, I suppose.
And this is the sequel to Iron Widow, which is a YA young adult fantasy combined with sci-fi.
It's a combination of fantasy and sci-fi, queer characters and a very strong feminist theme.
The whole message was about misogyny and sexism and patriarchy and stuff like that.
Iron Widow, the first book, is pretty strong. When I read it in... The book came out in 2021. I read
Iron Widow in 2022, and it was a solid book. So when this second book was available for pre-order,
I pre-ordered it based on the expectation that at worst it's going to be kind of like a mid-sequel.
You know, it wasn't going to be terrible. It was just going to be kind of not as good as Iron
Widow or whatever, right? But what I got instead, when I started reading this, I don't like to use
this word because it's not a great descriptor. It feels reductive sometimes, but this is a book
that's cringe. This is a cringe book. I don't know. I don't know.
I can maybe have another way of gauging it that our audience might know.
From Timpipa Butterfly to a Destiny campaign story, where does it sit on that scale of good writing?
This is going to sound like I'm exaggerating, but I genuinely think Destiny's story is better
written than this book. This book is... The bar is low because this book is... I think there are
multiple problems with this, and not just... There's technical problems with it from a writing
perspective, but also from a narrative perspective and the way the book is structured. First of
all, the book is 500 pages long, and it doesn't... It should have been 300 pages long. It's too long.
Second, it's clumsy as hell because it's badly paced, and it does this thing, which I call in
my review "lecture sections," where the whole premise of the sequel, Heavenly Tyrant, is that
our character, one of our main characters, Wu Zetian, is part of this revolution that's happening.
The whole thing about this is... I feel like the author read a Twitter thread about a revolution
and the Communist Manifesto. The author, they have these sections that I like to call "lecture
sections," where you have one of the characters in the book, whether it's the main character or
one of the side characters, do basically... It sounds like copy and paste from a lecture,
a communist theory lecture, a 101 course on communist theory. There are entire sections
of this book where one character will explain this to others. It's some of the most basic things
possible being explained in this way. The whole tone of this book, that's the problem I have with
this book. It would be one thing to have these lecture sections be in the book. You could say
that, "Hey, if you're new to communist leftist theory or whatever, if you're understanding
these things, this book could be some sort of introductory fiction thing for communist Marxist
theory or whatever." But it's not good at that. I think it's not good at that because it's clumsy
at doing that. It sounds condescending because the way the tone of the characters is, it sounds
condescending. So you're being condescended to in this way, and it's even worse if you're even
vaguely familiar with any of the things this book is talking about. And that's the other problem.
This book is trying to tackle so many things. One of the reasons this book is so long is because
they're trying to do a revolution. There's a war happening. At counter-revolutionary forces,
there are these aliens in the sky. There are all of these things that are happening. And the book
has to cover all of this. There's obviously this fight against capitalism. There's all these
things about the revolution happening. This book is trying to do too much. It's unfocused. It's
clumsy. It's incoherent in that way. While "Iron Widow" was good because it focused on the singular
feminist message in the book, this book also tries to do the feminist messages. But it also adds in
all these things about capitalism, about colonization, about war. And it does none of
those with any nuance or any careful examination of this book. It's just not a good introduction
to understanding communist theory. I feel like if you want that, there are other books
that I could recommend. I recommended "Babel" by R.F. Kuang, which I think is a much better way
if you want to read a fiction title about colonization and the necessity of violence
and revolution and all that. That's a much better book. And this book is... I know you read my
review. What did you think of the quotes in there? I put a couple of quotes in there from the book
that I thought were... I have a lot more quotes in my e-book reader. But those are a couple of
the quotes that I put in there that I felt like were... The first quote about... The one about
with the Harlan code. What did you think of that? So going off of the review, going off of what
you've described so far, to me, this sounds like it's the author was trying to work a lot of things
out themselves about themselves while writing this book. It's like a lot of, "I'm working out
my own politics while I'm actually working on this project, and it's bleeding into the project itself."
Specifically, before we get to the quotes, I do want to address the part about how the politics
were just jumped into it and explained in bulk while trying to be leading to the narrative.
And I think maybe having a footnote or at the end, some appendix of, "Okay, here's just some
basic theory so you understand what we're talking about in the story. Here's some other works you
can read if you really want to know more. But here's what you need to know just so you know
what's going on in this story," would probably have been the better way to have handled that.
But with those quotes about the smut and all that, here's the thing about being horny, right?
[laughs]
Okay. Yeah, yeah.
That laugh is the, "You're about to say something problematic," laugh. I'm not about to say
something problematic, all right?
Okay. Yeah.
If you didn't grow up on the mean streets of AO3 writing smut fanfic,
maybe don't put your first attempts at horniness into a YA novel.
Okay, so this is a YA, that's what this is a discussion, I suppose, is that this is a YA
novel. And I mean, the smut here is not, I mean, there's this use of, I guess you'd call it BDSM
dynamics and BDSM dialogue, I suppose. But it's not very, the dialogue isn't very explicit.
It's horny, but it's not that explicit. But at the same time, I feel like those scenes,
the reason I have a problem with those scenes is not that they are not that original or they're
kind of doing it poorly. It's more that these two characters that these scenes are happening,
like the two characters involved, one of these characters, the male protagonist,
one of the main characters, is Kin Zeng, is an abusive piece of shit.
So the book tries to redeem him at multiple points through this. And you have this thing where
three quarters into the book, this other character, Wu Zetian, the other main character,
who's hated this person, basically most of the book, all of a sudden, she's too horny for this
guy. And I'm just like, why? What are we trying to do? I just find that kind of like, there's no
romance here. There's no romance happening. It's just like kind of weird smut in there for some
reason. That whole thing, that part of the book shouldn't have been in there. There was no reason
to put that bit of smut in there. There's no reason this book had to have any smut.
I just think this was a bad way of having these two characters interact and try to have this
really kind of character that's really kind of abusive to this other character be in some sort
of fucked up, toxic, weird relationship. It's not good. I don't know what the point of that was in
that relationship in this book. So that's like the biggest problem I have with that particular
aspect of this book. Like a lot of things in this book, like one of the things I heard after I
published my review from somebody on the Fediverse is that the publisher actually made the author,
I think, cut out a bunch of stuff from the first book and then put it in the second book, which
might explain why this book is so long, which would be interesting. But I mean, that's
through the book's detriment, I'd say. But yeah, if there was a book, I don't like to use like
star ratings or number ratings or whatever, but if there was ever a book that I would rate like
zero stars, this book is in. I legitimately, at points, I just wanted to throw my ebook reader
out the window. I was actually dying. It was bad. It's bad. Not worth your time. Personally,
I don't think it's, unless you really want to see what happens and you want to read the whole
trilogy, it's not worth it. So do you have any closing comments before we talk about something
that's nicer to talk about, I suppose, more interesting? No, no, no. I say enough stupid
stuff online already. You're the one brave here for talking shit on this book. I do not want a
TikTok girl to come after me. I don't think, yeah, anyways. Yeah, I don't really. If anybody
has a problem with my review of the book, we can discuss it. And if you want to discuss it in good
faith, I'm willing to discuss that. But okay. I mostly, I actually do not know how big this,
I do not know how vicious this author's online following is. I just think I don't. Yeah. I'm
not on TikTok or I'm not putting this on TikTok or whatever. So I don't care. I had a thought
where I wanted to make a video review of this book. And I also at the same time don't because
I really kind of want to move on from this book. It's not a book that... I want to scroll. I want
to go back to the smut comments though for a minute. Just to be clear, I'm not talking...
I think maybe the AO3 joke might be being taken as like, I'm anti-smut. I'm not anti-smut,
like put it in all the things. It's just that there's mixing in smut in a book that necessarily
isn't a smut book. It's held to a higher standard, I think, than a straight smut book just for the
reason that you... Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. You have to weave it
into the narrative where it's not overpowering, but it also makes for an interesting read while
also still pertaining to the main arcing story, right? So that's a challenge you have. And from
what I read in the quotes, I actually don't think it hit that bar. So that's what I really meant to
say there. I think really to expand upon that. I feel like this was something like the author,
some author's own kinks they were working out in this book. You mentioned about how the author was
working out their own politics throughout this book, and that's why so much of this book is
info-dumping about communist theory or whatever. And I think that might be the same thing for,
same case for the stuff that's happening with the smut. I feel like that's just the author's
self-insert or whatever. Maybe. I'm not... I don't... Obviously, I don't know that for sure.
I don't know the author, so I'm not going to say that's for sure. But that's Heavily Tyrant by
Shiran J. Zhao. Apologies if I mispronounced the name because it's possible that we did.
But let's talk about something that's good, actually. Something that's actually some good art
instead of talking about bad art. Let's talk about Bad Bunny's latest album, which dropped
this past... This last Friday, right? On the 5th, right? On the 5th of January.
Yeah, last Friday. So Sunday.
Sunday, right? Oh, it dropped on Sunday?
No, it was the 5th. Wait, okay. I got it.
On the 3rd of January, did it drop on the 3rd? I think it dropped last week, right? On a Friday.
Albums usually drop on a Friday, but... It came out... No, January 5th. It came
out on a Sunday, yeah. Oh, it came out on Sunday. Okay.
So this album came out on Sunday. And speaking of mispronouncing things, I'm not going to try
and pronounce a lot of the... I mean, all the titles are in Spanish. And I'm not going to try
and pronounce these titles because I will definitely be mispronouncing the Spanish words
here. And we don't need that. We just don't. So Christian, I'm going to let you take this away.
Let's talk about this album and the context and all that.
Yeah, absolutely. So this is the latest Bad Batting album, and it is Debiarte Armas Fotos.
So this one is interesting in that mostly it's prior music. It has been not pop music per se,
because it's always had a little bit of a political twinge to it. But it's mostly just been
trap, reggaeton, all that. Yeah, mixed together. Yeah.
Reggaeton, right? Latin trap, Latin trap and reggaeton.
And this one is still some of those general themes, but it is extremely, extremely
old school in a good way. I don't want to compare this album to To Be A Butterfly,
because I don't think lyrically it could have...
No, no, no. I feel like, what do you mean by old school? What are you referring to,
referring to, rather, as far as what do you mean by old school?
So we can just talk about the actual samples. It opens up with a song from El Gran Combo de
Puerto Rico. So that's an old salsa group from way, way, way, way, way back in the 60s and 70s.
But then it goes from that super old salsa sample to throwing just a trap reggae beat over it.
And that's really what most of this album is. You take really old salsa songs or really...
There's some of it's new recorded stuff. It's not all samples. So you take that and then you
mix it in with just some modern trap hi-hats and stuff. And you get this super interesting
soundscape where it's not just the stuff that I grew up listening to,
but it also sounds so modern and refreshed. So that's why I was talking about...
I don't want to draw direct comparisons to To Be A Butterfly. But I think there is...
It's good conversation or it's good in conversation of this album where
To Be A Butterfly starts with what? Every n-word is a star from what? The 70s, the 60s, the 50s?
From some random... Not random. People obviously who are black probably know that group. But
from some super old sample, then it takes George Clinton, I think of the...
Fuck. Funk? I'm blaming on the name. But it takes that with some Dr. Dre production,
with Kendrick talking about how we should never give any of y'all money.
And this Bad Money album starts with a Ugron combo sample, goes into him just talking about
how he's turning up in New York. And the pronunciation of New York is the most...
I don't know what the word is for it. Because it's how people on the island say New York,
Nova York, where it's all stored together. There's probably a word for that for taking
the word from an English right and then saying it with the pronunciation of your native language.
I know people in India do that sometimes with English words to write if they're speaking Hindi
or a different language. They'll take the English word and just pronounce it as if they were saying
it in their native language. I know Japanese does that as well, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing.
I'm sure there's a linguistics terms where I'm not familiar with it. But yes, I know what you're
talking about. Yeah, that happens everywhere. It's so good though, because it's just talking
about partying in New York and then comparing it to the island itself. And it is extremely,
extremely unapologetic about being a record that if you don't understand this kind of Spanish,
you're not going to understand anything that's being said in it. Even an interview had the New
York Times. I think they asked them. I think the question was, "Aren't you worried that listeners
who don't understand that dialect of Spanish are going to get this album?" And he just sings,
"I don't care" as loudly as possible. I respect that. I respect you just being like,
"It's not for you. I don't care." Yeah, that's good. So I think the overarching theme of this
album in particular is a love letter. The way I understood this, I don't speak Spanish, so this is
my understanding of this album from you, but also reading about it. There's an NPR article that I
read this morning about going through the various themes of this album. And it's an album about
Puerto Rico. So what is he talking about when he talks about Puerto Rico with this album? What is
the message? There's three general bits. The first one is, I think it's an anti-colonizer album.
Various points. The biggest track is "What Happened to Hawaii?" where it's basically saying,
"Hey, if we become a state, we're going to turn into Hawaii." I think the chorus is,
"First, they'll come for your rivers. Then they'll come for your land. Then they'll come
for your grandma's house." That's an extremely strong message there. I think the second one
is him just reclaiming his own identity as being from there. Him claiming that the people of that
island are important, protected, and that he's from there. The last track, "La Maldanza," the
last line of it, which I think is the best fucking way to ever end an album that I've heard in years,
is him just on a fucking bongo-ass drumbeat saying, "This is where my grandfather was born.
No one's going to move you from here. This is where I'm fucking from." That's as strong of a
statement, I think, as any to claim your identity. Then the third part of this album is that it's
just a tour of the sonic landscape of all the indigenous sounds from the island, the various
reggaeton, various sub-genres that have come out of the island, and mixing it all together.
Yeah. I really love this album from... I don't understand the lyrics because I don't speak
Spanish, but I love the sonic aspects of it. The salsa, the song that has a music video where
they're doing a salsa class. Are you talking about the "Baile En Voladil?"
Yep, that one, that track. I just love anything with salsa in it because it's just so fun. It's
such a fun sound. I love that shit. Yeah, there's all kinds...
I mean, to interrupt you real quick, if you listen to this album in order, that's where you
realize this shit's going different. Because the first one is still a more modern of a sample,
and people have done that before. There have been artists that have sampled old salsa stuff. That's
nothing new. The second one's more of a regular reggaeton song. Then you get that one, where it
starts with some Travis Scott synths, and then just flips to being a salsa track, which I think
is hilarious. It's such a good... If you listen to this album in order, you were not expecting
that to happen. That, for me, is where I'm like, "Wait, what the fuck is he doing?"
Yeah, the production of this album is... I just enjoy listening to... I mean, I love listening
to reggaeton, but I love listening to Bad Bunny because his voice is just... You could be talking
about something pretty serious, but also his voice always sounds like he's just chilling. It's so
laid back. His voice never sounds like that tone he has when he sings or when he raps. It's just
like this laid back kind of tone to it, and I just love it. It's good. What are some of your...
We want to talk about the... Which tracks do you want to talk about? Is there a specific...
I know we talked about the salsa track, but there are other tracks.
I mean, the one about Hawaii. That one, I think, is just... That one's not a one I keep on repeat,
really. I listen to that once or twice just because... Especially to talk about, too, the
film. The short film we released with this. I don't think I need that message because I'm pretty...
I understand it clearly. I think... Oh, fuck. I got to find a link to it.
Data Vampires off of Tech Won't Save Us with Paris Marx. I actually think Paris is very well...
Hear me out. Because it's not just Puerto Rico that has this whole entire gentrification
concern going on. You have Google, Meta, other companies trying to go into Chile, Central
America, South America to build data centers. What is the one thing that data center needs?
Water for cooling. I mean, this is... You read any history books with the fucking 1800s and stuff.
Well, it depends on who wrote it. But you read any history books written by the people who are there,
and you find that a lot of the resources, really, in what Africa and other continents, too,
comes down to water usage. What do colonizers want? They want natural resources and they want water.
Land and resources. It's resources. All is about resources. It's about land, water,
minerals, oil, gas, natural resources. And it's just land. Obviously, just land. Data centers
take up a lot of land. They take up a lot of electricity. They take a lot of... They use a
lot of water. I don't know. There's all this happening. And the whole video, this music video,
I was watching this. This short... It's not a music video. It's actually a short film with this
old man sort of reminiscing about... The title of the album translates to, "We should have taken
more photos." And this old man is reminiscing about how he doesn't have enough photos. He was
living in the moment and he should have taken more photos. I need you to explain the animated
frog character. What's his name? Kancho? What's the deal with the frog? What's happening with the
frog? All right. I will drop the Wikipedia article for Kukui in... Oh, there's a Wikipedia article.
Oh. In there. Of course it does. So it... It is a frog that is a native to the island. And it really
has a whole indigenous aspect to it. Where back in the day, way, way, way, way, way back when
it was... I'm trying to find the right word for it. But I guess a lot of indigenous folks have
different stories and different oral stories that were told about different animals and stuff.
The natives of the US, natives of Central and South America, Mayans, they have those too.
So that frog has been a huge part of native culture. There's legends about how a goddess
fell in love with the frog. So it is just the symbol of the island. So it's a very... It's
just... It's one of those smaller things that if you're not... If you've not been there,
or if you didn't grow up around that, you just don't know.
Yeah. I was just like, "What's going on with the frog?" And it's the... Yeah.
Also, too, climate change is going to extinct the... It's going to make that frog extinct. So
there's a climate change angle to it too, where, "Hey, rising temperatures are going to kill off
that species," which I think is a very good symbol for what this album is. It is people,
other people making choices because they don't think about the Caribbean. They don't think about
the South, right? They don't think about it because they don't care. Because really...
And this is... If you ever want the core of why me and Tana talk so much shit about Europe,
it's the fact that so much of tech, so much of Mastodon, it's all this Eurocentric bullshit,
where honestly, no one... I think... And there's people on the FedEx, right? Not all of you.
But a good number of you, I don't actually think about what the choices you have for what you're
coding, what you're building actually has on the people in Central South America, the people in
Africa, the people in India, or more importantly, the smaller nations outside of India, Pakistan,
all of those that no one ever talks about. People never talk about India. No one ever talks about
their neighboring nations. They just don't think about it. I think the... Yeah, if you want to use
a theoretical term, there's a concept of the imperial core and the imperial periphery, right?
So countries like the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, a lot of Europe is part of the
imperial core. And places like Puerto Rico, a lot of countries in Africa, like the Congo,
South Africa, a lot of places in Africa and outside of this imperial core, the imperial
periphery where the countries from the imperial core extract resources from these countries and
then build their own systems of their economies and whatnot, right? So a lot of things that come,
that things like the lithium ion in the batteries in your electronics, they come from
people who mine them. There's a whole supply chain happening from a country in Africa to your
Eiffel, right? That's the kind of thing we're talking about the data vampires, the colonization
of Ismael resources kind of deal. And here it's talking about kind of like a cultural colonization,
right? It's talking about gentrification, obviously, which is a lot of the time, not just
physical, but also like cultural, right? Like there's this old man is like taking this walk
through the street. And he noticed like all these things happen. Like there's this like
English metal music, rock music playing out of speakers. And then he walks past like this family
like doing like a 4th of July barbecue or some shit on their lawn. We're very American. Then
he walks into this like restaurant where he used to know the owner, right? And like the funniest
thing about this thing is like the cheeseless, how do you say that? A casita? Like what is it?
It's a, it's like a, no casita, like the thing in the video where he gets like a cheeseless. Yeah.
Oh, casita, the sandwich. Yeah.
Like, it's like, if there's no cheese in it, you have to change the name, right? I started,
I was just like, okay, that's good. And like the whole thing about how the man usually pays in
cash and then the place has gone like full on cashless, which is the thing. Yeah. That's the
thing that happens. And how that's like part of like the gentrification where you're just like,
kind of like, you're like kind of left behind. Like, you know, there's a whole thing about like
being left behind by like, you know, people who just like the society has gentrified around you
and like, you kind of, kind of, you're still there, but like at the same time, you kind of
like disconnected from like. Exactly. Which is, which is like what happened in Hawaii, right?
Like how much of Hawaii does Mark Zuckerberg now own? Like how much of the native, is it Laue? I'm
going to, I apologize to anyone from there, from this pronouncing name, but like how many of the
native people, like how often do you go to Hawaii and it is a white man selling you things, right?
That are, that are branded with the natives. Or my guess for you actually, you're in Toronto,
right? There is a huge Indian population in Toronto now and from, you know, Middle Eastern
and stuff. Toronto is a diverse city. My question is how many, how many restaurants have you seen
that are branded as being like Jamaican, whatever kind of quote unquote ethnic we'd call,
you go in there and it's complete, it's full of white staff. I'm genuinely curious,
like how often do you see that where it's just white staff and no one who
would be of that culture? It depends on how upscale the restaurant is, right? Like if you
go to like, for example, like a Middle Eastern restaurant, that's like, say very upscale,
you're going to see like a lot of white people on the staff or whatever, right? But if you go to
like some place that's like, like a little less expensive, not in the downtown core,
you don't need to make a reservation. Like you walk in, it's like, you know, like, like there's
like music, like Arab, like Lebanese music playing on like the, on like a stereo system,
right? Or whatever, right? Or like I, when I was in like, I was in like Chinatown last week,
last weekend. And like, I went to a Chinese restaurant and it was like all Chinese people,
like on the staff, right? Like, so that was cool. But like, yeah, that's the, I mean,
yeah, it depends on, it's also like a class thing, right? Like white people like want to go to these,
like who go, like who have the money to go to these like really expensive restaurants, right?
Want a certain atmosphere and they don't want to think about like, you know, the actual culture
there, like, it's like, okay, this is going to sound weird, but like, you know, the kind of
people who like have, I'm going to bring somehow bring this back to like, you know, what do you
want on dating apps? And you see the profile of a person who travels a lot. I always find that,
you know, the person who just like always traveling. And I'm, my first question is always
is like, how much money do you have? The second question is like, are you like tweeting, like
going to these places that actually like get actually respecting the culture or whatever?
Like you just like kind of like sampling. You go to all the Brown countries, but you always
stay at the Hilton, like that kind of thing, right? Where it's like, you always stay at the
really nice hotel and you don't indulge any of the local culture. Or more importantly, to maybe
say it more directly, you're not spending your money in a place that goes back to that community.
You're spending your money at places that are global businesses that kind of just channel
back to the European and the American and Canadian bank accounts, right? So I think
really that's like, this is the microcosm of like what this album is trying to represent.
Like I guess I'm, to me, this is just like, once again, it's stuff that for better or worse,
I guess when I was younger, I thought I was super annoyed by it. But nowadays, I'm probably more
glad that my parents shut this all down my throat because there are so many people who
are like me, right? Who just don't, can't understand it because they don't know the language,
right? Because I guess to maybe talk about the language for a minute, this album, I think,
as we said earlier, the way it's titled, the language used in it, it's a dialect of Spanish
that is not proper Spanish, right? Puerto Rican Spanish is a little bit different in that
syntactically, it's written... Do you think it's like a patois, like Jamaican creole or something
like that? Is it kind of like a... No, no. It's a dialect piece. It's how the words are written
and how the words are put together. So syntactically, Puerto Rican Spanish is spoken
in how you would write a sentence in English. So this album, Debe Tirar Mas Fotos, is,
"We should have shot more photos," right? "Shoot photos." Tirar fotos is not proper Spanish.
You would say, "Tomar un foto." You'd say, "Take a picture." So to shoot a photo, that's an
Englishism, right? And it sounds dirty to people who speak regular Spanish. It's a relatively
recent thing that I think that Spanish from the Caribbean has become more popular.
- Is it more similar to African-American vernacular English?
- I mean, the way it's looked at, yes. The way it's looked at, the way it's structured,
I'm not comfortable making that kind of... - Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're not linguists.
We're not experts in languages, but... - But the way that people see and look down
on it, totally. Because you structure it in the way you would say stuff in English and you borrow
English words. And that's why it's a little dirty. And that's why for some people can't
understand this album because that's the Spanish she's using. So that I think is also important
to that it's not being written in a way that everyone can understand. So I guess I'm curious
from... You have a lot to explain to you, which is fine. But I mean, and maybe this is not...
The podcast is not the place to have the therapy session on this. But I mean, you obviously are
not Canadian. I mean, you live in Canada, but you're not actually Canadian. So from where you're
from, are there... Is that something you indulge with? Because I have a bunch of local Spanish
places I go to all the time. I think the joke I make is I gave up on American places when I don't...
If I don't want to think about food, I would just go to a Spanish place. I know it won't give me a
stomachache. - I don't actually eat... So I'll
explain something. So I provide some context for people who don't know who I am, I guess, maybe
listening to people who listen to this who are not familiar who I am. I'm Bengali. My parents are
from Bangladesh. That's a small country in Southeast Asia. Shares the border with India
and also with Myanmar. Tiny country called Bangladesh. So I'm from Bangladesh. My parents
are from Bangladesh. And my sister and I both have our agreement with this is that we don't
eat Bengali food outside of home because it's just the quality is not... There's a lot of Bengali
restaurants. And I don't actually eat a lot of Bengali food myself because it doesn't work for
the way I eat food anymore. The way I eat... My diet, rather, the way I eat food. My diet is
shifted out of being here for so long and just by the way my stomach works, what it'll tolerate and
what it'll tolerate. Certain foods that are pretty staple, like Bengali foods, I can't eat because
of texture-related reasons. The texture is weird. A lot of fish, like river fish, fish curries,
I can't. I can't eat that shit. I really can't. I haven't been able to eat that shit in a long
time. So I don't actually eat Bengali food out of home. I think my brother does. My sister...
Yeah, I just eat... My mom's cooking. If she makes Bengali food at home, I'll eat it.
Because she knows the way to cook, we will actually eat it. And if I go to a restaurant,
I'm not going to eat it because they'll put too much oil in it. Restaurants, you'll notice a lot
of the quality is not good because they put a lot of low-quality oil in it. It just tastes bad. So
I don't trust any Bengali restaurant out here. But I also won't eat other Southeast Asian cuisines
a lot. I won't eat Indian food or whatever, unless I'm at some sort of event or whatever.
Indian food is the thing that I'm going to eat. But usually, I actually try to eat different
kinds of food from different cultures because I like to experience... Like I mentioned, I was
in Chinatown last week. But also, while I was in that area, slightly outside of Chinatown,
there's a Jamaican restaurant called Chubby's Jamaican restaurant. And it's really good.
If any listeners are in Toronto, that jerk chicken was top tier. It was really good. That's some
good jerk chicken. It's run by a Jamaican chef and it's good. Anyways, what I'm trying to say,
I think the point you're trying to make is food and culture. I don't think I have anything else
to say, unless you have a question. Well, I guess another question I have,
and it was me being curious. What is the art scene like over there? Because I think with me being so
close that we're kind of blessed over here to have so many things and so many artists who come out,
Violent and also Central America, and stuff that blow up where it's a little more prominent.
This is my own ignorance speaking. I don't know shit about that part of the world. I don't hear
shit from that part of the world. It's probably on purpose. Go back to me talking about Meta being
in this episode. But I'm honestly just curious, just genuinely curious what that looks like.
I mean, culturally speaking, I think what happens in these diaspora communities,
the Southeast Asian diaspora communities, form these enclaves where you do your own cultural
events. You have your own social clubs. You have your own. There's a part of Toronto, it's near
Victoria Park Station. It's on Victoria Park and Danforth. There's a bunch of Bengali restaurants,
stores, and Bengali businesses, a lot of Bengali businesses on that stretch of Danforth
road. If I get on the subway and go to Victoria Park and I walk on that stretch of Danforth,
I'm going to hear a lot of Bengali. I'm going to hear people speaking Bengali. A lot of
Bengali people live around that area. There's a lot of apartment buildings. There's the Crescent
Park apartment building complex. A lot of Bengali people, when they first move here,
go stay there. When they first moved to Canada, they move in that area because
all the Bengali people in Toronto, not all of them, but a lot of Bengali people in that area,
it's a Bengali area. You have Chinatown where you'll see signs in Mandarin or Cantonese.
You'll see signs in Bengali and posters in Bengali and people speaking Bengali on the street.
So there's that aspect of culture here in Toronto. Musically speaking, I don't know. I'm not in tune
with Bengali music. I'm not really familiar with what the Bengali musical forms are even. I'm
really quite disconnected from Bengali culture as a whole, actually. There's various reasons for
that, but I am actually fairly disconnected from Bengali culture in a lot of ways. So there's that.
That's my experience. Yeah. No, that's fair. That's fair. Yeah. I'm just genuinely curious
because I don't know. This is not a conversation I've really ever had. Because on my side, right,
I spent most of my teens not wanting to fuck with any of this. And the more older I get, I'm like,
"You know what? There's ain't nothing good about white culture. I don't need to identify with,
I don't know, cut my life into pieces." No, I'm good. I'll listen to this instead.
Yeah. I try to listen to a lot of music, obviously. So culturally speaking, even if
music I don't understand, I'll try to listen to it because I have a specific interest in Latinx
music, actually. We're talking about Bad Bunny. I wanted to mention before we wrap this podcast up,
if you want to listen to more discussion about Latinx music from Latinx people,
go subscribe. Speak up podcast. We talk about podcasts. Go subscribe to radiobanana.com.
Radio Banana. It's a podcast by two Latinx hosts. They talk about Latinx music. It's really good.
It's how I learned a lot about Latinx music and the various kinds of genres that are present in
the piece. And there's so many different genres, all kinds of genres, right? So there's a lot of
music. There's a whole world of music that I feel like if you are somebody living in North America
who has never interacted with music from say Central and South America, the Caribbean, there
is so much there. It's incredible. There's a lot of music. So I like to explore music like that.
Even if I don't understand the language, I don't really care. It's fine if I don't understand the
language. I listen to Japanese music. I don't understand Japanese. I don't listen to Korean
music. I don't understand Korean either. So it's like... Oh, no, for sure. Yeah, to be clear,
I just want to say, the point I was trying to make is not that we should indulge in other music
stuff. It's just more of that me on my own journey. I'm just kind of like... I should
personally, because I think culture is such a weird thing. And every person has their own
journey. And some cultures are really shitty for how they treat queer people or how they treat
women. And you might not want to engage with that, right? It's a very nuanced thing. But I think at
least for where I come from, there's a lot more positives nowadays versus just going to the
triplet that's run by white people who can't even pronounce it properly.
Yeah. Listen, I know authentic Bengali restaurants here in Toronto. So if I ever need to actually go
and eat some authentic Bengali food, I know the places. I know them. Even if I don't go to them,
I know where they are, right? Because I have a family who knows where they are. My mom knows
where they are. So I know where they are. So I still speak Bengali, which is not a thing.
But it's interesting because I only speak Bengali with my mom. When I'm at home, that's the only
time I speak Bengali, right? So that's another part of this thing about language is that there's
a disconnect generationally. If you're like an immigrant, the first generation... When I was
growing up in the United Arab Emirates, my parents made sure that I learned Bengali and how to speak
it. And I learned how to write it as well and read it. But those skills have kind of atrophied with
disuse. I haven't used those skills. So I kind of forgot how to write or read Bengali. I'm sure if
I started reading Bengali again, I'll come back. But yeah, I speak Bengali only at home with my
mom and my sister, who also speaks Bengali, but we just speak in English. That's the kind of thing.
It's more comfortable speaking English together. So it's like we speak English.
And I don't know if you do this, but where you mix... Where you're saying an English...
Midsentence. You say the midsentence and you just break it to another language and switch
back out of it, hop back and forth? Yep. You forget the word for a certain thing
and say English. And you only know the word for it. And there's vegetables I only know the
Bengali words for. For some reason, I don't know the English words for them. So I'm like,
I'll just say the Bengali word in the sentence. It's like you mix the Bengali and the English
sentence in the English sentence. So I do that when I'm talking to my mom and my sister at the
same time. We'll be switching from Bengali and English mixed together. So that's the thing.
That's the thing I do. I'm sure you do that as well, probably. I think anybody who speaks
multiple languages and has to switch between them, it probably does this. If you're bilingual
or multilingual. Yeah. So that's a little bit of... I didn't expect this podcast to go in this
direction. I wasn't sure. Oh, this is what I was intending on having the whole conversation be
about. Because I could spend an hour talking about the little things on this album, but
it's important to me and it matters to me. But I think for our listeners from the fully grasped
what we're talking about and the grasp why this specific one means so much, you have to have the
broader context on colonization, on gentrification, on the fact that it's not just stuff from the
1800s. It's happening nowadays with tech companies and data centers. No, no. I think I mentioned a
book earlier. When I was talking about "Heavenly Tired," I mentioned another book, "Babel" by
RF Kuang, which is like a historical fantasy fiction that deals with colonization and language.
It's very specifically about how language is a thing that colonization kind of takes over and
destroys, like a cultural colonization. So if you want to read more about this, I highly recommend,
and you want to read a fiction title. I mean, obviously there's a lot of nonfiction books
about colonization. If you want to read like, you know, "France Fanon" or something like that,
you can do that. But if you want to read a fiction book, "Babel" by RF Kuang. But yeah,
I think we can wrap this up. Go listen to "Bad Bunny," actually. Go listen to not just this
album, but I think people should probably go back and listen to "Un Verano Senti." I think that's
probably the definitive "Bad Bunny" starting point, probably, for people. That's the album
that kind of made "Bad Bunny" really popular. I mean, outside of Central, South America,
and the Caribbean, right? Yeah. Definitely go through the discography, listen to this one.
And more importantly, if you ever travel to places outside of your home country,
you pay local businesses, go to local restaurants. Yes, absolutely. 100%. Always. Yes.
Yeah. Ask somebody to take you or ask about local restaurants. Go find out.
Go look on Google Maps what the restaurants are. It's not difficult.
Okay. Look, I can say this is true for anywhere in Central and South America,
and I'm pretty sure it's true if we went to your part of the world. People who grew up there
love talking about where they're from. Just ask them.
Oh, absolutely. 100%. My sister, she went back to Bangladesh a few years ago, and
she loved talking. Our relatives there, she went around, loved talking about all the restaurants
and all the cultural stuff there. So it's like people from that place will, if you take a genuine
interest, I think people will love to... You'll find a lot of cool things if you actually have to
step outside of it. First of all, you have to care. You have to be-
You have to care about the people and you have to make those conversations.
They're in good faith. You have to be... Don't have the mentality that you know everything
already. You have to be willing to be part of new experiences, but also willing to step
outside of your bubble, basically. You have to be willing to step, go into that tiny,
hole-in-the-wall restaurant that has amazing tacos. That's the best tacos you can possibly get.
But there's probably places like that that you won't find out from Google Maps or from reading
some blog posts. You won't find those places. There are those restaurants that only the locals
know about. The house, the good food, but it's not on any blogs or on Instagram. But it's this
tiny restaurant that has the good food. You have to just ask people. You'll be surprised what you'll
get. So that's my... That's some travel tips. I guess we're doing... Anyways, we're not going to
become a travel podcast. That's not happening. So as always, show notes on voxels.fm. I almost
said twoshadesofbrown.com. It's the wrong podcast. It's voxels.fm. I mean, given what we're talking
about, this very much was like the most shades of brown, not shades of brown we've had yet.
It was like a... We had like shades of shades of brown in here. So anyways, you can find all the
show notes. Go read my review of Heavily Tired if you want something fun to read where I dunk on a
book. It was... Yeah. I took some psychic damage. So please enjoy the content. And where can people...
Where can people find you on the internet? Just using automatic problems... Using automatic
products. I'm so sorry. But lofi carrots.link has all my links. Yeah. Catch me online,
talking shit on the timeline, having a good time. Some blog posts... Sometimes y'all on computers
want to make sure you really check the titles. Because something in my RSS the other day,
homomorphic encryption in iOS 18. I almost said it. And I spent five minutes saying,
"Is that homophobic encryption?" Computer people, please check what you're naming your things.
Yeah, that one is... Yeah. That's one of those... Yeah. So you can find me on the Fetiverse at
patrickcat@10forward.social. Oh, before I forget, we have a Fetiverse account now. I made it because
we need a Fetiverse account to not use our personal accounts. This is just an account
for the podcast. If you want to just follow an account that will put links to the new episodes,
add voxels@10forward.social. So go follow that. If you want to get podcast updates on the timeline
about my shitpost. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. If you want to follow without following
either of us, which I guess you don't have to do that if you don't want to. But go follow both of
us. I'm at patrickcat@10forward.social. And you're at lofi carrots@10forward.social. My blog post
is on my blog, nullrouted.space. And go check out my music blog syndicator.com. And all my other
links are on packetcat.link. And you can find like all the other things over there. So with that,
goodbye. Bye.