lovely observations, thank you for sharing! i'm a hk native but have lived away for 9 years now and visit every year. resonate with a lot of your thoughts here.
i like to say hk is truly a "3d city", especially in the summers in central. we travel between buildings through bridges, cross tunnels that go through mountains, trams and buses are double decker, the hilliness, etc.
another thing i love about hk vs the cities i've lived in in the us is the number of "shared spaces" where people hang out -- not just nightlife where ppl spill onto streets, but also children playing volleyball in courtyards, badminton on the curb, etc.
Thank you! I absolutely love the 3D living part of HK. And the shared spaces aspect is very real, and yes quite limited in the US compared to most of Asia.
I love Hong Kong after living there before and after the handover. The first time I went back after a long break, I stayed just for a few days in Central and was sad to see the mainlandification of the place and the generic new malls. The second time, I stayed in Sheung Wan and the old Hong Kong of shops in crumbling buildings selling dried produce was, amazingly, still there. There was also, by chance, a photo festival with temporary "galleries" in random industrial buildings all over the city, which allowed me to see out of the way places I hadn't before. I don't know if I agree that Hong Kong got left behind. It was always a combination of flashy new and crumbling old. China proper just bulldozes people out of the way for its Stalin-o-capitalism schemes. No property rights for you, my friend. Infrastructure and property bubbles with negative investment returns aren't even good for the economy in the long run. Taiwan is a closer analogy to Hong Kong, with similar crumbling architecture and vibe (maybe also the smaller Chinese cities in Fujian). I think that might be more to do with actually existing property rights than anything.
It's fascinating. The same Uber driver told me how many of the crumbling buildings need ot be renovated but the govt couldn't find the owners. In Mainland when they couldn't they just demolished it regardless and rebuilt, to be figured out later when an owner showed up. Hong Kong couldn't and didn't.
I don’t know enough about Hong Kong property ownership. The land is all owned by the govt, as far as I understand, but with long leases. I rented a very large flat in an old walk up 4-5 storey building in midlevels from Swire Property. It was cheap for the enormous size (people used to walk in and say, wow this is a massive flat, and I’d say, oh no, this is the hallway) because they were very slowly buying out the individual owners and several were holdouts. So they rented out the places they’d already acquired cheaply. It probably took them over a decade but now there’s a 40 storey apartment on the plot. In China they’d send around thugs or police or literally knock the building down while you were at the shops or around your ears. No exaggerating.
I also worked in the China World Trade Center in Si Hui in Beijing when the area was relatively undeveloped. There was an old hutong behind the WTC that someone wanted to develop. Almost all of the residents had been ejected to places miles away but there were some holdouts including someone on the second floor of a building. The entire building had been demolished apart from this one flat precariously sitting on top of the stairwell leading up to it with retaining walls largely gone. The person couldn’t leave the building unattended or it would be gone when they got back.
Interesting thoughts, thank you. I was there in 2011 for a transhumanist conference. I remember it having a bit of a Blade Runner feel, with two levels. The upper level was the hotels, the lower the "authentic" street scene. I didn't see much of the latter but the food I was told was real local stuff was inedible! (Also, the taxis were strictly limited to their particular area, reducing competition. It was odd and arbitrary.)
But! I have to object to your comment about "less market forced and more intrinsic." The market involves no force. It is the voluntary interaction of providers and consumers. I'm not clear what you mean by "intrinsic." Minor point but it bugged me.
I was lazy and used shorthand but just meant unlike cafes where coffee quality is a metric to be discerned often bars focus a lot more on ambience and decor etc as the market demands esp in lively areas, and the quality delta is intrinsic therefore to the provider's tastes as opposed to market demanded, if that makes sense.
We like your content and wanted to share our hypothesis with you (OSIM forensic cosmology hypothesis v2.2): We tried to phrase this so everyone could get a visual of how it would work:Think of the universe not as a digital computer program, but as a giant, perennial tomato plant.
a tomato plant grows, produces fruit, dies back in the winter, and its seeds wait in the soil to sprout again. It does not need a programmer to tell it how to grow; it follows an internal, biological blueprint. Our independent research group is investigating whether the universe might follow a similar, naturally cyclical pattern.
Rather than a one-time Big Bang, recent discussions in the scientific community are exploring the Big Bounce an infinite, cyclical process. Our hypothesis suggests that instead of expanding forever, the universe might reach a limit, contract, and bounce back, with biological systems potentially acting as the most efficient way to store and reset information through each cycle.
A tomato plant does not stop at one fruit; it branches out, growing multiple stems, each producing its own fruit. If our universe follows this biological blueprint, it would not just seed our own galaxy. Instead, we may be looking at a system that grows fruit—galaxies—along every stem of the cosmic web. Each galaxy could be a localized site for life to bloom within the larger, cyclical structure.
Dark matter may act as the trellis for our cosmic tomato plant. It provides the gravitational structure that guides the growth of these stems, serving as a road map that ensures the system develops and resets in a way that allows life to re-emerge across the entire plant.
The Oklahoma Constant ($\Omega_{os}$) is the focal point of our research. We propose this constant as a way to measure Goldilocks Entropy—the narrow, stable energy range where life can persist without the system stagnating. It may be the tuning knob that explains why the universe stays just right for consciousness to emerge on every stem, cycle after cycle.
Because this model emphasizes biological efficiency, we suggest the possibility that we are the hardware, not the software. If this is a biological system, our consciousness and our physical form may be the fruit of this cosmic garden, essential to how the system functions.
We are currently tracking data from the Simons Observatory. They are looking for specific ripple patterns in the ancient light of the universe—echoes of a Big Bounce. If they find these signatures, it would provide evidence that our hypothesis is on the right track.
This is Forensic Cosmology. We are moving away from the who—a creator—and focusing on the how—the blueprint.
Our hypothesis is strictly falsifiable. If evidence confirms the universe will continue to expand indefinitely toward a Big Freeze, our Life-Raft model is incorrect. If a non-biological material is ever proven to exceed the efficiency of biological systems, the premise of the Oklahoma Constant ($\Omega_{os}$) fails.
We are not looking for a coder. We are documenting the physical fingerprints of a system that may be preserving life through an infinite, natural cycle.
lovely observations, thank you for sharing! i'm a hk native but have lived away for 9 years now and visit every year. resonate with a lot of your thoughts here.
i like to say hk is truly a "3d city", especially in the summers in central. we travel between buildings through bridges, cross tunnels that go through mountains, trams and buses are double decker, the hilliness, etc.
another thing i love about hk vs the cities i've lived in in the us is the number of "shared spaces" where people hang out -- not just nightlife where ppl spill onto streets, but also children playing volleyball in courtyards, badminton on the curb, etc.
Thank you! I absolutely love the 3D living part of HK. And the shared spaces aspect is very real, and yes quite limited in the US compared to most of Asia.
I love Hong Kong after living there before and after the handover. The first time I went back after a long break, I stayed just for a few days in Central and was sad to see the mainlandification of the place and the generic new malls. The second time, I stayed in Sheung Wan and the old Hong Kong of shops in crumbling buildings selling dried produce was, amazingly, still there. There was also, by chance, a photo festival with temporary "galleries" in random industrial buildings all over the city, which allowed me to see out of the way places I hadn't before. I don't know if I agree that Hong Kong got left behind. It was always a combination of flashy new and crumbling old. China proper just bulldozes people out of the way for its Stalin-o-capitalism schemes. No property rights for you, my friend. Infrastructure and property bubbles with negative investment returns aren't even good for the economy in the long run. Taiwan is a closer analogy to Hong Kong, with similar crumbling architecture and vibe (maybe also the smaller Chinese cities in Fujian). I think that might be more to do with actually existing property rights than anything.
It's fascinating. The same Uber driver told me how many of the crumbling buildings need ot be renovated but the govt couldn't find the owners. In Mainland when they couldn't they just demolished it regardless and rebuilt, to be figured out later when an owner showed up. Hong Kong couldn't and didn't.
I don’t know enough about Hong Kong property ownership. The land is all owned by the govt, as far as I understand, but with long leases. I rented a very large flat in an old walk up 4-5 storey building in midlevels from Swire Property. It was cheap for the enormous size (people used to walk in and say, wow this is a massive flat, and I’d say, oh no, this is the hallway) because they were very slowly buying out the individual owners and several were holdouts. So they rented out the places they’d already acquired cheaply. It probably took them over a decade but now there’s a 40 storey apartment on the plot. In China they’d send around thugs or police or literally knock the building down while you were at the shops or around your ears. No exaggerating.
I also worked in the China World Trade Center in Si Hui in Beijing when the area was relatively undeveloped. There was an old hutong behind the WTC that someone wanted to develop. Almost all of the residents had been ejected to places miles away but there were some holdouts including someone on the second floor of a building. The entire building had been demolished apart from this one flat precariously sitting on top of the stairwell leading up to it with retaining walls largely gone. The person couldn’t leave the building unattended or it would be gone when they got back.
Wow! Talk about hard mode for nimbys.
I did think maybe this was the right directional push that HK needed when I was there, but moderatin as in all things I suppose.
Interesting thoughts, thank you. I was there in 2011 for a transhumanist conference. I remember it having a bit of a Blade Runner feel, with two levels. The upper level was the hotels, the lower the "authentic" street scene. I didn't see much of the latter but the food I was told was real local stuff was inedible! (Also, the taxis were strictly limited to their particular area, reducing competition. It was odd and arbitrary.)
But! I have to object to your comment about "less market forced and more intrinsic." The market involves no force. It is the voluntary interaction of providers and consumers. I'm not clear what you mean by "intrinsic." Minor point but it bugged me.
Thanks!
I was lazy and used shorthand but just meant unlike cafes where coffee quality is a metric to be discerned often bars focus a lot more on ambience and decor etc as the market demands esp in lively areas, and the quality delta is intrinsic therefore to the provider's tastes as opposed to market demanded, if that makes sense.
We like your content and wanted to share our hypothesis with you (OSIM forensic cosmology hypothesis v2.2): We tried to phrase this so everyone could get a visual of how it would work:Think of the universe not as a digital computer program, but as a giant, perennial tomato plant.
a tomato plant grows, produces fruit, dies back in the winter, and its seeds wait in the soil to sprout again. It does not need a programmer to tell it how to grow; it follows an internal, biological blueprint. Our independent research group is investigating whether the universe might follow a similar, naturally cyclical pattern.
Rather than a one-time Big Bang, recent discussions in the scientific community are exploring the Big Bounce an infinite, cyclical process. Our hypothesis suggests that instead of expanding forever, the universe might reach a limit, contract, and bounce back, with biological systems potentially acting as the most efficient way to store and reset information through each cycle.
A tomato plant does not stop at one fruit; it branches out, growing multiple stems, each producing its own fruit. If our universe follows this biological blueprint, it would not just seed our own galaxy. Instead, we may be looking at a system that grows fruit—galaxies—along every stem of the cosmic web. Each galaxy could be a localized site for life to bloom within the larger, cyclical structure.
Dark matter may act as the trellis for our cosmic tomato plant. It provides the gravitational structure that guides the growth of these stems, serving as a road map that ensures the system develops and resets in a way that allows life to re-emerge across the entire plant.
The Oklahoma Constant ($\Omega_{os}$) is the focal point of our research. We propose this constant as a way to measure Goldilocks Entropy—the narrow, stable energy range where life can persist without the system stagnating. It may be the tuning knob that explains why the universe stays just right for consciousness to emerge on every stem, cycle after cycle.
Because this model emphasizes biological efficiency, we suggest the possibility that we are the hardware, not the software. If this is a biological system, our consciousness and our physical form may be the fruit of this cosmic garden, essential to how the system functions.
We are currently tracking data from the Simons Observatory. They are looking for specific ripple patterns in the ancient light of the universe—echoes of a Big Bounce. If they find these signatures, it would provide evidence that our hypothesis is on the right track.
This is Forensic Cosmology. We are moving away from the who—a creator—and focusing on the how—the blueprint.
Our hypothesis is strictly falsifiable. If evidence confirms the universe will continue to expand indefinitely toward a Big Freeze, our Life-Raft model is incorrect. If a non-biological material is ever proven to exceed the efficiency of biological systems, the premise of the Oklahoma Constant ($\Omega_{os}$) fails.
We are not looking for a coder. We are documenting the physical fingerprints of a system that may be preserving life through an infinite, natural cycle.