Sri Lanka
Article
Sri Lanka is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between July 15, 2021 and February 03, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “One of the worst-affected countries was Sri Lanka, where 30,000 people died”; “a total lack of even the tiniest amount of actual knowledge about Sri Lanka”; “Sri Lanka tsunami refugee camp”. It most often appears alongside Trump, California, China.
Metadata
- Category: Places
- Mention count: 4
- Issue count: 4
- First seen: July 15, 2021
- Last seen: February 03, 2025
Appears In
Related Pages
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- Trump (3 shared issues)
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- California (2 shared issues)
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- China (2 shared issues)
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- Peter Thiel (2 shared issues)
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- Twitter (2 shared issues)
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- Zanzibar (2 shared issues)
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- forcedbreeding (1 shared issues)
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- forcedbreeding (1 shared issues)
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- 1902 (1 shared issues)
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- 1903 (1 shared issues)
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External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
III. PTSD In Sri Lanka
In 2004, a magnitude 9 earthquake struck the Indian Ocean. The resulting tsunami devastated Southeast Asia. One of the worst-affected countries was Sri Lanka, where 30,000 people died and millions were left homeless.
I cannot do justice to Crazy Like Us’ excellent portrayal of these people. They combined a genuine and admirable desire to go halfway around the world to help people in need, with a burning desire to be “culturally sensitive” and reject “white savior narratives”, with a total lack of even the tiniest amount of actual knowledge about Sri Lanka. The island nation was [insert some term other than “inundated” or “flooded”] with a [insert some term other than “tide”] of counselors, therapists, and psychiatrists, holding public awareness campaigns, appearing on TV/radio/etc, browbeating Sri Lankan officials for not caring enough about the mental health aspect of recovery. Through this whole process they were all tripping over each other to look culturally aware despite having no clue what they were doing. My favorite anecdote was the training lectures, where earnest sensitivity counselors would tell play therapists not to play “Go Fish” with young survivors - given that many of their parents had just been swallowed by the sea.
35: Adrian D’Souza on Sri Lanka’s economic crisis. I’d heard a lot about the role of their decision to switch to all-organic farming, but it seems more like a typical case of “leader who wants to say in power borrows lots of money, spends it on popular projects, then can’t pay it back”; the organic farming was partly a fig leaf to cover up being too poor to afford fertilizer.
Inline links: on Sri Lanka’s economic crisis
“There is a bird from the jungles of Burma. Cut off its beak and claws, then keep it in a dark iron cage for its entire life, and eventually it will produce a curious round white stone. Break the stone and fry the golden liquid inside. Garnish with a black spice from Sri Lanka, and a ground-up pinkish rock mined from a cave discovered by Alexander the Great just below the tallest mountain in the world.”
But he seems to have landed on his feet - his website now advertises an Investment & Innovation Startup Zone in Sri Lanka.
Inline links: his website, Investment & Innovation Startup Zone in Sri Lanka