Dalai Lama Succession as Evidence That Determined, Motivated People Can Reach Their Nineties
And we need to quit talking about their death all the time
The 90th birthday of the "St. IGNUcius" or "Chief GNUisance" of Tibet led to a ton of media debate and actually real discussions (not only in the media) about what China will do when he dies. Tibet must be prepared for that; using social control media like TikTok the Communist Party of China already tries to defame him as a "pedophile". They probably have memos and detailed plans for what to do when he dies (e.g. appointing a "false prophet").
Dalai Lama isn't some "pope"; his role goes back to the 1950s, even 1950. He has been "at it" for about 75 years. St. IGNUcius has been at it for almost 42 years, a bit more if one counts Emacs.
For many years people spoke about the hypothetical death of Tibet's remaining prominent symbol (dating back to a pre-annexation era). St. IGNUcius is 72 and, unlike the Pope, he does not look so unhealthy. In his homepage he says: "Richard Stallman has cancer. Fortunately it is slow-growing and manageable follicular lymphoma. Treatment put it into remission, and he can expect to live many more years. However, he now has to be even more careful not to catch Covid-19."
Dr. Stallman can possibly make it to 90 (like my best friend did), but people like SPAMnil (among other RMS haters like the person SPAMnil calls his "mentor") asked him about his death even when he was in his early or mid 60s. Brian Fagioli, the Serial Slopper, used LLM slop to make a fake (and clickbait) article about a dead Linus Torvalds (who was in his early 50s); others do the same crap with LLMs.
My parental grandfather managed to reach his 90s and my grandpa's brother recently died at almost 100 (he could probably make it to 100, but he chose to turn down an operation; he said he had already had enough). Referring to living people as if they're dead or imminently dead is rude. When Dr. Stallman was asked by SPAMnil about his death the reaction was rather telling; those are the sorts of idiots the Linux Foundation pays for B2B spam. They also publish in proprietary formats (despite being asked not to). Dr. Stallman, as recently as one year ago, spoke about his mother's death. He said he wished he had spent more time with her, basing the discussions on literature they both liked.
So here we go back to Tibet. Succession plans may not be premature; 90 is a "high age" and staying mentally sharp at this age is not simple. To my grandfather's credit, he was very sharp even in his 90s. His son (my father) spoke for decades already about health problems and longevity worries; yet as he approaches age 70 he still looks about 55 (the photo on the side is him in 1969). I'd like to assume he too will reach his 90s and not talk about "wills" and other such nonsense. It is premature.
Can we all stop talking about living people being dead? It is not only morbid; it can be outright offensive. It can even put people down, damaging their health and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy loop. █
