George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
The things you lean on / are things that don't last
User ID: 107
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1d ago
Two hours is a long nap. Especially if, as you say, you are not sleep deprived. A good target nap time is about 20 minutes? Any more than that and you're heading toward a full sleep cycle. Have you considered shortening the nap time?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3d ago
Thanks I'll update a bit later
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
Advice, but not what you asked for: If you have essentially cut ties, don't worry about drama. You have just written that you hate the guy, and have called him a "scamming motherfucker."
Tell your 20-year-old friend exactly what you think and what he should (or shouldn't) do.
If you don't want to do this, just let fate take its course; it's none of your business at this point.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
GPT 4o has improved dramatically quite recently.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
You never know what's going on in this woman's life. Just as women can smell desperation, so can you and I. And desperation makes people neurotic. And neurotic people can act very unpredictably. The "You're not expecting sex" line was enough of a warning signal to set my alarm off. (Which isn't to say it's unreasonable of her to not want intercourse on a first or any date, but it's weird to ask like that over text.) I'm guessing she is very attractive to you, otherwise you'd be able to shrug this off. My advice is shrug it off anyway.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
7d ago
I should update and add all the suggested revisions.
That Starbucks employee may have been a rude, incompetent blob. I wasn't there, and the nuances of the interaction get lost. Perhaps there is some element missing in your relating of the conversation that neither I nor others have grasped. It doesn't matter that much.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
7d ago
I never thought I'd be someone who could converse in Japanese. I actually think at least in the US Spanish would have a great deal of utility in just dealing with people, but then the positives you list regarding the Chinese school may not be part of the Spanish-school package.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
7d ago
Why would Japanese or Spanish be useless?
This is interesting. It's well-written in the sense that it flows and sticks the landing, even though I agree with almost everyone who has commented that your behavior (and subsequent dismissal of this woman) were oddly tone-deaf to the way polite society works. And slightly, to my archaic worldview, ungallant. But that point has been made repeatedly--to the point where you invoked Satan no less--so I'll change tack.
In Japan I generally avoid Starbucks because I don't enjoy their simple black coffee, and I am not interested in all the milkshake-type drinks which are considerably more popular, as well as time-consuming to make. Thus I have found myself waiting in line for up to 15 minutes just to have hot beverage poured from urn to cup because the three people in front of me ordered the dessert drinks. Also, although I haven't been to a US convenience store in years, here at least the Family Mart coffee machine grinds the beans as you're standing there, and that's like a minute wait tops. This is a tedious preface to my point that, at least here, Starbucks workers are efficient, on-task, and professional--which is to say very good at customer-facing friendliness. Also often young and pretty (the males and the females). Yet I cannot imagine how I could ask your question without creating a shit storm of awkwardness. Unfortunately awkwardness is routinely expected from foreigners (in a society built around avoiding awkwardness) so anyone brave and reckless enough to interact with a foreigner would probably be unfazed. This wouldn't be a good thing, as they'd probably be equally unfazed if I suddenly took off my shirt in the shop and began applying deodorant to my armpits. "Foreigners, what can you expect?" etc. So I am probably routinely viewed, despite my best efforts, as a relatively tame chimpanzee by many. And chimps can suddenly lose it, as we know.
Your posts sometimes seem exasperated--with people, with the Motte. Because of this (in addition to your username) I have assumed you are drinking booze while posting. But maybe it's something else. General misanthropy? I'm not trying intentionally to be satanic.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
8d ago
The circle is now complete.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
8d ago
In Japan motherhood is still revered, and many girls see it as a definite goal, though the having-it-all delusion seems to have a certain foothold here as well. I appreciate your response in any case. Arguably many males also work absolute bullshit jobs as well. More to say but I gotta sleep.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
8d ago
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
9d ago
I agree wholeheartedly with your comment if the assessment is at that undergraduate level. Any knowledge, of, say a work they should have read should be available to them via their brains. At most allow outlines.
When the assignment is research -based it's more difficult. In the days of which you speak, and before (e.g. in my day) to do research you went physically to the library and looked through the damn card catalog and microfiche, and the achingly slow interlibrary loan system. Even ten years ago for research you were online trolling through Google Scholar. The worst you had to fear was if a student plagiarized some other essayist, and thus sites like Turnitin.com sprouted up.
Now to let a student online is to risk them simply composing a prompt and asking their Chatbot to do literally everything.
I am currently editing a conference proceedings. Out of the 20 or so submissions, around four clearly used an LLM to create chunks of text and all the references. Sorry to say this is still easily detected--xxxx instead of DOI information information in citations, for example. t's shocking because these are either Masters level or in one case a doctoral candidate. They don't even bother reading through what they're submitting, it sometimes seems.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
9d ago
It's probably better for society on the whole.
Why, exactly? I've read you making these sorts of statements before, where you suggest that educating women is a mistake. Frankly, it baffles me, as it seems such a broad generalization that does not account for the multitudes of contexts women face, where typically your posts are very well-thought-out and articulated. Now i't possible you've thought this out as well, but I'm not getting the line of reasoning here.
Possibilities: It's not that you don't want women working jobs or getting educated. You want them well-educated and able to do jobs well, and jobs that they are capable of doing. (What that looks like to you I am not sure and I don't want to put words in your keyboard.) Or maybe you think women shouldn't be working at all but staying home, raising kids, taking care of hearth and home. Surely not all women can/will do this, though--what about an unmarried nulliparous woman of 40? Or any number of women who do not fit into that box?
I'm just making things up now, though.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
10d ago
Why the snipe against anthropologists (the 'neurotic janitors'?) I get that many have lost all faith in academia but that seems like throwing out the bathwater, the baby, the soap, and the tub itself.
I think to design this study or studies you'd need to first sort out what you mean by "Asian." That may sound eggheaded but you would want as much precision and as little noise as possible, or you'd risk losing any statistical rigor and thus your conclusions would be suspect. Depending on how well you designed the study (accounting for as many other variables as possible besides however you operationalize the term 'culture') you'd still require replication, and replication across and into different cultures, to have any definitiveness in your conclusion.
There's a term 帰国子女 in Japanese referring to children who are taken abroad by their parents when very young, and who then must return to Japan when dad gets transferred back home, or whatever. There's an entire system of schooling set up both in Japan and abroad to cater to these children, because of the impact of cultural norms and how the kids get thrown out of whack (as it's perceived here) in that process. The changes in behavior and attitude from before and after are often dramatic. This is individual level, however, not longitudinal across generations.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
10d ago
There is extensive evidence from numerous disciplines--psychology, anthropology, sociology, economics--that culture has an effect on behavior. You mention significance--do you mean statistical significance? That would require numerous studies with numerous groups, and even then there's the question of generalizability. I think to simply look at "Asians" and make assumption XYZ then look at 2nd or 3rd generations (presumably "outside" their culture? To whatever degree?) and make more assumptions is a weak analytical design.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
11d ago
I don't know the answer to your first question, but I am wondering why it would tell us with any definitiveness the influence of culture on behavior. Possibly I'm being obtuse, but could you explain?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
11d ago
Interesting. The study I have seen said more than 80% were male but may be dated, to say nothing of the methodological issues. Personally I've never known IRL a woman who regularly played video games. Or maybe they've just never told me. Many years ago I saw my fiercely competitive wife on Mario Kart, and it's probably just as well that she doesn't have much interest in turning on the PlayStation .
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
11d ago
Buried the lede there a bit.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
12d ago
I thought generally unisex terms had become mainstream. At least in Hollywood, no one's idea of a traditional stronghold, terms like "actor" (rather than actress) were for a time preferred (I'm interested to see what will happen if a transsexual person --MtF or FtM--wins best Actress or whatever.)
Actually I'm not that interested.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
12d ago
I don't know. My first reaction would be that it's because she's female, but I suppose girls and women do take to games. Just not her thing, I guess, and the vision of me sitting there gazing at a screen for hours was sufficiently far from the man I guess she thought she was involved with that she balked.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
12d ago
There was a time just about when Burning Crusade came out that I played WoW. My god that game kept me out of trouble (albeit my soon-to-be wife despised that I played it.) I loved it. It's the only game I ever really got into, and I was well into my 30s at the time. I thought about doing the WoW Classic when it was released but I simply don't have the time now, as a husband/dad.
I can usually see everything from Japan fwiw
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