ResoluteRaven
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User ID: 867
ResoluteRaven
19d ago
At the end of the day, the number of Americans with deep (white) nationalist convictions is much smaller than the number that will gravitate towards arguments couched in blood and soil because they are angry about something else, usually crime, and can be placated by increased policing and a reduction in public disorder, regardless of the actual demographics of their community. Even if Trump succeeds at deporting 15 million illegal immigrants and ending birthright citizenship, which is unlikely to say the least, that still leaves tens of millions of legal immigrants, many of whom have just started voting for Republican candidates because of the Democrats' mishandling of identity politics and will be key to winning future elections.
ResoluteRaven
19d ago
She was raised Hindu. You can't convert to Hinduism. No Indian would be able to explain what that even means.
Gabbard has no Indian ancestry and her mother does not appear to have known anything about Hinduism prior to moving to Hawaii and getting involved with the Hare Krishna sect there, being herself a white American from Indiana. For whatever reason, this rather unorthodox religious background did not seem to bother the Hindu community in the US, who claimed Tulsi as one of their own when she was first elected. Not that I would fault anyone for believing her family aren't real Hindus, but certainly it was also possible to convert to Hinduism in the past, otherwise Southeast Asia wouldn't be full of beautiful Hindu temples.
That aside, what's her reason for opposing gay marriage? I know Christians and Muslims have a scriptural disgust for it. I'd like to know where young Tulsi's strong opposition to it comes from.
Her father is a conservative Catholic whose only claim to fame has been being stridently opposed to gay marriage for the past 30 years.
ResoluteRaven
24d ago
The average height in the US has fallen over the past several decades due to immigration, but I know of no mechanism by which the gender height gap could be closing except in cases where girls start off more malnourished than boys because of parental favoritism, as they do in a few of the poorest parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
ResoluteRaven
1mo ago
In addition to what others have pointed out downthread with respect to food, crime, relative status, etc. another thing I've noticed is that people in developing countries are generally free from most of the mental health issues that plague North Americans, and often have a refreshing combination of optimism due to recent economic improvements and a sort of Daoist willingness to go with the flow however things turn out i.e. "Isn't it great we have all these shiny new cars and computers? Maybe it will all go to shit someday but we've dealt with that before and we'll get through it like we always do." I'm not sure if the latter is just a poor people thing or a non-Western country thing, but I suppose we'd have to take a closer look at places like Japan, which has been rich for a while now, to find out.
ResoluteRaven
1mo ago
I'm a bit confused by what you mean here, unless you're using a very specific definition of meetup. You would presumably still have to ask out any girls you met at such an event yourself, just as you would those you meet at work/school/etc. and you're not really the one calling the shots or setting things up in those situations either. If you only want to get a girlfriend by cold approaching women in the street or at bars and clubs, that seems like an unnecessary imposition on yourself and one that will make your life infinitely harder, but I wish you the best of luck.
ResoluteRaven
1mo ago
For a moment I thought Poland was being flooded by Belarusian citizens fleeing Lukashenko's government and was wondering why they were complaining about what was clearly some divine plan to make Poland great again by heaping ruin on its neighbors one by one and rejuvenating the Polish population with millions of their Slavic brethren, but I see now that these are in fact the usual migrants.
The way I see it, we can group people who want to move to a new country into three main categories: highly-skilled individuals that basically everyone agrees should be let in, people fleeing active warzones that a majority (albeit a smaller one) agrees should be let in for humanitarian reasons, and then economic migrants who are neither highly-skilled nor in imminent danger but just happen to live in poor places and would rather move someplace better (you probably want a few of these people around to do certain low-skill jobs). The latter group is by far the largest and is what causes the most problems, since if allowed to move freely with open borders they will demographically swamp your population in a way the first two groups will not.
Since any reasonable immigration policy would be able to distinguish between "real" and "fake" refugees, I support maintaining a list of "ongoing conflicts from which people fleeing may claim asylum" (most likely at the national level, allowing for variation depending on financial ability and local tolerances) and deporting anyone who can't prove they are from one of those places, ideally in an interview with some other former refugee from that area hired to screen them and who would be justifiably mad at e.g. some Nigerian trying to pass themselves off as a Syrian. Perhaps some version of this has been tried locally in the past, but clearly not at a scale commensurate with the challenges we face nowadays.
ResoluteRaven
1mo ago
I don't think anyone could have ended up posting here without being a reflexive contrarian by nature. When I was younger, if you told me that the sky was blue I would pull out a physics book and start arguing with you about Rayleigh scattering and about the arbitrary definition of colors with respect to wavelengths of light. At a certain point it just becomes an inconvenience when you get nerdsniped by every offhand remark that people around you make and find yourself looking up rebuttals in the wee hours of the night.
Land acknowledgements are, of course, stupid, and it's fine to tell people that you think that, but I find the idea of waiting around hoping someone gives you an excuse to verbally destroy them vaguely distasteful, in the same way I would the idea of, for instance, an MMA fighter who went through life hoping someone tries to mug him so he has a reason to beat them up.
ResoluteRaven
1mo ago
If you buy loose-leaf tea I would suggest you store it in a vacuum-sealed container like this one. Oolong tea is my favorite, particularly the stuff grown at higher elevations (usually called something like "high mountain tea"), but I get it when I travel to Asia or from friends and family, so I don't know what it costs to order online or where else they sell it. If you want something a bit different you can get some Kirkland brand green tea and cold-steep it in the fridge overnight for a refreshing drink the next day, and if you ever want something caffeine-free you can try barley tea (although if I remember right this was an acquired taste for me).
ResoluteRaven
2mo ago
Answering the question as stated, though perhaps not as intended, the vast majority of the people in the world have seen substantial improvements in their material standard of living over the past two decades. In some places that might just mean going from being desperately poor, sick, and starving, to being desperately poor, malnourished, and overworked, but China went from being a source of cheap plastic knockoffs to a maker of electric cars and smartphones on par with anything Western companies can produce, there's now high-speed rail in Indonesia, Morocco, and Uzbekistan, and countries like Malaysia and Poland have more or less converged with the developed economies.
Limiting ourselves to the US, Gwern has a good writeup on the subject, though it's pre-pandemic and so misses things like anti-obesity drugs. Obviously nothing on the scale of first getting access to cars or the internet, but that's a pretty high bar to expect to clear every generation, and even then there's a decent chance AI has you covered in that department. In the end though, whether we're born into a time of progress or decline (or material progress coupled with moral decline, or any combination thereof) is never under our control to begin with, so it's just something we have to learn how to accept and live with, whichever way the dice roll.
ResoluteRaven
2mo ago
I mean, to use an analogy, just because most people these days would rather eat fast food instead of nutritious meals cooked with fresh ingredients, that doesn't mean that food is bad for us in and of itself or that we could do without it.
ResoluteRaven
2mo ago
Harvard at least seems to think that the Supreme Court decision changed things. Looking at the admissions data for some other schools, it seems that the results are all over the place, most likely because each tried to achieve their desired racial mix via novel methods and haven't worked out all the kinks yet.
In any case, I thought the whole point of getting rid of affirmative action was so that we would stop caring about things like "[race] makes up [percentage] of the population and so deserves [percentage] of the seats." If you just wanted the racial spoils system inverted in favor of white people, then a lawsuit on behalf of Asians whose goal was admissions purely by test score was probably never going to achieve your goals.
Really we'd all be better off if there were a clearer distinction between admissions at technical schools like MIT and Caltech, which would do fine on a purely meritocratic exam system, and places like Harvard and Yale, which if they had any balls would say "We are private institutions and will admit whomever we damn well please, because our job is to groom the future rulers of this country, not churn out a bunch of programmers and engineers who will never hold the reigns of power." I thought perhaps the disruption of the pandemic would allow for reforms of that magnitude, but sadly the higher education system seems content to stumble along with kludges and half-measures until its bubble inevitably bursts.
ResoluteRaven
2mo ago
Some states are three families in a trenchcoat. What's up with that? Particularly in the case of Pakistan: it's a nuclear state, but it also just has a lot of difficulty projecting power into rural areas...
South Asia just has a level of inequality unimaginable to the rest of the world, with a small elite (in relative terms, they still consist of tens of millions of people) capable of developing nuclear weapons, running a space program, standing toe-to-toe with the West and East Asia in every field of intellectual achievement, and doing everything else you would expect of a developed nation (other than keeping the streets clear of filth) living alongside a much larger population still mired in conditions that range from "bad by Latin American standards" to "bad by Sub-Saharan African standards."
Pakistan has the additional challenge of many rural areas being inhabited by clannish groups that will violently resist any perceived imposition by outside forces on their tribal way of life, and as the ruling class is just barely holding together some semblance of a state with guns, duct tape, and prayers, it has more important things to worry about then e.g. getting polio vaccines to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
ResoluteRaven
2mo ago
Everyone is vaccinated against smallpox in the west and it provides at least some protection.
Didn't routine vaccination stop in the late 70's/early 80's after smallpox was eradicated, leaving younger generations unprotected?
ResoluteRaven
3mo ago
South Africa seems to fit the bill, with Pretoria as the administrative capital, Johannesburg as the financial center, and Cape Town as the cultural center.
ResoluteRaven
3mo ago
While as others have pointed out, China still punches well below its weight as far as modern cultural exports go due to government restrictions, I don't think it should be surprising that a region containing 20% of the world's population (and a much higher percentage of its industrialized population) would become a major player in the media and entertainment spheres. It's also not as though a Western obsession with East Asian culture is anything new.
ResoluteRaven
3mo ago
They may have been upper-class, but the Tidewater gentry still subscribed to a violent honor culture and disdained manual labor, so I don't think it should be surprising that some of their descendants would display these negative qualities, particularly absent the kind of social hierarchy that maintained their whole neo-feudal enterprise.
ResoluteRaven
3mo ago
In the sense of "we had some old leaders and now we might have a younger one" sure, but that seems like a fairly shallow comparison and I don't see the case for Kamala proposing or being capable of implementing any great reforms of our political or economic systems. If anything, policy-wise they are diametrically opposed, with Kamala's campaign basically arguing that things are good now under Biden and if we just keep doing what we're doing they can be even better.
ResoluteRaven
3mo ago
If there is a wave of refugees from Bangladesh, the only place they can go is India, their other neighbor being in the midst of its own civil war. The wealthy and powerful will make their way to the West if they can, but that has always been the case and the numbers are small by comparison. So I'd say that Indian leaders ought to watch events in Dhaka closely, but that the rest of us shouldn't expect our streets to be overrun with fuchka stands and clothing wholesalers anytime soon.
ResoluteRaven
3mo ago
This video goes through some of the available Three Kingdoms TV and film adaptations, which are probably the best entry point. As far as Koei goes, I've tried some of the Hyrule Warriors spin-off games, and there's a certain kind of mindless fun to be had there in limited doses. I'd probably stick to adaptations and not the novel itself if you want to get a sense for the cultural role of the Three Kingdoms setting in modern China and Japan, and then read an actual history book if you feel like you need more details about army composition or whatever.
Why get worked up over people's beliefs when there's no substance behind them? To borrow a quote from The Expanse: "He doesn't care about treason. That's just him parroting you because you talked to him last. If he spoke to a janitor he'd be passionately declaiming about a fucking mop!" Trying to edify most people is about as silly as turning a weathervane because you don't like which way it's pointing.
Now, you can react to this with existential horror at the thought that you're surrounded by mindless NPCs/p-zombies/what-have-you, or you can accept that the world is the way it is, enjoy the time that you spend arguing with us autists about ideas and politics as though they mean something, and then put down the phone and spend the rest of your time grilling with the normies. Having these ideas be so central to your identity that you walk around constantly stressed about hiding your power level and trying to slip red pills to everyone you meet is making the same mistake as woke or trans activists who've taken their ideological or sexual fetishes out of the online caves where they belong and into the light of day for passers-by to gawk at, and made an embarrassment out of themselves in the process.
ResoluteRaven
3mo ago
I can confidently say that if outsiders moved in and learned and spoke Chinese and did so for a thousand years, they would still be foreigners.
I'm pretty sure nobody can tell Manchus apart from Han anymore without looking at the ethnicity listed on their ID, and they were assimilated less than 300 years ago.
ResoluteRaven
4mo ago
I think entering parenthood with the mindset that your children (or worse, a single child) must be equal to or superior to you by every possible metric is setting yourself up for disappointment, similar to the modern idea that your spouse must also be your best friend and that if they don't share all your niche interests then you aren't really soulmates and should find someone else. Your best bet is to have multiple children and hope that collectively they embody all the characteristics you value in yourself and your partner, or if it matters enough to you wait a few years for genomic prediction technology for embryos to improve (even if they only screen for health, that is still correlated with IQ and also makes it an easier conversation to have).
I come from a family of fairly accomplished people. Upper middle class academics and some geniuses. Her family generationally is lower/middle middle class.
My children would inherit this.
Perhaps I have a different perspective on the heritability of social class, seeing as my grandparents were illiterate peasants, but I think it at least needs to be normalized to opportunity i.e. if they, and more importantly your partner, are conscientious and working to improve their station in life, wherever they may have started, then that is a sufficient demonstration of value.
archetypical shape rotators.
They do have their own opinions and are independent thinkers but they are deeply "practical people"
I think if there's anything potential descendants of us motteposters could use a dose of to become well-adjusted members of society, it's this.
ResoluteRaven
4mo ago
I decided to try a big bowl of raw fish at my local sushi bar
I'm not sure if this is an exaggeration, but if you did just eat a bowl of fish with no dipping sauce or other accompaniments then that's the equivalent of eating an unseasoned boiled potato and wondering what the big deal is with said tuber. While, as others have pointed out, the main attraction of raw fish is the texture, there are some that taste a lot better to me than others e.g. I would choose raw over cooked salmon any day, but raw tuna can have an off-putting metallic flavor unless it's of the highest quality. Also, if sushi just isn't your thing, I would suggest giving ceviche a try instead, if you can find it (especially if you ever happen to find yourself in Peru).
ResoluteRaven
4mo ago
I agree with others downthread that linguistics per se is and ought to be descriptive, but that there's nothing wrong with having and enforcing prescriptive rules based on some standard form of a language. This argument, when it isn't a vehicle for fighting over the relative social status of different class/ethnic groups, mostly boils down to some people choosing to emphasize the fact that such standards are arbitrary, as opposed to the fact that we need them in place to communicate.
As for myself, while I have my own idiosyncratic pet peeves (proper use of the subjunctive is one I picked up after learning a few Romance languages), I've mostly gone from being a pedant to finding great amusement in deliberately provoking pedants and watching their heads literally explode.
Anti-Indian sentiment within the Anglosphere seems mostly confined to Canada and the UK, increasing in the former noticeably in the last few years because of the enormous ongoing immigration wave and diplomatic disputes over the relict Khalistan movement-in-exile. Indian-Americans are a cut above most other immigrant groups as far as education, income, and general "merit" go, even compared to Indians in other countries, so they don't tend to draw a lot of flak. Perhaps if India achieves a similar global status as China, Indians here will go from being ignored all the time to occasionally being harassed due to geopolitical events before being ignored again.
In the last few years the gender imbalances in interracial relationships seem to have evened out a bit in the US, at least with respect to Asians. I assume the increased prominence of Korean music and pop culture around the world had something to do with this. It will probably take popular perceptions a while to catch up and the stereotypes that were validated by the old OkCupid data are still alive and well, usually played for laughs but sometimes tinged with real resentment, particularly from the groups at the bottom of the totem pole i.e. Asian men and Black women.
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