stuckinbathroom
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User ID: 903
stuckinbathroom
2hr ago
I did my time (twelve_years_of_it_in_azkaban.gif) in the Bay Area and things didn’t seem vastly different there. The biggest difference I noticed is that nerdy white male/East Asian female was always an extremely common pairing in the Bay but only recently (post-pandemic, roughly) became comparably prevalent on the East Coast.
I used to think it was just a matter of the gender ratios; even a mid white guy in NYC can easily find (white) BPD art hoes, struggling musicians, or fashion/publishing/journalism girlboss types, while mid white guys in the Bay are SOL without the boost they get in the eyes of East Asian women. But the gender ratios are the same as ever, if not even more lopsided than before, and yet WM(E)AF has only trended upward in NYC for the past half decade.
stuckinbathroom
2hr ago
Precisely this. East Asian men, by contrast, have something like a -2 or -3 handicap on average* while the women have a +5 buff
*though these days it is very context-dependent; e.g., Korean men have a big advantage with white female K-pop fans
stuckinbathroom
2hr ago
So yeah, I do think that the arranged marriage/matchmaking thing still exists for 2nd gen South Asian Americans to a far greater extent than for (e.g.) East Asians. This plays a big role in finding matches for the men, who are the least desirable demographic out there and face a terrible slog on the apps.
But it takes two to tango, as they say, and I suspect the primary reason why the women are also available to be matched in the quasi-arranged marriage market is that white men are much less eager to snap them up as compared to East Asian women. IME the rates of WMIF dating relationships and marriages are roughly the same, so it’s not so much that South Asian women are fooling around with white dudes in their early 20s before settling down with a parentally-approved Nice Jewish Indian Boy From A Good Family right as the Wall approaches. It’s just that white guys aren’t asking them out all that much in the first place, and from my (single straight male) perspective it’s pretty easy to see why: East Asian women have more of the traits that men generally find attractive, viz. petite and slim build even after marriage/children, fair-but-not-ghostly-pale skin, and lack of body hair/body odor.
I also don’t think that 2nd gen South Asian Americans are that much more susceptible to parental pressures re: choice of spouse than East Asians. In both cases, the parents would prefer that their children (especially daughters) marry within the race and grumble but usually grudgingly accept if and when that doesn’t happen; and in both cases, at roughly equal rates in my anecdotal experience, sometimes the children acquiesce and sometimes they go their own way. The degree of submission to the parents depends mostly on the strength of the relationship with the parents, which again I think is not vastly different on average between East and South Asians.
Though if I had to hazard a guess, I suppose I would agree that South Asians (even 2nd gen) tend to defer to their parents somewhat more so than do East Asians, and both groups defer far more so than do whites.
stuckinbathroom
5hr ago
(I am a 1.5 gen immigrant to the US from South Asia)
Honestly I think this is not entirely due to South Asian insularity/clannishness. The bigger reason is that South Asian men are the least desirable on the dating market, plus in all races (except perhaps East/Southeast Asians), women generally prefer their own; moreover, white men seem markedly less likely to date and marry South Asian women as compared to East Asians. This nets out in South Asian men pretty much only being able to pull South Asian women, hence the phenomenon you notice.
I will admit, though, that South Asian parents/older relatives are much more into playing matchmaker for the younger generation than East Asian parents. Also, South Asian parents heavily stress the importance of marriage, especially for daughters, whereas East Asian parents stress the importance of being skinny/good looking and seem to be less vocal about marriage specifically (though of course they generally don’t want their daughters to end up as spinsters)
stuckinbathroom
1d ago
Further nitpick: despite that being how it’s written in Cyrillic, in modern Russian it is pronounced something like “kto kavo”
stuckinbathroom
1d ago
Can’t speak to her looks, but she would be at least a year older
This is like when Dems chased out Al Franken or Andrew Cuomo, there’s a noose tightening now around straight heterosexual male sex. I see a lot of conservacons cheering but this seems longhoused to me.
Al Franken perhaps, but I always got the impression that Cuomo’s cancellation was the left’s way of shitcanning him for bungling the pandemic with a minimum of cognitive dissonance. Much more palatable to run with the fig leaf of sexual impropriety than to recant the glowing hagiographies they had spent the previous couple years composing.
stuckinbathroom
3d ago
I (and they) would much rather go back to China
stuckinbathroom
3d ago
I believe the increased scrutiny ("Are you a chinese spy?") and increasingly hostile culture against China lead to many Chinese deciding to go back to their country.
Not to mention the near-impossibility of dating as an East Asian male fob in the US, especially in the major tech hubs (Bay Area, Seattle)
stuckinbathroom
5d ago
I remember one of the things that really struck me about Halo in its day was that it didn't have bosses.
Arguably hunters are mini-bosses, especially on the higher difficulties. And there was the unique elite with gold armor and the plasma sword—I think in “Silent Cartographer”—but he was easily dispatched with a single plasma grenade so it’s hard to call him a true boss.
Hungary is also an interesting sign of how this new "postliberal right" have abandoned the plot on traditional conservatism.
See, the thing is that actual traditional conservatism doesn’t necessarily have any strong ideological reason to join itself with pro-business, anti-regulation free market economics. The latter is approximately what Americans call libertarianism, and what Europeans call (classical) liberalism. It’s really a historical contingency that in America, this political strain happened to join forces with the religious right/moral majority/tradcon types from approximately the Reagan era to the Trump era; even then, it was far from a solid Republican voting base (cf. Clinton peeling some of them away with the Third Way, “the end of welfare as we know it”, NAFTA, etc.)
There’s no reason to think this should be a general law of conservative politics; indeed, globally speaking, it tends to be the exception rather than the rule, especially in systems that favor the formation of smaller, focused parties instead of two big amorphous tents. Hell, even within the FPTP Anglosphere, it’s not uncommon to find conservatives, leftists, and classical liberals form 3 entirely separate parties (cf., respectively, Tories, Labour, and LibDems in the UK; Tories, NDP, and Liberals in Canada)
Or when the pro-government media tried to "attack" him that in the EU parliament, while waiting for his turn to speak, he had his hand in his pocket and was adjusting his penis, or that the shape of his large penis is sometimes seen in his tight pants on some of his photos.
“My opponent has a magnum dong, for which he needs monster condoms” is … not the angle I would take for an attack ad. But what do I know; perhaps it comes across better in Hungarian.
stuckinbathroom
5d ago
Magyar knows the symbols and spefaks the language, and uses national symbols, national clothes, songs and so on.
Nominative determinism strikes again!
stuckinbathroom
6d ago
I'm admittedly fortunate in that nobody in either of my families is a high-grade fuckup and I could see how that'd cause issues with the current state of things.
IMHO this is literally the entire argument (whatever you think of its merits) for a redistributive welfare state to take care of the young, the old, and the incurably indigent. You are indeed very lucky to have at least some family members of an older generation alive and in good enough shape to provide a degree of childcare, but from behind the Rawlsian veil, such good fortune is hardly guaranteed.
stuckinbathroom
6d ago
I think the point that comparatively few people used to live long past the point of becoming a net fiscal drain still stands, though. Modern medicine has made eking out low-quality end-of-life years, at exorbitant expense to the taxpayer, much more common than it once was. See also the comment downthread about Down syndrome life expectancy over the years.
The funds were “invested” in Treasury bonds which means that they were spent more or less immediately on whatever the government at the time wanted. The return on that investment will ultimately come from taxing future generations, or inflating away the debt, so it’s really just an intergenerational Ponzi scheme with extra steps.
But I agree with you that this was the plan from Day 1, so strictly speaking it’s not a broken promise per se (at least not yet).
stuckinbathroom
6d ago
Maybe they should have a special express lane on the highway for people who pay more than $50k a year in taxes.
I’d settle for a plaque from Lockheed Martin/Raytheon/Northrup Grumman every time I pay enough tax to fund a new Tomahawk or something
stuckinbathroom
8d ago
… which incidentally is exactly why people were worried about JFK becoming the first Catholic president back in the day: would he refuse orders from Rome if his immortal soul were on the line?
But as chairman of the JCS, Caine had to walk the fine line between giving military advice and administering politics.
…
At no point during the deliberations did the chairman directly tell the president that war with Iran was a terrible idea — though some of General Caine’s colleagues believed that was exactly what he thought.
Judged deontologically, without reference to the outcome of this particular case, this is a good thing: Gen. Caine’s job as JCS chairman is to provide technical advice on the implementation details of military actions, not to propose defense policy. Within the Situation Room, Trump is the principal; Gen. Caine is his agent (and Trump is in turn the agent of the people and the Constitution of the United States of America, per his oath of office). Policy is the job of the president and his cabinet, because civilians are and should (almost) always be holding the military’s leash, not the other way around.
Assuming that this article is credible, it was former JCS chairman Gen. Mark Milley and his attitude of being “the adult in the room” by fighting back against Trump’s hawkishness that—what was the phrase?—ah yes, “eroded norms” and “contributed to democratic backsliding”.
But given how things actually went in practice, I think it’s fair to wish that someone in the room had talked Trump out of this one.
stuckinbathroom
9d ago
thats_the_joke.jpg
stuckinbathroom
16d ago
Until around 2016 (rhetoric around the culture war also looks bad. The left is not exempt from this), many Europeans looked up to America and dreamed of traveling or living there.
Ehh I dunno, the way I remember it any such European admiration for America ended much earlier, with the Iraq War.
and we've committed to at least two acts of war (I'll spot you bombing Yemen)
And my point is that—as evidenced by the deafening silence around the Venezuela operation—the so-called anti-war Republicans are not actually anti-war tout court, they’re really just anti-quagmire, especially in the Middle East, double-especially when it comes to quagmires (that they perceive as being) in Israel’s interests rather than America’s. The recent resignation letter of the former head of the National Counterterrorism Center encapsulates this mentality nicely.
If Trump immediately pulls out of Iran and declares “mission accomplished, American interests secured, no boots on the ground, no occupation”, that portion of his base should be willing to cut him some slack, just as they did with Venezuela, regardless of the actual merits of his claims, and of the fact that this is just another instance of TACO. Bonus points if he loudly and publicly turns on Netanyahu and accuses Israel of perfidiously trying to manipulate us into another forever war (which I think is unlikely, but supposedly Trump is aware that after the Boomers, support for Israel is cratering across the political spectrum)
stuckinbathroom
25d ago
The anti-war caucus will not trust Trump after he flips on Israel
I assume you mean the anti-war caucus of the Republican Party, seeing as the anti-war Dems have never trusted—and will never trust—Trump in the first place. In which case, why? Trump kept his promise of no forever wars in his first term, and for most of his second term. The recent Iran action is an aberration but so long as he doesn’t get bogged down in a quagmire, the America First anti-war types should be perfectly willing to turn a blind eye, as they have on Venezuela.
stuckinbathroom
29d ago
The doctors have a midevil guild
The evil seems more than just mid, honestly
lol no, the meme was meant to indicate that I spent too long in that hellscape (at least dating-wise) for crimes I didn’t commit
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