Gaashk
12d ago
I don't, it's very hard to learn, and I am not much good at languages. I learned enough to do things like go shopping, hire a cab, or give an extremely basic toast.
It wasn't too bad -- most communities have at least a couple of English speakers, and will go find them. Most older people know some Russian, and younger people know some English. We were part of a government volunteer program specifically to provide English speakers for people to practice with. The latter goal had mixed success in my case, since I'm more introverted than ideal for the role. I went to a lot of occasions where I just didn't know what anyone was saying most of the time, but didn't really mind it.
Gaashk
28d ago
I'm ambivalent, I just tend not to feel excitement over babies in general. I want the children in the long run, but many of the parts I don't like are front loaded.
Gaashk
22d ago
The program in question appears to be one week in June (several Juneteenth references and they each have a one week itinerary), so probably schools are only involved because they already have staff and connections in place. It's likely free to advertise at schools, vs elsewhere they would need paid advertising.
There was a recent change to the "Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act" which has led to several of the best natural history museum museums simply shutting down their Native American exhibits last week, rather than (what I would naively expect, based on the title) removing human remains from display or something. For instance, The Field Museum papered and curtained over their displays. The American Museum of Natural History is closing two exhibit halls.
This seems like the sort of rule that looks like it might make sense initially, of not grave digging and talking to descendants, until everyone is suddenly reminded that archeology largely is grave digging, and finding descendants is often fraught, with plenty of Tribal Council politics even if a museum can figure out the right authorities to talk to.
I can't tell if this was the intention of the President's Office when they passed the rule, and how much will be left after everything settles (or if it won't settle, and everything will just sit in storage awaiting a change of zeitgeist).
Admittedly, I already mostly go to the local natural history museum for the animatronic dinosaur, and my state has lots of Pueblo Ruins museums, but they're not very good, and run in partnership with the Native American communities. It isn't clear how this will affect locally interesting museums about communities not continuously inhabited since the most archeologically interesting period, such as the Dickson Mounds museum (I recommend stopping by if you're in the area!). Their most interesting parts for non-archeologists are landscape, reproductions and dioramas anyway, so perhaps not much. The Milwaukee Natural History Museum has an unusually enjoyable Native American section (very good in general, go if you're in the area!), but iirc it was also mostly reproductions and dioramas as well.
Ultimately, I suppose it will probably not deteriorate the experience all that much for non-archeologists once the dust settles, but will be one more step of history museums in general toward irrelevance.
Gaashk
1mo ago
I'd argue that the housing issue is actually downstream of the cultural issues. There are a bunch of large houses around me that could easily accommodate six or even eight people living them, but currently there are only two. People can and do raise children in their parents' house if it's respectable in their culture. One of the interesting things about current trends, is that it doesn't really seem to make much difference; countries with all different housing situations and acceptable arrangements are falling together.
Also, there are large areas of the US where it isn't all that hard to buy a house. I live next to a city of under a million people, and didn't bother saving any money in my 20s. I had a baby in a one room duplex, and we realized why families have houses, so we asked a local agency that helps people buy their first time home if we could buy one or not. They said, yes, up to $x. Then a year later we had bought a house, and it was all basically straightforward aside from a regionally specific appraisal issue on the first house we tried to buy. We aren't making a lot of money. It doesn't make any difference, birth rates are going down just the same.
Gaashk
16d ago
Probably that it's not super relevant to other groups, like noticing that Bhutan is doing well on some indicators. It's not like either joining the Amish or replicating their community structure is a real possibility for most people at this point.
Gaashk
10d ago
I just looked this up, since I had never really noticed or thought about height all that much before. Turns out I've been spending time with all the tall ethnicities by accident. I didn't know the Balkans and Southern Slavic people were noticeably tall before, TIL.
Gaashk
1mo ago
They both seem to be ranked somewhere below Pi Day, where at least people bring pies into schools, and way below Cinco de Mayo, where people not only consume taco and margaritas, but also play music and make decorations.
It's probably because they're such BS holidays that they weren't transferred to Monday or Friday. A real federal holiday would have been.
Gaashk
13d ago
I used to do intermittent fasting and part time veganism for Orthodox fasts, and generally liked it. Their feasts are more fun after fasting as well. At some point when I'm not pregnant/with small children, I'd like to get back into it.
Gaashk
1mo ago
My state offers heavily subsidized childcare and healthcare for pregnancy and young children to middle income families and below, which is not that hard to actually use. I looked up the fertility rate, and it isn't great.
But also, I like this visual tracker of US births by state 2005 - 2021, where is shows births per 1,000 women (15 - 44) going down noticeably every single year: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/fertility_rate/fertility_rates.htm
It looks like more than just "we can't go out when we want." Arizona went from 80 to 55.5 in 15 years. Utah went from 93 to 64. 15 years ago, women went to college and worked, people also moved away from their parents to work, liked going on trips together, missed going on date nights when they had young children, used contraception, and had access to abortion. The trend remained pretty steady through Covid and the years after.
I'm not sure why it's so stark, but even very expensive taxpayer funded childcare, food, tax breaks, and healthcare programs don't appear to be doing anything about it. Certainly not trivial things like cheap (or even free!) diapers and formula.
Gaashk
14d ago
It seems likely you've had some bad relationships or experiences with people who behave in that way, and haven't completely gotten over it.
The scenarios in the Kindness article, especially, strike me as weird.
Sure, it's pretty lame to just be vague and open about what to do with a friend when they visit. But it's also kind of weird for the friend to just kind of passively expect you to play tour guide, rather than just asking about a good restaurant or museum or something, and if you want to join. When I've shown up places with vague expectations, I'm not at all surprised if we just have tea and I'm left to wander around the city or follow them on a grocery trip or something.
The second one is also odd. A man has gone to a woman's house, is there late at night, just the two of them, and is planning to stay until she kicks him out? So he's, what, going to either fall sleep or make a move, but it basically indifferent as to which? Or he likes her so much, but as a friend, he'd be interested in staying up all night together platonically? None of that has much to do with "kindness" or lack thereof on his part. And this is in the same category as lighting up a cigarette in a group of people, as long as you ask how annoyed they'll be first? Isn't the convention to announce you're going around the corner to smoke, and offering one to anyone who wants to join?
I'm pretty sure the convention for gas is to wait until they stop for gas, and then buy the gas?
Umm... giving game. Right.
Anyway, everyone described sounds so foreign that interacting seems like it would be an interesting cultural experience.
Gaashk
3mo ago
I think there's something to this.
There's some enthusiasm from my parents' generation for Tony Hillerman's novels, set in the Navajo Nation, especially because he was a careful observer and puts in a lot of interesting local details. There's a TV adaptation from a couple of years ago that, in general, looks rather good (I haven't watched it because cop shows aren't my thing), so the top hits on Google are things like this:
WINDOW ROCK-Despite fine acting, suspense and entertainment featured in the first episodes of the AMC mystery series “Dark Winds,” overall the show misses the mark when it comes to accurately portraying Navajo language and culture, say some Diné experts.
Navajo is one of the most difficult languages in the world for outsiders to learn. That's why it was used instead of code during WWII. Also, speakers like to teach it wrong so they can laugh about it (source: my mom was living on the Reservation for a while. She is not bitter about it, and figured they're entitled to their fun) The Navajo youth most interested in careers like acting are least likely to learn it, because that would require growing up with their grandparents, herding sheep or something. There is not a large pool of Navajo speakers who are also attractive actors. And yet:
One thing learned in the first episode is that if a non-Diné actor wants to depict a Navajo character, they need to have Navajo language lines down and support to do that. “C’mon Hollywood, do better,” said Clarissa Yazzie, who is also a popular social media influencer. In a TikTok critique, Yazzie spelled out how some of the actors’ mispronunciation of words changed their meaning to the point of distraction and shock.
Lol, "social media influencer" as representative of traditional culture. The lesson is mostly just not to try.
Gaashk
25d ago
There's plenty of overlap with Orthodox Christianity, more than Protestantism, but much of its sphere of influence was forcibly conquered by Islam, then ground down over centuries.
So Muslims are more warlike, sure. I guess complicated by all the equally warlike Slavs taking up "Third Rome" rhetoric and putting a pretty hard stop to expansion Northward. It does seem probable that, ultimately, any civilization that doesn't want to be ruled by Islam has to physically fight it off.
Gaashk
22d ago
Something I just realized reading this is that while I'd love to host sometime, and think we would be a really good host family when the kids are older (we would take them to all the local archeological sites! To the historic plaza! To the pig slaughtering contest!), and have enough space, with an enormous spare room just sitting there, we will not have enough vehicle space, until the oldest is driving herself and can afford her own car, at which point it will probably be too late.
I've stayed as a young adult with a host family in the Republic of Georgia, and liked it a lot, but they have cheap van transportation, so I went off and made my own friends, and met up with them myself.
Gaashk
1mo ago
Perhaps the Latinx trans persons will feel extra validated. Cheers for intersectionality.
Gaashk
1mo ago
One of Shrier’s points is that it’s much more appealing for therapists to treat an anxious but otherwise normal teen than someone with a worse condition, since they make the same money, the client is generally easier to get along with.
Gaashk
1mo ago
Whether it is technically legal or not, a male-bodied teenager who comes into a job interview with lipstick and a dress is likely not going to get the job.
Depending on the job, I'm going to go ahead and take the conservative position that, yes, this is inappropriate at an interview and should not be protected, along with very visible tattoos and facial piercings. There are still employers who think that it's cool anyway, just maybe not as mainstream. Especially the lipstick, if it's showy. This is partly aesthetics -- most men are not going to be able to pull it off with visual dignity. I don't have a problem with Billy Porter's tuxedo ballgown, because it looks cool. But, yeah, if it's a basically normal service job, and they come in looking like this, then they are absolutely signaling, not so much femininity, as high maintenance and potential social and legal trouble. In my experience, women who dress up and apply showy makeup significantly more than their female co-workers, especially if they are older and/or already married, also tend to be Bad News.
This is distinct from non-work contexts. People should have all kinds of freedom to wear lots of quirky things in general.
The transvestite pass seems either useless (nobody is currently arrested for cross-dressing), or oppressive towards everyone else ("pronoun hospitality" sounds like an outside force telling people what pronouns to use without the trans person having to do anything particular to win them over).
Gaashk
14d ago
So I guess looking at Coffee Enjoyer's list:
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media restrictions -- common and generally seems like a good idea. Even secular academics like Jonathan Haidt are now advocating for this. I'm unsure how much I want to apply it personally, though -- so far very little.
-
simplicity -- I'm not sure that I've seen this seriously attempted, or what exactly it means in most contexts. For instance, look at a grown up homeschooler Paula at the Cottage Fairy Youtube channel. In general, I like her, and she likes to talk a lot about simplifying her life and home, and about "simple living," but actually, she's always buying craft kits off of Etsy, filming complex shots from multiple angles, moving her artwork around, and dusting the bundles of dried herbs artfully decorating her wall space. I sort of get what she means (contrasted with a complex social and work life in a city, more or less), but also somewhat don't (contrasted with playing DnD with friends once a week in the city? Going to bars? I'm not actually completely sure) People in Bronte novels sometimes advocated for it seriously, and they seemed to mean only owning three dresses, all of them grey, keeping one's hair in the same basic bun every day, without curls or lace, and only leaving the house to go to church. This has been found undesirable and left untried in my circles.
-
social competition predicated on virtue -- I'm not very clear on this one, either. It seems to depend somewhat on the virtues that are most focused on. The people I most genuinely respect seem to be the "beauty will save the world" sorts. The ones who were eventually disgraced, their daughters prostitutes, their wives divorced, focused very hard on controlling other people in their household, to get them to act virtuous for social credit. Mostly, the men seemed fine and stable, but often boring and bored. There were a few years where several of them got really into Wild At Heart, with not only book studies and conferences, but also a salmon fishing trip and beating on drums in the forest. Our church bought the pastor a claymore sword. The men occasionally got a beer together, despite mostly not drinking. It seemed interesting sociologically, related to contemporary alienation. Several of these men worked a engineers at a missile company, and came home every night to their two to six basically fine children and an expectation to "give everything to God," but it's still important to provide for the children, so nothing too wild is on the table, really.
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emphasis on tradition -- I suppose that the people I grew up with were mostly in the American Evangelical tradition, where it is traditional to talk a lot about the unimportance of following traditions of man, and then there are traditions like giving testimonies and going on mission trips. I did traditional to my family things like reading George MacDonald and complaining about Calvinism. Then I was Orthodox, so of course there are general traditions, much talk about Tradition vs traditions, and some people went around checking out the different cultural traditions and cobbling things together. This is all a worthy project, but fairly complex in America, in a way I don't think Coffee Enjoyer is representing realistically.
Gaashk
15d ago
It's certainly possible to have too little space. My first daughter was born in a 500 sq ft section of duplex, and that was too small. My current house is something like 2,000 sq ft, and that is larger than necessary. 1,000 sq ft seems like an alright amount of space for a family of four if it's well designed. All else equal, I would rather a slight smaller place with thicker walls, a better layout, or architectural details than a larger space built as cheaply as possible, but when house searching in America, all else was never equal.
I have trouble telling other people's preferences because all else has never been equal for anyone I've ever known well enough to ask -- there's always a school they want to go to, something about the yard or neighborhood, a subsidy, or something else involved that's more important than the square footage.
Gaashk
18d ago
- Pick up the kids and drive them home
- Make something for dinner, or talk to my husband while he makes something
- Eat the dinner
- If the weather is nice, look around the yard. Otherwise, read online message boards and talk informally with family who are also watching or reading things.
- Put the children to bed.
- Have alone time -- write, read, meditate. I am very much an introvert.
Theoretically, I would also like to paint, but I never actually have enough energy after working, so I suppose I should just accept that I paint during the summer, when I'm on break.
In my experience, restaurant trips with a four year old are fairly rushed, but as others say, it depends on the four year old, and how much they like the event in question. The local fancy tea house allows children starting at four, so presumably there are some kids that age that do well. IME, four year old girls especially are really incentivized by wearing pretty dresses, drinking from fancy dishes, and getting pretty treats, and will try to behave well to be trusted with fancy things and experiences. I have less experience with little boys, but could certainly see them working to be able to choose from a buffet or something.
I don't necessarily find it very helpful to think about taking young children to formal events in terms of discipline. I wouldn't expect them to be able to behave for vague reasons like "this will embarrass my parents" or "I will get yelled at an hour from now." If the situation is very uncomfortable, and they aren't all that naturally compliant, they will whine and nag, and a parent will probably have to remove them and go for a walk around the building or something. If they're crying loudly over a long period of time in a restaurant, then the parent is not acting very responsibly, and probably shouldn't have brought them.
Also, working in an elementary school, it's pretty clear that 1/10 of children or so are just not cut out for quiet, slow, calm activities, and even when there's something they want to earn, they just have a terribly hard time controlling themselves, and mostly fail.
Another thought - time of day is still important at that age. Tired children are not usually well behaved children.
Gaashk
1mo ago
One could say that Catholics are the oldest group celebrating Easter today anyway.
Gaashk
1mo ago
Are there inexpensive enrichment activities I should consider enrolling my ~5 year old daughter in?
I was in Girl Scouts, but it was getting pretty dodgy (heavy cookie sales focus, zero outdoors skills) even then, and I haven't heard great things lately. 4-H is still good as far as I can tell, but for 10 and up. Someone I know tried Mormon and Evangelical groups (for a bit older kids), and said the boys groups were fine, but the girls were doing kind of the larp housewife stuff people have been commenting on lately. A co-worker has her first grade daughter in gymnastics and she likes it, but I think that's kind of expensive for me at this time.
Congratulations!
Most of my ancestors are from Scotland, which is why myself and all my relatives sunburn absurdly easily everywhere else.
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