Gaashk
29d ago
I always ask why don't they just clean up the place and rent it out and it's always a "eh, I guess I could do that, but eh, Im fine".
Being a landlord in the US generally seems somewhat high risk and high responsibility. Better not to if you don't need the money.
Gaashk
30d ago
Patriarchy, gender norms, media restrictions, simplicity, social competition predicated on virtue, increased exposure to nature and an emphasis on tradition can all be emulated
What if those aren't really what make the Amish special, and you've invested all that energy, but your daughter turns out to be Aella, or the lady who wrote Quivering Daughters, or Samantha? It's not like traditional, strict, "umbrella of protection" patriarchal Protestantism has not been tried recently.
Huh. I am a woman, working primarily with women, and don't recall ever hearing any comments like that. I have heard people ascribe poor managerial tactics partly to the manager in question being a woman, and that a man wouldn't do that/get away with that. Also some comments about why the (mostly female managers) are not very good around "well of course it's hard to fill that role, with a lot of responsibility and not much more pay. I certainly wouldn't take the position." Different worlds, and all that, I suppose.
I've also lived a while in several native communities, and only experienced that attitude from a smattering of sullen teenagers. Shrug
In general, I would say, the healthier/less oppressed feeling women are generally at least as involved in their family and religious responsibilities as their job, and think of it as "a job," a way to make money for their other interests and responsibilities, not some kind of Career, Vocation, or Quest. The healthier Native American folks are invested both in multi generational family stuff, and heritage art/food/language projects. A kid out on some tundra who likes smoking fish, hunting moose, making stuff out of fur, and singing at church is... fine. As fine as pretty much anyone.
Gaashk
1mo ago
Perhaps the Latinx trans persons will feel extra validated. Cheers for intersectionality.
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 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
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
2mo ago
On vouchers, I tried to look up what's happening in Arizona, since it passed a pretty expansive voucher program a couple of years ago, but it's hard to find much information aside from the standard "democrats think it's bad" and "republicans think it's good, and also costs less per student than public schools." An article says there are currently 68,455 enrolled in the voucher program, with $7,200 available per child, vs $13,000 per public school student. I would expect the very high needs children to be in the public education system, and for it to be basically impossible to create private programs on that voucher budget that meets federal requirements, but haven't heard anything about it. Google says that responsiblehomeschooling.org says there are 38,983 homeschoolers (but the link is dead now?), which would make almost twice as many voucher students as homeschoolers. I don't see any qualitative reports on what kinds of schooling arrangements people are choosing, so it's kind of hard to have an informed opinion. I'm basically in favor, since as far as I've heard from people like Caplan and DeBoer, kids learn about as much in any modern, structured educational setting, so they might as well do it somewhere they and their families like. But all the articles are biased (mostly from the anti side), so it's hard to tell how things are going.
Gaashk
30d 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
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
1mo 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
26d 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
3mo ago
I think there's something to this, and that it's unfortunate. American Indian culture is often quite interesting.
I do like what the Ojibwe adjacent areas have been doing in Minnesota, with "Indian Education" teachers in the schools, both academically supporting native youth, but also making popped wild rice and leading field trips to the art and culture exhibits, leading plant walks, and inviting drum circles to assemblies. It adds regional flavor, which seems good. Not that (clearly!) Minnesota doesn't have their own problems, but Ojibwe teachers and artists are, on he whole, doing good work.
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.
Have you ever read Madeline L'Engle (author of A Wrinkle in Time)?
There's a woman I know who went to MIT, worked on Science for a national laboratory, raised five children, sings in a delightful acapella choir, is choir director at a Byzantine style church, and runs things like pierogi baking events and Ukranian egg decorating. Her children are all interesting people I also enjoy. She's smart, sure enough, but what really stands out about her is that she's warm, kind, and generally a delight to be around. She wouldn't be better or smarter if she had done slightly more math or science at the expense of everything else.
I'm not sure what to call this archetype. (edit: I think the old term was "pillar of the community") That's the kind of person Mrs. Murry in L'Engle's novels is. It's one of the archetypal roles upholding our current civilization.
The future will run out of niches for all but a very small handful of math wizzes and wordcels long before it runs out of room for the smart, warm, sciency mother.
Gaashk
1mo ago
Have you noticed this too?
A little bit, but not undertaken (or even intended, I think) very seriously. There are some families living on a couple of acres, with a goat and a little garden, and the mom staying and homeschooling the kids. But they are not serious about the garden or the goat, they're just kind of a nice hobby to have if you're going to be a housewife in an era full of appliances, and less expensive than other hobbies. They tend to be the same people who go to church a lot, and are part of a small (but sometimes physically distant) church with a reasonable tight community, who kind of want to belong to a more physically close village sort of unit, but not enough to actually make it happen.
I don't know if that kind of thing is more common than when I was a kid. I was homeschooled, and there were a lot of families who liked homesteading aesthetics, raising one livestock animal, once, and reading Little House on the Prairie, and a few families who took that unexpectedly far.
What you've described is unlike my experience of the internet in Current Year. I spend a lot of time here and on DSL, which are highly selected discussion spaces. My Instagram feed is the one clothing brand I chose, three people I know in real life, and art and craft videos for eternity, which I also chose. My Facebook feed is mostly local plants and day trip sort of places, and a little bit people I know. Occasionally a person I know says something political, and then if they do it a few times I unfollow them. My experience of the internet feels very narrow, like I would like to expand it a bit, but am not sure how.
This seems basically unrelated to whether or not I would rather live in a city vs rural area. In rural areas, I'm more likely to interact with people who are unlike me, because they're the only people I can find to interact with. It's interesting, to an extent, I like having an excuse to get to know people unlike myself. There'll be some old person talking about their (literal) dream or somebody's wedding or funeral to go to I don't know that well. In a city, I mostly find people at least as selected for similar interests as I do online, which can be comfortable, but also gets a bit cramped. Whenever I've had an opportunity to interact in a friendly and non-political way with people unlike myself, it has generally been interesting, and I've enjoyed it, at least in retrospect.
Gaashk
27d 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
One could say that Catholics are the oldest group celebrating Easter today anyway.
Gaashk
28d 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
22d ago
This is not a small scale question...
The small answer is to apply state force to the defectors regardless of any sympathy inducing specifics. Crush them into dust under the massive boot of Leviathan instead of shaming others for complaining about them. Let some people starve to death. Reinstate an earnest belief in hell. The question of why that's not possible is large.
Caleb Hammer interviews people (in a fairly obnoxious and click-baity style) in significant loan and credit card debt, breaks down their finances, and tries to get them on a budget with a varying amount of success. The most common factor of the guests he has on his show is eating out- for most of his guests, almost 33% of most of their monthly income is eating out at various establishments and other spending that does not significantly increase their quality of life.
Well at least this involves individual choice, not massive government bureaucracy. There are probably people who do in fact spend a lot of money eating out. There seem to be a surprising number of rather pricy restaurants, even in not terribly well off towns, so I suppose people are going there. It's doubtless more entertaining to find and talk to those people than the ones who are in debt because of health problems, or because they want to live in a big city, and are paying 60% of their income in rent. It would be quite the downer to have to tell someone to move to a much cheaper, duller city far away, choose a small apartment near public transportation, sell their car, and get rid of their pet.
Gaashk
4mo ago
I wish that this were a transcript, not a Youtube clip. Personally, I do not like starting a separate thread as a way to get around writing a submission statement. Why were you interested in this? What do you want to talk about? It looks like pretty standard stuff about people not having as many children as they would have wanted, and this being bad for society, and also for those who never become grandparents. That seems true enough.
Gaashk
3mo ago
That might have been too salty, it's a mixed bag.
The Santa Fe Museum Hill Indian Arts & Culture museum is quite good, especially when they have a traveling exhibit up. There was an excellent glass art exhibit a couple of years ago, and the current Dine (Navajo) weaving display is also quite good. https://www.indianartsandculture.org/current?&eventID=5406 They are, especially, very good at things like lighting an integrating a bit of technology in a way that improves the experience, rather than having a bunch of broken tablets embedded in signs, as I've sometimes seen. They have a couple of other spaces with also excellent lighting and use of color to improve the experience.
I've mostly just been feeling like the older museums have a lot of interesting reproductions and scenes, and the newer ones tend to have a lot of flat panels with words and images that might as well have been a website (would be better as a website!), but it could just be based on where I personally have visited.
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.
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