France is so globohomo that gay men told me when I was there, that there are no gay bars anymore (outside of Paris) because it's depassé so all the gays go to straight bars. I assume that means they're so integrated into mainstream society that the distinction between gay and straight bars just doesn't exist. As a gay man this sounds horrible because I don't want to be rejected by 90% of the men at a straight bar and I don't want to just hit on the obviously homosexual ones.
And regarding Japan, have you watched the NHK lately? Their news is more globohomo than NPR half the time (though I suspect it's more reflective of an attempt at fawning to the international media/pleasing Americans as propaganda than any actual reflection of the beliefs of the people of Japan). Their traditional culture does seem like a strong defense against globohomo however, I would broadly say that South Korea feels more globohomo than Japan though it's hard to say how much of that is due to SK's much more recent modernization than Japan's. Japan feels more mid-20th century while SK feels more 21st century, so SK has more globohomo while Japan has more of a mid 20th century hippie Beatles energy (still!).
Germany has gone so globohomo because of a very German obsession with not appearing to align with Nazism and don't seem to have the desire to dream up anything other than the American globohomo enterprise. The UK actually feels less globohomo to me as the culture is so pessimistic that they don't take globohomo very seriously and just seem to put up with whatever's going on in a passive way. I haven't been to Australia at all or Canada very much so I can't comment on the globohomo invasion of these places.
Edit: After re-reading your comment I do actually agree with what you said, I formulated my response as a knee-jerk reaction to the idea that France and Japan aren't globohomo at all (which isn't what you said.) So excuse me. I do agree that strong local cultures are a bulwark against globohomo.
aiislove
11mo ago
I did take that into consideration as well, I was in Japan for three months and lived in a random Tokyo suburb but traveled to small towns while I was there and I've been to Japan two other times before covid also and generally avoid touristy places like the plague and I'm basing my observations on all that, not as a random tourist who flew to tokyo for 2 weeks and took the shinkansen to Kyoto and back
aiislove
11mo ago
Makeup and skincare products age your face and give you acne and bad skin to make you buy more makeup and skincare products.
I mean, if they don't, the industry is leaving money on the table.
aiislove
9mo ago
I wasn't familiar with the Four Sights before your comment but I just read the wikipedia entry and it does seem like a good parallel to the Barbie movie. Barbie's shock at the things she sees and experiences make her look ridiculous, even if she is changed by the experience of seeing them. We're not meant to empathize with her character's initial state, only once she sees the suffering of others does she become more human.
I'm not sure where a discussion of realism fits into a film that features both tiny girls replaying the 2001 monolith scene and multiple extended musical numbers.
Well, metaphors point to reality. Realism is the main theme of the movie as it's contrasted with the artificial Barbie dream world. The mom and daughter pair are the most apparent representation of reality in the film as they have to deal with the realities of humanity while Barbie gets to ignore them all in her perfect dream world. Extended musical numbers can be used to express great truths about reality even in their artifice. Effective art can mirror and illuminate reality rather than abstract or distract from it.
aiislove
6mo ago
What can I do with my money after I'm dead? (No, I'm not planning on dying soon, I'm just curious.) Is it possible to, say, have all of my money invested and untouched for a hundred years, with someone as a steward of the fund who is paid from it yearly just to manage it, and then create a foundation to, say, support a certain art or something I'm interested in after the money has amassed to a great amount? Is this legal? Are there foundations that people have planned after their death that are operating today in this fashion?
aiislove
6mo ago
I don't know about pornhub but I know on xvideos that the website automatically appends "step" to words like "brother" or "dad" (and also completely removes other certain words) so maybe pornhub operates the same way
aiislove
8mo ago
I definitely don't have anxiety about the election and its outcomes at all. I know dumb shit will happen either way and my actions have effectively no impact on the outcome, I don't even vote, what irritates me is that other people have anxieties about the outcome of the elections and I hate having to see their anxieties on full display for months on end. I really don't imagine anything particularly fiery or explosive happening either, but the incessant political signaling and cultural anxiety is enough to drive me crazy and the past two election seasons had me thinking "I wish I was out of the country" for months at a time and now that I can make it happen I have no reason to stick around
aiislove
8mo ago
I've messed around a bit with controlnet, but it's usually not people/poses I have issues with but the style of imagery. Like most models are trained on tons of anime and deviantart/pixiv style artwork and I am always going for a really specific style (like, say, Fujifilm documentary style photography from a specific year) so I'm always adding tons of tags in the negative to try to get away from the irrelevant styles in the training set that it wants to keep spitting out. Training my own LORAs with imagery I pick out has given me better results w this but I've just started doing that the other day so I'm still figuring it out
aiislove
8mo ago
Thanks for your response. I think I will try to seek out a more niche community of people who might be aligned with my interests.
I have considered working a real job just to kill time but I'm not sure what I could do. I've been self employed ever since I graduated college other than just a bit of interning and freelance work so I don't think I'm very attractive to employers. I have a pretty strong dislike of authority figures (stems from the irritation I felt toward my ineffective parents growing up I believe) so working for someone I don't respect would be a huge issue for me but I do like the idea of doing some work to give my day to day life more variety and purpose.
I’ve had acne since my teens as well, the one thing that cleared it up completely was a round of antibiotics. My skin looked amazing for a few weeks but staying on antibiotics long term is a bad idea. Do you have body acne by any chance? You only mention your nose but I’ve had back, chest and face acne in conjunction with extremely dry/dandruff scalp/beard and eyebrows even, which I realized was all related to a fungal acne issue. I bought a bottle of nizoral (ketoconazole) shampoo and it works really well on the acne and dandruff, every few weeks or months it will come back and I just use some nizoral and it goes away again. Maybe give that a try. I have also noticed huge differences in my acne based on my diet, sometimes I go weeks without eating any bread (only eating rice and potatoes/sweet potatoes for carbs) and my skin will be doing great then I’ll have some bread and suddenly the acne is back. Sugar seems to make it worse as well.
Edit: Consistency is also really important. I used to have much worse skin when I would shower randomly at different times of the day and switch up the products I used on my face all the time. Now I wash my face twice a day at the same times of day and with the exact same products (cleanser, not face wash, because face washes are drying and I have dry skin which also contributes to acne) followed by a moisturizer. Every time I have to use a different product my face will break out again, so try to be as consistent as possible.
aiislove
9mo ago
I was trying to point at the spiritual toll of ignoring race in my comment. I think it's more empathetic and kind to simply look at people and the groups they belong to and make broad observations about them and accept that they have differences that make them unique in the same way that white people have differences that make us unique. Trying to ignore that does a disservice to your own judgment as well as the shape of reality and the path of nature.
You dodged @Ben___Garrison's psychoanalysis downthread but really I think it's a valid point to examine the underlying motivated reasoning for your position rather than to pedantically try to dissect whether some group's traits are due to like, racial group genetics or their specific parents. Personally I do find it irritating to dissect race in a competitive way, as most men are prone to doing- seeing men who are more fit in ways that I am not is grating but accepting it is part of being a mature and respectful person. Race blindness appeals to me in theory because it absolves me of having to see the lack within myself and those around me, but it's at the expense of coming to terms with my own inadequacies and the traits of others. We focus so much in this thread on the hypothetical violent black males which can make us feel superior in terms of peacefulness but so few of us want to focus on the traits of black males that we can feel jealous of- sexual virility, domination, and so on.
aiislove
10mo ago
Nah man, I know what I like too, but I'd rather go without them than make the people around me jealous that I have something they covet. It actually makes me feel horrible to flaunt status around other people. It's just sick and would be ridiculous for me to brag about what I have when it makes other people upset. I'd rather use my resources to empower people around me than make them jealous. I have ruined friendships from envy before and I would much rather have the friendship back than be able to feel superior to them because of what I have or what I've been able to experience.
aiislove
11mo ago
Do Americans not cook for themselves anymore?
I disagree with all the other comments on here. I was just in East Asia for half a year, no one cooks at home- people don't even have ovens in their homes, and food is so good and plentiful and cheap there that no one eats at home. Americans cook way way more than that, everyone I know from my mom to my brothers and sister to my friends in NYC to my friends in the midwest are into cooking their own food. Eating out is very expensive in the US. My dad, recently deceased, ate out every meal of his life after leaving home, but he was particularly rich and an outlier in many other ways. Everyone else in my family cooks for themselves and their families.
Fever, Body Language and X by Kylie Minogue are all great and super fun danceable albums
Kelis put out a house record in 2010 that's still so good called Flesh Tone (Not sure if the Kelis or Kylie albums have kid friendly lyrics if you're sensitive about that)
Definitely look into some old Nile Rodgers produced disco, I Want Your Love is one of my favorite songs of all time
Also Giorgio Moroder- Coast to Coast AM legendary theme song The Chase and his work with Donna Summer I Feel Love are amazing but I'm sure he has some full albums that are great
Not exactly what you're looking for but I think kids would love the Bust a Groove 1 and 2 soundtracks, the Katamari soundtracks (1 2 3 etc.) and anything from Dance Dance Revolution :)
Edit: I also used to listen to this CD on repeat when I wanted to dance
aiislove
4mo ago
I am a designer, I make all of my money from selling things I design online. The one thing I sell the most is not that exciting to me, so I spend a little time on that, then spend the rest of my time exploring other projects that I enjoy but don't make money from. I like to think that I'm funding my passion projects with money from boring shit I make that people do buy.
Occasionally, I am motivated to make something, but it's because I see someone else's work and think I can easily do better. I always do.
This is sort of a driver for me, as I'm a competitive person. Maybe try to tap into that energy for whatever you want to work on.
My dad's family had lots of alcoholics and mental disorders yet many successful business people, I really think that the addict genetics help me with the "natural urge" to monetize that you seem to lack.
How much money do you want to make in your year off? Do you need to make money or just feel bad that you're being lazy and want to challenge yourself? If you don't need to make money, honestly, I would just try to enjoy the time off. Once I got my passive income to a livable place I traveled for over a year and not thinking about making anything was great.
aiislove
4mo ago
Yeah, I can relate. I am mainly interested in gaming from an aesthetic perspective. I think the switch from prerendered backgrounds to fully 3d environments in JRPGs between the PS1 and PS2 eras killed the genre. The prerendered backgrounds of FF7, 8 and 9 are probably the best art that have ever come out of gaming and 3d environments are extremely ugly in comparison. Prerendered cutscenes are beautifully lit shot and angled by an artist to create an attractive visual, whereas 3d environments have a crappy camera angle pointed at random stuff that doesn't look good.
Similarly I strongly prefer the art and music of SNES era to N64 era. The creativity after N64 era really took a dive, the industry was no longer about innovation but rather the genres became very rote and the industry has become much more bland. I blame this also on Japan's economic stagnation after the 90s, and though American tech companies had plenty of money to pump into gaming they lacked the taste and creativity of Japanese designers in the 90s and early 2000s. I believe creativity in gaming has basically died after We Love Katamari was released.
I took the Gamer Motivation Model you linked to and scored highest on creativity as well. I like games like Animal Crossing and the early Harvest Moon games where you can decorate/arrange things. I also used to spend an embarrassing amount of time on crappy Korean farm sim games on my phone so I could design beautiful towns with their assets. Actually, I would prefer to play a game like Super Mario RPG or Persona 1/2:EP/2:IS which all have really really good art direction, even over games where I can be creative, because it's enjoyable to see the art that other people have made.
You mention games that you don't like in your post but none that you do. Which ones do you like?
aiislove
5mo ago
France and UK have lots of Celts...
aiislove
8mo ago
Yeah. As someone who has been using stable diffusion/ai art generation nearly every day for quite a while, your box metaphor is pretty good. I feel like I keep hitting the walls of what's possible with it, and augmenting the capabilities of the AI take a lot of time and tweaking and technical skill that I'm lacking. It's also like it's so easy to get 90% of what I want from the AI but it can take ages and ages to get 100% what I want and even then it involves some old fashioned photoshop tweaking post generation most of the time. I ran into the same issue with chatgpt stuff too but my skills are more in visual arts than in language arts so I hit the walls faster with chatbots as I'm less able to coax out useful stuff with chat than I can with image generation.
Koreans are more attractive because the beauty standards of Korea are more strict and conformist than Japanese beauty standards. Korean men aim for a butch/masculine military inspired appearance with short hairstyles and Korean women keep their hair black and makeup and clothes very simple. Japanese men and women are far more likely to use hair bleach and have ridiculous hairstyles as well as adopt more Western inspired individualistic fashions. Korea is much more conformist, in Seoul everyone on the train wears the same 3 colors (black, beige and gray) whereas in Japan everyone wears some random bullshit that they believe suits their personality. When I was in Seoul for a few months I would see really handsome Korean men just about every day whereas I would see a really handsome Japanese man in Japan much less frequently, maybe once a week or less. Likewise I would see an extremely beautiful Korean girl just about every day in Korea whereas extremely beautiful women in Japan are harder to find (I also attribute this to Japanese modesty and, possibly, covid malaise because I somewhat remember more beautiful Japanese women when I was there in 2017 but this could be a change in my personal perception)
Also mainstream Japanese are like 10 percent Jomon and 90 percent Yayoi, I don't think Koreans have Jomon ancestry but I'm too lazy to look up the stats right now so I could be wrong
Also, Japanese people have really a diverse range of skin tones and body hairiness levels from very pale to quite dark and completely hairless to fairly hairy. Koreans are broadly much paler and almost entirely hairless.
The Korean diet is also significantly healthier than the Japanese diet which I suspect contributes to the difference in health/general appearance between the two countries. (People I talk to often don't believe me when I say this but I have spent time in like 20 countries at this point and Japan is by far the most difficult country to eat healthy in, meat and vegetables are still expensive and hard to come by and usually deep fried and battered and very fatty cuts, it's also the only country I can't find a rotisserie chicken in and many of the food standards in the country seem weirdly stuck in the showa era)
aiislove
8mo ago
Do you think that painting people as obese walmart shoppers who dislike the things that you like is a good display of empathy and compassion? Can you see how I might interpret your opinions as being rooted in condescension and classism?
aiislove
8mo ago
Great post.
But do people in the current year seriously understand AA as investment?
I have never heard AA framed as an investment before but now that I think about it it's actually a great framing. Growing up around lower to middle class white people in the midwest everyone I knew hated AA and resented it but if I'd been around in the 60s and thought of it as an investment for society I might have actually supported it. It's appealing: Why not give better opportunities to 15% of the population? Shouldn't we invest in those people, to make peace with them and so they can have a greater contribution to our society? It sounds great on paper.
Of course the situation as it works out just reinforces the importance of telling the truth about things.
aiislove
8mo ago
Yesterday I almost replied to this comment and said that doing all that has gotten me where I am today, but I thought about it over night and even as I slept and realized you're totally right. The problem is that I feel like I'm not working toward anything valuable, and I'm not challenging myself enough. Yesterday I was tempted to fall back into my self destructive habits and I didn't know why but I realized it's because I'm not holding myself to a high enough standard and it was irritating to me. Now I just need to think of some new goals to strive toward.
aiislove
8mo ago
Yes, 2rafa is right. But I have a background in art/design so I mostly sell things I design myself. I don't want to dox myself or give away too many secrets so I want to be vague but at the same time I think most of the posters here could do the same thing I've done and succeed. It is relatively easy as long as you've got the time to put into it and are willing to work for very little reward in the beginning. Building my online businesses isn't too much different than building one in the real world but there's less moving parts physically with ecommerce so it's good for me as someone who would be sitting around on my computer anyway
You're right that there are so many conflicting opinions about dating out there. I think it's because lots of people want different things and have different experiences with dating so what works in one situation doesn't work in another. I have been single forever so have lots of experience dating and I can tell you that the most important thing is to be honest, be realistic with yourself about what you want. If you aren't really into someone, don't string them along, and don't pursue someone you think is really out of your league either because you won't be confident and secure enough in the relationship to make it work. Really think about what you want out of a relationship, no matter what that is, and then pursue people who can give you that, because then you'll be acting in accordance with what you really want. For example I used to spend a lot of time with men that I was attracted to in theory and enjoyed being with them but they weren't really what I was looking for in a partner so the relationships never went anywhere. Don't be afraid to pursue the people you actually want, I used to avoid this because I didn't want them to reject me, but more often than not now I'm not rejected by the guys I like and if they reject me then I can simply move on and look for someone else I who fits what I'm looking for.
Also working on self improvement and increasing self esteem is huge, dating was the worst when I hated myself because I also hated anyone who liked me, so do everything you can to fix your issues and treat yourself kindly and remember that you don't have to be perfect, just kind to your partner and yourself
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