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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   700 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 22, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So I'm planning a trip to China this December. It's a gigantic place with a lot of history and I find myself a bit paralysed with indecision as to where I should go, I've drawn up about five or six different plans in multiple different parts of the country and can't choose between them.

I'm not sure how many people on this forum have actually visited China at all (there's at least one I guess), but anybody here have any recommendations to share? Any parts of the country in particular stand out to you?

I liked Xi'an. The terracotta army is genuinely worth seeing, and the centre of the city is surrounded by a medieval fortress wall about 15m high and 15m across - it's pretty unique and impressive. About 5 hours from Beijing by train.

Can anyone explain America's love affair with the pickup truck? This is prompted by this Matt Yglesias post talking about abundance politics, and acknowledging that for working-class Hispanics (among others) owning a pickup is a key measuring stick for material prosperity and that it would be politically stupid for abundance-orientated Democrats to argue this point.

This isn't a question about why Americans drive much bigger personal vehicles than people in other countries - that is obvious. (Generally richer country, cheaper fuel, wider roads, more idiot drivers such that "mass wins" is seen as an important part of being safe on the roads). I think I understand why so many of these are built on a truck chassis (mostly CAFE arbitrage). But the thing I don't get is why the pickup as the big-ass form factor of choice. If you look at the big-ass personal vehicles in the London suburbs, you will see at least 5 full-size SUVs (as in the US, the most common form factor in affluent suburbia is the crossover, which no longer counts as big-ass) for every clean pickup. And if you look at work vehicles, you will see at least 10 vans for every pickup. Most of the work pickups I see in the London suburbs are owned by landscapers who regularly haul large quantities of fertilizer, so "ease of cleaning the bed" is the obvious reason for them. The pattern seems to be the same in other European cities, and googling "Tokyo traffic jam" brings up pictures with more pickups than Europe, but still many fewer pickups than vans or big-ass SUVs.

So my small-scale questions are:

  • Is it true that there are more clean pickups than full-size SUV's in the US? Everywhere or just in Red/Hispanic areas?
  • Is it true that there are more work pickups than work vans in the US?
  • Does anyone have a sense of why Americans choose pickups over other big-ass form factors?

I have no answers to offer, but I can tell you that the Thai are just as obsessed with pickup trucks. Half the cars I saw on the road were one variant or another, and they rarely seemed to be used for their nominal purpose. Thankfully, much like the people, they were on average much smaller than American pickup trucks.

Work vans are far more common than work pickups in the USA. ‘White van man’ is not a usual American phrase, but everyone here understands what it means. The reason is obvious- it’s harder to break into the back of a van than a pickup bed.

Pickup trucks are the single most common vehicle in red/hispanic areas. It comes off as masculine and respectable(some form factor of success, maturity, decent behavior) for cultural reasons. Remember the American concept of masculinity, even upper class masculinity, is much bigger on ‘can personally go and do work’ than in the old country and utilitarian-but-not-really pickups make sense in that mold.

This is a bit regional -- pickups are more common for rural tradesman than urban -- partly maybe for high/low trust society reasons as you touch on, but also decreased feasibility of having materials delivered to the jobsite leading to an actual need to, uh, pick things up yourself.

In my experience (southeastern US) it depends on the trade. Plumbers and HVAC guys tend to run in vans while construction guys tend to run pickups.

During my brief membership in the white pickup mafia (I was a service/install technician for draft beer systems.) I drove a quad cab Chevy Colorado with a bed cover. Most of what I did could be accomplished with a van, but I occasionally hauled large refrigeration units (glycol chillers) that wouldn't easily fit in one. It was also nice to carry dirty/smelly equipment in the bed instead of the cab.

I'm not a truck guy, but I was honestly impressed with that Colorado (aside from. It was faster than it needed to be (300HP V6), nice for a base-trim vehicle (power windows/locks, excellent AC and stereo), and got decent fuel economy (21 MPG mixed and 24-27 MPG highway) while being easy enough to park (Backup camera is a lifesaver here.).

The external bed of a pickup truck is also easier to clean than the inside of a van, so you can haul dirty things that you might not want inside your van (cans of gas for your lawn implements, deer carcasses, brush) and hose it out when you're done.

This is prompted by [this Matt Yglesias post] talking about abundance politics

You forgot to add the link.

Thanks, fixed.

What are some interesting contrasts on the same issue in your personal policy views?

For me, I think it should be illegal to sell already cold beer for off premises consumption, because people use it to drink and drive- but also that lowering the drinking age would probably be a good idea.

How long am I driving? 20 minutes in the icechest isn't too long.

But people also use it to re-load for parties, go from the store to their event, enjoy their new beer when they get home, etc.

I feel pretty similar about Gambling.

Adults should be allowed to gamble.

But there should be some friction in order to participate, so I'd like to remove e.g. scratch-off cards at convenience stores and force all casinos into specifically designated areas.

so I'd like to remove e.g. scratch-off cards at convenience stores

When I worked in a convenience store the people who would hang around the till buying and scratching cards until they were out of money were a big annoyance, the more inconsiderate ones would let a queue build up behind them while they did it.

Can't lie. At least part of my animus is from getting stuck behind people buying like 12 scratch-off tickets at a time, and oftentimes trying to claim winnings at the same time.

In my state you don't even have to scratch them off, the cashier has a machine they can scan the ticket on and tell you if you won or not.

At that point, where's any of the fun?

I know these folks would probably just find a way to get their jollies elsewhere, but seeing how gambling has penetrated every aspect of society now, I really do want to put this genie back in its bottle.

I'm for the dual-pricing system in Japan-- one for Japanese (or local residents) and a different, higher price for tourists, who are almost always disruptive and are seemingly everywhere in Osaka now. This could be charged to me unless I initiated some negotiating tactic, which would itself be disruptive.

You have my vote, brother.

That sounds like it would only be enforced in major international tourist destinations - which could be a lynchpin argument for my long-term goal of never going to Tokyo or Kyoto again in favor of the places I actually like.

Kyoto during COVID and just after was as it should probably best be experienced. Only Japanese, no tourists whatsoever. It is currently a kind of hellhole.

I only went there as you describe once, some ten years back. I was very young and dumb and spoke none of the language so most of it was wasted on me. Most of my experience is of the hellhole sort… oh well. At least I met some very nice people each time I went!

I have done and been the same in various places on earth, and also Japan. The only difference is that, in Japan at least, I remained, and have to some degree matured, and, to some degree, have become able to reflect and revise my behavior.

Oh, I didn’t do anything bad there, I just didn’t have any of the experience I needed to enjoy it. Going back much later and speaking the language well enough to hold a (simple, very patient on the part of my interlocutor) conversation, I’ve had a much, much better time with the country. And in retrospect, I would have liked to explore a less-overrun Kyoto more using those skills.

I was recently at a Faire type event and briefly saw a family I've known for a long time. The mother was a part of my college-aged social circle, and the older daughter is my son's age. They live down the street, and we have little contact for reasons that will be made abundantly clear.

The younger child, chronologically 5, biologically a son, was clad in a full Faire style Faerie Princess regalia, complete with wings. His long hair was plaited, and every article of clothing was not even unisex, but just straight up girl's clothing and sandals. Anyone seeing a picture of the lad would have thought him a girl, and anyone seeing him as I did, in the minute before I made hurried excuses and fled, would have suspected he was a boy by the way he reached insistantly for an ornate foam weapon, like the song in his blood knew his hand was made to grip a sword. He was stymied in his efforts by the gentle chiding of his blue-haired pussy cuck "father" (I use the scare quotes because I'd bet 5:1 odds that the kid is literally not his).

In the time I've known them, in all my observations, I've never seen the boy hold a ball. Pick up a stick. Have a single instant of non-supervised or mildly rambunctious fun.

I feel so bad for that boy, and so angry at his Devouring Mother, who homeschools both children because our Blue State curriculum isn't woke enough. That situation seems at least as bad as gay conversion camp, and I would call it flatly worse if and when it progresses to medical interventions.

And yet.

I'm not going to violently free the poor oppressed child. I'm not even going to call out his mother. I might say something to the daughter's father, a close friend. I feel a deep aversion to so overtly criticizing the way other people raise their kids, even when I find it abhorent. I might try to slip the kid some ball games, and maybe leave a few High Quality Sticks in his yard, but I probably wouldn't even risk a socially awkward conversation for the sake of it.

Where do you all draw the line? At what point would you intervene? When should the State intervene?

At the point where the father prevents the boy from picking up a sword. That's where you should have stepped in, enthusiasticaly pressed the foam weapon into his little hands, and distracted or even confronted the "father".

Of course I'm heavily biased here. I'm doing what I can to teach fencing and grappling to my 3-year-old daughter, who at least humors me even if she has no drive to fight. Kid wants to pick up weapons? Great! What parent wouldn't want their child to develop a healthy enthusiasm for self-defence, or maybe even the capacity to defend others? Boys may be boys and girls not as given to physical fighting, but even then, kids of either gender benefit from learning how to handle themselves.

I have a habit of alienating my wife's friends and family members by telling them straight-up what I think on controversial issues. My own family members know better than to start, by now, and my own friends either have no opinion on childrearing or are conservative enough themselves. So I don't think I'm playing internet tough guy when I say that I would have no problem telling the parents in your tale that what they're doing is straight-up horrifying and that I hope the child grows up to escape their influence ASAP. If they want to virtue signal to provoke the squares, fine, consider this square provoked, but they won't get off uncontested.

Now, as for the state...eh. In an ideal world, the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-competent yet all-benevolent state will have prevented that scenario from occuring in the first place. In our current world, with our current states, I think it's better for the state to stay out of it.

Brother, you do not interfere in the affairs of a neighboring tribe unless you want to start a blood feud. It's a shame for the boy, but the world is full of such evils, and there is no state powerful enough to root them all out. That tribe has their customs, we have ours. They have their rituals, we have ours. They have their god, and we have ours. The best course of action is to interact with them as little as possible, only to trade goods and reach agreements about territory. With the passage of time, we will see whose tribe flourishes and whose tribe withers.

That situation seems at least as bad as gay conversion camp

If it makes you feel any better (and it is literally the same thing, I'll add), my outgroup claims those don't work. Of course, they would say that, wouldn't they?

Where do you all draw the line? At what point would you intervene?

Depends on the kid, depends on the family. And really, you just do what you can within your strategic and tactical realities/liabilities; you can't influence if you're dead (either to them or more literally).

There does come a point where you just kind of have to trust the kid'll figure it out. Parents stop being the prime authority figures around physical adulthood sexual maturity (for blatantly obvious evolutionary reasons) anyway; this is why, when I hear "the teenage years were hell", I think "yeah, that's 'cause you were bad at parenting/were still under the pretense that the biological age of adulthood is 18, expecting the tricks that worked when they were 5 to work when they're 15, and taking it personally when they do not".

I once met one who was like this- 12 years old, standard fundie-type Christian family, tracked out the ass. Had a bedtime on vacation (wtf?). We watched Dirty Harry and he didn't object over the scenes I would have expected him to get upset over were he a party-liner.

Observably, he's going to be fine. Likely, so will this one.

His long hair was plaited, and every article of clothing was not even unisex, but just straight up girl's clothing and sandals.

Remember, the specific reason those who worship LGBTesus are destructive is that they impose an adult (sexual) outlook on a child not strongly caring about which gender clothes they wear (his behavior is still male, after all). I suspect that it would have been a fight to get him into those clothes if he actually cared; merely failing to care at this age is not really a sign of malfunction.

Actively adopting the other gender's clothes for the sexual reasons that the other gender wears them at a post-sexual-awareness age... that's different. (It's also only a reliable signal of malfunction in men, since there are no male gendered clothes except maybe boxers.)

When should the State intervene?

Given how hard it has been abused against me in favor of specifically this kind of child abuser? So long as the State is unable or unwilling to punish abuse from women in the same degree it does men my answer is "never".

It's also only a reliable signal of malfunction in men, since there are no male gendered clothes except maybe boxers

While it’s not controversial anymore for women to wear pants in broader society, men’s and women’s pants are definitely a thing.

(It's also only a reliable signal of malfunction in men, since there are no male gendered clothes except maybe boxers.)

Not true above a certain level of formality - women's trouser suits look very different to men's suits, starting with the acceptable colour palette. And as the level of formality increases the expectation that women wear dresses gets stronger. This is why tomboys hate formal events - they are used to being able to be performatively androgynous without looking like they are cross-dressing.

Personal intervention? Not unless I was literal family to the kid, or similarly close due to other events. Adults trying to slyly undermine a parent’s agenda is a nasty thing even when well-intentioned. The kind of bond needed to trust that from the kid’s perspective is significant. Otherwise, it’s either not going to stick, or you’re gonna have erratic results because the child has no training or instinct to defend against grooming. From what you say, the parents do seem to be abusing the poor boy, but being quite frank, child abuse is a fairly common thing in various gradations and breaking out of the abuse is usually going to happen in or after puberty if it’s going to happen at all. Trying to break a five-year-old’s trust of his parents sounds like it could lead to some much darker places.

As for the state. Essentially never, outside of truly bright lines, like permanent mutilation or death. The state is so ponderous and ignorant that bringing its power to bear on something as delicate as personal relationships is incredibly unwise and guaranteed to yield destruction. So forbidding hormone poisoning and surgical mutilation of a minor who cannot consent to such things (which adult consent would lower them to merely, in my eyes, deeply unwise self-experimentation) well within the state’s purview, with little possibility of overreach.

Of course, this is from the perspective of one who would rather other moral busybodies and the cruel state stay out of the serious business of how he does good for his children and is willing to yield some theoretical power over the families of others for political consistency on that point.

Where do you all draw the line? At what point would you intervene? When should the State intervene?

I'm sufficiently white trash that the cultural norm of my people is to call out bullshit, but not so white trash I'm willing to cavalierly go to prison. I'd take a foam sword for myself, offer one to the kid, and ask if he wanted to play. If the parents seemed reluctant to let him, I wouldn't force it -- legally I couldn't -- but I would obnoxiously question why they're doing this to their son.

I'd willingly burn down every bridge I had with that family to force a social confrontation. If I ended up convinced the situation's abusive, I'd call CPS.

So, what are you reading?

I'm adding Hall and Stead's A People's History of Classics to my list. Definitely the most interesting open access find I've made.

Picked up Cyrano de Bergerac without realising it was a play instead of a novel. Makes quick reading though.

About three-quarters of the way through Unsong.

Dungeon Crawler Carl, on the third book. It’s decently fun after the disappointing “The Devils” from Abercrombie.

The latter was not that bad, by the way. I just have to accept that Abercrombie will never reach the level of his first five books again.

I just have to accept that Abercrombie will never reach the level of his first five books again.

He's hit Brandon Sanderson levels of mediocrity.

Death of the Ideal: Godclads Book 2 by OstensibleMammal. Still like Cyber Dreams overall, but by book 4 some of the plot devices were becoming repetitive and one of the major plot threads felt majorly "off" to me so I'm putting that series down for a while.

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