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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   1093 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 2, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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what i eat in a week at my NONNA's house in ITALY 🌶️

TLDW: Lots of good and fresh food. Family, country side, trees, farmers markets, music, etc. (Also moderately hot girl, but let's ignore that for now)

A significant portion of but not majority of the comments be like:

most people want rich and modern lives, but this is the life i want. being home cozy with people i love, eating homecooked food, living in the forest... this video just gives me warmth (+16K)

I’m American and never lived this kind of life. No close family, no home cooking, no fresh fruits and vegetables, no comfortable house. My eyes tear up watching this. It seems so natural and right. I’m happy people live like this. I think it’s how people are meant to live.

Unbelievable that there are places in the world like this that treat everyday like this. Food is a celebration. Everything is fresh from the market. Time is less important and eating nourishing and full meals throughout the day is normal. And coming together to sit around the table each and every time…unbelievably important. 3rd time watching this because it just gives me so much inspiration as an American who is dying to travel to Italy someday and who also hopes to be able to give my future children more of this type of experience surrounding food, family and connection.

It’s nice to see that some parts of the world haven’t forgotten how to live life and it’s not all about money

However

I am autistic. My brain is conjuring up a thousand thoughts and conflicting feelings.

I will admit the life portrayed in the video is probably very pleasant, and you would have to achieve a rather high-end version of the "modern" atomized or even DINK lifestyle of International travel, Michelin Starred monthly meals, and Music Festivals to be about just as happy. So on one hand, I do relate to the comments.

HOWEVER. On the other hand. I want to yell at the people making these comments about lacking perspective. If the entire world lived like this, we wouldn't have engines, computers, the Internet, or ChatGPT. And I think all those things are worth a lot.

Also, doesn't Italy have a youth/recent-grad unemploymentrate of like 40%? Isn't nonna able to afford all these meals because she bought her house when boomers stole from the future? And is funding it now because they are stealing from the zoomers., Maybe I have some kind of brainrot, but my priors whenever I see a group of people having it too good (from my atomized capitalistic point of view), I think rent seeking.

My wife is from southern europe, she moved to live with me. From observing life there, they do have high quality produce year round, which I envy them for, but we do have comparable produce here too, when it's in season and doesn't have to travel too much. Yes, winter is difficult, but in season I've had superlative local tomatoes I would be unashamed to pit against any other countries' best. Same for most produce we grow here.

Other than that, yes, the lifestyle in this video seems pleasant, but there isn't really much stopping us from having it even in cities, we just... don't. I have a farmer's market 5 minutes walk from me, and a very large one 30 minutes away by bus. No matter how much more expensive that food is than supermarket food, it's still vastly cheaper than ordering/eating out and we do the latter way too often (especially considering the diminishing returns in enjoyment).

Maybe there's something we don't want to admit in city life that makes most people at least bit depressive, and that makes us not want to seek out the things we know would make life better even when they're right at hand.

What's so unusual about this video? To me it didn't look like any kind of cottagecore porn at all. The food wasn't anything extraordinary, just some regular dishes elevated by the high quality of Italian ingredients (although unlike Italian snobs online, grandma doesn't give a fuck and uses Barilla pasta).

Nothing unusual about the video, It's just a run of the mill video of the "comfy" genre, and that too a half decent one, most of them induce the opposite of comfort in me, albeit I'm not exactly the target audience. It's the comments that bothered me.

If my grandmother were still alive a talented vlogger would be documenting chicken and dumplings (complete with slaughtering the chicken and watching the body run around if my uncle was careless, like that one nightmarish time), fried okra, sliced tomatoes, shelling a bunch of black-eyed peas, cornbread cooked in a cast iron skillet, and probably some kind of gravy and fried meat dish like country fried steak. Maybe some macaroni and cheese with tons of butter and cheese baked into it. Good memories.

Youth unemployment in Calabria is like 40% and the state is a hopelessly corrupt shithole bankrolled by the north and effectively ruled by the ‘Ndrangheta, the most powerful and most dominant of all the Italian mafias.

Many if not most young Calabrians would trade their left leg for a Green Card and a ticket to the US.

Many if not most young Calabrians would trade their left leg for a Green Card and a ticket to the US

They can take a flixbus to Switzerland or Denmark or Netherlands today and start living in very wealthy non-corrupt democracies with almost full citizenship rights.

The majority of Italians do not live that lifestyle. They live a life of quiet desperation in the gray/black economy if poor, a financially tight lifestyle if middle class with constant fear of sliding down the social-economic ladder if middle class. Many people's vampiric grandmas and grandpas, after having stolen their young's blood future through the virtuous economic policies of our government like "baby-pensions", are now fostering the lifestyle of their endlessly children[1] nieces and nephews using the money they started collecting without working at 35.

[1]The job market (if we can call it that) is abysmal: low salaries, many companies who do not want to pay, extremely short term contracts after which we are promised we will be hired and somehow the job always fails to materialize, technophobic society with anti-entrepreneurial mindset unless we are talking about small retail, food, hospitality and tourism (which I fervently despise). This bring many young people to need the help of their parents/grandparents if they do not want to be homeless while they search a somewhat stable employment. Or they emigrate, generally to Germany.

moderately hot girl

sure.jpg

Do Americans really not eat fruits or vegetables? I never really bought into the food desert narrative but perhaps YouTube commenters really are so deprived.

Isn't nonna able to afford all these meals because she bought her house when boomers stole from the future? And is funding it now because they are stealing from the zoomers.

It's not clear to me that there's much to afford here. Italy has 1 euro houses in some areas. Obviously the 1 euro is a fake price but the point is that there isn't an overwhelming demand for housing in many parts of the country. Many Italians are happy to live an unemployed lifestyle with rather little consumption, funded partially by young Italian suckers workers and partially by other Eurozone workers.

It's true that if everyone was an Italian layabout we'd be much worse off though.

sure.jpg

It's interesting; despite the "Sophia Loren" reputation attached to Italian women, imo most have the much more nuanced attractiveness of the girl in the video. While Eastern European and Scandinavian women have major surface appeal with relatively uninteresting/utilitarian minds, Italians are truly wild... manipulative, creative, unpredictable, and worldly-wise. The tradeoff occurs in their design - rarely gifted with golden-ratio faces and generally ambivalent to cosmetic surgery, with extreme ranges based on their ancestry (north vs. south vs. Sicily/Sardinia). In total, they're extraordinarily interesting but difficult to ever pin down (leading to the Italian society we see today - committed, married couples routinely engaging in "side quests").

Central and Southern Italian men aren’t particularly impressive, usually shorter than average, hairy and with average faces. By Northern and Eastern Mediterranean standards they’re probably the least attractive men, although Greece is a mixed bag I guess. Not as ugly as the Portuguese, but not far off.

To be totally honest with you IMO Scandinavian women are vastly overrated as well. That Finnish prime minister who was doing the rounds for being super hot was, in fact, a garden-variety mid. I'd say Colombian women are generally the most attractive of the places I've visited.

In terms of raw facial structure you see the best examples in the Balkans and occasionally in NW Europeans and East Africans.

I'm deeply unimpressed with the, uh, raw facial structure of British and Irish women. I don't know enough about the rest of the region.

The Irish are quite an ugly people although occasionally their features coalesce into something very beautiful, often in a pretty eerie way. The English vary tremendously ethnically, like the French, so I think blanket pronouncements are tough.

English people are often naturally beautiful - Mormons in Utah (overwhelmingly Anglo) and Australians are often described as at least moderately attractive peoples, the latter before sun damage turns their skin leathery by 35. But the British upper and middle classes don’t look after themselves like their continental or even other Angloid peers (cf terrible teeth, bad aging, dislike for any cosmetic intervention, the British PMC drink and smoke more than their American peers etc), and the working class are deep into an abhorrent and clownish obsession with heavy makeup, fake tan, dyed hair, the ‘jersey shore’ kind of ‘chav’ look, dress terribly and are quite fat for non-Americans, so you can’t usually tell.

There are a few major British phenotypes, but both the squat Celtic and the taller, more nordic Norman and Saxon types all look better skinny. By contrast, other populations like the Balkan and Mediterranean looks cope better with slightly higher body fat percentages, and so look better in modernity. The main thing that Brits can’t change is thin lips, largely out of fashion but once considered quite beautiful.

Do Americans really not eat fruits or vegetables?

We do, but:

  • Fruits and veggies are more expensive than in europe. They are lower quality with greater selection.
  • When we do have them, there's a cultural proclivity to deep fry, cover in mayonnaise, etc. that removes much of their benefit (Side note: southern fried green tomatoes are unbelievably delicious)
  • We also have more exotic synthetic foods to choose from that are cheaper than most "whole" foods
  • People are fucking lazy in terms of cooking, developing their palates, or exercising the self-control to make most of their meal vegetables. Including me.

I would be interested in a more detailed look at point 1 because it seems a bit hard to believe.

A cursory search pulled up this: https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/outlooks/40408/30646_wrs0404f_002.pdf

The price comparison doesn't include fruits and veg, but the availability table shows that the US is better off than the average EU country and better than most of the rich ones, though not as good as the Mediterranean countries like Greece and Cyprus.

YouTube comments are particularly bad. I am always disappointed when I check them. Far better to enjoy (or not enjoy) the content itself, without tapping into The Discourse.

YouTube's algorithm changed in the past few years to promote the uncontroversial comments much more. It'd fixed the issue YouTube used to have of being renowned for one of the most toxic comments sections of the Internet, but imo it's made the comments much less interesting and mostly people just parroting funny jokes from the video or blandly saying how much they loved the video. There's rarely any interesting build up or push back to the videos in the comments anymore

I get the feel, I really do, but maybe you're just not watching the (potentially NSFW) right videos?

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