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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   932 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 šŸŒ¶ļø

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)

Iā€™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. Iā€™m happy people live like this. I think itā€™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 timeā€¦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.

Itā€™s nice to see that some parts of the world havenā€™t forgotten how to live life and itā€™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.

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 arenā€™t particularly impressive, usually shorter than average, hairy and with average faces. By Northern and Eastern Mediterranean standards theyā€™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 donā€™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 ā€˜jersey shoreā€™ kind of ā€˜chavā€™ look, dress terribly and are quite fat for non-Americans, so you canā€™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 canā€™t change is thin lips, largely out of fashion but once considered quite beautiful.

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