domain:academic.oup.com
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
11hr ago
Daily Mail is not the best sort of news outlet
Off topic, but the hate the Daily Mail gets is surreal to me. They're literally no worse than any "respectable" media outlet.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
11hr ago
One thing that needs to be kept in mind on this topic is selection effects. If you're an upper class professional in rich Northern Virginia, the average immigrant you encounter is likely very heavily selected for intelligence, education, and familiarity with American culture.
Lucky.
Since we're dropping anecdotes, I'll share mine as someone who has much more experience with the lower class side of things - quite possibly more than everyone else on the site combined.
My first meaningful experience was working as a laborer in high school for contractor family members. There was a period of time when we were willing to work for Indian small business owners and a reason that is no longer the case. The pattern would go like this: we would get a call about a problem, go to check it out. Give a rough quote, get an agreement, then do the work. Think minor to moderate repair jobs taking 1-3 man-days of work.
At that point we would present an invoice, and the Indian man who owned the place would interpret that as "time to start haggling", with the added bonus that the work was already done, so he had huge leverage to be a totally obstinant asshole. There was just nothing about their approach that my culture would recognize as fair dealing or good faith. On several occasions, family members did go back and destroy the repair work instead of taking an insulting low-ball offer out of sheer, outraged spite.
We soon stopped taking their calls. But when I see certain elements speak negatively of the subcontinent as a culture that celebrates being dishonest scammers and grifters, well...
I also worked alongside a fair number of illegal Hispanics during this time. I don't have particular personal complaints about them, but neither are they precious compared to the median American laborer. There are definitely standouts (Gregorio was double my age and put my ass to shame), but it's more that the far left of their bell curve in drive just never leaves the old country. Their market niche is a willingness to ignore labor laws, OSHA, and building codes. If you want to take a libertarian stance on that, maybe attack the other angle there, instead of importing a class of deliberate lawbreakers.
And in my current job, I deal with tons and tons of immigrants. Dozens every day, from all continents save Antartica. It's hard to give examples without doxing myself, but speaking in very broad generalities...
Imagine being forced to keep an even demeanor while you spend twenty minutes trying (and failing) to explain to a grown woman, using multiple forms of translation software because she does not speak any English, that a circle is different from a square, while she just looks at you sadly and says "no comprendo...". And you never actually get the idea through, you just finally manage to beg her to call a middle-schooler to put on speaker phone, and something the child says in Spanish makes her stop bothering you on that topic.
Then she asks you to help her commit welfare fraud.
That's a bit worse than the median, but it's far from an unrepresentative example. There are better ones, of course, but for every African immigrant who is just respectably middle-class with an accent, there is one who is a paranoid schizophrenic that's invisible to NoVa office workers. Many varieties of Asians seem to be more prone to demanding and Karen-ish behavior than white women - again, while being nearly incomprehensible about it. If the average immigrant you deal with just has a bit of an accent and can quote from The Office, consider that you are experiencing a large selection effect and there are tens of millions of others who cause much more severe cultural friction. Imagine if YOU, Highly Educated Theater Kid, had to deal with cast members from Duck Dynasty every day.
And I have to mention the medical side of things. Having a doctor you struggle to understand is actually extremely stressful. I had to take a kid to a specialist who ended up being Nigerian. The thing is, I genuinely liked the guy. He was charismatic and made a sincere effort to give me thorough explanations. I appreciated the effort. It was mostly wasted though, because I was struggling to make out two words in three.
On another occasion I was assigned to a GP who was an Indian woman. I went in for one physical and it was one of the most demeaning experiences of my life. Refused to make contact, would barely look at me. She ignored my concerns and fixated on a single skin thing that she immediately referred to an associated specialist for a 10 minute outpatient procedure that billed my insurance as a "surgery". I'm sure she is very good at gaming the system to make number go up, but I'm never booking another appointment with someone who considers me an untouchable, and if I could press a button to have her denaturalized and deported I'd hit it twice.
But on the other hand, I don't have terrible stories of violence and drunk driving. I've dealt with plenty of second generation Hispanics and Asians who seem to have assimilated fine (and others who were disasters, but disasters within the expected bounds for mid-00s emo girls).
What I really want is for the cultural friction to go down. I want fewer people I struggle to communicate with. I want fewer people with alien, unpleasant mores. There's this thing I've been seeing a lot of lately from completely unassimilated South/Central American young women. When you ask them a question in English, they don't say "Que?", they do this thing where they jerk their head forwards and jaw upwards at you while making a sound that I can only describe as an "angrily inquisitive grunt". And I'm sure it's just a cultural quirk, but I can't stop my lizard brain from going. I want fewer people with alien ethnic ingroup preferences. Nara said something down thread about opposing identitarianism from the left AND the right, but the identitarianism from the right was "American". Of course things get unpleasant when that's no longer enough to answer the question.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
11hr ago
I did this to myself, didn't I. Yeah you're Indian, a dude, anyone who saw you would think yeah, probably one day will have love handles but otherwise normal shape.Black hair, slightly wavy, conservatively cut. Thin fingers. Mild overbite. You could be a sympathetic minor character in a Spielberg movie set in New Delhi, but you get revealed as evil in the end. Prone to light colors, and blues. Still not a fan of those spikes off the field.
CanofWorms
11hr ago
Still working through Grant. Finished listening to the audiobook Nickel Boys and gave up on Trust. Relistening to Stephen King's The Wind Through The Keyhole which is essentially The Dark Tower 4.5. I also just picked up a bunch of Pulitzer Prize books from eBay (Oscar Wao, Interpreter of Maladies, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Poisonwood Bible (not a Pulitzer winner)).
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
11hr ago
Why not.
To at least one woman you are. Your username suggests not a spring chicken so I imagine 30 or 40 something white guy. Mildly overweight. Gamer. Beard, longish hair. A good voice. I'm just making this up, I could be completely wrong.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
12hr ago
I think I've described myself quite a few times, but I'll bite.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
12hr ago
I'm usually shy of card games or deck builders, but I've heard good things about it. I'll give it a shot!
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
12hr ago
Southeast Asian, Singaporean maybe, or Malaysian, or something, thus dark hair, and in your case longish. Dude, 20s probably, or maybe early 30s. No glasses. Perpetual smirk. You have a lot of black shirts.
Wave_Existence
12hr ago
Rice and beans can be incredible but there is a canyon between well prepared rice and beans with all the fixin's (some fatty pork stewed in the beans, lots of spices, maybe some hot peppers) and plain ass rice+ plain ass boiled beans.
I would eat "fancy" rice and beans as a meal any day of the week. Simple rice and beans is at best a side dish and it would be pretty unfulfilling to subsist on it.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
12hr ago
Ha, well it's my mind's eye, so probably not a reflection of actual appearances. You're 40ish, heavyset but stout, not fat, big hands, short cropped hair for the hardhat, or possibly balding. You burn instead of tan. Clear blue eyes. Beard and moustache, a goatee type setup. Polo shirts, favoring blues or the occasional yellow someone else bought for you. White guy. Any dress shirt is a button down and probably short sleeved.
@thejdizzler is late 20s, about 185 cm tall, about 75kg, fit by any reasonable standard but not in his own mind, wears glasses, fools around with facial hair sometimes but not currently. Short wavy hair brownish. Also a white dude.
faceh
12hr ago
Also suggesting that the Epstein files are a bit of a MAD situation going on with the parties and perhaps even other elites.
Contingent on there be actual evidence that could tie important people to felonious activity, this was the most probable reason things have been held up regardless of who was in power.
Its why I generally don't count out the existence of major conspiracies, even somewhat complex ones, when everyone involved has either legal protection or strong reasons to be quiet. Everyone having the incentive for the story NOT to come out/be corroborated means cooperation is pretty cheap/easy... unless one of them gets investigated and pressured to flip, that is.
If Mossad can maintain a fake electronics company for years and sneak explosives into pagers sold to dozens of their enemies, well, a lot of things seem possible to achieve without alerting the world at large.
As someone who was aware of the general Epstein situation well before he didn't kill himself and became a meme, I am heartened that people are tenaciously clinging to the story even as a lot of influential folks claim there's nothing to see. Most people are doing it for misguided or outright fallacious reasons but they got the spirit and are aiming it in the general correct direction.
Of course, what are the dogs going to do if they, miraculously, catch the car? Assuming they can make sense of anything, seems like the only just and meaningful outcome requires a bunch of trials and criminal consequences, which will be litigated for literal years to come and I'd wager will result in less than half of the people named being convinced.
Me, I'd just settle for removing all those people from power permanently and banishing them from the public eye and also polite social contexts.. Castration of their status and influence, in lieu of literal castration, if you will.
But we don't have a reliable mechanism for doing that at scale.
JustAGuy0
12hr ago
You were probably just talking about the classics, but I've always seen Frozen 2 as a vast improvement on the first one, up to retroactively improving the first movie. Including the story of the second movie, the end of the first one feels more like a midpoint, while also expanding the world as the story expands to fit it.
Also, the music is much better IMO
problem_redditor
12hr ago
How do I look?
Note: Answer will determine whether I ever comment on another post of yours again.
I didn't mean that there was no wokeness in museums, just that the "memorials being forgotten about in renovations" thing doesn't necessarily/inherently seem like an effect of it. As per my anecdote, I've seen the same thing happen for no political reason at all, just because the bureaucrats who oversaw some alteration or other to a building or organization didn't care to preserve them in the switchover. (I do not say this to exonerate them. Frankly, all else being equal, the thoughtless lack of respect appalls me more than any deliberate attempt at damnatio memoriae. Actively wanting to destroy the legacy of your enemies is at least an understandable human emotion.)
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
13hr ago
I'd be happy to take a look at yours if you share a link!
(Theft of Fire was great, the author needs one lit under his ass so he comes out with the sequel quick)
Lewis2
13hr ago
Not a direct response to your question, but Leo created a bit of a stir in traditional Roman Catholic circles last week when he celebrated Mass ad orientem. Read into that what you will.
Lewis2
13hr ago
even a connection to wokeness-writ-large seems strained
No, I think it’s very easy to place the blame squarely on wokism, especially given this detail:
The museum to the accomplishments and hardships of my ancestors had been "renovated". It now celebrated the fictitious diversity my town has always had.
Museum curators are 94% Democratic, and the newer generation seems quite gung-ho on inserting racial diversity everywhere. The New York Tenement Museum made the news a few years ago when it altered its core principles to change its focus from the Italian and Jewish families who actually lived there to celebrate a black Black family who didn’t. The Art Institute of Chicago made headlines around the same time for firing its entire staff of unpaid, highly educated volunteer docents because they were too white and hiring (and paying) a younger, more diverse crowd in their place (something several other museums also did, but without the attendant fanfare). In the city closest to my own hometown, the history museum has started replacing its old displays on the history of the area. With the changes, a first time visitor could be forgiven for thinking that the area’s history went 1) Native Americans, 2) Genocide, 3) Civil Rights, and 4) Immigration (2000–present), without anything of note in between. It’s a deliberate assault on the heritage of the people who actually built the city and made the area what it is today, and it’s entirely due to the wokeness of the museum staff.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
13hr ago
I'm an early adopter of LLMs, but using them to "write" the thing would be counterproductive. If I had to give an estimate, less than 1%.
I use LLMs for:
- Editing
- Brainstorming
- Research
- As an alpha reader
Research is the big one. I remember, back in the GPT-4 days, I asked it to help make a certain Jamaican character's patois more realistic. Didn't think much of it, till six months later, when an actual Jamaican reader left a comment saying that he was really impressed at how authentic it was, and asked me if I'd asked a native speaker.
Writers are often advised to write what they know, and it's remarkable how easy it is to know more these days. I used to trawl Wikipedia articles and crib notes back in the day, now you can just ask an alien intelligence.
Hmm.. What else? There are half a dozen chapters I illustrated with the help of AI image generators. More of a novelty than anything, but it was super cool that it was even an option.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
13hr ago
No.
(You're gorgeous)
grognard
Intel Pentium III 450 / Nvidia Riva TNT2 Ultra / Corsair 128MB PC133 / ABIT BH6
13hr ago
Am I pretty?
anti_dan
13hr ago
This post reminds me of the "His name was Robert Paulson" scene from Fight Club. Just a heads up.
naraburns
nihil supernum
13hr ago
We do have much better video games now, though.
Very debatable, especially if you include the early 2000s.
I appreciate everyone taking the bait, but: I did say 1990s, I would not include the early 2000s (particularly since Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003) is still among the best-written CRPGs in history).
The Super Nintendo was indeed an excellent console with some timeless classics (FF4, FF6, Chrono Trigger, Seiken Densetsu 2 & 3, Super Mario World, Super Metroid) as well as foundations to future franchises (Mario Kart, Star Fox, Harvest Moon) and strong entries in others. The Nintendo 64 struggled but brought amazing first party titles (Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, Super Smash Bros.) while the PlayStation brought mature themes and writing to new prominence. Final Fantasy 7 was a tour de force. No question: the 1990s were fire.
But almost every single franchise I've mentioned so far has stronger entries now. The Final Fantasy franchise has fallen off, but Expedition 33 is as good or better than FF7 along almost every axis but chocobo breeding and cinematic summons. Super Mario Galaxy (and its direct sequel) are better games than Mario 64, and Donkey Kong Bananza on the Switch 2 reinvents 3D platforming with equal aplomb. Red Dead Redemption 2 exceeds the writing, design, voice acting, etc. of basically every game that came before it. It's not just "better graphics," though it certainly has those. The Grand Theft Auto games from III to V were just one masterpiece after another. Even indies--you can argue that Stardew Valley lacks originality since it's just an evolution of Harvest Moon, and yet given a choice between Stardew Valley and the SNES Harvest Moon, I don't know anyone who would pick Harvest Moon.
I sometimes go back and play old games for nostalgia, but I almost always bounce off pretty fast. Some few games hold up surprisingly well but most just don't. We owe past developers a debt of gratitude for breaking new ground but the level of polish the years (and billions of dollars) have brought to the industry can't be ignored. Yeah, bad games get made, but that was always true. The best games of today are leagues ahead of the best titles developed in the 1990s, along basically every axis of comparison except pure originality (since originality was lower-hanging fruit in those days), and I don't even think it's close.
anti_dan
14hr ago
My hometown was a very less egregious version of this. Well, sort of hometown. We moved there from an adjacent town when I was in 5th grade. By the time I got to HS the immigrant population had jumped pretty significantly such that about 15% of freshman struggled with English. Violence was not a problem at school, we had a sufficient supply of jocks and racists that made it clear to them (at the time) that there would be reprisals. I recall one such when a 15 y/o illegal grabbed a girl's tits, and the football team broke his leg and his bike. This influence kept them mostly sidelined from the time I was there. By my youngest sibling's graduation though, it was more like 25% and it was becoming a real problem. And like you said, DUI is actually the biggest problem. It is out of control, no DL, no INS, 15 modelos in the back seat. They then just don't come to court and go to some other town, or just hide till hopefully (for them) the SOL runs out or the cop retires and wont be able to come back from Florida for a class A misdemeanor or CL4 felony (depending on what was actually charged).
anti_dan
14hr ago
I do wonder where, when, and why "community organizer" was coined. Among the euphemisms for fake jobs that are out there is isn't a particularly good or effective one. The first time I recall hearing it was with regards to Barak Obama during his senate run. No one seemed fooled. Maybe a few people hung onto it to avoid thinking they were not voting for an unemployed grifter, but I don't see that as having been a significant number of people, it was a 2005 IL senate DNC primary. People were expecting a grifter.
The theory presumes nothing of the sort. But they had control of the executive branch. If Trump has info that he could be hiding for personal reasons, there is no reason to think Biden's people wouldn't have had it too. If anything, the Dems ought to have a much stronger prior for having access because so much of the IC and deep state was supporting them. What possible chain of events could have taken place to make some killshot link between Trump and Epstein available to the Trump admin now, but not to the Biden admin any time in the last four years?
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