FZDC

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

I wonder how the built-in Google and Apple IMEs compare.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

I think Black English has been a major contributor towards towards mainstreaming "y'all" outside of the South. The rise of black stories being told on television and through film, plus the rise of hip hop/rap as a mainstream genre of music, has helped normalize certain phrases that used to only be associated with either the South or with black vernacular.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

That's basically what Arlington National Cemetery is. The union government seized the land of Robert E. Lee, and planning for if they couldn't keep it after the war, decided to turn it into a cemetery to basically make it useless as a farm/estate. Lee's heirs eventually sued and won the land back, but didn't have much use for it, so they sold it back to the government.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (2 children)

BUT I don't tear down people for choosing that life, urban living isn't for everyone.

My contempt for small town and rural America comes from living in it for about 5 years, and then regularly visiting it for another 3 or 4 years. I'm glad I live in a walkable city now. But I don't really criticize people for living that rural life, except in defense to someone else attacking my own lifestyle.

When this song came out, I remembered joking with my Army friends (many of whom are from rural areas, and definitely shared the experiences of getting stationed in rural areas) that it's weird the song! didn't include stuff like "find decent sushi" or "attend an NFL game" or "order pizza after midnight." Or if I'm feeling particularly mean spirited, I'd throw in "find a six figure job" or "hold hands with a white woman in public."

Realistically, though, something like 60% of Americans live in suburban America: close enough to a major city that they can go in for events, but far enough that they can feel that they're isolated from crime or whatever. Nobody actually likes rural living, but some residents of suburban America likes romanticizing rural ideals while still living in an environment that gets the benefit of the economic engine of a nearby city, and the density to support a variety of restaurants and stores and activities. There's an entire subculture of people who own $80,000 trucks and $3,000 guns, who have $200k+ jobs in the city but say their heart is in the country or whatever.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (5 children)

I'm healthy, fit, educated, and kinda rich. I'm also a man.

Do you believe those circumstances grant me with privilege?

The answer is obviously yes, so I'll acknowledge it, rather than try to change the subject to ways in which I'm not privileged. Bringing up ways that white people may not be so privileged doesn't actually address whiteness as privilege.

And privilege isn't even something to feel guilty about. It's just worth acknowledging in a "know thyself" kind of way.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Stop arguing semantics. We're done here.

Compare to Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass:

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master——that's all.

Yeah, if you want to make up your own definitions to the words you use, and then order those around you to stop arguing semantics, then you're basically not having a conversation at all.

Your comment was confusing because you don't seem to understand what is or isn't part of an operating system, and the mere mention of the operating system was pretty far removed from any relevance to your own point.

It's a proprietary service, and if you want to argue that companies can run proprietary services in a closed manner, denying access to third party clients, cool, that can be your position, but it would be an incoherent position to claim that only OS developers should have that right.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

I'm raising kids in a walkable neighborhood.

At this point, my biggest concern is still that they'd get hit by a car. At their current young ages (under 5), they're just not good about understanding where danger comes from when crossing the street or a driveway/alley entrance. Even later in life, I'm wondering how old they'll have to be before I'm comfortable with them riding their bikes on city streets.

At some point, I expect it to pay off (they'll be able to go to hang out with friends and bring themselves to school long before they turn 16). I'm just hoping I'll be able to stay in a walkable neighborhood when they're at those life stages, so that they can take advantage of the good stuff that this neighborhood has to offer.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I've been seeing it in fashion, too, with children's clothes not being as clearly gendered. There's the whole muted colors/beige trend that's easy to make fun of, but looking closer also reveals quite a bit more undermining gender norms in clothes. My daughter wears a lot of dresses (obviously a girly clothing item) with things that are traditionally associated with boys: rocket ships, robots, dinosaurs, heavy construction equipment like dump trucks and excavators, etc. I happen to have a lot of men's clothes that use floral prints or similar design elements, and my toddler son has some of those shirts, too.

I know I have a long road ahead of me on parenting through how to navigate societal gender norms (or even other norms that don't always make sense), but I remain hopeful and optimistic that the environment will be relatively kind and will provide plenty of role models of all types to work with, and draw lessons/examples from.

I'm not going to win every fight, of course, but I'd like to think I'll be able to choose my battles and at least provide some guidance in the right direction, and shield my kids from the worst of the worst examples.

 

So I got to watching Elemental over the weekend, and wow. I'm the U.S.-born child of Asian immigrants, and really didn't expect to see a kids movie tell a story that resonated so well with me.

This movie was basically mismarketed as some kind of cross-cultural love story, about a couple that defies the odds to get together despite a society that doesn't approve. And yes, some of that does exist in the movie, but mainly as a plot point about the relationship at the core of the movie, between an immigrant father and his adult daughter, and the decisions he made early on to build a life full of opportunity and potential for her.

I thought the themes were genuinely beautiful:

  • The sacrifices made by the older generations, and how the challenge for younger generations of showing appreciation for that sacrifice without necessarily being boxed into the expectations that might derive from that sacrifice.
  • The struggle to "belong" when tugged between multiple cultures.
  • Prejudice and how it affects people long term, decades after these key moments, and how it manifests in unhealthy and unfair behaviors.
  • Different cultural values not just creating conflict, but also providing valuable background for thriving in cross-cultural environments, as well.

I thought it was valuable to have these moments play out in a way that could evoke my own memories of growing up in a diverse city, being raised by parents who loved me but didn't always fully understand the society they'd chosen to raise a family in, little bits of racial or ethnic tension, whether small or large.

My 3-year-old didn't get any of this while watching. But she loved the movie at a superficial level, and I'm hoping when she's older we can have those conversations about these themes and the stories of her grandparents and the family history that brought us where we are today.

And who knows, maybe I'm overstating the primacy of the immigrant story over the love story. It's just that I don't normally get to see depictions on television and film that focus on these themes.

Anyone else get these feelings from watching this movie? Any other television shows or movies evoke similar feelings for you?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Even if you give your kids both, they still interact with other kids at school who primarily get the gender role toys, and make the gender/interest association. By the time they hit teenage years and are starting to engage with the internet, the learning and interest gap is there.

I'm genuinely hoping that things will be better for my children, through some active management of the environment/exposure that my kids see, especially by fostering and highlighting examples they can learn from. I'm hoping that the early exposure will provide some level of inoculation against the worst of the worst cultural gender norms. There are a number of women engineers and programmers in our family, and my wife has a ton more athletic accolades/credentials than I do. So my daughter associates her soccer league with following in her mom's footsteps, and knows that science and computers are associated with her aunts.

As the dad, I do almost all the cooking in my home, and any activity in the kitchen is associated more with me than with their mom. My daughter has a play kitchen but she also tends to come to me to be the person to show her how to play restaurant (not sure if I'm muddling the message by implicitly leaning into the male stereotype for professional cooking, rather than the female stereotype for at-home cooking).

Of course, there are plenty of examples of people doing things more traditionally associated with their own gender, but I'm hoping that the more chaotic distribution weakens the willingness to internalize stereotypes.

So I am somewhat optimistic, somewhat hopeful, that these Gen Alpha kids will actually have plenty more counterexamples diluting the force and effect of those societal gender norms, compared to what we experienced as Millennials.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I still say "y'all."

Y'all means all.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I'd argue the opposite.

Because you can use metal utensils on stainless, that means that an ultra thin fish spatula is an option when you're cooking something delicate. Silicone or wooden utensils tend to be too thick and clumsy for working with anything delicate.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

From what I read the cleanup is just warm water, soap, soft cloth.

What's stopping you from using just warm water, soap, and soft cloth on every other type of pan? If the answer is that it doesn't do a good enough job cleaning those things, then you'll want a pan that can stand up to more aggressive cleaners/scrubbers.

 

As my oldest goes into pre-k, in a formal school, it's a big transition to how we approach our family's relationship to the teachers, administrators, and the school as an institution. It's clear that the other parents are also in the same boat, with some unspoken undercurrent of competitiveness that I don't personally want to participate in.

Parents of older kids, what do you think other parents should know as their kids transition into elementary school?

 

(Gift article link, doesn't require a subscription to view without paywall.)

This article, from a few weeks ago, describes the linguistic phenomenon where a highly bilingual community starts incorporating direct translations of phrases from Spanish, to where those non-standard phrases get adopted by English speakers who don't even speak Spanish themselves.

I thought it was interesting, because I've seen this very same phenomenon play out in Chinese American communities, where certain Chinese idioms or phrases (especially of prepositions) tend to show little remnants in the English translation of that idea.

Have you seen this in your bilingual community? What are your favorite examples?

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