fireweed @ fireweed @lemmy.world

Posts

6

Comments

413

Joined

2 yr. ago

They might also recognize that shrinking family size isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Lower birth rates around the world could lessen environmental degradation, competition for resources, and even global conflict, Wang Feng, a sociology professor at UC Irvine, writes in the New York Times.

In every single one of these "depopulation crisis" articles the "maybe a shrinking population isn't entirely a bad thing" perspective is always in a throwaway paragraph near the end, if it's even mentioned at all.

Also consistently missing in these types of articles: an actual breakdown of the costs of raising a child (including the opportunity costs to one's career as the result of parental leave) vs the benefits the government is offering.

Also invariably missing: a description of the serious short- and long-term physical and mental risks of pregnancy and childbirth; at least this article mentions maternal mortality, but there's so much more at risk even in a "healthy" pregnancy and birth, from post-partum depression to incontinence. Occasionally articles will muse about women's fear of "frivolous" conditions like weight gain and stretch marks, but never life-altering ones like severe hemorrhaging, organ failure, and fistulas. How many women are postponing or forgoing pregnancy because they're not willing to risk life and limb to procreate? We'll never know as long as no one thinks to ask.

I have read a million of these "birth rates are dropping despite government efforts" articles, and they all echo the same pro-growth propaganda while conveniently neglecting these major, crucial points. JOURNALISTS, DO BETTER!

Not op, but yes? Like people have been doing since homo erectus first migrated to snowy places?

Saga of Tanya the Evil may be the greatest isekai of all time. Also the complete opposite of a harem. I'm not sure there is any romance in the series at all, actually.

You're still making this out like it's an individual problem and not a genuine (and major) gender difference.

From a BBC article on office temperature wars:

Boris Kingma from Maastricht University Medical Center decided to take a closer look. He found that women have significantly lower metabolic rates than men and need their offices 3°C (5.4F) warmer.

That's a huge discrepancy! Obviously not something you can chalk up to individual factors like exercise rates or medical disorders.

Women are biologically more susceptible to getting cold than men are (or conversely, men are more susceptible to getting hot than women are). Also most people in America need more cardio; it's not a gender thing.

Reading the article, there is obviously there's some shady-ass conflict-of-interest shit going down in this specific case.

However.

Literally any municipality in America could make bank if they enforced the traffic laws to the letter. Conditions permitting, most drivers regularly go 5-10mph over the speed limit. Distracted driving is common, and evolving (apparently the new things is people watching streaming videos while driving). In certain areas drivers leave their cars parked on sidewalks, blocking crosswalks, inside bike lanes, etc. Laws about stopping for pedestrians waiting to cross the street may as well not exist. Buzzed (and more recently, mildly-stoned) driving is socially acceptable. My local municipality could probably fund itself exclusively off tickets from drivers who don't have their lights on in the rain.

To be very clear: enforcement is a terrible way to get people to follow traffic laws (an outsized number of encounters that end in police violence started with a traffic stop, traffic stops are disproportionately made against people of color, tickets are regressively priced, etc etc). However the case study of this little town reveals a big truth: lawbreaking while driving is widespread on American streets to a level so extreme that nearly all drivers on the road will break the law (however minutely) every time they get behind the wheel. What kind of a broken system is that?

Okay, that makes a lot more sense; I thought you were being sarcastic!

Japanese theater history is interesting! Kabuki (I assume you're referring to this) started off as all women, then became all male. This created "onnagata," actors playing female parts but in a constant state of method acting so they also appeared as women off stage. More recently there's also the super-popular Takarazuka, an all-women musical troupe (basically Japan's Broadway). I'm not sure how much those folks in Texas would consider Japanese theater part of their cultural heritage, but it's another great example of queer theater in human history (that continues to this day!)

[It seems I accidentally deleted the original comment when I went to edit it, so here's the repost]

There were literally classes at the public library where people would get together and share websites. Also, because the web wasn't monetized, similar sites would link to each other because they didn't see other sites as competition for views and ad dollars. The Anime Turnpike, for example, was basically a yellow pages of any and all English-language websites related to anime. There were also "circles"* (even well after search engines entered the picture) of sites sharing a theme (eg a TV show fandom) and you could click through them like flipping through a Rolodex. But yeah, in the very early days (as in, before most folks even had email) word of mouth was quite prevalent; one of my mom's favorite sites she heard about from a taxi driver.

*EDIT: Sorry, I think I got my languages mixed up; as others have said they were called webrings in English

Shakespeare's original productions in the Globe Theatre had men playing women. The ancient Greeks had men playing women. Granted that's because of widespread cultural gender inequality, but the argument that people should only play roles that align with their gender assigned at birth because of "traditional values" is nonsense.

(For those who don't read Japanese: 彼=he 彼女=she)

Sure those exist, but so do many gender-neutral pronouns, although many of them are impolite and/or colloquial. However the main difference between English and other European languages vs Japanese is that you can make a fully-formed Japanese sentence with no subject at all. "Went to the store" (or even just "Went") is a fragment in English but a perfectly complete sentence in Japanese. Actually if you say "he went to the store" you're emphasizing that HE went to the store, rather than SHE or I or WE or THEY (Japanese verbs do not conjugate based on the subject). So if context makes it clear whom you're speaking about, it's actually clunky to include a subject. It's like saying "Sam dropped her son off at school, then Sam went to the store, then Sam went home" instead of "Sam dropped her son off at school, then she went to the store, then she went home." In Japanese it would be something like "Sam dropped son off at school, then went to store, then went home" (so if you don't know whether "Sam" is male or female, this sentence would provide you with no information on the matter).

A fun wrench in the system is that Japanese has gendered speech; in theory you can tell the gender (and sometimes rank and age) of the speaker based on their speech pattern, although this is significantly less true in writing, especially formal writing (e.g. academic, business, etc). There are gendered forms of "I" (あたし, 僕, 俺, わし, etc) as well as various phrases and conjugations (such as かな vs かしら, ~て vs ~ろ, use of の at the end of a sentence, etc). However the Japanese people, especially the younger generations, have been breaking away from these conventions, and it's not that unusual for women to use male speech patterns, and to a lesser degree vice-versa. Plus there are gender-neutral speech patterns where based on context you might be able to make a guess as to the gender of the individual, but this is highly context-dependent and again, these conventions are being contested.

There are lots of examples out there of works that are successfully able to obscure the gender of characters (intentionally or merely by chance) for either a chunk of time or even the entire series. This happens pretty frequently in manga, where the pictures provide extra context and make gendered pronouns (or any pronoun at all) even less necessary: no need for "he said.... she said..." when there are speech bubbles, and no need to say "he's doing a thing" when a character can point to another character. This occasionally creates problems for the English translation, where it's much harder to avoid gendered pronouns; if it's not immediately obvious what the character's gender is based on context or appearance, translators have to either hope that future chapters will include a gendered pronoun, or that the manga-ka will clarify in supplementary materials. This usually happens in fantasy/sci-fi series with non-human characters, but it can also happen with androgynous human characters. For example, nearly every character (except for the human protagonist) in the CLAMP series Wish is a gender-less angel or demon; for ease of translation the English version made the angels female and the demons male because they thought the translation would be too clunky if they couldn't use gendered pronouns (this was back in the early 2000s, when the singular "they" wasn't a mainstream thing yet).

In conclusion, while gendered pronouns and speech-patterns certainly exist and are frequently used in Japanese, it is also possible (and more importantly, grammatically correct and not linguistically awkward) to avoid gendered references to individuals in Japanese, especially when done on purpose.

I remember a pre-search engine era, but that didn't last too long. First there was Yahoo!, then Altavista, then Google came on the scene and changed everything. God those early Google days were amazing; it felt like if it existed on the web, Google could find it for you with the right search input.

I'm definitely with you re: American (yellow) mustard. It's good on a street dog in Chicago, but that's basically the only time I'd eat it.

There were literally classes at the public library where people would get together and share websites. Also, because the web wasn't monetized, similar sites would link to each other because they didn't see other sites as competition for views and ad dollars. The Anime Turnpike, for example, was basically a yellow pages of any and all English-language websites related to anime. There were also "circles"* (even well after search engines entered the picture) of sites sharing a theme (eg a TV show fandom) and you could click through them like flipping through a Rolodex. But yeah, in the very early days (as in, before most folks even had email) word of mouth was quite prevalent; one of my mom's favorite sites she heard about from a taxi driver.

*EDIT: Sorry, I got my languages mixed up; as others have said they were called webrings in English

I don't know your life, but are you sure you haven't just had poorly prepared brassicas? Have you tried roasted Brussels sprouts? Do you hate sauerkraut and coleslaw? Buffalo wing cauliflower? What about mustard (the condiment, the spice, and/or the fresh leaf)?

There are lots of ways I hate brassicas: kale chips (gag), broccoli of any kind (not even in Chinese takeout), and let's not forget plain, steamed brassicas (basically medieval dungeon food). But the brassica family is huge and there are so many ways to prepare them. Even kale by itself has dozens of varieties, and they do in fact have different tastes and textures. In fact, the exact same plant will taste completely different depending on time of year: mustard leaves harvested in summer heat are almost unbearably spicy, but nearly lettuce-bland in winter. Kale harvested in summer is way more bitter and earthy than in winter when it's juicy and sweet (in response to freezing temps the plant produces sugars like an antifreeze for the leaves).

Saying you hate all brassicas is like saying you hate all nightshades: you may be correct, but it's such a huge family it's hard to imagine there's not something in there you enjoy.

Mustard and kale are also (among) the ultimate year-round crops. They shrug off winter in all but the coldest places like it's not even happening. The brassica's arch nemeses, aphids and the cabbage white caterpillar, die off in autumn. Brassicas even get tastier after a frost. Forget California lettuce; local winter greens ftw!

(Also part of the dead-of-winter greens gang: chicory/raddichio, lamb's lettuce/corn salad/mâche, Claytonia/miner's lettuce, spinach, cress, and sorrel)

As mentioned in another comment, I would totally consider importing a kei truck except they're not street legal in the US and AFAIK they're not available in automatic.

I know what a work van is, but I only have minimal experience with them so instead I critiqued my extensive experience with minivans vs pickups. A work van could address some, but not all, of the issues I outlined. The bigger issue is that it's still a MUCH larger vehicle than I want or need. I'd rather a small pickup and a detachable trailer for when I've especially large jobs to handle. I'd even consider importing a kei truck if they were A) road legal and B) available in automatic.

I have a minivan currently and they're so practical for the average American. Hauling stuff? Put the seats down, and your "bed" is longer than almost any pickup's, plus it's protected from the elements. Hauling people? Seats go up, and it will fit seven people. Even though you sit high up the grill is angled downward, meaning better visibility AND in a crash will throw the victim over the car rather than under (way better likelihood for survival). They also tend to get decent mileage compared to trucks. Hell they even make for a great camping vehicle: no tent needed, just throw a sleeping pad in the back with the seats down and call it a night. It's such a shame that they were branded as soccer mom vehicles, because a lot of folks buying trucks for their "practicality" would be better served with a minivan.

However! They are not good for: carrying loose gravel/soil/mulch/manure, transporting livestock, traveling on 4WD roads and other rough terrain, hauling a trailer, or moving stuff that's tall but cannot be tipped on its side. The carrying/hauling capacity is really low, the ground clearance minimal, and the carpet-like interior gets dirty really easily. These are not tasks that the average customer is going to undertake often, and I've creatively worked around many of these limitations in the past for one-off instances, but it's definitely not an everyday-use farm vehicle.

I need a truck for agricultural purposes, but don't want to purchase a ToddlerKiller4000. Short of inventing a time machine and traveling back to an era of car-sized rather than tank-sized pickups, my options are pretty slim. Fuck me, right?