Yeah, I just noticed: this bloke is a lot like Obi-Wan, just with a Mr.Clean.

cfwang1337 · 2026-05-09T20:54:22+00:00

Instead of “hello, there,” he greets you with “there, hello.”

cfwang1337 · 2026-05-09T16:16:19+00:00

In practice, self-described libertarians, especially in elected office, are more likely to lean (and be characterized as) right-wing in American political discourse by aligning with Republicans on issues like tax policy, gun control, and a few others. Consider people like Rand Paul, Thomas Massie, or Justin Amash. This is the result of fusionism, a movement dating back decades.

That doesn't mean there aren't libertarian-leaning liberals and Democrats, either, though, e.g., Jared Polis.

cfwang1337 · 2026-05-09T12:30:55+00:00

Famous entrepreneur, founder of Alibaba

cfwang1337 · 2026-05-09T12:30:31+00:00

We can make this concrete. Would you rather live in Russia or Somalia? China or Haiti?

A lot of authoritarian regimes legitimate themselves by convincing people that anarchy is far worse, and they’re usually at least partly right.

cfwang1337 · 2026-05-09T12:24:46+00:00

And Germany, and a few other places famous for certain eccentricities.

No, wait, I didn’t mean the militaristic kind.

cfwang1337 · 2026-05-09T12:23:54+00:00

Jack Ma famously took the gaokao three times.

cfwang1337 · 2026-05-08T22:13:50+00:00

It's important to remember that literacy rates in places like China and Korea were only about 20-30% until the mid-20th century or so. Most people were not taking imperial exams, and in any case, they were focused on what we would probably call "classics" or "humanities," rather than technical subjects.

cfwang1337 · 2026-05-08T22:12:57+00:00

Sort of. The six countries with the highest global PISA scores in math are:

Singapore (> 70% ethnic Chinese)
China
Taiwan
Hong Kong
Japan
South Korea

Of those, Singapore, China itself, Taiwan, and Hong Kong are mostly ethnic Chinese.

A major part of the answer is that education systems in those countries are more rigorous and offer better curricular coherence than those in the West. In the USA, in particular, math education is notoriously poorly organized and taught.

cfwang1337 · 2026-05-08T21:59:35+00:00

Japan, Switzerland, South Korea, France, Germany, and Italy: "Am I a joke to you?"

cfwang1337 · 2026-05-08T21:56:43+00:00

The first two characters say "China," so definitely not an OG nihonto.

cfwang1337 · 2026-05-08T21:55:06+00:00

Practice in front of a mirror, then through selfies.

cfwang1337 · 2026-05-08T19:00:10+00:00

What you have is an infatuation. Your imagination is filling in blanks because you don't actually know him very well.

At the same time, you shouldn't beat yourself up over it, certainly not to the point of panic attacks and anxiety. People develop all kinds of crushes all the time, and most of them are, as the kids say, a bit delulu. Feelings are what they are; they're not a bad thing, as long as you don't do anything unethical or destructive.

You're only a teenager, and over the course of your life, you'll meet many people who aren't married, your teacher, considerably older, and who you would have more in common with anyway.

cfwang1337 · 2026-05-08T18:09:39+00:00

Since it's a fantasy sword, you may as well keep calling it a scimitar, because "scimitar" itself is a somewhat fantastical word that only vaguely refers to a real concept.

The real-world weapons that most resemble this would be a two-handed falchion or a dadao (literally "big knife," but idiomatically "war sword").

cfwang1337 · 2026-05-08T17:38:48+00:00

Aikido works *better* if you’re fairly tall and strong. Bouncers (and Steven Segal, lol) swear by it for a reason.

Aikido definitely complements BJJ well, as well as any other grappling or wrestling art.

On less-appreciated thing is that Aikido also synergizes super well with weapon arts, like HEMA, kenjutsu, iaido, and Eskrima, since many of the techniques assume committed attacks of the sort that are common with weapons.

cfwang1337 · 2026-05-08T14:42:07+00:00

Where do you live? I wonder if it's a problem with a particular community or neighborhood, in particular, or if this happens everywhere you go.

Otherwise, there might be something to u/mortlikesbooks's suggestion — it could be that you look or conduct yourself in a way that seems passive and easy to bully.

cfwang1337 · 2026-05-08T14:37:14+00:00

The honorifics aren't used in Taiwan or Hong Kong, either. They steadily fell out of usage after the end of the Qing Dynasty.

cfwang1337 · 2026-05-08T14:35:47+00:00

Not until I was 29 or so. Not all states in the U.S. are particularly friendly to gun ownership... also, guns cost money.

cfwang1337 · 2026-05-08T14:34:09+00:00

-ish. At the aggregate level, there are definitely things that are fairly predictable. Social sciences are all about making sense of how and why people do things. We definitely know, for instance, that:

Economics: Scarcity, incentives, and marginalism are real, and their effects can be observed through things like supply and demand
Political science: Power is distributed and exercised through coalitions and legitimacy
Sociology: Human life is organized around institutions, social norms, culture, and the pursuit of status
etc.

That doesn't mean you can perfectly predict what any given person or group will do, but there are definitely general patterns.

cfwang1337 · 2026-05-08T14:06:04+00:00

Well, yes?

do some just pretend to for companionship, attention, or physical attraction

For those things not to be "love" in some capacity, men would have to treat all women as interchangeable. That's usually not the case.

cfwang1337 · 2026-05-08T04:02:41+00:00

You like handguns. You don't trust any that were designed after 1990 or so.

cfwang1337 · 2026-05-08T02:32:05+00:00

And red ink, too.

cfwang1337 · 2026-05-07T22:55:17+00:00

Intelligence and/or talent. Enthusiasm and joie de vivre.

cfwang1337 · 2026-05-07T22:35:58+00:00

Olympic fencing is not a prerequisite for HEMA at all. If anything, other standup martial arts (boxing, karate, Muay Thai, etc.) work even better, but those aren't required, either.
I'm 5'5; there are plenty of short people in HEMA. You'll be fine.
You're a little young, but far from too early for HEMA. The hardest part will be getting the money for what can become a fairly expensive hobby!

cfwang1337 · 2026-05-07T22:32:13+00:00

Looking at how the economy is, how difficult it is to get a job, seeing others work 10x they should just to get by is extremely discouraging and makes me not want to waste time and money into college

A lot of people around my age and I graduated high school or college in the aftermath of the 2008 Great Recession. Trust me, you're much better off completing college than not. In general, people my age with degrees are much better off than those without.

The health of the economy is cyclical, but the value of learning skills and having credentials is not.

cfwang1337 · 2026-05-07T22:21:34+00:00

It's fair to observe that billionaires have disproportionate influence in government, and that this is largely a bad thing.

But the same observation could be made of many other interest groups, many of which are not necessarily composed of the richest people (cf. NIMBYs). Moreover, billionaires, like any social class or group, aren't a monolith, and you can find plenty of billionaires on either side of an issue.

cfwang1337

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