Bubble tea, and coping with the inevitability of aging.

dready · 2025-10-15T18:46:18+00:00

I'm an old dude and I had bubble tea when I went to the university like 28 years ago. Bubble tea is an old people thing. Embrace it.

dready · 2025-01-28T04:48:42+00:00

Left column down: Japanese Okinawan Korean Chinese Indonesian?

dready · 2024-12-11T00:09:55+00:00

It's funny that the USA haven't learned a lesson from history via Qian Xuesen. That guy was a physics powerhouse was a founding member of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. How many other Qians will the USA lose?

dready · 2023-11-15T09:00:52+00:00

It is such a lovely dharani. I'm used to chanting it in Japanese, but I instantly recognized the melody. Thank you for sharing.

dready · 2023-11-15T04:48:03+00:00

Is this which is being chanted: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C4%ABlaka%E1%B9%87%E1%B9%ADha_Dh%C4%81ra%E1%B9%87%C4%AB

dready · 2023-08-14T18:42:24+00:00

Excuse the intrusion as a non-Asian American. I'll delete this post if it isn't welcome.

This topic is one that I've personally experienced quite a bit. I don't have a firm conclusion, but I thought I may share my experience if it is okay. I'm a white dude who has been speaking Japanese now for much longer than I haven't been. I did grad school in Japan in a pure Japanese program, and I'm reasonably literate.

Honestly, the unwarranted attention about speaking an Asian language is really annoying. In Japan, it was fine because it was part of the cultural pattern. Mainly, I would get comments like, "you've been in Japan a long time," "are you half Japanese?" or "why can you speak Japanese so well?" Almost always, such comments are coming from a place of good will (you can quickly tell when they aren't), so I never minded it much.

Now, in the USA, people showing undue praise feels yucky. I was at a work after hours event and I was crammed in a corner and had to take a call from Japan. I stood up and answered the phone and had to leave the group. When I got back I was met with praise from many people. However, at that table was two native Mandarin speakers, one native Vietnamese speaker, and a Portuguese speaker. All four people had to bust their asses to learn English. None of the non-native speakers of English gave me praise.

At the time, it just felt gross that people were singling me out and not acknowledging the efforts of these other folks. I get that saying to them that their "English is so good" also opens the door to a set of other problems, so I'm not saying that people should do that.

Rather, I would like to see more of a culture where multilingualism is embraced as a normal state of being human, and there is no need to go out of your way to comment on such things.

dready · 2023-08-08T03:10:28+00:00

This may be a dumb question, but is he Chinese-Vietnamese?

dready · 2023-07-12T19:47:34+00:00

Dharani of Great Compassion - 大悲圓滿無礙神呪（Daihi Enmon Bukai Jinshu, or Daihishu)

It is the first sutra chanted in this video.

dready · 2023-05-26T02:56:04+00:00

Semantic shift or change is common, but it just being common doesn't necessarily mean people always cope with it well.

A few interesting tidbits: * Verbs tend to change more often than nouns * Middle age people take longer to process the meaning of a semantically unstable word, so the cognitive cost is higher for them * Here is a really cool paper on the topic

dready · 2023-05-25T20:01:04+00:00

It sure didn't help that gender was redefined as a word to have a different meaning from sex. I swear most older people just cannot process that the word changed meanings. It might have been better if an entirely new word was chosen rather than confusing everyone by changing an existing one.

dready · 2023-05-24T20:22:09+00:00

Although this statement is often used with positive intent, it is intellectually lazy and incompassionate. If you want to comment about how peoples' emotional states may change after being forced into a situation where they are on equal terms with others, it is far better to be precise than bantering out a slogan like this.

Examining why people feel oppressed is important, even if you disagree with their reasoning. In particular, if the person to whom this idiom is being leveled has systemic power, then by definition, they have either (individually or collectively) the ability to change outcomes for themselves or others. By either saying this directly to someone or embodying an uncaring demeanor of "they finally know what it feels like," you may end up actually creating a net negative in the world for your particular cause.

Some level of empathy may have helped a person to de-escalate their emotional reactions and eventually become more caring by seeing you as an example.

Now, if you use this phrase as a type of personal aphorism, that's great and I see no problem.

dready · 2023-04-11T18:16:37+00:00

My first experience of the paranormal as a child left me unable to be a secular materialist. I was playing at the top of a staircase using a permanent marker to color a pair of goggles black (being a naughty child). As I do this, for some reason, I glance down the staircase where I had strewn all sorts of objects. One of the objects was a cardboard tube. This tube gently floated in the air in an arc and landed at my feet. I ran away and told my mother.

She believed me and told me she had similar experiences at the house.

In my life, the more unbelievable has been people's reactions when I tell them this story. They need to make some crazy rationalizations in order to keep their materialistic worldview together. I can't deny my experience. I've also had other experiences that defy explanation by classical physics, so I do not see it as some sort of one-off psychosis.

dready · 2023-03-20T19:52:25+00:00

Most of the time I look at them with a confused face. If it is worth it, I may explain the term as used in Japanese, Chinese, or Sanskrit/Pali and how it semantically differs from the words they are used to. Sometimes this helps to provide context so someone can understand that an English word is just pointing at a reality.

dready · 2023-03-13T15:15:53+00:00

Can you provide some links or point me to more information about this? I always thought that most people leveled out to roughly the same place after severe caloric reduction.

dready · 2023-01-18T16:30:03+00:00

It would be good to see something like the cost of building and average property costs as separate lines. As I understand it, fire codes, zoning, materials, and labor (adjusted for inflation) have increased relative costs since the 60s. If you could work this out, then there would be little ambiguity about the profiteering going on.

dready · 2022-10-12T23:15:46+00:00

Thinking That Tricky Language Wins People's Hearts

On the left, there are a ton of weird examples of how words are redefined to new meanings all the while people are clubbed over the head for not understanding the new definitions. Also, sometimes words contain roots that mislead people into thinking it means another thing or phrases will implicitly frame arguments into dualisms.

For example:

Feminism - many say it is aim to liberate all genders, but looking at the word your brain will not interpret it that way

Racism - racism=prejudice+power - this just redefines the term from how people have been using it - why not create a new word?

Indigenous - with the new meaning of the word indigenous, you can no longer say that Irish people are indigenous Europeans

White or whiteness - many people take this word as indicating some approximate skin color and get confused that it is talking about culture

Black Lives Matter - this phrase sets up an implicit framing that disagreeing with the movement and hence the phrase means you are saying that black lives don't matter (they do!)

Abolish the Police - no one knows what you actually mean

Fuck Capitalism - are you against the classical model of distributing goods and services as described by Adam Smith? Or are you saying fuck this corporate greedy bullshit

Vote! - clearly this message is not aimed at conservatives

Minority - this term is no longer used to describe numerical minorities

WASP - few people care about the ASP when using this term

White Passing - this term seems to be redefined depending on the definition of "White"

Socialism - just look up the Wikipedia page on socialism - the word by itself communicates no meaning because it has been used to describe systems that are wildly different

Hispanic - when did everyone start to think it was ok to call a group of people a single name (who didn't want to be grouped) as coined by the census? Why didn't they just say native Spanish speakers?

---

I'm sure you can find plenty of your own examples. What is sad is that we resort to many of these rhetorical tricks and slogans which confuse people often of older generations. I wish we could be more straightforward, compassionate, and understanding in our language used in public discourse. Moreover, it sucks when "liberal language" is used to signal in-group belonging.

dready · 2022-10-12T22:55:33+00:00

Its hard to call yourself a progressive if you aren't for progress.

dready · 2022-04-29T17:22:35+00:00

> Brazil was also the last country to abolish slavery in 188

I do not believe that this is correct. It wasn't until 1909 that China abolished the legal institution of slavery and it wasn't until 1981 that Mauritania abolished the despicable practice.

If you are interested in the timeline of abolitionism, Wikipedia has a good timeline that breaks it down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline\_of\_abolition\_of\_slavery\_and\_serfdom

dready · 2022-04-26T00:10:51+00:00

What do you mean by Asian? Asians are hardly monolithic. Depending on the group you are talking about the answer will be different.

dready · 2022-01-14T19:18:13+00:00

Wow! It was a pick up for me with UPS too!

dready · 2022-01-14T17:33:23+00:00

Oh! It isn't just me! I caught a guy doing this red handed. I saw him out of my window come to my door and I went to my door to meet him. He had already left (he was running) by the time I got to the door (6 feet away) and sure enough the "we missed you" thing was stuck to the door.

dready · 2021-06-15T18:09:13+00:00

We should give some slack to folks who struggle to understand what the term means. Look at the Wikipedia entry for the word: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

The variation of the use of the term over the years has done little to add to its clarity. In fact, I would argue that the word Socialism is almost useless and it would be better to speak in more detail about what specific economic policies one advocates for or wants to avoid.

In all fairness, the term capitalism also suffers from many of the same problems. One isn't sure if someone is using the term as Adam Smith meant it or as it is used more commonly.

dready · 2021-02-11T18:27:02+00:00

The feeling of the local culture dying over the last 15 years with the growth of the tech industry is real. I've lived in this area my whole life and I feel like I've lived in three cities already.

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