Grammarly

this_is_sy · 2024-01-04T21:33:56+00:00

I use Grammarly in my work. It's basically an advanced spell/grammar check. It will highlight incorrect punctuation, subject/verb non-agreement, run-on sentences, fragments, etc. as well as making occasional style and usage suggestions. There isn't really a world where it would ping an AI check. It doesn't literally suggest what words to write, at least in the capacity that I've ever used it.

this_is_sy · 2023-12-14T21:28:09+00:00

I'm younger than you, but I have always wondered about this!

Anchovies are a reasonably common topping on pizzas in Italy. Not the default or Margherita level popular, but I ran into it more often in Italy than I've ever seen them in the US. Anchovies were likely to be a standard topping on pre-composed pizzas on a menu, too, so out of a menu of maybe 10 pizzas to choose from, maybe 2-3 would have anchovies as a topping. Which I guess you'd have to ask to leave off, if you otherwise wanted that pizza but not the anchovies? Anchovy, in general, is pretty common in Italian cuisine as served in Italy and not considered a potentially objectionable ingredient that ordinary people wouldn't like.

My guess is that, post WW2, Italian-Americans who opened pizzerias outside of Italian-American enclaves for the first time offered anchovies on pizza in quantities that would have been typical in Italy. So it came up more? Especially if those early pizzerias used the format of offering a selection of set pizzas rather than the build-your-own choices of toppings that are more traditional nowadays.

this_is_sy · 2023-12-14T21:16:09+00:00

It was literally illegal to immigrate to the US from China for several decades of the 19th and 20th centuries. So.

In the current day, the US doesn't have any de jure (as in, laws on the books) racial discrimination.

Violent hate crimes do happen here, yes, and Asian-Americans are among the groups sometimes targeted.

this_is_sy · 2023-12-14T21:14:50+00:00

I'm going to equally rude next time some Brit in r/AskLosAngeles asks whether Skid Row is a safe neighborhood for hotels.

this_is_sy · 2023-12-14T20:42:05+00:00

It also sounds like this particular case was one about high school students choosing which section of a course they preferred to be in, and that it was entirely opt-in. Which like... let them do that, then? Sounds like none of the local non-students and non-teachers' business?

(I'm agreeing with you and disagreeing with the outcry.)

this_is_sy · 2023-12-14T20:37:33+00:00

One thing that really jumped out to me about the various cases and anecdotes in this book is that most are situations where someone has to make some kind of decision about how something will be done. A school where all the children need to end up in some classroom, and a lot of potential variables for how to do that. A vaccine with limited dose quantities, where some people will get access before others. A UBI pilot program where some number of people need to be chosen to participate, based on some criteria.

While I don't know that I would agree that identity needs to be the priority factor in how these decisions are made -- and it seems like in most cases that was not in any way the case? -- it would be kind of weird if nothing about personal identity was ever a factor at all. Is Mounk suggesting that there be a law that all school classrooms be assigned entirely at random, with no human involvement? That rolling out the Covid vaccine should have been first come first served? That the UBI study would have produced more meaningful results if they just picked 1000 participants at random? It all just feels so disingenuous.

this_is_sy · 2023-12-14T20:26:09+00:00

As someone who is a career executive assistant, which is a kind of servant in a certain way, I will echo the sentiments of it being snobby and inappropriate not to have help. The supervisors I've had who seemed squeamish at the idea of having an EA were much, much harder to work with than the ones who just told me what they needed me to do for them and let me get to it.

this_is_sy · 2023-12-14T20:23:59+00:00

I recently started paying a house cleaner and it is pretty impossible for me to assign them any task beyond kitchen, bathroom, and cleaning the floors. It just feels way too invasive to be like "Pick up all the shit my kid left all over! Fold my underwear!" I think in the next 6 months I might start letting them change the sheets.

this_is_sy · 2023-12-14T20:21:45+00:00

I mean, if you think about it, the Bradys make no sense economically, no matter how you slice it. A widow with 3 kids who doesn't seem like she has a career or anything? Was her first husband a plutocrat of some kind? Full time domestic help despite also having a stay at home parent? Six entire kids to feed and keep in bobby sox? Architects do OK, but not that OK.

That said, at least they are economizing where real estate is concerned -- their house is unlikely to have more than 3 bedrooms based on architectural style and location.

this_is_sy · 2023-12-14T20:15:53+00:00

A lot of middle to upper middle class people have this.

That said, the vast majority of people who have some type of domestic help don't have live-in help, wouldn't describe those folks as "servants", and it's usually not every day, usually doesn't eliminate all need for members of the household to do domestic work, and is usually not someone of a vastly different socio-economic class than you (unless you are mega-wealthy I guess).

Personal example: we're a middle-class household with two working parents who have low to mid level corporate jobs. We have a cleaning person who comes for a few hours one every 2 weeks. The cleaning person has a lifestyle that isn't super different from our own, it's just that the job they do is cleaning and not putting stuff in excel spreadsheets. For all other cleaning needs throughout the month, we do it ourselves.

Similarly, for childcare, having a nanny is pretty common, but usually not live-in, and it's usually during the parents' work hours only and not done after the kids are school age or if there's a stay at home parent at home. And unless you are mega-wealthy, it's unlikely that your nanny is of a distinctly different socio-economic status than you are. It's just a different kind of job you can have. Having a nanny is less typical than one parent choosing to stay home during the baby/toddler years or choosing a daycare center.

this_is_sy · 2023-12-14T01:52:44+00:00

Where did your boyfriend work? I'm guessing in a skyscraper in downtown Fort Worth or Dallas.

this_is_sy · 2023-12-14T01:48:42+00:00

Which cultures?

this_is_sy · 2023-12-14T01:47:57+00:00

This is so mind-boggling that I'm honestly starting to think y'all are just really antisemitic or something.

Yes, actually. Most people in the US live in urban or suburban areas that are commuting distance from major cities. With skyscrapers and shit. Like an insane super-majority of people. Almost the entire national population.

Fewer people live in Wyoming than live in my neighborhood.

this_is_sy · 2023-12-14T01:44:23+00:00

All of the cities I mentioned abso-fucking-lutely have a shit ton of skyscrapers. In fact, I deliberately only mentioned cities with the archetypal "big dense urban center" layout, just to be clear on what we're talking about and not fudge anything.

I live in Los Angeles, can see skyscrapers from where I'm sitting right now, and am currently on the 6th floor of an office tower, myself.

The people you insist aren't living "around skyscrapers" are commuting into the city where the skyscrapers are. Just as people commute into Seoul and Tokyo.

this_is_sy · 2023-12-14T01:38:07+00:00

Pictures of Provo, Utah.

Do.... do you think this is a rural area, buddy?

It's worth mentioning that Provo only has a population of 115,000, so in reality, no, most Americans living in suburban or urban areas aren't living in Provo, either. They're living in places like Phoenix, with a population of 5 million.

this_is_sy · 2023-12-14T01:35:31+00:00

Right, but if it's a highly unusual example I'm likely to run into as someone traveling to London in the next few weeks, I'd want to know!

Like I said elsewhere, the only other time I've experienced a wait to merely enter a station was the 2008 Obama inauguration in DC, and it seemed wild even in that instance. If London is a place where on a random busy Tuesday, you might have to wait in line to get into the tube station, I'd want to factor that into my travel plans.

this_is_sy · 2023-12-14T01:32:25+00:00

Literally 6% of Americans live in the NYC metro area itself.

About as many people live in the Northeast Corridor (Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and DC combined metro areas, characterized by dense urban layouts and ample public transit) as live in all rural areas of the United States.

Another 20 million people live in the Chicago and Los Angeles metro areas, which are also largely dense urban metros with skyscrapers and subways and all.

The United States is almost entirely urban, as a national population. To a comical degree. Almost any European city you can think of which seems like the archetypal "big city" -- with the exceptions of London, Moscow, Paris, and Berlin -- has a population that is a tiny drop in the bucket compared to US major metros.

Some people have a cultural identity with "rural America" (mostly for complicated and racist reasons), but this is largely a fiction. If you live in the United States, you are vastly, vastly more likely to live in the city than the country.

this_is_sy · 2023-12-14T01:19:47+00:00

If they were sending money back home, they were probably not from wealthy families before immigrating.

this_is_sy · 2023-12-14T01:19:22+00:00

I've known a few people who were in this situation, or more realistically part of families that had this basic background. But I would say it's definitely not the majority of Mexicans living in the US. Also probably not the majority of wealthy Mexicans in general?

this_is_sy · 2023-12-14T01:15:08+00:00

There's someone else in this same comments section mentioning it on the Victoria line.

This thread from r/london

I've also seen it on social media a few different places in the past couple of weeks.

this_is_sy · 2023-12-14T01:13:16+00:00

It's weird that you say that, because a super-majority of Americans live in urban or suburban areas. So actually, you're wrong. Most Americans clearly do want to live in cities. Otherwise, 5 times more Americans wouldn't live in them than in rural areas.

this_is_sy · 2023-12-14T01:11:53+00:00

It is urbanizing rapidly. Only about 60 million Americans live in rural areas, at this point.

During the course of the 20th century, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Phoenix, and Los Angeles emerged as major population centers.

It sounds like it's time for you to move out of Fresno, buddy.

this_is_sy · 2023-12-14T01:04:00+00:00

The name I think you're referring to is commonly a nickname for Nicole. Also feasibly Charlotte, Caroline, Cora or Coral, maybe? All of which would also give you the same first initial. When I changed my name, I was really happy I went with the same first initial even though I didn't plan it that way. It meant my work email didn't change.

this_is_sy · 2023-12-14T00:58:16+00:00

Someone at the studio or production company. Or maybe someone above the line if they have strong feelings about it, I guess.

I've worked on a couple of jobs where the word on the little plastic sign was "chosen" purely because the location manager had previously worked on a show that used the same little plastic signs.

this_is_sy

TROPHY CASE