kafkaesque

A lot of tourists and foreigners come to Canada and say they want to try Tim Horton's because they've heard it's quintessentially Canadian.

I have to always correct them and tell them it's not Canadian.

It's hilarious that so many people have these crazy timing techniques and use their hands or a swatter

Use a spray bottle to get its wings wet, I usually use Windex or a multi-surface cleaner, then get a paper towel and kill it as slow or as fast as you want

This is similar to Soren Kierkegaard's stages of life theory, which he was fine-tuning 130 years earlier

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_S%C3%B8ren_Kierk...

We call it PII (Personal Identifiable Information) at my workplace

This state of mind is called "ignorance is bliss." There's nothing wrong with it. Despite people thinking "happy" people have never had any hardship in life, it really just describes not wanting to explore what has caused them any trauma, thus, not letting those things affect them (in a negative way or positive way).

I've noticed this kind of person is usually the most uninteresting to talk to, though. But not everyone has to be interesting. In my experience, aside from their work, they seem to have surface-level conversations and interests and live a much simpler life. It's like an extreme form of pragmatism.

Also, to paraphrase Borges, happiness is its own justification.[1] In other words, it either needs no justification or, at the most, only a surface-level justification.

[1] "He sospechado alguna vez que la única cosa sin misterio es la felicidad, porque se justifica por sí sola."

Most likely due to the peanut butter content.

Other foods with ("a lot of") selenium: salmon, pork chops, and chicken breast

Yes! Thank you so much!

I've been trying to find this site that, if I recall correctly, just has a gradient background that I think is animated and it's just an audio file of a man saying "Welcome to the" something-something in different ways.

I tried googling it but because it's so nondescript it's hard to find it.

> Historically Asian artists and musicians imitated master's styles. Only after you are fully mastering the previous style, you can add something little of your own.

This sounds euro- or western-centric, which is interesting because it is how we've been taught the world is: everything of highest esteem originated in Europe, and different European cities were the cultural capital of the world at different times in history.

There may be some truth to that, but you're not recognizing the original and creative Asian art that does not imitate or derive from European influences.

My take on this whole AI-created influencer is that younger generations (putting aside race and ethnicity) prize beauty and perfection at the cost of human connection and personal stories in the "art" or "celebrities" they follow or admire.

My background is in the arts. I was taught that during most of the 1900s, art was about the process and what gave it value. The output was just an effect of the process of creation. Why did artists put such value in the process? Because that is precisely what is so hard to replicate. The final result (end product) is easier to mimic. The story behind the art is irreplaceable and as personal as the artist's soul, as trite as that may sound.

I would go as far as to say all artists, including Asian ones, understand this, which is what creates such a huge divide between "real art" and "massively produced art," where the human element is lost and things are produced in a "lab."

Not just in BC. There are quite a few Chinese and Taiwanese who are also corrupt in Los Angeles and its suburbs (the San Gabriel Valley).

This is not to say there aren't thousands and possibly millions of Chinese people who are good citizens.

But I mention it because OP seems a little too confident in his belief, when there are are pretty massive examples of the contrary.

I would think we should fund research and studies that deal with why such a hobby is embarrassing or frowned upon, if not illegal. Try to improve society by tackling the problem, not covering up for someone's misgivings.

Ban cash. Most people use cards in the UK. We should push for that in North America.

> To say you are hungry you say that your stomach is empty, to say you are thirsty you say your throat is dry.

That's interesting.

It's the same in Japanese.

I wonder if it's the same in Chinese.

I got into a very nasty discussion with someone on here over Latin American history once.

As much as I love a lot of things about Hacker News, most users here have never discussed the indigenous histories of the Americas, so remain ignorant as to how to express themselves in such discussions.

To be clear, you should not be downvoted.

And to others oblivious as to why "peopled" is wrong: To people is frowned upon when discussing early histories of the Americas because it connotes that before the arrival of Europeans, aboriginals were not people and there was a lot of "empty space."

There were plenty of people in the Americas. The vast genocides across all of the Americas by the hand of European governments were due to a culture clash and the European immigrant's need for hegemonic power.

After the deaths of most indigenous population, Europeans used rhetoric to convince people that "vast, empty" lands needed to be "peopled." Genocide was used to replace native tribes with European immigrants.

A lot of the lands that were already rich in resources and on their way to healthy growth (prospering) did not need to be "peopled" by European immigrants.

Yes, if you know all this information and still use "peopled," you should be ashamed of yourself.

Here is a map of all the tribes in just North America:

PDF file: http://www.tribalnationsmaps.com/uploads/1/0/4/5/10451178/pi...

Other maps: http://www.tribalnationsmaps.com/store/c1/Featured_Products....

NPR article: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/06/24/323665644...

Site of the maker of these maps: http://www.tribalnationsmaps.com

This should be the top comment.

I move among different circles of friends. Some studied philosophy and political science, others arts in general, and others computer science.

It's scary that tech people have this very "blase" attitude (oversimplification perhaps?) that one's motive when it comes to how to handle distribution of money comes down to simple "meritocracy" and/or "greed."

As if the very fact that blaming the innate human debility of giving in to avarice or greed does not presuppose much more problems, such as ulterior motives, cultural bias, nepotism, etc.

There is, of course, the notion that the bigger a corporation gets (e.g., a conglomerate), the more dehumanizing it is. With such large sums of money being moved around (to whatever end or outcome) comes more "bottom line" interests and "corporate interests," and as such, it is less about the individual. The repercussions of this, which are pretty evident to me, is that it creates an institution or entity or agent ("corporation," if you want) that does not have a moral framework or acts not humanely but immorally, while its shareholders and investors can sleep comfortably at night because they distance the self from the company, so it is not the person acting immorally, but some "unknown force" (the Company), which, using reason, cannot actually be "immoral," because surely only humans can act in such a way.

What a world.

This lost all credibility when it placed Santa Monica, California in the Top 5 Most Authentic Mexican Restaurants Per Capita list.

Just about every Mexican brick-and-mortar restaurant I go to in Los Angeles has a burrito option, but not always tacos.

What a weird methodology.

That's unfortunate because I'm pretty sure I and all of my Canadian friends/family use an article with a highway or freeway number.

Are you talking about Gadget for iOS or desktop?

I don't know if what you said is right, but I have been basically relaying what my Latin professors have taught me and what I, as an A-student in Latin, have learnt, yet I am being downvoted. A similar thing happened to me when I started talking about Latin American literature and history.

I'm assuming most people here have gotten their information off the Web and have a very one-sided view of whatever they have decided they have attained "knowledge" on.

Just out of curiosity, you studied Latin in the US? And have you read Cicero?

Since we are quoting Wikipedia:

"The concepts and vocabulary from which vulgare latinum descend were known in the classical period and are to be found amply represented in the unabridged Latin dictionary, starting in the late Roman republic. Marcus Tullius Cicero, a prolific writer, whose works have survived in large quantity, and who serves as a standard of Latin, and his contemporaries in addition to recognizing the lingua Latina also knew varieties of "speech" under the name sermo. Latin could be sermo Latinus, but in addition was a variety known as sermo vulgaris, sermo vulgi, sermo plebeius and sermo quotidianus. These modifiers inform post-classical readers that a conversational Latin existed, which was used by the masses (vulgus) in daily speaking (quotidianus) and was perceived as lower-class (plebeius)."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgar_Latin

Wiki:

"Philological analysis of Archaic Latin works, such as those of Plautus, which contain snippets of everyday speech, indicates that a spoken language, Vulgar Latin (sermo vulgi ("the speech of the masses") by Cicero), existed at the same time as the literate Classical Latin. The informal language was rarely written, so philologists have been left with only individual words and phrases cited by classical authors and those found as graffiti."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin

Wiki:

"The written Latin of today, as used for Church purposes, does not differ radically from classical Latin. Study of the language of Cicero and Virgil suffices adequately for understanding Church Latin."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesiastical_Latin#Compariso...

And finally, to quote what I quoted another user in this thread:

"But you are right, Cicero is Classical Latin. However, we were taught a mix of Latin that is kind of like what this Wiki says:

'The Latin of the panegyrics is that of a Golden Age Latin base, derived from an education heavy on Cicero, mixed with a large number of Silver Age usages and a small number of Late and Vulgar terms.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panegyrici_Latini#Language_and...

'Silver Age' is what I probably should have said instead of strictly Late and Vulgar, which are both technically different terms, but which were also taught in my Latin courses."

I'm assuming a few people here have not studied Latin, which is fine of course, but their understanding is based on a simplification of a summary of nice and orderly definitions on what periods adhere to what types of Latin dialects. This is not how the real world worked and neither how Latin is taught at my particular institution.

Unfortunately, I do not have time to explain everything, and I am also not a Latin scholar. I studied Latin over 6 years ago so my Latin history knowledge is also a little fuzzy.

But you are right, Cicero is Classical Latin. However, we were taught a mix of Latin that is kind of like what this Wiki says:

"The Latin of the panegyrics is that of a Golden Age Latin base, derived from an education heavy on Cicero, mixed with a large number of Silver Age usages and a small number of Late and Vulgar terms."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panegyrici_Latini#Language_and...

"Silver Age" is what I probably should have said instead of strictly Late and Vulgar, which are both technically different terms, but which were also taught in my Latin courses.

You're right. There are a lot of cognates. But in first year Latin we are taught and given exams on false cognates, so I guess I always treated each cognate carefully because our prof was always trying to trick us!

In translation class, we were taught about false friends, so this added to my paranoia probably.

Trust me, I understand what you mean, but it is not the same.

I don't mean to brag, but I speak fluent Spanish, and I studied Italian, French, and Latin for four years. I never studied Portuguese, but I can read probably 50% of it and grasp about 70% of its meaning. Romanian looks a lot more like Latin, so I used to be able to spot some words in it, as well. My Latin is rusty these days, though.

The difference between Classical Latin is that word meaning is very different, even though it looks similar. You can't go from a modern Romance language and back, but you can go from Classical/Vernacular Latin forward.

Even Latin speakers would sometimes get confused which words were accusative and nominative cases in complex sentence structures. The easiest ones are genitive, ablative, and dative, but try reading literature that is long, and it starts getting complicated to parse who is doing the action to what.

Not to mention the noun declensions, which are completely nonexistent in all modern Romance languages.

This is a weird thread.

I hate to be so contrarian, and I'm beginning to question people's knowledge in this thread, but I was taught Middle English and they hammered home how it was very close to modern English.

Yes, a lot of students were first shocked and disagreed, but if you stuck with it, you would see a lot of similarities. One thing that I think threw off a lot of students was the spelling versus the pronunciation.

If you analyze Middle English on a purely visual or "literal" level, it looks almost nothing like English. Once you start learning the pronunciation and liaisons and connecting words, and with a few minor pronunciation differences, you really do begin to hear its strong correlations to modern English.

> This is certainly not the case in the US. That sounds more like studying church Latin, which will be mocked if you're studying Latin outside an explicit religious context. Where are you?

I studied Latin in Canada. Foundation Latin classes are based on the "Latin of Cicero," the writer who is considered to have mastered the language during its Golden Age by most scholars. We are not taught Classical Latin til more advanced courses, as the declensions and conjugations change and so do many word meanings, and instead of learning Classical Latin the language, we learn to close-read Classical Latin literature.

Uh, no?

The two broad categories are high Latin and low Latin. Put another way, classical Latin and vulgar Latin. Low Latin was the vernacular and already used by most by 270 AD, including poets, who greatly influenced the formation and unification of the new Latin language. The "Latin" that is generally studied at university these days comes from a mediaeval Latin that is a simplification of this old, vernacular form.

Actually, during the period of classical Latin, the vulgar form already existed and broke off into at least a dozen dialects, some of which include old forms of French, Spanish, Portuguese, and, of course Latin, of which there were many versions. It was a fight between the two, but nobody really used classical Latin in everyday speech. These days, there are I want to say probably a dozen dialects in Italy. But Italian is a simplification of Roman Latin with minor influences by other Romance languages and even less influences by other world languages such as Arabic.

My basic conclusion to what you say is, there is no way you can understand classical Latin if you speak modern Italian.

I majored in literature and minored in philosophy by taking an interdisciplinary programme.

As you suggest, the ideal path is majoring in something that will get you a job that pays decent to handsomely; and minor in something that will feed your soul. It sounds trite, but it is the best option and one few take from the people I've encountered.

I don't mean to burst your bubble but you might be romanticising a liberal arts education. It saddens me to say but I know UC Berkeley lit grads who still write like high-schoolers.

Literature doesn't teach you to write. Creative writing doesn't teach you to think. Forget about journalism. University writing style guides don't keep up with modern society. You have to tailor your liberal arts experience. Classical education taught the trivium to students at an early age so they can get a head start on teaching them how to think.

Luckily computer science teaches logic indirectly, but philosophically, it is only one type of logic. Writing involves many types of logic. But logic alone is not good writing. That depends on your audience and purpose. Good writing sometimes requires writing grammatically incorrect sentences. Good writing mirrors the natural flow of your reader's language, including phraseology, diction, and cause and effect. It has to jibe with them. But again, there are different purposes for a given writing composition.

When I got my first writing job, I was naively proud to say I was a writer. Now I'm embarrassed by it and just say what field or department I work in.

> If I felt unwelcome here, I would not like this place, and I would leave it.

> You have to find the place where you fit, or make the place fit you.

This is an extremely ignorant thing to say. I recommend having a read of the history of Koreans in Japan. They cannot just pick up their stuff and leave. Some Koreans like Japan, sure, but others do not because they do not want to change the way many Japanese people want them to.

I saw that you wrote that you have ancestors from Northern Europe in this thread. I assume you mean Scandinavia? If this is correct, by this I deduce that you are White. It's pretty obvious, but Whites have a vastly different experience in Japan. They have a very privileged experience. Most of us know the majority of Japanese (especially women) love White, blue-eyed, blonde foreigners. And even if you don't have these characteristics, you are still viewed as White to them as an American, as long as you are not black, and for that you receive extra special treatment and they offer you concessions because, in their eyes, you are not Japanese, will never be, and will never really understand their culture.

Let me be clear: everything you write comes from a place of comfort, privilege and where people go easy on you because you surround yourself with people who love White foreigners.

Why do I say this? Because I am White and I have been to Japan. Every single person was extremely nice to me, and so I thought these people could never be mean to anyone else. However, I spoke with a family of minorities, some people who are now part of my family circle that I love, and other Japanese friends to understand how the same people that treated me so well treated others so poorly.

And absolutely: Japan will never be my place, even though they treat me with such love and attention. I believe in treating everyone genuinely and equally, though.

I don't necessarily begrudge your lifestyle. I take issue with foreigners in Japan painting Japanese people in such a one-sided way. I can list the many things of Japan that I like, but I feel I need to balance out what you're saying here.

And I'm going to call you out and say you sound exactly like the old Japanese "Baby Boomer" generation who nag the yutori generation (Gen Y-equivalent, if the HN crowd is following this discussion), when it was these baby boomers who have lived such a privileged life during great economic times in Japan. Congrats! You've assimilated wonderfully!

I'm ready to take all the downvotes.

You have lived a very privileged life in Japan, my friend.

I have travelled to Japan and have a fiancee who is Zainichi North Korean.

I urge you to stop interpreting Japanese culture with such extreme rose-coloured glasses and tone down your extreme positivity because it is blinding you from having the "balanced view" you say you have of Japan. Furthermore, it is insulting to minorities in Japan, which has a racist, insular, homogenous culture that so rigidly controls what is "true" and what is "false". The difference is that racism in Japan manifests itself in less violent and direct ways, as the culture of honne and tatemae is so prevalent. So it's difficult for foreigners to distinguish these things at face value.

If you compare types of crimes and the types of "bad things" in the US to Japan, you will see Japan has very little of the "bad" things the US has. That is not the point, however.

For example, I read an article that car accidents are up there as the leading causes of most deaths in the US. The Japanophile will remark how great Japan is because cars are not the leading deaths in Japan. But what the Japanophile will not tell you is that Japan has a high suicide rate, Hokkaido residents have the highest rate of heart disease in the world due to their consumption of sodium, and other issues that are probably specific to Japan.

There are very few robberies in Japan, but sexual harassment and sexual assaults are so common that there are specially designated areas and classes for women only. The sexual predators known as "chikan" have targeted foreigners, as well. It is so widespread that there are public service announcements advising women to be cautious. Does this happen in the US? Yes, but not to the degree that it happens in Japan.

I'm sure you don't know what it feels like to be eating at a sushi restaurant with your family and an old Japanese "steward" interrogating you about why you don't pay taxes and still leach off the government like Zainichi North Koreans have felt. These stewards' reasons are unfounded, of course, and an explanation of this would be too lengthy to write in this box.

Homelessness? Please tell me what your thoughts are on Kamagasaki: http://viewfind.com/story/fruits-of-his-labor-or-lack-thereo...

For reference:

https://www.tofugu.com/japan/nishinari/

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/03/24/national/nations...

Japan has many wonderful things, but what I have learnt is that Japan has specific problems related closely to their unique culture. It's tempting to consider Japan as the better country simply because it lacks the bad that the US has. But I believe the wise thing to do is consider the opinions of those Japanese that want to leave their own country and their reasons for doing so. This way, you get a more balanced view. It is definitely a trade-off, and it is about your priorities.

You've read Kafka. Great.

Now read Wittgenstein.