I never said the word lazy. Please explain to me your experience with the culture in central America in-depth and how people tend to think over there, if you wish to elucidate your points further. There are tons of broken elements of the culture of my country that are directly perpetuated by my people and are actively working against our development.
Extremely condescending to imagine that I have no knowledge of my own nation and region's history? I absolutely know and have extensive readings of how things came to be, and I have even lectured on the topic in my national university. Do you know more about Honduras than a native Honduran that has dedicated years to the topic? Have you liver there? I have my whole life. And yes, I still believe our culture is radically behind and we can no longer make excuses for it.
This is an incredibly impactful childhood. I'm from Honduras, a developing country where there is practically zero investment in science or the arts, and I was fortunate enough to also have gotten a similar book. One thing that struck me is how not a single person around me ever conceived of the things we use and consume on a daily basis as having been created by someone...another human being with our same physical faculties. I found all kinds of tech fascinating as something one could create, but my culture is too preoccupied with petty gossip of what others think and third world consumerism traps that prevent any kind of development. I felt like a fish out of water telling everyone about water and them not noticing it growing up over there
I would argue it isn't the same. Not every single American male grow up playing American football. It is fragmented across the country. However, for us, almost every single human has the experience of soccer being an integral part of our lives at every stage of it, from toddler to adulthood. It's so pervasive it is part of our core vocabulary and idioms, the govt shuts down when real madrid vs barcelona play, and everyone comes together over a single cause, no matter young or old. Soccer covers every aspect of our lives over there.
This is hilarious because we think the same about any sport that isn't soccer (football) in much of Latin America: "basketball / baseball is what girls play" is the tagline folks said growing up
I'm from Honduras, which is also quite a poor country, and the sport (soccer) is all we do and all everyone talks about. It's a core part of our society and a core part just what one does as a human, so since we are kids we think of always kicking a ball around no matter where you are, even fashioning balls from socks tied together or rubber bands, and we all learn how to control them really well even barefoot, in difficult terrain, in rain, sun, shine, anything. It isn't a structured activity. Coming to the US I realized so many American sports need a ton of setup...lots of expensive equipment, a full squad, a special field (baseball), etc. and not just something you can do easily on the street with your friends. It isn't "lived and breathed" as it is where I'm from, and we have so many incredible players. Unfortunately, we are a poor country so the best players won't become professionals and instead pursue other careers, so our national team isn't great, but I know guys that could easily be pros in Europe if they went down that path
I feel like now, you can't even tell! I was in an uber drive where the driver had this incredible playlist of Brazilian bossa nova. It was sublime and some of the best tracks I ever heard. He even said he loves the singer but cannot find their name anywhere. It turns out it's a youtube playlist that is fully AI generated and genuinely some of the best bossa nova you can imagine. I still hear that playlist daily tbh. A legitimate, real Brazilian was vibing to a playlist he didn't even know was AI generated...
Sometimes you can't even tell. I was in an uber drive where the driver had this incredible playlist of Brazilian bossa nova. It was sublime and some of the best tracks I ever heard. He even said he loves the singer but cannot find their name anywhere. It turns out it's a youtube playlist that is fully AI generated and genuinely some of the best bossa nova you can imagine. I still hear that playlist daily tbh. Moreover, imagine if you are an independent musician, have a good voice, know how to play instruments...you could ask AI to generate hit tracks for you and then you can play them at concerts or shows and claim them for yourself
Kudos to you! I have one and it's been the hardest thing I've ever done and it has broken us entirely. We can never imagine having more than one given the difficulty, and are now finished at one 100%. Very huge admiration for parents of > 1. It's 10x the work and not just 2x the work
So many folks that have it say things like "I was super healthy! Did exercise, young, don't drink, etc." Then you dig deeper and realize the last vegetable meal they ate was a soggy brussel sprout their mom made them when they were 17 years old, and also eat cold cut turkey sandwiches every lunch because they're "healthy", and maybe have a tiny shred of lettuce in the sandwich. For breakfast, they eat pancakes or sugary foods, and dinner is just a piece of steak
My point is they see themselves as having more freedoms than the west does in places that matter to their daily life: freedom from poverty, violent crime, the devastating effects of drugs on families, social chaos, and corruption. To Singaporeans, these are real freedoms. They’d much rather have that quality of life than live in homeless-infested cities with drugs where they can at least criticize the government.
Singaporeans have insanely high quality of life and high pride in their system and people. They have an immense number of negative freedoms that the average person across the world could only dream of: freedom from violence, freedom from the devastating effects of drug addiction on families and society, freedom from poverty, freedom from corruption, freedom from instability. For the average person looking to raise a family, build a quality life, and just live well, Singapore is the perfect social contract. Don't like it? They have the most powerful or second most powerful passport in the world and can move anywhere else they see fit, yet they see their country as the best place they could be
Nope! Harvard and some of the top ivies offer full, need-blind financial aid to all students, especially international. I attended and did not have to spend much at all, coming from a poor country. Many such cases and it is a lifeline for gifted students in developing countries
I'm from latam. I never saw anyone drink water growing up. Anytime you try to drink water, people label you as boring, even your parents. Whenever we go to a restaurant, the first thing you ask the waiter is "what sodas do you have?". If you're not feeling like drinking soda and want something "healthier", you ask what kinds of fruit juices they have. If you don't like the options, you settle on a hyper-sweetened tea.
I frequently ask my parents to drink more water, and they get defensive saying they drink a lot of water but I just don't see it. The truth is they only drink half a small cup in the middle of the night...
Tokyo and Singapore do not. My whole country, and family, struggle with corruption, poverty, third-world-country crime and infrastructure, extortion, gang violence, and I’m supposed to want to go back and live there and raise my kids there? Nah, there are far better places to be despite being far from family.
I’m from latin america. The world is a vast, beautiful place with stunning, clean cities full of opportunity and serendipity. Either I can explore the world and live in these places, or go back to my dangerous, dirty city to spend the rest of my life there because family lives there. Sometimes it isn’t worth the tradeoff
Opposite experience. Here in the US, I've heard a lot more people watching anime than when I was a kid. Especially modern ones such as Jujutsu Kaisen, Demon Slayer, etc.
They are not, not even in other parts of the world. It is also very rare in Asia. Folks tough it up and are fine, as the risks of opioids are not worth it
I use Ethereum / Arbitrum every week at least. I use it for managing a lot of my finances. I provide liquidity on exchanges, provide liquidity for lending protocols, and use GMX for opening long/short positions and trading perpetuals. I also use USDC a lot, and also do self-custody
What's crazy is that arguably the greatest story is in their MMO game FFXIV, which has spanned over 10 years at this point to its build-up. I would argue its big story climax, Endwalker, rivals some of the greatest classics humanity has ever produced, even in literature. It exudes meaning and soul in using an epic story to answer one of the biggest mysteries of life: "why, given this life, are we meant to suffer, to die? Why should we exist and how do we find meaning?". It has some of the best cinematography direction, music, and an incredibly optimistic conclusion.
I urge anyone to please consider going through FF14. You can practically complete the story as an individual experience, for the most part, without needing to do much "MMO"-like things.
My point is that it doesn't need to be. Chinese is concise, simple, single pronunciation per character, very little grammar. It has no need for verb conjugations, tense markers, 3 different writing systems super-imposed into one like Japanese does, and can still express highly sophisticated thoughts and meaning that English cannot
There's no tense, no verb ending, no conjugation, zero of any of that stuff in Chinese...the difference is night and day. There is barely any grammar to learn. I finished the Chinese grammar in less than a week lol
A few examples from endless notebook on Japanese grammar notes I have from lessons
- Various て forms, which have their own complexity and nuance. Spent almost a year on this
- Volitional forms
- X-なければ, conditionals, should/shouldn't
- the "te-shimau" form
- くれる / あげる
- Conjugations for past tense for the 3 different verb categories...which were so hard to remember
- しか
- ばかり
- ように
- X-ところだ
- X-ほうが-Y
- Command forms, conjugations, etc.
As someone who speaks Chinese and is learning Japanese, I have been so surprised at just how incredibly complicated and obtuse Japanese is. Chinese (Cantonese) 7-9 tones, loads of characters, but after memorizing the first 2000-3000, you pick up on all the radicals, patterns, and meanings which help you fill in the gaps. Grammar is barebones: I only had to learn 5 to 10 different grammar rules for Chinese that I recall, and basically everything else is incredibly easy.
Whereas in Japanese, I am learning 2-3 grammar rules per LESSON. Having each character pronounced a single way in Chinese is also super easy, and communication is even more direct than English. With Japanese, the cultural context, the phrasing, the end particles, and subtle vocab changes the meaning significantly.
I think for me, it took 5 years to reach fluency in Chinese but I feel that even after 10 years I will barely reach conversational fluency in Japanese. It just feels like an inefficient language for communication. Why does it have to be so complicated?
There's a government app called Chivo that people use for this, and a lot of shopkeepers do have it, but they begrudgingly accept it. People much prefer USDC because they don't want to get paid in assets that are volatile
High demand back home. People see dollars as valuable, so they can send it to pay other people as needed. Loads of people have a binance account and will accept usdc for goods and services. Also, BTC is accepted everywhere in el salvador which is close to where fam lives so there is a lot of acceptance
I'm an everyday user. One of my major uses is to send stablecoins to family back in latin america, and ETH/BTC. They can get it and use right away within seconds and paid almost no fee compared to traditional means