yunnansourcing.com is the real plug for puerh tea

AND their garbage trucks play a cute song! ours just makes loud diesel noises and reversing beeps outside my window at 7AM

he’s got many cool hats

No, if you can say “What?” “No!” “Maybe?” and “Uhhhh” with typical expressive enunciation in English, you can say chinese tones

learn chinese so you can read dumb memes and commentary on 哔哩哔哩. my favorite so far was someone reposting one of those videos of MAGA chuds pointing pistols at their junk for some reason, retitled "人类根除计划“ which is like “humankind extinction project”. oh also lots of chinese g*mers to hang out with if you’re into that, i played a ton of GTA Online with a homie from 辽宁省, although this was before I knew any Chinese whatsoever.

The dems are entirely integrated with a professional class of advisers, marketers, analysts and “activists” who work for think tanks or boutique consultancies. These ppl align themselves with the dem party through professional networks and branding but have zero incentive to actually lead the party to any kind of success. They get paid regardless and any perceived crisis only increases the demand for their “expertise.” This industry has an unlife of its own, decoupled from any ideology or political goals. In perpetuating itself, it churns out perplexing artifacts like Big Structural Bailey or Pete Buttigeig that only serve to further alienate citizens from the dem party while reaffirming the superficial values of the in-group by displaying their symbols of authenticity or competency.

Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. Should scratch that worldbuilding itch.

for those who don’t know, Taiwan is probably the most progressive place in Asia in regards to LGBTQ issues. for example, they legalized same-sex marriage in 2019, and they have a very high profile “Digital Minister” named Audrey Tang who is openly transgender/non-binary. so for your friends the difference is probably especially notable coming from TW.

judee sill

i got a bachelors degree in the sciences but instead of pursuing research and grad school i immediately left that field after graduation for working in the arts. my reasoning was actually pretty similar to what you describe here. i went through a “skeptic”/new atheist/rationalist phase, tried to go deep into understanding the epistimological biases of my particular field of study, and eventually felt like the issues were more cultural than knowledge/fact-based. that’s not to say we don’t need a huge revamp of how we teach critical thinking and the scientific method in the USA- we definitely do! but after i graduated i felt I could have more impact in changing circumstances via fostering the creative imagination in the cultural sphere rather than siloed into some extremely specific research within an institution.

10ish years later, the jury is still out on whether that was a sound decision (lol). if I had stayed in that field I would probably be either a highly paid data scientist or an extremely low paid academic researcher. i’ve done a lot of cool things since within arts/culture but there’s maybe even larger issues in promoting creative pedagogy/thinking in the USA compared to scientific literacy.