When my mother wants to give me something, I think it’s like a gift thing, or maybe its just some snacks, then my older brother (5 years older than me, for context) gets jealous and then my mother promises to get him something at another time, its late and no time to go to a store right now. Dude was so pissed me at ME, keeps complaining and would rather both of us get nothing… like… bro… why?!?.. I didn’t make this choice, blame mom or something. Why do I get blamed for receiving something?

I imagine bro was probably so pissed when he found out my mother was having another child, I could practically imagine him being 4 years old and trying to kill me before I was born lolz.

There are billions of comparatively clueless users

It’s worse than simply “doesn’t bother with customizations”, people these days just watch short-form videos algorithmically fed to them with zero interaction. These are my parents, WeChat short-videos, on loud speakers in the livingroom. You can hear it upstairs. Also, there are occasional horizontal videos they watch in portrait mode. The fuck? Who watches a landscape video in portait? 🤣

Boomers and Gen Alpha are actually quite similar (well my parents aren’t “boomers”, but they have boomer mindset)

“Please select the logos in order”

displays TWRP Logo, Lineage OS Logo, Nova Launcher Logo, and Fdroid Logo

no explanations or instructions

“Please complete this within 5 seconds”

“Please correctly tap the TWRP Logo within 1 second”

shows a bunch of random symbols spread out on the screen

There’s no way a granma would be quick enough to get to it.

I personally don’t like the idea of murder, I’d if we-the-people get into power, just pass laws that taxes them, then enforce the law as such. If they resist, jailtime for tax evasion.

For those that are exceedingly cruel with their time as a billionaire, they get tried, judged by a jury of average people, 2/3 is a conviction (as opposed to the unanimity required now), life imprisonment.

Billionaires and their heirs are deprived of political rights.

Easy peaceful transition. Zero bloodshed

I don’t like bloodshed, because once that starts, once we “okay” mob killings, people are gonna attack anyone they don’t like, including small bussiness owners they had a grudge against in the past.

I have empathy, I don’t wanna see the streets filled with blood.

Nobody ever read to me 😥 lol

But I did remember reading this kids science book all by myself. Like just entire pages of Chinese characters, and I understood most of it (well… it is made for kids).

I never really did the “parent/guardian read to me” thing, I never asked.

I don’t read Chinese characters often now in an English-speaking country, but I still recognize the basic characters, enough to watch a tv show. Its always interesting when Chinese scenes come up… like in Three Body Problem (the Netflix Adaptation), I felt like that show was made for me lol. Like just very immersive for a polyglot like me.

How massively complicated are they thinking to make this that people are not “coerced” into installing?

“Please present your ID and wait for a party member to inspect and approve your installation package. Glory to Arstozka!”

Something something “To bEtTEr pRoTeCt our users, please present your ID to enable sideloading”

Any day now…

Lol its like the Americans going “I’ll just move to China”…

Me as a someone who was born in mainland China and gained US Citizenship:

(meanwhile my grandmother just obtained US Citizenship too lmao)

I’m East Asian… how “PoC” am I on the “PoC Scale”? 🤔

but I am not huge on chasing after nostalgia

Lol, me on the otherhand… I get obsessed about my childhood and think about it everyday… like obsessively…

currently dealing with depression and I’m trying to think about the good stuff more and maybe the depression goes away? idk

I remember enjoying McDonalds… I mean I know it kinda sounds “lame”, but the Big Mac, McChicken, McNuggets, and Fries are just so memorable. I had McDonalds in Guangzhou, China too, but like… don’t have much memories of it lol. Somehow, the NYC Mcdonalds are just more memorable, maybe I got older and memories are encoded better, or maybe its just novelty, I mean, an entire different country, I was so excited, so its probably easier to remember.

But yea… I think McDonalds is just the first “western food” I had after arriving in the US.

We go there quite often, and its not the shitty stuff today, it used to taste much better (2010s for reference), not sure if its location dependent, but the current McDonalds near me sucks so much. It’s like very close to where we lived, could walk there within 10 minutes.

I mean… there’s no really any guide to finding any “real” non-fastfood places, everything is just foreign, so we never really went to any “foreign” places, never really went to a local non-chain restaurant (except Chinese Restaurants).

But I do remember getting cakes at a local bakery and also there was a sushi place, I think it was my first time having sushi.

But yea… the McDonalds thing is gone, corporatism/inflation, or whatever happened, or perhaps its location dependent? Idk…

Speaking of Holidays, I remember during the first Thanksgiving Black Friday, we were at the Bayparkway (Brooklyn) Bestbuy. A whole line of people lined up there. We didn’t have a car, so we basically just walked there, like 30 mins away. We got a cheap tv and some budget laptop, forgot how we got it home, but I assume one of our relatives came by and helped us move it home.

My aunts and uncles who lived around there said people would set up tents there the night before lol. Wait in line felt like 1-2 hours, maybe 3 hours, forgot. That was insane, but you kmow… poverty and people want cheap stuff.

Home would’ve been so much sadder without these stuff. Never had laptop before coming the US, new stuff, the novelty… it’s useful to look up a lot of unanswered questions kid-me had. Like space stuff, planets, looking up stuff was magical.

Like this was 2010s btw. Nowadays I think people just do online shopping.

Clearly, they hired kids as unpaid interns xD

Speaking of Time Square. I remember one time in Manhattan, like somewhere near 42 st, but maybe not that close. There was like a big toy store, Toys R US maybe? Forgot. They had this weird paper plane thing constructed from I think cardboard paper. Dude threw this paper plane and it kinda “bommeranged”, looped back back to the man and he caught it. I kinda wanted that thing, never got it.

I remember having a toy helicopter thing as a gift. Broke it during first flying attempt. If it were a modern DJI, it would never have crashed, that thing sucked, but I kinda got sad about it.

Also, I was in, well… not Long Island, but I’ve played at the beach in Coney Island. It was a fun beautiful memory. I think every time I was at the beach, I always try to make a model NYC Subway railway with the tunnel things, or it’s an amalgamation combined with a castle, or something… forgot…

I also rode the ferris wheel at Coney Island… Every been there? There was like the ones that move and the non-moving carts. The moving ferris wheel carts were in red or blue or something, the non-moving ones where painted white. The non-moving ones ends up higher at the top, so it was scarier for my fear of heights, but its non-moving so its less scarier in thay regard. My entire body shaked during the ferris wheel ride, so much heights. I remember riding the Q train (or was it the F train?) when we used to explore NYC, that coney island railway segment was layered on top of the F train, like taller than 5 stories of a building, and it was so high, I got scared that the train would fall off. I think they even paused the train when there were storms, perhaps it is possible for those trains to fall off?

Sorry, just to clarify, I didn’t mean to mention the drug use thing as an insult lol. I just kinda admire that Americans (and Westerners in general) are kinda rebellious, like in a badass kinda way. I personally kinda never dared to do that stuff.

there was one ride that I was a few inches too short for

Bruh, you reminded me of the opposite situation. When my family were new immigrants in NYC, the money situation was a bit of a struggle, so my mother often tell me to just pretend to be younger, avoid the MTA employee stationed on that stop, and just go through the turnstiles with her, as on, on one fare, which was allowed for uo to like 2 children accompanying an adult. But…

Eventually I got too old, but my mother keeps insisting. I felt so embarassed lmfao. I was like idk 11/12 years old, and I was growing taller. And also, my mother would pass the monthly pass through like the fence thing to my father, who then just waited 20 minutes and can swipe the card again (because they prevent double swiping in quick succession), I think it was against policy to give it to another person, but like… lmao. Personally, as a child, I was always taught to be obedient and obey laws/rules. but then this happens, so I feel so uneasy, lmao, I felt like cops were gonna show up and we’d get in trouble.

But I eventually got so big, I convinced my mom to just get me a separate fard card loaded with a small amounts of money (deducting money instead of being a monthy pass). (Just googled the site, apparantly it’s done by height not age, so I think that was always the case even back then)

So yea, that was NYC. Damn I think I spend so much time on the subways I have so much memories of it. It’s like a big section of those years, much more memorable than car rides when nothing notable happens. I always get so bored on those subways. I had no phone, smartphone didn’t even exist. I’d just stare out the windows and see things. Mind wandering through thoughts. Pretending there’s a monster in the tunnels. And the Manhattan Bridge. Can’t even call in the tunnels, so my dad or mom (whoever was with me at the time) would make a phone call to someone else, either the other parent, or my older brother who already got a cellphone (a verizon flip phone). Bruh I didn’t get one till much older after the Smartphone revolution already begun.

Damn, those were nostalgic. NYC was nostalgic. But I kinda hate it there. Trying to find a bathroom was a bitch, Manhattan doesn’t allow non-customers to use their store bathrooms, so I hate those storeowners. I remember my mom asking a fellow Chinese Immigrant who ran the store, to use their bathroom, they fucking refused, even though my mom already said she was already planning to buy something there anyways.

I just got so pissed at this transactional type of mindset, I fucking ran off to get my mom to stop spending money there.

I kinda disliked Manhattan ngl, even Chinatown, not Chinatown itself, but these fucking evil storeowners who wouldn’t let a little kid use their bathroom. Also MTA subway stations had NASTY bathrooms, oh lord.

But anyways, NYC, subways, I was basically always just observing the environment. No entertainment to stop the boredom. Except sometimes I ask my dad for the flip phone to play with like the few games that it does have. Snake? Tetris? Forgot… I remember one of the later feature-phones having an UNO game.

Oh wow I rambled so much now its a wall of text. It’s amazing how much memories got associated with just thinking about NYC Subway.

Um… 🧐

Bruh, y’all got wild teenage years. I still haven’t ever tried any drugs to this day. 😅 (Am Asian, drugs are very stigmitized in Asian families)

Damn, sorry to hear about that, now I’m starting to realize just how much more fcked up the scale of “good parent” vs “bad parent” is, mine are shitty, but far from the worst, so in a way I kinda lucked out. My parents aren’t that crazy, thank goodness, and I still have good memories of them, just kinda relationship-wise detached because of life circumstances. Basically, the older I got, the more school stuff kinda drained my energy, depression slowly built up, parents busy with their small bussiness… so eventually relationship just kinda silently fell apart, with the occasional “parents yelling at me out of frustration” sprinkled on top, clock hasn’t stuck midnight yet, hasn’t gone nuclear, still sort of a “cold war” in terms of relationship.

Damn, the “FBI Friends” is wild, again, sorry to remind you of that again.

Who cares. We’re colonizers, the natives lives don’t matter /s

(check history book lol, humans are brutal)