Posted by speckx 4 hours ago
I group European & American food into their respective groups as well.
> Asia rolls out 4-day weeks, WFH to solve fuel cris...
Makes no sense, same with "I'm in a mood for asian food"
Asian food = contains rice
European food = contains wheat
American food = contains liquefied synthetic cheese?
Thai, Japanese, Vietnamese, Indian food / cuisine even thought different is more probably closer to each other same like e.g. Polish and Spanish is closer to each other than to most other asian cuisine.
The only major similarities I see uniting the national cuisines you listed (not regional ones) are things like curries and rice. The former arrived in Japan with European influence (where it's also common in colonial countries) and the latter isn't a feature common to all Asian cuisines (e.g. Mongolian).
> Polish and Spanish is closer to each other than to most other asian cuisine.
I'd say Polish has a lot of similarities with Asian cuisine. Sure, both have stews and sausages, but flavor profiles are very different: acidic vs sour.
I won't be able to tell difference between gyoza & wonton if they shaped the same, but surely I can tell difference between ravioli & uszka. Uszka is IMO closer to any dumpling from Asia than to anything European.
Very few east Asian dishes use the spices most popular in South Asia.
Spaghetti is far more similar to noodles than it is to any South Asia equivalent I can think of.
Yes, a filled pasta is a very different thing from dumpling, but a lot of European cuisines have dumplings.
I feel like as Europeans, we're as good at importing American food as America is about importing European.
European food is things like hamburgers, French fries hotdogs, and apple pie.
This is getting silly
If by "American" you mean "Unitedstatesian" then I agree. But Latinamerican food is worlds apart from what the US and Canada eat.
When someone outside of America thinks of American food, do you think they will think of Cajun gumbo, TexMex, Clam Chowder, or something you'd find on the menu at McDonalds?
Statistically this random non-american is some sort of Asian. Therefore the answer is finger lickin good.
So when you're going out for Asian food, it really is that. No sense in being pedantic here.
We hosted an exchange student for a few weeks, and he was from Nanjing. Before he left the country, we took him to a Chinese restaurant and warned him that it was likely going to be more like American-Chinese.
He went through the menu and pointed out the dishes which were authentic and those which were not. I was surprised at how many were actually authentic -- it was about half of the menu. Maybe we were at a more authentic Chinese restaurant, as the menu was in both English and Chinese.
He was a great kid, and I really enjoyed the experience. He loved peanut butter and jelly, had to spit out ranch dressing, and did not care at all for pumpkin pie.
Also things like asian fusion can evolve independently.
When my wife or I say "I feel like eating something Asian today" it usually means spicy-Chinese adjacent, i.e. served hot, vegetables fully cooked, heavy on flavor, paired with either rice or freshly made noodles.
Korean qualifies, Sichuan food qualifies, Thai food qualifies, Indian food maybe sort of borderline qualifies on some days but only if we haven't eaten it recently.
We don't usually mean Japanese food when we say that. That's just our mutual understanding of what we call "Asian food". Yeah, I guess we unapologetically kicked Japan out of culinary Asia :) It doesn't matter. The system works for us. We don't dislike Japanese food, but we'll say "Japanese food" when we feel like having Japanese food.
Another Asian family from a different part of Asia probably uses the term to refer to a different subset of Asian cuisines.
Like just about everything else in Asia, it's a fluid term that means different things to different people. I've only ever seen people in the west be pendantic about terms like this. I also think of it as a very western ideology to want to have a term have a singular global definition.
I read the headline and assumed it was "Japan and China" but it wasn't.
that we now live in a world where people are confident enough to make claims this stupid in front of a camera should frighten anyone.
Some basic logic, if China had the population of the United States it would have magically acquired the per capita economic output of the US in ~30 years, consume several times the energy and food it imports and somehow have produced several cities the size of Tokyo. The fact that China produces ~50% of the world's ships and has the manufacturing output of of the G7 combined is impressive with over a billion people, but hey they must have some space age technology to do it with 3% of the world's population!
In philosophy there's a concept called the coherence theory of truth, if you want to know if something is true check if it doesn't defy basic logic or other facts you know, great tool instead of believing what youtubers say
The reality is the bigger Asian nations like China, India, SK, and Japan that worked on building resilient alternatives after the 2022-23 ONG shock due to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine aren't as dramatically impacted. The others didn't or were hit by other crises at the same time.
For example, in Pakistan's case, their government raised fuel taxes by around 33% because they didn't meet their IMF loan terms [0] but somehow found $11M to buy a private jet [1] for the CM of Punjab who is also the niece of the PM and the daughter of the former PM and Pakistan is in the middle of a war with Afghanistan [2].
Edit: can't reply
> gas cylinder booking...
The gas cylinder/LPG issue is due to consumer habits - induction and electric stovetops have been available in India for decades, but there has been a cultural aversion to adopting electric.
Even Indian Americans in the US prefer using Gas Stovetops over Electric for cultural reasons (eg. I've had my parents say the "taste" of food is worse on electric instead of gas stovetops despite living here since Clinton was president).
And dhabas and restaurants used to use coal briquettes or kerosene until those were banned in the 2000s-2010s for pollution reasons (much help that did /s) and to promote LNG and CNG, and will most likely revert back to those.
Additionally, India has shifted from Qatari to Omani LNG [3], which was what India was already using before the India-Qatar FTA led to a diplomatic thaw between the two.
It's the same situation in Vietnam as well.
> freight is pretty much fucked
Indian diesel prices are being subsidized and kept constant [4]. That said, this is a good forcing function to begin India's shift to electric trucks.
And freight and passenger rail is already around 98-99% electrified in India [5] which reduces the need for diesel.
[0] - https://www.dawn.com/news/1979709
[1] - https://www.arabnews.com/node/26978/pakistan
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Afghanistan%E2%80%93Pakis...
[3] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/india-gail-buys-oman...
[4] - https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/petrol-diesel-prices-to-rema...
[5] - https://infra.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/railways/ind...
If you are using the cooking technique of "bhunai" [1], which is quite common in South Asian cooking, there is a large difference in food quality you can make with an electric and with a gas stove. Gas stoves are able to provide higher heat at consistent levels, and you can tilt the pot to concentrate heat in one corner to intensify the cooking. So I don't disagree with your parents.
[1] bhunai is when you cook meat with spices at very high heat while rapidly stirring it. I think the willingness to burn the spices during this process is what sets this apart from similar techniques in other cuisines, but I am no expert.
I've also done bhunai with electric stovetops and ceramic cookware like Dutch ovens and green pans and gotten close enough to an authentic taste - the marginal differences that exist are due to differences in ingredients in the US (eg. lower milkfat percentages, onions instead of shallots, different cultivars of vegetables, etc) and some inexperience of non-Westerners with Western cookware.
It's a very solvable problem. For example, the Indian restaurants my parents like and feel taste "authentic" use electric stovetops as well in the back, but discriminate on ingredients and masalas.
Like, I can't really stir-fry on max because my range hood can't keep up and I set the smoke detector off. Outside of crappy rentals, I'm pretty sure electric ranges here are up to whatever, high-heat cooking wise.
Anyways, everyone's affected - gas cylinder booking requests which usually take a couple of days to fulfill currently have a 30 day period to fulfill in some major cities. Roadside vendors are shutting down temporarily, as are many restaurants.
At least EVs have had a good success rate in adoption, so commuting isn't as much affected. But freight is pretty much fucked.
Again, this is a country that could have gotten a sweetheart deal from Iran, just like China, but apparently decided to become a little bitch.
https://www.electrive.com/2026/01/23/year-end-surge-electric...
The benefits of living in an authoritarian state. The CCP says "we will provide for cheap electric trucks" and it happens, no matter if that displaces tens, if not hundreds of thousands of workers in ICE car manufacturers.
It's still 5/6 day workweeks in the office in China, India, SK, Japan, HK, and Singapore. Same in the Gulf.
For example, India worked with Oman, the UAE, and Iran to build export hubs like Duqm, Fujairah, Sohar, and Chabahar (the US has ignored Indian operated Shahid Beheshti port and is hitting Konarak on the other side of the Chabahar Bay) that aren't blocked by Hormuz.
By making sure Indian SOEs were equity partners in those projects, this meant India got first right of refusal on exports.
China, Japan, and South Korea all implemented similar projects as well.
Other Asian countries could have implemented similar redundancies as well, but they didn't despite this exact situation happening 3-4 years ago during the Russian Invasion of Ukraine.
Decades ago, I knew people who pronounced "Italian" as eye-TAL-yun. They were usually older, sometimes WW2 veterans. This was in an area of the US that has a large Italian immigrant population, FWIW.
I don't know if it was due to historical disrespect of Mussolini-era Italy, some contemporary xenophobia, or just simple ignorance.
They all pronounced "Italy" in the normal way though.
But FWIW, the EYE-rack thing is because GWB (most prominently, but others before and after) intentionally mispronounced the name of the country, in a "real american" kind of way, and also to annoy SAD-dumb Hussein as a kind of "we're stupid but we're going to kill you anyway" kind of psyop. Or maybe just "we disrespect you in advance of killing you"?
Americans of other political persuasions usually pronounce the names correctly.
The extremely, I mean extremely rare occasion when someone pronounces it differently on TV, it's almost like they get side-eyed by other people as trying to "talk fancy".
Anecdotally, the pronunciation popularity has split neatly along statewide-prominent political lines. For my four example states, three were correct/respectful, and one wrong/disrespectful.
Correct pronunciation has also had an inverse correlation with the rates of active/former military employment, which might be more directly indicative. And a positive correlation with education levels. So the answer is in there somewhere, I suspect.
National TV "news" programming might have a style guide which dictates pandering to the audience by speaking in real american, no matter how well-educated the hosts might be.
And "Central America" often means "Mexico and countries south that speak Spanish" even though LATAM might be a bit closer.
“4-day week, WFH roll-outs in Asia to solve fuel crisis caused by Iran War” is better.
> There is no reason to separate Europe out of Asia except for that "people that look like that go over there."
People that look like what? A lot of west and central Asians look far more like Europeans than like South Indian or Chinese people, and the latter resemble two do not resemble each other at all.
You cannot put it down to racism dividing white vs non-white because that is very recent. It predates the invention/introduction of racism to Europe. Even better, until well into the 20th century (literally millennia after people separated Europe from Asia) South Asians and some North Africans were regarded as belonging to the same race as Europeans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race
Consider this sentence from the article: "Asia is particularly dependent on oil exports from the Middle East." That's a bizarre statement if you take "Asia" literally. The Middle East is in Asia. Is Saudi Arabia dependent on oil exports from the Middle East? Is Iran?
Asia has very distinct countries and in some cases is even at war even if it's a cold one. Like India vs Pakistan, India vs China, North vs South Korea, China vs Taiwan. And customs, languages and (where applicable) religions are more radically different than within Europe too.
It makes less sense calling it "Asia" than it is calling Europe "Europe" :)
Not just that. If we get really pedantic, the EU is not only in Europe but includes territories in Africa (parts of Spain) and Asia (the entirety of Cyprus). And that's not even getting into the intercontinental shenanigans of France!
Same goes for China, if a couple of companies do something, often in the headline it's just the general "China" doing it. For example we'll see China doing something with EVs whereas for the US we'd see Tesla doing something with EVs.
“Parts of Europe” or “Europe increasingly” etc would be ok (the latter if there was an expected progression of these policies to other European nations).
This headline is similarly misleading.
China is a country so what is the problem there.
In fact, I've added two days working outside of home instead of one because of the benefits. I think 3 days home/2 days office is the sweet spot.
I'm a software engineer in a Product Engineering team and it's about 75% hands-on engineering, 25% Slack/Teams interaction and alignments between people. I find being in the office helps to make connections with other staff in other teams (eg. bumping into people while making coffee in staff kitchen etc). I think thats important from a career perspective.
(no affiliation)
If it is a sweet spot for you fine, I am happy you found it. But DO NOT FORCE all of US who have different sweet spots to meet you at yours.
I put my comment out there to trigger just this kind of discussion.
I work from a library on the other day, thats a 30 minute drive. I tend to leave before 0700 when the roads are peaceful. My car is pretty fuel efficient, i try to hypermile it and get ~50mpg.
I encourage people who are remote but want human contact to rent a desk once a week at a co-working space.
For me personally, I want to do my work as efficiently as possible, in as little time as possible, and then have my social time, which has very little in common with my work and/or colleagues.
I might be an exception, but I get up very, very early and work almost right away, and I don't want to be on a roll and then have to pack up, get in the car at a terrible traffic time where (some) people are driving like animals, hunt for parking and then find a desk. That's a huge _tax_ on my productivity.
But I don't expect or demand that the rest of the world do this.
As a side comment, I would agree with you though, that 2 in the office is better than one. But I also had a very effective pattern around 10 years ago, where I spent 2 days in the office per month, and that worked really well for me (though those days were far, far less productive than my at home work days).
Now, if the world adopted a 32 hour, 4-day work week I would probably be ok with the office 1 day a week.
But ya, probably best to just call it "traffic" then, and they might be more receptive.
However I do know people who really do not care. They may say they care but their actions and voting record show that in fact they don't care (or don't want to make it a real priority). But those same people get very upset when they're stuck in traffic
And this is a massive reversion too. In the mid 2000s republicans were openly advocating that we needed to do something about climate change and that it was a serious problem and then we opened the cash floodgates to American federal politics and would you look at that, oil companies have a lot of cash.
Keep in mind that the real cost of transitioning is very likely to be less than what we spent on the stupid oil wars of the 2000s. We can literally afford it now, let alone if we hadn't burned all that cash bombing the desert because of oil politics.
Oil companies themselves are fine to be "Energy" companies and invest in Solar and other renewables. They will be profitable just fine. Our country is tearing itself apart over a lie to ensure they remain more profitable.
The entire system is designed around making the numbers go up, not down
And for many people WFH has other problems - if you're a dual-WFH couple in a small home, lack of home office space is a very real problem. (Although if WFH was a permanent thing, many people could choose less expensive places to live, and have more space)
Still, anything to eliminate a miserable and environmentally wasteful commute.
Sure I get meetings you need to go to separate rooms, but how is the rest is different from a regular open office? Oh no, my co-working space has the person I like to spend time with?
This claim might be true but it’s simply not showing up in the data which suggests that even if true, the effect is probably minor.
But no, it won't ever be that level without major infrastructure change. Not all jobs can be wfh. We can get close by a major public transportation overhaul, but that will take decades (even without the inevitable pushback).
So? The only people who matter are shareholders and their proxies (management). To everyone else: you don't matter as much as you think you do, quit being selfish and be happy you get anything at all. The world doesn't revolve around you.
The world might not revolve around me, but thankfully, I do get a vote in who I chose to work for, and I chose an employer that lets me work remote.
You don't speak for me :)
I hate it.
But these are stupid made up arguments. WFH or not both the homes with no one in them and the offices with no tenants are getting heated still to keep the pipes from bursting.
Note, some people even think that would take even more energy in total per day, but that's not correct because a cooler house doesn't emit as much energy as a warmer one.
I am 100% more effective in person where I can dev and my desk and bounce ideas off if team mates around me verbally. This can be recreated in a remote environment by having things like a team Discord that folks sit on, but it can feel forced at times (just like communiting to the office I suppose).
My take might be heavily skewed though. I am in games and our environment is highly collaborative.
And half the staff was just WFH anyways, or remote, so the collaboration opportunities... diminished.
I even saw this happening at Google before I left there, which had formerly been a ... luxury office. Packing people in like sardines, forcing people to "reserve" desks. Bad parking and/or transit situations.
I get it when employers face financial or real estate crunches. But in the last 10-15 years (I've been working for 30) -- even pre-COVID -- I feel like some switch went off in tech industry leadership brains that is just outright disrespectful. Paying high salaries to engineers and then providing them with uncomfortable accommodations. Makes little sense to me.
I'm back to WFH and the isolation that comes with it. In part because the office environment was actually not what I was hoping for. Because the industry ruined it.
My kingdom for an office with a ceiling, lmao. The exposed ductwork cheap-ass offices are so awful.
I'd just like cubicles back.
>Oh no you don't understand I need a compress decompress cycle I TRIVE when I burn as much gas as possible
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/04/8110190...
I worked from home but a few times I needed to go to my parents house during what used to be rush hour. Less than 5% of normal traffic and fuel demand dropped so much that prices were lower.
My job went hybrid in 2022 and then return to office full time last year. Everyone hates it. It's a waste of time and resources.
Less pollution, less traffic means we don't need to use tax revenue to expand roads and less wear and tear means less repairs.
Take it one step further and give tax breaks to businesses that let employees work from home and close physical offices. Then this means less new office construction which can be used for housing to help the housing crisis. It's a win win for everyone except control freak managers.
For those kind of business having full occupancy is more important than worker productivity.
Let me guess, you live in the West and don't need to worry about your family's basic needs being met?
There's no empirical basis for that statement, the people behind it have been making similar apocalyptic predictions for decades that never materialized, their models have no predictive power.
You're say things that even climate denialists aren't claiming are true.
So... Office workers commuting every day create food to put on people's table?
Imagine if the world had aggressively invested in renewables at any time in the past ten years!
So, maybe when Carter put those (thermal) solar collectors on the White House we should have thrown a hundred billion dollars at solar panel work and had abundant solar power decades ago.
But no, Carter was "weak" so we had to instead elect the guy who ignored AIDS because he hated gay people, pushed absurd drug policy, put us in bed with the middle east, and started the process of removing taxes from any rich person and racking up national debt for stupid reasons.
Why was Carter "weak"? Well you see, Iran was a huge Bad Guy that we needed to stop!
Oh.
It does seem like a glaring contradiction, but it's actually not. In the West, at least, climate rhetoric is a tool primarily to discipline and control the masses through fear, with actual concern for the climate a distant secondary factor. This is why those elites can cry crocodile tears for the environment while also riding on private jets to private islands and staying mum about intentional environmental disasters caused in the ongoing wars (which they support, of course).
In the current fuel crisis, mandatory WFH is also an attempt to manage populations through controlled demand-destruction, which avoids more volatile forms of demand-destruction that result in unrest, like not being able to afford food.
From an (cynical) governance perspective, there is no contradiction here.
Over My whole life, 5 out of 7 full days of work always felt so daunting and almost dehumanizing.
But 4/7 is mentally close to half and just feels way different qualitatively. If you have a job you mostly like, 4 days a week feels really sustainable.
Think of the classic case of the deadline and what it actually means. Case A, you didn't procrastinate. You took plenty of time to think on the problem, work on a solution at an unhurried pace, put it aside, come back to it, and solve it before it is due. And then, it is done.
Case B, you did procrastinate. You have no time at all to think all day, you immediately do and iterate. Four hours later you've sprinted and delivered. And then, it is done, same as it would have been if you didn't procrastinate, maybe 10 fold reduction in time.
And that is worst case examples. Typical case is probably somewhere between these A and B, but the point is non linear time to output.
My homeowners association can't pull off a neighborhood playground cleanup without conflict, disorder and confusion even with 6 months of planning so again, kudos to the 48+ countries of Asia for coming together in this herculean example of speed, unity and coordination.