How to move to Canada and become a Canadian citizen

Seriously, I like your post You're an excellent writer and I know I've said that many times, cause it's true! Sometimes I'm not sure if you are writing parables or not? Especially as occasionally you stress the caveat, I swear this is true. Which then makes one wonder abut the caveat free stories

I agree with Rules, dont be ashamed of being able to spit out a story. Hell thats the whole point of this place. Its a gift to be able to actually, like being able to recall jokes (I never can).

We all age and die Steel, at least you paid attention.

I appreciate the kind words, Rules, from both you and Tongo.

Maybe I make the disclaimer because if you have too many good stories, people think you're like "Frizby" (Andy Devine's character on the Twilight Zone) - a tall tale teller who's stories were so outrageous and self-agrandizing that they couldn't be believed.

I don't want to say I "exaggerate" because that's too strong a word - I strive for accuracy, but I may "dramatize."
The stories are completely true, but maybe the emphasis on a certain word or phrase wasn't as perfectly timed as I make it sound. Stories don't flow in the retelling if you include how many times you stuttered, hesitated of said "uh" or "um" (know what I mean?)

I will admit that I've had the uncanny and often unwanted capacity to somehow attract the bizarre (both people & occurrences), weird, coincidental, synchronous, ironic, and strange to me. Synchronicity is one thing I desired to have - it's something I've long studied and found that the more you focus on it, the more you find it occurring - it's really a factor, I believe, that is based on observation and attention than on anything more paranormal.

And Lois? I never lie.

Captain, please don't lump me in with what Tongo said. My post were meant in a fun, good natured spirit, the type of post we usually make with each other.
Tongo usurped my post when he quoted me +said he agreed with me AND added a dig at you. I do NOT agree with what Tongo said...BUT unfortunately his agreeing with me and then ad libbing makes my post seem like I agreed with him, I do not.

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Tongo's post are of a quite different tone:

Are you kidding me?! I wasnt trying to make it look like ......I wasnt even breaking his balls!
Stop trying to stir it up CR.

Thing is that statistically, a person's skin color is indeed indicative of a person's character. In the US, a black man has 8 times higher probability of being a criminal than a white man. And on average an Asian usually has 20 points of IQ more than a black. And as Captain Steel has shown, it's common for blacks to feel discriminated when someone doesn't like rap.

So ethnic groups differentiated by phenotype have certain characteristics that hold on average.

So you wouldn't think that a person's opinion regarding "general cultural tendencies" of a culture he/she does not know anything about to not be prejudiced?

Also it's very, very hard to identify a "general cultural tendency" in a large country. When people think in terms of general cultural tendencies (such as "all Japanese comics look like "this") they are engaging in stereotyping and that's inherently prejudiced, it's the same as thinking that blacks are lazy.

Take the US, are there very clear "general cultural tendency" in the US's culture? Well I wouldn't think so. American music, for instance, contains pretty much any genre of music in existence in the whole world, if you dislike "American music" you dislike music, unless you redefine American music to mean something very restricted like "rap". Same with Japanese comics, well, even more considering Japan makes the vast majority of the comics in the world: if one dislikes "Japanese comics" one dislikes comics.

Unless you redefine manga to mean "action fantasy manga published in Shounen Jump magazine", which is most Anglophone people's idea of "anime" actually but that is as representative o "anime" as 50 Cent is representative of American music.

Of course, if you dislike a movie like Your Name (2016) that doesn't mean you hate Japan. Or even if someone says he/she is not going to watch Your Name because he/she did not like the art style used in that movie.

However, if one says he/she is not going to watch Your Name BECAUSE it's Japanese, then, I think that we have a problem: Modern Japanese visual culture is not like rap, rap is a genre, it's a clearly defined defined genre of American music with very clear characteristics (such as lack of melody and harmony you just mentioned). People here think of Japanese comics as if it were like rap but it's like American music, and it's impossible for me to conceive that someone might dislike all American music just as its absurd for me to think of someone who might dislike all Japanese comics. I don't think it's actually useful for people to use terms like "anime" and "manga" because they create artificial stereotypes that only exist in the heads of westerners.

Guap - I thought of you last night.

Often, I'll listen to Coast to Coast on the radio while brushing my teeth before bed (probably the worst time to listen to THAT show, but that's the only time it's on). I don't know who last night's guest was or what he was talking about but at one point he said something about "American culture" and then he went on to say something like, '...if there is any such thing...' then I remember him saying verbatim... "...it's really more like an anti-culture."

When I heard that I though of your recent posts about American culture.
Unfortunately, I have no idea what the guy meant by that.

Controlling for things like income, this disparity is dramatically smaller, if not gone completely. It's primarily a function of poverty, rather than race.

I chose the word "character" deliberately. It is technically true (though admittedly politically incorrect) to say that different racial groups have, in the aggregate, different physical or biological characteristics. But that's different than their character, and observation becomes prejudice at the moment you take a general tendency and presume it applies to an individual.

I find myself right in the middle of most of these discussions, because I don't think it should be at all taboo to observe and reference these tendencies, but I do think it crosses an important line to make assumptions about individuals based on them.

If they knew literally nothing, sure, but that's almost never the case. Even someone who holds a broad, unfair generalization is tapping into some commonality. Stereotypes are often exaggerated, or unfairly applied, but they're not usually invented outright. As I pointed out earlier, even if you show me a wide variety of Japanese animation styles, nearly all of them are instantly identifiable as being Japanese, even by people who don't watch much Japanese animation. That alone proves that there's some sort of broad aesthetic through-line.

Aye, and I addressed this preemptively:

"Culture is, of course, complicated and not universal, so it's very easy to be insensitive or simplistic when talking about any culture. But being sensitive and easy to generalize about it is still different than being necessarily prejudiced, by its very nature."