All posts in: Culture

24 Aug 2019

Blog Roundup

  • Stop Calling Asian Women Adorable [New York Times]
  • Dr. Ruth Says ‘Make Time’ For Sex [New York Times]
  • A Bowl of Cut Fruits Is How Asian Moms Say: I Love You [Taste] This is my own mother! <3
  • Why Everyone Is Watching TV With Closed Captioning On These Days [Kottke]
  • How Complaining Turns Co-Workers Into Friends [The Cut]
  • How to Tip [Grub Street]
  • LA Ice Cream Truck Charges Influencers Double [Ohnotheydidnt]
  • This warms my heart every time [Instagram]
  • 100 Best Memes of All Time [Thrillist]
  • Iowa Official Resigns After Sending Agency-Wide Email About Tupac [Fader]
  • How to Deal With Anxiety At Work, According to Experts [Bustle]
  • Let Your White Jeans Get Stained [The Cut]
  • In Memoriam of 2019’s Celebrity Breakups [W Magazine]
13 Jul 2019

Relationships Over Time

Even though this is my first time seeing this visualization by Olivia de Recat, I think about relationships and their change over time often. It’s all made so clear to me in this one graphic. As I’m glazing over each one, I can pin point it to specific people in my life and agree with the way these have played out. Readers, do you agree with these or disagree? Since I’ve never had a dog, this is the only one that doesn’t resonate.

[Source]

11 May 2019

Instagrammers Are Killing This Field of Poppies

I’m glad that we haven’t reached this point in our Instagram career yet, but not proud to say that we’ve gotten very close. The world of Instagram is so strange. On a weekly basis, my friends and I discuss how Instagram manages to seep into our relationships, partnerships, and sometimes careers. Even in the last year, I’ve been wrestling with my account and the thought has crossed my mind about creating necessary boundaries for myself. Though I haven’t discussed it on Yow Yow! it’s something that I’ve considered for the last year. I’m not entirely comfortable with all that I’m seeing on Instagram and often wonder if my account mirrors those that make me uncomfortable as well.

We’ll spend some more time unpacking this in a future post. For now, I want to share this ridiculous coverage that VICE shot on the poppy fields. Here’s an example of what not to do.

10 Mar 2019

Blog Roundup

  • Nearly a Decade Later, The Hills Comes Back to Reality [Interview Magazine]
  • Chocolate Fights Coughs Better Than Codeine, Says Science [Coast Living]
  • Second Life Podcast: This Is How Revolve Chooses Its Influences [WhoWhatWear]
  • Chuck E. Cheese Pizza Conspiracy [Ohnotheydidnt] made me laugh
  • Abercrombie & Fitch Will Close 40 Stores This Year [Fashionista]
02 Mar 2019

Pixar’s ‘Purl’ Promotes Inclusion in the Workplace

Living and working in the Bay Area has made me all too familiar with the term “workplace inclusion.” It may sound like a complex concept, but it’s actually very simple. How do you feel at work? What does your company and its employees do to make you feel included and like you belong when you show up to work? Pixar’s latest short “Purl” paints this visual clearly for those that are familiar with how this feels and for those that are hearing this for the first time.

It’s a powerful short that highlights Purl’s first day on the job surrounded by men – her new colleagues. Sure enough, these men promote “bro” culture and are quick to shut her out. Purl finds a way to fit in and relate to the men, but begins to lose some of her own identify. When her transformation to one of them is complete, she recognizes another new employee caught on the outside the way that she once was.

This short was written and directed by Kristen Lester and produced by Gillian Libbert-Duncan. Inspired by how she once felt in her own work environment, Kristen felt compelled to share her story.

“When Kristen came to me and said, ‘This is a story that I want to tell,’ I looked at her and I said, ‘Oh my gosh, I have lived the exact same thing,'” Libbert-Duncan said in a companion video.

[Source]

16 Feb 2019

Review: Netflix’s “Dating Around”

It’s not my first rodeo. I’ve watched plenty of reality dating TV shows in my lifetime and personally save two hours of my Monday night to remotely watch The Bachelor with two of my best friends in Seattle. When I first heard about this show (without watching the trailer) I remembered thinking “What’s so different about this one?” Right? Because when you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. However, it was a text from Mandi tonight at dinner that prompted me to give it a chance. Mandi knows all too well about my dating life and TV life for that matter.

I have to commend Netflix for the way they produce their shows. I promise I’m going to get into the meat of the content and why this show is different, but aesthetically, this show does a phenomenal job of painting what dating looks like for my friends and I. I’ve been watching the Bachelor for years, but even now I’ve got the formula down. I know exactly what’s going to happen in every season and the type of characters they are going to cast. There’s always a sea of blondes. You’ve always got a crazy villain. You have someone with a unrealistic job title. And of course, the dates. So extravagant that it’s not real life at all. What is real life though is drinks, maybe dinner, and maybe something for afterwards if the night has gone well. This is the formula that is true – that Netflix highlights and that I can get behind.

I’ve only watched three episodes so far for a total of 90 minutes, but I can’t get enough. I caught myself nervously laughing when a girl made a cringe-worthy comment. It could’ve been a disaster, but it wasn’t! She recovered. My eyes widened when I saw one of the girls go in for a make out sesh at the end of the night. In my head I thought, “Was that too much?” “Is that what people do on first dates these days?” Sure, this is New York, but everyone has a different dating style and it’s incredible to observe.

Let’s talk about the diversity in this series. It’s not a sea of blondes actually. In the 2nd episode, we’ve got a career woman who is Indian and a divorcee and in the 3rd episode a gay Asian man. This first couple episodes alone are already years ahead of The Bachelor franchise. Something I always think about in dating culture is how it feels like you are repeating the same type of conversations. Where are you from? What do you do for a living? How do you spend your weekends? And if you’re a serial dater or racking up a couple dates a week, it can feel tedious. Instead, these conversations for first blind dates are digging a bit deeper. They are getting into values, upbringings, and real dating challenges to find out if the person in front of them is a future match. For some, this feels like hard hitting topics to discuss on the first date, but maybe it’s just a sign that these folks are looking for something more serious. It’s an interesting watch, but I like to think it’s going to serve as a playbook for current daters who find trouble with this process today.

My favorite part of the show? We haven’t even talked about the set up yet and we’re well into this post. The show revolves around one individual. They go on five blind dates and throughout the 30 minutes, we see a snapshot of each of them. It feels fast, but the conversations are there and Netflix is capturing the most important parts, that you feel like you know everyone well by the end of it. For each episode, the main character wears the same outfit and is at the same restaurant which provides consistency. It’s as if it is one long date, but you know that it’s five separate occasions. By the end of the five dates, the main may choose to go on a second date and you’ll see who they pick! There isn’t any commentary or any context. It’s also not very obvious who they are going to pick. But this is my favorite part! It’s always satisfying when I pick the right person! Classic me finding someway to turn this into a game.

There’s no word yet on whether or not this series has been given the green light for a second season, but we like what we see.

30 Jan 2019

A Collection Part 53

Tonight I did something for the first time that I’ve never done with these posts. Since I started working on this post over the holidays while I was at home there were a few Christmas themed photos in this batch. As I scrolled through the preview, I didn’t feel that same spark or attachment to them as I once had. So while on my way to finish this post, I replaced those photos. Since we’ve been through 53 rounds of this and I’ve never once replaced any photos before posting, in some way, I felt like I was being inauthentic. Could my readers tell that I had swapped them out? Of course not. But I would know and that kind of ate me up for about 15 minutes.

We haven’t written our resolutions post yet, but this made me think of two previous resolutions I’ve had. A few years back, I had “say yes to everything.” The intent was good, sure. But saying “yes to everything” can sometimes do more harm than good. Sometimes you say yes to things when you don’t want to. Maybe saying yes to things causes you to spend money when you don’t want to. Have experiences that you don’t think you’ll appreciate. The next year I refined that resolution: do the things you want to do. And that has stuck around longer than saying “yes.” So if that’s what I truly believe, why not act upon that when it comes to this blog and my posts?

Read more “A Collection Part 53”
21 Jan 2019

Blog Roundup

  • Job Alert: Become the keeper of this San Francisco lighthouse for a $130,000 a year [The Manual]
  • A 4-year-old Trapped In A Teenager’s Body [The Cut]
  • Second Life Podcast: Aimee Song [My Domaine]
  • Design Sponge Will End Its 15-Year Run In 2019 [Design Sponge]
  • Sen. Kamala Harris announced today that she would be seeking a 2020 Democratic nomination for president and we are HERE for it.
  • Visualizing the Highest-Paid Job In Every State [Howmuch] TLDR: become a doctor like your parents told you to.
  • Spotify to Release New In-Car Music Player in 2019 [Hypebeast]
19 Jan 2019

Conservatives and Their Closed Communities

My work recently included educating myself on the real estate industry so I found this piece by Vice fascinating.

For those that are feeling like their current communities are “too liberal,” they are fleeing to an area in Texas to be around those that share the same values as them. And by values, I mean a strong conservative viewpoint. One family featured in this piece was relocating from California. The community, as seen in this piece, looks predominantly “white” and is cookie-cutter perfect. I believe someone referred to it as “Pleasantville” like? The community was created by those that share the conservative values and are the realtors themselves.

However, not everyone in the neighboring area agrees. The mayor recognizes that everyone will have different viewpoints, but building your own enclosed wall to shut those opinions out doesn’t actually solve anything. Is this not modern day segregation at work here?

Growing up, I’ve always been very fond of my communities within music, my university, and even spirituality. I have never felt so strongly about anyone that disagreed on these things that I needed to remove myself from them altogether. 2019, you guys.