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1. Embed this notice
   Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 29-Mar-2026 07:04:30 JST Adrianna Tan

   This country is so big. I mean, I think I knew it intellectually but I don’t think I really understood it until I spent the last few days traveling through it by train. I come from a country that’s so small, you get two other countries’ cellular signal if you stand at your window.

   In four days, I’ve been in three different time zones. I’m now three hours ahead of San Francisco, here in Atlanta.

   I’m in the south for the first time. It might as well be a completely different country. I’ll be checking out all the museums and monuments relating to civil rights while I’m here. This place was an important place in that struggle.

   http://atlantacivilrights.com/civilrights/essay_detail.asp?phase=1

   • Rich Felker repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 29-Mar-2026 07:06:26 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Claire, The Ultimate Worrier

     @waitworry just did! I’m going to try to go to a Gullah place. Really want to try that cuisine

   • Embed this notice
     Claire, The Ultimate Worrier (waitworry@sakurajima.moe)'s status on Sunday, 29-Mar-2026 07:06:27 JST Claire, The Ultimate Worrier

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte get some soul food

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 29-Mar-2026 07:11:46 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     When the train was passing through Arizona, they said Navajo Nation is larger than Vermont and Massachusetts put together. It kind of broke my brain.

     I’ve found that when I try to spend more time learning about Black and Native history and culture, I get a much truer sense of the U.S. today, particularly how many of today’s problems see to be continuations of old time racism and Civil War divisions.

     Rich Felker repeated this.
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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 29-Mar-2026 07:18:38 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Rob van Kan🔻

     @edgeofeurope different ways of life. They also don’t have city centers or even densely populated states close to each other except on the east coast

     I really think it’s more a group of countries put together.

     When I fly SF to New York, that’s almost as far as Singapore to Dubai and all of the countries in between.

   • Embed this notice
     Rob van Kan🔻 (edgeofeurope@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 29-Mar-2026 07:18:39 JST Rob van Kan🔻

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte Isn't that strange though. I find it oddly limiting. Where I lived in Holland before I came to southern Italy I could just hop across the border into Belgium in 15 minutes. Heck I even had student lodgings *in* Belgium for a year.
     Here, the nearest land border is ten, twelve hours by car.

   • Embed this notice
     Alan Bucknam (bucknam@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 29-Mar-2026 07:19:21 JST Alan Bucknam

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte if you haven’t read Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s book “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States” I’d highly recommend it. It’s a good overview of how colonialism and counterinsurgent war built the United States, and how the legacy of those two systems pervade our current situation. As a white guy born in the land of Manifest Destiny Colorado it was really illuminating. https://www.beacon.org/An-Indigenous-Peoples-History-of-the-United-States-P1164.aspx

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 29-Mar-2026 07:19:21 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Alan Bucknam

     @bucknam thanks for the rec!

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 29-Mar-2026 07:19:55 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Strider Uwe 🇺🇦🇨🇦🇲🇽

     @UweHalfHand I was amazed when I was in an overnight train and when I woke up, I was still in California.

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     Strider Uwe 🇺🇦🇨🇦🇲🇽 (uwehalfhand@norcal.social)'s status on Sunday, 29-Mar-2026 07:19:56 JST Strider Uwe 🇺🇦🇨🇦🇲🇽

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte That’s a thing that a lot of Europeans don’t get, and as a result wonder why “we Americans” aren’t shutting the government down with protests. In France or Germany, traveling 300 miles crosses a large fraction of the whole country… in California, never mind the whole US, that doesn’t quite get you from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 29-Mar-2026 07:29:45 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     Even in California, whenever someone says ‘this neighborhood is nice’ or ‘this town is safe’, I always look up redlining. Almost always, the nice, safe places are places where Black, Asian, Hispanic, Native and other people were not allowed to buy homes. This is recent history.

     I am so allergic to anyone who says words like nice and safe.

     Learning about redlining helps me see why

     It’s almost always a perfect match for the places where non-white people were banned from living

     https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/

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     Timo (timo21@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Sunday, 29-Mar-2026 13:37:47 JST Timo

     in reply to

     • keeps vis.social running

     @kristinHenry @skinnylatte and after the Civil War, Arizona was set up by former confederate soldiers. The first time I realized that, I recalled all the 1950's black and white TV westerns. Those writers took pages out of history and made a half-hour morality play out of them. From the former soldiers, to the burning down of courthouses that held the Mexican land records, the first time I heard any of that was as a small child watching those old shows.

   • Embed this notice
     keeps vis.social running (kristinhenry@vis.social)'s status on Sunday, 29-Mar-2026 13:37:48 JST keeps vis.social running

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     @skinnylatte Oh yes....so much is still going on today. A lot of state rivalries go back to the lead up to Civil War and were 'slave state' vs 'free state'. Like New Mexico (free) and Texas (slavers).

     Rich Felker repeated this.
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     Raven667 (raven667@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 29-Mar-2026 14:10:00 JST Raven667

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte not as important but I remember the aquarium in Atlanta being nice, obvs not as large as Monterrey, but what is?

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     pinskia (pinskia@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 29-Mar-2026 18:06:44 JST pinskia

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte
     I am not so sure.
     Take east palo alto. (It has been gentrified in the early 2000s, when IKEA moved in and such). But it was always not the nice part of the bay. Even heard that after the gentrification like 8 years ago.
     Now Oakland and Hayward has been the not so nice parts. There are also not so nice parts of San jose.
     And I hate hearing that but I have heard from non whites too.

     Note I have not lived in the bay area for 8 years but I lived in San Mateo for 4 years and Sunnyvale for 8 years. I still have friends and family that live there too.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 29-Mar-2026 23:16:23 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • pinskia

     @pinskia the vast majority of the not so nice places of the east bay are because people of color were not allowed to live in Orinda, Lafayette, Antioch, Concord, etc

     To me, 95% of ‘a place is unsafe’ can be attributed directly to racism. Even in the Bay Area.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 29-Mar-2026 23:18:11 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     I’ve only been in Atlanta a day and obviously there’s a lot I need to learn about it.

     But it makes me sad that the city I live in has displaced its Black population but still thinks it is liberal and open and welcoming to all.

     https://law.stanford.edu/publications/disinvestment-of-san-franciscos-african-american-community-1970-2022/

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 30-Mar-2026 00:30:59 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • pinskia

     @pinskia red lining in Palo Alto

     https://gunnoracle.com/19991/uncategorized/a-tale-of-two-cities-how-racism-in-housing-deeds-redlining-and-gentrification-led-to-the-stark-divide-between-palo-alto-and-east-palo-alto/

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 30-Mar-2026 01:35:21 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     (When I worked at a Silicon Valley startup, I was curious about why they picked my Asian city to expand to before they went to other U.S. cities. They said ‘we think there’s more in common between SF and Singapore in terms of demographics and income)

     Anyway, just remembering that now as I have spent the last few days outside of California. I knew there was a gap in my knowledge of the U.S. (which is very SF & NYC centric) but I am starting to see it is larger than I think.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 30-Mar-2026 01:45:58 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     A primary thing I am noticing:

     The cities I’ve spent most of my time in are West Coast cities and New York City. This means that I actually haven’t ever been in a place that’s not.. at least 10-60% East Asian? Obviously I don’t consciously think about this daily, and it’s not a ‘I need that environment’ thing. It’s more that those places have long histories of East Asian migration and strong local communities.

     Albuquerque and Atlanta have been the first places I’ve visited where that’s not the case.

     I don’t feel like I consciously seek out East Asian food or groceries, but they were always *around me* whereas here I guess if I lived here I would have to drive really far to go somewhere in particular.

     My friends in Oakland, CA ofte say ‘when someone said they were made fun of for their food in school I literally have no idea what they mean’ and this is one facet of it.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 30-Mar-2026 01:56:50 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     Something I’ve also been thinking about (as I’ve been dealing with some Singaporean haters who keep telling me that I chose a terrible place to live)

     I feel like there’s no one way of life here. That probably sounds completely normal? But for people from very small countries, there is definitely a ‘this is the way you are supposed to be / live’ (never mind that that one prescribed way in even tiny, tiny places is usually a majority grip dominating others)

     But I feel like it would be laughable to even think that for the U.S., for a single town or city or state.

     There’s maybe something here about the lack of national coherence that makes a lot of ‘America is X and Y’

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 30-Mar-2026 02:08:20 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     Also very tangential to my ‘immigrant discovering the rest of the US’ journey:

     Anecdotally, many East & SE Asian immigrants seem to be only ‘lactose intolerant’ to Clover brand milk, which is the primary source of dairy whole milk in Northern California.

     On a personal note I can attest that I am not intolerant of any whole milk most other places.

     This got me down a rabbit hole of trying to understand why. The best theory remains that Clover milk has A1 proteins which many of us can’t digest. It’s not scientifically proven, but on a ‘this doesn’t send us to the bathroom immediately’ scientific scale, A2 is much, much better.

     Nowhere else have I experienced this other than in CA (I’ve tested this in all the other states)

     (Related: this excellent post on ‘if Chinese people are lactose intolerant, why all the milk tea? Sorry it’s a *stack)

     https://open.substack.com/pub/chinesecookingdemystified/p/if-asian-are-lactose-intolerant-why

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 30-Mar-2026 02:13:30 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Napalousa

     @napalousa ha. People back home can tell exactly what school I went to, for reasons. It’s bizarre

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     Napalousa (napalousa@pagan.plus)'s status on Monday, 30-Mar-2026 02:13:31 JST Napalousa

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte Yes! I totally agree. Coming from Scotland even if people disagree there’s always a general consensus that this thing is always done this way. It’s both comforting and stifling at the same time. On the plus side you know exactly how everything works and what you’re meant to do but also if you suggest anything other than that to solve problems you get shut down.

     Also it’s so weird getting interviewed for a job over there after living in the US and the interviewer asks where you went to elementary school because they are trying to find people that you both know or have in common.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 30-Mar-2026 02:25:55 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Napalousa

     @napalousa ha, someone on here had a theory that may British ‘inspired’ (lol) territories / ex / current colonies have a similar layer of class / caste imposed on whatever our societies already originally had. I can definitely understand that. Probably even translates to specific accents communicating social class too

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     Napalousa (napalousa@pagan.plus)'s status on Monday, 30-Mar-2026 02:25:56 JST Napalousa

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte They don’t guess with me, but that leads a whole load of questions, who’s your mother, father, distant relative, school teacher, cousin, etc They have to know! It’s meant as a nice thing, but man it can be intimidating if you’ve never experienced that before.

   • Embed this notice
     David McMullin (mcmullin@musicians.today)'s status on Monday, 30-Mar-2026 02:29:08 JST David McMullin

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte
     I think a lot of our problems come from Americans who fail to appreciate or accept this. They think there is one way and it’s their way. All the evidence to the contrary—the mere fact of such diversity—drives them nuts and they treat it as a threat.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 30-Mar-2026 02:29:08 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • David McMullin

     @mcmullin yes, and they like authoritarianism because they get to dictate their norms

   • Embed this notice
     Luke Kanies (lkanies@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 30-Mar-2026 02:43:15 JST Luke Kanies

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte it’d be fun to design a tour that provided the widest possible range of cultures through the US, even just focusing on cities.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 30-Mar-2026 03:07:10 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     Walking to and from the King Center

     #Atlanta #Georgia

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 30-Mar-2026 03:29:30 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • David McMullin

     @mcmullin that’s all true, but due to power dynamics it does feel sometimes like Americans expect nuance for themselves but don’t extend that often to other. Like many are happy to say ‘all Chinese people are ax’ about what, 1.5 billion people? But sometimes get worked up when people from the outside don’t know the difference between Ohio and Oklahoma

   • Embed this notice
     David McMullin (mcmullin@musicians.today)'s status on Monday, 30-Mar-2026 03:29:34 JST David McMullin

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte

     A general observation from an American who is interested in the outside world and enjoys talking to people from all over:

     • Everyone knows us better than we know them.

     • No one knows us as well as they think they do.

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     David McMullin (mcmullin@musicians.today)'s status on Monday, 30-Mar-2026 03:29:37 JST David McMullin

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte
     “There’s maybe something here about the lack of national coherence that makes a lot of ‘America is X and Y’ feel incomplete.”

     Definitely. This is something everyone everyone underestimates, including Americans.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 30-Mar-2026 03:44:29 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Carolyn
     • David McMullin

     @CStamp @mcmullin I’ve met Europeans who believe they are experts on *all of Asia* :)

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     Carolyn (cstamp@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 30-Mar-2026 03:44:30 JST Carolyn

     in reply to

     • David McMullin

     @skinnylatte @mcmullin A lot of people seem to not be able to grasp the scope of how big the US and Canada are, and that not a single place represents the whole.

     I remember travelling around Europe, beginning conversations in French so as not to be confused with being an American (it made a big difference, at least at the time) & the number of people who would ask, "do you know my cousin in Quebec?" Quebec is bigger than their countries, is only one of 10 provinces, 3 territories, so, no. :)

   • Embed this notice
     Carolyn (cstamp@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 30-Mar-2026 03:44:30 JST Carolyn

     in reply to

     • David McMullin

     @skinnylatte @mcmullin And then travellers come, visit Vancouver, Montreal, or Toronto and then think they are experts on Canada. Not by a mile. :)

   • Embed this notice
     RiaResists (riaresists@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 30-Mar-2026 03:47:35 JST RiaResists

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte
     What’s the bottom part of « stop trumps war on…. »?
     He’s waged war on so many different things.

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 30-Mar-2026 03:47:35 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • RiaResists

     @RiaResists Iran, but I left out the bottom because I think this is something that links to a pro-China leftist group

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 30-Mar-2026 03:49:54 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Phil Dennis-Jordan

     @pmdj ha! Yeah. I can see that.

     A British elderly woman I know in San Francisco once described it to me as, ‘if you decide you want to stand on one leg and knit, no one else tells you it’s a bad idea, in fact they’ll join you or encourage you’ about why she still lives there.

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     Phil Dennis-Jordan (pmdj@mstdn.social)'s status on Monday, 30-Mar-2026 03:49:55 JST Phil Dennis-Jordan

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte The “no one way of life” thing resonates with me; I don’t set out to be the weirdo but just seem to end up prefer doing everything in a way that’s unusual. The UK seems to lean a lot more into “no one way” attitude than Central Europe, which made some aspects of life in Britain nicer/easier. (Though a bunch of other aspects were significantly worse from my point of view.) But yeah, that whole thing is probably why I periodically toy with the idea of moving elsewhere.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 30-Mar-2026 04:47:06 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Jonobie

     @jonobie you gotta run off data roaming or you’ll get international charges. It’s not fun!

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     Jonobie (jonobie@social.coop)'s status on Monday, 30-Mar-2026 04:47:08 JST Jonobie

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte It’s really cool to “see” some of the country through your eyes. Also my brain just broke about the idea that you can see three countries’ cell networks from one spot! How does that even work with billing? 🤣

     I love Atlanta. It is SUCH an interesting and vibrant city. Great food too.

     The thing about being surrounded by other SE Asians is interesting - I remember when I first discovered “ethnic grocery stores”. It was in COLLEGE. Because I finally was in a city. I suddenly wondered how on earth the few immigrant families I knew of in rural Ohio shopped. Because out there there weren’t any and the “international aisle” in grocery stores was absolute crap. Like, La Choy soy sauce and kits, El Paso taco kits, and maybe some matzo crackers. 🥴 In Seattle, even my local Safeway has some basic stuff like, say, shrimp paste, presumably because they’re responding to local needs.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 30-Mar-2026 06:48:48 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Daniel Reeders

     @onekind oh wow! did not know that!

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     Daniel Reeders (onekind@beige.party)'s status on Monday, 30-Mar-2026 06:48:50 JST Daniel Reeders

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte it's not just a can't digest, it's an allergy, that's how the illness comes on immediately. I've got friends who get neuro symptoms from the allergy, relieved by avoiding milk or only drinking the A2 variety.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 30-Mar-2026 21:01:15 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     Last couple of days:

     - Coast Starlight (Emeryville to Los Angeles)
     - Southwest Chief (Los Angeles to Albuquerque)

     Then I flew to Atlanta and I have two more cities (Philadelphia and New York City) before leaving the country

     #Albuquerque #NewMexico #Atlanta #Georgia #Trains #Amtrak

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     Itamar Turner-Trauring (itamarst@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 30-Mar-2026 21:36:44 JST Itamar Turner-Trauring

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte Now I miss my old Yashica.