Lex Anteinternet: Friday Farming. All agriculture is local, the danger of taking agricultural advice from Reddit, and Meeting Marcus Aurelius on the prairie.

Lex Anteinternet: Friday Farming. All agriculture is local, the dan...: 

Friday Farming. All agriculture is local, the danger of taking agricultural advice from Reddit, and Meeting Marcus Aurelius on the prairie.

Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together,but do so with all your heart.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Longhorn in mixed herd, central Wyoming.  This is from this year. . . a high water year.

From the r/ranching Subreddit on, of course, Reddit:

I just inherited 1200 acres of ranch land. WTF do I do?

My father in law wants to pass on his ranch to me before he passes. He’s in bad health and for some reason decided that I would be the best of everyone to take on his property. I don’t know a god damn thing about cows or hay, having lived in a big city my whole life; but I’m a pretty good mechanic and would fix all of his equipment whenever I visited him, so I guess he likes me and he thinks I’m the best to take things over. The ranch, located in southern Wyoming, hasn’t done anything productive in the past 5 years due to FIL declining health and I have no idea what to do with it. Like the title says, it’s 1200 acres of mostly hilly sagebrush with grassy bottom land surrounded by forest land. I promised him I wouldn’t break up the land or develop it; but how does a city slicker move out to the middle of Wyoming and generate a living income off of the land without knowing a thing about ranching? Can I lease the grazing property out; lease the grass land out? Just looking for any advice or recommendations. Any advice is appreciated.

Let's answer the question first, that being, "how does a city slicker move out to the middle of Wyoming and generate a living income off of the land without knowing a thing about ranching?"

The answer is simple.  You don't.

Here's the reason why:

level 1

DyersvilleStLambert

·1 day ago

With only two sections, in Wyoming, I’m assuming that he wasn't a full time rancher, or that he leased a lot of land to get by. Most working Wyoming ranches are large for a reason.

So, as a starting point, what did he do with it? 1,200 acres sounds like a lot unless you've actually ranched in Wyoming, in which case, it really isn't.

19

level 2

overeducatedhick

·22 hr. ago

And to be fair, two sections in Carbon or Sweetwater Counties is different than the same area in Laramie or Albany Counties. Your mention of sagebrush suggests that you are somewhere west of Laramie. That also suggests that there are some state or federal leases that are connected to the privately owned land. How many adult cattle does (or did) he run on his place?

The truth of the matter is that, in today's operations, your mechanical abilities are among the most important skills to make a farm or ranch work.

15

level 3

DyersvilleStLambert

·18 hr. ago

True. If you are east of Cheyenne, which is really more farm country, it's one thing. Once you start heading west of Cheyenne and into Albany County, it's another. The sagebrush country of Carbon County, something else entirely. Wyoming has quite a bit of varied terrain and conditions.

None of it will support really dense stocking, however, like some other regions of the country will allow. I'd have to assume, like you, that if he was really ranching, he must have had Federal and perhaps state leases, or maybe some private leases.

As a total aside, the line "Somewhere west of Laramie" is part of one of the greatest advertising campaigns of all time, which some credit with starting modern advertising. The 1923 ad for the Jordan Playboy car, which starts off with “Somewhere west of Laramie there's a broncho busting, steer roping girl who knows what I'm talking about".

Replies, from me, and some other guy.

Now, the same thread is full of advice on how this person can just move out and, yee haw, be a rancher.

Bull.

All agriculture is local.  All of it.  A grain farmer in Kansas can't walk right into a bandanna plantation in Africa and expect to make a go of it instantly.  Gardeners all over the country, if they suddenly inherited a wheat farm, would go broke.

And with animal agriculture, this is particularly true.  Ranching in Wyoming may be like ranching in Montana, but it's not like cattle farming in Arkansas.  Frankly, a Northern Plains rancher used to low grass and cold winters would have a lot better chance of being successful in Arkansas, than an Arkansas cattle farmer would of being a rancher here.

And somebody from a city, stepping into land on advice from people who don't realize that 1,200 acres doesn't cut it here as a ranch, and who have never endured our winters.

Forget it.

This property will be leased to a neighbor, or sold.

And let us discuss the injustice of things.

From when I was small, I've always wanted to ranch.  It's hard to explain these things, but I always wanted to.  It's probably one of the two "I want to be when I grow up" things in my personality.  The other one was being a soldier, which I've done.  Regarding that, by the time I was approaching graduating from high school (I graduated when I was 17 years old, not all that uncommon at the time) that was waning, but that desire was expressed by six years I spent in the National Guard.

And I have been a stockman as an adult, but I was never able to make it my full time occupation.

I came pretty close twice, once before being married, and once after, but events transpired and. . . off to the office I go.

There's a difference between being in the Regular Army (which I was for training) and being in the reserves. And there's a difference between being a part-time stockman and a full time one.  Moreover, as I'm in one of the professions, I've entered that weird part of my life, which seems to be the case for at least people in my profession, when the kids have grown up and have their own lives, and your spouse has her own job, and most of the people you meet on a daily basis are in your profession, where your private aspirations just die as other people murder them.

You don't need a stock working horse. . . you can borrow one.  Wouldn't you like to sell that old one ton stick shift and buy a nice 1/2 ton sport auto, or maybe a Jeep pickup?  You don't need to work cattle this weekend, you can get that big project done at work.

Which is why, I think, that I see so many old members of my profession carrying on into their 70s and 80s. Their actual personality died thirty years ago.  Just the shell is left.  

And in the weird way of the world, here we are.  Some urban dude who has little interest in ranching inherits a small (and it is) parcel, but one that has entertaining possibilities, and isn't really that interested, whereas some rural dude spends his whole life, more or less, in suit and tie.

M'eh.

My wife always says things work the way they do for a reason.  We're placed in one place, under one set of circumstances, because God wants us there for some reason.  We should accordingly accept it, and be happy with it and that we can do what we do, even if we don't realize whatever the good is that we're supposed to be doing by our placement. I try to accept that, but I'll confess, stuff like this frustrates me.

Lex Anteinternet: Red meat for the dogs. Hatred.

Lex Anteinternet: Red meat for the dogs. Hatred.: 

Red meat for the dogs. Hatred.

Animals don't hate, and we're supposed to be better than them.

Elvis Presley

"Bolshevism without a mask" Nazi poster from 1937.

As silly as it may seem to say, something (well, a lot of things) has been really bothering me about the current blather coming out of Republican quarters.

It is not that a conservative party, although it is unclear if that is what the GOP is anymore, would have nothing to say, but it's not saying it. I'm not hearing from any William F. Buckley's or George F. Will's on the merits of conservatism.  George Weigel isn't breaking through to the audience.  Politician wise, I'm not hearing the voice of a Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater being taken seriously.  I was hearing a bit from Mitt Romney, but he's stepping away from the podium.  Asa Hutchinson and Chris Christie are still there, but they're not making it above the din.

I am hearing from a lot of candidates, local and national, who speak with short invectives, however.  I won't bother with the Boeberts or Greene's but even locally it's pretty upsetting.

Somebody acting in anonymity (but with enough in the way of time and resources available to purchase signs supporting their blog) is accusing people of being "RINO's", as if they can define half the state's GOP that way based on their own assessment. The head of Wyoming's Freedom Caucus and at least one of its members calls Republicans they disagree with and the Democrats the "Uniparty".  Our congressman purports to have knowledge that there's a "place in Hell for those who pursue policies that are intended to increase the price of food, energy, and housing" as if anyone anywhere has a policy that actually is intended to do any of those things.

And then there's Trump.

Ceterum (autem) censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Cato.

Trump rages against his opponents. They're debased, insance, Marxists, fascists, and the like.  It recalls the radical statements of earlier demagogues.

Here he stops at nothing, and in his vileness he becomes so gigantic that no one need be surprised if among our people the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.

Rather, it's campaigning on almost one thing, and one thing alone.

Hitler, Mein Kampf.

Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.

Stalin.

And what is being expressed is hatred.

Hatred.

And that, more than anything else, is what unites the GOP increasingly with the spirit of fascism, and ironically enough, Communism as well.

It's not that conservatives or populists have nothing to say.  Rather, they don't say it much, and only rarely as sort of a battle cry.  Instead, their public image is based on hate.  It's not all of us together, and we must find a way, listen to my ideas, but rather, it's us against them, they're vile, and must be destroyed.

Trump isn't arguing any policy positions.  Instead, he spews hatred.  His opponents, legal and political, are mentally incompetent, deranged, fat, etc. etc.  He doesn't appeal to logic, but emotion, and the emotion he appeals to is hatred.  People need to fear his opponents, as they are Der Untermensch, i.e., subhuman.

Indeed, the entire yapping class appealing to the populist in the GOP, which is now a populist party, appeals to fear and hatred in a radical way.  The scary left wing intelligentsia is going to insert itself into the schools, or vaccines, or whatever, and turn us all into drones, and your sons and daughters into debased freaks.

Authoritarian movements that have little else going for them other than fear have always behaved this way.  If you didn't support the Ku Klux Klan, Catholics are going to take over and give the country to the Pope and black men are going to rape your daughters.  If you don't support the Nazi's, the Communist Slavic Jewish hoards are going to take over and rape your daughters.  If you don't support the Communists, the big monied (probably Jewish, they always get the short end of the stick in this stuff) are going to control everything and starve your daughters.  It's not our ideas against theirs, but rather us against them, and in the end, they must be destroyed.

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

Trumpist populations tell us that Democrats are deranged to the extent of being Untermenschen.  They must be destroyed.  It's gotten so bad, that to merely call somebody a "RINO" is the equivalent of calling somebody subhuman. An entire Wyoming website, which moderate Republicans asked to unmask itself, exists only to do that, as if calling somebody a RINO in the context in which the position that seem to determine that would have left you out of the GOP mainstream in the pre Trump era, is preposterous. But it happens now all the time.  No Democratic or moderate Republican position can be considered, as they are the hideous Untermenschen.

Indeed, hate has become such the defining factor, that all of the former standard which conservatives adhered to have gone by the wayside, although frankly they started to as long ago as Ronald Reagan. "Family values" are to be defended, but divorces and personal sexual misconduct mean nothing, because as long as one is a populist, your infidelities are irrelevant.   Biden is corrupt because he's a Democrat. Trump is pure because he's a Republican.  I'm not saying anything about either man, but defining their morality based upon their party is all the more that needs to be done.

I have decided to stick to love...Hate is too great a burden to bear.

Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

Cato urged that Carthage be destroyed as a detraction.  Hatred never serves humanity, but in the end serves one man.

If all a politician or public figure has to offer is invective, they should be disregarded.  Moreover, if that's principally what they have to offer, they should be cast aside.

Hate isn't a policy.  It's a vehicle, more often than not, for the person publically spewing it.

Related threads:

Red Meat for the dogs and cowardice.

Lex Anteinternet: Red Meat for the dogs and cowardice.

Lex Anteinternet: Red Meat for the dogs and cowardice.: 

Red Meat for the dogs and cowardice.

I've met 2/3ds of our people in Congress from this state, and I may have met, but just don't remember doing so, the remaining 1/3d.

I can't say that I know any of them well, but I have spoken to the ones I've met, before they were in office, in a different context.  One in a commerce sort of sense, and the other just as two folks sort of sense.

All of them are very smart people.  

I frankly don't believe that they believe a lot of what they're saying.  When they stand up and talk about "Biden's radical green agenda", I don't believe that they believe what they're saying.  I've strongly suspected that in at least one case the speaker would be speaking for a green agenda if they had remained in their native state.  And when one stated that just recently, it was combined with waiving the banner of a new mask mandate that hasn't happened and isn't going to happen, and the speaker, who is no dummy, knows that.

I think they're throwing red meat to the dogs.

They're pitching to people at the top of the GOP Central Committee here and its supporters. Those people actually do believe what they say, which raises the bigger question of how they believe it.  Some of it may be due to narrowed horizons, both professionally and in reality.  I.e., if you never leave your village, you'll only have the views of the villagers and the village occupations.

An example of that, I think, is the discussion on electric vehicles.  All the time, around here, I'll hear somebody say something like "we'll they'll never work here. . . har, har, har."

Well, they will, and are. Technology is advancing.  On top of it, they don't build cars and trucks for Wyoming.  Not once, in the entire history of the automobile industry, as somebody in the industry said; "so what do Wyomingite's want?  We better build that".

No, they build cards for Denverites, and Daytonites, not people who live in Bairoil.

But if you live in Bairoil, and always have, well how would you know better?

Politics at a certain level evolves from a concern of working people, who man it at the lower levels, to people who have a lot of time on their hands. That's why, at one time, the legislature, which meets in the winter, was made up of ranchers. Shipping had happened, and gathering was yet to come.  Hanging out in nice warm hotel rooms in Cheyenne sounded okay and they had the time to do it.

That's repeated in the party in a different way today

At the upper levels today, we have a rancher of course, but we also have figures who are retired military officers.  The latter is particularly weird for the isolationist anti-government GOP today, as how somebody who spent their entire career in the most expensive branch of the government living off the government teet would suddenly hate the government hard to explain, but whatever.  They have the time.

People on county commissions, etc., they don't have the time.

So the closed circle at the top, fed by the disgruntled populist at the bottom, is convinced of extreme right wing positions. 

Those at the very top of elective office, not universally, but pretty commonly, repeat the positions.

But is it out of genuine belief?

I doubt it.

Indeed, of the top elected officials at the state and the national level from this state, there's only one that I think might believe part of what that individual is saying, but only part, and I don't know how that person, whom I once knew somewhat, got there. Back in the day, I would have thought that person, based upon that person's circle of friends, to have been a liberal Democrat. 

I may have well been wrong.  If they were really right wing, they kept it to themselves.

Which brings me to cowardice.

I'm not referencing that person today, but many others.

I can't say how many times I've been somewhere where somebody said a racist joke, or made an extreme political comment, and nobody said anything.  Probably thousands.  Most people don't want a fight or an argument, and most people who do want a fight or an argument are complete and total assholes.  Indeed, people who say "well I want to be a lawyer because I like to argue", and mean it, are actually saying "I'm a total asshole".

It's so much easier to simply smile at a comment and move on it isn't funny.   When the local anti-maskers made comments, that's what we often did around here. And when the Trump supporter in the lunchroom spouts off, figuring everyone else agrees, it's easier just to take a drink of coffee and comment on something dull, like football.

But at some point, you should say or do something.

The Apaches used to have a custom in which hey'd sacrifice a young woman annually.  It endured into the horse era, during which, at one annual such event, a young man rode in, scooped up the young woman, and carried her off. The event never happened again.

That took courage, but it changed the course of things.

On rare occasions, I've seen people do that in conversations.  Simply state what they believe when that belief seems to be contrary to the audience, and people immediately start agreeing with the stated.

In others, it makes the person a pariah.

But in an era in which we're asking why has so much gone wrong, and much that's being ignored is going wrong, it's time to say something.

Thus says the LORD:

You, son of man, I have appointed watchman for the house of Israel;

when you hear me say anything, you shall warn them for me.

If I tell the wicked, "O wicked one, you shall surely die, "

and you do not speak out to dissuade the wicked from his way,

the wicked shall die for his guilt,

but I will hold you responsible for his death.

But if you warn the wicked,

trying to turn him from his way,

and he refuses to turn from his way,

he shall die for his guilt,

but you shall save yourself.

The advice here isn't Bayard Rustin's "Speak truth to power" maxim, and it sure isn't Noam Chomsky's "speak truth to the powerless", but rather, simply; Speak the truth.

Lex Anteinternet: Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLVIV. Fatigue.

Lex Anteinternet: Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLVIV. Fatigue.: 

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLVIV. Fatigue.

September 3, 2023.

U.S. Rep. Cory Mills, R-Florida, and articles of impeachment, and issue/culture fatigue

Apparently, Rep. Mills has nothing to actually do.  Perhaps somebody can find something for him, so he has real problems to work on.

I can't help but note that District Attorney Willis in Georgia made a suggestion of that type to Representative Jim Jordan, expressing what is undoubtedly a widely held view that people are really tired of Congress acting like a bunch of children all the time.  

Most people are tired of this.  And by that, I mean a Congress that is monkeying around with bills that aren't going anywhere and are of the nature of throwing gasoline on a fire. We know that this impeachment is going nowhere. We know that a recent bill to do away with the Department of Education isn't either. We know that shutting the government down, which is going to happen soon, just causes the government to lose money.

Some people out in the audience of society may believe that all of this serves to get something done, but it sure isn't obvious.  Most people are simply tired.  Of course, this helps whip up a pre convinced base even though nothing is actually going to happen on a lot of these things.

Relating to fatigue, on another topic I posted on, that being the upcoming Synod on Synodality, I suspect a lot of Catholics are tired of this topic:

Dread and the Synod on Synodality.

At some point, constant change and the search to change things wears people down.  A good argument can be made right now that after Covid, and after a lot of people, would just like things to calm down for a while.  That's part of the reason, I suspect, that younger people are looking back to more traditional times, and maybe that the whole culture is, except in certain quarters.

That may explain why the leaders of the Church, or some of them, are keen on a synod on synodality, as difficult as it is to figure out what that means, while globably, in the pews, only at most 2% of Catholics participated in the survey process.  That alone should give the participants in the synod pause, as it may very well mean that the 2% that responded doesn't reflect anywhere near a statistically signficant number of Catholics.  It may well be that the maybe 5% or whatever of Trads in the parish this morning do.

Of course, part of the reason changed, including unwanted ones, occur is that most people are just busy living their lives. That means people who have what a lot of us do not, surplus time, tend to be reflected in change.  In some instances, that's because of the way that people are employed.  It's ofen noticed by some that institutions are resistant to change, but by the same token, change can be forced on members of an institution simply becuase somebody in charge wants to change things, and everyone else just has their shoulder to the wheel and can't really take note until the change arrives.

On people in different quarters, and obviously wanting things to be different, Saturday I was driving up a really busy city street and saw, on the sidewalk headed towards the center of downtown, which was far away, a young woman riding a bicycle.

She was probably around twenty, fairly thin, had a large tattoo running up her side, and was topless.

It was impossible not to see, and I wonder if she had done it before, as quite frankly she looked nervous.  She probably should have, as she wasn't like the late middle-aged woman, now deceased, who used to ride a Vespa around here topless.  It was always a shock to encounter her, but as impolite as it may be to say it, she wasn't attractive. This young woman was, and for any normal male, she was going to be noticed, an impact added to by the fact that she was well-endowed.

My guess is she was headed to David Street Station, where her breasts were going to be oggled at by many.  And the look on her face belied the fact that she no doubt would maintain that she was there to make some other point.

Another reason we really need to put the brakes on things until we take a look at Chesterton's Fence on all sorts of things.

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

Indeed, something of this type, although not quite of this type, lead commentator Amy Otto, in an Op Ed written some years ago, to maintain "Men Did Greater Things When It Was Harder To See Boobs".  The caption on the article, which was flippant but which addressed a serious topic, if not idential one, not too surprisingly went viral.

Also not too surprisingly, this is a topic that's been pretty widely studied and the entire observational nature of this is hard-wired into men.  That some don't get this is another defiance of science.

And one putting all the burden, I'd note, on men.  I don't really want to be in the position of taking note of some 20-year-old woman's bare breasts, and I don't want to be seeing something that only a spouse should.  But now I have, and I can't get that back, nor can she, nor can the probably hundreds of men, most with fewer reservations than me, that saw her on Saturday and whose thought went where every they let them go.

US Suicide Rates at all-time high

US suicides hit an all-time high last year

• By MIKE STOBBE - AP Medical Writer
• Updated 44 min ago
• 0

About 49,500 people took their own lives last year in the U.S., the highest number ever. That's according to new government data posted Thursday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not yet calculated a suicide rate for the year. But available data suggests suicides are more common in the U.S. than at any time since the dawn of World War II. Experts caution that suicide is complicated, and that recent increases might be driven by higher rates of depression or limited availability of mental health services. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention says a main driver is the growing availability of guns.

A horrific story, to be sure.

It occured to me for some reason that all things being equal, a record number would likely to be set every year, as the American population continues to grow.  Having said that, the rates are very high, which is referenced in this article.

Predictably, the reporter blames it on the "growing availability of guns", but firearms have been easy to get throughout American history. Availability has grown from the mid 20th Century, which saw a lot of gun control provisions come in which have later faded, in part due to being found unconstitutional, with the 1970s probably the high watermark of that, but if we go back prior to the 1930s, we'd find that things were, in most places, wide open.  Even children could buy firearms in most of the US prior to the 1950s.

What has really changed is a society within any kind of foundation whatsoever.  In the entire Western World, the culture built on Catholicism, but heavily impacted by the Reformation, has seen the foundation attacked and dismantled to be instead one that's now centered on radical individualism.  It's not healthy, and it's killing people.  Added to that, the increasing corporatist culture work in a box life throughout the developed world, that removes people radically from nature, is levying a toll. The combination of both is deadly.

Everyone claims to want to do something about this, which seems to amount to doing something about it sort of clinically, rather than existentially.

Storm Warning

At least 55 people died on Maui. Residents had little warning before wildfires overtook a town

• By TY O'NEIL, CLAIRE RUSH, JENNIFER SINCO KELLEHER and REBECCA BOONE - Associated Press
• Updated 2 min ago
• 0

Maui residents who made desperate escapes from oncoming flames have asked why Hawaii’s famous emergency warning system didn’t alert them as wildfires raced toward their homes. Officials have confirmed that Hawaii emergency management records show no indication that warning sirens were triggered before devastating fires killed at least 55 people and wiped out a historic town. The blaze is already the state’s deadliest natural disaster since a 1960 tsunami. The governor warned the death toll will likely rise. Hawaii boasts what the state describes as the largest integrated outdoor all-hazard public safety warning system in the world. But many of Lahaina’s survivors said in interviews that they only realized they were in danger when they saw flames or heard explosions nearby.

I really have to wonder how long a large segment of American society, and the official leaders of the GOP, are going to continue to pretend there's nothing going on climate wise.  It's extremely difficult to grasp why they won't face reality on this, unless of course it's an example of worshiping money as if it was as religion.

People are now dying. Shouldn't this be taken seriously?

Without fail, one of our state's Congressional delegation comes on television or other media to promote fossil fuels and at least two out of the three like to talk about "Biden's radical climate agenda".  Keeping a natural climate isn't a "radical agenda" and simply refusing to discuss this topic is foolish.

Speaking of the Maui fires, some real goofballs are claiming that it was caused by a "direct energy weapons", which they also claim the last devastating California fires were.

It's scary to realize that people who believe something so idiotic have the right to vote.

Lil Tay is not dead.

I'd never heard of Lil Tay, aka Tay Tian, aka Claire Hope, aka Claire Eileen Qi Hope, but this line from her Wikipedia entry says a lot:

Tay's father and manager sought for Tay to become more focused on professionalism, suggesting a music career for her, though her mother and half-brother encouraged her to continue her original boastful character.

Keep in mind, she hit the music scene as a foul-mouthed rapper at age 9.

That's frankly sick, and not "sick" in the good pop culture lexicology way.  Her parents deserve a dope slap for letting that happen in the first place.

Whatever her legitimate name is, her story illustrates the poverty of values in the Western World.  Her parents were simply shacked up over a prolonged time, never married.  At some point, they separated and shared custody of the child.  Somehow, they allowed her to enter into the world of hip hop, which is marked for its celebration of criminal culture and high death rate. That made the stories of her death seem pretty credible.  Hardly a week goes by without some hip hop artist with a made up name dying young, in all the ways that tragic young deaths occur.  Just this week, it might be noted, one such artist was sentenced for shooting another, the victim of the shooting being Megan Thee Stallion (yes, that's a made up name).

When it was revealed she wasn't dead, I wondered if it was a PR stunt.  I'ts being claimed her social medial was hacked.  I see I'm not the only one who was speculating on the stunt possibilities, however.

Regarding Tay, even at age 9 to 14 she's an interesting example of a certain public pseudonym phenomenon.

Entertainers have always affected false names, often due to being required to do so by reporters.  Actors with Jewish names, for example, almost had to take another name early on. Paul Newman, an exception to so many rules in the acting community, is notable here as his real name actually was Paul Newman.

That's pretty much stopped as cultural prejudice of that type diminished.  A peculiar modern phenomenon has been people, particularly women, of mixed Asian and Euro-American heritage adopting their Asian mother's surname as a stage name.  It seems clear enough that Chinese American Tay was given the name at birth of Claire Eileen Qi Hope, i.e., Clair Hope, a pretty generic European name, and when she was drop-kicked into hip hop she became Tay Tian, or at least around there somewhere she did, taking her mother's last name. Priscilla Natalie Hartranft, a Korean American, took her mother's name Ahn, becoming Priscialla Ahn for the stage.  The surprising exception is the very successful Michelle Zauner (Michelle Chongmi Zauner) a Korean American born in Korea, who has kept her given name.  Zauner is the front for Japanese Breakfast, which is eclectically named, however, as Koreans are not particularly fond of hte Japanese.

I guess that takes us to Asian Pop, or maybe K Pop.  It's bad, but seems huge.  I don't know why.  Like a lot of Japanese group, K Pop tends to be very Kwaaii

But not all Japanese music actually is:

While I should not note it, by the way, I'm going to note it anyhow.  And what I'm going to note is that the children of European ethnicity people and Asian ethnicity people look very Asian as a rule.

It's simply an observation. But as a genetic observation, the genes that contribute to appearance are obviously dominant for the contributing Asian partner.

When I was in college, I knew a student whose father was British and mother Japanese.  He looked very Japanese.  Zauner looks Korean (and yes, I've been to Korea).  Ahn also looks Korean, and Tay looks Chinese.  This is merely an observation.

Last Edition:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLVIII. Library withdrawals.