Ciro Santilli
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- knowyourmeme.com/memes/high-expectations-asian-father
- www.reddit.com/r/AsianParentStories/ 100k+ subs Reddit sub about it
A-sians, not B-sians
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All interests are based on fetishes.
The fetish of beauty. The fetish if intelligence. The fetish of kindness.
What's wrong with the fetish of Asianess?
Whenever Ciro's wife starts with "the Asian fetish talk", Ciro reminds her of her own claimed "tall person fetish", and they call it quits.
Asian fetish is much more than sex. It is about the culture, the history, the language. It is the same fetish that makes great mathematicians an Artists do what they do.
When Ciro Santilli was at École Polytechnique, he had to do a presentation for his stupid English courses that all students were forced to take, no matter how good their English was.
The topic was likely something like "pick a country", and Ciro was delighted when he managed to pick "China", after it had gone around a table with many many people before him.
The PowerPoint presentation Ciro made over the weekend was so amazing (and making it was actually fun to make, Ciro actually remembers it a bit!), drawing partly from stuff his wife then girlfriend showed him, that at the end the one of the other students asked him if he had lived in China.
It is a shame Ciro couldn't find the presentation when he wrote this line many many years later. Anything that is not in a BLOB-free monorepo, will disappear, heed my words. But he's certain about two things which it contained:
- century eggs
- Chinese traditional painting
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_fetish#History_of_originssubservient, passive, mysterious are understandable. But Hyper-sexual and villainous? OMG have these people never seen real Asians?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_fetish#Pornography:
In the United States, women of East and Southeast Asian descent are sometimes stereotyped as subservient, passive, mysterious, villainous in nature, and hyper-sexual.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_fetish#Pornography:
Several studies have implied that Asian women are over-represented in the American pornography industry. Asian women make up perhaps 20% of all female performers, despite being roughly 2.5% of the U.S. population. Asian men also appear to be considerably over-represented, at 10% of male actors.
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www.nytimes.com/2023/07/09/world/asia/north-korea-china-defectors.htmlK-drama, the ultimate symbol of resistance. Epic.
North Korea keeps itself cut off from the internet and sends these highly trained specialists to do work in China, Southeast Asia and elsewhere to avoid international sanctions imposed on the country for its nuclear weapons program. The specialists usually live together in dormitory apartments, where they are instructed to spy on each other. Their North Korean minders look for signs of disloyalty - like watching K-dramas.
This brand: www.jongga.co.kr/global/product/product.jsp
Indian vegetarian thali is the best thing ever! The Southern version in particular. Also do watch a video on how to eat it.
A good place to have it abroad is Saravana Bhavan. The founder killed a dude to marry his wife, but failed and was sentenced to life prison. But he died in 2019 so we're all fine eating there now.
This was Ciro Santilli's main study/work music for several years around 2020. Tabla rules.
Mahamrityunjaya Mantra chanted by 21 Brahmins by Mystica Music
. Source. Mahamrityunjaya Mantra by Medic Medit
. Source. Single male chanter, slow tempo, tanpura drone.Mahamrityunjaya Mantra by The Ghanapati
. Source. Single male chanter. This one has that cool hard edges.Shanti Mantra with Ravi Shankar and George Harrison
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This dude is amazing. He apparently has many devotional songs.
Pandit Jasraj and Ustad Zakir Hussain - 1987 - Haveli Sangeet, Malkauns, and Bhairavi
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Jugalbandi in Chartaal-Ki-Sawari from album Together (1990)
Source. Background?Taal Pancham Sawaari by Zakir Hussain
. Source. The top YouTube commend mentions:This video was made in 1970, on Zakir's first visit to the USA. He and Aashish Khan (keeping taal next to him) had a guest residency at UW Seattle, under the ethnomusicology dept. set up by Robert Garfias.
Two are riculously well known:
Tabla Solo in Jhaptal by Alla Rakha, featuring Ravi Shankar (2003)
Source. 
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Ciro Santilli visited Qatar in 2025, here are some notes.
The lady at the border crossing that checked the passports was terrible. She and all her colleagues had their hijabed colleagues had cell phones on social media right on the job, and a terrible attitude. But one of them had an Apple Watch, they are not poor. They must be the disliked third wives of the cousin of the king of something. During exit the ladies were much better. Perhaps is also because they had the late shift. The facial recognition system was terrible and took several tries to work for some people. Quite funnily, all the border crossing male officers look like Saddam Hussein. Interestingly, Chinese nationals need to take more fingerprint than Europeans. Also there's a company that has a service to collect your bags for you, they have an infinitely long line of Indian valets waiting to pick up other people's bags.
Signal is blocked at my hotel 1 but not hotel 2, and also works on Vodaphone SIM. pornhub.com is blocked everywhere: www.reddit.com/r/qatar/comments/uyhwdz/comment/m6d5980/. WhatsApp voice calling was blocked on hotel 1 and 4G, but not on hotel 2. The National Museum of Qatar blocks YouTube comments with: "Restricted mode has hidden comments for this video".
The place looks a lot like Singapore. Both have an infinite money glitch, and they import cheap NPC foreign labor like there is no tomorrow. At the end of the day you can see a bunch of Indian dudes sitting on the grass in the park as is their custom, exactly like Singapore. But is is way more extreme, with 85%-90% of the population being immigrants.
Paintings of the dictator and his father are visible everywhere. The father is important to suggest that he willingly chose this son to power and give smooth transition. Sometimes the mother is also together, presumably in part to identify which of the wives is the mother!
Drivers are a bit wild, definitely a step up from UK level.
What they are doing to the Palestinians is a tremendous injustice. Either give them citizenship, or give them a country.
The fact that the United States supports this is an incurable black mark in their moral standing that will not be forgotten for a very long time.
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The Israeli occupation is obscene.
The only reason the UN doesn't do anything is that other countries can't be bothered to send people to fight Israel and die there.
And the outcome of this is fundamentalism and indirect deaths elsewhere.
For the most part, a great pseudo-country to live in with lots of cultural diversity, art and safety.
However, Europe is in economic decline after all its Jewish and German geniuses fled in/after World War II and due to having more than one natural language is bad for the world.
Ciro Santilli moved to Europe in 2010.
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It hasn't achieved anything beyond the Schengen zone.
Related:
- having more than one natural language is bad for the world
- Video "The Euro Has Never Been More Problematic by Yanis Varoufakis (2018)" youtu.be/cCA68U3P_Z8?t=433 mentions a quote attributed to Gandhi, although Quote Investigator does not think that the attribution evidence is strong:to which Ghandi answers:
What do you think of Western civilization?
I think it would be a good idea.
Europe has made good regulations to limit the absolute power of immoral companies. Partly because it does not have any companies anymore, but so be it.
But the law that forces every fucking website to show a message "Do you consent to cookies?" is not one of them.
Ciro cannot stand fucking clicking the "I consent" button anymore.
Please stop, for the love of God.
At most, there must be a standardized API that allows your browser to say "I agree or I disagree" automatically to all of them, e.g. an HTTP header.
2021: United Kingdom is considering it post-Brexit: techcrunch.com/2021/09/06/after-years-of-inaction-against-adtech-uks-ico-calls-for-browser-level-controls-to-fix-cookie-fatigue/. Something good might actually come out of Brexit!
Old town sign of Fugging, Upper Austria
. Source. Welcome to Austria!
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Ciro Santilli lived in Paris for a few years between 2013 and 2016, and he can confirm the uncontroversial fact that "Paris is Magic".
Not just one type of magic though. Every quarter in Paris has its own unique personality that sets it apart and gives it a different mood.
Ciro knows Paris not from its historical facts, but from the raw feeling of endless walks through its streets in different times of the year. Ciro is a walker.
Maybe one day Ciro will expand this section to try and convey into words his feelings of love for the city, but maybe the effort would be pointless. Maybe such feelings can only be felt by other free-roaming walker souls living in the city, and that is both beautiful and a shame.
Ciro had written the following in the past before he lived in smaller cities, started cycling and joined the Street reclamation movement he thought:Perhaps compared to São Paulo City, which is what he knew before that was true. But no, his standards have improved since. Paris has way too many cars. The noise of internal combustion engine vehicles is extremely annoying. And because there are too many personal vehicles, cars have to horn a lot to fight for space. Fuck cars. Paris has been making a big cycling push in the early 2020's, and that is great. But it is still far, far from good.
Paris is a friendly city to walkers, as it is not too large, and does not have too many extremely busy roads, you can basically cross all of it on foot.
A lot of skateboarders hand out there, and it was where Ciro Santilli used to practice Cirodance.
For parallels between nazi Germany and the cirosantilli.com/china-dictatorship/nazi
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