Only Bayes Can Judge Me

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • Without going into too much detail (because I am not well read on this and am likely to be wrong about a lot of it), one of the many issues that Abe addressed during his leadership was Japan’s declining birthrate. There’s a bit of a conspiracy amongst many people who consume Japanese popular culture (at a deep-ish level) that Abe pushed pronatalist themes in pop culture, as well as tropes like NEETs/hikikomori escaping their isolation from society and entering romantic relationships. This has become a huge meme, where any time a romantic development happens in a manga or anime, many people are quick to say things along the lines of “Abe would be proud”.

    E: From the knowyourmeme page on Abe:

    Japan has seen a declining birthrate and population in recent years, which has been blamed on young people in Japan being uninterested in having sex. However, due to sexual content in many anime, including shows like Darling in the Franxx whose plots seem to encourage procreation, people have joked that Abe is using anime to encourage Japanese young people to have sex and start families. These are particularly popular on Tumblr. For example, Tumblr user justintaco posted a photoshopped image of Abe superimposed on a screenshot of Darling in the Franxx, gaining over 36,000 notes (shown below, left). User freyjaofthenorth made a similar post about the anime Conception, gaining over 2,900 notes (shown below, right). There is also a mock Tumblr for Shinzo Abe devoted to this joke.




  • Idk if I have the formulation right on this but I imagine it’s a combination of various things:

    • Conservative nostalgia, concretely for fries themselves and abstractly for a fake, idealised version of the past.
    • Crackpot health woo: beef tallow is “carnivore” and “caveman” diet-coded. It’s not a processed/GMO seed oil.
    • Conspiracy by US Big Dairy to beef up their numbers.

    I can’t speak for the taste. However, the fat used to fry fries does make a difference, as fat is a conveyance of flavour. Many fry recipes call for peanut oil, for example, while many people prefer using a neutral oil like canola to deep fry. I don’t think I know instinctively what the taste of beef tallow is like, but I imagine it’s just… beefy?

    Notably different oils have different smoke points, meaning you can fry at higher temperatures for different textures. That’s why duck fat potatoes are a thing, for example.

    Malcolm Gladwell famously has a podcast episode on the crusade against beef tallow, where he also replicates mcdonalds fries with beef tallow. But Gladwell is a chud, so fuck all that.