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Pop Culture

A viral post argues East Coast folks are better people even if they aren't as 'nice' as those out West

It's sparked a "nice vs. kind" debate from people across the country.

OnlMaps/Twitter, Jordan Green/Twitter, Mike DeAngelo/Twitter

Having lived in small towns and large cities in the Pacific Northwest, Southwest, and Midwest, and after spending a year traveling around the U.S. with my family, I've seen first-hand that Americans have much more in common than not. I've also gotten to experience some of the cultural differences, subtle and not-so-subtle, real and not-so-real, that exist in various parts of the country.

Some of those differences are being discussed in a viral thread on Twitter. Self-described "West coaster" Jordan Green kicked it off with an observation about East coasters being kind and West coasters being nice, which then prompted people to share their own social experiences in various regions around the country.

Green wrote:

"When I describe East Coast vs West Coast culture to my friends I often say 'The East Coast is kind but not nice, the West Coast is nice but not kind,' and East Coasters immediately get it. West Coasters get mad.

Niceness is saying 'I'm so sorry you're cold,' while kindness may be 'Ugh, you've said that five times, here's a sweater!' Kindness is addressing the need, regardless of tone.

I'm a West Coaster through and through—born and raised in San Francisco, moved to Portland for college, and now live in Seattle. We're nice, but we're not kind. We'll listen to your rant politely, smile, and then never speak to you again. We hit mute in real life. ALOT.

So often, we West Coasters think that showing *sympathy* or feeling *empathy* is an act of kindness. Sadly, it's really just a nice act. Kindness is making sure the baby has a hat. (s/o to breenewsome and BlackAmazon)

When you translate this to institutions or policy, you'll see alot of nice words being used, & West Coast liberals/radicals are really good at *sounding* nice. But I've seen organizers & activists from other places get frustrated because nothing happens after ALOT of talk.

Nothing happens after the pronoun check-ins and the icebreakers. It's rare we make sure that people's immediate needs are addressed. There's no kindness. You have people show up to meetings hungry, or needing rides home, and watching those with means freeze when asked to help.

As we begin to 'get back a sense of normalcy' or 're-calibrate' to what people in Blue States™ think is Right™ and Just™, I want us to keep in mind the difference between Niceness and Kindness. If something sounds nice, doesn't mean that it's kind."

Of course, there are genuinely kind and surface nice people everywhere you go, so no one should take these observations as a personal affront to them individually. Generalizations that lead to stereotypes are inherently problematic, and broad strokes like "East coast" and "West coast" are also somewhat meaningless, so they should taken with a grain of salt as well.

In reality, a small town in South Carolina is probably more culturally similar to a small town in Eastern Oregon than it is to New York City, and there are some strong differences between various subregions as well. A more specific cultural comparison, such as "big cities on the West coast vs. big cities in the Northeast" might be more accurate as far as generalizations go, but regardless, many people related to Green's observations based on their own experiences.

To kick things off, a slew of responses poured in from people describing how New Yorkers can be cold on the surface while simultaneously reaching out their hand to help you.

Several people explained that the hustle required to afford the expense of living in New York explains why people skip the niceties. It's about valuing people's time; wasting it with nice words is ruder than just quickly helping out and then moving on.

Many people chimed in with agreement with the original post (even some Canadians confirming that their East/West differences aligned with ours).

"No sense of urgency" is definitely a West coast vibe, but is generally viewed a positive out here. And "inconveniencing everyone around them" might be a subjective observation. Maybe.

Plenty of people with bicoastal experience weighed in with their stories of how their experiences lined up with the basic premise of the thread, though.

Though certainly not universally true, the tendency for West coasters to be more hands-off might extend back to the frontier days. The pioneer and gold rush mindset was necessarily individualistic and self-sufficient. In my experience, West coasters assume you don't need help unless you directly ask for it. But people don't ask because of the individualistic and self-sufficient thing, so automatic helpfulness just hasn't become part of the dominant culture.

Things got even more interesting once the South and Midwest entered the chat.

But the takes on warm/nice/kind thing varied quite a bit.

One thing that seems quite clear if you read through the various responses to the thread is that specific states and cities seem to have their own cultures that don't break down as simply as East/West/Midwest/South. There's an entire book about how the U.S. can actually be subdivided into 11 different regions that are almost like nations unto themselves. Even this map from 1940 included 34 different cultural regions in the U.S.

And don't even get a Californian started on the differences between Northern CA, Southern CA, and the Central Valley. "Culture" can even be narrowed down even to specific neighborhoods, and people's experiences and perceptions vary for all kinds of reasons, so once again, generalizations only go so far before they fall flat.

If you're curious about what the data says about all of this, a cursory search of surveys about which states are the kindest brings up a fairly mixed bag, but people seem to find Minnesota quite friendly. A Wallethub ranking of charitability by state based on 19 factors including volunteerism also placed Minnesota at number one, followed by Utah, Maryland, Oregon, and Ohio. Pretty hard to make a regional generalization with those states.

Then again, there's the whole "Minnesota nice" thing, which brings us full circle back to the original thread.

So many elements go into the culture of a place, from population density to the history of settlement to the individual personalities of the people who make someplace their home. And nothing is set in stone—the atmosphere of a place can change over time, as anyone who's visited a city a decade or two apart can attest.

One thing that's true, no matter where we live, is that we play a role in molding the culture of our immediate surroundings. If we want where we live to be friendlier, we can be friendlier ourselves. If we want to see people help one another, we can serve as that example. We might stand out, but we also might inspire others who yearn for the same thing.

"Be the change" might seem a bit cliche, but it truly is the key to shifting or world in the way we want it to go, no matter what part of the country—or the world—we live in.


This article originally appeared on 01.22.21

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Education

Grad student in California commuted from L.A. to class in the Bay Area by plane to save on rent

He made the trip from Los Angeles to Cal Berkeley and back an average of 3 days a week.

via Kelly/Pexels

The inside of a commercial airliner.

Even though Los Angeles and San Francisco are both in California, they are still 380 miles apart, which either involves an hour-and-fifteen-minute-long flight or a roughly 7-hour drive.

An engineer in Los Angeles named Bill got accepted into a one-year master’s degree program at Cal Berkeley but was put off by the idea of paying the astronomical rent in the Bay Area. Berkeley is located just north of Oakland in the East Bay, where the average rent is over $3500 a month.

Bill had an affordable place in L.A. and a job waiting for him when he finished school, so he decided he would do the unthinkable to most people, commute to school and back.

"I was living in LA comfortably. I got accepted into a one-year MEng program (technically August 2022-May 2023). I knew I would go back to LA after graduation because I want to go back to my previous employer once I graduate,” he shared on Reddit’s Berkeley subforum. “I love flying and I have a lot of frequent flyer miles/points from credit card sign up bonus/flying over the past few years. Bay area rent is expensive in general, and my program is only 10 months, so I thought I could get it through commuting by plane."

Bill had classes three days a week on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday, but he booked flights for five days a week in case he had a meeting or an event he had to attend.


“If I don't need to come to campus that Tu/Th, I just cancel the tickets the night before and get a full refund. I have elite status with Alaska and Southwest, both offer a valuable perk called same-day change,” Bill said.

On a typical Monday and Wednesday during the fall schedule, when classes started at 10 am, he would wake up at 3:40 am in Los Angeles and drive to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) for a 6:00 Alaska Airlines flight to San Francisco International Airport (SFO). Upon arriving in the Bay, he would take the BART light-rail train to campus. For his 8 am Friday class, he would take the 5:30 am Southwest Flight to Oakland International Airport.

“If I'm hanging out with friends or working on hw/projects with cohort for a bit longer in the library, I would take the last flight home (905pm OAK-LAX on Southwest or 1030pm SFO-LAX on Alaska),” he continued. “But normally I would take the 6pm or 7pm flight and reach home around 930pm.”

Bill completed the degree program in 10 months, and the total cost for transportation was less than two months of rent living in Berkeley.

Total Cost:

$5592.66, with $671.29 on BART, $520.00 on parking, $1948.27 on gas, $39.96 on inflight wifi, $1552.10 on Alaska, 407500 Alaska miles, $758.24 on Southwest, 156945 Southwest points, $71.30 on United, 5500 United miles, $15.60 on Avianca, 6500 Avianca miles, $15.90 on Spirit. 114 trips, 238 flights, 92089 miles flown, spent 75955 minutes on my commute, equivalent to 52.75 24-hr days.

But most importantly, Bill got his degree, and according to Fox 5 San Diego, he is now working full-time as a transportation engineer. He hopes to one day become Secretary of the U.S. Transportation Department, like Pete Buttigieg.

“This is probably one of the craziest things I’ve done in my life, and I’m so glad I made it through, without missing any classes,” Bill said. “That itself is a miracle.”

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Health

The tear-jerking open letter Joe Biden wrote to the Stanford rape survivor

"I do not know your name — but your words are forever seared on my soul."

Photo (cropped) from Michael Stokes/Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons.

Joe Biden at the podium.

This article originally appeared on 06.09.16


Vice President Joe Biden penned a heartfelt letter to the victim of the Stanford rape case — a story that has left the country stunned, outraged, and heartbroken.

The case's convicted perpetrator, Brock Turner, was given just six months behind bars, despite sentencing guidelines that could have resulted in him facing up to 14 years.

Why? Jail could have a "severe impact" on the 20-year-old criminal, Santa Clara County Judge Aaron Persky had determined.

The injustice doesn't stop there. It appears Turner — a former swimmer at Stanford University, whose athleticism somehow seemed disturbingly pertinent throughout the trial — will likely only spend half that time behind bars for good behavior, The Chicago Tribune reports: just three months.

Along with the rest of the country, Biden is both outraged over the injustice and saddened for the survivor.

Biden — who led the charge in passing the Violence Against Women Act in 1994 and has since been an outspoken advocate on the issue — wrote an emotionally-charged open letter, published on BuzzFeed, which both praises the 23-year-old survivor for coming forward and slams "a culture that continues to ask the wrong questions" for failing her so badly.

Here is Biden's "open letter to a courageous young woman" in full (emphasis mine):

I do not know your name — but your words are forever seared on my soul. Words that should be required reading for men and women of all ages.

Words that I wish with all of my heart you never had to write.

I am in awe of your courage for speaking out — for so clearly naming the wrongs that were done to you and so passionately asserting your equal claim to human dignity.

And I am filled with furious anger — both that this happened to you and that our culture is still so broken that you were ever put in the position of defending your own worth.

It must have been wrenching — to relive what he did to you all over again. But you did it anyway, in the hope that your strength might prevent this crime from happening to someone else. Your bravery is breathtaking.

You are a warrior — with a solid steel spine.

I do not know your name — but I know that a lot of people failed you that terrible January night and in the months that followed.

Anyone at that party who saw that you were incapacitated yet looked the other way and did not offer assistance. Anyone who dismissed what happened to you as “just another crazy night." Anyone who asked “what did you expect would happen when you drank that much?" or thought you must have brought it on yourself.

You were failed by a culture on our college campuses where one in five women is sexually assaulted — year after year after year. A culture that promotes passivity. That encourages young men and women on campuses to simply turn a blind eye.

The statistics on college sexual assault haven't gone down in the past two decades. It's obscene, and it's a failure that lies at all our feet.

And you were failed by anyone who dared to question this one clear and simple truth: Sex without consent is rape. Period. It is a crime.

I do not know your name — but thanks to you, I know that heroes ride bicycles.

Those two men who saw what was happening to you — who took it upon themselves to step in — they did what they instinctually knew to be right.

They did not say, “It's none of my business."

They did not worry about the social or safety implications of intervening, or about what their peers might think.

Those two men epitomize what it means to be a responsible bystander.

To do otherwise — to see an assault about to take place and do nothing to intervene — makes you part of the problem.

Like I tell college students all over this country — it's on us. All of us.

We all have a responsibility to stop the scourge of violence against women once and for all.

I do not know your name — but I see your unconquerable spirit.

I see the limitless potential of an incredibly talented young woman — full of possibility. I see the shoulders on which our dreams for the future rest.

I see you.

You will never be defined by what the defendant's father callously termed “20 minutes of action."

His son will be.

I join your global chorus of supporters because we can never say enough to survivors: I believe you. It is not your fault.

What you endured is never, never, never, NEVER a woman's fault.

And while the justice system has spoken in your particular case, the nation is not satisfied.

And that is why we will continue to speak out.

We will speak to change the culture on our college campuses — a culture that continues to ask the wrong questions: What were you wearing?

Why were you there? What did you say? How much did you drink?

Instead of asking: Why did he think he had license to rape?

We will speak out against those who seek to engage in plausible deniability. Those who know that this is happening, but don't want to get involved. Who believe that this ugly crime is “complicated."

We will speak of you — you who remain anonymous not only to protect your identity, but because you so eloquently represent “every woman."

We will make lighthouses of ourselves, as you did — and shine.

Your story has already changed lives.

You have helped change the culture.

You have shaken untold thousands out of the torpor and indifference toward sexual violence that allows this problem to continue.

Your words will help people you have never met and never will.

You have given them the strength they need to fight.

And so, I believe, you will save lives.

I do not know your name — but I will never forget you.

The millions who have been touched by your story will never forget you.

And if everyone who shared your letter on social media, or who had a private conversation in their own homes with their daughters and sons, draws upon the passion, the outrage, and the commitment they feel right now the next time there is a choice between intervening and walking away — then I believe you will have helped to change the world for the better.

Biden's words — as well as the survivor's letter she read aloud to her attacker — are rippling across the internet for one very important reason: Millions of us are disgusted, fed up, and demanding change to a culture that's allowed this atrocity to happen.

To every warrior with a spine of solid steel: We hear you, we support you, and we stand by your side.

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Science

A whale-watching tour got to witness a gray whale giving birth right next to their boat

Even the expert crew said they'd never seen anything like it.

Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash

Whale watchers got to see a baby whale being born off the coast of Dana Point, California.

Seeing a whale in the wild can be a moving experience for many people. That's why thousands of people pay money to go on whale-watching excursions, hoping to catch a glimpse of the gentle, majestic, intelligent creatures in their natural habitat.

Lucky whale watchers get to catch much more than a glimpse, and some even see a whale breach up close. But very, very few ever get to see anything close to what a recent group of tourists on a whale-watching cruise off Dana Point, California, got to witness.

Boats are required by law to stay at least 100 yards away from whales, but if a whale approaches a boat when it's stopped, there's not a whole lot a captain can do. Starting up the engine would just disturb it, so the best thing to do is just enjoy the encounter.

In this case, when a gray whale swam near a Capt. Dave's Dana Point Dolphin & Whale Watching Safari tour boat, passengers and crew thought they might be witnessing something tragic. The whale was splashing about and was soon surrounded by blood in the water. Some speculated that maybe a shark or other predatory animal had attacked the whale.

As it turned out, they were witnessing the miracle of life—it was a mama giving birth to a baby gray whale.

Twitter user Jeremy Theisen shared a video of the event, and though it's difficult to see what happens, you can hear the people on the boat wondering what was happening before it became clear.

Capt. Dave's shared drone footage of the exciting moments after the birth as the calf learned to swim and the mama seemed to show off her newborn to those who witnessed the event.

"This is a first for all of us. We've never actually seen it happen," Capt. Gary Brighouse can be heard saying, according to WXXI News.

Captain Dave's shared in a statement on YouTube:

"After surfacing, the newborn calf began learning how to swim and bonding with its mother. The female even brought the calf over to the boats as if to show off her offspring and say hello.

Gray whales prefer to give birth in the warm and protected lagoons of Baja California, Mexico. The lagoons offer safety from predators such as orcas, as well as warm water for calves who have not yet built up a thick layer of blubber.

Although some gray whales do give birth in Baja, there are times when calves just won't wait and are born during the migration. Gray whales migrate annually along the U.S. west coast, swimming 10,000 to 12,000 miles round-trip. It is one of the longest migrations of any mammal. The whales travel from their feeding grounds in the Bering and Chukchi Seas near Alaska to the mating and birthing lagoons of Baja, and back again."

Alisa Schulman-Janiger runs the Los Angeles chapter of the American Cetacean Society's Gray Whale Census and Behavior Project, which tracks the migration patterns of whales along the coast. She told NPR that the footage of the birth and immediate aftermath was "astounding" and a windfall for researchers.

"The fact that you can see the blood pool means the calf must have just come out," she said. "That isn't something that is seen very often or documented often. In fact, I don't know if there's any other video footage of something like that."

Schulman-Janiger explained how the mama whale was holding the calf up so it could rest and breathe and that they exhibited typical bonding behavior. She said she wished she had been there, adding: "It's extraordinarily rare and really, really special for people to be able to share in those first few moments of a young whale's life. A whale could get to be 50, 60, 80 years old. And this is just the beginning of that calf life."

What an incredible thing to witness.

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