How to speak Minnesotan, in case you want to travel to the KKKanadian enclave in AmeriKKKa.
I have to shout out the Rosemalt plates and how even after my exodus, I have to still do the only accepting food on the third offer thing.
This holds for a lot of the upper midwest.
The long goodbyes thing is very real. I kinda love it though, it’s sweet. The talking around what you actually mean, understatement, and symbolic offering and refusal is a little less enjoyable, but it can be learned and it works out ok as the sort of ritual performance it is.
Honestly “Minnesotan language” should refer to some sort of Dakota-Anishinaabemowin hybrid language
I’ve heard Minnesota is one of the better places to live if you’re in the US. Is that true?
This would fully require a real effort post to respond to, but it depends how you look at it. Minnesota is known for being the coldest state in the US, so you have very brutal winters along with hot and humid summers. Though I personally think further west in the great plains, like the Dakotas, is worse because even though the average temp is slightly higher, there is much more wind and lower wind chills. That is usually a big barrier for people wanting to move to the Upper Midwest. But I like the lakes and forests in the northern Midwest, and do think it is a really great area in terms of natural beauty.
The main reason people say that though is that the DFL (Democratic Farm-Labor), essentially the equivalent of the Minnesota Democratic party at this point, is more progressive and less useless than the national party, as low of bar as it is. So there is a bit better public services and transportation than you’d naively expect, and some minor social democratic things like free school lunch and abortion protections that came this year. But obviously that is really hindered by how much smaller state budgets are than federal and that states can’t deficit spend, so there are fundamental limits to what they can do. But now living near Los Angeles for a few years due to my job, I do think that the Twin Cities are better overall, and fairly good for a major US city. Overall, this leads Minnesota to have fairly good metrics on average standard of living for the US, along with being in the Midwest and lower population density meaning rents and cost of living are lower.
This next section is coming with a huge caveat that I am cishet and white, but friends that are gay and other people lead me to believe that Minneapolis is pretty good for LGBTQ+ people, at least relative to the rest of the region. Race issues aren’t great, George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis PD, but I hear varying narratives of racism being above average, or what is to be expected for an average American city. As I said, white, so huge caveat on this, but it doesn’t seem like the Twin Cities are worse in terms of racism than LA, FWIW.
Thanks for the info. I’m in Finland now but if I move back I would consider MN. There’s a reason a lot of Nordic people are there lol. Similar climate and number of lakes.
How bad is the racism there if you’re a Chinese person?
I don’t have a good gauge of that. Chinese students I was friends with didn’t seem to have too hard of a time, as far as I was aware. But that is also before COVID and all the scaremongering about the Chinese the last few years. There is a large Hmong population in the area that seems to do okay, and I assume most racists wouldn’t understand that they aren’t Chinese and not distinguish them much, but IDK.
Thanks that’s good enough for me.
Unquestionably, but that honestly really isn’t saying much. When I was there last year, literally one of the first things I saw on the drive from the airport was a homeless tent.
