Not going to say too much about it except for a few things:

1. “It’s All in the Game” is a reoccurring catchphrase that can be very relevant in the real world.

2. The Wire is Barack Obama’s favorite TV series.

3. There’s an Asian American (Sonja Sohn) in the series who isn’t doing stereotypical Asian American shit and was given one of the leading roles throughout the entire series doing “real police work” in a society which otherwise prefers to paper over the truth with statistical optics.

4. Just to let you guys know how important she is, she’s the girl sitting next to the white dude/main lead Dominic West on this poster.

Anyways, that’s my recommendation for anyone in the Asian American community wanting to watch something interesting.

Hope to meet some new peeps next month! We’re gonna have it at a nice cafe if people are willing to come after work. Come have snacks, some laughs, some new breathing exercises. Shoot maybe make a new homie. Hope people are down to come.

https://www.instagram.com/lotusrisingofficial_?igsi=dXlpdXR6b2VwcWR6&utm_source=qr

Cool shirt I found, so nostalgic

99.97% of refugees admitted to the US in 2026 are South African.

Refugees from South Africa make up almost all the refugees to the U.S. so far in fiscal 2026. Before this fiscal year, South Africans never appeared among the top origin groups. In fact, fiscal 2025 was the first year that the U.S. admitted more than just one or two South African refugees.

The large increase in South African refugees reflects an executive order Trump signed in 2025 that said the federal government would prioritize resettling Afrikaners – an ethnic group descended from mainly Dutch, German and French colonial settlers in South Africa. The executive order said the group faced “government-sponsored race-based discrimination” in South Africa, including the government seizure of farms owned by White South Africans. Those claims have been disputed.

The influx of refugees from South Africa marks a major change in the makeup of refugees to the U.S.

Source: Pew Research Center ( https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/08/17/refugee-admissions-to-the-us-are-dropping-sharply-in-trumps-second-term/ )

So happy Gerardine gets to lead this show in her motherland!

Authorities have recovered the stolen Suni Lee statue that went missing from Phalen Regional Park in St. Paul, Minnesota, almost a year ago.

According to The Minnesota Star Tribune, St. Paul police were responding to reports of shots fired at a home on the 900 block of First Street. When they searched the home with a warrant, they found the bronze Suni Lee statue.

A 22-year-old man has been charged with receiving stolen property. According to CBS News, his mother claims that she found the statue in the bushes down the street.

“Our city honored a great American, Minnesotan, and Saint Paulite, with a statue to celebrate her incredible achievements in multiple Olympic Games. Last year, disrespectful and shameless thieves decided to desecrate this tribute by stealing the statue from our community,” said St. Paul Police Chief Axel Henry in a press release, per KARE 11. “I am happy to report that the statue of Suni Lee has been recovered thanks to our officers’ diligent response to what began as a shots-fired call.”

https://asamnews.com/2026/08/30/stolen-suni-lee-statue-found/

Son and mother involved in Suni Lee statue theft, say police

The stolen bronze statue of Suni Lee was recovered by St. Paul police overnight Friday during the course of a shots fired investigation.

New charging documents reveal that a mother and son may be involved in the theft of a bronze bust of Olympic gymnast Sunisa Lee that was taken more than a year ago.

Ramsey County prosecutors charged 22-year-old Dashawn Caradine on Friday with one count of receiving stolen property. Carardine remains jailed on a $10,000 bond. ...

...

It was around 12:40 a.m. on Friday when neighbors heard gunshots and laughter from 902 Forest St. Officers responded to find shell casings from different caliber guns on the stairways leading to an apartment. They surrounded the unit and told occupants to come outside. Caradine and seven others exited, and Caradine told officers that he lives in the unit with his 44-year-old mother.

Officers searched the unit and found Lee’s statue at the foot of a bedroom closet surrounded by men’s clothing. ...

...

... Caradine’s mother told police that she brought the statue into their home a month ago after finding it in some bushes down the street.

...

Investigators say Caradine’s mother has six previous felony convictions that include burglary and receiving stolen property. ...

Seexeng Lee, the artist who sculpted the bust, estimates it’s worth at least $6,700.

https://www.startribune.com/mother-and-son-involved-in-suni-lee-statue-theft-say-police/601884160

my therapist highly suspects that i have autism and or adhd and now looking back at all my childhood experiences, it adds up.

i never really fit in with the local asian community because socially i was an outcast that didnt understand conversation. my mom always told me im not “feminine enough” and blames me everytime i came up to her regarding struggles on befriending people (yea no wonder why i dont tell her shit anymore).

ifeel like the the only communities that I get along with are the neurodivergent community along with lgbtq (not a part of lgbtq but a strong advocate). funny enough, both communities are very contrasting compared to the asian communities. in a way, it confuses my identity since of course i value culture but it seems like culture doesnt value me.

Pretty cool guy!

is anyone elses family terrified of fish sauce/spilling fish sauce/fish sauce being anywhere but inside a container like mine is or are we just weird. we're probably not, its a bitch to clean up and the smell stays for hours. im never on reddit so sorry if im breaking any cultural rules for reddit 😓 i was just curious if its just me

Mirror

https://archive.ph/2026.08.27-112020/https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2026-08-27/olivia-rodrigos-daisy-chain-fields-is-festival-scale-roar-for-abortion-rights-womens-health

I’m a foreign worker on H1B. Graduated from one of the best universities in China, I came to the United States for my master’s at a top 3 engineering school. I expect to obtain my green card soon under EB1.

I came here not for the prospect of a better life, as naive as it sounds, the 21 year old me was attracted by the fact that the US was founded on a set of principles and ideas. In 2018, I regarded the US as the lighthouse of freedom “自由的灯塔” as Chinese liberals call it.

Before 2018, racial discrimination never crossed my mind.

Now, with the increasing pressure on legal immigration, and personal experience with US society, I do reckon if I should stay here, or if I may live up to my full potential back home. The core principles that made the US special, which I still admire, seem to be under attack.

I consider myself quite fortunate to have a group of American friends — we play sports on weekdays, and throw pool parties or get on the river on weekends. However, I’m feel an increasing sense of otherness “他者”.

This is not a post that I made for venting, I’m genuinely curious how American-born Asians feel in the current environment, given that we are already terribly underrepresented in politics and media.

Edit: added time 2018

So I was recently watching the show Five Stars and it has this Asian character, Gigi, in it. And of course, she’s somewhat of an antagonist in the show, and I just rolled my eyes because lately it seems like this is a serious trend in television and no one’s talking about it.

It’s like TV producers these days thinks they get a free pass at Asians (specifically East and Southeast Asians) because we never really mobilize enough to bring it forward. But male Asian assholes have been everywhere lately (that new show Furious, movies like M3gan, basically any character played by Ronny Chieng), and rich, malevolent Asian women are also a rising trend too. In a lot of teen dramas Asian girls in particular are duplicitous snakes who only value their own wellbeing and, more often than not, their white partners (Leila in Grand Army, Sasha in Heartbreak High—yes I know this is Australian but the point still stands— the best friend in Spinning Out). I can’t even think of a recent show or film that shows Asians in a positive light except Heated Rivalry, and I watch a lot.

And the thing is, it’s not like there aren’t asshole Asian techies or eat-the-rich style Asian millionaires and billionaires in Silicon Valley. But this is Hollywood we’re talking about, and it seems to me like this is another subtle way to sneak in a techno-orientalist agenda adapted for a modern social climate because it so often feels like Asians are treated like “the enemy” just because some of us act like that. The growing stereotype of the “douchey Asian techie” may have some merit, but it feels like it’s being used as an excuse to take jabs at Asians who’re socially mobile and showwriters get away with it because we’re not as likely to discuss it.

And it’s not like all these Asian characters are poorly written—that’s the thing. In my aforementioned example Gigi is a well written character and I do somewhat feel for her, but lately it always feels like it comes with a caveat, like having a genuinely good Asian person who’s not messy is too much of a burden for TV. And don’t even get me started on how often I’m seeing the Asian woman-white man pairing where the woman, in particular, is a vixen or pathetically overvalues her white boyfriend. Or they happen to adapt stories where Asian girls/women get with white boys, like To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before or The Summer I Turned Pretty or even Turning Red. Yes, these were written by Asian women but there’s a reason Hollywood mainly chooses to adapt and push these stories, like Asian girls are exclusively attracted to white boys because that’s all they’re surrounded with—seems like an excuse to not write Asian males or romance unless it’s specifically about Asian Americans. I even relate because I grew up in an all white area and even then, I still wanted to be around more Asian people and still crushed on the only Asian boys at my school (and girls), but usually if those stories are adapted it a whole big thing like an “Asian American assimilation story”. You don’t need to make a big deal about it but it’d also be nice to not have Asian boys be completely invisible in media, or worse, emasculated to hell and back (and to be clear, that doesn’t mean not feminine. I love feminine men and I love seeing it in media, just not with the connotation of them being inferior or feeling racist propaganda like it so often does in American TV).

Like I said, this is happening more often but it feels like Hollywood is more threatened than ever by Asian women and have been shorthanding this trope with the anecdotal exception of “but this happens all the time!” It really doesn’t happen as much as Hollywood thinks it does, but a few spotlighted cases of Asian women marrying wealthy billionaires and all of a sudden it’s what we’re all doing. Please chill.

I don’t know, it’s not the biggest deal in the world but it is getting frustrating. I’d really like if we were represented more holistically. Wealthy white men and women are constantly depicted as assholes, but they have a wide range of representation that doesn’t just box them into one role. We don’t get the privilege of that, especially in “casual” television that isn’t specifically targeted at Asian Americans as “representing the Asian American experience”. And don’t get me started on the recent influx of crazy rich Asians filling our screens—it’s like poor or lower middle class Asians are invisible now, which is completely discounting the many communities of SEA/EA people that are still struggling in the US. It’s definitely tied to the “model minority” stereotype that demands Asians not engage in any form of activism because we’re “all” socially mobile now. Okay, sure.

I don’t know this is kind of a winding rant here, and maybe it has something to do with the type of media I consume, but I watch a lot of mainstream television and I shouldn’t have to seek out Asian American media to see us represented in a more complex and complete way. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to turn on a show and see us doing something other than being rich assholes or marrying rich white assholes or being the token Asian with token Asian characteristics. Even if these characters are well written, that doesn’t erase the fact that they’re all written with these particular traits in mind to push an insidious agenda that we shouldn’t complain because we’re “practically white at this point.” I call this the Stephen King effect—just because you write a well written character doesn’t mean there isn’t a racist ideology fueling it, even subconsciously. White (especially white woman) liberal media, in particular, likes to claim representation when the threat of Asianness “invading” white spaces is subtly and subconsciously reinforced in the characters and shows they write.

Asian Americans, immigrants or children of immigrants- What was it like for you or your parents coming to America? What were the reasons for making such a big change? What challenges did you or them face among society or with the system? And for children of immigrants- did you ever have dreams you wanted to pursue (even if they didn't guarantee a successful life) that ended up being supressed by your parents? How and why? I, as a child of Chinese immigrants, am trying to draw from my experiences and my parents, but Asian Americans contain a spectrum of stories and I would like to draw from others'. I am creating a graphic novel, now for IB creativity hours and a college application, although I have been wanting to do this for some time without considering academics. It looks just like any other superhero story at first. A kid can create discs made of pure energy, he can throw them and fly on them, he meets other heroes his age and fights aliens alongside them, etc, etc, etc. However, that's only the tip of the iceberg. The story isn't just some run-of-the-mill superhero epic, it's a story about the struggles of immigrants and their children. Working hard enough to make it through, their motives, and adapting to a culture that's not theirs. And the kids have dreams, some would say too big, especially their parents. Some of our parents (mine and the main characters included) think that because they moved to America to provide a better life to their children, their kids need to save face and prioritize stability rather than big, "stupid" dreams. I go through this, as I want so badly to be a musician, but I have my life written for me already in dentistry. My main character goes through this too, finally finding a purpose and a crevice he can fit into, wanting to be a superhero. I'm sure someone here can tell these kinds of stories too. So tell me, what's yours? And if you can, what were your parents'?

My parents have been here 15+ years and manage fine, but there’s a steady drip of small English-only tasks that still land on me. This week it was a live chat with the city, in the middle of my workday, to schedule a bed frame pickup — then chasing them again when nobody showed. Other weeks it’s the “is this text a scam?” screenshots, a letter from the bank, a phone update.

Just my family, or is this universal? What’s on your list?

I've always felt there's a slight disconnect between how I feel when I interact with suburban white Americans as opposed to suburban Asian-Americans (when I say suburban I mean suburban, not someone from the Deep South or something). But I'm not entirely sure why.

Both speak with the same accents, use the same slang, like partying and going out, have similar hobbies, eat a variety of foods, have similar personality traits for the most part, and are generally happy to interact with each other.

And yet, I've always felt that when I'm talking to a suburban white person it frequently feels like I'm talking to someone in a foreign language that I can speak fluently. We can talk but it still doesn't feel the most "at-home" to me.

I'm wondering if there's some fundamental differences that I'm missing. And not anything superficial or outdated like "Asians like boba and white people like milkshakes" or whatever, I mean something deeper in difference between the two that you wouldn't really note down on paper generally.

I have a white friend who is super into cosplay. In general I don't really care what makeup style people use. Wearing Asian style makeup like Douyin makeup for example can be perceived as cultural appreciation.

The thing is my friend only does Douyin makeup when cosplaying as an Asian character. I don't know how to feel about this. One hand, it's just makeup and anyone can do it. But it seems a bit odd to wear Asian style makeup only when cosplaying as an Asian character. The intent seems like she wants to be perceived as Asian in her cosplay since she doesn't use that makeup for anything else.

I'm sure it's harmless and I'm probably reading too much into it but I don't know. It just seems a bit strange.

I’m Korean and have an older Korean friend who moved from Korea to Sydney at 9. He’s 27 now, basically hasn’t been back since, grew up here without his parents and says English is more comfortable for him. But after knowing him for over 5 years, I’ve never once felt like I’m talking to someone who grew up overseas.

He did almost all of his schooling after age 9 in Australia, went to uni here and works here now. His parents stayed in Korea and his grandmother looked after him to some extent, so he didn’t even grow up with Korean speaking parents constantly using Korean at home.

His English is completely native and most of what he’s learned academically and professionally is in English. I’ve also seen him around his English speaking friends plenty of times, so I know that side of him well.

But with me, we basically only speak Korean.

I don’t mean this as a purity test or that diaspora Asians are somehow less Asian. I’m talking about the small linguistic and social differences you often notice when someone grows up in places like Australia, the US, Canada or the UK.

I’m 21 and came to Australia at around 15-16, did Year 10 to Year 12 here and I’m now finishing my third year of uni before moving back to Korea after graduating. I’ve lived here long enough to meet a lot of Koreans and other Asians who grew up overseas, so I’m pretty familiar with the differences you usually notice.

My English wasn’t as good when we first met, so Korean probably became our default early on, but my English is completely fine now and he knows that. We could easily speak English if we wanted to, but we still almost never switch.

The only recent time we spoke a noticeable amount of English was while drinking with his girlfriend and a non-Korean coworker, so everyone was speaking English. I was pretty drunk and ended up speaking some English to him, and he did the same lol. Even then it felt unusual because that’s just not how we normally talk.

His Korean was already very natural when I met him around 2020. He later dated a Korean girl and his current girlfriend is Korean too, and he says his Korean improved a lot through that.

I once jokingly told him it was impressive that he basically never got “gyopo-fied” despite moving here at 9, by which I meant he never developed the kind of Korean diaspora linguistic or cultural vibe I usually notice in people who grew up abroad. He just laughed and said something along the lines of how some people end up not even knowing their own country’s culture. What stood out to me was how casually he said it, like he didn’t see his own situation as anything unusual.

I’ve seen very different outcomes at similar ages too. I knew a Korean guy who moved here at around 11-12 and by high school English was already his dominant language and his Korean was noticeably awkward. I also knew a Chinese guy who moved here at 9 whose Mandarin sounded mainland native and who never really gave me the typical Chinese diaspora vibe either, but he said culturally he felt like he was basically stuck at age 9 when it came to China.

So for other 1.5-gen Asians who moved around 8-12, how much variation have you seen?

Do some people basically retain their original linguistic and social framework while becoming fully native in English too, while others become much more diaspora-coded within only a few years?

im vietnamese american and i want to start packing more asian foods to school and work but im not really what are good options! please give me your favorite recommendations, or recipes!

thanks in advanced!!

Posting here because there's a higher likelihood of people who might experience this. I get Asian glow, aka a deficiency of the aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 enzyme which causes a buildup of acetyldehyde in the system. I don't drink often. The morning after I drink (2-3 drinks minimum), my first pee of the day always smells like yeast. I'm curious if this has to do with the enzyme deficiency or if it's just a weird thing my body does.