Maybe I'm not putting all the pieces together correctly.
What is the significance of her wearing a hijab? Why is that worthy of mention, or the fact that the owner family was from Turkey? And also the Thanksgiving eve bit?
They are just details. Let them echo around in your head as you like.
Maybe she's from a conservative part of the world that doesn't have too many woman turning out as doctors. Maybe supporting her family of immigrants, who might not have a ton of money and are dealing with some of the hard things that being new in a strange country brings. Maybe in the deep background you can sense an unhappy reason they left Turkey in the first place. And all this taking place on a holiday eve when she and your narrator would rather be home with a hot tea and a book. She's a fighter, up against long odds, having overcome some adversity to get here. I don't mind a short wait.
It seems you're a big fan of judging people on superficial details of their internet comments.
The point was pretty clear to me...that there's a person and a family on the losing end of all this. Giving the owners of a store a backstory is humanizing, OP gave as much detail as he knew which wasn't much and that's fine. It's a shame we're all so tense about cultural details that people get attacked for trying to say something nice.
Not op. I frequently do, all the time. You seem to indicate this is a bad thing. Maybe I misunderstood but its just data. As long as you don't draw huge conclusions with no room to adjust, then in my book its basically par for the course. We reason from heuristics, its difficult to analyze every possible person from first principles, especially in a casual interaction...
This has nothing to do with the hijab. This is a matter of mixing perspectives.
All of the descriptions of the situation are rather mundane and bland. Only two extra details stand out: "Upper East Side of Manhattan (think pooches inside Gucci bags)" and "in a Hijab and was studying medicine and was helping her parents who immigrated from Turkey".
A significant percentage of "regular" stores in big cities are owned or at least managed and operated by immigrants from very different backgrounds.
These details being present in the brief story seem to have some significance, so my question was, "Why is this significant?"
This is not a judgement on the people running the store or of people in hijabs. It's a question for the poster about why those details were significant.
Maybe it was just the ramblings of an old person (which I can say as I'm an old person). But it is still fair to ask for clarification.
In a brief recall such as the parent post, certain details would seem either superfluous or meaningful if they don't appear to relate to the topic.
If you mentioned that the guy at the counter of the CVS was wearing a baseball cap, we would wonder why that was a significant detail, or maybe "what team was on the cap".
Saying someone had a hijab is clearly leading with some meaning, but the post didn't go into that detail. I can only guess that it implied something related to Muslims; but I don't even know. They didn't expand on that. So we are left to wonder WHY they mentioned it.
My interpretation was simply painting the picture of who helped him, and not commentary about muslim beliefs.
As another commenter said—humanizing the part of the locked deodorant, and that they did not mind because at the end of the day “we’re all in this together.”
It sounds like somberi is bringing home the point that they went really far out of their way to a very different culture to work hard and make a way for themselves and try to beat the odds? Isn't that the very idea of America?
You are filling in so many details that are not there. But whether that is correct or not is not the point.
The point is, why mention it? Should we be surprised, or should we be impressed that an immigrant Muslim family was involved? I just don't know what the OP wants me to feel. It's touchy, but it is ambiguous.
Is that good? Is that bad? Is it stereotypical? Is it challenging expectations?
I think the point is that there’s a human on the other side too, not faceless corporation.
Rhetorically, the story works just as well if it’s a scary-looking guy in a biker jacket, helping his sister open a ballet studio, or someone clad head-to-toe in Rangers’ gear.
> scary-looking guy in a biker jacket, helping his sister open a ballet studio
I think this illustrates the possible unspoken angle of the post. Is the post trying to show a surprising contrast? And if so, should I be surprised to see anyone, hijab or not, working in a family pharmacy store while also working on their MD?
With your example, a scary-looking guy in a biker jacket evokes a certain feeling (fear, worry, etc.), but then we find out that he's just a good guy helping his sister do something that's very unlike his nature - or the nature we would assume a "scary-looking" guy in a biker jacket would be about.
By this example, I would take it to mean that your interpretation is that a girl in a hijab is a scary person to worry about, but in reality she's just a good, smart, hard-working girl helping her family.
This is why I raised the initial question. These couple of extra specific details lead somewhere. I wanted to know where, because the perspective was not provided. The reader was left to make their own assumptions or draw conclusions. Based on your example, we see one conclusion: fear of people in hijabs, but that such fear is not appropriate.
I take the perspective that the hijab doesn't represent a special person nor a person to fear any more than a guy with a baseball cap on his head sideways means something other than "he likes to wear a cap in a way that doesn't block the light from his eyes".
Nope. At least for me, the details are meant to sketch striking human characters that you want to support, whether they are plucky (children of) immigrants, surprising family men, or hometown characters [0]. The rhetorical contrast is not a hijab-less woman, jacket-less man, or Dallas Cowboys fan.
Instead, consider this over-the-top example: "Augustus P. Moneybags, who owns 51% of the parent company Amalgamated Holdings, said deodorant theft reduced earnings per share from $1.20 to $1.19 this year. Although the company still turned record profits, he vowed to crack down on it. Specific plans were not available at press time, as Mr. Moneybags had left on his yacht." Here, I can imagine thinking "Meh, who cares? Maybe people need deodorant more tan this guy needs money."
[0] You didn't mention Rangers guy, but if it wasn't clear from context, the NY Rangers are a local hockey team. Nothing scary about them, except perhaps their recent mediocrity.
Well, she was unlocking small pigeon holes so that they could read the labels (reveal the mystery inside), clearly she will do gastroenterology or gynecology.
Do we really have to explain? She is patient because she is willing to unlock multiple deodorants for a customer until they find one they are satisfied with, she’s a hard worker who puts others needs above her own. Her family relies on the store for income and she is working there even when she should just be focusing on school. Because of rampant theft, the family cannot afford to lose inventory the way other stores can.
Finally, the adherence to the hijab shows that she knows her place in the world. She is here to serve, not chase her own self interests and hedonism. Hence why she will be a good doctor in the service of others.
Where did you develop your reading comprehension skills?
> she knows her place in the world. She is here to serve,
I know it's sort of an unspoken NoNo on HN, but given your bold comment I had to look (I thought maybe you were using confrontational comedy). But your bio: "Ethically challenged software engineer working for a major tech company you know. Used to have close to 1000 karma, got destroyed over time by hackernews cancel culture and a change in downvote algorithms. But now that the algorithm has been changed back to classic style, I'm rising up again."
There's no point arguing with you. I want so much to tear apart your lunacy, but it would do nothing here (and worse, it wouldn't change what you apparently have going on in your mind).
I will admit though, I never realized that a woman without a hijab would "chase her own self interests and hedonism".
But out of curiosity, assuming women with hijabs don't have self interests or hedonistic tendencies, what sort of clothing would a man wear if he wanted to demonstrate that he also was not self focused or hedonistic? (I ask because I want to be sure I'm never caught wearing such garb.)
A real keyboard is absolutely necessary for real work, as you say. I think what makes the iPad Pro attractive is that it can have a real, decent keyboard (and trackpad) that is optional depending on your momentary need.
Unless one flies business class, there is often not enough space between seats to comfortably use a traditional laptop. With a tablet, you can at least do something.
The other big thing is that iPad Pros have very high screen brightness. For working outside it's a big benefit, as most portable laptops don't get that bright. The M2 Air and the M* Pros do, but you can't just pull the screen off when you only need a screen.
The best of both worlds, imo, is to have an M2 Air and an iPad Pro. When you're at a desk to do real work, you get the full laptop benefit plus the big iPad Pro as a second monitor. When you're on the daily outing, you take either or depending on your expected need. But you do now have a $5000 setup, which is more than many people would like to spend for a little more flexibility.
If Apple hadn't done such a great job with the M* Air, it would be easier for me to consider some other vendors' 180 degree folding laptops. But the silence of my Air and the amazing battery life are hard to give up.
I have previously setup a Hetzner server (EU) with openVPN and Code Server, and then I was able to really have the benefits of pretty secure dev environment that was always on, easily accessible, and powerful. Of course it required a connection to use, but the bandwidth requirements were low. Latency requirements were more important, but they weren't as harsh as if you were using a remote desktop.
This is probably an underserved area, actually. There are a lot of patterns of behavior we each have which involve our browsers, and there's probably room for some usage optimization extensions.
Do you know of a good site that focuses on browser extension reviews and discussions? I now realize I could probably find things which would improve my life, but I don't feel like doing a random walk through the general extension page of Firefox.
This is one of those examples that I liken to the dry cleaning business.
In any given city there may be lots of dry cleaners available. Some will be much better than others (service, performance, etc.). Some will be much cheaper than others. Some may be the perfect combination of all these things.
Unfortunately, we often don't know where the best one is. And perhaps because of another person's suggestion "affiliate marketing", it is now virtually impossible to search online to get actual reviews of things (as there are now more SEO-d review sites which are just thinly veiled affiliate marketing sites).
So we use the service we see nearby or stumble upon. It may not be the best, but we don't really know better.
The same applies to so many things in life, business or otherwise (people, friends, relationships). Thus, yet-another-monitoring-service can succeed if it gets enough customers, even if there are much better services out there.
The target markets haven't increased in size, unless you're in developing countries with upwardly mobile populations.
So more affiliate marketers just means more duplication of noise, with everyone gaming ways to get the same business (or direct the same business to your companies).
If I have to watch another NordVPN ad baked into a youtube video, ...
This idea could be scaled (and likely is implemented somewhere) to big $$$. This is essentially a last-mile care system which could be contracted by governments to do what, in this case (not all cases), private industry can be more efficient at doing.
I don't think it has to scale though, maybe it can but it might just perpetuate poor conditions for care workers
I think it could be as simple as a few standardised processes and contracts. If a village wants to try it they follow the steps and set it up themselves
As long as you're not unhappy with your day job, that's great. If you are unhappy, then you have a passion project/domain that you already have good progress in.
It's easy to give advice, so I'll give some. Make a 6 month plan toward quitting your day job (reducing financial burdens, winding down unnecessary expenses, generally preparing for no income). Make some potential plans for how you might fill your days with regard to your audio work. If you don't do this step, you may find yourself feeling lost or aimless and consequently not as happy as you would have expected.
But here's the best part, I think: start using some of your free time to go to conferences and shows where audio tech is a feature. Show some of your stuff, or at least talk to others about it. Where this could lead is vast and somewhat unpredictable, but it might be a lot of fun and it likely could lead to something solid.
Meanwhile, focus on one or two of your projects and try to get them polished enough to setup a storefront and promote (assuming you're not already doing this).
Maybe it never reaches your current job income, but it might get close enough that you decide it was worth it. And if not, there will always be more jobs waiting.
What is the significance of her wearing a hijab? Why is that worthy of mention, or the fact that the owner family was from Turkey? And also the Thanksgiving eve bit?