Once I travelled in Asia and met someone from Taiwan in a hostel, and there were two things I noticed about him: 1. How much in kind he was with the culture of

Once I travelled in Asia and met someone from Taiwan in a hostel, and there were two things I noticed about him: 1. How much in kind he was with the culture of the Taiwanese immigrants I knew as a white kid going through a diverse school system - all the same little mannerisms and phrases. 2. That he thought it was oddly particular that I specified San Francisco when we discussed our places of origin. But then recalled it as "Old Gold Mountain", the term used by the Chinese who joined in the gold rush. (New Gold Mountain is Melbourne, Australia. Which as it happens is also a gold rush city that turned into a tech center.) I feel like our ignorance is rather set by preexisting connections or lack thereof, bits of history learned here and there and how our local society positions itself relative to others: surprise at that idea that if people live in a place, it might have the trappings of civilization. On HN it would be strange to be unaware of San Francisco. Someone picked at random from the East Coast cities might think of it as irrelevant(compared to New York, which is actually a surprisingly common comparison). Likewise it doesn't surprise me that some city dwellers see the Midwest as somehow equivalent to the Siberian wilderness.