Non-Americans who have been to the US.. What is the weirdest thing about America that Americans don't realize is weird?
Non-Americans who have been to the US.. What is the weirdest thing about America that Americans don't realize is weird?
I never understood the need to display multiple US flags in your yard. We get it, you live in america. You love America. We get that too. Are you afraid someone will think you no longer wish to be American if you took your flags down?
It took me (an American) going to Ireland and Northern Ireland to realize how odd the excessive flag waving is. Still odd, but those two have the US beat.
"Those two" have a few reasons to want to wave their flags.
Currently live in the Republic of Ireland and I have no idea what you're talking about? Were you here on Saint Patrick's Day? There's a significant amount of Palestinian flags in windows here for pretty obvious reasons but other than that I don't think I've seen a flag since, again, Paddy's day.
No, leave them up so I know to avoid you.
I think for some it's a mix of patriotism and having poor taste in decor. I know people who also have American flag swim shorts, sunglasses, etc. Also, it's not exclusive to America. My British side of the family (especially the ones who've met the former Queen) have a weird amount of UK flag decor too, ranging from clock faces, throw pillows, and even an armchair covered in a giant union jack.
As long as it's the UK flag, and not the English flag, I'll give them a pass. Stay clear from anyone in an England flag, drunk or sober, football or naught.
Honestly I assume most people with an American flag in their yard are racist trump fans these days
ok so, i hate to do this to you, but have you ever considered that these people would probably just... Have a trump sign.
You know what's a funny one? Flag pins. Every politician in America, take a look, they will ALL be wearing a little American Flag pin, always.
I have to assume other politicians in other countries don't always wear a pin of their country.
You’re wrong. They also do this in North Korea.
Funnily enough this is exactly how people think including our house.
I took mine down when Roe v Wade was overturned and the Progress Pride flag went up. I had been considering putting the American Flag back up recently if Democrats start winning again.
People from every country like to pretend that patriotism isn't a natural part of living but will stick their heads so far up their own asses when talking up all their food, culture, teams, or any other number of arbitrary things.
And while there has been some divergence in Patriotism vs Nationalism, they're essentially the same damn thing but with better connotations for one now lol.
And while there has been some divergence in Patriotism vs Nationalism, they’re essentially the same damn thing but with better connotations for one now lol.
ok to be clear, nationalism is generally a hinge point in a fascism/authoritarian political party. Patriotism is just being proud of the country you're a part of. A lot of people are very patriotic about their states, or sports teams. Brits especially.
The flag patriotism and intense praise of military action was a lot for me. I remember going to a mall, and seeing what would typically be reserved as disabled parking was instead veteran parking?? And then the cinema in the mall loudly advertising its discount for veterans as well. We do have a general discount in my country too, but it's not so... intense. Like no one else has to know it's happening because it's more of a state benefit than it is a form of patriotism.
Neighbourhoods in general are what I found the strangest when I stayed in the States. Flags everywhere as you say, but also just the intense size, and the lack of walkability (the kurb drops felt massive compared to my country). Beyond that I remember walking for around 20 minutes through a suburb and counting upwards of 10 different company logos on rubbish bins. This neighbourhood seemingly had 10 different bin days rather than one centralised service.
It's a political thing. Signals that you are a nationalist chud.
Shoes in the house
I grew up in a home where we just never thought about wearing, or not wearing, shoes in the house. Like, we obviously didn't track mud all over the place if our shoes were that dirty, but if we were wearing our shoes inside, nobody said anything or cared, it was just whatever. Married a Kenyan who put her foot down and was like, "Are you crazy?" It's apparently a big thing elsewhere in the world. In Kenya alot of roads aren't paved, things get dusty, and it's just common sense that you don't walk all over the house with dirty shoes, so I get it from that perspective.
Yeah that’s a huge part of it. Few Americans (me included) frequently walk outdoors on anything but sidewalks or paved roads in their normal day to day travels. When I go hiking I take those shoes off before I get back into the car, but my daily driver boat shoes which rarely touch actual dirt? I don’t have a problem leaving those on in most places, my house included. Same I imagine for Americans where their job is construction or something where your shoes are dirtied, take the work shoes off when you get home, but it’s fine to wear more casual shoes
Edit: what a strange thing to get downvoted about
Double edit: I guess the first downvotes were just from people who very much don’t like shoes in the house under any circumstances. That's ok. If I come to your house my shoes will come off. If you come to mine, feel free to leave them on if they aren't muddy.
As an American, it drives me crazy. Then there’s those heathens who lay on the bed with shoes on!
American of asian descent, absolutely ludicrous! It would perhaps be more forgiviable if all of the floors were furnished in hardwood and tile, but they'll wear shoes even on carpet! Immediately after entering one of these heathen's houses, I long for the soft, lucious, kempt, carpets of my own abode, compared to the repuslive, stiff, flat and even crunchy carpets of my white friends. Frankly it offends me, deeply. I must slap my friends silly before entering my home to remove their filthy clogs.
As an American this is gross to me too
Only place I've live where this is taboo is Chicagoland. And that's to be expected with the muddy snow.
Here in the South we usually don't have carpets, no reason to take our shoes off.
Thinking that there is no reason to take your shoes off is the most American thing in the world. There is poop, pee, puke, pollen, pollution, parvo and prions out there, among other things.
In Japan the entryway of a house is usually a step lower than the rest of the house. It is considered part of the outside, where the shoes stay, as well as all of the dirty things from the outside that are on the shoes. And symbolically, your troubles from the outside world are not brought into the house either. It's a major faux pas to wear your shoes in the house past this step and bring all that shit inside. Interesting contrast
It's not carpets that I take my shoes off for - it's so I don't track public bathroom and outside street debris into my house.
Ever walked into a public toilet? Well, that piss is now all over your floor at home.
As is spit from the street. Remnant dog poo, bird poo, etc etc.
Take your shoes off. Please.
Yeah. No carpets, dogs coming in and out. I only take mine off if they are legit muddy, it's a lost cause, I am not going to make everyone take off their shoes. We aren't eating off the floor. I am also willing to sit on the ground outside, turn cartwheels, etc. Really just not that paranoid about dirt.
Up north I understand everyone has carpets.
Some places there is much more sitting on the floor.
It seems situational to me.
Nobody is putting their shoes on the furniture though, they are putting them on the floor.
Oh man YES
That is always a weird one for my brain to work around.
Do I just live in a weird bubble? I live in the US and I am rarely at someone’s house who doesn’t remove their shoes nowadays. I certainly grew up wearing shoes at home, but that’s changed significantly over the past 20 years or so.
Anecdotally this is also my experience. I grew up with shoes off in the house, but even up to the early 00's it seemed to be a cultural outlier in the US.
These days I think the majority of people who I go over to visit have a shoes off rule. Seems like the split is between the older half of millennials and up shoes on, and younger half and down shoes off for the most part.
From my experience this varies wildly regionally. My family in LA will put on shoes as part of getting dressed in the morning, but in Wisconsin you take your shoes off at the door since theres a good chance they're wet or even muddy depending on the season
American flags everywhere. Like EVERYWHERE. I get a bit of national pride but holy crap, every other house in the street is flying a flag, clothing has flag patterns, bumper sticker American flag, it's everywhere. And no, it wasn't even close to July 4.
It's like Americans are afraid they might forget what country they're in if they aren't in sight of a flag at all times.
I'll try to avoid stuff you know is weird.
- Adjectives. You can't just have a thing. It has to have an adjective. For example: Milk. I wanted to buy milk. I get to the milk section, and there's no such thing. There's x milk and y milk and about a dozen other variants. Where is the basic milk (it turns out, I wanted "4% milk") in this damned place?
- Fresh produce. In fairness you've gotten loads better on this one after subsequent visits, but beyond some basic staples like potatoes, carrots, corn etc it was really limiting what fruit and vegetables you could get in the supermarket. Also: baby carrots are weird.
- Your cheese is radioactive yellow. Cheese is not supposed to be that colour - but you seem expect it to be for some reason, so your producers add yellow colouring to their cheese.
- Your eggs are weird. I'm not sure what yous guys do to to them, but it's like you blast away half the shell and are left with a porous super-white textured inner shell. They need to be refrigerated and last a fraction of the time they'd last if you just left them alone and sold them as they are laid.
- Your bread tastes weird. Maybe it's sugar or preservatives in it, I don't know. Bread is meant to have a really short ingredients list like flour, water, salt yeast and maybe a touch of oil and sugar. Take a look at the ingredients on your bread and it's 5 lines long.
- Portions! Your food portions are ludicrous. I'd much rather pay half the price for half as much food as they offer on the menu.
- Money. You have this weird unconscious pecking order thing in your culture where you value people more based on their bank balance. You show a weird unconscious level of respect to someone who is rich. And similarly, unconsciously look down on someone poorer than you. Not in a mean way - just as a "I'm better than this person" way that is hard to quantify. You are aware at some level roughly how rich everyone you deal with is. I see this trait far less in people under 20. I hope there's a cultural shift on this one, because money on its own is a weird way to measure someone's worth.
- Your police are run by the local counties. I think your schools also? I know you have state and federal police also, but most places only have police and schools at those levels.
- I'll mostly stay clear of health, because you know your health system is weird. But I will say that it's weird that very few of your hospitals are run by government. They're mostly run for profit. Health is meant to be a government service.
- Outside a few cities, you barely have public transport of any sort. LA is a mega metropolis, and it's train network is a joke for that level of population - something like 100 stations for 18 million people?
- You have no idea what's going on. Most of you couldn't name the UK Prime Minister (this one has been hard to keep track of, in fairness), the German Chancellor or any of the G20 leaders aside from USA and maybe Canada/China. You don't know about geopolitics beyond whatever you guys are doing. Your world news is literally stuff USA is involved in.
- I'll finish on a weird one: you guys are lovely. This may because I'm white and have an exotic accent to you guys, but almost everyone I've ever encountered from the USA in or out of the country has been wonderful. You don't seem to think of your fellow countrymen you meet as 'good' by default. There's a lot less connection and respect to each other than other nations I've been to.
it turns out, I wanted "4% milk"
As a lifelong American, I don't think we have 4% milk (reliably). Growing up we had Skim, 2% and Whole. Looking it up Whole is defined as 3.5%
I did look up a local store online and I was able to find it, but not universally at every store.
We had 1% as well where I grew up.
You're right, of course - I heard the same stuff referred to as "whole milk". But the only thing you're correcting about the wider point is the appropriate adjective. Which I find very funny. 😀
It's interesting that you picked this one out. I thought the money one in particular was going to be a controversial take.
I'll try to address some of this, as I'm able. 🙂
-
Yes, many many milks, we can't agree on what is best. Personally I like a quality almond milk, for its nutrients & no sugars and huge bonus it's shelf stable. Great for emergencies.
-
I think the dearth of fresh produce is related to Americans not doing a lot of cooking. Most Americans have a simpler diet, and the stores need to concentrate on a number of things they know will sell. Baby carrots are actually awesome, you're going to appreciate this -- IIRC baby carrots are an innovative way to reduce food waste, sell crop. A farmer had ugly, misshapen, perhaps slightly molded or otherwise undesirable carrots. But most of it was good! So they cut off the bad parts & whittle it down to a nice, uniform, attractive shape & size. Baby carrots were born! Kids like them, they're 'snackable'...idk, I like them & I like the green effort.
-
Yes, food dyes are thrown into everything. RFK recently did a little rant about the yellow dye, some coal runoff chemical. He's absolutely right, it's not cool. I always say you go back 200 years & some people were starving, food of any kind was great. Now we throw red dye into ketchup solely because the ketchup isn't red enough. Disgusting.
-
Natural eggs have some waxy layer on it, a protective layer. So your eggs look dirtier but are actually healthier, can withstand low/no refrigeration. IIRC. Our eggs have that layer removed, they're required by law to be 'washed'. Yes, I also think it's bullshit.
-
It is definitely the sugar & preservatives.
-
As our bellies have grown, so has everything else. If you find old houses with old cabinets & old plates, you'll find the dinner plates are much smaller than we have today! We have been programmed to consume. Search 'dinner plates have gotten bigger' and read for yourself.
-
Yes, our police forces get down to counties. Towns. Idk, I would say that this should provide a more personal & immediate presence. Also in the American spirit, keeping these matters fractured & separate (but also working together, and deferring to increasing levels of authority as needed) allows for the most freedom. You don't like how things are run in this town? Well move to another one. Same with the states. I see people moving towns because they want a better school for their kids. It allows for choice.
-
Yeah, pretty much. TBF, though, our brains can only process so much. And what can we do about the European stuff, anyway?? We've got our jobs, maybe our families, our homes, 334M fucking people of our own with various beliefs scattered across 50 diverse states, heavy taxation without representation (hint, hint), our own problems...then somebody comes up to you..."Did you hear what happened in Fuckistan this morning? 🥺" NO! 😂🙃
Thankfully, with the internet, we can look into any world events we want to & educate ourselves that way. I do, I am politically more involved than most. But no, I cannot name current ministers, chancellors, presidents... I hear their position & that's enough for me. Not my monkeys, not my circus, you handle yours & I'll handle mine.
12 . Thanks! I think at heart we're very cordial people generally speaking. But onto that second, contradictory part: I absolutely agree. I live in a generally good area, but I also see a lot of...other...people. There's a saying, people were a lot more polite & considerate when duelling was legal. Looking around, I think things have become far too 'civilized', the people too soft & dumb, our food as you've pointed out is poisoned, mental & physical illnesses abound, the people haven't seen real hard times, there is no clear & present danger to unite & fight so they make up stupid things to get offended by & fight each other, they're protected from the natural consequences of their actions...I see it. Often. This & more culminates in disrespect & disconnects. Unlike other nations, partly because of our freedoms & partially because our legal system lacks balls, we tolerate a lot of bullshit behavior. As they say, if you tolerate something, expect more of it.
As an American, I kinda assumed that subconscious rich/poor thing comes into play with tourists. We "know" how much it costs to come visit this country and we really do want to make it as pleasant as possible, partially because most of us really do love the place even though it has problems, and partially because we want to be a "good value" for their money.
-
In fairness for number 11, many Americans can't even name their own government officials, expecting to know about other countries is a tall order.
We’re not neighbors with 43 countries, so we don’t have as much immediate exposure to everything going on around those countries. For one, because it’s not going on around us, like it is for you. That said, I thought I had you with the Prime Minister comment. Of course it’s Boris Johnson. Doh! It seems you’ve had 4 prime ministers in 2 years? What’s going on with that? Like I said, we don’t really get exposure to what is happening over there, so unless we specifically go looking for it, I guess we’re out of the loop. We know what’s going on in Mexico and Canada though.
I just sort of assume my instance gives away my location - I'm in Australia, not the UK. Not that we can talk, we also churned through about 5 prime ministers in five years a while back.
But I could still talk about any number of issues going on around the world, because our news covers topics around the world. Yours doesn't. It's too busy talking about your election and recently a hurricane. Which I know about as it was in our news.
That's not a criticism, I actually sought out world news while I was there, and there just weren't any local sources of it.
Money. You have this weird unconscious pecking order thing in your culture where you value people more based on their bank balance. You show a weird unconscious level of respect to someone who is rich. And similarly, unconsciously look down on someone poorer than you. Not in a mean way - just as a “I’m better than this person” way that is hard to quantify. You are aware at some level roughly how rich everyone you deal with is. I see this trait far less in people under 20. I hope there’s a cultural shift on this one, because money on its own is a weird way to measure someone’s worth.
Others have written on this far more eloquently than I have, and so I will use their words to help explain this.
‘It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but might as well be.’ It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: ‘if you’re so smart why ain’t you rich?’ There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.
- Kin Hubbard
Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times.
- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
- Your police are run by the local counties. I think your schools also? I know you have state and federal police also, but most places only have police and schools at those levels.
This might be dependent on state but any place I've ever lived has had 3 kinds, state police, county "sherrifs department" police and town/city police. To hear theres a part of the US with sherrifs department police is odd to me, usually the state police would take that role in rural areas without their own police department in my experience.
Adjectives. You can’t just have a thing. It has to have an adjective. For example: Milk. I wanted to buy milk. I get to the milk section, and there’s no such thing. There’s x milk and y milk and about a dozen other variants. Where is the basic milk (it turns out, I wanted “4% milk”) in this damned place?
you guys are out there buying NULL milk??
Your cheese is radioactive yellow. Cheese is not supposed to be that colour - but you seem expect it to be for some reason, so your producers add yellow colouring to their cheese.
american cheese or cheese more generically? I assume more generically but i've seen this mentioned a few times and not specified lol.
They need to be refrigerated and last a fraction of the time they’d last if you just left them alone and sold them as they are laid.
"So what's the deal with washing and refrigeration? Soon after eggs pop out of the chicken, American producers put them straight to a machine that shampoos them with soap and hot water. The steamy shower leaves the shells squeaky clean. But it also compromises them, by washing away a barely visible sheen that naturally envelops each egg."
huh, basically just seems like a different approach to solving the problem. Prevention of disease and what not.
Your police are run by the local counties. I think your schools also? I know you have state and federal police also, but most places only have police and schools at those levels.
schools are run locally, though they all adhere to state standards. Sometimes it depends on the schools, some of them are run by the state directly, with a local school board, others are private.
I’ll mostly stay clear of health, because you know your health system is weird. But I will say that it’s weird that very few of your hospitals are run by government. They’re mostly run for profit. Health is meant to be a government service.
is this true? there are a lot of non profit hospitals, i can't think of any "for profit" hospitals off the top of my head though. https://www.aha.org/statistics/fast-facts-us-hospitals
i did find this stat, which appears to show that there are more non profit hospitals.
Outside a few cities, you barely have public transport of any sort. LA is a mega metropolis, and it’s train network is a joke for that level of population - something like 100 stations for 18 million people?
the obvious answer here is that it's not for 18 million people. Public transit is almost never intended to get 100% of society from one place to another. It's just to relocate mass traffic from the roads to something more efficient.
You have no idea what’s going on. Most of you couldn’t name the UK Prime Minister (this one has been hard to keep track of, in fairness), the German Chancellor or any of the G20 leaders aside from USA and maybe Canada/China. You don’t know about geopolitics beyond whatever you guys are doing. Your world news is literally stuff USA is involved in.
in our defense, Britain is basically the size of a small state... So with local politics alone we're basically dealing with the entirety of the EU, and probably more. Also, we don't really live next to anywhere exciting, so world news isn't really super relevant to us. We have canada up north, they exist, we're friendly. Mexico to the south, we're relatively friendly too, but they have an organized crime problem, and beyond that it's sort of just outside of our bounds.
Canada and mexico are considered "domestic" policy for us lol.
Eggs look like this:
They don't need to be washed with hot water and soap, they're perfectly good as they are.
Sorry about the hospital thing. By "for-profit", I meant you had to pay to go there. That's completely alien to everyone in the first world. We have private hospitals as well, and yep: lots of them are (or claim to be) non-profit also.
#8: Police
State police enforce state level laws, and Federal agencies enforce federal laws.
The whole semi-autonomous thing. If a state and the Feds both have their own laws against something they could each try to arrest somebody, but there could also be a situation where one might not have a law while the other one does. For example , weed is still illegal under Federal law. The Federal government has mostly chosen not to enforce these laws, but it could. Many states have legalized weed to varying degrees.
So there could be a situation where somebody is smoking weed in a state that has legalized it. The state police have no power to arrest that person, but the Feds do.
I'm sure this has all made it more confusing.
Family eating at shooters (and the whole hooters/twin peaks concept)
Need to take the car for a 500m trip because there is no sidewalk and a highway to cross
The car thing really blew my mind. My hotel was 400m from the office but 1.6km by car. Colleagues were waiting for a taxi while I walked. I had to cut over a couple of car parks and a bit of grass (zero sidewalks) and was there in a few minutes while they turned up 15min later since they were waiting for a taxi.
The worst part, they all jumped in cars to go 300m down the road for lunch. Yeah, I walked. With looking for a parking space then walking from the space to the restaurant, they got there after me.
I adore Americans; they’ve been nothing except kind and generous to me in every part of the country I’ve visited but damn, the money they’re wasting alone just starting their engines and the wear and tear on the vehicles blows my fucking mind. Build some sidewalks, guys!
Many of us would like this, but it's dangerous or even illegal to get to some places by walking in large parts of America. And zoning laws make it really difficult to change.
Depends on the state, but biking can be legitimately faster in cities with gridlock traffic. Particularly if there are biking greenways. I unintentionally beat friends back from a beach after they hailed a taxi, and I ebiked the ~3km home. In their defense, the terrain is extremely hilly, and some of them aren't super comfortable on the city ebikes.
and the whole hooters/twin peaks concept
I haven't thought about Hooters in years. It always did seem like a dated concept from the 1980s that was somehow still clinging to life in the 90s. It's still in business, so obviously somebody must be going to them, but I don't know if I'd call it normal for most Americans.
Being overly fake nice because you want a tip. Tbh I'd be more inclined to tip you if you left me alone and stopped talking to me.
The whole tipping thing in USA is weird. Everyone wants a tip, it's entirely random (as a non-American) how much tip to give. Just pay your staff a wage they can actually live on ffs.
As an American I agree it's fucking weird. Tips should be for exceptional service and not an obligation.
There's actually a loose set of rules to it. Im not sure where the specific numbers came from, but 22% of the bill as a tip is considered "excellent service", 18% or so is considered "mid" or "acceptable" service, and anything below that is a sliding scale of how bad you think they did. 0% is either you being rude and/or saying "i dont believe in tips", but giving a $0.01 tip is basically saying "fuck you, you piece of shit," (because fishing out a penny or writing it in takes more effort than opting out).
Yeah but how do you consult those rules? How often are they updated? How do you get notified of updates?
The fact that there are no answers to these questions and therefore everyone is working with mismatching rule sets makes the whole thing useless. You can be totally well meaning and still piss off a server because somehow you don’t know what the currently acceptable magic number is.
I recently visited the states for the first time in a decade and didn’t find out until afterwards that 15% is now considered by some people to be “low”. Sorry everyone who I tipped, I shafted you without realizing it. 🤷♂️
Parts of Greece apparently also do tips. Is that new? Seems like it's leeching into Europe :/
It's not the healthcare that bothered me most, although it did.
It's the cognitive dissonance around the unavailability of healthcare in order to avoid anxiety over the fact that a traffic accident can bankrupt you with no relief. Ignoring the risk takes some serious mental gymnastics and basic math failure to get there, but when brought up in this environment - where a TV show about a teacher who has to cook and sell meth to get hospital money is actually a plausible plot where no one actually examines the mercenary care at all and the main character just pays it - it's just a part of their existence.
Not understanding that few other people live like this - cubans don't live like this - is absurd.
When I watch "alone", it's so depressing at the end when they ask them what they'll do with the money they won. And they say "pay for my wife's cancer treatment". Like omg America
It's awful
When I watch “alone”, it’s so depressing at the end when they ask them what they’ll do with the money they won. And they say “pay for my wife’s cancer treatment”. Like omg America
probably more noble than the ending to squid game lol
Yeah, as an American it's disturbing and makes it hard to believe we can change things. You've described it very well.
Maybe that explains the amount of mental health issues in the population?
It's a much deeper rabbit hole that I can't fully explain and I'm someone who went without menal health treatment for most of my life and I should have been treated in my childhood and wasn't. Up until recently there was a stigma attached to mental illness. Probably because you until the 80s you could get thrown into an assilym and given a labotomy or worse. Lately mental healthcare has become something of a fad. And everybody is trying to see doctors. Mental health physicians are few and far between. Even with health insurance it can be difficult to find one. Some places have appointments booked solid for six months or more. It is expensive. It's roughly $200 (before insurance) to see a psychiatrist for ten minutes just to get a prescription refilled. The deductible you pay with insurance varies, but can still be over $50 or more. You can go to a private practice doctor, but they likely don't deal with insurance. Prescriptions are generally pretty cheap, even without insurance, it depends on which pharmacy you go to. Going to a regular doctor for mental healthcare is generally a bad idea because they don't understand how to diagnose people properly. Giving someone with bipolar disorder an SSRI is like throwing gas on the fire.
Local jails are full of people with undiagnosed and untreated mental health disorders. It would be much cheaper to just give people free healthcare, but there's a lot of mean spirited people in the u.s. also due to mental health issues, no doubt.
Tipping
Oh we realize, but it's difficult to stop once it's been ingrained in the culture. Not only that, employers took advantage of that and therefore tipped employees have a much lower minimum wage.
Technically they have the same minimum wage. If they don't get back up to minimum wage in tips, the employer is legally required to make up the difference. The issue is most people don't know this, and so employers get away not doing it. This is one of the many forms of wage theft, the most common form of theft in the US.
based on knowledge of the US : many things that other places take for granted or fight to preserve, you guys struggle to obtain.
based on my trip : fucking nothing, I visited new york and stayed at a run down, pre paid hotel. I ate food from stores or carry out. I can't exactly critique the healthcare system, tipping culture, driving culture when I had access to a fairly modern public transport system, didn't need medical assistance and didn't need to tip 50 people just to eat one thing.
EDIT: it's like asking tourists in antalya at the beach what they think of turkey, they're fucking tourists, they aren't affected by the dictator and his bullshit
I was just in Göcek and Ankara and I had some wildly interesting interactions with locals when they asked me how I liked Turkey.
"I like it, very beautiful country, lovely people, great food."
"So you'd move here?"
"Uh... perhaps not"
"So you don't like Turkey"
👀
lol
those fuckers have some nerve asking you that shit, when we have so much brain drain that most high streets are basically completely catering to elderly people with hearing aid and similar stores on each one, because all the working age people leave to live abroad.
No shit rich foreigners don't want to move to turkey.
source : part of the brain drain for both turkey and the UK. fuck them countries.
I’m from Alberta Canada. I’ve worked up North in camp jobs, and have been working in the trades with the rowdiest people our country has to offer.
Every time I’ve been to the states I’m shocked at how aggressive a large portion of your population is willing to talk to people. Every time I’ve gone there I’ve had at least one negative aggressive interaction with one of your citizens. I’m a large man with a beard and tattooes up to my neck, I’m a pretty intimidating looking dude paired with the Canadian politeness we’re known for. I do not understand how this keeps happening. And I see you guys do it to eachother too! It’s fucking wild.
That's very surprising. Where have you visited?
Example?
There's a lot of regional variation in what people do or don't find to be "aggressive".
The fear of naked (intact) female bodies, i.e. censoring of even the slightest nudity, when at the same time, it’s totally fine to have minors play computer games where they can dissect other humans in great bloody detail.
Oh, and chocolate that tastes like somebody barfed into it during manufacturing.
Signs telling you not to bring guns into shopping centers.
In some states, these signs don't even mean that a person can't carry a concealed weapon into the shopping center. In my state, for instance, assuming you are otherwise able to legally carry a gun (meaning you took a class and aren't a felon), the list of areas where you can't legally carry a gun is very limited: Federal buildings, courthouses, etc. If a business has a sign posted stating "no guns allowed," you can still legally carry your weapon in that business. If an employee sees that you're armed, they can ask you to leave, and you're trespassing if you refuse, but nothing legally stops you from carrying a gun into the establishment in the first place.
As a disclaimer, I'm not arguing this one way or another. I have a license to carry a concealed handgun, in fact. Just sharing information.
If a business has a sign posted stating “no guns allowed,” you can still legally carry your weapon in that business.
I'm sure that's the practicality, but I am skeptical of the legality of a CCW permit trumping the rights of the property owner.
It sounds more like breaking the law and just not getting caught. Do you have any links to CCW permit overriding property owner rights?
Does this give you any increased sense of security as a non-american?
the opposite for me
The sign actually would give me an increased sense of security yeah.
Obviously a lunatic out to do a mass shooting would disregard the sign but your average gun wielder might be offended and take their business elsewhere – and statistically that's the one who's more likely to shoot me. That's my logic as a Norwegian who's lived there for just a year anyway.
Never seen this where I live. Not every state is a complete shit hole thankfully
I haven't seen it many times, but the first was definitely a bit surprising.
I only stopped there for transit on a flight to Mexico. Just before boarding my flight I was told that I need a visa for the US, which is extremely weird because normally airports have transit zones where you don't need any visa. But apparently the US is special, so you actually have to enter the country before going right back into the airport. This nonsense made me miss my flight.
Also I remember in the airport there was a security guard doing nothing but shouting nonstop that it's not allowed to carry water. Why not simply put up a sign?
Americans don't read.
Am American, don’t know what this says
We weren't elected to read.
W.r.t. water bottles, I think it's because people don't look at or think about the signs that are often posted. A loud person yelling specifically at you is much more likely to make someone stop and ask themselves if they have a water bottle.
I'm definitely not defending it, but that's my take on the matter. The whole water bottle thing is just security theater anyways.
Just before boarding my flight I was told that I need a visa for the US [...] This nonsense made me miss my flight.
I WOULD HAVE FUCKING LEFT IF YOU'D LET ME ASSHOLE
China did that to me too, except I didn't miss my flight. After getting off the plane they made us go through immigration and when they asked how long I was staying I said about 3 hours. Stamped my passport with a 1 day visa haha
The US doesn't do sanitized transport because there's not really a need in most airports. The vast majority of passengers are Americans or coming into America. It's also self reinforced, because once others learn they stop doing layovers in the US. It might make sense for a few large airports like Atlanta, JFK, and LAX.
Going out in public in your pajamas.
How difficult it is to find fresh produce in small shops (food deserts)
How much fat is in all the meat.
How old and badly maintained many of the roads and bridges are (I am from Africa, so that says something)
The levels of national arrogance.
I don’t really ever leave my house and I live in loungewear. I ain’t changing just to go to the store. That’s a ridiculous waste of time and energy. I don’t think that most Americans care what other people think about their clothes.
Going out in public in your pajamas.
I have seen this on very few occasions, and each time, the pajama-wearing individual is very obviously only out in public so they can either stock up at the liquor store or meet their meth dealer. I don't think this is common.
Go to Walmart (not the neighborhood Walmart, the super Walmart) and look around
I do it regularly because it's comfortable and I do not give a single shit about what anyone thinks.
I have seen thqt zero times.
But tbf I don't live in a big metropolitan area.
First thing I (another Canadian) noticed when we switched from the car to a shuttle to the airport (crossed the border by car to take a flight to Florida) was that there were multiple people on that shuttle that were at least as big as the most obese person I'd ever seen in person up to that point.
Even though our cultures overlap quite a bit, there's something different in that aspect.
Your public toilets are not private. There should never be a gap around the door. The height should be above what any reasonable person would grow to, and the lower height of the door should hide the person's feet on the toilet unless you crouch down. It's weird and very off putting to use one
They say it's to prevent crime. Same as a lot of the awful things we come to expect. I'm willing to bet it doesn't do anything noticeable with respect to crime.
Yeah, I went to Germany ... we need to fix this. It could be so much better, we should copy the German's and use full doors.
This is changing! More and more places in the western US are going to euro-style stalls, or fully gender neutral bathrooms that are entirely walled in. Much, much better. I can't speak for the other parts of the US.
I was fascinated by glass stalls in Greece. I've never seen those before (opaque glass, but still, you could make out shapes). Lots of glass in general, such as highway soundproof barriers, balconies, etc. Much more so than I'm used to seeing. We tend to use a lot more metal or sculpted concrete.
Right?! A country that’s so prudish and worried about nudity, and yet they observe each other on the toilet? I feel like the whole transgender-bathroom discussion would be mostly gone if they had normal toilets with privacy.
My favorite internet video on the subject: https://youtu.be/WlP9aJnzyZw
Canadian here, British Columbia.
Going to a Wal-Mart in a small-ish town and counting 38 CCTV cameras across the outside front of the building. Ours, in a city with 28× the population, has only 6.
Inside that same Wal-Mart, going into a checkout line without first checking out the customers, and the very next guy ahead of us was an open carry: a semi-auto (AR-15 like looking weapon) slung over his shoulders, a handgun in a holster on his waist, and a lump on his right ankle above his boots. And two knives on his belt. Dude looked like he was ready for some urban warfare.
The sheer amount of infrastructure decay. Sure, even Canadian towns that haven’t seen economic good times look run down and dilapidated, but American towns really kick that up a notch. Most small-town buildings look like they haven’t seen a makeover since the Carter administration.
Unusually authentic Mexican food. Up here 90% of Mexican places are run by white dudes who make semi-authentic “fusion” dishes that are mainly just spicy. Cross the border and less than 15 minutes in, there is one family-run chain (Rancho Chico, Rancho Grande) with super-cheap 100% authentic foods run and staffed solely by Mexicans. And like, holy shit, that’s good food.
The sheer number of people who support and vote for a party who will do absolutely nothing for them, and will enact policies that will drive them even further into poverty and destitution just so their Parasite-Class campaign donors can get even more obscenely wealthy. Conservative voters are just weird, man.
Sweet bread.
OMG. It's bread. Why is it sweet?
Depends on which kind you're talking about. Cinnamon raisin breads and similar are sweet because they're basically deserts (desserts?).
Standard sandwich loaf is sweet because your weak foreign palate cannot handle the background level of high fructose corn syrup in all American food. It gives us the strength and vitality to enforce pax Americana, build our secret space colonies, and invent all new world technology.
2 S's for dessert - you always want a second helping. How I always remember that one :p
As an American, yeah that’s what gets me. I just don’t understand it and I hate it
Not to be confused with sweetbread (pancreas)
German, only having been there once some years ago, so no idea if it still is that way:
Not knowing what I will have to pay in the grocery store until the cashier tells me what to pay. Here the price on the shelf is THE price. I might have a voucher that reduces the price in the end, but nothing is ever added only subtracted, all prices on the shelf are easily comparable, because no matter the weight of one package there is also given the price of 1kg or 100 g for everything.
No kids on playing grounds without parents standing around. No kids just playing on the side walk (often there is no side walk anyway), no kids walking to school. It made me aware of how much freedom kids have in Germany, how independent even 6 y.o. are in Germany compared to kids in the US. They walk to to school alone or use public transport alone, they buy groceries alone, they visit friends by foot or public transport, three y.o. already having a bike and cycling besides their parents to kindergarden...
On the other hand seeing so many very young people having a job, like a really hard job for many hours besides school. It broke my heart, they should be free to be young and having all the time, working comes fast enough and goes on forever. Also I saw very old people doing jobs that should be able to retire because you could see them being in pain and barely able to function, definitely not a "choice" for them.
The amount of medication, especially pain medication, people take in the US compared to Germany and how much of it is freely available while it is needing a subscription from a doctor here. Every time I was feeling unwell I was offered pills that I found to be numbingly strong and switching my brain off? Hard to explain. I found them scary, but was told that they take them on a daily basis and they are harmless ... nope.
Juxtaposition of pearl-clutching Puritanism w/ a 21 drinking age against beer available in a 7-11.
Pick a fucking lane
You could probably sell Americans on lowering the drinking age in many States, but there's some big legal hurdles and pretty much everyone agrees we've got bigger problems to deal with first.
Sorry to be honest, but this is my view...
Voting between two parties, and then getting whatever the "electors" pick. All the while, thinking they live under the biggest democracy of the world.
Having all sorts of inhuman behaviors, like robbing childs from immigrants.
Child marriage.
Having lots of weapons in the country but all wars outside.
Mmm.. What else? Ah, prisoners are slaves.
The firearm culture, and how normalised it is.
I went into a Walgreens in Chicago, and waited in line behind two other people. There was a cashier free but the person in front of the line was waiting to be called. The guy behind the person in front politely said, “ma’am, the cashier is free” ‘I’m waiting to be called” was the response.
So the guy behind her just walked past her, and she pushed him and said, “Careful buddy, you’ll get shot for doing something like that”
I was taken aback at how quickly a simple discourtesy escalated to shooting someone. It just blew my mind that shooting someone over queue jumping was verbalised, and seemingly normal to each other.
That's not gun culture per se, but gang culture. Gun "culture" in the US is something that trends far more right wing in general, and tends to be mostly white, mostly (nominally) christian.
I can't speak to other cities, but the south side and west side of Chicago (esp. around Garfield Park, Douglas Park, and all of Austin) have a serious gang problem. If you aren't willing and able to engage in violence at the slightest perceived provocation, then you tend to be victimized. The net result is that someone that jumps a line can end up getting a beat down, or killed. (And, BTW, the gang problem is a result of a century of institutionalized racism, combined with a few decades when CPD was exceptionally effective at jailing gang leaders; instead of just two or three major gangs in Chicago, you have hundreds of small ones, all constantly fighting over tiny patches of turf.)
I get what you mean, but this was in the central loop, in a business district, between a white woman in her 50’s and a black man in his 30’s. Very much gun culture by your definition.
Gang culture I can somewhat understand, but this was just wild to me.
Not saying it’s right or wrong… not my circus. But at a chemist?
I've never seen an interaction like that and I've lived in this country 40 years
Yeah, that is definitely not normal. Never heard anyone say anything like that (western US)
That is not a normal interaction anywhere that I've been in the States and not in Chicago. Despite what the press says Chicago is a very beautiful and relatively safe city. The people tend to be civil.
Btw, it's illegal to kill someone for checks notes cutting you in line. Had he wanted to waste the next three hours he could have reported her and if the cops decided to do their job it is a crime (communicating threats and assault for the push). I don't think that criminal acts gun owners aren't allowed to do are really part of the "culture" just because criminals sometimes do crime, like, people steal but theft isn't part of "shopping culture," y'know?
Careful buddy, you’ll get shot for doing something like that”
i guarantee you this is a joke.
Not that it can't happen, but i am willing 100% to bet that this was a joke.
The toilets/restrooms at restaurants (or at least many fastfood restaurants?) are often shared and used by both employees and customers. It grossed me out a bit a bit at first, especially as they are, in my experience, quite often pretty filthy. So all the nastiness customers drag in could potentially be picked up by employees.
I've been to BKs and Wendys' where I left the establishment as soon as I entered, just because the whole place looked and smelled like somewhere you shouldn't eat. I suppose these were more often than not in pretty rural areas..
While on the toilet topic, I've found public restrooms at e.g. gas stations and shopping malls to often be, uh, less than inviting. I think I've seen more overflowing toilets on a 4 week vacation in the US than I've seen in 40 years over here, in northwest Europe.
To be fair, I've driven east/west at least 10 times over the years, so I've been to a lot of public restrooms and the bad experiences tend to stay with you for longer than the good ones.
America uses a sub standard s-bend to keep plumbers in a job.
As an American, my top realization was... everywhere else in the world yall use electric kettles - Americans frequently only have a stove top kettle like it's the fucking eighteenth century.
Honest truth is that people in the US don't need to use kettles as much, so for a lot of households it's just a question of why buy an extra appliance when the cheap $10 kettle from Target or a small saucepan will do for the few times a year a kettle becomes convenient.
But my electric kettle only cost me $10
Also: Microwave. Apparently, lots of people heat their water in the microwave. (See pinned comment here.)
+1 for the account name being on topic
I thought this one was also to do with their power being on a lower voltage so Kettles take longer?
But it's still super weird. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They are common among US tea drinkers, but coffee seems more popular.
The stove top kettle might get a comeback since modern induction stoves are faster than an electric kettle. I'm about to get one and look forward to having one less appliance on the table.
I'm not sure it's that much faster but we recently switched to a stove top kettle for our induction stove. It's one less thing that needs to be plugged in somewhere. Also, the kettle makes a very cool sound! :)
I don't know anyone with a kettle.
coffee makers (basically everyone has one) are basically just a kettle
I actually find this cute. Like we're all out camping and someone wants to make a brew. Adds an element of magic to making a simple tea.
Many things. To say some...Billboards with lawyers advertising for things like demands after accidents. Like dozens one after another on the road.
So much sugar in everything. Last time I was there had to throw to the bin a yogurt. Was so sweet It was awful. Prices of "fresh" food.
Tips for everything. Going to a restaurant and have to tip like 20% of the bill, or even more, is crazy.
Wáter consumtion. Like big golf camps completely green in the middle of a desert (Vegas). When asked about It, people there just answered "no problem, we have the Hoover Dam for that".
Lack of public transport outside four or five big cities. And that just walking on the streets in some places is very strange fot the people living there. I was asked ten years ago in Palo Alto if I was Russian because I was not driving, just walking on the street!!
Sugar in everything
That's not sugar, buddy, that's 100% American grown High Fructose Corn Syrup!
Another Canadian.
All-green money is weird, about as weird for us as ours is for you. Once I knocked over some products in a store and then picked them up. The staff acted like that was saintly, so I guess other people just make a mess and move on? Drive through liquor stores are weird, and seem like an invitation to drink and drive. Paying at a hospital is weird just in concept, although thank god I've never had to deal with it down there.
Uhh, other than that it's been pretty similar in the places I've been. Etiquette around "sorry" is famously different, but aside from giving me away as Canadian it has little impact.
Edit, to add a couple positive things: Amazing Mexican food and barbecue not only exists but are ubiquitous. Coding jobs pay good money.
Everyone has an air conditioner, although Canada might be the weird one there.
The brown paper-bag thing with alcohol in public. I mean, everybody and their dog knows what's in there, right?
And the fact that people ask if you need help if you decide to NOT take the car but instead walk the 5 minutes to somewhere.
As someone that sold liquor for a while, if the bag is dropped and the bottle shatters, the brown paper holds up a bit better when you're cleaning that shit up compared to the thin plastic that rips when you breathe on it,
Everyone does know. I can't speak for all states/counties/cities/etc, but the brown bag thing is mostly a legal grey area for allowing folks to drink in public. Most of the time drinking isn't legal to just do while walking around and can be given fines by cops. However this can be problematic for additional resources being redirected from more important crimes. So as long as the cops don't see a label or the whole bottle/can, then they can ignore it as "it could be anything."
For example, in the summer people in my state like to go tubing down sections of rivers. While tubing you can have coolers and stuff, however open drinking of beer or other such drinks isn't legal. So if cops were to be watching the river and clearly see the labels it can mean that they order you to get out and hand them over and/or be fined. But everyone makes sure to put their cans/bottles in foam cozies, and therefore it is a low-key unofficial understanding that as long as you aren't smashed and/or causing lots of problems everything is good. The same also applies to other places like lakes and the beach (at least in my state). But if you are super drunk and/or being an asshole, then the cops will use that as probable cause to actually search the bag/cozies and all that.
A church and a MC Donald every 250 meters The sheer size of everything
-
The intense income disparity.
-
Healthcare bills.
I suppose these are cliche topics but as a non-american non-tourist the first thing that has stood out to me is that the highs are so incredibly high, and the lows are so incredibly low. Being a Canadian, it's not like we don't also have income disparity...but the gap is not as insane. The rich in the US have yachts that are 100's of millions of dollars, and the poor literally carry their kids on their backs while selling fruit on the side of the highway. You can see both in the same day.
Also I don't think Americans truly understand that you can get weeks of hospital care in Canada and not even receive a bill. Like a month in a private hospital room and i paid for a phone bill, a wifi bill, and some parking fees. In the US if you even so much as flash your eyelashes at a doctor you get a bill for hundreds of dollars.
While I agree with the essence of what you are saying. I want to say, if you have insurance the "bill" might be hundreds, but my share might only be 20 usd, if anything at all. If my "bill" was thousands, I might see my share be a couple hundred usd at most. It is possible for it to be far less then a couple hundred.
The other thing people don't mention is, if I honestly can't pay my share. I can walk into the billing office at the clinic /hospital and explain I honestly can't afford my share. The hospital will bill the insurance what they can, then look for extra funding. Most hospitals have a charity fund. It is based on my income. If I am broke and make crap wages, my share might be reduced to 0 usd.
Should we have a better system? Yes, but many times there are real options out there.
As a Canadian it's insane to me to have a bill at all after going through some sort of health ordeal the last thing you need is a big scary bill with something to do.
if I honestly can't pay my share. I can walk into the billing office at the clinic /hospital and explain I honestly can't afford my share. The hospital will bill the insurance what they can, then look for extra funding. Most hospitals have a charity fund. It is based on my income. If I am broke and make crap wages, my share might be reduced to 0 usd.
So the ask here is for someone who already need to work every waking moment, and then just lost a bunch of hours being hurt/sick, to then spend their time explaining multiple times to the billing dept that they cant afford it (this is degrading) and then their bill MIGHT be reduced but it also MIGHT go to collections and which further goes to damage the individual by hurting their credit. just seems like a burden on the poor.
But yeah i mean its a difference in systems. I think about how canada builds it into taxes - everyone pays in at a rate consistent with their income levels and benefits similarly - but the US way is donations. And I hope that works too. It seems to work from what i've seen so far. but it seems like a round about way to get it done.
User fees invoke a chilling effect on care usage, especially preventative care.
And when you're seen as a cash cow and as a patient, there can be a conflict of interest.
Most hospitals have a charity fund. It is based on my income. If I am broke and make crap wages, my share might be reduced to 0 usd.
Currently working through this with the local hospital and about $8k of various visits over the last 4 years of so while we had some mix of no insurance, garbage insurance and Medicaid (federally funded low income insurance) and it's literally all being wiped away. The lady who processes the applications explained to me that it's on a sliding scale, so if you make $1 over the threshhold for 100% waiver, it might be a 95% waiver. Notably some of the debt turned out to be a billing error where they should have billed Medicaid in the first place, but that was one of the smaller bills in the pile of debt
The statement for my wife's first month-long hospital stint was upwards of $957k.
My auntie had 4 major surgeries to overcome a situation she found herself in. It was serious ICU and ER stuff.
She's been there a month now, recuperating, and once she's fully tapered off the morphine she can go home with a visiting nurse.
Only expenses so far are vending machines when she wants some Peak Freens.
I'm getting my shoulder repaired next week (I completely tore my supraspinatus tendon, wooo...). It's going to cost me $16,000. That's relatively cheap in the US; if I had insurance (which I don't), I'd have to have surgery done in a hospital, and my insurance would be billed >$30k. I've looked into medical tourism, but I just don't have the time; if it was still 80% torn, I could fly to Spain or something, pay cash, take 2-3 weeks to recover, do touristy shit, fly home, and still come out ahead. Unfortunately, once a tendon is fully separated, you need to address it ASAP.
And, BTW, I'm very, very lucky that I have $16k in a 401(k) that I can withdraw in the first place; if this had happened to me 10 years ago, i would have just lost partial use of my right arm for the rest of my life.
...And why don't I have insurance? The only insurance available to me costs >$500/mo., and the annual deductible (the amount I have to pay before insurance covers anything aside from routine care and prescriptions) is $9000. My costs would be almost identical if I had the only insurance that's available to me.
EDIT - OTOH, it's generally a little faster for people in the US to get non-emergency care. E.g., if my supraspinatus was torn, but not completely separated, I would generally have a longer wait for surgery in the UK or Canada than I would in the US. But that's a pretty small positive for the US system compared to a huge ton of negatives.
Drive through rural Mississippi. The wealth gap is nuts just from what you can see on the highway.
-
To name a few:
Calling yourself Americans, after the entire dual continent. There are two continents and many other countries in the Americas, you know... [I know you know. And, what are you supposed to call yourselves, 'USAians'? 'Americans' makes more sense and is easier to roll off the tongue. But it's weird.]
Holding the door open for me. Smiling at me on the street. Those are sure signs of a swindler, but it's the norm in the USA. [I am not suggesting USA folks are swindlers, only that those actions are what swindlers in much of the world use. USA people are generally super nice and a genuine pleasure to be around.]
Turning right on red light. Red means stop. It's weird and confusing.
Edit: I added a third thing.
Edit2 in []
We are far from the only people that refer to us as Americans.
Very true. I added context as you commented. I'm not putting you down for it. It's the term that makes most sense. It's just weird. Not wrong or dumb or stupid or anything else insulting. It's just a weird term to use, even though it's the one that makes most sense. I honestly meant no disrespect or offense. I actually like USA and its people (I mean, there are crazies everywhere, but they don't define the rest of you). I genuinely apologize if I offended you. Seriously, mate, I meant no offense at all.
Edit: clarity
You can even turn left on a red if it's from or into a one-way street. I think that is state specific though
It's pretty much everywhere except for NYC and Montreal Island.
From OR onto?
I'm just imagining someone making a left from a one-way onto a two-way, and it seems like it would be a very bad idea in that situation?
Aww c'mon, I was gonna deliver this in a much more conspiratorial tone!
With regards to right on red. It (legally at least) requires that you must first stop at the light. So if you are turning right the idea is that you are supposed to first check for active traffic and treat it as if it is a stop sign. If someone ahead of you is waiting to turn right and then goes. Then you are supposed to pull up and then stop again before turning. Though in practice a lot of people will at best treat it more like a yield sign and just roll through without stopping. In super low traffic times or places where traffic is a non-issue (like a rural road where as you pull up to the light you can clearly see open roads without anyone) then this isn't really an issue aside from learning bad habits. Though heavy traffic places are much more of an issue.
Regarding the red stoplight:
In Germany we have a rule that you may turn right if theres a sign permitting you to do so. In that case the traffic light is to be treated like a STOP-sign.No replies on the holding the door and smiling being the sign of a swindler? That actually sounds like you live in an exceptionally hostile place. I'm swedish, as in people not exactly known for showing a lot of warmth to each other in public, and I always hold the door, and smile at people very often. The smiling part might be somewhat unusual here in Sweden too, but not unusual as in bad or a sign of a swindler. Most people seem to appreciate these behaviors. Either that or I'm absolutely delusional and everyone secretly views me as a swindler ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I was in Scotland years ago waiting to turn at a red light. The guy behind me started yelling "you got a bloody filter" which I think means you can turn left on red.
Calling yourself Americans, after the entire dual continent
But we never use "America" to refer to North and South America collectively. You can say "the Americas", or just "North and South America". And there's no adjective that means "of the Americas"; you can say "North or South American". But just "American" unambiguously means "of the USA".
I've always wondered if disagreement over this comes from the fact that in some parts of the world, North and South America are considered to be one continent just called "America", whereas we consider them to be two separate continents. And we don't have a word for the pair of continents, any more than we have a word for Europe and Africa together. (I mean we do have "Eurasia", which kind of pokes a hole in the hypothesis, but maybe that's a special case because a brief glance at a map makes it clear it's pure fantasy to count those as separate continents.)
Yeah, I always wonder how often there’s a need to refer to inhabitants of two continents together as a single entity. Like, if you say someone is South American or North American, that is never confused with being someone specifically from the US. When would those terms be insufficient?
i propose america squared
Calling yourself Americans, after the entire dual continent
This is one (small) reason why many USAians will tell you their state if you ask where they're from.
The A in USA stands for "America"
Calling yourself Americans
Wait until you find out what the citizens of indiana are called, here's a hint, it's hoosiers.
The technical term is 𝕌𝕊𝕠𝕟𝕚𝕒𝕟 just so you know
Your bread is sweet. Like, all of it. And not just like, pleasantly so like a French brioche, but almost candy-like. Wonder Bread is one of the worst offenders, coming in at 5g added sugars per 100g: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Wonder-Bread-Classic-White-Sandwich-Bread-Sliced-White-Bread-20-oz/37858875?classType=REGULAR&athbdg=L1600
Edit: as a commenter pointed out, it's actually closer to 9g/100g, bringing it to soda levels of sugar ಠ_ಠ
British.
I found a lot of things weird, but I did go to Florida like 8 times so it’s to be expected and maybe some of these are exclusive to that state.
- I found it weird that alcohol seemed to be sold only in liquor stores. But you can buy a machine gun in Walmart.
- The food. Don’t get me wrong it’s nice and all but the quantity. Take sizzlers, you go in order your main meal then get an endless buffet for free. Like I couldn’t eat my steak when it arrived as I was full from the buffet.
- syrup all over breakfast items and people bigger than id ever seen were gorging and then taking a box home too.
- enthusiasm: grown ass adults whooping and hollering as we were queuing for rides. I’m a man child myself but it was startling.
- Jaywalking. Wtf
To throw out some positives. Everyone I met was lovely and nothing like the nut jobs we get to see online. People were polite, friendly and accommodating.
Beautiful nature and national parks.
Well I've just read every comment on this thread and I'm relieved to realize that our recitation of our National Pledge of Allegience at every opportunity is in-fact seen as totally normal.
I can't tell you how much humor I found in this response to that comment. 😁
It is not, but it's also hard to notice as a tourist. I've learnt that from here
I only really saw that in grade school. And it was a Red Scare thing. Super culty, but so is all the McCarthy stuff.
Do you ?
At a point I was travelling a lot to the US, the only time I heard the national anthem was before a Rodeo in Texas, and I never saw someone reciting the "pledge of allegience
Mostly in schools, so not something a traveller is likely to see
Yeees, totally normal and culty at all...
Sizes for clothes, drinks and fries are all bigger than in Brazil. A medium size shirt in the US is easily as big as a large in Brazil. For drinks I would usually groan every time I forgot to buy a small drink since I literally can't drink a medium soda in the US in less than an hour and I hate wasting food.
Canadian checking in.
Biggest oddity to me is that the default for restaurants is one bill, and waiters get annoyed if you ask them to split it by person.
Like why would I want to either:
- do math correctly splitting the bill while trying to leave; or
- be worried I ordered something more expensive than the average and unfairly make others cover it?
It's complete insanity to me.
Seems to have deliberately taken the opposite path of anything British:
- Drive on the wrong side of the road
- The light and power switches are upside down
- Weights & measures. Imperial? Ha!
- Screw your English dictionary. Ima put z's everywhere, drop the letter u and randomly pronounce words like buoy so you think there's an animal in the water over there
It kinda makes me laugh to think about it as just anti-British 🤣
Electric kettles (or hot water jugs depending on where you are) are just not a thing there. Apparently it has something to do with your 110v AC system. They don't boil as fast, and so never really took off. Just a little factoid that blew my mind, considering how commonplace they are everywhere else.
It's not that much slower. Our 20a outlets give 2,400w, while yours gove 3000w. And, it's still faster than a stovetop kettle. Its more that we don't make hot tea very regularly, while drip coffee was the dominant hot drink for so long.
We aren't big tea drinkers, so we only need hot water for food preparation.
The coffee machines make their hot water for coffee. If you don't use a coffee machine to make coffee, you might use an electric kettle or the microwave if you are derrainged.
They do exist here, just not very common. But in my family at least, every person has one in their kitchen. We are big tea drinkers though. I use mine a lot to heat broth for Ramen.
I got this electric kettle and it heats up really quick. It shows the exact temperature on a screen too.
https://fellowproducts.com/products/stagg-ekg-electric-pour-over-kettle
LOL, we has 2 and have never used them. One is at camp, where we have a gennie, and we sold the other at the flea market.
The only hot drinks we make are coffe and we have 3 machines for that. If we need hot water to cook, we heat it on the stove top. I just can't see why we would want one. Am I missing out?
They're faster than the stovetop by a lot over here, so if you're boiling a lot of water multiple times a day (for tea, coffee, ramen, and whatever else) they're super convenient.
If you're not making many hot drinks (or have better machines for that) I'm not sure how much use they are.
As for cooking, I know for myself, when I make something like rice, I boil the water in kettle first, and it definitely saves me a couple minutes. A few minutes doesn't sound like much, but it all adds up. Another commenter says that they're actually not that much slower over there, so it might be worth timing one compared to stove top?
I mean, they sell them at Costco, I'd hardly call that unknown. They're less common because most people just don't need them.
They are available now. This was in WaMart
https://i.imgur.com/d5ae1Po.jpg
Some of them even plug in!
But yes, kettles and toasters take forever.
Yeah, I have an electric kettle but I don't personally know any other American who owns one. People are weirdly interested in it when they visit me.
Canadian, so it's not all that different, but why. can. I. buy. liquor. in. a. PHARMACY?
Don't know if this is just a California thing, but it was weird as fuck. What's even weirder, in light of this, is they didn't go whole hog and sell cigarettes too. 'Cause helf.
Side story: Went into a Dollar General and bought a can of Sapporo. Ok, not so weird, it's functionally a super basic grocery store with a bunch of other cheap goods. Guy at the counter said, "Oh yeah, they make this beer in some place very far away". Looked at the can - I'm pretty sure he meant Japan, not Guelph, ON Canada.
He wasn't wrong but I did chuckle.
i like that there's this post where it's weird to be able to buy liquor in a pharmacy (canadian in california) and another where it's weird to only be able to buy liquor in a liquor store (brit in florida)
In some states you can buy booze pretty much anywhere. I moved out of the country for awhile and when I went back home I stopped into an ice cream shop slash convenience store, and when I was surprised to see the 6 coolers of beer along the back wall I realized I'd been gone a long time.
Pharmacies/drug stores in America have unique laws and ordinances that go back to prohibition. During that time, they took over the role of saloons in communities, since they were able to sell medicinal whisky.
Walgreens and CVS stopped selling cigarettes as corporate decisions around 2010, there's no law against it, they probably had a family member die of lung cancer.
Getting any entity that jumps through as many hoops as one has to jump through to get a liquor sales license to voluntarily give up that profit isn't nearly as likely in the current US societal climate. Maybe once we have legal weed, but not while it is the current drug of choice.
Pharmacy liquor is a new one to me, lol.
The god damn warning labels on absolutely fucking everything. Bro, I just wanna eat at a restaurant without wondering why the menu has a god damn "at your own risk" label... Also can't go 1 step in a water park without seeing a life guard, they're fucking everywhere. Not to mention on the rare occasion they aren't there, you just can't do shit. Land of the free my ass, feels like the optimal way to do anything is to always have a lawyer by side.
Drive thru ATMs. Also, people just sitting in their cars without driving.
What about drive-thru liquor stores!
Literally sitting in my car waiting for my take out order (canada)
What I mean is, just sitting in a parking lot not doing or waiting for anything. I came to realize after moving here that it’s probably the lack of 3rd spaces in the US. And because the country is so car-centric, the only place really where someone can take a minute just for themselves is in their car.
Donald Trump. I mean seriously WTF?
britain got boris, and the cabbage lady, so... I'd say we're doing ok
I'm Canadian. I went to a concert in Michigan (Third Eye Blind) and half the crowd had some article of clothing with the American flag on it. Not really that weird, but it's more than I'm used to seeing Canadians sporting Canadian flag clothing.
We do love our flag, especially post 9/11. Michigan is definitely a place where you would see more American flags than average. If you were in San Francisco, you would see far less.
In Belgium mostly the only time you'll see anyone with the flag on some piece of clothing is at some international (sports) event.
Guns. Paying for being medically treated / not having a proper healtcare system. Weird relationship to Socialism.
Weird relationship to Socialism
Cold war really messed US up, mentally
Yea, somehow understandable.
Non-stop televangelism channels are quite something. But probably you know that’s weird.
School shootings Kids safety trainings for school shootings Guns everywhere Two party political system Rampant racism Prison slavery Everything about its police force Unaffordable medical system combined with absolute shit medical insurance I can go on for a while
I've never been there, but apparently you guys don't have blackberries, and have grape jam?
Edit: what you don't have is blackcurrants, not blackberries.
We absolutely have blackberries. In my neck of the woods, there's apparently 2 species of blackberries, one of which is highly invasive. I was going for walks about a month ago, specifically routed to pass by as many wild blackberries as possible, and they were very delicious!
I avoid anywhere with blackberries and raspberries when they're in season; that's where the bears tend to hang out, and I'm not super keen on surprising a bear when I'm out hiking.
Surprised a family of bears (sow and two yearlings) trying to walk out of my basement last week in the dark. That was not fun.
We definitely have blackberries. We don't really have blackcurrants though, may be thinking of that?
Yep, currants took a hit because they were a vector for a pine tree infection that rocked our logging industry and led to a ban on currant growing like a hundred years ago. Currants aren't banned at the national level anymore.
And even through that, we have had creme de cassis as a liqueur that a decently built out bar would have.
We've definitely got blackberries and blackberry jam, but grape does tend to be the norm in a lot of areas. I prefer raspberry myself.
We have both blackberries and grape jam. Though grape is more likely to come as a jelly rather than a jam.
Grape jelly is more popular than jam, but we have both. Grape jelly is kind of an essential foodstuff in a lot of houses for making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which is a common food for children.
everything is chlorinated. i get painful rash if i ingest chlorinated water, so basically everything was undrinkable. this was also true for soft drinks the time i visited Vegas, so my options for hydration were extremely limited.
Do you mean fluoridated? Was the drinking water really chlorinated?
Yes public/city water systems often do use chlorine in the sanitation process: https://www.safewater.org/fact-sheets-1/2017/1/23/what-is-chlorination
And you can really smell and taste it when you're used to rural well water.
It's typically both. So little chlorine you won't notice unless you have a particular condition like op or you're doing something weird like growing algae. You can also just leave a glass of water out for a while and the chlorine will evaporate out of it.
our tap water IS chlorinated, but it's very minimal, some people pretend that they can taste it, idk if i believe them on that one. But it's safe to drink and doesn't cause harm to most people, unless for example, you're allergic to it.
TSA, but I guess you know that this is not normal?
Also the constant humming of ACs in New York drove me crazy.
From Austria:
The amount of plastic waste you produce.
Every shopping trip you get (single use) plastic bags, every food item is packaged individually. Even your plates are often times made from plastic, as is the cutlery (sometimes).
All those plastic cups in every restaurant - it's disgusting.
It's insanity.
Also: general waste is labeled "landfill" in some places.
