ALTtogether they legalised drugs and marriage 70 years before any other county in the usa. they are the ultimate power couple. they could do anything
[ID in alt!]
see now THIS is how you do an introductory google form
europeans will really look americans dead in the eye and say they’re so uncultured because they never leave the us
do europeans understand they can take a train two countries over with no passport required in almost the same time it takes someone in the us to drive to another major city within the same state
The train system in the US (Amtrak) is... Less than ideal.
It only crosses the border in 3 places, all three in Canada, and only to the nearest major city across the border (Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver). They do not cross the US/Mexico border. They do not provide service to Alaska, Hawaii, Wyoming, or South Dakota, all of which are US states (at time of recording). As far as I can tell, they only have one station in the entire state of Idaho, and it doesn't have anything. Not even restrooms or a ticket office. For a lot of trips you have to take multiple trains to get there, and most of their trains only run once a day.
Oh, and fun fact, that same trip from San Francisco to San Diego by train takes between 12 and 15 hours (depending on the route). And it's "mixed service" meaning it includes buses that are operated by Amtrak. The trips range between 2 and 4 segments, and some of them are more bus than train. All of them were pricier than the train ticket shown in OP's screenshot (the lowest for the date I was looking at - Nov 7, 2023 - was $65, but most routes were $81 for coach and or $100 for business).
for further context, every time you have to get off a train to get on a bus, you will wish to be shot in the street
The lack of travel is not why we tend to say that though.
1) The situation is fucked up beyond belief because white Europeans colonized the entire continent while not having the population to need that much space in the first place. If you want more borders and more cultural diversity, go vote to give back land to the natives, call your representatives. 3 percent of your country, that’s nearly 10 million people, still don’t get to live their own culture on their own land, under their own rule. Grant them complete independence and the money and resources to rebuild their land, build schools where they teach in Hawaiian, Na-Dene or Iñupiaq, among others, instead of English.
I understand the situation that you are in, but let’s not forget that this situation is your countries own responsibility. Your continent is a large monoculture mostly because it was made to be so. We can also create easily accesible cultural diversity if we encourage it to grow.
As long as you play national sport competitions that you call world series, as long as you pledge allegiance to the flag everyday, as long as you still have a two party system of a far right and a center-right political party, you will have to deal with the stereoype of being uncultured. That has nothing to do with not being able to travel, and everything to do with literally being a country that constantly oppresses cultural diversity at any chance it can get.
2) The situation being fucked up beyond belief does not negate that you don’t leave the USA mentally either. Almost 80% of your country is monolingual English speaker. In Europe 56% is bilingual.
To graduate high school, 16 states don’t require you to learn a second language, 24 leave it as optional. you have 430 languages being spoken or signed in the states, 117 of them are indigineous to your land and native people! one in 5 people don’t speak english at home.
You can start learning a language today.
You don’t need to travel 8 hours to find a reason to learn more cultures. Look at at your own family, your neighbors, you classmates/coworkers. do you understand them and their culture? Try foods from different cultures, eat some Vada Pav, Hete Bliksem, Räkmacka or Jianbing. Try out foods you’ve never tried before, and if you aren’t sure: ask what something is made of, google the history of the dish, and look up the pronunciation in the original languages. Wikipedia that shit.
3) You’re a country built by immigrants, settlers, Native people and imported slaves. You are literally the biggest, most excessive, cartoonishly obvious example of a melting pot culture in the western world. Go watch a bollywood movie with subtitles every once in a while, listen to welsh music, download babbel or duolingo or something and learn one or two languages, read books from different countries, study different religions, and when you are hungry go eat a meal in a restaurant from a culture you’ve never eaten from before. try new things.
You don’t even need to leave San Francisco to find someone you can speak French, Spanish, Tagalog, Xhosa or Hindi with. Don’t use the 8 hour train way as an excuse.
4) Europeans, Asians and Native Americans mostly say “you don’t have any culture“ because we often have to deal with tourists and internet shoppers trying to americansplain our own culture back to us, while not even speaking the language.
All the reason you seem to need to tell us that the “Leaning Tower of Pisa should be in Rome” is apparently that your grandmother was Italian, while at the same time forgetting that A) your grandmother was a sicillian immigrant, and B) it’s called the Leaning Tower of Pisa because it’s in Pisa. We know that. You, when you DO travel to our countries, don’t even seem to do some light reading beforehand.
“Dealing with Americans who don’t know that different countries have different cultures, and therefor different societal expectations, rules and perspectives“ is a very common experience when dealing with people on the internet and with tourists. I am not kidding when I tell you that I have had to tell more than a dozen american tourists that Rotterdam is in fact not a walking distance away from Amsterdam. Most of them were offended because they thought I was lying, also claiming they knew better because they were (fill in a weird percentage) dutch heritage. It might just be me, but knowledge and culture isn’t blood related. Behavior rarely is, too, and even when it is, it’s not something like “Well I am Russian, so I must like vodka“. That is not how things work, but that is the kind of people we have to deal with, because you don’t actually have any interest in learning what other cultures actually are like.
It’s not your lack of travelling we are annoyed by, it’s your hypocrisy of maintaining a self-centered anglocentric culture, while having such rich cultural diversity that you just blatantly ignore, while you are ALSO bothering every single person in the world with your know-it-all attitude and your weird bloodline alchemy beliefs in which you seem to thing that cultural traits are blood inherited and you therefor don’t need to do research.
imagine being the person above me and just thinking that there aren't americans who try to address this only to be met with insurmountable odds, like there aren't americans of color who aren't to blame for this entirely, or like the entire country is the fault of all its people and not it's shitty government.
shut the fuck up and stop making people feel helpless and shitty over things we barely if ever get the opportunity to learn.
also europeans do all of this and more and european colonialism is the reason we're like this lmao
Lemme just
we often have to deal with tourists and internet shoppers trying to americansplain our own culture back to us, while not even speaking the language...
“Dealing with Americans who don’t know that different countries have different cultures, and therefor different societal expectations, rules and perspectives“ is a very common experience when dealing with people on the internet and with tourists. I am not kidding when I tell you that I have had to tell more than a dozen american tourists that Rotterdam is in fact not a walking distance away from Amsterdam. Most of them were offended because they thought I was lying, also claiming they knew better because they were (fill in a weird percentage) dutch heritage.
So...this is what the original post is talking about.
Most Americans cannot go on vacation in Europe. I don't have statistics to back it up, but as an American, if someone says they went to a tourist-popular European city on vacation, I know instantly that they have money. Your everyday plumbers, middle school teachers, truck drivers and cashiers cannot do that.
There are exceptions, but American tourists in European cities are probably among the wealthiest ten-ish percent or so of Americans.
These people are annoying and condescending to other Americans too.
Re: the other stuff, a good rule I like to follow is that if I hear about a problem and several solutions immediately pop into my mind, I consider it likely that there is a reason those solutions haven't worked, instead of assuming the people who could work to implement them are just dumb or malicious.
WE KNOW it's a problem that 80% of the country is monolingual. The reason for this goes back to racist, anti-immigrant policies that were put in place in the early 20th century that tried to purposely force English on immigrants, not to mention the colonialism that goes back even further where Native languages were purposefully stomped on and nearly or almost entirely destroyed.
Most Americans do take non-english language classes even if it's not explicitly required because you often can't get into college if you haven't. (Or at least this is true in Kentucky which is like, the least politically progressive state.) The problem is that kids who aren't bilingual at home don't start learning a second language until high school (starts at age 14), which is well past the point where languages can be easily picked up. Why? I don't know, our public school systems are hot garbage. But the sheer dominance of English in America is because of aggressive colonialism and racism, not because of the incuriosity of Americans.
Most of us have tried to learn a second language. I can ask simple questions and do basic things like order at a restaurant in Spanish, but I still count myself as monolingual because I have only the barest grasp of grammar and still know frustratingly little vocabulary. I'm lying here in bed trying to remember the spanish for "blanket" and I can't, and the closest I can get to the concept is like, "papel de dormiendo."
just saw a post written by a very kind and tolerant person politely explaining in detail why it is rude to listen to music/watch stuff on your phone in public without earbuds. I'm glad people patient enough to do that exist, since the only explanation I could possibly offer is "because you aren't the protagonist of this grocery store"
Seeing people shoot raptors in other countries is fucking wild to me because we have a whole system of super strict laws governing how you can handle an individual FEATHER off of an eagle, and it doesn't have to even be a dead eagle. One can molt and you can find it on the ground and if you're caught with it the warden will fuck your entire life. What do you mean people are out there shooting them to protect a fucking pheasant. A pheasant??? That thing I have to avoid running over approximately 459 times any time I leave a major highway???
My good friend @prismaticate has asked a very good question here, and while I’m not entirely sure I’m qualified to explain it and would love some input from more qualified sources, my SUPER simplified understanding of why the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 and its numerous modern revisions and addendums have clauses about this included is this:
-It’s basically impossible to tell a feather that’s been picked up off the ground from one that’s been taken from a poached bird
-This used to be a MAJOR problem when bird-feather hats and the like were in high demand back in the day, because several bird species on the edge of extinction kept getting poached in spite of the new laws protecting them since people would just say they “found” any feathers from protected species used in the stuff they were selling, and you couldn’t prove otherwise unless you literally caught them in the act of poaching
-This eventually got SO bad that they had to just make it illegal to have the feathers at all, with certain exceptions made for members of different indigenous groups, or authorized organizations that display them as part of efforts to educate the public about the species they belong to
@zooophagous is this a reasonable rundown? Was there anything I missed/any better sources you might recommend to learn more about this? I know it’s probably far more nuanced than that, but this was kind of the explanation I’d always seen floating around. 😅
That's pretty much the gist of it! Eagles and eagle feathers have more laws on top of that because of their sacred uses in certain indigenous practices, how they relate to legal falconry, and because eagles at one time were highly endangered while at the same time being a national symbol. Where a cop or a game warden may shrug and look the other way if you, say, illegally picked up a chickadee feather from your bird feeder, if they see a real eagle feather they will notice and will be VERY interested in where it came from.
Not long ago here someone was arrested and charged for violating these laws because they tried to sell a plains feather bonnet at a pawn shop, claiming they had "found it while exploring an abandoned house."
The clerk suspected it was real eagle, the warden confirmed it was, and because those feathers are so tightly tracked they were able to locate the family of the previous owners who said the item had been stolen some time ago.
If nobody knows you have it, obviously you can get away with it. But if they see it, or God forbid you try to SELL it, the hammer will fall.
Im surprised every time people think it's a crazy sounding law, it is genuinely one of the only things preventing a lot of native birds from extinction or any asshole could kill as many as they want and just say they found them on the ground
Lost followers after reblogging that whole thing about JKR being radicalized over the years, and that disturbs me.
Like if you think saying that people can be radicalized and manipulated into hate is somehow justifying it, yikes. And if you think that people are somehow just good or evil and that you are not at risk of buying into propaganda, have I got some very red flag news about that!
Idk if its because I am an older Millennial maybe (most who unfollowed were younger) but I watched a ton of that generation slide from one of the most progressive to the far right before my every eyes. Hell, my dad fought alongside his black friends in the Detroit race riots and now he watches Fox News 24/7 and talks about the border wall. Yet still claims he could never be racist because of how he used to be. He doesn’t even realize what he has become.
JKR isn’t a deluded old woman or innately evil, but in fact THE prime example of how well-meaning ignorance and privilege can be weaponized and encouraged down a pipeline, until it turns into a force of hate, and should be a cautionary tale about why educating and being open about these issues are necessary. Because there are those out there who will use those divisions and ignorance to their own ends. And just digging in our heels and saying “that could never be me!” is the very thing that puts you more at risk. I’ve lost so many loved ones down that pipeline and it is more slippery than most realize.
Stay alert, stay compassionate, stay humble, and make sure you move through life guided by reason rather than reaction. I love y’all and don’t want to see your passion twisted to get used against the world.
tags from @galwednesday
One of the best writing advice I have gotten in all the months I have been writing is "if you can't go anywhere from a sentence, the problem isn't in you, it's in the last sentence." and I'm mad because it works so well and barely anyone talks about it. If you're stuck at a line, go back. Backspace those last two lines and write it from another angle or take it to some other route. You're stuck because you thought up to that exact sentence and nothing after that. Well, delete that sentence, make your brain think because the dead end is gone. It has worked wonders for me for so long it's unreal
