dnext

Right, I've run into those a few times. They always say we are arrogant and being disrespectful - while telling us that we can't use the name of our country in our language. I've even had one guy in a bar tell me that - in Washington DC.

Not to the vast majority of Americans. There's a strong bias against that in several latino cultures in the broader Americas however, as they contend that there's only 1 continent and anyone from it is an American, and that the US residents who call themselves Americans are being disrespectful. The other side is in English there's 2 continents, which we refer to in the plural as the Americas. And the United States is the only nation with the word America in it.

Nope and nope. Hope you folks have fun though!

A brave officer in WWI. An effective Chief of Staff from 1930-1935, hamstrung by the downsizing of the military. A solid but unexceptional general during WWII. Better at getting news clips than winning battles, but he did lead the retaking of the Philippines. Perhaps the most powerful single leader in the world in the post-war, from 1945-1951, and is immensely influential in turning Imperial Japan into a successful and peaceful democracy. In Korea the US was initially understrength, but he responded well and his amphibious end run at Inchon was very impressive. But then the Chinese intervened, and he cracked, and was insubordinate to Truman. He was relieved for cause, and if he had his way would have nuked several cities in China. Complicated guy, and it ended very badly. But he also did some impressive things.

Let me guess, single? It's possible if you are just buying for yourself, but the larger your family is, the harder it is to walk and purchase groceries for more than a few days.

Not sure why that got downvoted. Yes, it's a different cultural practice - hence my comment on 'car culture.' Strange how contentious the concept of 'how do you shop for groceries' is.

The other thing is car culture is ubiquitous. Lots of folks in the world don't have cars, or bike, or have smaller cars with less cargo capacity. It makes sense to drop by the corner market if you are walking by or biking. Less so if you have to get on the freeway to get home.

The saddest thing I've ever seen is Mexican food in Canada. Nice restaurant too, but at the time (20 years ago) we talked to the manager to see how they were doing and they told us it was impossible to source the stuff they needed where they were. Wonder if that's changed. Of course, if that's what you grew up on that's just 'Mexican food', and that's fine. Hell, maybe you even like it better. I grew up on TexMex and prefer that, and it definitely Americanized Mexican food.

Agreed, kebab is a thing in the DMV

I've got five or six kebab places near me, and we are 30 miles outside of a city. So they aren't pizza or burgers, but they aren't a niche food any more either.

One of the top 3 presidents, alongside Washington and Lincoln. Domestically the FDIC, the SEC, and Social Security have made enormous impacts in the stability of the American economic system and the well being of American lives. The WPA (Works Progress Administration) was one of the largest infrastructure programs in history, and set the way for the soaring economy in the 50s and 60s. The Civilian Conservation Corps put people back to work doing constructive tasks, such as planting 3 billion trees and turning the national parks into one of our greatest assets and the envy of the world. He foresaw the enormous threat of the rise of the Axis fascist powers and navigated the US deftly to countering that threat, when he was opposed by a Republican congress. The Arsenal of Democracy was one of our greatest moments and Lend-Lease helped save the world. The New Deal also helped with this, with millions of miles of new roads, electricity to rural communities that never had it before, and the Tennessee Valley Authority, which revitalized the region and provided much of that power to the South and Midwest. And he was an innovative and effective communicator with his fireside chats, which rallied the people during the Great Depression and then WWII.

I particularly love unlimited dark money in campaign finance, the concept that speech IS money, the rulings that allow you to give unlimited gifts to government officials including judges as long as you don't state an open quid pro quo, even when they have open business before them. And the open support for partisan gerrymandering, along with the gutting of the voting rights act, and the destruction of reproductive healthcare leading to more dead women. And the party line rule that a President has absolute immunity for 'core constitutional acts', which only the Justices themselves can interpret. This court has done tremendous damage to democracy, and has openly embraced oligarchy, including gutting protections on the federal government regulating corporate activity.

I doubt that very much. Unlike most of the rest of the world, the US has very large interest in collegiate sports, and then there's golf, MMA, and motorsports such as NASCAR.

Education, pro-business, pro-education. America's primary education system is of widely divergent success, but it's university system is definitely one of the best in the world, and for a long time attracted the best minds. The perfect example is Google. An American born student (Larry Page) and a Russian born student (Sergey Brin) met at one of the best universities in the world, Stanford, and realized that they had an innovative idea that led to Google. America is a case of extremes. We do a lot of things really well, and a lot of things pretty piss poor. The high end is very high, the low end can be pretty awful. But now we are having a backlash over what we've done successfully in the past, we pro-nativists becoming anti-immigration and anti-education.

Depends on where you are going in the states. If you are already in Bethesda MD, there's a great civil war battlefield, Gettysburg, about 75 mins away. Or you could go down to the historic triangle in VA. That's a weekend trip, 4 hours. The Yorktown Victory Center, which was the final battle of the Revolutionary War. The Jamestown Settlement. Colonial Williamsburg, which is a recreation of life in 18th century Virginia. Plus there's a great theme park, Busch Gardens. Several great roller coasters. For sports in the DC area, you could go to a Nationals Baseball Game, a Wizards basketball game, a Capital Hockey Game, or a Commanders Football game, depending on the time of year. As to watch, I'd recommend Friends as a sitcom, Breaking Bad for a crime show, Star Trek for Scifi, and Band of Brothers for a war story. Westerns are also very classically American. Tombstone is a modern classic. OK, hope that helps!

I don't care that much myself, as long as both parties are adult and good with their relationship. We've gone way too far into gatekeeping on things that aren't any of our business.

We've got a LOT of fast food places, and some of them are incredibly popular, but only in their regions. In-N-Out, White Castle, and Whataburger are all really popular in their region. Nationwide we've got McD's, Burger King, Taco Bell, Dunkin, and Subway. There's a lot of good subway places now, including Jersey Mike's and Firehouse. Subway is all over the place, but beginning to fall off. Chick-Fil-A and Popeyes are fighting the Chicken Wars, with their chicken sandwiches. And in the US, no, it's not a chicken burger - burger is a minced patty.

Hollywood is located in Los Angeles, so most of the production companies are there, and lots of writers live there so their setting is often that region. That being said, New York gets tons of attention in Media and Games, as it's the most prosperous and populated city, and also had a huge media presence. I'd say there's more set in NYC than any other location. Washington DC gets some attention, especially in political thrillers, as it's the nation's capitol.

Not really. About 1 in 4 Americans attend church weekly, 2 in 5 monthly. The fastest rising single group of respondees in recent polling for religion is 'none.' And of course the Founders banned any formal religion as being the national religion, and even went so far as to unanimously approve a treaty that said that the US was in no way based on the Christian religion. While Christmas is the single biggest holiday, it's practiced both as a religious holiday and a secular one depending on people's inclinations.

I think if we got rid of all the indoctrination of anti-intellectualism throughout our churches, it would do just fine. As it is, the education system is constantly fighting against said indoctrination, and the anti-intellectual people are political and actively trying to destroy education in many spots in the US. Our university system is tremendous, by most accounts the finest in the world.

I've responded a dozen times in this sub and then found that the question was deleted just after I submited. It definitely makes me less engaged and less interested in yet another sub with bad moderation.

Note the Reagan era went even further, with massive sentencing discrepancies. Getting caught with crack cocaine, the most common form of the drug in black communities, was often a 100 time longer sentence than getting caught with powder cocaine. By 2000, more black men were disenfranchised due to drug convictions than were before the 15th amendment in 1870.

After the Civil Rights era moved most minorities from supporting the GOP to supporting the Democrats, the Republicans realized they could no longer remove voting rights from minorities who voted Democratic legally, but could if they hung a felony on them. So alcohol remained fine, but marijuana was criminalized, and indeed, a propaganda war was launched against it. Blacks and hispanics at the time were disproportionately the users. One of Nixon's aids was candid about this, John Ehrlichman: "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the anti-war left and Black people... We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities."

No. I took 3 years of French in High School but never practiced and it's all basically gone now.

Yes, but the Confederacy is a symbol, as you just rightly pointed out. It's not just celebration of the Confederacy, it's celebration of the racism for 350+ years, from the early colonies, to Antebellum South, to Jim Crow. It is their heritage. They just lie about it.

No. It's not like we need dead reckoning in the wild or are jumping in small airplanes or helicopters to land in remote areas. GPS and a massive highway system.

Well, I don't think we have much to brag about these days considering our politics. But yes, a lot of people enjoy taking the piss off of Americans. Except the folks in Latin and South America, who absolutely detest we call ourselves Americans... LOL.

I agree that WWII was Britain's finest hour, and they were one of the few nations that fought over principle in defending another nation. But a realistic look, they didn't fight alone. They were the head of the largest empire the world had ever seen at that point. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, and forces from the African colonies and the Caribbean all fought with the UK. In addition, the appeasement strategy was problematic, especially in the context of their selling Czechoslovakia to the Nazis to buy time for rearmament - especially considering in the mid 30s and France together had the balance of power and squandered it. That being said, Churchill was probably the single most important Allied leader of WWII, and the UK fought bravely and valiantly throughout the entire war, and their intelligence services were probably the best the world has ever seen.

Universal healthcare, like 32 of the 33 other advanced economies in the world somehow have managed to do.

The Founders enshrined in the Constitution that there was no establishment of religion, and freedom of conscience to worship as you wish. And then went further and enshrined it in a treaty that was unanimously ratified by the Senate that the US was 'in no sense founded on the Christian religion.' But a lot of people in the evangelical churches lie to their congregations, and lots of those people are amazingly ignorant.

Who in turn persecuted other Christians that didn't share their own specific view of Christianity - that's why they were kicked out of England and Holland, and that's what they did in the colonies. Jefferson and Madison saw this when people were being thrown in jail for not tithing to churches they weren't a part of, and vowed to ensure that this stopped. Hence the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom that became the foundation of freedom of religion in the Bill of Rights.

You are conflating the UK, that is not a member of the EU and does allow 8 bank holidays to count against leave, with the EU, which doesn't. So says the European Court of Justice. ECJ Case: ANGED v FASGA (C-78/11) determined that each type of leave is separate and can't be required to be substituted with each other. So they can't make you use accrued vacation in place of parental leave, you get back your vacation time if you have illness during it, and public holidays are not part of vacation leave. It is where you live - but then, the UK gives 8 extra days to correspond with those 8 bank holidays because of that. It's literally just to simplify payroll record keeping.

That's why you check the citations and the notes. That's what determines if a wiki entry is accurate or not, based on best available public data. Most of the notes, with their associated citations to the labor laws in questions, for EU nations specifically state that PTO and public holidays are indeed separate, with the caveat that if the holiday falls on a weekend, then it doesn't count as paid time off, as you would be off anyway. For example, here's Portugal, emphasis mine: ***Workers are entitled to paid holidays which are mandatory and have a minimum duration of 22 working days. Workers are also entitled to*** [***13 paid public holidays***](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_holidays_in_Portugal)***.*** *During the first year of admission, workers accrue 2 vacation days per completed month of work, to be enjoyed after 6 months employment. On the following years all 22 days are accrued on January 1.*[*^(\[152\])*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_by_country#cite_note-152) *However, when a public holiday is during the weekend, the holiday is not recovered, which means that in all years, a number of these holidays are actually not considered as paid days. Thus, on average the effective paid public holidays are 9.*[*^(\[15\])*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_by_country#cite_note-TravailEurope-15)[*^(\[153\])*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_by_country#cite_note-153) Pretty explicit. Here's Belgium: *Before 2012, a worker after one year of full employment is entitled to: 24 working days if they work 6 days per week; and 20 working days if they work 5 days per week. This was challenged by the EU.*[*^(\[31\])*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_by_country#cite_note-31) *From June 2012, workers are allowed to take holidays in their first year of employment.*[***^(\[32\])***](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_by_country#cite_note-32) ***Workers are also entitled to*** [***10 paid public holidays***](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_holidays_in_Belgium)***.***[***^(\[15\])***](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_by_country#cite_note-TravailEurope-15)[***^(\[20\])***](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_by_country#cite_note-Eurofund-20) And here's the question in r/Germany \- Do I get paid public holidays in addition to my annual leave? The #1 response was 'Of course.' [https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/uo5j4y/do\_i\_get\_national\_holidays\_off\_in\_addition\_to\_my/](https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/uo5j4y/do_i_get_national_holidays_off_in_addition_to_my/) You are clearly wrong. Have a nice day!

I literally just showed you the data. The fact that you just say 'nuh uh' in a long screed isn't convincing.

No, that doesn't include national holidays. The nation in question may or may not have additional time off for national holidays, but virtually all of them do. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_minimum\_annual\_leave\_by\_country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_by_country) Sort by total paid leave. And, of course, the UK left the EU.

Well, let's see. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics by the time you reach your 15th year at the same employer as a full time employee you are 50% likely to have 4 or more weeks of vacation. The number of workers at the same employer that long? 16.85%. So that's about 8% of workers getting that amount of leave. The same that the EU mandates everyone starts with. So of the 135 million full time workers in the US, 124 million of them don't get the same level of leave as mandated by law in the EU. What's more, we don't even mandate PTO for full time - part time employees get the percentage of time off equal to their number of hours worked compared to 40. So a Dutch part time worker that works 20 hours a week gets 2 weeks of PTO.

Because my screen hadn't refreshed in that time frame.

It's unconscionable, like most of what this criminal administration led by a rapist felon who protects pedophiles has done.

As an average is a generalization, it's more than heavily implied.

I was really luck and had 25 days. It was glorious! LOL. Of course, that was during the heady days of the tech industry. And I stayed with the same company for 20 years. But yes, we definitely get less than Europe. For some reason objective reality bothers a lot of people on the right.

Which has nothing to do with their lifetimes. That's how many did in 1 year.

Love Acadia and that area, absolutely gorgeous. One of my fondest vacations was to Mystic CT, Bar Harbor ME, and Acadia,

And then went on to make an inaccurate generalization of US work-life balance. The EU gets a minimum of 4 weeks off by law. That's where it starts. You can get more depending on where and how long you work.

LOL, this is nonsense.

But a thing called averages exist, and in those averages, the US fares poorly to Europe. The EU minimum by law is 4 weeks.

I did for a long time. But it depends on your industry and specific company. Most don't allow for that much. And it's just a face that the US averages less PTO than Europe. We generally start at 2 weeks, and that's only for full time work. Different European nations do it differently of course, The EU has a statutory minimum of 20 days to start.

I think it speaks a lot to who we wish we were, or who we think we are, as many of us aren't that self-aware. Everyone thinks they are the hero, right?

Ah yes, memories of my childhood in Northern Virginia! Another big one for the time, though not a major chain. Chesapeake Bay Seafood House!

Right, it's just the optimum preference for most humans on the planet. I guess being from Michigan is it's own special hell. :D

That's the thing though - coastal California does not have a lot of variation in temperature. It's not like it's 110 in LA in the Summer.