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is USA safe for my girlfriend?

Posted by Unfair_Dimension200@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 96 comments

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Listen, I only have a few minutes to type this because I'm being hunted by a crime gang and there's a tornado storm going on at the same time. You've got to warn her: *stay away*.

Ceiling fans and American homes ?

Posted by sergioo_8@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 67 comments

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> It has always surprised me to see ceiling fans in every room of American homes on the TV shows What are some of these shows where they have a ceiling fan in every room?

Do you feel like your state suffers from brain drain?

Posted by Bignosedog@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 359 comments

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I think we're a net draw of talent, because of technology and aerospace, but in certain areas (like, for instance, finance and the arts) we probably lose people.

Do Americans actually expect people to "sell themselves" in job interviews?

Posted by MayaTulip268@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 613 comments

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I only know about hiring in tech, including but not limited to startups. Maybe it's different in other industries, but where I'm from arrogance is not desirable—the tone you want to strike is self-assured confidence. An interview is not the place for false modesty. You have it right, you *are* selling yourself, not only as a worker but as a team member. The best possible impression to leave them with is *he's got this*.

Do you use “Girlfriend” as friend and/or romantic partner?

Posted by rjewell40@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 212 comments

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For the most part, this is a generational change in language. My grandmother referred to my (platonic) male friends as my boyfriends: "Are you going to the movies with your boyfriends this afternoon?" This wasn't intended as some kind of backhanded homophobia, that's just the word she used to refer to male friends. But to everyone who wasn't 75 years old in 1998, it sounded a little odd.

What are the connotations of a greyhound bus?

Posted by UwUnabomber_@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 322 comments

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It is expensive (not quite *that* expensive) but it's also part of the trip. You get food, you get a bed, you can actually enjoy watching the scenery go by. With a flight, the whole mentality is "this sucks, just get through it and you'll be somewhere cool," but if you truly believe it's about the journey rather than the destination, trains are not a bad way to go.

45/50 all in for unrelenting Nevada positivity

Posted by CupBeEmpty@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 33 comments

What are the connotations of a greyhound bus?

Posted by UwUnabomber_@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 322 comments

Why has American soft power not managed to spread US Customary Units around more?

Posted by crivycouriac@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 178 comments

Is Taking a Nap Considered Childish in the Western World?

Posted by Tylerdurdenps5@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 872 comments

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Napping is great. People don't look down on it. All the conversations I've had about adult napping have included a sentence like "napping during the day is great, I wish I could do it."

How long is your commute to work?

Posted by Stawberry8763@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 1314 comments

Do cops commonly ask to swear to God that you did nothing wrong ?

Posted by Huldreich287@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 370 comments

Did your high school have "senior assassination"?

Posted by CommercialOil8763@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 411 comments

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Yes, the ingenious analogues for different weapons were one of the big attractions to me, too. Spreading "contact poison" (petroleum jelly) on a door knob. Putting crosshairs on the aperture of a Polaroid camera, so you can use it as a 'sniper rifle' and immediately prove to your target that you'd hit him. I had no concept of danger or personal safety at that point in my life, I guess.

How much influence do cartels have on the US side of the border?

Posted by NotWorriedAgain@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 95 comments

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My assumption is that a lot of shady industries like pornography, online gambling, some areas of crypto, and pump and dump stock trading, and so on are in some part controlled by the Mexican cartels. They don't operate in public or do anything that gets them too much attention from the government.

Did your high school have "senior assassination"?

Posted by CommercialOil8763@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 411 comments

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I played *Killer* too! The things you did in that game were so far beyond what I understand Senior Assassins to be. You would put fake car bombs on the underside of your target's car. I had the police called on me *twice* in a pre-Columbine, pre-9/11 world, once for planting the aforementioned car bomb, the other for 'staking out' my friend's house at 6 am, waiting to attack him with a squirt gun when he got home from his work shift. I can't imagine what it would be like now. I imagine you'd get suspended for even carrying a book that said 'killer' on the cover.

Why has sport viewership gone down in united states?

Posted by DryOkra7058@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 86 comments

Is Jackie Chan the most famous Asian in America?

Posted by Intelligent_Chef9950@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 415 comments

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According to Google Trends, [Ohtani is searched for a lot more](https://trends.google.com/explore?q=%2Fm%2F0nb273g%2C%2Fm%2F099d4%2C%2Fm%2F012d40&date=today%201-y&geo=US&gprop=web). For Youtube, Ohtani and Bruce Lee are [roughly tied](https://trends.google.com/explore?q=%2Fm%2F0nb273g%2C%2Fm%2F099d4%2C%2Fm%2F012d40&date=today%201-y&geo=US&gprop=youtube).

Does "I couldn't care less" and "I could care less" mean the same thing now just because people use both?

Posted by HolidayEntry6823@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 245 comments

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The meaning is the same, what each signifies about the speaker is not the same. Both matter in communication, so I'd say the answer is that they aren't perfectly equivalent.

Best bbq to buy?

Posted by chubbegg@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 477 comments

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If you want to start from zero, a cheap propane grill with at least 2 burners for different temperature zones is a great place to start. I'm not saying it's the best, I'm saying it's the lowest barrier to entry.

How many Americans have actually visited a national park?

Posted by Bitter-Penalty9653@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 2173 comments

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I'd say most of my friends and family have been to a national park in the last year. I don't go around surveying them, but I'd bet money on it. It's a pretty common destination for vacations. The National Park Service keeps records. [About 325 million people a year](https://www.nps.gov/subjects/socialscience/visitor-use-statistics-dashboard.htm) visit national parks. They don't track the nationality of visitors, but the sources I'm seeing estimate [~10% of visitors](https://www.usanationalparks.info/unveiling-the-global-footprint-how-many-foreigners-visit-us-national-parks-annually/) are not U.S. citizens. So, figure about 300 million Americans a year visit their national parks, out of a total population of about 341 million. Presumably a lot of those are repeat visitors, but you should get the impression that it is very common for people to visit national parks occasionally.

Do Americans actually oppose public surveillance cameras and stricter civic laws, or is that just a loud minority?

Posted by Last_Clothes6848@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 248 comments

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According to surveys (like [this one](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/americans-warier-of-us-government-surveillance-ap-norc-poll-finds) and [this one](https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/april_2013/70_favor_use_of_surveillance_cameras_in_public_places)) Americans either strongly favor or strongly oppose surveillance in public spaces. The difference between poll results, I suspect, is in how you ask the question, as well as when you ask the question: when you ask it right after a major public tragedy (like the Boston marathon bombing) you get more people in support. My hunch is that with trust in government quite low at the moment, the most current polls would probably be very strongly against. At the same, private surveillance (Ring cameras and the like) are quite common, which says something on its own. Personally, I'm against it, and my position has never really changed: You have to oppose it by default, because you can't go back once its in place. Once the foot is in the door, the door just opens wider and wider. We've got drones, we've got AI, and we've got laws preventing the AI from monitoring everything we do using drones. The AI and drones aren't going away, so we have to protect the laws.

Why do Americans tend to say where they went to college before what they studied?

Posted by Key-Introduction-591@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 712 comments

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I gotta question how often this happens in reality. I think in TV and movies, people provide this information because it is a quick character sketch: it reveals something about the character's social status and academic orientation ("I went to Vassar and studied poetry" is different than ("I went to MIT and studied mechanical engineering"). But it's not been my experience in real life that people ask about your educational background in daily life, nor that most people just offer it without being prompted.

Are Mike and Ike’s popular in the US?

Posted by mimyson@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 334 comments

28/50 Unrelenting Sabers positivity. New York is our new state for unrelenting positive posting.

Posted by CupBeEmpty@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 134 comments

Do Americans notice how someone learned English right away?

Posted by Edi-Iz@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 262 comments

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If every time you say a few sentences, an owl in a track suit comes out and congratulates you, that's a clue that you learned from Duolingo. We pick up on that kind of thing. Beyond that, no, we generally don't know.

27/50 Toto I don’t believe we are in Reddit anymore. Unrelenting positivity for Kansas.

Posted by CupBeEmpty@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 71 comments

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I know someone who immigrated to the U.S. to go to KU. She'd never been in the country before, and Kansas was her first impression of America. She said she fell in love with it right away. If you say "Rock chalk..." she'll finish your sentence for you. I've never been to Kansas, but it inspires adoration and loyalty, so it's probably a pretty good place.

Do Americans also go to a public viewing for sports events like Germany?

Posted by Material-Wallaby-587@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 156 comments

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We don't watch any rebroadcast, retransmission, or account of the game without the express written consent of the National Football League, that's for damn sure.

What kind of household tech did y'all have in the 1970s–1990s?

Posted by Tight_Note4515@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 521 comments

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My first memories are from around 1984. I remember we had a color television at the time, but it was controlled by knobs. I don't think we had a remote control until we got our next one. We had a landline on the kitchen wall, it had a piece of paper with every friend, family, and local restaurant written on it. Their was also a landline in my sister's bedroom—she had the stereotypical pink phone. We got a computer around 1987-88. It was an Apple IIc. It might have been used, I'm not sure. We were early on getting a computer (thanks Mom) but in all other respects I think we were pretty average for a middle class family. The late 80s and into the 90s is when I remember consumer electronics becoming a thing. Digital watches, the Sony Walkman, and the Gameboy were very common in elementary school for my generation. Most middle class families owned a personal computer by the mid-late 90s, and cell phones around the turn of the century.

How do they handle crypto culture there?

Posted by OrdinaryStill2806@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 22 comments

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It's taxed as a property. You have to declare when you sell it, trade it, or use it to buy something. Crypto transactions are legible to the government: you must report each transaction. In the past there have been loopholes that let transactions on exchanges be pooled and summarized, but the IRS is actively trying to close them. Know Your Customer (KYC) is important and enforced for legitimate crypto exchanges. It's impossible for the IRS to catch everyone, and there are certainly still gray and black markets. The government's intent is that you shouldn't be able to hide a transaction on the blockchain, or fail to pay taxes on it either.

West coast residents: how much do you worry about earthquakes?

Posted by Physical-Incident553@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 293 comments

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I'm vaguely worried about "the big one" that's eventually coming, but not in a way that affects my life on a daily basis. I'm mainly worried about losing infrastructure (water and electricity) for a long time, I'm not really worried about being hurt by the main event since that is unlikely.

How truly big/monumental was the OJ Simpson trial?

Posted by Own-Cellist9339@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 287 comments

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I'll put it this way: I just looked it up and it was 16 months from the murder to the acquittal, with the trial only lasting nine months. If you'd asked me yesterday, I would have guessed it took about five years. It was on the news day, it was what the talk shows talked about every night, it was the front page of every magazine at the grocery store. It was huge. We took time out of high school *math class* to watch the verdict.

Is it the government, the culture, or something else? Why are nearly all the world’s biggest companies American?

Posted by Patrick_walkerr@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 477 comments

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Really? I've met quite a few really good business people, including business owners and leadership. They're pretty much just regular people. If you're judging millions of people by a few outliers who make the news, you're just misleading yourself for no reason.

25/50 halfway home. Unrelenting positivity for Utah

Posted by CupBeEmpty@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 63 comments

Is there really a common cake flavor that apparently comes in a box and the flavor is “yellow”?

Posted by IMicrowaveSteak@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 414 comments

In places where having a car is crucial to getting around, what are alternative options for transport without relying on friends or family to drive you?

Posted by astarisaslave@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 235 comments

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Internet pedantry: the classification isn't specifically about power, but about speed and whether you can operate the bike by throttle only. Class 1 bikes are pedal-assist up to 20 mph, Class 2 is throttle-powered without pedaling up to 20 mph, and Class 3 is pedal-assist up to 28 mph. It may differ slightly from place to place, but this classification is very common. I dunno about freeway speeds. If I see someone in a bike on the freeway, electric or not, I assume something has gone very wrong for that person. You're not getting up to freeway speeds on anything rightly called a bicycle.

How do Americans generally refer to kilograms in casual parlance? "Kilogram", "kilo", by the initialism kg ("kay-gee") or some other word?

Posted by cavendishfreire@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 1371 comments

Men: Do you wear a wool coat when it’s cold?

Posted by topdownyeti@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 453 comments

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It doesn't get all that cold where I live, but it does rain. So, I wear a rain shell most of the time during the winter. I used to have a wool coat, but it was heavy at the best of times, and really heavy when it had been rained on.

How expensive are American school lunches?

Posted by That_guy84636@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 374 comments

19/50 the southernmost Carolina is ready for the unrelenting positivity

Posted by CupBeEmpty@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 111 comments

Is Michael jackson more famous than Elvis presley ?

Posted by HappyCrow11@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 231 comments

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How do you measure fame? If you go by how often their name is searched on Google, it seems like Michael Jackson is more famous than Elvis Presley: * Since 2004, about [4 times as much](https://trends.google.com/explore?q=michael%2520jackson%2Celvis%2520presley&date=all&geo=Worldwide) as Elvis Presley, worldwide. * In the U.S. only, it's about [5 times as much.](https://trends.google.com/explore?q=michael%2520jackson%2Celvis%2520presley&date=all&geo=US) * In the last year, about [6 times as much in the U.S.](https://trends.google.com/explore?q=michael%2520jackson%2Celvis%2520presley&date=today%201-y&geo=US) In terms of name recognition, I would assume that everybody who knows one name knows the other. It would be odd to meet someone in the U.S. who knew Michael Jackson but not Elvis Presley, or vice versa. Some very young people might not know either of them.

​As an outsider, the concept of high schools having massive parking lots specifically for students is mind-blowing. Is it really that common for 16-year-olds to drive themselves to school every day?

Posted by Necessary_Angle2117@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 1378 comments

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Yes, and furthermore (at least at my school) there were more students with cars than there were spots. Only juniors and seniors could have a spot, and about a third of them couldn't get one anyway, so they had to park off campus and walk a few blocks. I lived in a small town with a lot of people who lived far from school. Buses were available, but most people had cars anyway, so they preferred to drive rather than be taking the school bus.

Are there any regions in America that are known for producing more soldiers than the national average?

Posted by bricklegos@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 241 comments

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> If youre talking states, then Alaska. Hawaii. Florida, places like that. This is not important, really, but I am not clear on the "places like that" part of your comment, because it makes it sound like there is a common thread between all of those places. It's not clear to me what that would be, and how it would affect military service rates!

Do you view America as a young country or an old one?

Posted by palep_hoot@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 549 comments

What’s your daily car and how many do you have?

Posted by Much-Parsnip3399@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 1603 comments

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I don't have a daily car, I work from home, but I have a 2026 Ioniq 5, and a 1999 Ford Ranger. I only bring out the Ranger for camping, hauling things to the dump, or red carpet Hollywood premiers.

How popular is anime in America?

Posted by Odd-Skin-762@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 144 comments

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When my older brother was going to high school in the late 80s, it was something people traded VHS tapes of. There was literally a 'connect' who had access to imported Japanese anime, and he distributed 2nd- and 3rd-generation copies around our town. When I was going to high school in the late 90s, it was much easier to get via mail order or at specialty shops, and they even showed Dragonball Z and Cowboy Bebop on Cartoon Network, a popular cable channel. That was how most of my friends were exposed to it. Nowadays I think it's just part of the media diet. I imagine a 10 year old today has probably seen a lot more anime than they've seen Looney Tunes, but probably still less than Disney or Pixar.

do americans really eat American fries sauce?

Posted by Infinite-Breakfast23@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 3681 comments

Do you drink tea in America?

Posted by Much-Parsnip3399@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 2173 comments

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Not British tea, but Taiwanese tea, yes. Every day, I make a pot of coffee in the morning, and pot of tea in the afternoon, and all through the day I vibrate with powerful energy.

Is “sitting in a car talking for hours” actually a big thing in America?

Posted by mechumechu@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 1181 comments

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They are roughly correct. Here's a historical chart showing [gas prices over time](https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10641) in blue, with the inflation-adjusted cost above it. It only goes to 2023, but for reference the [average cost for a gallon of gas today](https://gasprices.aaa.com/) (according to AAA) is $4.52, which is about what it was in 1981, and less than it was in 2012.

16/50 get your memes and trash talk on point we are goin with unrelenting positivity for Commie/Coolifornia. Be nice it’s a wild state.

Posted by CupBeEmpty@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 130 comments

Who is the "Mount Rushmore" of American literature?

Posted by QueenShewolf@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 169 comments

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1860: "Is there not a child in these United States who has not thrilled to the many adventures of Natty Bumppo, in the Leatherstocking Tales of James Fenimore Cooper?"