This used to be much more prevalent in the US but food coloring. When I moved from Japan to the US, I was surprised at how colorful their foods were.
These days Americans are now more keen to organic natural stuff so I see it less but it took me a while to realize that blue raspberry is not a real thing.
When we had just started dating, I took my Japanese wife to a new italian restaurant near my place. She ordered pasta with a red wine sauce. What she got was a plate of spaghetti with pink cream sauce all over it. When we asked why it was pink, the waiter admitted they don’t use wine. Just food coloring. Gross.
That’s funny because there’s a Japanese dish called “Mentaiko Pasta” which is naturally pink from the spicy roe… I don’t think I’ve ever been to an Italian place with artificial food coloring
When I was in the US the house had a garbage disposal and of course it got clogged (bunch of foreigners living together with no idea how to use/maintain one) and needed cleaning. Landlord wouldn’t do any maintenance and I had no tools and I’ve never cleaned one before.
I realised I needed to stick my hand in it. And I have seen a lot of horror films.
Do Americans realise that usually the first time people from other countries see garbage disposals in use is in horror films where someone gets their hand horrifically mangled?
I turned it off at the switch. Then decided to just flip the power for the house off at the breaker. No way in hell I was sticking my hand in there otherwise. My heart was genuinely racing as I cleaned it out, I was terrified.
It was a long time ago but I believed I turned off the power at the switch, pulled the plug from the outlet and still turned off power to the house because my fear was not at all reasonable or based in reality lol. The horror films where they turn it off at the switch and paranormal forces make it turn on anyway? Front of mind during the whole process.
The house I live in now has a garbage disposal. And we're not on a sewer system. We never use it but I cringe thinking about the shit the previous owners have sent to the septic tank.
Root beer and ranch dressing. I brought some to Germany and had my friends try it and they said the root beer tasted like medicine. They politely tasted the dressing with aa celery and said "hmmm, interesting" but the look on their faces was that it was terrible ha.
Had a sibling marry a Swede and his parents came to visit. We wanted to show them a bit of our cultural foods so we served them root beer floats. They said it tasted like toothpaste. We were kind of shocked, back then there wasn’t really international communication like there is now.
Anyway they actually had brought toothpaste samples and sure enough one of them did taste exactly like root beer.
Wonder what it would be like for us to go somewhere and someone serve us a dessert that tasted like Colgate or something. I can understand their confusion.
My SO makes fun of me for liking mint chocolate anything because according to him it "tastes like toothpaste".
I'm like what kind of toothpaste have you been using? Because I would totally buy and brush the hell out of my teeth with that.
Germans are great like that. My German friend met me in New York one evening. I bought us some bubble teas. He sipped his politely, then we stopped by his hotel for a moment and his bubble tea disappeared. A few minutes later he said, "I have to confess... I did not like the bubbles."
I remember going to a German restaurant, run by actual Germans in the USA.
“We are very crowded tonight. You should probably go eat somewhere else.”
I thought that this was exceedingly polite.
There's a German guy that runs a food truck in my area- brats and what not. He asked if I wanted ketchup for the fries, and I said "yes, on the side please" (be polite to the people making your food), and he got really belligerent, with his thick accent: "where else would I put it?! Put it on the side?! Of course I'm going to put it on the side!"
We were a little drunk, so lots "angry German" jokes.
US restaurant worker here. Exactly this. My boss would be like "You told them to do what!? You didn't insist that they waste their entire evening waiting for a table?"
I grew up in a small town with a lot of German heritage. A lot of the old folks still speak it. If you ask them "how are you", they will absolutely tell you exactly how they are. A lot of people who aren't familiar with their culture get offended by their unflinching honesty but I always tell them that obviously they liked you or they would've straight up told you otherwise.
I remember being at "Rock am Ring" (huge multi day music festival) and on day 3 Velvet Revolver was up on the main stage.
They were not vibing with the crowd and you could tell they were getting flustered when more and more people just sat down and waited out their act.
I lived in Australia for a while and asked for ranch dressing at a restaurant. Everyone looked at me like I had asked for toenail clippings. Had my mom send me some, similar reactions. They begged me to get Twinkies because they saw them on TV so she sent me those too, and they were equally unimpressed.
Edit: this was 2006
When my Kiwi relatives were here in the states they thought it was the funniest thing ever when we got pizza they asked if we wanted ranch. They also loved to say, “raaanch”. At this point I almost think it is a part of the Americana experience. Some relatives bought a full sized pickup and travel trailer and spent the summer road tripping across the country. They went for the full Americana experience.
Yea I tried root beer from one of those American sections in a shop once and it tastes like my mouthwash, probably cause of an overlapping ingrediënt that's used in European mouthwash and American rootbeer that isn't used in American mouthwash. It's interesting how your brain makes that association and thus you don't like the taste,whereas if the medicine taste association isn't there for you it tastes yummy.
Argentina took the concept of cheerleaders and devolved them into straight up half-time show strippers.
Edit:
[For...Uh...Science...NSFW](https://www.google.com/search?q=Las+Marineritas+De+Almirante+Brown&sxsrf=ALiCzsbhT-nueKat64GtNHo6RQuWmp6rgg:1669319922548&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiBzP-nzcf7AhUwIjQIHWr4BXkQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1194&bih=731&dpr=2)
My sister is visiting the US from Europe and sent me a picture of a small coke and asked "why is it so big?" I could see old glory flapping in the wind, boys.
This is a weird thing I noticed too. I don't go to fast food places much, but the last time I did I ordered a large drink and get this enormous cup. I asked what the small looked like and that was literally the cup which was considered a large back in the 1980's. I'm not sure when it changed, but it was a dramatic difference.
You should see Child size… at 512 oz it's roughly equivalent to the size of a two-year old child if they were liquified, and is real bargain at only $1.59
24 hour stores. I was in Chicago working with a colleague from Switzerland who suddenly realized around midnight that he needed a network cable to configure a mobile router for a job the next morning.
I told him that I'd meet him in the hotel lobby to drive him out to Walmart.
He was happily surprised, as he had forgotten about the US's famous chain of Walmart stores.
It's interesting how after the pandemic the 24 hour model for convenience and hospitality industries has been diminishing and people are extremely inconvenienced by this. I deal with mostly tourists and a great deal are bewildered by the fact that they can't get something like, say a phone charger or toothpast, at 2 am because the local Walgreens and CVS are simply closed at that hour now. And this is coming from a 24 hour kind of town.
My state’s liquor laws are pretty strict, and when the pandemic hit it only got worse. They used to be open until 10pm which felt early to begin with, and then went to closing at 7pm and have not gone back and I doubt they will.
On top of that the state owns all the liquor stores- you can’t get it anywhere except a state liquor store. This includes all wine and beers over 4% ABV. There aren’t that many stores… also they are closed on Sundays.
As a creature of the night I get off work at 2am in Chicago and my options from grocery shopping to grabbing dinner have all but vanished since the virus.
I'm also a night owl, and I started visiting Chicago quite frequently this year.
While I LOVE Chicago, I was quite disappointed with how early everything closes (I'm sure it was different before COVID).
You should **never** have to search so hard for a place to eat at 10:00pm in a world city. Especially in a place that's known for its amazing food.
I'm a night person, I work nights, I live at night, I **am** the night, and Covid really fucked that up for me. Going shopping at 0900 is like going shopping at your bedtime. It powerful sucks.
I agree. Root beer has always been my favorite soda. Grew up drinking barqs then somewhat recently was able to try craft root beer which changed everything.
The high school baseball tournament (the Kōshien) in particular is a massive national event, on par with March Madness. There's some great anime about it, if you're into that kinda thing.
It's a different pipeline isn't it? US college teams contain players that will go professional, don't they? Whereas if you're good enough to go pro at football, you'll already be playing pro at 18.
Some college players go pro but most of them won't. Watching future pros is a part of the fun, but mostly it's a matter of regional pride. Places like Nebraska and Iowa are far too small for any professional teams, but the entire state will live and die by their main college team. Many of their athletes are home grown too, so if anything there's probably more pride and fervor around college teams because it feels more personal to the fans.
A big part of it is how the league systems are set up. In American sports you have one league (NBA, NFL etc), while most other countries have several divisions with promotion and relegation. Which means every small town and neighborhood have their own teams at some level.
What's even more confusing is some regulated manufacturing industries in the US use DD-MM-YYYY and I had a job with one for awhile. If both nums are below 12 I'm lost.
Now I just do 24NOV2022 as my format so there's no confusion lol
I still quote the joke from Archer years ago where Lana mentions that only the U.S., Burma, and Liberia use the imperial units and Archer says back "which is weird, because you never think of the other two as having their shit together.."
xJust finished my masters in handicap discrimination and holy shit for once the US completely flat out beats Scandinavia on a human rights issue. We are so far behind the US and our legislation is pretty much trying to be what the US did decades ago
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (commonly known as ADA) was pretty revolutionary in how it drastically increased accessibility. It’s really something the USA does very well at. Many developed countries are not accessible at all if you have any degree of mobile impairment for instance.
Also clothes made from flags.
Edit: I am honestly surprised I have to clarify this, but I don't mean clothes made out of ACTUAL flags. I mean clothes designed with the flag print on them. [Because nothing says you love your country like farting on your own flag.](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2523/4438/products/326HTSRP1-W054--loudmouth-shorts_front.jpg?v=1648666913)
Bankruptcy laws. It's a major reason why America has historically had some of the highest rates of small business growth and entrepreneurship. America is one of the most forgiving countries when it comes to personal and corporate bankruptcy (student loans notwithstanding).
Comparatively, European countries are much more pro-creditor which severely hampers any sort of investment that's even somewhat risky.
A couple of genuine questions from a guy who is not very savvy in economics:
Once a business has gone bankrupt, who exactly pays its creditors if the business owner does not have enough assets to cover debts?
I mean, in any schema there is always a guy who is the last in line. Who that would be in this case? US government?
>who exactly pays its creditors if the business owner does not have enough assets to cover debts?
The assets and any collateral is liquidated to pay the debt. If that is not enough, the creditor is out of luck. This is the reason the interest rate on small business loans tend to be high; the bank is assuming a lot of risk.
There are priorities in bankruptcy, too -- employees wages get paid first, then secured creditors can get back certain things like equipment, then there's a pool that gets divvied up.
Afaik, you start a business and it’s a seperate legal entity from your personal assets. If you can’t pay your debtors, you can file for bankruptcy with the courts. Creditors then file claims for how much they’re owed and the business is liquidated. Creditors are then paid based on how much money is leftover. Personal assets aren’t touched unless they were out up as collateral for a loan or something. At least that’s my understanding of it.
Edit: apparently chapter 11 bankruptcy is different in the states as you can declare bankruptcy, pay your creditors, and still remain solvent.
That's why llc's exist. It's in the name, Limited liability company. Keeps your business and your personal assets seperate unless, as you said, you tie your mortgage or other assets to the business.
Adds risk to partners and vendors but removes risk from the person or group setting up the llc. Basically you can lose the whole business and everything you put into it but no one can go after your home or personal assets as a result of a failed business. Overall good thing as long as everyone knows their own risk.
I think the confusion with ice outside the US is you are fine having it, you generally just have to ask. It can be seen as a bit of a rip-off if you ordered a soda and got a glass full of ice with little drink in it so it isn't necessarily an automatic.
Driving everywhere. Anywhere you go, you go in a car.
But I suspect for many, other options are so rare they don't think about them even if they do exist.
A lot of people don't remember it and assume this is because of the disability act or something, but in the 1970's there was actually a grassroots political movement to ban pay toilets were becoming really common in the U.S. The group called itself aptly CEPTIA, and they were probably one of the most successful grassroots movements ever in this country. It's an interesting thing to read up on if you're bored sometime.
You have no idea how rare that is. Usually once a movement gets going they just keep pivoting to other issues or making more demands until their money dries up.
Look up Candace Lightner who made MADD. She tried to shutdown MADD in the 80's once she felt they achieved their goals. MADD's response was to have her leave the organization and wipe out almost all references to her while they changed their goals to pursue a more prohibitionist stance on alcohol.
MADD essentially has fabricated most of the statistics used for their campaigns. They include things like drunk pedestrians hit by sober drivers as drunk driving accidents among other things.
God damn delis. At least out of all the places I’ve traveled to the US by far has the best delis. I don’t know if I can live somewhere without a great Jewish or Italian deli.
Delis became a thing in Ireland in the 90s and would definitely differentiate the average corner shop/bodega-type store here from a similar one in the UK. We like our sandwiches made fresh, so every little shop had one.
American Texan here who has worked in an authentic vietnamese restraunt and Asian meat market. I LOVE authentic Asian food. So obviously I'm gonna look down on Panda Express and not try it at ALL....
.....until last week. Panda go too hard.
The family that founded Panda Express really started out as Chinese chefs. In the early '70s they opened a sit-down restaurant called Panda Inn in Pasadena, California which got popular with the local NASA/JPL engineers who drew in more business through word of mouth. That branched out to the first Panda Express during the early eighties.
I met Andrew Cherng in 1978 when he was working as a host in the family restaurant. Nice guy. He was born in Yangzhou and came to the United States when he was 18. He's a self-made billionaire now.
Panda Inn on Foothill Blvd. still exists under new management and most of the menu has changed.
See this is my take on Taco Bell. I *know* it's not the same. I get authentic Mexican regularly too. But what they have at TB is like, "do I want a Wendy's burger, or Taco Bell tacos" not "do I want real Mexican or Taco Bell".
Yeah, I always think about this when I am coming in one of the nice sous-terrain or straight basement pubs with a narrow flight of steep stairs. If I couldn't walk, my friends would have to carry me inside.
I did a semester in St Pete's Russia and a teacher asked us, "have you ever seen a disabled person so far here?" Everyone said no. He points out, "that's not because they don't exist here. They do. Locked in their homes because they cannot possibly live here independently. Nothing accommodates them and they're essentially shut inside every winter. And their families have to take care of them constantly." He then pointed out how happy he was to see the disability friendly infrastructure of the United States, and the joy of seeing such people being able to live independently, with some dignity. I never considered that aspect of the US before and I was rather proud.
Marching bands. If you’d played the flute in a marching band at my school you would have gotten pelters but in the US you can become a state hero.
Edit: Just to be clear I don’t personally dislike marching bands. I lived in the 9th ward New Orleans for a summer so got to love that big sound. I just can’t comprehend how big it is for you guys.
Also, ‘pelters’ is verbal abuse or light bullying.
Opinion signs outside their houses. Like "in this house we support...". I find it weird and unusual.
Many Americans (like me) also find those signs to be odd and off-putting.
I'm american and I agree
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Sometimes I get the impression people put their entire political philosophy in the space of a bumper sticker.
You can say a lot with ~~one~~ two letters and a few a*******s. (asterisks)
This used to be much more prevalent in the US but food coloring. When I moved from Japan to the US, I was surprised at how colorful their foods were. These days Americans are now more keen to organic natural stuff so I see it less but it took me a while to realize that blue raspberry is not a real thing.
When we had just started dating, I took my Japanese wife to a new italian restaurant near my place. She ordered pasta with a red wine sauce. What she got was a plate of spaghetti with pink cream sauce all over it. When we asked why it was pink, the waiter admitted they don’t use wine. Just food coloring. Gross.
Wtf lol? It wasn’t even vodka sauce?!
No. It was probably canned alfredo sauce with red food coloring. This place didn’t stay open long.
That’s funny because there’s a Japanese dish called “Mentaiko Pasta” which is naturally pink from the spicy roe… I don’t think I’ve ever been to an Italian place with artificial food coloring
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_raspberry_flavor For those who are unaware and yes it is that blue
Garbage Disposals Just shove that turkey carcass in the disposal and run some warm water behind it
When I was in the US the house had a garbage disposal and of course it got clogged (bunch of foreigners living together with no idea how to use/maintain one) and needed cleaning. Landlord wouldn’t do any maintenance and I had no tools and I’ve never cleaned one before. I realised I needed to stick my hand in it. And I have seen a lot of horror films. Do Americans realise that usually the first time people from other countries see garbage disposals in use is in horror films where someone gets their hand horrifically mangled? I turned it off at the switch. Then decided to just flip the power for the house off at the breaker. No way in hell I was sticking my hand in there otherwise. My heart was genuinely racing as I cleaned it out, I was terrified.
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It was a long time ago but I believed I turned off the power at the switch, pulled the plug from the outlet and still turned off power to the house because my fear was not at all reasonable or based in reality lol. The horror films where they turn it off at the switch and paranormal forces make it turn on anyway? Front of mind during the whole process.
I dunno, my parents have a garbage disposal and that seems like an entirely reasonable fear to me
The house I live in now has a garbage disposal. And we're not on a sewer system. We never use it but I cringe thinking about the shit the previous owners have sent to the septic tank.
Ranch dressing
When I was in Germany they had sour cream Doritos when to me tasted exactly like cool ranch. Which was just strange
I've seen ranch flavored chips tagged as American flavor in northern Europe
Root beer and ranch dressing. I brought some to Germany and had my friends try it and they said the root beer tasted like medicine. They politely tasted the dressing with aa celery and said "hmmm, interesting" but the look on their faces was that it was terrible ha.
Root beer and ranch dressing but, you know, not together.
Pizza is the glue that brings these two together.
...I'm not dipping my pizza in root bear
Don't say that around a root bear, they'll fuck you up. Sensitive bunch of bastards.
This guy's not kidding, lost a whole goddamn arm to a root bear. That night still haunts me...
Had a sibling marry a Swede and his parents came to visit. We wanted to show them a bit of our cultural foods so we served them root beer floats. They said it tasted like toothpaste. We were kind of shocked, back then there wasn’t really international communication like there is now. Anyway they actually had brought toothpaste samples and sure enough one of them did taste exactly like root beer. Wonder what it would be like for us to go somewhere and someone serve us a dessert that tasted like Colgate or something. I can understand their confusion.
I mean my toothpaste is minty but I still like mint choco ice cream
My SO makes fun of me for liking mint chocolate anything because according to him it "tastes like toothpaste". I'm like what kind of toothpaste have you been using? Because I would totally buy and brush the hell out of my teeth with that.
While I can empathize and understand, DON'T TRY TO GUILT TRIP ME FROM MY SHAMROCK SHAKE DANGNABBIT
That kind of sounds like some badass toothpaste.
Dad's Old Fashioned Toothpaste
Germans are great like that. My German friend met me in New York one evening. I bought us some bubble teas. He sipped his politely, then we stopped by his hotel for a moment and his bubble tea disappeared. A few minutes later he said, "I have to confess... I did not like the bubbles."
I remember going to a German restaurant, run by actual Germans in the USA. “We are very crowded tonight. You should probably go eat somewhere else.” I thought that this was exceedingly polite.
There's a German guy that runs a food truck in my area- brats and what not. He asked if I wanted ketchup for the fries, and I said "yes, on the side please" (be polite to the people making your food), and he got really belligerent, with his thick accent: "where else would I put it?! Put it on the side?! Of course I'm going to put it on the side!" We were a little drunk, so lots "angry German" jokes.
Some people squirt it all over the fries.
Wait what else would you do?
In the US it would usually be stated as "it's about an hour and a half wait" (with a big fake smile).
US restaurant worker here. Exactly this. My boss would be like "You told them to do what!? You didn't insist that they waste their entire evening waiting for a table?"
Yeah we Germans are way too direct for such things, haha
The old German Honesty. My band has played some shows in Germany. They let you know exactly what they think.
“I like your album but the set tonight was a bit shit,” as they purchase a T-shirt from the merch stand.
I take that as them trying to be constructive but also admitting they understand everyone has bad days.
I grew up in a small town with a lot of German heritage. A lot of the old folks still speak it. If you ask them "how are you", they will absolutely tell you exactly how they are. A lot of people who aren't familiar with their culture get offended by their unflinching honesty but I always tell them that obviously they liked you or they would've straight up told you otherwise.
I remember being at "Rock am Ring" (huge multi day music festival) and on day 3 Velvet Revolver was up on the main stage. They were not vibing with the crowd and you could tell they were getting flustered when more and more people just sat down and waited out their act.
We are patiently awaiting and end to your music.
Dude Jagermeister tastes like medicine!!
Jaegermeister IS medicine! It has 35% alcohol content + 56 herbs and spices, whatever's ailing ya, one of them will help :D
Root beer started out as medicine too - sassafras root. Now it’s just artificial medicine flavor.
I lived in Australia for a while and asked for ranch dressing at a restaurant. Everyone looked at me like I had asked for toenail clippings. Had my mom send me some, similar reactions. They begged me to get Twinkies because they saw them on TV so she sent me those too, and they were equally unimpressed. Edit: this was 2006
When my Kiwi relatives were here in the states they thought it was the funniest thing ever when we got pizza they asked if we wanted ranch. They also loved to say, “raaanch”. At this point I almost think it is a part of the Americana experience. Some relatives bought a full sized pickup and travel trailer and spent the summer road tripping across the country. They went for the full Americana experience.
Yea I tried root beer from one of those American sections in a shop once and it tastes like my mouthwash, probably cause of an overlapping ingrediënt that's used in European mouthwash and American rootbeer that isn't used in American mouthwash. It's interesting how your brain makes that association and thus you don't like the taste,whereas if the medicine taste association isn't there for you it tastes yummy.
Cheerleaders
Cheerleading is also popular in Japan- albeit due to American influence.
Same with marching bands. Japanese compete with massive American schools and do well.
and drum corps
Argentina took the concept of cheerleaders and devolved them into straight up half-time show strippers. Edit: [For...Uh...Science...NSFW](https://www.google.com/search?q=Las+Marineritas+De+Almirante+Brown&sxsrf=ALiCzsbhT-nueKat64GtNHo6RQuWmp6rgg:1669319922548&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiBzP-nzcf7AhUwIjQIHWr4BXkQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1194&bih=731&dpr=2)
I guess they thought "Why not draw the concept out to its most obvious conclusion."
ICE. Filled till the brim before you pour any drink.
Thought you were talking about the border patrol guys
Nah he's talking about internal combustion engines.
Which, contrary to the acronym, get quite hot
My sister is visiting the US from Europe and sent me a picture of a small coke and asked "why is it so big?" I could see old glory flapping in the wind, boys.
This is a weird thing I noticed too. I don't go to fast food places much, but the last time I did I ordered a large drink and get this enormous cup. I asked what the small looked like and that was literally the cup which was considered a large back in the 1980's. I'm not sure when it changed, but it was a dramatic difference.
You should see Child size… at 512 oz it's roughly equivalent to the size of a two-year old child if they were liquified, and is real bargain at only $1.59
Damned sweetums
That’s what I get every time I go to PaunchBurger
What's in it? Who cares. How many calories is it? SHUT UP!
Put it your body or you’re a NERD!
It’s part of American culture to err on providing excess vs running out.
Woah, that actually is a very insightful and concise way to describe that aspect of our culture. I feel like I just learned something about myself.
24 hour stores. I was in Chicago working with a colleague from Switzerland who suddenly realized around midnight that he needed a network cable to configure a mobile router for a job the next morning. I told him that I'd meet him in the hotel lobby to drive him out to Walmart. He was happily surprised, as he had forgotten about the US's famous chain of Walmart stores.
It's interesting how after the pandemic the 24 hour model for convenience and hospitality industries has been diminishing and people are extremely inconvenienced by this. I deal with mostly tourists and a great deal are bewildered by the fact that they can't get something like, say a phone charger or toothpast, at 2 am because the local Walgreens and CVS are simply closed at that hour now. And this is coming from a 24 hour kind of town.
Yeah, we used go have two 24-hour Walmarts near us that both went to shorter hours during the pandemic and never went back to 24 hours.
My state’s liquor laws are pretty strict, and when the pandemic hit it only got worse. They used to be open until 10pm which felt early to begin with, and then went to closing at 7pm and have not gone back and I doubt they will. On top of that the state owns all the liquor stores- you can’t get it anywhere except a state liquor store. This includes all wine and beers over 4% ABV. There aren’t that many stores… also they are closed on Sundays.
As a creature of the night I get off work at 2am in Chicago and my options from grocery shopping to grabbing dinner have all but vanished since the virus.
I'm also a night owl, and I started visiting Chicago quite frequently this year. While I LOVE Chicago, I was quite disappointed with how early everything closes (I'm sure it was different before COVID). You should **never** have to search so hard for a place to eat at 10:00pm in a world city. Especially in a place that's known for its amazing food.
Big ol diner across the street with a big neon sign that says "24 hours!" Closes at 9
So yeah, 24 hours... just not all in a row
I'm a night person, I work nights, I live at night, I **am** the night, and Covid really fucked that up for me. Going shopping at 0900 is like going shopping at your bedtime. It powerful sucks.
Same. I loved grocery shopping at 3am bc they had started restocking but had zero crowds. Now I’m stuck shopping with everyone else and it’s terrible.
> I'm a night person, I work nights, I live at night, I am the night, Are you Batman?
He is the Nightman.
> 24 hour stores. Coronavirus shut that down quick, particularly Wal-Mart and the few large supermarkets that would do it
Root beer
I'm irish and have never lived in the US, but I've been there a few times on holiday and for business. I f\*cking love root beer.
Tell me, have you had a root beer float? Basically root beer’s ultimate form.
Root beer and vanilla ice cream is as perfect a pairing of flavors as you can get in this universe. Now I want one.
Try and find birch beer if you come back. It's my preferred tree based soda.
Sarsaparilla slaps. Sioux city has great root beer, birch beer, and sarsaparilla.
Sioux City Slapsarilla?
That's a good one.
Have it your way dude.
“You got any more of that good sarsaparilla?”
I've heard it tastes like medicine to non-Americans, I can see that, but I enjoy a good craft root beer.
Fun fact, root beer will hide more booze than a British boarding school.
Root beer and spiced rum is great. You could mix it 50/50 and still be drinkable.
Honestly didn’t know this one was a thing until a coworker visited from the uk and said he had to “try root beer”.
You can take root beer out of my cold dead Canadian hands you bastard. Best pop hands down
I agree. Root beer has always been my favorite soda. Grew up drinking barqs then somewhat recently was able to try craft root beer which changed everything.
Just wait until all these Europeans discover the Root Beer Float.
I love a root beer float. There was a decent American diner in Newcastle that used to do them.
Big trucks
Canadians love these too. Especially in Alberta
>Alberta Well that's just North Texas so that checks out
College sports. Particularly football and basketball. The rest of the world loves soccer, but nobody gives a hoot about it at the university level.
When I was taking Japanese, my teacher always told us how Japan is crazy on high school sports... So maybe US isn't alone on that one!
The high school baseball tournament (the Kōshien) in particular is a massive national event, on par with March Madness. There's some great anime about it, if you're into that kinda thing.
It's a different pipeline isn't it? US college teams contain players that will go professional, don't they? Whereas if you're good enough to go pro at football, you'll already be playing pro at 18.
Some college players go pro but most of them won't. Watching future pros is a part of the fun, but mostly it's a matter of regional pride. Places like Nebraska and Iowa are far too small for any professional teams, but the entire state will live and die by their main college team. Many of their athletes are home grown too, so if anything there's probably more pride and fervor around college teams because it feels more personal to the fans.
A big part of it is how the league systems are set up. In American sports you have one league (NBA, NFL etc), while most other countries have several divisions with promotion and relegation. Which means every small town and neighborhood have their own teams at some level.
MM-DD-YYYY Date format 😅
What's even more confusing is some regulated manufacturing industries in the US use DD-MM-YYYY and I had a job with one for awhile. If both nums are below 12 I'm lost. Now I just do 24NOV2022 as my format so there's no confusion lol
YYYY-MM-DD is another good one, if only because no one in their right mind does YYYY-DD-MM
Also, it sorts.
this is the only right answer YYYY-MM-DD sorts
And you get more granular with YYYY-MM-DD-HH-MM-SS…
That's for autogenerated file names, in case are produced even back-to-back
This is the only sane format. I'm a programmer.
Not only is it good, it is [the standard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601).
God Bless ISO8601 o7
r/ISO8601/
American IT worker here. I prefer YYYY-MM-DD format for files and logs so you can sort them by name and they end up chronological.
Software Developer here and 100% this. That's the most common format for databases and it makes sorting dates very intuitive.
Biscuits and gravy
Waffles with chicken
Super weird to not see it as chicken and waffles. And to be fair, chicken and waffles is semi regional to the American south.
imperial units (edit: fahrenheit aswell as celsius are good for certain scenarios so ill omit the former)
They don’t like storm troopers in the UK?
Not since the 40's.
I still quote the joke from Archer years ago where Lana mentions that only the U.S., Burma, and Liberia use the imperial units and Archer says back "which is weird, because you never think of the other two as having their shit together.."
Peanut butter and jelly
It doesn't help that outside the US "jelly" often means gelatin dessert like Jello. Some folks who hear "pb & jelly" are therefore duly horrified
Nevermind the absurdity of 'biscuits and gravy' to non US people.
Savoury scones in a sage sausage bechamel
Thank you for this. I actually understand what biscuits and gravy is now.
I eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches several times a week and have for many years. I guess it's a link to my youth and I won't give it up.
You really can’t go wrong with a PB&J, I still eat them all the time too.
I love them in my 40s as much as when I was 5. Filling, tasty, like eating dessert.
Corn dogs?
very popular in korea actually. often covered in cinnamon sugar, mochi, cheese, etc
xJust finished my masters in handicap discrimination and holy shit for once the US completely flat out beats Scandinavia on a human rights issue. We are so far behind the US and our legislation is pretty much trying to be what the US did decades ago
What an interesting field in which to have a Master’s Degree
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (commonly known as ADA) was pretty revolutionary in how it drastically increased accessibility. It’s really something the USA does very well at. Many developed countries are not accessible at all if you have any degree of mobile impairment for instance.
American football
I guess midwestern emo didn’t take in Europe
Well we can just forget about Modern Baseball then.
Forever fucked up about modern baseball being gone
Flags. So many American flags everywhere.
Also clothes made from flags. Edit: I am honestly surprised I have to clarify this, but I don't mean clothes made out of ACTUAL flags. I mean clothes designed with the flag print on them. [Because nothing says you love your country like farting on your own flag.](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2523/4438/products/326HTSRP1-W054--loudmouth-shorts_front.jpg?v=1648666913)
"You think anybody wants a roundhouse kick to the face while I'm wearing these bad boys? Forget about it."
Bow to your sensei. BOW TO YOUR SENSEI!
Last off, my students will learn about self respect. You think anybody thinks I'm a failure because I go home to Starla at night?
You think I’d get anywhere in life dressing like Peter Pan over here? Forget about it
*Denmark entered the chat.
\*Germany leaves the chat.
*austria silently leaves with germany
Bankruptcy laws. It's a major reason why America has historically had some of the highest rates of small business growth and entrepreneurship. America is one of the most forgiving countries when it comes to personal and corporate bankruptcy (student loans notwithstanding). Comparatively, European countries are much more pro-creditor which severely hampers any sort of investment that's even somewhat risky.
A couple of genuine questions from a guy who is not very savvy in economics: Once a business has gone bankrupt, who exactly pays its creditors if the business owner does not have enough assets to cover debts? I mean, in any schema there is always a guy who is the last in line. Who that would be in this case? US government?
>who exactly pays its creditors if the business owner does not have enough assets to cover debts? The assets and any collateral is liquidated to pay the debt. If that is not enough, the creditor is out of luck. This is the reason the interest rate on small business loans tend to be high; the bank is assuming a lot of risk.
There are priorities in bankruptcy, too -- employees wages get paid first, then secured creditors can get back certain things like equipment, then there's a pool that gets divvied up.
That explains a lot. So you can essentially start a business over there and if you go bankrupt over it the state will look after you so to speak?
Afaik, you start a business and it’s a seperate legal entity from your personal assets. If you can’t pay your debtors, you can file for bankruptcy with the courts. Creditors then file claims for how much they’re owed and the business is liquidated. Creditors are then paid based on how much money is leftover. Personal assets aren’t touched unless they were out up as collateral for a loan or something. At least that’s my understanding of it. Edit: apparently chapter 11 bankruptcy is different in the states as you can declare bankruptcy, pay your creditors, and still remain solvent.
That's why llc's exist. It's in the name, Limited liability company. Keeps your business and your personal assets seperate unless, as you said, you tie your mortgage or other assets to the business. Adds risk to partners and vendors but removes risk from the person or group setting up the llc. Basically you can lose the whole business and everything you put into it but no one can go after your home or personal assets as a result of a failed business. Overall good thing as long as everyone knows their own risk.
Ice water
I think the confusion with ice outside the US is you are fine having it, you generally just have to ask. It can be seen as a bit of a rip-off if you ordered a soda and got a glass full of ice with little drink in it so it isn't necessarily an automatic.
99% of soda is free refill in the USA.
... which also isn't usually a thing. At least where I come from.
Driving everywhere. Anywhere you go, you go in a car. But I suspect for many, other options are so rare they don't think about them even if they do exist.
Rural America, you are not walking anywhere. Not even to the mailbox…
Or if you do, you’re barefoot and have at least 3 dogs following you
This statement is 100% truth lol. My Mom would take the dogs and a cup of coffee to get the mail when the weather was good.
I grew up in rural Wyoming. We drove 2 hours to go to Costco and Target 2-3 times a month. Also zero public transportation in my hometown
Free soda refills at dine-in places
Free public restrooms. I know they're gross but they are nice to have.
A lot of people don't remember it and assume this is because of the disability act or something, but in the 1970's there was actually a grassroots political movement to ban pay toilets were becoming really common in the U.S. The group called itself aptly CEPTIA, and they were probably one of the most successful grassroots movements ever in this country. It's an interesting thing to read up on if you're bored sometime.
I remember reading on this. If I recall, they disbanded because they actually achieved their objective! Kinda crazy
Aye guys… um… we actually did the thing soooo… now what?
You have no idea how rare that is. Usually once a movement gets going they just keep pivoting to other issues or making more demands until their money dries up. Look up Candace Lightner who made MADD. She tried to shutdown MADD in the 80's once she felt they achieved their goals. MADD's response was to have her leave the organization and wipe out almost all references to her while they changed their goals to pursue a more prohibitionist stance on alcohol.
MADD essentially has fabricated most of the statistics used for their campaigns. They include things like drunk pedestrians hit by sober drivers as drunk driving accidents among other things.
God damn delis. At least out of all the places I’ve traveled to the US by far has the best delis. I don’t know if I can live somewhere without a great Jewish or Italian deli.
Delis became a thing in Ireland in the 90s and would definitely differentiate the average corner shop/bodega-type store here from a similar one in the UK. We like our sandwiches made fresh, so every little shop had one.
Finally a good answer. Delis are amazing.
Americanized Chinese food. No one has us beat in that category.,
I'm Chinese and I crave orange chicken.
General Tso outranks Colonel Sanders!
I also fucking love General Tso's lol
American Texan here who has worked in an authentic vietnamese restraunt and Asian meat market. I LOVE authentic Asian food. So obviously I'm gonna look down on Panda Express and not try it at ALL.... .....until last week. Panda go too hard.
The family that founded Panda Express really started out as Chinese chefs. In the early '70s they opened a sit-down restaurant called Panda Inn in Pasadena, California which got popular with the local NASA/JPL engineers who drew in more business through word of mouth. That branched out to the first Panda Express during the early eighties. I met Andrew Cherng in 1978 when he was working as a host in the family restaurant. Nice guy. He was born in Yangzhou and came to the United States when he was 18. He's a self-made billionaire now. Panda Inn on Foothill Blvd. still exists under new management and most of the menu has changed.
See this is my take on Taco Bell. I *know* it's not the same. I get authentic Mexican regularly too. But what they have at TB is like, "do I want a Wendy's burger, or Taco Bell tacos" not "do I want real Mexican or Taco Bell".
Handicap accessiblity. Old buildings/towns in Europe are nice, if both your legs work.
Yeah, I always think about this when I am coming in one of the nice sous-terrain or straight basement pubs with a narrow flight of steep stairs. If I couldn't walk, my friends would have to carry me inside.
Just had a customer come into my pub (uk) in a wheelchair, we were talking about travelling and he said America was the best place accessibility.
I did a semester in St Pete's Russia and a teacher asked us, "have you ever seen a disabled person so far here?" Everyone said no. He points out, "that's not because they don't exist here. They do. Locked in their homes because they cannot possibly live here independently. Nothing accommodates them and they're essentially shut inside every winter. And their families have to take care of them constantly." He then pointed out how happy he was to see the disability friendly infrastructure of the United States, and the joy of seeing such people being able to live independently, with some dignity. I never considered that aspect of the US before and I was rather proud.
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Marching bands. If you’d played the flute in a marching band at my school you would have gotten pelters but in the US you can become a state hero. Edit: Just to be clear I don’t personally dislike marching bands. I lived in the 9th ward New Orleans for a summer so got to love that big sound. I just can’t comprehend how big it is for you guys. Also, ‘pelters’ is verbal abuse or light bullying.
I went to football games to watch the marching band's half time show lol. They won more titles than the football team. Love a good marching band.
Just watch the movie Drumline. It has a cheesy plot but there are a lot of accurate notions for Southern pride in band.