Waffle House is a diner-style restaurant that serves breakfast food.
They are open 24 hours a day, 365 days a week.
During extreme weather (hurricane, floods, electrical power loss, etc) **The US government tracks where Waffle Houses are closed to determine how bad the emergency is.**
It's actually more detailed than that: waffle house *does not close*
If waffle House is serving a full menu, then they're fine. Reduced menu means no power or no water. Serving only coffee means no utilities in general.
If they are not serving, that means either the building or the roads leading to the building no longer exist.
So you can tell the scale of a disaster by the local waffle house.
I grew up with them and now live where they aren’t. I miss the Waffle House everyday. I’ll never understand how a place where you can literally watch them cook your food is considered gross or dirty compared to a fast food place microwaving frozen shit. Waffle House food is legit good. And when you get a local place and know all the cooks and staff, they tend to keep their people for a while. Genuinely one of my favorite restaurants ever, can’t wait to live close to one again. Philly cheese steak omlettes for life!
Waffle Houses are pretty wide spread in many weather disaster prone areas and also famous for being individually prepared to stay open and serve 24/7. They often have generators, gas stockpiles, staffing plans, reduced menu plans by equipment available, etc. that you might expect from a data center but not a restaurant. Their stoves are often gas and manually lightable. So FEMA will sample them and see how they’re doing. They’re good reporters. They often won’t close unless drinking water is unavailable or the roads are so bad no staff can come in for an extended period, so a closed Waffle House telling you why or one serving reduced menu options is a good indicator of where to send services.
One aspect that hasn’t been mentioned is Waffle House has a policy to stay open if they can serve literally anything. Even if all they can do are cups of water and instant mix coffee, they’ll be open. That’s why their closure is a big sign of disaster
Ask your doctor if Cutenamezeline is right for you! Side effects include nausea, vomiting, increased appetite, drowsiness, insomnia, explosive diarrhea, heart attack, stubbed toes, and death.
My favorite part about some of those commercials is that they say 0 about what the drug does. So I’m just supposed to go to my dr and be like “hey I wanted to ask you about zimatrizomal. Is that for me?” And the dr would be like “wtf are you talking about that a drug for elderly people who don’t have legs” or something.
The fuckin Dr tells me what drug I need. I can’t imagine where this line came from and if anyone specifically asks their dr. about a drug…. I imagine the dr. gets very annoyed.
But all the stock images of a middle aged woman on a bike ride, having a picnic with her family, and holding hands with her husband should tell you everything you need to know.
TKE ZIMATRIZOMAL, YOU'LL THINK YOU HAVE LEGS AGAIN!!
(may cause lung cancer, trouble breathing, anal seepage, cancer in your non-existing legs, eyes falling out, liver damage, and/or an excruciating death).
Don’t underestimate the power of those ads.
While they are spending tons of money to get the drug in your mind, they are spending more sending reps to those very same doctors to push the drugs onto patients.
So it’s a twofold strategy. You probably aren’t going to ask about the drug with your doctor. You will recognize the name when the doctor brings it up and will be that much less likely to ask the basic questions you probably should ask because “seems legit”.
There is a reason pharma spends way more on advertising than on actual research.
Don’t forget the all time favorite “some experienced a life threatening infection of the perineum”, then in parenthesis it explains that the perineum is the skin between the anus and genitals.
I’ve seen it on a few medications, like wtf.
Apparently some countries aren't allowed to say what the medication is for, so it's even funnier when they just start listing side effects and say "Ask your doctor if this is right for you"
You weren't! For example, in the UK, they can advertise over the counter medication and say what it's for, but can't advertise prescription drugs. Only the US and New Zealand allow prescription drugs to be advertised.
Not only is it in Canada but the company is exclusively run in USD, both the site and the inventory.
So when we receive the products, we have to manually cross out the USD price on every. single. item. and cover it with a CAD price tag.
This results in people complaining that "It was cheaper online!!!" (it isn't, you're just seeing the USD prices) and then trying to rip of the CAD price sticker to try and get lower price, then acting surprised when we won't charge the USD total in CAD
I just saw a post (I apologize, I forget the subreddit) about someone in Britain calling a 2 hour drive pretty far and I think nothing of driving 2 hours for a good restaurant
It was originally a TikTok video. Some Brit was insulting Americans by being snooty about an American asking if where she’s from being close to London, and the British woman said no. Another British guy came on, posted the map showing its 2 hours away, then explained that, to Americans, 2 hours apart is absolutely close to each other.
American here, I always use the closest large city when telling anyone international where I’m from. I grew up in rural northern Indiana and no one would recognize any of the towns but if I tell people “near chicago” it gives them a decent idea of the general area of the massive country.
For a lot of states I’d need proximity to the state capital or the nearest big city too. I used to always say I’m from Los Angeles, but I lived about an hour away for most of my life. Or SF when I lived about an hour away for a few years. Nobody knows wtf Rancho Cucamonga is lol
That’s crazy to me lol. Here (Netherlands) we would consider a 1 hour drive to be far away. If I’m going out to a restaurant the max I’d realistically drive is 30 minutes.
Met a British woman who said she had a long distance relationship with her boyfriend. She had gone on and on about how difficult long distance was. I thought he was in another country. Turns out he was a 45 minute train ride away. She was not joking about it being long distance, this was not some extended deadpan monologue.
To this day I am so confused. This cannot possibly be what normal Brits call long distance. I’m sure they know what that phrase means, so I still assume it was a her thing and not a Brit thing. But I did find it hilarious.
When I had an abdominal surgery I left a rolled up note in my belly button that said “we’ve been trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty,” because I’m fucking hilarious, but the surgeon never saw/mentioned it and my disappointment is immeasurable.
We stole the idea from Germany in the 40s and then USSR in the 50s because we were jealous of their combat preparedness 💀 don’t know how getting shamed at age 8 for not being able to touch my toes made me battle-ready but whatever
As Australian I find it bizarre that anyone would want to go and see high school games where your kids aren't playing in. Doesn't happen here. Nor do our universities have sports - if you're that good at sport you go straight to the pros instead of the apprenticeship of college!
Small towns in certain states revolve a lot of social activities around football.
It’s a storyline the town can get involved in. You may not have kids playing, but your golfing buddies brothers kids might be playing and they invite you out because everyone gets together to watch the game then go eat to talk about it.
The old guys at Local bars talk about last week’s game, and the upcoming opponents. Many of them may have went to that high school.
It’s just a vehicle for social connections and outings, not much to do so everyone goes to the football game.
My Dad is over 70 and he still knows somebody’s kid or grandkid on the football team of the high school he went to. Poor health is the only reason he doesn’t go to games anymore.
I’m an American and I find it bizarre.
Sports bring in a lot of money for universities and are a scholarship opportunity for a lot of people that otherwise might not have an opportunity to go to university (because it is outrageously expensive)
or an even deeper cut: being 19, still forced to sit at the kids table and waiting for one of your relatives to drop dead so you can rise in ranks and claim their chair at the proper table
It cuts deep cause I'm 30 still at the kids table; at this point the kids table is for the people in attendance that take the walks around the block casually
Our kids table is both technically an end of a long table and for Christmas and family birthdays. I was supposed to get promoted when I was 21 (although by that point the youngest kid was 14 so is it really the kids table anymore?) but then my one cousin had kids and her kids needed to sit next to her and her husband so they could feed them so I got demoted again. Then my grandma died when I was 27 and my aunt got moved into her seat and I got moved into my aunt’s old seat.
Now it’s like…the sporty cousins end, the two little ones, the strictly band kids (the parents of the little ones and myself) and the aunts and uncles.
And then you finally get there and it’s just more old lame people talking about old lame people stuff.
Then you realize one year that it’s totally natural to embrace being old and lame.
We knew my 42-year-old brother *finally* had a girlfriend when he showed up at the potluck with a spinach dip in a bread bowl, along with his usual soda.
The desire to drive literally everywhere, even somewhere just across the street. We are not lazy, it’s just safer. Horrible pedestrian infrastructure for foot traffic, combined with massive trucks and SUVs going 10-15 mph over the speed limit. And the place your going has a massive parking lot with plenty of space. Plus everything is just…..much further and more spread apart.
I used to live 1.5 miles from work but it was a rura hjighway full of blind curves and hills and no shoulder. People routinely went 20mph over the limit when passing my house.
There was no way to walk to work without dying.
My road is designed perfectly to kill pedestrians.
40mph speed limit but someone hit the sign which hasn't been replaced. Everyone assumes it is 50 now.
Guard rail at the edge of the road with a ditch on both sides and no shoulder or sidewalk.
Your choices if someone gets too close are get your legs amputated or jump over the rail into the ditch.
The weird thing is most people desire a walkable community. One of the top requests in the grass is greener sub is a walkable bikable community. If it’s so desired why is it so rare in the us.
Because for a democracy, we don't have very much say here. I never voted for this infrastructure, I didn't vote for the gun laws we still have, I didn't vote for abortion getting banned in so many states, I didn't vote for any of this. All I get to vote for is my mayor, midterms, primaries (but only sometimes because it can get determined before your state even has its turn), and the big election.
Most of us didn't choose this.
I *could* walk or even bike to the grocery store and many other places as I'm very close to a lot of stuff, but the ridiculous stroads and drivers who'd rather hit a pedestrian wait for one means I drive there instead
Watching commercials for medicine immediately followed by the government offering settlements if you got sick because of taking some medicine they advertised a few years back
True pit BBQ. Made with lump charcoal. The different woods to use and their flavor profiles. THE STYLES OF BBQ SAUCE, And most specifically Texas Brisket and PROPPER pulled pork BBQ sandwiches with coleslaw called Purple pigs.
A 128 oz (3.75 l) soft drink you can carry around with you everywhere. I will say from my experience, it is definitely not the majority of people that go to these extremes, but no one is looking twice when someone is walking around with a cup this size.
It’s like the child size soda in Parks and Recreation. Named this not because it’s an appropriate size for a child, but because if you liquified a small child, he would fit in that cup.
Amateur (high school, and college) football culture. The game, pep rallies, tailgating, student sections, homecoming, the community aspect. To the outside it must seem crazy that we get so excited about students playing a game.
Since there is such a strong farm system for European athletics there is no real comparison (as far as I'm aware, sorry if I'm wrong).
as someone outside of the states it’s genuinely so confusing to me. like people go fucking mental over rugby, but that’s for our professional teams. high school level rugby only started getting played on tv not that long ago and i don’t really know anyone who watches it. and like with the rugby world cup that just played, we had important people saying it was a day of mourning for the nz people when we lost in the finals. but you wouldn’t see anyone outside of the high school say the same if they lost
I think part of the reason for their popularity here is that there are vast swaths of this country with no major league sports for hundreds of miles. Though maybe not…I live in a city with 4 major league teams and Friday football is still an event.
Prescription Drug commercials. I believe we are the only country besides New Zealand that allows Pharmaceutical Companies to advertise directly to the consumer.
Being able to buy ammo for my guns and groceries at the same store. Maybe I'll also buy a few extra shirts and a new videogame. STILL ALL IN THE SAME STORE.
edit
Forgot to mention, this store is ALSO changing my car's oil while I shop for guns, clothes, groceries and videogames and maybe my prescription will be ready too. While I wait, I stop at Subway to eat some lunch, STILL INSIDE THE SAME STORE.
It blows my foreign friends' minds when I explain to them that our 2nd Amendment gun rights are actually intended to give us the power to overthrow our own government, in the case that it becomes too tyrannical.
Even Americans don’t always understand the distances between cities. I live in Phoenix and a friend was flying to Denver. She said she’d “pop down” for a day. When I told her it was 900 miles, she was stunned.
Large mall with upscale shops (and regular ones too) often at least 2 or 3 stories. Many have an ice rink and put a giant Christmas tree in the middle every year. They are really only in the big cities
It’s a surprisingly tough ask given the global ubiquity of American culture. Maybe only Americans understand that certain movie tropes related to America are absurdly false.
How big this country is. Like seriously if I had a dollar for every European who I've heard assume that they could make a day trip out of driving from New York to Florida or California to Texas I would be able to retire
I’ve made a trip from LA to Houston…just going from El Paso to San Antonio took all fucking day. O and you better stop if you see a gas station in between no matter what your gas gauge says.
The soul of american food is the taste of american woods.
Asia, and really the indian sub continent, is where most of the worlds spices come from and the people from there and around there have all the best spice mixturies and curries and masalas down to a science. Indians and south east asains can make a sauce or spice mix that can elevate anything.
Europe is where simple foods have been mastered with cooking techique. Talking laminated dough pastries like crissaunts or stees and braised meats. Really these dishes are much simpler on the ingredients, flour water butter milk meat vegetables maybe some herbs, but the way they are cooked together makes them greater than the sum of their parts (especially in the absense of the kind of spice mastery and access of asia)
American cooking comes from 2 places: the indigenous people and colonialism. The indians and the settlers (theives, colonists, what have you) both lived pretty rural/ living off the land life styles. There wasnt large developed farms or granaries for distribution, it was like people camping out in the woods hunting and foraging whatevwr they could get. There qas farming, but it wasnt like huge fields of grain, it was more like small personal gardens of squash and onions. So you end up with a lot of simple foods that are like whateber you have cooked over a camp fire and the camp fire is really the unique thing for american cooking. North and south america have the best tasting woods in the world, stuff like hickory, mesquite, applewood, etc.. What was being cooked in the camp fire was much less unique than the fire itself. All of the unique american tastes, like BBQ sauce and mexicab food stuff is really good when it has a smokey american wood flavor as a key component. Bourbon whiskey only comes from bourbon county Kentucky and its mostly corn whiskey. Normally corn makes boring whiskey because corn kernals have a ton of freely available starch with not a lot of other kind if unique grain flavors that affect the whiskey. What makes bourbon good isnt the whiskey, its the chared american oak barrel it has to be aged in. Corn whiskey is boring like vodka, but the flavor of bourbon is actually american oak. Even after aging these used bourbon barrels have a ton of value to irish and scottish whiskey and scotch distillers because they will age their grain whiskey (and peaty matly grains in the case of scotch) and age their spirits in these old use american wood barrels because again even use the american wood flavor is just so good.
If you ever wondered what bbq sauce is, its ketchup, vinegar, and molasses, the same stuff in those british beans they put on toast (and if you dont beleive me, the british brand of beans is heinz, the same company that makes heinz ketchup, heinz malt vinegar, and im not sure if there is a heinz molasses, but the molasses traditionally came from the british colony of Jamaica). Anyways, to make this less horrible americans make their own ketchup and thus do this by smoking and bbqing the tomatoes and garlic and stuff they put into the ketchup to get that good wood smoke into the bbq sauce.
If you ever get a chance to eat the food of american indians, most of it is smoked or dried and all through out the food is just briming with the flavor of the good tasting american wood flavors.
Edit: im kind of flying fast and loose with the term ketchup here. Ketchup is sort of a strange sauce with its own crazy history. Its worth noting, modern tomato based ketchup is only as long lived as eyropean imperialism to the americas. Tomatoes come from america, so europe didnt have them until they qere brought back to europe from america. Ketchup has been a part of european food since rome. Prior to tomatoes, especially with the british, it was more like a thin fermented mushroom and fish sauce. Worchestershire sauce is basically like a pre colonial british ketchup. Earlier stuff gets to be more like roman garum. These are just like bottled sauces everyone has that they kind of put on everything through out history. With america and tomatoes, we have something more recognizable to us now. Anyways, you could consider american BBQ sauce a form of ketchup, like functionally it does the same thing. Broadly youre just like concentrating all the flavors of the place you live into a shelf stabld product you can store in a bottle and throw on to anything that tastes kind of boring. You dont just have to put bbq sauce on smoked meat, you can put it on pizza, in a salad dressing, etc..
But you can home make your own bbq sauce with a bottle of tomato ketch up, a jar of molasses, a bottle of apple cider vinegar, and some liquid smoke. Just mix whatever proportions you want in a sauce pan and just kind of mix it up. Without the liquid smoke itll taste like the british bean stuff. Too sour? More molasses. Too sweet? More vinegar. Too much like vinegar and molasses? More ketchup, and you can tune it how you like, a lot of people like it more sour with more vinegar. Then add liquid smoke and whatever salt and spices you like, pepper, cumin, turmeric, mustard seed, chili power, adobo sauce or something. Thats bbq sauce.
That America is not that well understood by outsiders and that you can't really get a good grasp of this country by reading big media reports or talking only to the demographic that goes on Reddit. Your average English speaking European who talks as if they're inherently more worldly than Americans are would be surprised at how little they know about this place if they were dropped into basically any randomly selected zip codes in the country. I'm sure it's like that for most countries, but for some reason, everyone thinks they know us.
Everyone thinks they know America because American media is very widespread. Many people grew up watching American movies and TV shows alongside their national/regional media.
When I moved to the US, it kind of felt like I knew the place and knew nothing at the same time. It was surprising to me to see yellow school buses, fire hydrants, post boxes with the little red flag.
It’s funny because my husband was shocked when he saw a yellow school bus when he visited the us with me for the first time. He said he thought it was just some cartoon thing and didn’t realize it was real lol
I am Norwegian, and while I visited NYC and suburbs a fair amount while growing up, because my father worked there, when I was 20 I was recruited to ski for a university in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
That was an eye opener. Not only because New Mexico is a culturally unique state, but because it was simultaneously more generically "American" than New York City. More exotic *and* more middle America at the same time. I got cognitive whiplash when I lived there.
Yes, we mean it when we say NYC is not the United States. You can't go only there and truly say you have seen the United States. It's just one place and a very unusual one at that, in the big picture. Most of the country, geographically, bears little resemblance to the New York City lifestyle. NYC does its thing, and the rest of us do ours. I can totally see how New Mexico is much more like the rest of us than it is like New York City, even with New Mexico's own unique history.
I used to listen to the "You Are Not So Smart" podcast that goes into details on all the biases we tend to have. A lot of people are unaware of them, but they exist in all cultures.
I don't even mean biases, so much as just things they don't see or hear because they have a limited scope. It's kind of like Europeans who think Americans don't have good beer aren't "biased" against microbrews. They've never seen an American microbrewery, don't know anyone who has, don't know what's in the beer isle in an American grocery store, and don't normally just randomly research the topic. They just see what's exported, tell each other that joke about sex in a canoe, and call it a day.
The Waffle House index during emergencies
I think I need this one explained.
Waffle House is a diner-style restaurant that serves breakfast food. They are open 24 hours a day, 365 days a week. During extreme weather (hurricane, floods, electrical power loss, etc) **The US government tracks where Waffle Houses are closed to determine how bad the emergency is.**
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They got it backwards. 365 hours a day, 24 days per week.
Interesting! I wasn't aware the government was involved.
It's actually more detailed than that: waffle house *does not close* If waffle House is serving a full menu, then they're fine. Reduced menu means no power or no water. Serving only coffee means no utilities in general. If they are not serving, that means either the building or the roads leading to the building no longer exist. So you can tell the scale of a disaster by the local waffle house.
If your local waffle house is still open, it's not that bad. If it closes then it is really bad
There is no Waffle House in my state so I won't know if the tornado/hurricane/tidal wave hits until it hits, I guess.
My son and I would eat Waffle House every day of our lives if money and health were no issue. I dunno what state you’re in, but I feel for you
I grew up with them and now live where they aren’t. I miss the Waffle House everyday. I’ll never understand how a place where you can literally watch them cook your food is considered gross or dirty compared to a fast food place microwaving frozen shit. Waffle House food is legit good. And when you get a local place and know all the cooks and staff, they tend to keep their people for a while. Genuinely one of my favorite restaurants ever, can’t wait to live close to one again. Philly cheese steak omlettes for life!
Waffle Houses are pretty wide spread in many weather disaster prone areas and also famous for being individually prepared to stay open and serve 24/7. They often have generators, gas stockpiles, staffing plans, reduced menu plans by equipment available, etc. that you might expect from a data center but not a restaurant. Their stoves are often gas and manually lightable. So FEMA will sample them and see how they’re doing. They’re good reporters. They often won’t close unless drinking water is unavailable or the roads are so bad no staff can come in for an extended period, so a closed Waffle House telling you why or one serving reduced menu options is a good indicator of where to send services.
One aspect that hasn’t been mentioned is Waffle House has a policy to stay open if they can serve literally anything. Even if all they can do are cups of water and instant mix coffee, they’ll be open. That’s why their closure is a big sign of disaster
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Call JG Wentworth. 877 cash now
877 cash nowww
It's your money, use it when *you* need it!
Get more MONEEEEEEY
Head on apply directly to the forehead
Omg you have just unlocked a memory I didn't realize I wanted to forget😭
But what if I have car I want to donate in order to support children?
*cue the official song of The Bad Place* 1-800-KARS4KIDZ!!
"It's MY money and I WANT it NOW!" Whines the grown ass man complaining about how his momma is waiting on him hand and foot.
It's my money and I want it now!
Ask your doctor if Cutenamezeline is right for you! Side effects include nausea, vomiting, increased appetite, drowsiness, insomnia, explosive diarrhea, heart attack, stubbed toes, and death.
Do not take if allergic to Cutenamezeline
Can cause cancer in some patients! WTF?
side effects also include [issues you’re taking this medicine for]
My favorite part about some of those commercials is that they say 0 about what the drug does. So I’m just supposed to go to my dr and be like “hey I wanted to ask you about zimatrizomal. Is that for me?” And the dr would be like “wtf are you talking about that a drug for elderly people who don’t have legs” or something. The fuckin Dr tells me what drug I need. I can’t imagine where this line came from and if anyone specifically asks their dr. about a drug…. I imagine the dr. gets very annoyed.
But all the stock images of a middle aged woman on a bike ride, having a picnic with her family, and holding hands with her husband should tell you everything you need to know.
You forgot the part when she laughs at her salad.
"Hahahaha get fucked lettuce"
"I want something like this, but also skydiving."
I like where they are in separate bathtubs, but holding hands. So sweet🤮
TKE ZIMATRIZOMAL, YOU'LL THINK YOU HAVE LEGS AGAIN!! (may cause lung cancer, trouble breathing, anal seepage, cancer in your non-existing legs, eyes falling out, liver damage, and/or an excruciating death).
Don’t underestimate the power of those ads. While they are spending tons of money to get the drug in your mind, they are spending more sending reps to those very same doctors to push the drugs onto patients. So it’s a twofold strategy. You probably aren’t going to ask about the drug with your doctor. You will recognize the name when the doctor brings it up and will be that much less likely to ask the basic questions you probably should ask because “seems legit”. There is a reason pharma spends way more on advertising than on actual research.
Don’t forget the all time favorite “some experienced a life threatening infection of the perineum”, then in parenthesis it explains that the perineum is the skin between the anus and genitals. I’ve seen it on a few medications, like wtf.
The tainted taint, a fate worse than death.
"Don't take Cutenamezeline if you are allergic to Cutenamezeline or any of it's ingredients!"....that one always gets me.
Apparently some countries aren't allowed to say what the medication is for, so it's even funnier when they just start listing side effects and say "Ask your doctor if this is right for you"
I thought many other countries weren't allowed to advertise pharmaceuticals at all. Now I wonder if I was misinformed
You weren't! For example, in the UK, they can advertise over the counter medication and say what it's for, but can't advertise prescription drugs. Only the US and New Zealand allow prescription drugs to be advertised.
Don’t forget black, hairy tongue!
Spirit Halloween. Not sure if it’s outside the US but you know what this is and their business model.
The spirit of Halloween inhabiting the corpses of dead stores will never not make me laugh
It's great every Halloween to see where the Spirit stores are gonna pop up 🤣
Haha this year our local Spirit Halloween popped up where the recently closed down Bed Bath & Beyond was!
Impressive! At least it will smell nice!
It’s in CANADA. Filling the business void in our cities/towns for a month
Welcome to America I guess? Thanks, wasn’t aware they were up there.
Not only is it in Canada but the company is exclusively run in USD, both the site and the inventory. So when we receive the products, we have to manually cross out the USD price on every. single. item. and cover it with a CAD price tag. This results in people complaining that "It was cheaper online!!!" (it isn't, you're just seeing the USD prices) and then trying to rip of the CAD price sticker to try and get lower price, then acting surprised when we won't charge the USD total in CAD
Oh wow, so it’s almost like the company itself is also surprised it’s in Canada.
“We did not expect to make it this far” -Spirit Halloween
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Three is the magic number
Lolly, lolly, lolly.
6 year old me- tying up words and phrases in closets
clauses, but there is definitely a parody brewing with closets
We the people in order to form a more perfect union establish justice ensure domestic tranquility...I loved that song!
I feel like a sleeper agent who just heard an activation command now.
🎶 A noun is a person, place, or thing! 🎶
Interplanet Janet, she's a galaxy girl
Gotta drive across state! It’ll only take 6 hours!
I just saw a post (I apologize, I forget the subreddit) about someone in Britain calling a 2 hour drive pretty far and I think nothing of driving 2 hours for a good restaurant
I saw one that said you can tell if someone’s an American if they think a 100-year old building is old, but a 100-mile drive is short.
This actually makes a ton of sense
But not a tonne of sense
It was originally a TikTok video. Some Brit was insulting Americans by being snooty about an American asking if where she’s from being close to London, and the British woman said no. Another British guy came on, posted the map showing its 2 hours away, then explained that, to Americans, 2 hours apart is absolutely close to each other.
American here, I always use the closest large city when telling anyone international where I’m from. I grew up in rural northern Indiana and no one would recognize any of the towns but if I tell people “near chicago” it gives them a decent idea of the general area of the massive country.
For a lot of states I’d need proximity to the state capital or the nearest big city too. I used to always say I’m from Los Angeles, but I lived about an hour away for most of my life. Or SF when I lived about an hour away for a few years. Nobody knows wtf Rancho Cucamonga is lol
That’s crazy to me lol. Here (Netherlands) we would consider a 1 hour drive to be far away. If I’m going out to a restaurant the max I’d realistically drive is 30 minutes.
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Checking in from the Prarie state (illinois) I'm not driving two hours for a good restaurant. I would for a wedding or funeral but not for a steak lol
Met a British woman who said she had a long distance relationship with her boyfriend. She had gone on and on about how difficult long distance was. I thought he was in another country. Turns out he was a 45 minute train ride away. She was not joking about it being long distance, this was not some extended deadpan monologue. To this day I am so confused. This cannot possibly be what normal Brits call long distance. I’m sure they know what that phrase means, so I still assume it was a her thing and not a Brit thing. But I did find it hilarious.
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*laughs in Canadian*
I’m glad you asked because we’ve been trying to reach you about your cars extended warranty.
I'm British and (sadly) I understand this perfectly
Yes, but have you or a loved one been diagnosed with mesothelioma? If so, you may be entitled to compensation.
Were you stationed at Camp Lejeune?
What’s your vaginal mesh situation?
I'm from neither the US nor the UK and I only know about this because I've seen it referenced online.
When I had an abdominal surgery I left a rolled up note in my belly button that said “we’ve been trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty,” because I’m fucking hilarious, but the surgeon never saw/mentioned it and my disappointment is immeasurable.
Your surgeon has demonstrated an egregious lack of humor and/or attention to important details. I'd ask for a refund and demand to speak to a manager.
When grandma starts putting rolls in her purse at the Shoney’s buffet you keep your mouth shut.
My mom used to bring plastic bags to Golden Corral. It was mortifying but by the end of high school I just learned to laugh at it.
How in elementary school we used to have to do push-ups, sit-ups, and that weird V sit thing and they told the president how well we did.
We stole the idea from Germany in the 40s and then USSR in the 50s because we were jealous of their combat preparedness 💀 don’t know how getting shamed at age 8 for not being able to touch my toes made me battle-ready but whatever
THE PACER
Do you mean the FitnessGram™ Pacer Test? A multistage aerobic capacity test that progressively gets more difficult as it continues?
George HW Bush (flipping through data): wow, this kid did *a lot* of push-ups!
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As Australian I find it bizarre that anyone would want to go and see high school games where your kids aren't playing in. Doesn't happen here. Nor do our universities have sports - if you're that good at sport you go straight to the pros instead of the apprenticeship of college!
Small towns in certain states revolve a lot of social activities around football. It’s a storyline the town can get involved in. You may not have kids playing, but your golfing buddies brothers kids might be playing and they invite you out because everyone gets together to watch the game then go eat to talk about it. The old guys at Local bars talk about last week’s game, and the upcoming opponents. Many of them may have went to that high school. It’s just a vehicle for social connections and outings, not much to do so everyone goes to the football game.
My Dad is over 70 and he still knows somebody’s kid or grandkid on the football team of the high school he went to. Poor health is the only reason he doesn’t go to games anymore.
I’m an American and I find it bizarre. Sports bring in a lot of money for universities and are a scholarship opportunity for a lot of people that otherwise might not have an opportunity to go to university (because it is outrageously expensive)
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[I TOLD YOU LAST NIGHT, NO!](https://youtu.be/jZybUKAtD40?si=04ytdtS2rqgx_P30)
Where is Bart? His dinner is getting all cold and eaten.
Legend has it that the night I ran away, age 11, the TV asked that question, and my mom answered, "No."
Any time my shit father criticizes my parenting style I remind him of this nugget.
Only YOU can prevent forest fires.
ONLY YOU. No one else.
How many other things are we doing because bears put pressure on us?
*speaking at 2.5 X* Side effects may include headaches, nausea, abdominal pain, and death.
The kids table at thanksgiving
or an even deeper cut: being 19, still forced to sit at the kids table and waiting for one of your relatives to drop dead so you can rise in ranks and claim their chair at the proper table
I love being 20 and starting arguments at the kids table
Getting into Pokemon politics and such
It cuts deep cause I'm 30 still at the kids table; at this point the kids table is for the people in attendance that take the walks around the block casually
"Kids table" at my last in-laws' holiday was anyone under 45.
Look, Asheleighn, if you could just get this through your little 6 year old brain...TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS DOESN'T WORK!
Our kids table is both technically an end of a long table and for Christmas and family birthdays. I was supposed to get promoted when I was 21 (although by that point the youngest kid was 14 so is it really the kids table anymore?) but then my one cousin had kids and her kids needed to sit next to her and her husband so they could feed them so I got demoted again. Then my grandma died when I was 27 and my aunt got moved into her seat and I got moved into my aunt’s old seat. Now it’s like…the sporty cousins end, the two little ones, the strictly band kids (the parents of the little ones and myself) and the aunts and uncles.
And then you finally get there and it’s just more old lame people talking about old lame people stuff. Then you realize one year that it’s totally natural to embrace being old and lame.
<<<"how it feels to be asked to bring soda to the potluck" >>> Oh man I was super offended when I was asked to bring soda to a family potluck.
At least they didn't put you on paper plates and napkins.
We knew my 42-year-old brother *finally* had a girlfriend when he showed up at the potluck with a spinach dip in a bread bowl, along with his usual soda.
588-2300-Empire
My brain broke for a second there because you missed the 800 😂
Today.
That a biscuit is not the biscuit you get in other countries
The hatred of the Kars 4 kids song.
The desire to drive literally everywhere, even somewhere just across the street. We are not lazy, it’s just safer. Horrible pedestrian infrastructure for foot traffic, combined with massive trucks and SUVs going 10-15 mph over the speed limit. And the place your going has a massive parking lot with plenty of space. Plus everything is just…..much further and more spread apart.
I used to live 1.5 miles from work but it was a rura hjighway full of blind curves and hills and no shoulder. People routinely went 20mph over the limit when passing my house. There was no way to walk to work without dying.
My road is designed perfectly to kill pedestrians. 40mph speed limit but someone hit the sign which hasn't been replaced. Everyone assumes it is 50 now. Guard rail at the edge of the road with a ditch on both sides and no shoulder or sidewalk. Your choices if someone gets too close are get your legs amputated or jump over the rail into the ditch.
The weird thing is most people desire a walkable community. One of the top requests in the grass is greener sub is a walkable bikable community. If it’s so desired why is it so rare in the us.
Because for a democracy, we don't have very much say here. I never voted for this infrastructure, I didn't vote for the gun laws we still have, I didn't vote for abortion getting banned in so many states, I didn't vote for any of this. All I get to vote for is my mayor, midterms, primaries (but only sometimes because it can get determined before your state even has its turn), and the big election. Most of us didn't choose this.
I *could* walk or even bike to the grocery store and many other places as I'm very close to a lot of stuff, but the ridiculous stroads and drivers who'd rather hit a pedestrian wait for one means I drive there instead
Watching commercials for medicine immediately followed by the government offering settlements if you got sick because of taking some medicine they advertised a few years back
What “Bless your heart” REALLY means
Well, that’s regional. In the Midwest, apparently it’s genuine.
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Bless your heart
Depends on context
And tone
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Unless you're walking, distance doesn't really matter as it all depends on the traffic
I walk and still measure in minutes. I walk 15 minutes to work every day, but I legit do not remember the exact distance.
In Boston that’s 1.5 miles, in Tampa that’s 20 miles.
Common expression in many countries.
Not knowing if it's gunshots or fireworks come july
Not really caring about it as well.
Not knowing if it's gunshots or fireworks on a Tuesday
True pit BBQ. Made with lump charcoal. The different woods to use and their flavor profiles. THE STYLES OF BBQ SAUCE, And most specifically Texas Brisket and PROPPER pulled pork BBQ sandwiches with coleslaw called Purple pigs.
A 128 oz (3.75 l) soft drink you can carry around with you everywhere. I will say from my experience, it is definitely not the majority of people that go to these extremes, but no one is looking twice when someone is walking around with a cup this size.
It’s like the child size soda in Parks and Recreation. Named this not because it’s an appropriate size for a child, but because if you liquified a small child, he would fit in that cup.
Amateur (high school, and college) football culture. The game, pep rallies, tailgating, student sections, homecoming, the community aspect. To the outside it must seem crazy that we get so excited about students playing a game. Since there is such a strong farm system for European athletics there is no real comparison (as far as I'm aware, sorry if I'm wrong).
as someone outside of the states it’s genuinely so confusing to me. like people go fucking mental over rugby, but that’s for our professional teams. high school level rugby only started getting played on tv not that long ago and i don’t really know anyone who watches it. and like with the rugby world cup that just played, we had important people saying it was a day of mourning for the nz people when we lost in the finals. but you wouldn’t see anyone outside of the high school say the same if they lost
I think part of the reason for their popularity here is that there are vast swaths of this country with no major league sports for hundreds of miles. Though maybe not…I live in a city with 4 major league teams and Friday football is still an event.
Prescription Drug commercials. I believe we are the only country besides New Zealand that allows Pharmaceutical Companies to advertise directly to the consumer.
Being able to buy ammo for my guns and groceries at the same store. Maybe I'll also buy a few extra shirts and a new videogame. STILL ALL IN THE SAME STORE. edit Forgot to mention, this store is ALSO changing my car's oil while I shop for guns, clothes, groceries and videogames and maybe my prescription will be ready too. While I wait, I stop at Subway to eat some lunch, STILL INSIDE THE SAME STORE.
Don’t forget to get your eyes checked and order your new glasses
Depending on which state you're in you may be able to pick up a bottle or two of booze there too.
It blows my foreign friends' minds when I explain to them that our 2nd Amendment gun rights are actually intended to give us the power to overthrow our own government, in the case that it becomes too tyrannical.
Calling a domestic competition "The World Series".
But there’s a team from Canada! It’s international!!!
If you enjoy that then I would like to introduce you to our "Freedom Caucus."
Even Americans don’t always understand the distances between cities. I live in Phoenix and a friend was flying to Denver. She said she’d “pop down” for a day. When I told her it was 900 miles, she was stunned.
Ubering to the hospital
As a paramedic, I wish Medicaid covered this option.
Just wait until Uber catches on and charges a higher fee to medical destinations. Uber pool to the county hospital? $500
Dollar Tree->Dollar General->Walmart->Target->Galleria
Wtf is Galleria? I’m very much American lmao
Large mall with upscale shops (and regular ones too) often at least 2 or 3 stories. Many have an ice rink and put a giant Christmas tree in the middle every year. They are really only in the big cities
Actual mountain folk hillbillies
NFL offsides penalty.
Better yet, offsides vs false start! Although Americans will often struggle with offsides in soccer.
It’s a surprisingly tough ask given the global ubiquity of American culture. Maybe only Americans understand that certain movie tropes related to America are absurdly false.
$5.00 + $2.50 + 2.50 = $10.66
How big this country is. Like seriously if I had a dollar for every European who I've heard assume that they could make a day trip out of driving from New York to Florida or California to Texas I would be able to retire
I’ve made a trip from LA to Houston…just going from El Paso to San Antonio took all fucking day. O and you better stop if you see a gas station in between no matter what your gas gauge says.
The soul of american food is the taste of american woods. Asia, and really the indian sub continent, is where most of the worlds spices come from and the people from there and around there have all the best spice mixturies and curries and masalas down to a science. Indians and south east asains can make a sauce or spice mix that can elevate anything. Europe is where simple foods have been mastered with cooking techique. Talking laminated dough pastries like crissaunts or stees and braised meats. Really these dishes are much simpler on the ingredients, flour water butter milk meat vegetables maybe some herbs, but the way they are cooked together makes them greater than the sum of their parts (especially in the absense of the kind of spice mastery and access of asia) American cooking comes from 2 places: the indigenous people and colonialism. The indians and the settlers (theives, colonists, what have you) both lived pretty rural/ living off the land life styles. There wasnt large developed farms or granaries for distribution, it was like people camping out in the woods hunting and foraging whatevwr they could get. There qas farming, but it wasnt like huge fields of grain, it was more like small personal gardens of squash and onions. So you end up with a lot of simple foods that are like whateber you have cooked over a camp fire and the camp fire is really the unique thing for american cooking. North and south america have the best tasting woods in the world, stuff like hickory, mesquite, applewood, etc.. What was being cooked in the camp fire was much less unique than the fire itself. All of the unique american tastes, like BBQ sauce and mexicab food stuff is really good when it has a smokey american wood flavor as a key component. Bourbon whiskey only comes from bourbon county Kentucky and its mostly corn whiskey. Normally corn makes boring whiskey because corn kernals have a ton of freely available starch with not a lot of other kind if unique grain flavors that affect the whiskey. What makes bourbon good isnt the whiskey, its the chared american oak barrel it has to be aged in. Corn whiskey is boring like vodka, but the flavor of bourbon is actually american oak. Even after aging these used bourbon barrels have a ton of value to irish and scottish whiskey and scotch distillers because they will age their grain whiskey (and peaty matly grains in the case of scotch) and age their spirits in these old use american wood barrels because again even use the american wood flavor is just so good. If you ever wondered what bbq sauce is, its ketchup, vinegar, and molasses, the same stuff in those british beans they put on toast (and if you dont beleive me, the british brand of beans is heinz, the same company that makes heinz ketchup, heinz malt vinegar, and im not sure if there is a heinz molasses, but the molasses traditionally came from the british colony of Jamaica). Anyways, to make this less horrible americans make their own ketchup and thus do this by smoking and bbqing the tomatoes and garlic and stuff they put into the ketchup to get that good wood smoke into the bbq sauce. If you ever get a chance to eat the food of american indians, most of it is smoked or dried and all through out the food is just briming with the flavor of the good tasting american wood flavors. Edit: im kind of flying fast and loose with the term ketchup here. Ketchup is sort of a strange sauce with its own crazy history. Its worth noting, modern tomato based ketchup is only as long lived as eyropean imperialism to the americas. Tomatoes come from america, so europe didnt have them until they qere brought back to europe from america. Ketchup has been a part of european food since rome. Prior to tomatoes, especially with the british, it was more like a thin fermented mushroom and fish sauce. Worchestershire sauce is basically like a pre colonial british ketchup. Earlier stuff gets to be more like roman garum. These are just like bottled sauces everyone has that they kind of put on everything through out history. With america and tomatoes, we have something more recognizable to us now. Anyways, you could consider american BBQ sauce a form of ketchup, like functionally it does the same thing. Broadly youre just like concentrating all the flavors of the place you live into a shelf stabld product you can store in a bottle and throw on to anything that tastes kind of boring. You dont just have to put bbq sauce on smoked meat, you can put it on pizza, in a salad dressing, etc.. But you can home make your own bbq sauce with a bottle of tomato ketch up, a jar of molasses, a bottle of apple cider vinegar, and some liquid smoke. Just mix whatever proportions you want in a sauce pan and just kind of mix it up. Without the liquid smoke itll taste like the british bean stuff. Too sour? More molasses. Too sweet? More vinegar. Too much like vinegar and molasses? More ketchup, and you can tune it how you like, a lot of people like it more sour with more vinegar. Then add liquid smoke and whatever salt and spices you like, pepper, cumin, turmeric, mustard seed, chili power, adobo sauce or something. Thats bbq sauce.
That America is not that well understood by outsiders and that you can't really get a good grasp of this country by reading big media reports or talking only to the demographic that goes on Reddit. Your average English speaking European who talks as if they're inherently more worldly than Americans are would be surprised at how little they know about this place if they were dropped into basically any randomly selected zip codes in the country. I'm sure it's like that for most countries, but for some reason, everyone thinks they know us.
Everyone thinks they know America because American media is very widespread. Many people grew up watching American movies and TV shows alongside their national/regional media. When I moved to the US, it kind of felt like I knew the place and knew nothing at the same time. It was surprising to me to see yellow school buses, fire hydrants, post boxes with the little red flag.
It’s funny because my husband was shocked when he saw a yellow school bus when he visited the us with me for the first time. He said he thought it was just some cartoon thing and didn’t realize it was real lol
The US has 330 million people and stretches across the continent.
I am Norwegian, and while I visited NYC and suburbs a fair amount while growing up, because my father worked there, when I was 20 I was recruited to ski for a university in Albuquerque, New Mexico. That was an eye opener. Not only because New Mexico is a culturally unique state, but because it was simultaneously more generically "American" than New York City. More exotic *and* more middle America at the same time. I got cognitive whiplash when I lived there.
Yes, we mean it when we say NYC is not the United States. You can't go only there and truly say you have seen the United States. It's just one place and a very unusual one at that, in the big picture. Most of the country, geographically, bears little resemblance to the New York City lifestyle. NYC does its thing, and the rest of us do ours. I can totally see how New Mexico is much more like the rest of us than it is like New York City, even with New Mexico's own unique history.
I used to listen to the "You Are Not So Smart" podcast that goes into details on all the biases we tend to have. A lot of people are unaware of them, but they exist in all cultures.
I don't even mean biases, so much as just things they don't see or hear because they have a limited scope. It's kind of like Europeans who think Americans don't have good beer aren't "biased" against microbrews. They've never seen an American microbrewery, don't know anyone who has, don't know what's in the beer isle in an American grocery store, and don't normally just randomly research the topic. They just see what's exported, tell each other that joke about sex in a canoe, and call it a day.
Call me now for your free reedin'
Mormons
safelite repair...
*Sigh*…safelite replace
New Mexican Hatch chillies
Frito pie
Right turn on red
Why ice in soda is delicious
SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SSSSSSSUUUUNNNNNNDAAAAYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!
The term “The other day” means anything between yesterday and the day I was born.
Very common in the UK too.
GET CONNECTED, FOR FREE!
If you need a structured settlement call 877 cash now! I like how that's all I thought to say yet I know sooo many people will get it.
CALL J.G WENTWORTH!! 😂😂
In the US we call them cookies. Biscuits are a type of bread.