Not to be confused with sweetbread (pancreas)
As an American, yeah that’s what gets me. I just don’t understand it and I hate it
Depends on which kind you’re talking about. Cinnamon raisin breads and similar are sweet because they’re basically deserts (desserts?).
Standard sandwich loaf is sweet because your weak foreign palate cannot handle the background level of high fructose corn syrup in all American food. It gives us the strength and vitality to enforce pax Americana, build our secret space colonies, and invent all new world technology.
2 S’s for dessert - you always want a second helping. How I always remember that one :p
I’ll try to avoid stuff you know is weird.
- Adjectives. You can’t just have a thing. It has to have an adjective. For example: Milk. I wanted to buy milk. I get to the milk section, and there’s no such thing. There’s x milk and y milk and about a dozen other variants. Where is the basic milk (it turns out, I wanted “4% milk”) in this damned place?
- Fresh produce. In fairness you’ve gotten loads better on this one after subsequent visits, but beyond some basic staples like potatoes, carrots, corn etc it was really limiting what fruit and vegetables you could get in the supermarket. Also: baby carrots are weird.
- Your cheese is radioactive yellow. Cheese is not supposed to be that colour - but you seem expect it to be for some reason, so your producers add yellow colouring to their cheese.
- Your eggs are weird. I’m not sure what yous guys do to to them, but it’s like you blast away half the shell and are left with a porous super-white textured inner shell. They need to be refrigerated and last a fraction of the time they’d last if you just left them alone and sold them as they are laid.
- Your bread tastes weird. Maybe it’s sugar or preservatives in it, I don’t know. Bread is meant to have a really short ingredients list like flour, water, salt yeast and maybe a touch of oil and sugar. Take a look at the ingredients on your bread and it’s 5 lines long.
- Portions! Your food portions are ludicrous. I’d much rather pay half the price for half as much food as they offer on the menu.
- Money. You have this weird unconscious pecking order thing in your culture where you value people more based on their bank balance. You show a weird unconscious level of respect to someone who is rich. And similarly, unconsciously look down on someone poorer than you. Not in a mean way - just as a “I’m better than this person” way that is hard to quantify. You are aware at some level roughly how rich everyone you deal with is. I see this trait far less in people under 20. I hope there’s a cultural shift on this one, because money on its own is a weird way to measure someone’s worth.
- Your police are run by the local counties. I think your schools also? I know you have state and federal police also, but most places only have police and schools at those levels.
- I’ll mostly stay clear of health, because you know your health system is weird. But I will say that it’s weird that very few of your hospitals are run by government. They’re mostly run for profit. Health is meant to be a government service.
- Outside a few cities, you barely have public transport of any sort. LA is a mega metropolis, and it’s train network is a joke for that level of population - something like 100 stations for 18 million people?
- You have no idea what’s going on. Most of you couldn’t name the UK Prime Minister (this one has been hard to keep track of, in fairness), the German Chancellor or any of the G20 leaders aside from USA and maybe Canada/China. You don’t know about geopolitics beyond whatever you guys are doing. Your world news is literally stuff USA is involved in.
- I’ll finish on a weird one: you guys are lovely. This may because I’m white and have an exotic accent to you guys, but almost everyone I’ve ever encountered from the USA in or out of the country has been wonderful. You don’t seem to think of your fellow countrymen you meet as ‘good’ by default. There’s a lot less connection and respect to each other than other nations I’ve been to.
In fairness for number 11, many Americans can’t even name their own government officials, expecting to know about other countries is a tall order.
Money. You have this weird unconscious pecking order thing in your culture where you value people more based on their bank balance. You show a weird unconscious level of respect to someone who is rich. And similarly, unconsciously look down on someone poorer than you. Not in a mean way - just as a “I’m better than this person” way that is hard to quantify. You are aware at some level roughly how rich everyone you deal with is. I see this trait far less in people under 20. I hope there’s a cultural shift on this one, because money on its own is a weird way to measure someone’s worth.
Others have written on this far more eloquently than I have, and so I will use their words to help explain this.
‘It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but might as well be.’ It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: ‘if you’re so smart why ain’t you rich?’ There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.
- Kin Hubbard
Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times.
- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
- Your police are run by the local counties. I think your schools also? I know you have state and federal police also, but most places only have police and schools at those levels.
This might be dependent on state but any place I’ve ever lived has had 3 kinds, state police, county “sherrifs department” police and town/city police. To hear theres a part of the US with sherrifs department police is odd to me, usually the state police would take that role in rural areas without their own police department in my experience.
I’ll try to address some of this, as I’m able. 🙂
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Yes, many many milks, we can’t agree on what is best. Personally I like a quality almond milk, for its nutrients & no sugars and huge bonus it’s shelf stable. Great for emergencies.
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I think the dearth of fresh produce is related to Americans not doing a lot of cooking. Most Americans have a simpler diet, and the stores need to concentrate on a number of things they know will sell. Baby carrots are actually awesome, you’re going to appreciate this – IIRC baby carrots are an innovative way to reduce food waste, sell crop. A farmer had ugly, misshapen, perhaps slightly molded or otherwise undesirable carrots. But most of it was good! So they cut off the bad parts & whittle it down to a nice, uniform, attractive shape & size. Baby carrots were born! Kids like them, they’re ‘snackable’…idk, I like them & I like the green effort.
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Yes, food dyes are thrown into everything. RFK recently did a little rant about the yellow dye, some coal runoff chemical. He’s absolutely right, it’s not cool. I always say you go back 200 years & some people were starving, food of any kind was great. Now we throw red dye into ketchup solely because the ketchup isn’t red enough. Disgusting.
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Natural eggs have some waxy layer on it, a protective layer. So your eggs look dirtier but are actually healthier, can withstand low/no refrigeration. IIRC. Our eggs have that layer removed, they’re required by law to be ‘washed’. Yes, I also think it’s bullshit.
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It is definitely the sugar & preservatives.
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As our bellies have grown, so has everything else. If you find old houses with old cabinets & old plates, you’ll find the dinner plates are much smaller than we have today! We have been programmed to consume. Search ‘dinner plates have gotten bigger’ and read for yourself.
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Yes, our police forces get down to counties. Towns. Idk, I would say that this should provide a more personal & immediate presence. Also in the American spirit, keeping these matters fractured & separate (but also working together, and deferring to increasing levels of authority as needed) allows for the most freedom. You don’t like how things are run in this town? Well move to another one. Same with the states. I see people moving towns because they want a better school for their kids. It allows for choice.
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Yeah, pretty much. TBF, though, our brains can only process so much. And what can we do about the European stuff, anyway?? We’ve got our jobs, maybe our families, our homes, 334M fucking people of our own with various beliefs scattered across 50 diverse states, heavy taxation without representation (hint, hint), our own problems…then somebody comes up to you…“Did you hear what happened in Fuckistan this morning? 🥺” NO! 😂🙃
Thankfully, with the internet, we can look into any world events we want to & educate ourselves that way. I do, I am politically more involved than most. But no, I cannot name current ministers, chancellors, presidents… I hear their position & that’s enough for me. Not my monkeys, not my circus, you handle yours & I’ll handle mine.
12 . Thanks! I think at heart we’re very cordial people generally speaking. But onto that second, contradictory part: I absolutely agree. I live in a generally good area, but I also see a lot of…other…people. There’s a saying, people were a lot more polite & considerate when duelling was legal. Looking around, I think things have become far too ‘civilized’, the people too soft & dumb, our food as you’ve pointed out is poisoned, mental & physical illnesses abound, the people haven’t seen real hard times, there is no clear & present danger to unite & fight so they make up stupid things to get offended by & fight each other, they’re protected from the natural consequences of their actions…I see it. Often. This & more culminates in disrespect & disconnects. Unlike other nations, partly because of our freedoms & partially because our legal system lacks balls, we tolerate a lot of bullshit behavior. As they say, if you tolerate something, expect more of it.
As an American, I kinda assumed that subconscious rich/poor thing comes into play with tourists. We “know” how much it costs to come visit this country and we really do want to make it as pleasant as possible, partially because most of us really do love the place even though it has problems, and partially because we want to be a “good value” for their money.
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#8: Police
State police enforce state level laws, and Federal agencies enforce federal laws.
The whole semi-autonomous thing. If a state and the Feds both have their own laws against something they could each try to arrest somebody, but there could also be a situation where one might not have a law while the other one does. For example , weed is still illegal under Federal law. The Federal government has mostly chosen not to enforce these laws, but it could. Many states have legalized weed to varying degrees.
So there could be a situation where somebody is smoking weed in a state that has legalized it. The state police have no power to arrest that person, but the Feds do.
I’m sure this has all made it more confusing.
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I just sort of assume my instance gives away my location - I’m in Australia, not the UK. Not that we can talk, we also churned through about 5 prime ministers in five years a while back.
But I could still talk about any number of issues going on around the world, because our news covers topics around the world. Yours doesn’t. It’s too busy talking about your election and recently a hurricane. Which I know about as it was in our news.
That’s not a criticism, I actually sought out world news while I was there, and there just weren’t any local sources of it.
it turns out, I wanted “4% milk”
As a lifelong American, I don’t think we have 4% milk (reliably). Growing up we had Skim, 2% and Whole. Looking it up Whole is defined as 3.5%
I did look up a local store online and I was able to find it, but not universally at every store.
Whole milk also often called “Vitamin D Milk”
You got something against vitamin D, buddy??
You’re right, of course - I heard the same stuff referred to as “whole milk”. But the only thing you’re correcting about the wider point is the appropriate adjective. Which I find very funny. 😀
It’s interesting that you picked this one out. I thought the money one in particular was going to be a controversial take.
is the appropriate adjective
I just found it interesting that the thing you were looking for, most Americans wouldn’t have heard of. It makes me wonder why America has at least 3 milks.
If we ignore the 3.5% v 4% distinction and assume what we call Whole Milk, you just call Milk; what do you call Skim Milk? Or 2% Milk? And if you don’t have them, why do we?
As for the money question, I was curious to see if other non-Americans felt the same. I agree that there is a subset of people who believe that. That subset may be quite large, but I’m not sure how it’s perceived from an outsiders perspective. If you ask me, I don’t think it’s common, but I imagine some loud folks may make it appear that way. But I also acknowledge I’m an American in America, so maybe I don’t notice it.
Low/no fat milk, which is not healthier but is marketed as being so, is quintessentially American
There’s a health food craze in the US that stemmed out of rampant body shaming. Which might be largely because of American portion sizes. And they think that nutritional fat makes you fat. It doesn’t. Excessive calories make you fat. And even that has caveats, but it’s the best rule of thumb.
When did we start splitting milk? I know part of it is to make cream and high fat stuff while repurposing the skimmed off grass water. ::Googles:: WWII as a means of selling the byproduct of butter. Okay. Then in the 50s physicians started calling it health food despite the fact that the fat is used in your body during the digestion of many fat soluble vitamins such as A, D, E, and K, and thus skim milk is pretty close to the opposite of health food.
And the money thing is kind of rampant. It’s a big reason why things with larger price tags, like Rolex watches, are thought to more impressive by Americans than equivalent or better watches. Rolexes do have a very high quality, but then the mark up on top makes it strictly something I do not respect, and others do not share that opinion with me. Same for a lot of things.
In Australia and New Zealand: we have skim milk, and call 2% milk “Hi-Lo” - sometimes I see it branded “lite milk”. Then there’s regular milk. It has 4% fat, but you need to read the fine print on the side of the bottle to learn that. I’ve heard it called “full cream milk”, but usually in a cafe setting when ordering coffee.
My brother in the USA had something called half-and-half in his fridge. I think that one was 8%? You guys would know better than I. We don’t have whatever it is.
Huh, I’m Australian and have never heard of hi-lo milk.
Full cream and light are the two most popular kinds where I am.
Also, you can’t have a milk discussion in Australia without mentioning extra dollopHalf-and-half is supposed to be “half milk, half cream” and is used primarily in coffee instead of heavy cream.
Use it for cheese sauces as well! They come out creamy and silky.
If you want a sauce that just won’t break, add a single slice of the singles cheese, or 1/8 tsp of sodium citrate if you can find it, to 8 cups of cheese sauce. It won’t change the flavor or color, but will create a silky smooth sauce that doesn’t break like nacho cheese sauce.
Sodium citrate is an absolute game changer for cheese sauces.
3,5% milk is also the standard milk here in central europe and it says so on the packaging. People call it simply “milk”, but it clearly says 3,5% milk on the branding.
Adjectives. You can’t just have a thing. It has to have an adjective. For example: Milk. I wanted to buy milk. I get to the milk section, and there’s no such thing. There’s x milk and y milk and about a dozen other variants. Where is the basic milk (it turns out, I wanted “4% milk”) in this damned place?
you guys are out there buying NULL milk??
Your cheese is radioactive yellow. Cheese is not supposed to be that colour - but you seem expect it to be for some reason, so your producers add yellow colouring to their cheese.
american cheese or cheese more generically? I assume more generically but i’ve seen this mentioned a few times and not specified lol.
They need to be refrigerated and last a fraction of the time they’d last if you just left them alone and sold them as they are laid.
“So what’s the deal with washing and refrigeration? Soon after eggs pop out of the chicken, American producers put them straight to a machine that shampoos them with soap and hot water. The steamy shower leaves the shells squeaky clean. But it also compromises them, by washing away a barely visible sheen that naturally envelops each egg.”
huh, basically just seems like a different approach to solving the problem. Prevention of disease and what not.
Your police are run by the local counties. I think your schools also? I know you have state and federal police also, but most places only have police and schools at those levels.
schools are run locally, though they all adhere to state standards. Sometimes it depends on the schools, some of them are run by the state directly, with a local school board, others are private.
I’ll mostly stay clear of health, because you know your health system is weird. But I will say that it’s weird that very few of your hospitals are run by government. They’re mostly run for profit. Health is meant to be a government service.
is this true? there are a lot of non profit hospitals, i can’t think of any “for profit” hospitals off the top of my head though. https://www.aha.org/statistics/fast-facts-us-hospitals
i did find this stat, which appears to show that there are more non profit hospitals.
Outside a few cities, you barely have public transport of any sort. LA is a mega metropolis, and it’s train network is a joke for that level of population - something like 100 stations for 18 million people?
the obvious answer here is that it’s not for 18 million people. Public transit is almost never intended to get 100% of society from one place to another. It’s just to relocate mass traffic from the roads to something more efficient.
You have no idea what’s going on. Most of you couldn’t name the UK Prime Minister (this one has been hard to keep track of, in fairness), the German Chancellor or any of the G20 leaders aside from USA and maybe Canada/China. You don’t know about geopolitics beyond whatever you guys are doing. Your world news is literally stuff USA is involved in.
in our defense, Britain is basically the size of a small state… So with local politics alone we’re basically dealing with the entirety of the EU, and probably more. Also, we don’t really live next to anywhere exciting, so world news isn’t really super relevant to us. We have canada up north, they exist, we’re friendly. Mexico to the south, we’re relatively friendly too, but they have an organized crime problem, and beyond that it’s sort of just outside of our bounds.
Canada and mexico are considered “domestic” policy for us lol.
Eggs look like this:
They don’t need to be washed with hot water and soap, they’re perfectly good as they are.
Sorry about the hospital thing. By “for-profit”, I meant you had to pay to go there. That’s completely alien to everyone in the first world. We have private hospitals as well, and yep: lots of them are (or claim to be) non-profit also.
from what i saw when i looked into the egg washing thing. It’s two different solutions to the same problem. The same problem ultimately being unsafe eggs. From what i can recall the europeans generally treat chickens against them, whereas the US generally treats eggs against them (by washing them)
presumably the US does it because either, we started doing it, and it worked, or it’s just more flexible. I know japan ended adopting it after they got a particularly bad batch of infected eggs causing a pretty bad health spook. Other than that i don’t think it’s happened anywhere else.
Sorry about the hospital thing. By “for-profit”, I meant you had to pay to go there. That’s completely alien to everyone in the first world. We have private hospitals as well, and yep: lots of them are (or claim to be) non-profit also.
yeah fair enough, it just bothers me when people say for profit when it’s literally not lol. It’s getting money in either scenario, it’s just taxes from one, and people who pay for insurance and operations directly in the other so.
Actually you’re not wrong about for profit hospitals here. Many of them are getting acquired by private equity firms(look into PE acquisitions across this country it will make you sick) and those are for profit hospitals.
I never understood the need to display multiple US flags in your yard. We get it, you live in america. You love America. We get that too. Are you afraid someone will think you no longer wish to be American if you took your flags down?
The flag patriotism and intense praise of military action was a lot for me. I remember going to a mall, and seeing what would typically be reserved as disabled parking was instead veteran parking?? And then the cinema in the mall loudly advertising its discount for veterans as well. We do have a general discount in my country too, but it’s not so… intense. Like no one else has to know it’s happening because it’s more of a state benefit than it is a form of patriotism.
Neighbourhoods in general are what I found the strangest when I stayed in the States. Flags everywhere as you say, but also just the intense size, and the lack of walkability (the kurb drops felt massive compared to my country). Beyond that I remember walking for around 20 minutes through a suburb and counting upwards of 10 different company logos on rubbish bins. This neighbourhood seemingly had 10 different bin days rather than one centralised service.
No, leave them up so I know to avoid you.
“Those two” have a few reasons to want to wave their flags.
But the Republic and Northern island need to fly those flags so you know where you are and whether it’s been taken over.
Okay, maybe not, but when I was in America for a few years we decided the ridiculous fixation was so people knew that they hadn’t been taken over … again.
Just wait until you start seeing the new combination flags where it’s divided diagnoally and displays two flags communicating opposing and incompatible values. So far I’ve seen American/Israeli, American/Trump and American/Confederate Battle flags. The irony clearly goes so far over their heads, not to mention how these flags technically violate the official rules for flag display
I do think it’s telling that I haven’t seen any American/LGBTQ flags for who the designers of these flags cater to
Currently live in the Republic of Ireland and I have no idea what you’re talking about? Were you here on Saint Patrick’s Day? There’s a significant amount of Palestinian flags in windows here for pretty obvious reasons but other than that I don’t think I’ve seen a flag since, again, Paddy’s day.
Funnily enough this is exactly how people think including our house.
I took mine down when Roe v Wade was overturned and the Progress Pride flag went up. I had been considering putting the American Flag back up recently if Democrats start winning again.
People from every country like to pretend that patriotism isn’t a natural part of living but will stick their heads so far up their own asses when talking up all their food, culture, teams, or any other number of arbitrary things.
And while there has been some divergence in Patriotism vs Nationalism, they’re essentially the same damn thing but with better connotations for one now lol.
And while there has been some divergence in Patriotism vs Nationalism, they’re essentially the same damn thing but with better connotations for one now lol.
ok to be clear, nationalism is generally a hinge point in a fascism/authoritarian political party. Patriotism is just being proud of the country you’re a part of. A lot of people are very patriotic about their states, or sports teams. Brits especially.
It’s a political thing. Signals that you are a nationalist chud.
You know what’s a funny one? Flag pins. Every politician in America, take a look, they will ALL be wearing a little American Flag pin, always.
I have to assume other politicians in other countries don’t always wear a pin of their country.
You’re wrong. They also do this in North Korea.
I think for some it’s a mix of patriotism and having poor taste in decor. I know people who also have American flag swim shorts, sunglasses, etc. Also, it’s not exclusive to America. My British side of the family (especially the ones who’ve met the former Queen) have a weird amount of UK flag decor too, ranging from clock faces, throw pillows, and even an armchair covered in a giant union jack.
As long as it’s the UK flag, and not the English flag, I’ll give them a pass. Stay clear from anyone in an England flag, drunk or sober, football or naught.
Honestly I assume most people with an American flag in their yard are racist trump fans these days
ok so, i hate to do this to you, but have you ever considered that these people would probably just… Have a trump sign.
I’m from Alberta Canada. I’ve worked up North in camp jobs, and have been working in the trades with the rowdiest people our country has to offer.
Every time I’ve been to the states I’m shocked at how aggressive a large portion of your population is willing to talk to people. Every time I’ve gone there I’ve had at least one negative aggressive interaction with one of your citizens. I’m a large man with a beard and tattooes up to my neck, I’m a pretty intimidating looking dude paired with the Canadian politeness we’re known for. I do not understand how this keeps happening. And I see you guys do it to eachother too! It’s fucking wild.
Example?
I give you my silly example. We were on a work trip with a college. We were talking in English. I said something like: I wanna try a hash brown! Never had one.
This dude replies to a conversation he wasn’t part of: THEY ARE JUST POTATO! very angrily.
Yeah… I know… Turns out I love potato
You think an American wouldn’t also regard that interaction as weird?
There’s a lot of regional variation in what people do or don’t find to be “aggressive”.
Who the fuck is this asshole?
My Canadian friends would be proud. Both of them!
Go fuck yourself. /s
Just kidding, but yeah, we suck as a people. But I’ll be friendly to ya when you land in my neighborhood.
As an American I think it’s largely that we generally suck at dealing with negative emotions. For many that means bottling it up and being kind anyways, but we have the assholes and you learn to walk away, or clap back, or whatever works for you and they just get angrier at being dismissed. They aren’t mad at you, they just suck and we’re bad at helping people not suck, especially since they tend to love guns
Fuck clapping back in a country with that high a level of access to guns and that little mental health access. Anyone could have a gun and I’m not playing that game. I’m not usually too confrontation adverse but I’d change my name to Mat (First name Floor) before arguing with a weirdly aggressive American.
That’s very surprising. Where have you visited?
Yeah it’s very surprising to me as well. As a life-long resident of one of the states mentioned, having lived in both major cities as well and small-medium towns, I don’t think I’ve experienced this “aggression”
Sometimes the base level of aggression or the base level of inflection is way higher than what you’re locally tuned for.
Anecdotally I have found even business conversations with people from the US to be over the top. Especially through the sales cycle. There is a lot of hype that I need to adjust for in comparison to vendors in the UK, Europe and Asia.
It’s not a bad thing, it’s a social standard. I probably appear quiet reserved and shy by comparison.
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You’re pretty much just missing Mississippi, New Jersey, and Boston and you’ll have made a complete circuit of all the places with the most assholes. Hard luck.
By chance do you experience this mostly at bars?
lol, that checks out for Montana
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The intense income disparity.
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Healthcare bills.
I suppose these are cliche topics but as a non-american non-tourist the first thing that has stood out to me is that the highs are so incredibly high, and the lows are so incredibly low. Being a Canadian, it’s not like we don’t also have income disparity…but the gap is not as insane. The rich in the US have yachts that are 100’s of millions of dollars, and the poor literally carry their kids on their backs while selling fruit on the side of the highway. You can see both in the same day.
Also I don’t think Americans truly understand that you can get weeks of hospital care in Canada and not even receive a bill. Like a month in a private hospital room and i paid for a phone bill, a wifi bill, and some parking fees. In the US if you even so much as flash your eyelashes at a doctor you get a bill for hundreds of dollars.
I’m getting my shoulder repaired next week (I completely tore my supraspinatus tendon, wooo…). It’s going to cost me $16,000. That’s relatively cheap in the US; if I had insurance (which I don’t), I’d have to have surgery done in a hospital, and my insurance would be billed >$30k. I’ve looked into medical tourism, but I just don’t have the time; if it was still 80% torn, I could fly to Spain or something, pay cash, take 2-3 weeks to recover, do touristy shit, fly home, and still come out ahead. Unfortunately, once a tendon is fully separated, you need to address it ASAP.
And, BTW, I’m very, very lucky that I have $16k in a 401(k) that I can withdraw in the first place; if this had happened to me 10 years ago, i would have just lost partial use of my right arm for the rest of my life.
…And why don’t I have insurance? The only insurance available to me costs >$500/mo., and the annual deductible (the amount I have to pay before insurance covers anything aside from routine care and prescriptions) is $9000. My costs would be almost identical if I had the only insurance that’s available to me.
EDIT - OTOH, it’s generally a little faster for people in the US to get non-emergency care. E.g., if my supraspinatus was torn, but not completely separated, I would generally have a longer wait for surgery in the UK or Canada than I would in the US. But that’s a pretty small positive for the US system compared to a huge ton of negatives.
The statement for my wife’s first month-long hospital stint was upwards of $957k.
My auntie had 4 major surgeries to overcome a situation she found herself in. It was serious ICU and ER stuff.
She’s been there a month now, recuperating, and once she’s fully tapered off the morphine she can go home with a visiting nurse.
Only expenses so far are vending machines when she wants some Peak Freens.
My wife’s hospital had a taqueria
Drive through rural Mississippi. The wealth gap is nuts just from what you can see on the highway.
While I agree with the essence of what you are saying. I want to say, if you have insurance the “bill” might be hundreds, but my share might only be 20 usd, if anything at all. If my “bill” was thousands, I might see my share be a couple hundred usd at most. It is possible for it to be far less then a couple hundred.
The other thing people don’t mention is, if I honestly can’t pay my share. I can walk into the billing office at the clinic /hospital and explain I honestly can’t afford my share. The hospital will bill the insurance what they can, then look for extra funding. Most hospitals have a charity fund. It is based on my income. If I am broke and make crap wages, my share might be reduced to 0 usd.
Should we have a better system? Yes, but many times there are real options out there.
Most hospitals have a charity fund. It is based on my income. If I am broke and make crap wages, my share might be reduced to 0 usd.
Currently working through this with the local hospital and about $8k of various visits over the last 4 years of so while we had some mix of no insurance, garbage insurance and Medicaid (federally funded low income insurance) and it’s literally all being wiped away. The lady who processes the applications explained to me that it’s on a sliding scale, so if you make $1 over the threshhold for 100% waiver, it might be a 95% waiver. Notably some of the debt turned out to be a billing error where they should have billed Medicaid in the first place, but that was one of the smaller bills in the pile of debt
User fees invoke a chilling effect on care usage, especially preventative care.
And when you’re seen as a cash cow and as a patient, there can be a conflict of interest.
As a Canadian it’s insane to me to have a bill at all after going through some sort of health ordeal the last thing you need is a big scary bill with something to do.
if I honestly can’t pay my share. I can walk into the billing office at the clinic /hospital and explain I honestly can’t afford my share. The hospital will bill the insurance what they can, then look for extra funding. Most hospitals have a charity fund. It is based on my income. If I am broke and make crap wages, my share might be reduced to 0 usd.
So the ask here is for someone who already need to work every waking moment, and then just lost a bunch of hours being hurt/sick, to then spend their time explaining multiple times to the billing dept that they cant afford it (this is degrading) and then their bill MIGHT be reduced but it also MIGHT go to collections and which further goes to damage the individual by hurting their credit. just seems like a burden on the poor.
But yeah i mean its a difference in systems. I think about how canada builds it into taxes - everyone pays in at a rate consistent with their income levels and benefits similarly - but the US way is donations. And I hope that works too. It seems to work from what i’ve seen so far. but it seems like a round about way to get it done.
I basically agree with what you are saying, just to clarify, it isn’t asking multiple times or explaining multiple times. The one time I had to ask for help, I talked to one person. They looked and said, don’t worry about the bill.
But yeah we do need a better system.
-
as an american i would like to make the presumptious statement of “it’s like, pretty normal actually”
please yell at me in the replies, i thrive on confrontation.
i thrive on confrontation
How does one learn this skill?
yell at people on the internet, say stupid shit, get yelled at, repeat.
I think it also requires a little but of being mentally unwell also, but that’s not for me to disperse. I’m not licensed.
please yell at me in the replies, i thrive on confrontation
This is like when people insist they’re alpha. That is to say, if you have to say it, it’s probably not true.
are you confronting me on my confrontation preferences? That’s bold.
Jokes aside, i do generally like confrontation, it provides for an interesting dialog and i also like yelling at people, so that’s a plus.
Well I’ve just read every comment on this thread and I’m relieved to realize that our recitation of our National Pledge of Allegience at every opportunity is in-fact seen as totally normal.
Yeees, totally normal and culty at all…
I only really saw that in grade school. And it was a Red Scare thing. Super culty, but so is all the McCarthy stuff.
It is not, but it’s also hard to notice as a tourist. I’ve learnt that from here
Do you ?
At a point I was travelling a lot to the US, the only time I heard the national anthem was before a Rodeo in Texas, and I never saw someone reciting the "pledge of allegience
Mostly in schools, so not something a traveller is likely to see
Well… not my culture, I guess 🤷♀️
It was made to sell flags
I can’t tell you how much humor I found in this response to that comment. 😁
Living in Florida I feel it’s more common to see publicly. Recently join a “Walk for Heart Health” type event and it started with the national anthem and pledge. Local army ROTC high schoolers also came by a did… some form of rifle performance. This all was to “kick off” the event and most people had hands on their heart type stuff the whole time. Not to mention the city has “Land of the Free” flags on all the light polls in that plaza and it was interesting just HOW MANY people in florida wear those 1776 shirts or the “F around and find out” shirts still.
I’ve never been there, but apparently you guys don’t have blackberries, and have grape jam?
Edit: what you don’t have is blackcurrants, not blackberries.
We definitely have blackberries. We don’t really have blackcurrants though, may be thinking of that?
Yep, currants took a hit because they were a vector for a pine tree infection that rocked our logging industry and led to a ban on currant growing like a hundred years ago. Currants aren’t banned at the national level anymore.
And even through that, we have had creme de cassis as a liqueur that a decently built out bar would have.
Thanks for the info!
We absolutely have blackberries. In my neck of the woods, there’s apparently 2 species of blackberries, one of which is highly invasive. I was going for walks about a month ago, specifically routed to pass by as many wild blackberries as possible, and they were very delicious!
I avoid anywhere with blackberries and raspberries when they’re in season; that’s where the bears tend to hang out, and I’m not super keen on surprising a bear when I’m out hiking.
Nice username. 😏 Dynavap fan? 🍃🍃🍃
Generated by diceware, actually. I wanted to keep it as random as possible.
That sounds quite terrifying! I’m in a pretty urban environment, so I don’t think there’s any bears hanging out on my usual routes, only coyotes, but I will keep that in mind whenever I venture out of the city.
Do you have blackberry jam? Or is it a different berry I was thinking of?
Edit: it’s blackcurrants, isn’t it?
I’m pretty sure we have blackberry jam, but I’m not much of a jam person, so I can’t say so from personal experience. Although if we have the berries, I can’t see why we wouldn’t also have the jam. Looks like blackcurrants is probably what you were thinking of, although they’re technically available in the US now.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackcurrant_production_in_the_United_States
We’ve definitely got blackberries and blackberry jam, but grape does tend to be the norm in a lot of areas. I prefer raspberry myself.
Grape jelly is more popular than jam, but we have both. Grape jelly is kind of an essential foodstuff in a lot of houses for making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which is a common food for children.
Another Canadian.
All-green money is weird, about as weird for us as ours is for you. Once I knocked over some products in a store and then picked them up. The staff acted like that was saintly, so I guess other people just make a mess and move on? Drive through liquor stores are weird, and seem like an invitation to drink and drive. Paying at a hospital is weird just in concept, although thank god I’ve never had to deal with it down there.
Uhh, other than that it’s been pretty similar in the places I’ve been. Etiquette around “sorry” is famously different, but aside from giving me away as Canadian it has little impact.
Edit, to add a couple positive things: Amazing Mexican food and barbecue not only exists but are ubiquitous. Coding jobs pay good money.
Everyone has an air conditioner, although Canada might be the weird one there.
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Once I knocked over some products in a store and then picked them up. The staff acted like that was saintly, so I guess other people just make a mess and move on?
sometimes it happens. Depends on the person and where you are sometimes.
Generally if someone accidentally knocks something over they’ll put it back, though it’s not uncommon that stuff gets put back in the wrong place, i’d say that’s more common.
In Australia it’s customary to thank the staff members attending your table. So when they top up your water, or lay out cutlery for the next course, or clear plates, you say ‘thanks/thank you’. Same for people clearing glasses in bars. It’s like a millisecond pause in your conversation to thank the staff member; it’s basically cell memory, you don’t think about it. They may or may not acknowledge it with a smile or ‘you’re welcome/no worries’. . It’s just a basic manners thing.
I and my partner were doing it in the states and it was clearly unnerving the staff. Lots of puzzled looks or ‘thats ok hun’ like they had to reassure me that it was part of the service.
Do people just ignore staff there? Is paying a tip at the end the only acknowledgment that they exist?
I’m American and always thank the staff pretty much no matter where I am, I don’t think I get puzzled looks
Maybe it was the location (I’m in Tennessee, for example) or your accent (assuming you have an Australian accent)
I’m really curious where you were that you had that experience? I was brought up with the thank you reflex and have lived all over the states and have never had a situation of note arise from saying thank you too much.
You are not supposed to interact with Help!
Just kidding and not American. If saying ″thanks″ for things like those would yield similar reaction, I would be confused as well. Seems so intuitive to say it.
Canadian, so it’s not all that different, but why. can. I. buy. liquor. in. a. PHARMACY?
Don’t know if this is just a California thing, but it was weird as fuck. What’s even weirder, in light of this, is they didn’t go whole hog and sell cigarettes too. 'Cause helf.
Side story: Went into a Dollar General and bought a can of Sapporo. Ok, not so weird, it’s functionally a super basic grocery store with a bunch of other cheap goods. Guy at the counter said, “Oh yeah, they make this beer in some place very far away”. Looked at the can - I’m pretty sure he meant Japan, not Guelph, ON Canada.
He wasn’t wrong but I did chuckle.
Liquor laws vary wildly throughout the US. The one good thing about Ohio is drive through liquor stores.
I always wondered how that isn’t encouraging drinking and driving. Indiana has them as well.
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Pharmacies/drug stores in America have unique laws and ordinances that go back to prohibition. During that time, they took over the role of saloons in communities, since they were able to sell medicinal whisky.
Pharmacy liquor is a new one to me, lol.
well i mean, depending on which state you’re in, canada can very well be “far away” it’s not the other side of the earth far away, but it’s a long trip.
Oh, 100%, dude was factually correct and I didn’t chuckle at him, just found the whole “Canadian in a Californian dollar store buying ‘exotic’ Japanese beer that is actually Canadian macrobrew from a brewery 5 hours west of his home” thing really amusing.
It was from far away - like, the other side of the continent - but not the kind of far away you’d expect given the branding.
Edit: That said, this was several years ago - a little Googling suggests that if I did this now, it would be even less exotic, and brewed by Stone Brewing in Escondido, CA.
In some states you can buy booze pretty much anywhere. I moved out of the country for awhile and when I went back home I stopped into an ice cream shop slash convenience store, and when I was surprised to see the 6 coolers of beer along the back wall I realized I’d been gone a long time.
Here in the UK you can buy booze more or less anywhere that you can buy food. Almost any supermarket or corner shop will supply you what you want.
In the US with all the variety there are places like that, but then places where you seemingly can’t find alcohol to buy and take home anywhere.
There’s differences between how wine & beer, and hard liquor are treated. I’d say the “average” experience is beer in any corner shop or gas station, beer and wine in a grocery store, and hard liquor in specific liquor stores.
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If I have this kind of influence, please let me know where I can guffaw so y’all can get some socialized health care.
Walgreens and CVS stopped selling cigarettes as corporate decisions around 2010, there’s no law against it, they probably had a family member die of lung cancer.
Getting any entity that jumps through as many hoops as one has to jump through to get a liquor sales license to voluntarily give up that profit isn’t nearly as likely in the current US societal climate. Maybe once we have legal weed, but not while it is the current drug of choice.
Not to mention that Walgreens became as big as they are specifically because of prescription alcohol sales during prohibition.
It’s not the healthcare that bothered me most, although it did.
It’s the cognitive dissonance around the unavailability of healthcare in order to avoid anxiety over the fact that a traffic accident can bankrupt you with no relief. Ignoring the risk takes some serious mental gymnastics and basic math failure to get there, but when brought up in this environment - where a TV show about a teacher who has to cook and sell meth to get hospital money is actually a plausible plot where no one actually examines the mercenary care at all and the main character just pays it - it’s just a part of their existence.
Not understanding that few other people live like this - cubans don’t live like this - is absurd.
When I watch “alone”, it’s so depressing at the end when they ask them what they’ll do with the money they won. And they say “pay for my wife’s cancer treatment”. Like omg America
When I watch “alone”, it’s so depressing at the end when they ask them what they’ll do with the money they won. And they say “pay for my wife’s cancer treatment”. Like omg America
probably more noble than the ending to squid game lol
Why were Cubans emphasized out of all people?
A natural impoverished (by us) enemy just a stones throw away.
What’s natural about a blockade?
obviously nothing, but we did it anyway and forced a nearby country into near starvation, thankfully they were resilient enough to hold out but not before we labelled them our enemy
It really is a tremendous injustice. Hopefully with global shifts in power they get some breathing space. The world would grow with a growing and prospering Cuba. They’ve had and have a lot to offer.
Because cubans are considered a poor, third world country (despite the definition being something different) and because USA considered them an example of evil communism. Sure, communism then was far from ideal, but at least now they have healthcare (according to OP)
Yeah, as an American it’s disturbing and makes it hard to believe we can change things. You’ve described it very well.
Maybe that explains the amount of mental health issues in the population?
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Probably because you until the 80s you could get thrown into an assilym and given a labotomy or worse.
yeah idk about this one, it wasn’t good but the asylum shit was killed in the 50s from what i can remember. Obviously we didn’t do much after that, but it probably wasn’t as bad. Most of those people probably just ended up in prison to be honest. Again for lobotomies, it looked like we stopped doing that in the mid 50s, by the 60s probably entirely.
Also the reason mental healthcare sucks is that we don’t have enough practitioners right now. It’s a bit of a problem.
Canadian checking in.
Biggest oddity to me is that the default for restaurants is one bill, and waiters get annoyed if you ask them to split it by person.
Like why would I want to either:
- do math correctly splitting the bill while trying to leave; or
- be worried I ordered something more expensive than the average and unfairly make others cover it?
It’s complete insanity to me.
This hugely depends. Most places will happily split it.
Yeah, this one is interesting to me. I go out with friends, and we split the bill every time. They’re even happy to split it differently for couples and singles. Never been an issue. Maybe it’s a regional thing??
Split meaning equal shares, or split as in each person pays for what they ordered?
Ah, good point. I was referring to each pays for what was ordered. Although, I think equal splits are typically not an issue either. I do live in a pretty touristy area - no clue if that affects it somehow.
It was an option on the POS we had. Just ask at the beginning and it gives you the option to start split. I’m pretty sure you could do it in process too but I just always asked at the beginning. I live in BC.
I think this largely depends on the system they’re using for billing. In Canada, most restaurant systems bill by seat anyway, so it’s easy to print multiple receipts or a combined one. A lot of systems in the US bill by table, so the waiter is the one who has to do all the math.
Interestingly enough that’s mostly in the Northern states I live in the East and we split all the checks every time we go out. Whenever I go to new York the waiters get all pissy though like it’s some monumental task. They couldn’t even manage to keep their trash in trash cans until recently though so maybe they will catch up one day.
It’s the tipping culture. If you have to split the bill, the presumption is everyone will tip poorly under the assumption that someone else will tip well. Having worked several food service gigs, I can say that is accurate.
That may vary. In my country if you want to split the bill some places will give a different number for each person but the most common is everyone at the table calculating how much each consumed and taking turns to pay your part whilst the waiter add all to make sure that the bill was all payed.
But in the US I was very surprised when the waiter asked at the end if we wanted a separate bill and they knew what each one ordered and they came back with 4 bills. I was very impressed. Granted I didn’t when to that many places in group so not sure how common it is.
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I noticed too many churches in Texas.
Wait till you get to Utah
Shoes. Indoors, in your own house, on your furniture?!
Yeah as someone living in Canada that seems wild to me. I can’t imagine they still do that in places with snow, that would be madness.
That is divisive even within the country.
I was raised in small town Ohio and taking your shoes off, especially in a strangers home (occasionally not in your own because of practicalities like going back and forth to unload the car), was considered part of common etiquette along with not wearing hats indoors.
Both of those things really depend on your family though as I’ve definitely met people that just don’t care.
I don’t like walking on my carpeted areas in my shoes, but I don’t mind walking in the laminate in shoes. Easier to clean imo.
How can you guys get any work done around the house if you’re constantly swapping shoes?
You buy shoes that are easy to swap - like no need to use hands kind of easy. You can also go barefoot at home, because the floor is clean.
I don’t really do this but I knew people who did growing up so I’ve got experience:
Laced shoes go on for big outdoor trips. If you’re walking around your yard or the immediate area it’s loafers/flip-flops/Crocs/etc, something you can slip on/off easily as you come in/out the house
It’s not really much of a time investment at all except if you live where it gets rainy and muddy, because then youre gonna put on more hardcore outdoor shoes like wellies
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Cascadian here to confirm. Throw on an insulated flannel and a pair of muck boots and you can stay in your pjs when you chore in and out.
Pffft
Just go barefoot everywhere
Hard agree, but you won’t gain any friends by mentioning this to Europeans. I guess they just stopped for tea after bringing in a single grocery bag, then change back into their shoes to get the rest of the bags, followed by a nice cigarette outside, another shoe change, and some black pudding for dinner.
on your furniture?!
Carpet counts as furniture?
Otherwise, no, I don’t tend to walk on my tables, chairs, and couch very often. If I do need to do that for some reason I tend to do it barefoot for the grip, tho
The amount of sugar in any food of yours! It’s incredibly sickening and I’m not sure how you deal with that.
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Even so, its still difficult to avoid sugar in normal foods like bread. Even the nicer bread brands still have some amount of added sugar and I can taste it
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Yes I have tried whole grains and they still taste sweet to me
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That’s the neat thing: our pancreases do! Until they don’t…
I’ve started noticing that now that I cook 100% of the food I eat. No more processed anything, no more prepackaged anything, no more eating out.
Mostly because of money and my location, but I’m better off for it.
I’m assuming fast food or restaurant food? Some of us definitely agree with you.
Even just snacks, it was hard to find something that didn’t taste toxic, sadly.
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Let me just say I love an effing Payday. And recently I discovered this, which is kinda like a Payday if the center part was hollwed out into a tube and filled with peanut butter. So damn delicious.
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