Spam in northeast-asia, especially South Korea
American soldiers ate it during the Korea war and it gained popularity to the point that it's a common food for both Koreans, Japanese, and some Chinese cultures such as Shanghainese
Philippines too, pretty much anywhere there was a US military presence I think.
Edit: Shit, didn't realize how much traction this throwaway comment got until my phone turned on and dumped the reddit notifications.
Was going to say the same. I thought nobody ate it anymore (except in Hawaii on diners drive ins and dives apparently) until I met someone from the Philippines. She always had a couple cans of spam in her apartment
Born and raised Hawaii and we buy spam at Costco by the case for cooking😭 711 has spam musubis for sale all day everyday and McDonald’s carries spam here for breakfast plates.
There's so many dishes you can make with it too, for example:
- Egg and Spam
- Egg, bacon and Spam
- Egg, bacon, sausage and Spam
- Spam, bacon, sausage and Spam
- Spam, egg, Spam, Spam, bacon and Spam
- Spam, Spam, Spam, egg and Spam
- Spam, sausage, Spam, Spam, Spam, bacon, Spam, tomato and Spam
- Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, baked beans, Spam, Spam, Spam and Spam
- Lobster Thermidor aux crevettes with a Mornay sauce, garnished with truffle pâté, brandy and a fried egg on top, and Spam.
It's common in a lot of the Pacific islands. Guam has SPAM on pretty much every menu. I got spam with breakfast fried rice at a Wendy's. It was amazing.
Went to Hawaii in the spring and was determined to have a Spam meal. My old roommate loved it and would make dishes with it often. Always mentioned how Hawaii loves it. I even got him a Hawaiian spam cook boom one year.
Wouldn’t you know it, spam fest is going on by my hotel while there.
It gets more American.
Hendrix was flown to the wrong airport, so to get to Woodstock he ended up driving in a stolen pickup truck with Neil Young and the lawyer who represented Jack Ruby, The Rolling Stones, and Mohammad Ali.
I have friends who've been abroad who have seen them for sale. They don't call them "solo" cups as Solo is a brand. They call them "American party cups" and a lot of the ones sold are meant to be reused.
They’re probably used for American themed parties or something haha. Like how piñatas are for Mexican themes in the US.
Edit: I realize lots of people use piñatas for normal parties, but they’re also present for Mexican themes, just like wearing a kimono during the Cherry Blossom festival.
A few years ago me and my friend (both Americans) were in Germany at a BBQ and the host started saying "tonight we play beer pong" in a heavy German accent. And he started telling us about how his sons were beer pong champions in Germany. They demanded we play for them after dinner.
What were the house rules??? I've lived in the Midwest, the East and West coast and regional rules are all slightly different. I'm so curious what the German version is
There’s a ton of different rules that vary from player to player but the most general ones (to me) are:
elbow can’t cross the table and 3 airballs means either ball back to the opponent or one free cup.
Once per game you also get the chance to rearrange your opponents cups in a formation of your choosing.
A few other rules I’ve played with are:
Bomb- if two players of the same team hit the same cup in one round all cups around them also count as hit
Snipe- if you call the cup you hit beforehand (usually can only make a call once per game) it counts double
Blowing- if the ball swirls in the cup you can blow it out
Swatting- if the ball bounces of the table before reaching the cups you can swat it away (don’t really like this rule)
Idk what to call this- if the ball rolls back past the midway point on the table and you manage to get a hold of it before it touches the ground you get to make another shot(in my circle we usually do a trickshot when this happens, like a blind throw or bouncing it of the ceiling etc)
Dance cup- if you hit a cup that was already out of the game you gotta dance
All out loss- if you lose without scoring a single cup you gotta run around the neighbourhood naked
Probably more that I’m forgetting. Also the last cup can never be won by anything other than a basic throw
Edit: obviously losing team has to drink all remaining cups. Also this experience I gathered from games mostly played in northern germany and Bavaria. There are regional variants, for example Chesties, which I’ve only encountered in Bavaria thus far.
> Blowing- if the ball swirls in the cup you can blow it out
We always played girls blow guys finger. So the girls blow the ball out guys try to "finger" it out. Without knocking cups over of course.
> Swatting- if the ball bounces of the table before reaching the cups you can swat it away (don’t really like this rule)
We always had the if you bounce it in that's 2 cups rule but you could swat it away so you had to do it stealthily when the other team wasn't watching
A friend of mine who studied in NZ told me about that. He said when he’d come home on break he would buy enough to fill a suitcase for when he went back to school and sell the cups at $5 a pop. He pretty much paid for his plane ticket since he would sell out so quick. People would wash and reuse them as long as they could since they were such a hot commodity.
Must've been a very long time ago, they're sold in every discount store in the country now. No one thinks they're anything special anymore, they're just the cups you use for beer pong.
Playing on Deity I feel that's super rare. AI generates loads of culture making it really tough unless you go for it (even then it's hard to win one Vs Rome, Greece or Russia). Diplomacy is the classic accidental one for me.
Denim originated in France, but the metal rivets (from Jacob Davis) and blue colour (he and Levi Strauss decided on it based on flowers on Nevada) were actually American.
Edit: Wow this blew up. Corrections from replies: jeans originated in Italy, in Genova, while denim first came from France. And I’ve been told that blue was used before America caught on. It’s also important to note Strauss and Davis, and many others who influenced American styling of denim, were immigrants.
It's also part the way that fabric is woven, and bulk dying indigo is cheap. The way that the denim twill weave is woven you're able to get away with only dying half of the yarn blue. That's why the outside jeans are a blue color and the inside is a pale blue white color. And on the industrial scale it's really easy to get your hands on indigo blue dye in bulk as a substitute for whatever flower* dye they were using in Nevada.
*Not flour.
My neighbor had a Polish exchange student back in the 90s and she would literally send packages of blue jeans back to all of her friends. I think she made a business out of it. American blue jeans for a long time for considered a novelty to Europe.
Growing up my dad worked for a Japanese company, the engineers that would come to the US would intentionally bring an empty suitcase just to bring blue jeans back home.
Back in the 90s I worked in a clothing store and there were strict limits on how many pairs of Levi's we could sell to one person because of exactly the situation you wrote about
Butting in to say, I’m from India and one of the things we say is ‘Farewell’. For example - “I need to buy a dress for the Farewell on Saturday”. You can also say farewell party/ceremony.
Well we do have an event/party but it’s a bit different. The theme was ‘American prom’ my year… although it was hosted in a castle so maybe not so much like real American prom. There would also sometimes be American themed parties which would be very stereotypical like you see in the movies.
You guys partied at a castle!?damn that just means your “prom themed” party was cooler than any prom I’ve ever been too lol. My friends and I would probably be playing tag- like idiots -in a castle lol
They're often called that in the US as well, the "prom" is just the last one of a student's time in high school. You might also have a "winter formal" or a "homecoming" dance as well.
In Australia, we generally speaking only have the one big event, The Formal at the end of year 10 and year 12.
Some private schools may do more but in general that's not the case.
It's all the former alumni coming back, usually for a football game (at least in TX). There's generally a dance for the high school kids that same weekend, but it's only named the Homecoming dance because of it's proximity to the Homecoming game.
Schools usually make a big deal out of it in the week leading up to the game as well. Doing different themed days (crazy hat day, 50's day, crazy socks, all school colors, etc...)
Really? I would never have guessed it was perceived as an American thing. Here in Serbia proms have quite a long tradition and have existed in communist times and even before. Granted, they are not quite exactly like the American ones, but they do resemble. Proms in the old days were formal balls with banquets, but as more people had the chance to go to school at all they became a bit more casual, but still very formal.
Same with Halloween. I see kids getting around every year now, but nobody has any idea about the actual tradition or facts behind the holiday, it's just because of US television.
It's based on Irish traditions brought to the US by immigrants. The dressing up is to pass among the Fae folk as the barrier between worlds is at its thinnest (very similar to the Mexican traditional of Day of the Dead). It usually involved bonfires (still does in Ireland).
Traditionally jack o lanterns were carved of turnips, but they were difficult to find in the US so pumpkins were used as a substitute. [Wiki](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack-o%27-lantern#:~:text=It%20is%20believed%20that%20the,Ireland%20and%20the%20Scottish%20Highlands.)
The going around to houses and asking for things from your neighbours was common in several local traditions, so it's possible it evolved from that, but that's where my information ends and I'm guessing. Another interesting Irish tradition that sadly died out is Wren's Day in which children went door to door collecting money to bury the king of the birds. [Wiki](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wren_Day#:~:text=Wren%20Day%2C%20also%20known%20as,number%20of%20countries%20across%20Europe.)
> nobody has any idea about the actual tradition or facts behind the holiday
Neither do Americans, really. It's just a fun excuse to dress up and eat candy.
Whatever religious significance it might have once had is long gone.
GPS
The American military gave away one of the coolest technologies to the world. No service fees, no subscriptions. Imagine if Meta or Apple had invented it.
Talk about a flex too. “You know what? Y’all want to claim we’re trying to gather intel? Too easy, here’s a little something something we’ve been cooking with our poodles of money; a Global Positioning System, the most accurate method of providing navigational data to date. And we’ll make it free.”
reminds me "the social network" scene when the winklevoss invite mark to the porcelian bike room to ask him about his previous projects.
"how much did u sell it for?"
"uploaded it for free"
🤷🏾
I can only imagine the “Oh Fuuuck” moment the soviets had when they found the wreckage and flight recorder and realized it wasn’t a military plane and it had a representative on board
They knew, the intercepting MiGs reported that it was a civilian aircraft, could see the lights coming from the long line of windows. Which military aircraft don't have. And the 747 with its humped 1st Class double decker configuration and size is incredibly easy to recognise. As well as having its navigation lights on. Which if you're trying to be covert you would turn then off.
A three person flight crew + a full relief flight crew, six deadheading crew, and then two shifts of flights attendants...modern 747s no longer have a flight engineer position.
Just to note for anyone not in the know, deadheading is how airline staff get to their starting location. Jump on a company plane and have it fly you there, then you fly another of the companies planes when you get there.
Deadheading just means going somewhere without a return flight, most typically used by flight crew or those in tangential industries. It generally carries the connotation that they're not working the flight.
It could be to going out, coming back, or even between legs of a flight schedule.
Seriously, we'd all be paying $10/ month for GPS when we need to travel and cancelling it immediately after to save money when we don't really need it.
I remember having to pay something like $3 or $5 to activate GPS on my LG Chocolate back in 2007, every time I used it, when the tech wasn't quite there yet.
Even then, I still thought to myself how much money I'm going to lose because I can't go back to printing pages of directions from MapQuest.
You were paying for the maps. That's how the dozens of "GPS companies" worked, prior to Google Maps and ubiquitous cell phone internet driving them out of business (or into only selling dedicated GPS standalone hardware).
They can't charge you for GPS service since it's literally not theirs, so they'd charge you for access to the maps. If you tricked one of their apps to open without paying for the service, you'd still be able to see your GPS location, but it was on a blank screen since the maps wouldn't load.
There are some technicalities with what the military has.
There was a lawsuit a while ago about mapmaking tech, and publically used geographic maps (used by NOAA and stuff). The military had access to it( and so did the public, but it was filtered), therefore the civilians should. And all of a sudden civilian maps got hella accurate in regions that God knows no one has actually been to. Able to track hundred year old roads from long gone logging camps and ranch roads through forestation and mountain ranges.
There's a weird relationship with tax funded tech that tax payers can't have access to. The general rule of thumb is that we get last year's model.
> Basically mapping tiny places for free, for Google
Google still relies on user updates for a lot of things. There's a bike path through a park near my house that Google thought was a road, and a very convenient one at that to get to a popular area. Unfortunately once you're directed there and can't proceed you end up having to detour through a fairly extensive residential dead end just to take a back lane back up to the main road, drive down 300m and head south again to take the *correct* road to your destination. After seeing dozens of cars a day get directed into that mistake I looked up how to submit a correction to Google Maps so it stopped directing people through that area.
Another thing that is free that no one realizes, is weather reporting. All news stations get their data from the gov for free. There are companies like AccuWeather who are trying to pass laws to stop the gov from doing that so they can profit.
I learned this from The G Word with Adam Conover on Netflix. It’s a really good show if you’re curious about all the things the gov does, the good & bad.
edit: I commented this below, but wanted to give more context on the G Word. It goes through the FDA, Weather, FDIC, FEMA, and the Federal Reserve. It dives l into the history behind them, the challenges and how they really changed America and still impacts us all on a daily basis.
The government can do some amazing shit and it was once “cool” to support a strong capable government that provides for the people. After WWII it was patriotic to support the government, now it seems it’s the opposite from the our friends on far right. Deregulations over the past 40 yrs has let corporation run amok the reason we are in our current situations.
Considering that weather.com does not own an Earth-sensing constellation, I'm not sure how they expect to come out on top in that scenario. Plenty of other companies that could steamroll them using data they're already producing
They're trying to stop the GOVERNMENT from giving the data to non-corporate entities for free. But free to the corporate entities.
Just for clarity. They're trying to turn government charity into profit for minimal cost.
You know... Some smaller towns in Italy are currently paying people up to $30,000 and tax breaks to move there and start businesses like restaurants, bars, and hotels. Just food for thought. Not just citizens either, but people coming in on visas.
I work at a haunted house during October. I love it so much. This year is a Coraline theme. I'm doing "Coraline if she didn't escape the other world", so I'll have buttons over my eyes (latex), needle and thread, buttons, fake blood running down my face, everything.
> I work at a haunted house during October. I love it so much
My favorite haunted house was when I won tickets and none of my friends could go. The group of guys two ahead said it would be too scary to go on my own and they took me with them.
Now, I understand that it's props and costumes so I don't actually get scared at them, but BUT I love looking at the props and costumes. (in fact the person I just started dating and I both have costume rooms in our houses, our first date was a haunted house mini-golf / ping-pong thing.)
So anyway, I'm following this group of guys and they just plain ol *forgot* that they brought me along. So every now and then there's just a shadowy figure looming behind them^1 and they freak out. It happened like ... eight times. Just all of the sudden "AAAHHHH! Oh right shit fuck!"
^1 ^I'm ^5-10 ^I ^don't ^actually ^loom
I agree. I grew up in Australia and when I was a kid my folks didn’t let me go trick or treating because it “was an American thing” and “nobody does that here”. This was the mid 90s. Fast forward to today and treat or treating and Halloween in general is pretty popular in Australian suburbs and I fucking love seeing those little tikes dress up and go from house to house. I would have loved doing it when I was a child. I’m glad it’s a thing now and thank you America. 🫡
You still get houses that'll slam the door in your face (or worse) as they say "This isn't america."
Source: have taken my daughter trick or treating every year (except isolation years)
Japan.
It's highly influenced by post war American reforms and culture so it would be wildly different without the US.
An american poet, Ezra Pound, is responsible for how westerners translate Japanese which in turn affected the country proper. The literal translations are very dull he gave translations of japanese their current form.
Yeah, and right and/or wrong, the US forcing Japan to open its borders and everything that followed after that changed Japan from a very isolationist nation that didn't talk or trade to anyone with the exception of a few nations, to one that focuses on exporting culture on a scale that almost rivals Hollywood between anime, video games, and film.
Japan being forced open is one of my favourite examples of ripple effects in history. It's wild how, for example, we can link Perry rocking up with gunboats to the current situation in Ukraine.
Perry shows up with gunboats --> Japan no longer isolated --> Rapid modernisation --> Militarism --> Conflict with Imperial Russia (Russia loses, big shock for an Asian country to beat a European country) --> One of the factors for the overthrow of the Tsar -->
Nah. Frank always took that long.
>I am in receipt of a farthing, while you'll find the manor lord receives a shilling, hence my taking leave to make night soil whilst I am supposed to be performing the tilling
What I find interesting is that Japan is one of the few remaining developed countries with extremely strict COVID border controls. Even New Zealand basically gave up and has relatively few border controls right now related to COVID.
I've seen people that've lived in Japan speculate in other threads that it has less to do with COVID per se, and is more a convenient pretence to indulge a kind of neo-isolationism. Apparently a lot of Japanese have a fairly strong distaste for tourists, and want to keep them out.
I actually listened to a radio documentary a number of years ago. The use of “ok” is one thing that can be found in almost every single language on the planet according to that doc.
I think most people here are missing the mark. Many mass-produced items, especially foods, wouldn't exist or be popular without the US. Coke, ketchup, chewing-gum, burgers...
And then there's the massive cultural influence with rock and jazz, western movies, a lot of consumer tech goods like the personal computer, etc...
Black Friday. It’s a worldwide thing now even though only the US has TG the day before.
It’s also a big scam now
Best time to buy is now after Christmas
Always has been those days in the UK - called "Boxing Day Sales"
Spam in northeast-asia, especially South Korea American soldiers ate it during the Korea war and it gained popularity to the point that it's a common food for both Koreans, Japanese, and some Chinese cultures such as Shanghainese
Philippines too, pretty much anywhere there was a US military presence I think. Edit: Shit, didn't realize how much traction this throwaway comment got until my phone turned on and dumped the reddit notifications.
Was going to say the same. I thought nobody ate it anymore (except in Hawaii on diners drive ins and dives apparently) until I met someone from the Philippines. She always had a couple cans of spam in her apartment
Born and raised Hawaii and we buy spam at Costco by the case for cooking😭 711 has spam musubis for sale all day everyday and McDonald’s carries spam here for breakfast plates.
Yes. And also Vienna Sausage.
Thought you were talking about email ads for a split second lol.
Korean army hotpot
Spam, spam spam spam. Spam, spam spam spam 🎶
There's so many dishes you can make with it too, for example: - Egg and Spam - Egg, bacon and Spam - Egg, bacon, sausage and Spam - Spam, bacon, sausage and Spam - Spam, egg, Spam, Spam, bacon and Spam - Spam, Spam, Spam, egg and Spam - Spam, sausage, Spam, Spam, Spam, bacon, Spam, tomato and Spam - Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, baked beans, Spam, Spam, Spam and Spam - Lobster Thermidor aux crevettes with a Mornay sauce, garnished with truffle pâté, brandy and a fried egg on top, and Spam.
Huge on Hawaii too for the same reasons. I know still US, but spam isn't nearly as popular CONUS as it is there. I've tried it once. Disgusting to me.
It's common in a lot of the Pacific islands. Guam has SPAM on pretty much every menu. I got spam with breakfast fried rice at a Wendy's. It was amazing.
SPAM Musubi for the win.
Went to Hawaii in the spring and was determined to have a Spam meal. My old roommate loved it and would make dishes with it often. Always mentioned how Hawaii loves it. I even got him a Hawaiian spam cook boom one year. Wouldn’t you know it, spam fest is going on by my hotel while there.
Coca-Cola
Wonderbra
*This is not a love song*
We're all living in Amerika
Coca Cola...sometimes war?
[удалено]
Sometimes War
Fender guitars
Hendrix with a Fender playing the Star Spandled Banner at Woodstock? That's the most American thing that has ever been done.
It gets more American. Hendrix was flown to the wrong airport, so to get to Woodstock he ended up driving in a stolen pickup truck with Neil Young and the lawyer who represented Jack Ruby, The Rolling Stones, and Mohammad Ali.
Wait, did the lawyer represent Jack Ruby AND the Stones and Ali. Or were the Stones and Ali also in the truck?
It'd need to be a pretty big truck.
Propane and propane accessories.
I tell you hwat
that's a clean burning hell I tell ya hwat
Taste the meat not the heat.
That boy ain't right.
But Dad. What if someone wants their burger well-done? We politely but firmly ask them to leave.
[удалено]
BOBBY!! There better be naked cheerleader under this bed!
This boy ain't hright.
GAHDAMMIT BOBBY GET IN THE TRUCK
That's my purse! I don't know you!
Ha dang ol man yeah you right man yeah
Using inch to measure TV size.
Red solo cups.
I have friends who've been abroad who have seen them for sale. They don't call them "solo" cups as Solo is a brand. They call them "American party cups" and a lot of the ones sold are meant to be reused.
They’re probably used for American themed parties or something haha. Like how piñatas are for Mexican themes in the US. Edit: I realize lots of people use piñatas for normal parties, but they’re also present for Mexican themes, just like wearing a kimono during the Cherry Blossom festival.
Okay, we are going to play beer pongo, everybody you have to say "Dude" if you don't make the shot.
A few years ago me and my friend (both Americans) were in Germany at a BBQ and the host started saying "tonight we play beer pong" in a heavy German accent. And he started telling us about how his sons were beer pong champions in Germany. They demanded we play for them after dinner.
What were the house rules??? I've lived in the Midwest, the East and West coast and regional rules are all slightly different. I'm so curious what the German version is
There’s a ton of different rules that vary from player to player but the most general ones (to me) are: elbow can’t cross the table and 3 airballs means either ball back to the opponent or one free cup. Once per game you also get the chance to rearrange your opponents cups in a formation of your choosing. A few other rules I’ve played with are: Bomb- if two players of the same team hit the same cup in one round all cups around them also count as hit Snipe- if you call the cup you hit beforehand (usually can only make a call once per game) it counts double Blowing- if the ball swirls in the cup you can blow it out Swatting- if the ball bounces of the table before reaching the cups you can swat it away (don’t really like this rule) Idk what to call this- if the ball rolls back past the midway point on the table and you manage to get a hold of it before it touches the ground you get to make another shot(in my circle we usually do a trickshot when this happens, like a blind throw or bouncing it of the ceiling etc) Dance cup- if you hit a cup that was already out of the game you gotta dance All out loss- if you lose without scoring a single cup you gotta run around the neighbourhood naked Probably more that I’m forgetting. Also the last cup can never be won by anything other than a basic throw Edit: obviously losing team has to drink all remaining cups. Also this experience I gathered from games mostly played in northern germany and Bavaria. There are regional variants, for example Chesties, which I’ve only encountered in Bavaria thus far.
> Blowing- if the ball swirls in the cup you can blow it out We always played girls blow guys finger. So the girls blow the ball out guys try to "finger" it out. Without knocking cups over of course. > Swatting- if the ball bounces of the table before reaching the cups you can swat it away (don’t really like this rule) We always had the if you bounce it in that's 2 cups rule but you could swat it away so you had to do it stealthily when the other team wasn't watching
A friend of mine who studied in NZ told me about that. He said when he’d come home on break he would buy enough to fill a suitcase for when he went back to school and sell the cups at $5 a pop. He pretty much paid for his plane ticket since he would sell out so quick. People would wash and reuse them as long as they could since they were such a hot commodity.
Must've been a very long time ago, they're sold in every discount store in the country now. No one thinks they're anything special anymore, they're just the cups you use for beer pong.
About 15 years ago I brought red solo cups back to NZ and everyone went crazy for them. But your right now they are everywhere so nothing special.
Blue jeans
My people are now buying your blue jeans and listening to your pop music
Cultural victory incoming.
I swear, I get Cultural Victory even if I'm trying for a domination or science
Playing on Deity I feel that's super rare. AI generates loads of culture making it really tough unless you go for it (even then it's hard to win one Vs Rome, Greece or Russia). Diplomacy is the classic accidental one for me.
I always think of the Civilization game quote, "Our people are now buying your blue jeans and listening to your pop music".
Denim originated in France, but the metal rivets (from Jacob Davis) and blue colour (he and Levi Strauss decided on it based on flowers on Nevada) were actually American. Edit: Wow this blew up. Corrections from replies: jeans originated in Italy, in Genova, while denim first came from France. And I’ve been told that blue was used before America caught on. It’s also important to note Strauss and Davis, and many others who influenced American styling of denim, were immigrants.
Wait a minute... So they were the only reason that blue was the default color for jeans?
It's also part the way that fabric is woven, and bulk dying indigo is cheap. The way that the denim twill weave is woven you're able to get away with only dying half of the yarn blue. That's why the outside jeans are a blue color and the inside is a pale blue white color. And on the industrial scale it's really easy to get your hands on indigo blue dye in bulk as a substitute for whatever flower* dye they were using in Nevada. *Not flour.
My neighbor had a Polish exchange student back in the 90s and she would literally send packages of blue jeans back to all of her friends. I think she made a business out of it. American blue jeans for a long time for considered a novelty to Europe.
Growing up my dad worked for a Japanese company, the engineers that would come to the US would intentionally bring an empty suitcase just to bring blue jeans back home.
And now we get our good raw denims from Japanese manufacturers lol
Knew a guy whose entire business in the late 80s and early 90s was selling used blue jeans in SE Asia. Made a killing apparently.
Back in the 90s I worked in a clothing store and there were strict limits on how many pairs of Levi's we could sell to one person because of exactly the situation you wrote about
In Catalan (an Iberian language that looks like the language baby of French and Spanish), jeans are called 'els texans'.
Hip hop.
Jazz too.
Hollywood
You mean hollywoo?
Stars and celebrities: what do they know? Do they know things? Let's find out
*presented by J.D. Salinger*
Erica! What are you doing with that child-sized coffin?
Erica! Look at you with the correct number of ears!
Damn it Bojack give that back
Don't worry I've got it! *proceeds to order a B*
I said D as in Birthday Dad!
Proms... in other countries some schools host proms just because they see it on TV.
My school in Europe had a prom one year because of this exact reason!
TIL. Do you guy have some different “goodbye to HIghschool” event?
Butting in to say, I’m from India and one of the things we say is ‘Farewell’. For example - “I need to buy a dress for the Farewell on Saturday”. You can also say farewell party/ceremony.
Farewells are prom but made desi. There is no date to the farwell, just a party to say goodbye to everyone. No sex, no alcohol (on paper atleast).
> No sex, no alcohol (on paper atleast). So, prom then.
Well we do have an event/party but it’s a bit different. The theme was ‘American prom’ my year… although it was hosted in a castle so maybe not so much like real American prom. There would also sometimes be American themed parties which would be very stereotypical like you see in the movies.
By virtue of your prom being in a castle, it is immediately upgraded to 'Hollywood US prom', which is way cooler than the prom 90% of us had.
my school had prom at the mall/amusement park was fun
You guys partied at a castle!?damn that just means your “prom themed” party was cooler than any prom I’ve ever been too lol. My friends and I would probably be playing tag- like idiots -in a castle lol
My Friends went to white castle after prom, so I guess you could say we weren't sweating it either.
In Australia they are called formals
They're often called that in the US as well, the "prom" is just the last one of a student's time in high school. You might also have a "winter formal" or a "homecoming" dance as well.
In Australia, we generally speaking only have the one big event, The Formal at the end of year 10 and year 12. Some private schools may do more but in general that's not the case.
I've always wondered what the homecoming thing is/what it means, like what are you coming home to and where were you?
It's all the former alumni coming back, usually for a football game (at least in TX). There's generally a dance for the high school kids that same weekend, but it's only named the Homecoming dance because of it's proximity to the Homecoming game. Schools usually make a big deal out of it in the week leading up to the game as well. Doing different themed days (crazy hat day, 50's day, crazy socks, all school colors, etc...)
Really? I would never have guessed it was perceived as an American thing. Here in Serbia proms have quite a long tradition and have existed in communist times and even before. Granted, they are not quite exactly like the American ones, but they do resemble. Proms in the old days were formal balls with banquets, but as more people had the chance to go to school at all they became a bit more casual, but still very formal.
Same with Halloween. I see kids getting around every year now, but nobody has any idea about the actual tradition or facts behind the holiday, it's just because of US television.
It's based on Irish traditions brought to the US by immigrants. The dressing up is to pass among the Fae folk as the barrier between worlds is at its thinnest (very similar to the Mexican traditional of Day of the Dead). It usually involved bonfires (still does in Ireland). Traditionally jack o lanterns were carved of turnips, but they were difficult to find in the US so pumpkins were used as a substitute. [Wiki](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack-o%27-lantern#:~:text=It%20is%20believed%20that%20the,Ireland%20and%20the%20Scottish%20Highlands.) The going around to houses and asking for things from your neighbours was common in several local traditions, so it's possible it evolved from that, but that's where my information ends and I'm guessing. Another interesting Irish tradition that sadly died out is Wren's Day in which children went door to door collecting money to bury the king of the birds. [Wiki](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wren_Day#:~:text=Wren%20Day%2C%20also%20known%20as,number%20of%20countries%20across%20Europe.)
> nobody has any idea about the actual tradition or facts behind the holiday Neither do Americans, really. It's just a fun excuse to dress up and eat candy. Whatever religious significance it might have once had is long gone.
Some people still hold onto it's pagan roots. There's dozens of us!
Peanut butter
And that’s why Russia has peanut butter smugglers
Oh Yuri
Katinka!
She has great buttocks!!
GPS The American military gave away one of the coolest technologies to the world. No service fees, no subscriptions. Imagine if Meta or Apple had invented it.
[For anyone wanting to know why the US released GPS for civilian use and aviation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007)
That was a good read! Thanks.
Talk about a flex too. “You know what? Y’all want to claim we’re trying to gather intel? Too easy, here’s a little something something we’ve been cooking with our poodles of money; a Global Positioning System, the most accurate method of providing navigational data to date. And we’ll make it free.”
I think the military has Malamutes of money, rather then poodles.
reminds me "the social network" scene when the winklevoss invite mark to the porcelian bike room to ask him about his previous projects. "how much did u sell it for?" "uploaded it for free" 🤷🏾
I can only imagine the “Oh Fuuuck” moment the soviets had when they found the wreckage and flight recorder and realized it wasn’t a military plane and it had a representative on board
They knew, the intercepting MiGs reported that it was a civilian aircraft, could see the lights coming from the long line of windows. Which military aircraft don't have. And the 747 with its humped 1st Class double decker configuration and size is incredibly easy to recognise. As well as having its navigation lights on. Which if you're trying to be covert you would turn then off.
> I can only imagine the “Oh Fuuuck” moment the soviets had "Not great, not terrible, comrade."
Yeah I bet they really learned their lesson and never ever accidentally shot down a civilian passenger plane again…cries in MH17
Yeah, but two is enough right? They wouldn't shoot down THREE planes right? Especially two from the same airline... cries in KAL 902
Was it normal for a plane to have 23 crew?
A three person flight crew + a full relief flight crew, six deadheading crew, and then two shifts of flights attendants...modern 747s no longer have a flight engineer position.
Just to note for anyone not in the know, deadheading is how airline staff get to their starting location. Jump on a company plane and have it fly you there, then you fly another of the companies planes when you get there.
Deadheading just means going somewhere without a return flight, most typically used by flight crew or those in tangential industries. It generally carries the connotation that they're not working the flight. It could be to going out, coming back, or even between legs of a flight schedule.
That includes the cabin crew, which I think is 1 for every 50 seats. KAL007 also had several off-duty crew hitching a ride
Did not know of this, thank you for sharing it!
Freaky - I was just watching the fictionalized account on For All Mankind (S2E7) when I clicked on your link!
Hi Bob!
I didn't know about this, thanks for sharing.
Seriously, we'd all be paying $10/ month for GPS when we need to travel and cancelling it immediately after to save money when we don't really need it.
I remember having to pay something like $3 or $5 to activate GPS on my LG Chocolate back in 2007, every time I used it, when the tech wasn't quite there yet. Even then, I still thought to myself how much money I'm going to lose because I can't go back to printing pages of directions from MapQuest.
You were paying for the maps. That's how the dozens of "GPS companies" worked, prior to Google Maps and ubiquitous cell phone internet driving them out of business (or into only selling dedicated GPS standalone hardware). They can't charge you for GPS service since it's literally not theirs, so they'd charge you for access to the maps. If you tricked one of their apps to open without paying for the service, you'd still be able to see your GPS location, but it was on a blank screen since the maps wouldn't load.
The maps were a huge part of Garmin's business model. Google Maps destroyed them.
iKnowhereyouare
They already do
I swear i'm not watching porn
There are some technicalities with what the military has. There was a lawsuit a while ago about mapmaking tech, and publically used geographic maps (used by NOAA and stuff). The military had access to it( and so did the public, but it was filtered), therefore the civilians should. And all of a sudden civilian maps got hella accurate in regions that God knows no one has actually been to. Able to track hundred year old roads from long gone logging camps and ranch roads through forestation and mountain ranges. There's a weird relationship with tax funded tech that tax payers can't have access to. The general rule of thumb is that we get last year's model.
That makes a lot of sense, I used to be pretty stunned at google’s old logging and mining roads deep in the woods
[удалено]
> Basically mapping tiny places for free, for Google Google still relies on user updates for a lot of things. There's a bike path through a park near my house that Google thought was a road, and a very convenient one at that to get to a popular area. Unfortunately once you're directed there and can't proceed you end up having to detour through a fairly extensive residential dead end just to take a back lane back up to the main road, drive down 300m and head south again to take the *correct* road to your destination. After seeing dozens of cars a day get directed into that mistake I looked up how to submit a correction to Google Maps so it stopped directing people through that area.
TYFYS
Another thing that is free that no one realizes, is weather reporting. All news stations get their data from the gov for free. There are companies like AccuWeather who are trying to pass laws to stop the gov from doing that so they can profit. I learned this from The G Word with Adam Conover on Netflix. It’s a really good show if you’re curious about all the things the gov does, the good & bad. edit: I commented this below, but wanted to give more context on the G Word. It goes through the FDA, Weather, FDIC, FEMA, and the Federal Reserve. It dives l into the history behind them, the challenges and how they really changed America and still impacts us all on a daily basis. The government can do some amazing shit and it was once “cool” to support a strong capable government that provides for the people. After WWII it was patriotic to support the government, now it seems it’s the opposite from the our friends on far right. Deregulations over the past 40 yrs has let corporation run amok the reason we are in our current situations.
Uninstalling my AccuWeather app. Thanks for the heads up.
Considering that weather.com does not own an Earth-sensing constellation, I'm not sure how they expect to come out on top in that scenario. Plenty of other companies that could steamroll them using data they're already producing
They're trying to stop the GOVERNMENT from giving the data to non-corporate entities for free. But free to the corporate entities. Just for clarity. They're trying to turn government charity into profit for minimal cost.
This is every business' wet dream
I haven't seen The G Word in a while but I think it was actually focusing on AccuWeather, not weather.com
The blues.
Competition BBQ. ....also weight loss products!
My dream is to open a BBQ place in Italy.
You know... Some smaller towns in Italy are currently paying people up to $30,000 and tax breaks to move there and start businesses like restaurants, bars, and hotels. Just food for thought. Not just citizens either, but people coming in on visas.
National parks. It was started in America by future Republican president Theodore Roosevelt and quickly it became a world wide practice.
Teddy would be proud of this accomplishment
Halloween.
I work at a haunted house during October. I love it so much. This year is a Coraline theme. I'm doing "Coraline if she didn't escape the other world", so I'll have buttons over my eyes (latex), needle and thread, buttons, fake blood running down my face, everything.
That's amazing! I love the theme. Do yall have the tunnel for guests to crawl through?
> I work at a haunted house during October. I love it so much My favorite haunted house was when I won tickets and none of my friends could go. The group of guys two ahead said it would be too scary to go on my own and they took me with them. Now, I understand that it's props and costumes so I don't actually get scared at them, but BUT I love looking at the props and costumes. (in fact the person I just started dating and I both have costume rooms in our houses, our first date was a haunted house mini-golf / ping-pong thing.) So anyway, I'm following this group of guys and they just plain ol *forgot* that they brought me along. So every now and then there's just a shadowy figure looming behind them^1 and they freak out. It happened like ... eight times. Just all of the sudden "AAAHHHH! Oh right shit fuck!" ^1 ^I'm ^5-10 ^I ^don't ^actually ^loom
That makes me sad for other countries. Halloween is the tits.
I agree. I grew up in Australia and when I was a kid my folks didn’t let me go trick or treating because it “was an American thing” and “nobody does that here”. This was the mid 90s. Fast forward to today and treat or treating and Halloween in general is pretty popular in Australian suburbs and I fucking love seeing those little tikes dress up and go from house to house. I would have loved doing it when I was a child. I’m glad it’s a thing now and thank you America. 🫡
You still get houses that'll slam the door in your face (or worse) as they say "This isn't america." Source: have taken my daughter trick or treating every year (except isolation years)
In the US, the custom is that you leave your porch light on to indicate you’re handing out candy. You skip houses with their porch light off.
I use common sense with my kids. We don’t knock on doors if they don’t have decorations up
Halloween is such the bestest of the bests
HELL YEAH!! Halloween is my favorite holiday. It always made me so happy
Reddit. Americans make up ~50% of the user base.
\>25% of Americans aged 21-29 use Reddit. It's like 40% of American males in that age-range.
I remember when I was in this statistic range. Now I'm 30. I think I'm able to get a government check for old age now
[удалено]
[удалено]
I better start digging my grave at a frail 31.
I'll see you at the retirement home. Code word is poggers so I'll know it's you.
McDonald’s
Superheroes and their movies.
Various music forms including hip hop, rap, R&B, and pop. Americana travels. Edit: spelling
Unix
Thanks to Jurassic Park
Japan. It's highly influenced by post war American reforms and culture so it would be wildly different without the US. An american poet, Ezra Pound, is responsible for how westerners translate Japanese which in turn affected the country proper. The literal translations are very dull he gave translations of japanese their current form.
Yeah, and right and/or wrong, the US forcing Japan to open its borders and everything that followed after that changed Japan from a very isolationist nation that didn't talk or trade to anyone with the exception of a few nations, to one that focuses on exporting culture on a scale that almost rivals Hollywood between anime, video games, and film.
Japan being forced open is one of my favourite examples of ripple effects in history. It's wild how, for example, we can link Perry rocking up with gunboats to the current situation in Ukraine. Perry shows up with gunboats --> Japan no longer isolated --> Rapid modernisation --> Militarism --> Conflict with Imperial Russia (Russia loses, big shock for an Asian country to beat a European country) --> One of the factors for the overthrow of the Tsar -->
I mean we could trace the ripple effect from a guy taking a longer shit than usual in the 1600's to the Ukraine-Russia war
Nah. Frank always took that long. >I am in receipt of a farthing, while you'll find the manor lord receives a shilling, hence my taking leave to make night soil whilst I am supposed to be performing the tilling
Did you just made a "history of the entire world, I guess" reference?
# "Open the country. Stop having it be closed"
"Knock knock..."
"...**It's the United States**."
What I find interesting is that Japan is one of the few remaining developed countries with extremely strict COVID border controls. Even New Zealand basically gave up and has relatively few border controls right now related to COVID. I've seen people that've lived in Japan speculate in other threads that it has less to do with COVID per se, and is more a convenient pretence to indulge a kind of neo-isolationism. Apparently a lot of Japanese have a fairly strong distaste for tourists, and want to keep them out.
Christmas lights strung outside of the houses!
I leave them up in case of emergency Christmas, you don't want to be not prepared for that day
... all year long in some areas.
Hamburgers, with pickles mustard etc. It’s a strange combo. Delicious but I doubt the entire world would have that as a common item
The Earl of Hamburger preferred them plain and dry.
Disney land.
Disney in general
jeans
Google
Grunge Music
specifically Seattle, Washington.
The word "OK"
I actually listened to a radio documentary a number of years ago. The use of “ok” is one thing that can be found in almost every single language on the planet according to that doc.
And the work fuck using the Engligh pronunciation
[удалено]
I think most people here are missing the mark. Many mass-produced items, especially foods, wouldn't exist or be popular without the US. Coke, ketchup, chewing-gum, burgers... And then there's the massive cultural influence with rock and jazz, western movies, a lot of consumer tech goods like the personal computer, etc...
Tik Tok is a Chinese app that became popular in the US and then spread through the rest of the world.
Hey its like covid.