I had these during kindergarten (in the 90s) in the US, but they replaced them with cartons by the time I got to first grade.

Which is good because none of us 5 year Olds could operate them

It has it’s own challenges, sure… but english isn’t even remotely close to being the hardest language to learn

The spelling is messed up, it has (like virtually every language) a bunch of exceptions to rules, but the grammar has been hugely simplified over the past 1000 years.

Not to mention that the biggest advantage to learning languages is familiarity and the fact that English is, well, everywhere makes it easier.

Sure Esperanto is easier, but for most of the world something like Japanese would be muuuuuch harder

Depends on the country though as well. Its probably pretty easy to figure out for big ones like the USA, but in smaller countries its often a mess…

When they say something like “60 days battery life” what they mean is using the device for half an hour everyday for 60 days.

OP is arguing that it would make more sense to just say the continuous use battery life, which in the above example would be 30 hours (60 × 0.5)

This just seems like more work for him!

You’ve basically just described golf’s superior cousin: disc golf

It depends on the person, but some countries like Austria have points-based systems that will work for some people. It’s how I’m getting a visa currently and I just needed a job offer.

Or you can go hard-mode and take the Svalbard route!

Interesting mix of kilometers and inches…

Sealand actually has actually been involved in some crazy shit during its history.

Particularly if you want to look at stuff per capita

Escape Simulator definitely fits the bill.

It’s great, but all about the discovery.

Or they could have been kitchen-staff. They are one of the biggest victims of tipping culture.

Essentially chefs are generally paid much, much less than wait-staff and it is very difficult to correct this balance. The reason is that in a normal business you would raise prices to afford to pay higher salaries, but since tips are percentage based this also raises the wages of wait-staff. This becomes a bigger and bigger issue the higher the tipping percentage goes. Restaurant margins tend to be razor thin as well, so raising prices would be the only way to raise kitchen-staff wages.

It’s one reason why many restaurants are struggling to find kitchen-staff, because even highly trained chefs can make 2-3 times as much working front-of-house. There are quite a few restaurants which are trying to fix this by banning tips, but it’s difficult due to resistance from customers and wait-staff.

Are you English speaking by any chance? In Germany I often notice that the waiters act totally differently whenever my American parents are visiting than when I’m just out with friends and speaking German.

With Germans they just show up with the card reader and we pay one by one; often people will ask to round up their bill to the nearest Euro but it’s not expected.

With my parents (or other Americans that have visited me) they often act like American waiters and bring the bill and then kind of hover next to us and wait for us to initiate what we want to do next. I think they’ve learned that most Americans will assume ‘this is the part where we work out how much tip to give’ and the waiters often end up with a (for German standards) gigantic tip. At least this always works with my parents since ‘we feel bad not tipping!’

Don’t forget that green areas such as this massively cool cities as well (compared to asphalt).

Something which is becoming increasingly important due to climate change.

Why though? If we let them leave, there wouldn’t be any reason to not recognize them.

Even countries that weren’t ‘allowed’ to leave usually get recognized eventually. Kosovo is a decent example, since Serbia is adamant that they are still part of Serbia, but they declared independence around 15 years ago and roughly half of the UN recognizes them as independent.

Seriously, it’s wild to me that people are against this.

The right to self-determination is important, regardless of what an old document (the US constitution in this case) says. Tons of countries (including the US!) became independent despite ‘not being allowed to’.

Also – think of what cutting off Texas would do for the American political balance… we might actually get to pass progressive legislation for once!

“we fought a war about this 160 years ago, so you can’t have self-determination”

I agree with you about their politics within the US, but hell yeah they should be able to leave if there is popular support for it.

Why not? Self-determination is important. Countries split up all the time, the US isn’t special.

If they genuinely want to leave, I’m all for letting them.

Exact same thing happens to me. It’s not necessarily nightmares, but really intense dreams. So intense that I wake up feeling tired.

Seems that he sticks around for 7-8 years everywhere he goes.

If that holds up, we can expect 1 (maybe even 2) more big jobs from him!

It’s basically standard (at least everywhere I’ve lived) in Europe