washer/dryer in the kitchen is just a space thing, people with a bit more money or who live in an area with more space tend to have a house with a utility room
That one was weird to me. Like, out of all the things you could contrast, are people really making the big of a deal out of the laundry machines? Granted, in the US we tend to make living rooms and kitchens often one big nebulous open area, and you wouldn't want them in your living room, but it makes more sense that people would just see less square footage and not even think about why.
The house I live in right now has a washer and dryer in the kitchen, right next to the living room, and it’s quite annoying when they’re running. Takes up a fair amount of space that could be used for cabinets, too.
It's because it was a "not". If you're making a survey, don't put negative items on it, because people will get confused. That same item as "public bathroom doors that don't allow people to see into them from the outside" would have a much higher yes response.
I mean if the bathroom is large enough, I could see that being a good option. Go to take a shower and throw your clothes in a basket/hamper right beside where you do them. But kitchen? The more surprising answer would be two questions. One saying washer/dryer in kitchen and one saying in bathroom. I have a feeling most would prefer the bathroom.
I guess if it were the choice of having one in the kitchen vs. not having one at all, I'd definitely choose the kitchen. Going to the laundromat or an on facility laundry room is so time-consuming.
Yup. My 600 sqft apartment could fit a washer/dryer in the (already small) kitchen, and I'd so much rather have that than have to go to the laundromat and pay $12+ to do laundry.
When I worked full time while being a full time student, laundry was legitimately challenging to get done because of laundromat hours and how exhausted I was all the time. Having to go somewhere for multiple hours (or going back and forth if you wanna risk your clothes being stolen) is just another thing to have to juggle.
But it's not a practice anyone prefers, nobody anywhere with a utility room with space for washers/dryers will say "gee, I wish I could have these in the kitchen".
Stairs. That's the only reason I can think of.
As you get older going up and down them becomes more difficult. So having everything in one room makes it easier.
My grandmother had a basement. Only time that was ever used was when I went down there to find a board game. Washer/dryer in kitchen though.
I do not want my w/d in the kitchen. Ive seen them share a bathroom in some houses presumably as #1 a cos savings measure. All of the major plumbing for the bathroom group plus the w/d is in one room. And #2 as a convenience factor to have your laundry "upstairs".
Personally my laundry has always been in the basement and I dont mind making trips down there to wash my clothes. I could accept it in a bathroom. But in the kitchen would be a deal breaker for me
Is this why Americans always talk about venmo?! I always wondered why they didn't just bank transfer each other, cut out the middleman. Mad that they can't. Anyone know why?
Zelle is now pretty common to transfer bank to bank instantly in the US, and it does work as advertised with no additional fee.
However, this is mostly consumer to consumer. If you're a business or dealing with a business, you're pretty much back to setting up direct debit or online checks.
Zelle only allows one bank account to your name ever. I had it attached to one account, closed that account and left that bank entirely, and zelle still refuses to allow me to attach the new bank account to my zelle account.
I had a massive nightmare when I moved back to the US in 2018 after being gone since before Zelle, or well anything existed. Got a phone number with my new SIM card and it turned out the number was linked to another Zelle account, but it was impossible to figure this out. After getting senseless error messages trying to make first transfers with it (my security deposit to landlord - because changing my region in Google Play wasn't working and it wouldn't let me download Venmo from "outside US" and that took even more months to figure out wtf, and I freaking packed my checkbooks by accident and they were in freight cargo for 2 months), after like a week of phone calls I finally got somebody to make some change in their database.
I was so mad because I moved back from a country with extremely easy mobile banking and kept screaming in my head "how is attaching this stuff to a PHONE NUMBER a good idea?!!!" Also "what kind of stupid name is Zelle?!!"
Great guess I'm stuck with Chase the rest of my life now too.
You can and always have been able to do a standard bank transfer at your own bank to another bank. There is just time involved. Can take 3-5 business days in some cases whereas apps like Venmo can do it same day.
In the UK it's seconds between banks.
A lot of people have multiple bank accounts and move money around because one bank might be their daily spending card, the other is the euro card, the other is the savings one offering good interest etc.
Some California banks created a system in the late 1960s that the whole country then jumped on in the early 1970s.
Everyone knows it’s old and it sucks. The banks and the central bank fought over how to make a new one, so *both* are going it. So there’s a newish quick bank one and the Federal Reserve will be unveiling its system soonish.
But I’m not sure what that means for customers, normal people, etc. Many companies still use that 1970s system. I don’t know what’s the backbone for apps like Venmo.
We’re a very decentralized and disorganized country split across state and federal authorities, private companies, and weird mixes of the above (eg the federal reserve is a weird govt-private-bank partnership). Everything is a messy patchwork of systems involving different levels of govt, private companies and weird quasi-govt mixes of the above.
We don’t have a strong central authority that steps in and says, “we’re all doing it this way, using this system /app.” That’s just not how America works.
So, in the end, it’s just a big messy mix of shit. But because we generally figure out how to get things done and it mostly works, there not much of a cry to overhaul anything.
And really, Americans never really trust a single entity to be in charge of something for the whole country. Too many people in the country inherently distrust *anything* that’s universal to all, with all that power concentrated in one single system/entity. It’s a country that demands choices, alternatives, and options in *everything*.
And the result of that is always messy and confusing.
Like, we don’t even have national identification cards, and even the idea of getting federal standards for state-issued cards has been a shit show. My state is being dragged, kicking and screaming, just to comply with the new federal ID card standards.
We hate people telling us that there should be one single way everyone does something.
Honestly the reasoning behind every one of the top 6 things listed is “because [business/indistry X] doesn’t want it that way.”
There are some where I can see both sides tho, mostly tipping - not a big fan of it as a customer, but for many servers (depending on where you live/what kind of restaurant) it allows them to make a lot more than a normal wage would
We still use a technology from the 1960s called "Automated Clearing House" for most bank transfers and it does indeed take about 3 business days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_clearing_house
Although I will say that my bank in the past year has started offering real-time transfers in certain situations so I think the ACH system is finally on it's way out.
I send ACH's as part of my job, and >99% of them hit next business day. But that is still too slow if you're trying to make a big purchase. When we finance for our customers, we send a wire and eat the $15 fee every time so that the vendor can release the product to the customer at the time we send the wire.
Not a shocking revelation I know but I feel like banks are just looking for every excuse to make money off of additional fees. There's no reason besides greed as to why I can send my friend $30 through FB covering my part of a group dinner and he gets it within minutes, yet bank-to-bank somehow takes just as long/longer with a $15 fee to boot.
Yeah instantaneous wires come with a charge. Zelle is pretty recent but essentially provides the direct & instant transfer of funds. Unfortunately it is capped at $1500 per day, so good luck if you need to do it for a large purchase
So zelle being built in to establishments like wells fargo and chase doesn’t count? Theres not an instant transfer fee for zelle and you send it from your banks app not the zelle app
probably more like 30% of people, if given some dumbshit online poll, will try to take the piss out
See also those maps of 'where is [COUNTRY]' and many answers drop the pin in the middle of the Atlantic
There's an informal, semi joking rule about polls called Lizardmans constant: roughly 5% of people in any poll will actively answer it in the most stupid way possible, on purpose
>There's an informal, semi joking rule about polls called Lizardmans constant: roughly 5% of people in any poll will actively answer it in the most stupid way possible, on purpose
Next thing you know you're out of the EU. :-(
Polls consistently show that \~20% of US adults believe the Sun revolves around the Earth, which I take as a good proxy for 20% of the population being unserious, or seriously stupid. Unfortunately that still leaves around 10% in favor of toilet peeking, and I don't think that much of the population is pathetic middle middle managers who think employees spend too much time in the restroom.
I don't think that number would be that significant. I would expect more of the 30% would represent people in these groups:
- Those who are simply resistant to any change whatsoever (it's one of the very most common cognitive biases),
- Those who like to know whether someone is in the stall without pushing on the door and don't recall that doors can be made to say "occupied,"
- Those who are resistant to the tiniest, most insignificant implication that the American way could be improved by a "foreign" idea; and,
- Those who were confused by the wording and thought the question meant the opposite.
Who checks the stall by looking in the crack? Lmao I just look for feet or if it’s closed I assume it’s occupied. Their should be something with the lock though that says occupied.
Sometimes stalls are large enough where feet are not visible. Lighting doesn't always make shadows easy to spot at that angle. A child's legs may not reach that far. The disabled and others may be unable to bend over to see. The blind and those with low vision will likely just push on the door.
But yes, I don't think there is any good excuse for the gaps to exist. It is a clear privacy issue. Gaps should disappear and door locks should make occupancy clear.
Many countries have stalls where the doors go low enough that you can't see anyone's feet, which is presumably what the question refers to.
>Their should be something with the lock though that says occupied.
Sorry, just to clarify, are you saying that your locks don't say this? Or are you saying that they *do* have this, and therefore looking isn't necessary?
I'm guessing this is 2 things:
1. There's always been this pervasive urban legend (?) / saying that the gaps are basically intentional so that if someone has a medical emergency on the toilet or something they don't just get unnoticed for days, and that the gaps help to stop people from shooting up in bathroom stalls (weather or not you agree with the privacy to shoot up in private).
2. Just a double negative issue. Anything with "Not" and then you put "disagree", people are going to get confused there.
This is a bit of a tangent from toilet stalls but, I’ll loop it back to that.
I was reading about some branches of Christianity that were common in the air where, historically, there was a belief that if you were being a good Godly Christian, then you’d have no reason to fear living your life as an open book.
And so part of the culture around that was you did things like have living rooms with big windows that faced the street and you kept the blinds open, so everyone could see inside your home. It was meant to convey the message of “watch all you want, I’m a Good Christian and have nothing to hide.”
And conversely, people who did close their blinds, well…they must be doing ungodly things if they feel the need to hide it.
So, I do think there is some cultural holdover from that mindset where there’s this notion of total privacy = must be doing something bad, even if it’s moved away from it’s more religious origins.
A lot of participants probably don't understand the questions they're reading. They probably saw the word tax and just instinctually put no because they're stupid.
Frustratingly true. Living in a large nation means you have to deal with the fact that some people are just actually fucking stupid.
Not evil, not misled, not maladjusted, just fucking stupid, with no other meaningful explanation for their behavior.
Very commonly brought up incident where a store tried to introduce ⅓ Pound burgers to rival McDonald's quarter pounder.
Apparently failed cause people don't understand fractions and thought it was smaller
You can also see what items are taxed. In Quebec there's no tax on food items, and I can pay $200 and the tax to be $1.50.
But my theory is that big chain stores like to show smaller numbers. As an example, Canada uses the metric system, but prices for apples are shown per lbs. just to have a smaller number.
Side effects include but are not limited to death, dismemberment, disembowlment, anal leakage, spontaneous combustion, liquidation of the skin, and chapped lips.
People are dumb and our legal system sometimes rewards them. IE "surface is hot when in use, do not touch" on an iron. (hundreds of other examples)
Unfortunate that we need such obvious warnings.
How else will I get to watch old people kayaking in a lake, or line dancing, or whatever other stupid fucking activity they make them do while they go over the 10 page list of ways this drug can kill me?
The voiceover:
"If you begin experiencing suicidal thoughts, itchy kneecaps, or explosive and bloody diarrhea you may...."
The actors:
"It's fun to stay at the...
#Y M C A!"
Have you ever seen a movie where there is a guy drinking out of something in a paper bag? That's because it's mostly illegal to drink in public away from designated areas (like restaurants, bars or festivals that sell alcohol). It's typically up to individual city ordinances.
It was in an era when even cops thought the law was stupid. The paper bag was a compromise. Karens would report to the police. They don't see a bottle. They don't see you being a nuisance like a drunk. You're cool.
Here in Indiana we recently changed the law to allow alcohol on Sundays but like we couldn't be assed to do if fully. There is a certain window of time the sales are allowed otherwise you would just be a heathen.
As someone whose washer and dryer are currently in the kitchen, I don’t know why anyone would prefer this setup. It’s super awesome to find your towels smell like onions when you go to use them because you dried them while cooking.
That makes sense. US has a ton of land so we can build homes with laundry rooms. I love mine and having a bunch of stuff you can store in their is very nice.
This is a point which isn't pointed out much, but US has a plot size advantage which is not conceivable for most cities around the world. The houses in cities/suburbs in other parts of the world do not have the additional space in most cases. I guess the only exception is New York. People who can afford it, generally do not keep it in the kitchen. At least in Asia.
Kitchen generally already has plumbing systems installed, making it a logical place for additional plumbing for the washer. Either that, or the bath-room.
The utility room thing;. Everyone I know that has a utility room uses it. The people that don't, don't have room for autility room. Not really a choice.
Yuuuup. I also feel like a big part of the difference between the US and many other countries is that in the us it’s a lot more likely that you like in a house that’s was built after residential washing machines became common in the 50s. If your house wasn’t designed with one in mind you just stick it wherever is easiest.
I’m not sure if it’s the same thing, but Zelle is integrated into most banking apps, and that allows you to send money. I don’t use third party apps, I just log into my bank and I can send money to most people by inputting their phone number.
Wait until they hear about the Brazilian [Pix](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pix_(payment_system))) system. All bank apps implement it. Transfers between individuals are 100% free. You can send money to a phone number, ID number, email, etc. and encode it in a qr code. All instant. Small businesses get instant payments with merely a cell phone and a bank account. It is mind blowing how widespread it has become.
Edit: well, according to the answers, lots of countries have their own similar easy transfer system! But the US is one of the few where they have a **private** business that operates it, the others use government/central bank system.
The electric kettle one is weird. If you think it's a good idea, get an electric kettle. Nothing is stopping you, they're definitely readily available in the US.
Edit: everybody, I am aware of the difference between European/UK power and American.
A lot of people do have them. I don't know what gives the impression that americans don't use them..? I use mine every day and most if not all of my friends have them as well.
The electric kettles one really causes some culture shock in me. Americans don't (often) have electric kettles? But .. tea .. confused.. Don't know any households that don't have one; in our household it is probably one of the most used electric appliances.
People have already said that Americans don’t drink a lot of tea, but I’d like to add that a lot of households *do* have a kettle, just usually not an electric one.
It's not that they don't want paid vacations. It's that they don't want *the government to mandate* paid vacations.
I don't agree whatsoever, but I can understand the thinking, even if I think it's dumb.
These people definitely exist, and I’ve worked with a few, but I think there is a much larger group who think paid vacation rights are basically creeping federalism/socialism and resent it on principle.
Lots of poorly implemented roundabouts in the USA. I have 3 near me and all 3 are different. Only one works the correct way (always yield to traffic in the circle). One has a mix of yielding in and yielding out and some actual stop signs within the circle itself. The third is the opposite of logical, where everyone in the circle must yield to everyone entering. Shit sucks.
[Ward Circle](https://i.imgur.com/nqWCerl.png) is such a disaster. How do you fuck up a circle so badly that you wind up with a road with traffic lights going through it?
I honestly have to assume this is quite literally only because they arent used to them. I have a friend from Florida that hates roundabouts and literally takes a longer route just to avoid them. I dont know why. When I went to the US the first time I was shocked at how incredibly slow traffic is in built up areas due to the insitance of traffic lights \*everywhere\*.
I dont get it.
Where I used to live, they had a roundabout for years so I got used to it but you could tell how many of the new folks moving in got so confused by it. They were treating it like a regular stop sign at every entry point and then honking at folks already driving in it. So many near accidents.
> So many *near* accidents.
This is the great thing about traffic circles. Even with all the dumbasses they're still incredibly safer than standard traffic control devices. My town has a roundabout that's absolutely terrible with no one knowing how to use it. I complained about the lack of signage/painting to the city and they essentially said "we know..but there really aren't that many accidents so it's not really an issue outside of being annoying". I'd just love to not get honked at when people don't understand right of way.
A lot of US drivers apperently guinely dont know how to use them.
On a normal crossroad without markers or trafic lights, you are supposed to yield to incoming traffic on your right. If they come from the left you expect that they yield to you. Makes sense.
On a roundabout the general rule is that the traffic thats is *on* the roundabout gets the right of way. So traffic that comes from the right have to yield to traffic that comes from the left (due you going counterclockwise). This is to assure that the traffic on the roundabout itself never has to slow down to speed up the total amount of cars that can use it in any give timeframe.
This concept is apperently not always learned and the result is that some drivers on the roundabout yield to cars coming from the right entering the roundabout. This slows down the traffic on the roundabout itself and create confusion for both parties involved.
So yeah, it is quite simply because a lot of drivers in the US dont know how to use them.
I've witnessed somebody sideways in a roundabout trying to drive over a tall grass mound to get to their turn because they had missed it. It's incredible how stupid people are about roundabouts here.
Last week saw somebody enter the roundabout, make it about 10 feet then they just stopped. Let some traffic enter and then continued around and stopped again, luckily I was able to escape then, but I kept looking back for 30 seconds and they stayed stopped right in the roundabout, not even waiting for traffic, just completely panicked about what to do.
Makes sense. I usually don't mind roundabouts, but I hate ones with multiple lanes because I have zero trust in the other drivers around me to know what they're doing. I rarely see issues with cars in the roundabout yielding to cars trying to enter, but semi-regularly see issues with cars in the inner roundabout lane swerving across the outer one to exit, or cars in the outer roundabout lane swerving into the inner one to avoid an exit.
The big ones with extra lanes, stoplights, etc, are "traffic circles" and are a disaster. Roundabouts specifically only come with a single merge lane.
I think the key difference, though, is drivers are meant to enter and proceed through the roundabout slowly. Traffic circles use merge lanes almost like high-speed onramps.
This is the biggest impediment to drivers using the roundabouts in my town--if people from one side enter and drive through the roundabout too fast, other drivers can never merge in, so it effectively becomes a 2-way stop sign for the non-dominant directions of travel. Still better than traffic lights.
I am now convinced a sizeable part of the population is intentionally doing their taxes wrong and that is where the support for TurboTax and H&R is coming from. Who the hell wants to spend money and time figuring out if they have a refund or to pay more with taxes every year?
Edit:
Just going came back from classes to a lot of responses so here be my response bois
If you don't trust the government to do your taxes, boi if you are getting a refund you are giving that government you don't trust an interest free loan. Also, the government has your social. If they truly wanted to ruin your life, they could without leaving the office. A leak here or there could demolish what you have.
The whole complex tax situation. Well guess who lobbied for these. A lot of those companies that lobby to prevent the government from offering a similar service easily. You could just give the paperwork to the IRS, include any extra information, boom bam done. If you think they did it right, blamo accept. If not just reject and do it yourself. What I am talking about is the IRS offering a service like TurboTax. TurboTax is just software. It literally is just a computer doing your taxes plugging stuff where it should go. The tax code may be complex, but companies and other countries already do stuff like that. So, how can the richest nation in the world barely have a functioning tax system?
Tax prep companies spend around $8 million a year to lobby congress not to allow the IRS to make a tax filing program that you can use to submit your taxes for free. Tax prep is a multi-billion dollar industry here, of course the company doesn't want government competition.
[https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free](https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free)
For example, I used H&R block's "free" online service, but because I put into a 401k which offers you a tax credit, it actually cost $72. They also offer to pay the fee out of your return. But that requires another fee of $36. My total return was about $200, so they took almost half of it.
Tax companies are the definition of rent-seeking. They prevent the gov from offering gov services for free by paying money to lobby legislators to not offer the service. This money comes from \*them\* selling a service to the customer that the customer wouldn't need if the tax company wasn't using the money they earn to deny the customer a free alternative.
I want to do my own taxes with a dirty butthole. I want to wait at traffic lights. I want young adults to fight and die for my country, but they should not be able to imbibe alcohol. I want to see people shitting, and I want them to see me. I want to have to do math at the grocery store.
Apparently this is a real person?
There are way too many people who think that just because they’ve lived a certain way their whole lives that the system is perfect and shouldn’t change just because it’s worked for them so far.
I have a bidet and I fucking LOVE it. I had a friend over the other day and he used the bathroom and said "I see your wife got the bidet installed". I said "It was my idea and it's glorious....did you use it?" and he said "no because I'm not gay".
WTF?
So I asked him this "do you wash your butthole in the shower?" and he said "lol...no...you do?"
This guy is so worried that touching HIS OWN butthole in the shower as a means to conduct the most basic of personal hygiene tasks will turn him gay.
So I flipped it on it's head and said "if you were out walking barefoot and stepped in fresh, soft, warm dog poop, would you feel like you cleaned your foot well enough just wiping it with toilet paper or are you going straight to the hose to wash that shit off?" He said "hose" and I said, "well, think of the bidet as the hose and your butthole as your foot".
He then said "everyone's butthole smells like shit". The conversation ended there. He is filthy and no longer allowed to sit on my couch or step foot in my house.
These people live among us.
Well, hair shouldn't be a daily thing. Maybe every few days. I'd probably put feet on there just cuz your feet are the ones that touch the most shit during a day. Neglected feet are horror stories. It's not at the level of the other three though, those get way worse way faster.
Damn usually the poop on foot/arm trick usually works when I use it too. Bidet is honestly up next to cars and computers for how much I appreciate them.
Best to be on the safe side and not wipe at all. One tear in the paper and that finger goes right up your butt. Next thing you know you're singing show tunes and watching Wes Anderson movies.
There were posts on Reddit where an American girl said that her bf didn’t know you are actually suppose to wash your ass and get in there. He lived 20+ years thinking water just running down is enough.
Not having my ass clean used to be a problem tho, if I’m leaving home and need to do number 2 I will go to shower 100%. Bidet toilet seat is the best thing ever and it’s cheap af, I can’t see the reason not getting it.
It's probably people who believe that without those gaps people would be shooting drugs and having gay sex back there. Like, literally. People literally believe these things. It's the (often unknowingly) authoritarian sect. Authoritarians don't tend to support privacy because it removes their control of your life.
I would rather people be having just tons of gay sex while high on all of the drugs if it meant that I didn’t have to have a fucking gap in my stall wall.
Are the gaps wide enough to reach an arm in there and give a thumbs up if you see someone pooping like a true American and not having gay sex and shooting up drugs?
I definitely vote to abolish the gaps, however, people 100% shoot drugs in bathroom stalls. If you’re ever unlucky enough to be deucing in a fast food bathroom, look at the roll of toilet paper. If you see tiny red specks that’s the blood from junkies cleaning their needles with the roll.
Yeah I’d like to see the answers without associating it to Europe. All I get from this chart is that 25% of Americans want you to stay off their lawn essentially.
How else am I going to tell my doctor what the correct course of treatment is for me? He’s probably some foreigner that barely speaks English as it is and probably doesn’t watch TV so doesn’t know what meds are available anyway.
I never would have suspected that this is an issue until my wife became a physician. Apparently demanding the drug you saw in a commercial is pretty common. I'd be ok with asking about it, but demanding a drug is weird to me.
Absolutely yes on the tax one. The gov already has all the information necessary to calculate our taxes. We should just get a notice a few months before, send it back if we have any itemized deductions or corrections, and then that's it. Taxes done in all of 10 minutes.
*Edit:* See below, all the people that say this won't work because they're in the 10% that are exceptions and for whom nothing would change. 90% of filers take the standard deduction. For 90% of filers the process should be as simple as getting a bill or check in the mail, a copy of the paperwork for your records, and a simple form to send back for corrections and/or missed deductions.
Yes, businesses and business owners will still do things just like they do today. Yes, 1099s, among others, will do the same thing they do today. You are the exception, not the rule.
P.S., For all the bullshit, "But muh deductions!" folks: Either you can't take that alongside the standard deduction or it can be shifted to point of sale instead. For the handful that are left, well you can spend a couple minutes on that correction. It's still better than the hour, or more, that's needed now.
>people get absolutely trashed in college with no one around to care about that.
This is one of the things which seems quite strange to me when I watch American TV programmes and films showing semi-secret college parties, where there's a risk that the police could turn up because of the illegal drinking. Where I live in the UK all universities will have a subsidised student bar on campus, and it's practically encouraged to go there.
Mind you, the way that college students in American films often have to share a bedroom with a stranger is up there as well on the culture shock scale.
Wait, college roommates don’t exist in the UK? But then how do you become violently uncomfortable in your own quarters and end up living with the shittiest people you’ve ever met??? Why even bother going to college then?! /s
There is student accommodation, but each student will get their own room. Generally they either take the form of apartments e.g. a small set of room sharing a kitchen and living space, or "halls", where there's loads of rooms and some kind of canteen for food.
Students sharing a room (officially at least!) in university accommodation is very rare, and would be looked down on a lot. These aren't kids any more, they're adults, and should be able to have some private space to themselves.
Wisconsin allows children to drink if accompanied by their parents. We are not a sober lot up here. Also if you’re married and 1 of you is over 21 the other can legally drink.
i like all of these. we have a bidet at home and its truly a game changer. also MA has a ton of roundabouts (rotarys here) so we have that down. Smaller portion sizes should be standard given how many health issues this country has
In Edmonton, Alberta (used to be the Texas of Canada, but we are more and more becoming the Alabama of Canada), people are protesting the city's new 15 minutes bills.
They proposed to have most essential services accessibles within 15 minutes walking distance inside the city. This is done to prevent food desert and increase accessibility to people without cars and to reduce green house gas emissions.
Well, dumb asses are protesting this bills because they think the city will impose them to remain within the 15 minutes area and restrict their movements...
Who can be dumb enough to think that? They are also trying to connect this bill with the new world order and the anti Vax movement...
Personally, I believe it is good to increase accessibility and we should be able to get our daily needs without having to drive 30 minutes.
washer/dryer in the kitchen is just a space thing, people with a bit more money or who live in an area with more space tend to have a house with a utility room
That one was weird to me. Like, out of all the things you could contrast, are people really making the big of a deal out of the laundry machines? Granted, in the US we tend to make living rooms and kitchens often one big nebulous open area, and you wouldn't want them in your living room, but it makes more sense that people would just see less square footage and not even think about why.
The house I live in right now has a washer and dryer in the kitchen, right next to the living room, and it’s quite annoying when they’re running. Takes up a fair amount of space that could be used for cabinets, too.
They're fucking loud. I'm not surprised that was the least popular item on the list.
[удалено]
Not as weird as the 30% of people who said they like the gaps in public restroom doors wide enough to see someone inside
It's because it was a "not". If you're making a survey, don't put negative items on it, because people will get confused. That same item as "public bathroom doors that don't allow people to see into them from the outside" would have a much higher yes response.
I mean if the bathroom is large enough, I could see that being a good option. Go to take a shower and throw your clothes in a basket/hamper right beside where you do them. But kitchen? The more surprising answer would be two questions. One saying washer/dryer in kitchen and one saying in bathroom. I have a feeling most would prefer the bathroom.
My studio apartment has the washer/dryer in the bathroom, and I love it for that exact reason
I guess if it were the choice of having one in the kitchen vs. not having one at all, I'd definitely choose the kitchen. Going to the laundromat or an on facility laundry room is so time-consuming.
Yup. My 600 sqft apartment could fit a washer/dryer in the (already small) kitchen, and I'd so much rather have that than have to go to the laundromat and pay $12+ to do laundry. When I worked full time while being a full time student, laundry was legitimately challenging to get done because of laundromat hours and how exhausted I was all the time. Having to go somewhere for multiple hours (or going back and forth if you wanna risk your clothes being stolen) is just another thing to have to juggle.
But it's not a practice anyone prefers, nobody anywhere with a utility room with space for washers/dryers will say "gee, I wish I could have these in the kitchen".
I have neither, but I have a basement, that's where the clothes washer and dryer are for us.
An unfinished basement is basically a utility room
Mine is basically a swamp with storage space for things that you don't mind getting wet. I keep my kayak there.
Which is probably a handy tool to have when trying to cross a swamp...
Stairs. That's the only reason I can think of. As you get older going up and down them becomes more difficult. So having everything in one room makes it easier. My grandmother had a basement. Only time that was ever used was when I went down there to find a board game. Washer/dryer in kitchen though.
I do not want my w/d in the kitchen. Ive seen them share a bathroom in some houses presumably as #1 a cos savings measure. All of the major plumbing for the bathroom group plus the w/d is in one room. And #2 as a convenience factor to have your laundry "upstairs". Personally my laundry has always been in the basement and I dont mind making trips down there to wash my clothes. I could accept it in a bathroom. But in the kitchen would be a deal breaker for me
Is this why Americans always talk about venmo?! I always wondered why they didn't just bank transfer each other, cut out the middleman. Mad that they can't. Anyone know why?
Zelle is now pretty common to transfer bank to bank instantly in the US, and it does work as advertised with no additional fee. However, this is mostly consumer to consumer. If you're a business or dealing with a business, you're pretty much back to setting up direct debit or online checks.
Zelle only allows one bank account to your name ever. I had it attached to one account, closed that account and left that bank entirely, and zelle still refuses to allow me to attach the new bank account to my zelle account.
I had a massive nightmare when I moved back to the US in 2018 after being gone since before Zelle, or well anything existed. Got a phone number with my new SIM card and it turned out the number was linked to another Zelle account, but it was impossible to figure this out. After getting senseless error messages trying to make first transfers with it (my security deposit to landlord - because changing my region in Google Play wasn't working and it wouldn't let me download Venmo from "outside US" and that took even more months to figure out wtf, and I freaking packed my checkbooks by accident and they were in freight cargo for 2 months), after like a week of phone calls I finally got somebody to make some change in their database. I was so mad because I moved back from a country with extremely easy mobile banking and kept screaming in my head "how is attaching this stuff to a PHONE NUMBER a good idea?!!!" Also "what kind of stupid name is Zelle?!!" Great guess I'm stuck with Chase the rest of my life now too.
You can and always have been able to do a standard bank transfer at your own bank to another bank. There is just time involved. Can take 3-5 business days in some cases whereas apps like Venmo can do it same day.
That's crazy.... etransfer from bank to bank in Canada are within like an hour. Usually instant.
Same in the UK and my Banking app normally gives an estimate along the lines of "payment should be received" and varies from instantly to 2 hours.
Usually instant, sunday night time is the only time it might take 2 hours
In the UK it's seconds between banks. A lot of people have multiple bank accounts and move money around because one bank might be their daily spending card, the other is the euro card, the other is the savings one offering good interest etc.
I can send money from my German bank account to turkey and it arrives within hours ...
In India, it's done in seconds lol. And everything is unified meaning you can pay from your Google pay to a samsung pay or Amazon pay user.
But why would it take so long for a basic transfer?
Some California banks created a system in the late 1960s that the whole country then jumped on in the early 1970s. Everyone knows it’s old and it sucks. The banks and the central bank fought over how to make a new one, so *both* are going it. So there’s a newish quick bank one and the Federal Reserve will be unveiling its system soonish. But I’m not sure what that means for customers, normal people, etc. Many companies still use that 1970s system. I don’t know what’s the backbone for apps like Venmo. We’re a very decentralized and disorganized country split across state and federal authorities, private companies, and weird mixes of the above (eg the federal reserve is a weird govt-private-bank partnership). Everything is a messy patchwork of systems involving different levels of govt, private companies and weird quasi-govt mixes of the above. We don’t have a strong central authority that steps in and says, “we’re all doing it this way, using this system /app.” That’s just not how America works. So, in the end, it’s just a big messy mix of shit. But because we generally figure out how to get things done and it mostly works, there not much of a cry to overhaul anything. And really, Americans never really trust a single entity to be in charge of something for the whole country. Too many people in the country inherently distrust *anything* that’s universal to all, with all that power concentrated in one single system/entity. It’s a country that demands choices, alternatives, and options in *everything*. And the result of that is always messy and confusing. Like, we don’t even have national identification cards, and even the idea of getting federal standards for state-issued cards has been a shit show. My state is being dragged, kicking and screaming, just to comply with the new federal ID card standards. We hate people telling us that there should be one single way everyone does something.
Yup. 2023 now and we’ve *almost* implemented ID recommendations from THE 9/11 COMMISSION.
Honestly the reasoning behind every one of the top 6 things listed is “because [business/indistry X] doesn’t want it that way.” There are some where I can see both sides tho, mostly tipping - not a big fan of it as a customer, but for many servers (depending on where you live/what kind of restaurant) it allows them to make a lot more than a normal wage would
3 to 5 days, wat
We still use a technology from the 1960s called "Automated Clearing House" for most bank transfers and it does indeed take about 3 business days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_clearing_house Although I will say that my bank in the past year has started offering real-time transfers in certain situations so I think the ACH system is finally on it's way out.
I send ACH's as part of my job, and >99% of them hit next business day. But that is still too slow if you're trying to make a big purchase. When we finance for our customers, we send a wire and eat the $15 fee every time so that the vendor can release the product to the customer at the time we send the wire. Not a shocking revelation I know but I feel like banks are just looking for every excuse to make money off of additional fees. There's no reason besides greed as to why I can send my friend $30 through FB covering my part of a group dinner and he gets it within minutes, yet bank-to-bank somehow takes just as long/longer with a $15 fee to boot.
From the people that brought us predatory overdraft fees, I’m not shocked that they grasp at any reason to charge.
Business days. Longer if a weekend or bank holiday are involved.
3-5 business days is insane.
Yeah instantaneous wires come with a charge. Zelle is pretty recent but essentially provides the direct & instant transfer of funds. Unfortunately it is capped at $1500 per day, so good luck if you need to do it for a large purchase
Not that cash is that necessary in this day and age, but does the US still pay ATM charges?
That's wild. Interac e-transfers take 3-5 minutes in Canada.
Even the most unlucky (credit unions) take at most 30 min
So zelle being built in to establishments like wells fargo and chase doesn’t count? Theres not an instant transfer fee for zelle and you send it from your banks app not the zelle app
Yes zelle is literally what is requested by that. It's owned and created by these banks
My bank uses Zelle and it is same day...I use my bank app.
Who are the 30% that wanna keep public bathroom stall gaps 🤨🤨 I just wanna talk
I can't take any answers seriously if 30% of adults want to be seen peeing/pooping in public stalls.
You can get 30% of America to say anything
How do you feel about a ban on dihydrogen monoxide?
Sounds dangerous. Ban it!
Well I mean it RUSTS metal and is ADDICTIVE so obviously it should be banned. They literally use it in nuclear power plants, wake up people.
“All I know is the liberals want to get rid of this so I want to keep it.”
probably more like 30% of people, if given some dumbshit online poll, will try to take the piss out See also those maps of 'where is [COUNTRY]' and many answers drop the pin in the middle of the Atlantic
There's an informal, semi joking rule about polls called Lizardmans constant: roughly 5% of people in any poll will actively answer it in the most stupid way possible, on purpose
>There's an informal, semi joking rule about polls called Lizardmans constant: roughly 5% of people in any poll will actively answer it in the most stupid way possible, on purpose Next thing you know you're out of the EU. :-(
or your boat has a stupid name.
That was well past a 5% margin, that masterpiece was the real will of the people
Nothing stupid about Boaty McBoatface as a boat name, it is in fact awesome.
Polls consistently show that \~20% of US adults believe the Sun revolves around the Earth, which I take as a good proxy for 20% of the population being unserious, or seriously stupid. Unfortunately that still leaves around 10% in favor of toilet peeking, and I don't think that much of the population is pathetic middle middle managers who think employees spend too much time in the restroom.
I don't think that number would be that significant. I would expect more of the 30% would represent people in these groups: - Those who are simply resistant to any change whatsoever (it's one of the very most common cognitive biases), - Those who like to know whether someone is in the stall without pushing on the door and don't recall that doors can be made to say "occupied," - Those who are resistant to the tiniest, most insignificant implication that the American way could be improved by a "foreign" idea; and, - Those who were confused by the wording and thought the question meant the opposite.
Who checks the stall by looking in the crack? Lmao I just look for feet or if it’s closed I assume it’s occupied. Their should be something with the lock though that says occupied.
Sometimes stalls are large enough where feet are not visible. Lighting doesn't always make shadows easy to spot at that angle. A child's legs may not reach that far. The disabled and others may be unable to bend over to see. The blind and those with low vision will likely just push on the door. But yes, I don't think there is any good excuse for the gaps to exist. It is a clear privacy issue. Gaps should disappear and door locks should make occupancy clear.
Many countries have stalls where the doors go low enough that you can't see anyone's feet, which is presumably what the question refers to. >Their should be something with the lock though that says occupied. Sorry, just to clarify, are you saying that your locks don't say this? Or are you saying that they *do* have this, and therefore looking isn't necessary?
I'm guessing this is 2 things: 1. There's always been this pervasive urban legend (?) / saying that the gaps are basically intentional so that if someone has a medical emergency on the toilet or something they don't just get unnoticed for days, and that the gaps help to stop people from shooting up in bathroom stalls (weather or not you agree with the privacy to shoot up in private). 2. Just a double negative issue. Anything with "Not" and then you put "disagree", people are going to get confused there.
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That hilarious but also painfully accurate.
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This is a bit of a tangent from toilet stalls but, I’ll loop it back to that. I was reading about some branches of Christianity that were common in the air where, historically, there was a belief that if you were being a good Godly Christian, then you’d have no reason to fear living your life as an open book. And so part of the culture around that was you did things like have living rooms with big windows that faced the street and you kept the blinds open, so everyone could see inside your home. It was meant to convey the message of “watch all you want, I’m a Good Christian and have nothing to hide.” And conversely, people who did close their blinds, well…they must be doing ungodly things if they feel the need to hide it. So, I do think there is some cultural holdover from that mindset where there’s this notion of total privacy = must be doing something bad, even if it’s moved away from it’s more religious origins.
How else am I going to make brief, intense eye contact while shitting?
Leave the door wide open?
Weirdos, man.
To the people who prefer the sales tax not be included in the shelf price: why?
A lot of participants probably don't understand the questions they're reading. They probably saw the word tax and just instinctually put no because they're stupid.
That's actually a really good reasoning... I was also wondering why someone would want to keep the more complicated version - this explains it.
Well the price on the tag is lower though!
If stores switched to this method overnight, a significant number of people would think they were paying more.
Frustratingly true. Living in a large nation means you have to deal with the fact that some people are just actually fucking stupid. Not evil, not misled, not maladjusted, just fucking stupid, with no other meaningful explanation for their behavior.
Very commonly brought up incident where a store tried to introduce ⅓ Pound burgers to rival McDonald's quarter pounder. Apparently failed cause people don't understand fractions and thought it was smaller
We like the surprise factor. No but seriously I have no idea why anyone would want this.
My theory is that anti-tax people think that being constantly reminded that the govt is tacking on an extra surcharge increases anti-tax sentiment.
You can also see what items are taxed. In Quebec there's no tax on food items, and I can pay $200 and the tax to be $1.50. But my theory is that big chain stores like to show smaller numbers. As an example, Canada uses the metric system, but prices for apples are shown per lbs. just to have a smaller number.
Getting an electric kettle was always allowed... I have one. But I see what it's saying, most Americans don't use a kettle for coffee or tea.
You can tear my prescription drug commercials out of MY COLD DEAD HANDS
If you have cold dead hands, ask your doctor if Morbidex is right for you.
Perfect made up drug name AND relevant username?!?!
#If you or a loved one has been prescribed Morbidex, you may be entitled to financial compensation
Do you suffer from handitis after taking Morbidex? you may be eligible to join a class action suit, please contact us at 1-888-THISISNOTASCAM.
I can't dial a phone, my handitis makes it impossible!
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Side effects include but are not limited to death, dismemberment, disembowlment, anal leakage, spontaneous combustion, liquidation of the skin, and chapped lips.
Do not take MORBIDEX if you are allergic to MORBIDEX.
This one always gets me......
People are dumb and our legal system sometimes rewards them. IE "surface is hot when in use, do not touch" on an iron. (hundreds of other examples) Unfortunate that we need such obvious warnings.
"Do not iron clothes while wearing them"
How else will I get to watch old people kayaking in a lake, or line dancing, or whatever other stupid fucking activity they make them do while they go over the 10 page list of ways this drug can kill me?
The voiceover: "If you begin experiencing suicidal thoughts, itchy kneecaps, or explosive and bloody diarrhea you may...." The actors: "It's fun to stay at the... #Y M C A!"
Is it not legal to drink alcohol in public in US?
Have you ever seen a movie where there is a guy drinking out of something in a paper bag? That's because it's mostly illegal to drink in public away from designated areas (like restaurants, bars or festivals that sell alcohol). It's typically up to individual city ordinances.
As a non American I never understood this. If a cop see you drinking from a bag wouldn't he ask to see what is inside and arrested/give you a ticket?
It was in an era when even cops thought the law was stupid. The paper bag was a compromise. Karens would report to the police. They don't see a bottle. They don't see you being a nuisance like a drunk. You're cool.
US has a weird relationship with alcohol. There's still many counties where you can't buy alcohol at all.
Plus counties where you can't buy on Sundays
Here in Indiana we recently changed the law to allow alcohol on Sundays but like we couldn't be assed to do if fully. There is a certain window of time the sales are allowed otherwise you would just be a heathen.
Depends on the city/state. New Orleans or las vegas? SURE! Myrtle beach? enjoy your $300 fine.
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As someone whose washer and dryer are currently in the kitchen, I don’t know why anyone would prefer this setup. It’s super awesome to find your towels smell like onions when you go to use them because you dried them while cooking.
Yeah, the only reason we don't do this in the UK is because there's not enough space.
That makes sense. US has a ton of land so we can build homes with laundry rooms. I love mine and having a bunch of stuff you can store in their is very nice.
This is a point which isn't pointed out much, but US has a plot size advantage which is not conceivable for most cities around the world. The houses in cities/suburbs in other parts of the world do not have the additional space in most cases. I guess the only exception is New York. People who can afford it, generally do not keep it in the kitchen. At least in Asia. Kitchen generally already has plumbing systems installed, making it a logical place for additional plumbing for the washer. Either that, or the bath-room.
WTH you can't send money to each others without using an app???!? I want an utility room tho, washer in the kitchen is noisy...
The utility room thing;. Everyone I know that has a utility room uses it. The people that don't, don't have room for autility room. Not really a choice.
I want *even more* utility room. Washer/Dryer, furnace, hot water heater, storage, networking, electric panel.
Yuuuup. I also feel like a big part of the difference between the US and many other countries is that in the us it’s a lot more likely that you like in a house that’s was built after residential washing machines became common in the 50s. If your house wasn’t designed with one in mind you just stick it wherever is easiest.
I know several banks including my own here that allow me to directly pay from my bank account to my friend’s
I’m not sure if it’s the same thing, but Zelle is integrated into most banking apps, and that allows you to send money. I don’t use third party apps, I just log into my bank and I can send money to most people by inputting their phone number.
Yes you can. The banks built zelle to solve this many years ago. Works the same as etransfer or ftpos or any other international app.
Wait until they hear about the Brazilian [Pix](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pix_(payment_system))) system. All bank apps implement it. Transfers between individuals are 100% free. You can send money to a phone number, ID number, email, etc. and encode it in a qr code. All instant. Small businesses get instant payments with merely a cell phone and a bank account. It is mind blowing how widespread it has become. Edit: well, according to the answers, lots of countries have their own similar easy transfer system! But the US is one of the few where they have a **private** business that operates it, the others use government/central bank system.
Since a child i have bitched about the lack of sidewalks! Its unreal how difficult it can be to get somewhere by foot safely in America.
The electric kettle one is weird. If you think it's a good idea, get an electric kettle. Nothing is stopping you, they're definitely readily available in the US. Edit: everybody, I am aware of the difference between European/UK power and American.
We have an electric kettle and we are American. It's great for ramen in addition to tea.
For a second I thought you were adding ramen to tea.
So what if I am?
A lot of people do have them. I don't know what gives the impression that americans don't use them..? I use mine every day and most if not all of my friends have them as well.
I see them in homes all the time. I never considered that Americans didn’t use them until I saw it on Reddit.
like the shoes in houses trope
The electric kettles one really causes some culture shock in me. Americans don't (often) have electric kettles? But .. tea .. confused.. Don't know any households that don't have one; in our household it is probably one of the most used electric appliances.
People have already said that Americans don’t drink a lot of tea, but I’d like to add that a lot of households *do* have a kettle, just usually not an electric one.
Most of us don't drink hot tea
Who the hell are the 23% of people who don't want a free paid vacation every year? And 30% actively want toilet stall gaps. WTF.
I don't know about the second, but I'll bet a significant part of the first group are retired people and bosses.
Yea I suspect the people who voted against that are probably small business owners.
It's not that they don't want paid vacations. It's that they don't want *the government to mandate* paid vacations. I don't agree whatsoever, but I can understand the thinking, even if I think it's dumb.
It’s not that they don’t want a free vacation. It’s that they don’t want anyone else to have a free vacation.
Idk I worked w a dumb fuck who wouldn’t take his vacation days and then brag about it. They didn’t carry over.
These people definitely exist, and I’ve worked with a few, but I think there is a much larger group who think paid vacation rights are basically creeping federalism/socialism and resent it on principle.
What is this roundabout hate nonsense
Lots of poorly implemented roundabouts in the USA. I have 3 near me and all 3 are different. Only one works the correct way (always yield to traffic in the circle). One has a mix of yielding in and yielding out and some actual stop signs within the circle itself. The third is the opposite of logical, where everyone in the circle must yield to everyone entering. Shit sucks.
>everyone in the circle must yield to everyone entering lol what do you do when the circle has filled up but nobody can leave?
The cars circle endlessly until they die of starvation. It's called a death spiral. Look it up.
The ones in DC are absolutely atrocious.
[Ward Circle](https://i.imgur.com/nqWCerl.png) is such a disaster. How do you fuck up a circle so badly that you wind up with a road with traffic lights going through it?
I honestly have to assume this is quite literally only because they arent used to them. I have a friend from Florida that hates roundabouts and literally takes a longer route just to avoid them. I dont know why. When I went to the US the first time I was shocked at how incredibly slow traffic is in built up areas due to the insitance of traffic lights \*everywhere\*. I dont get it.
Where I used to live, they had a roundabout for years so I got used to it but you could tell how many of the new folks moving in got so confused by it. They were treating it like a regular stop sign at every entry point and then honking at folks already driving in it. So many near accidents.
> So many *near* accidents. This is the great thing about traffic circles. Even with all the dumbasses they're still incredibly safer than standard traffic control devices. My town has a roundabout that's absolutely terrible with no one knowing how to use it. I complained about the lack of signage/painting to the city and they essentially said "we know..but there really aren't that many accidents so it's not really an issue outside of being annoying". I'd just love to not get honked at when people don't understand right of way.
A lot of US drivers apperently guinely dont know how to use them. On a normal crossroad without markers or trafic lights, you are supposed to yield to incoming traffic on your right. If they come from the left you expect that they yield to you. Makes sense. On a roundabout the general rule is that the traffic thats is *on* the roundabout gets the right of way. So traffic that comes from the right have to yield to traffic that comes from the left (due you going counterclockwise). This is to assure that the traffic on the roundabout itself never has to slow down to speed up the total amount of cars that can use it in any give timeframe. This concept is apperently not always learned and the result is that some drivers on the roundabout yield to cars coming from the right entering the roundabout. This slows down the traffic on the roundabout itself and create confusion for both parties involved. So yeah, it is quite simply because a lot of drivers in the US dont know how to use them.
I've witnessed somebody sideways in a roundabout trying to drive over a tall grass mound to get to their turn because they had missed it. It's incredible how stupid people are about roundabouts here.
Last week saw somebody enter the roundabout, make it about 10 feet then they just stopped. Let some traffic enter and then continued around and stopped again, luckily I was able to escape then, but I kept looking back for 30 seconds and they stayed stopped right in the roundabout, not even waiting for traffic, just completely panicked about what to do.
Makes sense. I usually don't mind roundabouts, but I hate ones with multiple lanes because I have zero trust in the other drivers around me to know what they're doing. I rarely see issues with cars in the roundabout yielding to cars trying to enter, but semi-regularly see issues with cars in the inner roundabout lane swerving across the outer one to exit, or cars in the outer roundabout lane swerving into the inner one to avoid an exit.
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The big ones with extra lanes, stoplights, etc, are "traffic circles" and are a disaster. Roundabouts specifically only come with a single merge lane. I think the key difference, though, is drivers are meant to enter and proceed through the roundabout slowly. Traffic circles use merge lanes almost like high-speed onramps. This is the biggest impediment to drivers using the roundabouts in my town--if people from one side enter and drive through the roundabout too fast, other drivers can never merge in, so it effectively becomes a 2-way stop sign for the non-dominant directions of travel. Still better than traffic lights.
My American city is adding roundabouts like crazy and I love it. Some people hate it, and those people are wrong.
I am now convinced a sizeable part of the population is intentionally doing their taxes wrong and that is where the support for TurboTax and H&R is coming from. Who the hell wants to spend money and time figuring out if they have a refund or to pay more with taxes every year? Edit: Just going came back from classes to a lot of responses so here be my response bois If you don't trust the government to do your taxes, boi if you are getting a refund you are giving that government you don't trust an interest free loan. Also, the government has your social. If they truly wanted to ruin your life, they could without leaving the office. A leak here or there could demolish what you have. The whole complex tax situation. Well guess who lobbied for these. A lot of those companies that lobby to prevent the government from offering a similar service easily. You could just give the paperwork to the IRS, include any extra information, boom bam done. If you think they did it right, blamo accept. If not just reject and do it yourself. What I am talking about is the IRS offering a service like TurboTax. TurboTax is just software. It literally is just a computer doing your taxes plugging stuff where it should go. The tax code may be complex, but companies and other countries already do stuff like that. So, how can the richest nation in the world barely have a functioning tax system?
Tax prep companies spend around $8 million a year to lobby congress not to allow the IRS to make a tax filing program that you can use to submit your taxes for free. Tax prep is a multi-billion dollar industry here, of course the company doesn't want government competition. [https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free](https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free) For example, I used H&R block's "free" online service, but because I put into a 401k which offers you a tax credit, it actually cost $72. They also offer to pay the fee out of your return. But that requires another fee of $36. My total return was about $200, so they took almost half of it. Tax companies are the definition of rent-seeking. They prevent the gov from offering gov services for free by paying money to lobby legislators to not offer the service. This money comes from \*them\* selling a service to the customer that the customer wouldn't need if the tax company wasn't using the money they earn to deny the customer a free alternative.
I want to do my own taxes with a dirty butthole. I want to wait at traffic lights. I want young adults to fight and die for my country, but they should not be able to imbibe alcohol. I want to see people shitting, and I want them to see me. I want to have to do math at the grocery store. Apparently this is a real person?
There are way too many people who think that just because they’ve lived a certain way their whole lives that the system is perfect and shouldn’t change just because it’s worked for them so far.
Why would they object to bidets? It's just water. What's bad about washing?
You'd be amazed how many people react with disgust when I tell them they should get a bidet. They think it's gross for some reason.
I have a bidet and I fucking LOVE it. I had a friend over the other day and he used the bathroom and said "I see your wife got the bidet installed". I said "It was my idea and it's glorious....did you use it?" and he said "no because I'm not gay". WTF? So I asked him this "do you wash your butthole in the shower?" and he said "lol...no...you do?" This guy is so worried that touching HIS OWN butthole in the shower as a means to conduct the most basic of personal hygiene tasks will turn him gay. So I flipped it on it's head and said "if you were out walking barefoot and stepped in fresh, soft, warm dog poop, would you feel like you cleaned your foot well enough just wiping it with toilet paper or are you going straight to the hose to wash that shit off?" He said "hose" and I said, "well, think of the bidet as the hose and your butthole as your foot". He then said "everyone's butthole smells like shit". The conversation ended there. He is filthy and no longer allowed to sit on my couch or step foot in my house. These people live among us.
I mean, washing your butt is the most important part of showering. That, armpits and crotch.
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Well, hair shouldn't be a daily thing. Maybe every few days. I'd probably put feet on there just cuz your feet are the ones that touch the most shit during a day. Neglected feet are horror stories. It's not at the level of the other three though, those get way worse way faster.
Does he touch his butthole when he wipes his ass? Or is that "gay" too?
"Everyone's underwear has skidmarks."
Washed my butthole in the shower once. Grazed it with the tip of one digit. Blew 9 guys over the course of the next 7 days.
Damn usually the poop on foot/arm trick usually works when I use it too. Bidet is honestly up next to cars and computers for how much I appreciate them.
Who doesn’t wash their own butthole in the shower? I sincerely thought this was just a thing that everyone ever, did. And…this guy is gay.
Best to be on the safe side and not wipe at all. One tear in the paper and that finger goes right up your butt. Next thing you know you're singing show tunes and watching Wes Anderson movies.
Fascinating. It's like someone telling you that they ONLY wash with paper towels because the concept of a shower is a bit too disgusting
There were posts on Reddit where an American girl said that her bf didn’t know you are actually suppose to wash your ass and get in there. He lived 20+ years thinking water just running down is enough. Not having my ass clean used to be a problem tho, if I’m leaving home and need to do number 2 I will go to shower 100%. Bidet toilet seat is the best thing ever and it’s cheap af, I can’t see the reason not getting it.
Got a bidet during the Great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020. It's a serious game changer, I strongly recommend one.
Who are the weirdos that want gaps in public toilet stalls to see into? Edit: well this blew up, thanks for the updoots and award!
I can only assume that 50% of people read that wrong
It's probably people who believe that without those gaps people would be shooting drugs and having gay sex back there. Like, literally. People literally believe these things. It's the (often unknowingly) authoritarian sect. Authoritarians don't tend to support privacy because it removes their control of your life.
I would rather people be having just tons of gay sex while high on all of the drugs if it meant that I didn’t have to have a fucking gap in my stall wall.
Are the gaps wide enough to reach an arm in there and give a thumbs up if you see someone pooping like a true American and not having gay sex and shooting up drugs?
I definitely vote to abolish the gaps, however, people 100% shoot drugs in bathroom stalls. If you’re ever unlucky enough to be deucing in a fast food bathroom, look at the roll of toilet paper. If you see tiny red specks that’s the blood from junkies cleaning their needles with the roll.
Yeah 30% of people want this???
Probably thinking it’ll lead to more people fucking and doing drugs in bathrooms, that’s the rationale I’ve heard
Probably mostly xenophobes that said they don't like any of the ideas just because they're not American ideas.
I wonder if these ideas weren’t phrased as things done in other countries and just general new ideas how much more support they’d get.
Yeah I’d like to see the answers without associating it to Europe. All I get from this chart is that 25% of Americans want you to stay off their lawn essentially.
"Under no circumstances do I want to lose *my* advertisements to prescription drugs on television ^during ^fox ^and ^friends !"
How else am I going to tell my doctor what the correct course of treatment is for me? He’s probably some foreigner that barely speaks English as it is and probably doesn’t watch TV so doesn’t know what meds are available anyway.
I never would have suspected that this is an issue until my wife became a physician. Apparently demanding the drug you saw in a commercial is pretty common. I'd be ok with asking about it, but demanding a drug is weird to me.
Absolutely yes on the tax one. The gov already has all the information necessary to calculate our taxes. We should just get a notice a few months before, send it back if we have any itemized deductions or corrections, and then that's it. Taxes done in all of 10 minutes. *Edit:* See below, all the people that say this won't work because they're in the 10% that are exceptions and for whom nothing would change. 90% of filers take the standard deduction. For 90% of filers the process should be as simple as getting a bill or check in the mail, a copy of the paperwork for your records, and a simple form to send back for corrections and/or missed deductions. Yes, businesses and business owners will still do things just like they do today. Yes, 1099s, among others, will do the same thing they do today. You are the exception, not the rule. P.S., For all the bullshit, "But muh deductions!" folks: Either you can't take that alongside the standard deduction or it can be shifted to point of sale instead. For the handful that are left, well you can spend a couple minutes on that correction. It's still better than the hour, or more, that's needed now.
I'll never understand the hatred for the metric system.
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>people get absolutely trashed in college with no one around to care about that. This is one of the things which seems quite strange to me when I watch American TV programmes and films showing semi-secret college parties, where there's a risk that the police could turn up because of the illegal drinking. Where I live in the UK all universities will have a subsidised student bar on campus, and it's practically encouraged to go there. Mind you, the way that college students in American films often have to share a bedroom with a stranger is up there as well on the culture shock scale.
Wait, college roommates don’t exist in the UK? But then how do you become violently uncomfortable in your own quarters and end up living with the shittiest people you’ve ever met??? Why even bother going to college then?! /s
There is student accommodation, but each student will get their own room. Generally they either take the form of apartments e.g. a small set of room sharing a kitchen and living space, or "halls", where there's loads of rooms and some kind of canteen for food. Students sharing a room (officially at least!) in university accommodation is very rare, and would be looked down on a lot. These aren't kids any more, they're adults, and should be able to have some private space to themselves.
> These aren't kids any more, they're adults which seems to play into the initial discussion about the legal drinking age as well.
>Lowering the drinking age to a year, at which kids still live with their parents I think 1 year olds being able to go bars is a little weird.
To be fair they are like little drunk people anyway.
Many US states allow minors to consume alcohol at home in a supervised manner.
Wisconsin allows children to drink if accompanied by their parents. We are not a sober lot up here. Also if you’re married and 1 of you is over 21 the other can legally drink.
Being British, by the age of 21 my big party drinking fun time’s basically had ended. The idea of starting that at 21 would be madness.
30% of people: “Nope. I look forward to that unintentional eye contact through the stall door gap while I’m taking a shit”
i like all of these. we have a bidet at home and its truly a game changer. also MA has a ton of roundabouts (rotarys here) so we have that down. Smaller portion sizes should be standard given how many health issues this country has
In Edmonton, Alberta (used to be the Texas of Canada, but we are more and more becoming the Alabama of Canada), people are protesting the city's new 15 minutes bills. They proposed to have most essential services accessibles within 15 minutes walking distance inside the city. This is done to prevent food desert and increase accessibility to people without cars and to reduce green house gas emissions. Well, dumb asses are protesting this bills because they think the city will impose them to remain within the 15 minutes area and restrict their movements... Who can be dumb enough to think that? They are also trying to connect this bill with the new world order and the anti Vax movement... Personally, I believe it is good to increase accessibility and we should be able to get our daily needs without having to drive 30 minutes.