AAA: Ask America Anything

[SomeInternetBloke]

Off Topic

There are two Canadas (both alike in dignity!), anglo- and francophone...

What is the origin of the stereotype that Canadians are overwhelmingly friendly and polite and Americans are not?

Is it psychological, is it dialectical, is it financial, is it the liveability factor, is it artifact of its European past, is it the harsh weather, is it timidity toward America, is it collectivism, is it conservative laws on weapons, is friendliness specific to anglophone vs the francophone region?

[ashi]

This isn't quite what you asked, but I am still useless with imperial units and anytime I have to convert hogsheads to furlongs or whatever damn nonsense I feel like I am trapped in a Terry Pratchett novel.

16 ounces in a pound, 14 pounds in a stone, 8 stone in a hundredweight, 20 hundredweight in a tonne.

12 inches in a feet, 3 feet in a yard, 220 yards in a furlong, 8 furlongs in a mile.

5 fluid ounces in a gill, 4 gills in a pint, 2 pints in a quart, 4 quarts in a gallon.

Unless you're in the U.S. of course. Then there's 16 fluid ounces in a pint.

A half-pint is a cup. In North America, a cup is equal to 250ml, 236ml, 200ml, or 180ml. Because fuck you.

Much worse than the hour though is the date. Like who the fuck thought that MM-DD-YYYY was a good system.

It is worse than that, though. Both MM-DD-YYYY and DD-MM-YYYY are used in the US, the latter especially appearing on government forms. At work I deal with both ... but our system will only accept MM-DD-YYYY, so I am regularly reading "correct" dates, thinking nothing of it, and entering them only to be hit with an "invalid date" errors. America!

I guess that leads me to another question: do some people need to work two jobs to maintain a reasonable standard of living? We were watching a documentary on the opioid crisis (The Crime of the Century) and there was an EMT who said that he had to work two jobs just to keep his head above water. Like is that a real thing? That's fucking crazy. An EMT is obviously a skilled worker. The idea he would have to work his EMT job and do bartending or whatever is nuts. It wasn't like he was going around in a Lambo wearing a Rolex or anything either.

This is quite common. Federal minimum wage is $7.25/hour, which is 15kUSD (12.7kEUR) a year assuming no time off (common) and 40 hours a week (often unavailable so companies can avoid paying benefits like health coverage) while the often discussed $15/hour mark puts us at $31k/year. These numbers don't tell the full story, however. Housing is expensive, owning a car is expensive, /not/ owning a car is expensive, food that isn't garbage is expensive, and anything to do with health care is extremely expensive. I have a co-worker who makes $18/hour working 40-60 hours a week and shares a two-bedroom apartment with her ex because neither can afford to move out and live on their own. (Supposedly. )

In theory I also have multiple jobs ... but at this point that is mostly serving to allow me to use tools I already own to feel better about having bought them and offset the cost of additional tools which I may or may not actually need.

[Utisz]

The wage stuff I guess must be the result of successful anti-union propaganda or something. I guess it becomes normalised or something?

I wonder are young people in the U.S., say in their twenties, really a lot more liberal and "woke" than the later generations? Like will this neo-liberalism in the U.S. eventually "die out" to a certain extent, at least in electoral terms? Will Texas and the like turn blue in the next years?

Also do y'all not wear white clothes after Labor Day?

It is worse than that, though. Both MM-DD-YYYY and DD-MM-YYYY are used in the US, the latter especially appearing on government forms. At work I deal with both ... but our system will only accept MM-DD-YYYY, so I am regularly reading "correct" dates, thinking nothing of it, and entering them only to be hit with an "invalid date" errors. America!

Wat. Like what do you do with a date like 12-11-2021? That must be the cause of all sorts of problems.

YYYY-MM-DD for the win!

[ashi]

There are two Canadas (both alike in dignity!), anglo- and francophone...

What is the origin of the stereotype that Canadians are overwhelmingly friendly and polite and Americans are not?

Is it psychological, is it dialectical, is it financial, is it the liveability factor, is it artifact of its European past, is it the harsh weather, is it timidity toward America, is it collectivism, is it conservative laws on weapons, is friendliness specific to anglophone vs the francophone region?

I am not sure I am capable of fielding a convincing answer to this, but in short: It is wholly rooted in American fables/delusions about itself that centre on stereotypes about the few cities/regoins that matter. The American midwest is indistinguishable from anglo Canada outside the densest cities, where everyone is either an asshole, withdrawn around strangers because of the assholes, or in ethnic enclaves that have their own norms.

If you mean from the other side, well ... Canada gets a lot of the most clumsily ignorant Americans because it s far more accessible than anywhere else in the world as you don't need a passport or pesky foreign language skills to enter or navigate. (Americans will wander into Québec, stare blankly at anyone speaking French to them, and complain about signs being in French. (85% of the population speaks French natively. Many more do as a second language. Including the large number of African immigrants.) Something that only baffles me more as time goes on because peopel seem to speak non-English language everywhere in the US that I have been ... specifically, I hear Spanish and Arabic daily.

Which reminds me, I met a cute and clever Colombian lady so I am secretly improving my Spanish after letting it rot for 15 years. What with the ore reserved default setting and, uh, air of passive aggressiveness. It's an acquired taste. Or we are dicks, I don't know.

As for anglo vs francophone Canada. Ehhhh ... I may have to admit that anglo norms probably read as more friendly to Americans.

The wage stuff I guess must be the result of successful anti-union propaganda or something. I guess it becomes normalised or something?

I have no sense of the timeline, but at present anti-union sentiment is extremely strong. They just take your money for nothing and block changes that would create new jobs. That coupled with the running narrative that you deserve to earn so little money and suffer, because only lazy people stay in those sorts of jobs.

]

It is worse than that, though. Both MM-DD-YYYY and DD-MM-YYYY are used in the US, the latter especially appearing on government forms. At work I deal with both ... but our system will only accept MM-DD-YYYY, so I am regularly reading "correct" dates, thinking nothing of it, and entering them only to be hit with an "invalid date" errors. America!

Wat. Like what do you do with a date like 12-11-2021? That must be the cause of all sorts of problems.

Same as any other date. Enter it as written, which is either accepted or returns an error, in the case of the latter: enter with the first two values transposed. What could possibly go wrong.

Don't worry, though, it doesn't actually matter because the dates in question don't ever matter which is why no effort was made to ensure they are recorded correctly.

I wonder are young people in the U.S., say in their twenties, really a lot more liberal and "woke" than the later generations? Like will this neo-liberalism in the U.S. eventually "die out" to a certain extent, at least in electoral terms? Will Texas and the like turn blue in the next years?

They are only more liberal if you mean "obsessed with developing and organising around dubious micro-identities at the cost of class analysis and collective action". There is no longer any meaningful left in the US or Canada, and I'm not going to cheer for neoliberalism in pink hair and a pride T-shirt just because the only alternative is slightly worse. Liberals, mostly liberal men, have spent the last 50 years waiting for the problem people to die out while becoming them because in general, men grow more conservative as they age while women grow more radical and ignored/marginalised.

Right now, what the super woke endlessly self-congratulatory young people are doing in not voting at all while harassing reporters and candidates for the tiniest perceived misstep and comparing feminists to nazis for suggesting things like "women are oppressed on the basis of their sex". Which I realise sounds insane, but I have spent the last ten years watching feminists be harassed and attacked as these loons are increasingly brazen and free to protest any feminist event, and even libraries for carrying their books, with impunity. I have no hope for or faith in any of these assholes.

[Senseye]

There is no longer any meaningful left in the US or Canada...

I think you meant to say there is no longer any meaningful left in the US (was there ever?) and no meaningful right in Canada.

Canada is left wing as fuck these days. Budget deficits sky high, free money for everyone and the answer to any and all problems is to throw (borrowed) money at them. Aboriginals and anybody with an oddball sexual orientation are practically worshiped like gods in the mainstream media. Social justice is pretty much all the Canadian media focuses on these days, with global warming alarmism mixed in on slow days when no new 100 year old colonial transgressions can be found to be dragged out for scrutiny under modern 'sensibilities'.

[starjots]

Also do y'all not wear white clothes after Labor Day?

I think this is regional. When I lived in the northeast, I was advised not to wear white pants after Labor Day. I also was told I needed a jacket to eat at a semi-fancy restaurant. These ideas were entirely foreign to me as a denizen of the southwest. My idea of a good dress code is that found in Hawaii, shorts and a shirt work almost anywhere and more colors please!

We are going to attend a kid's 'real' wedding in Mexico, I hope, this September. My wife is concerned about how formal they may or may not be - my daughter-in-law's family comes from Mexico City and are much more sophisticated than we are. Then again, my wife is originally from the northeast US and may have some residual give-a-fucks about such things.

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

\

They are only more liberal if you mean "obsessed with developing and organising around dubious micro-identities at the cost of class analysis and collective action". There is no longer any meaningful left in the US or Canada, and I'm not going to cheer for neoliberalism in pink hair and a pride T-shirt just because the only alternative is slightly worse.

Based on my experience, that is less true now than it was 10 or 15 years ago. It still exists, but alternative currents exist which sure as fuck only existed on a latent level when I was in college.

The only people against neoliberalism then were very small groups that would present grand plans for doing things, and then back away at the last moment because there was something "problematic" or "colonialist" about it. They were dominated by people who were incapable of conceiving how the election of Obama would change the political landscape and this would inevitably affect organizing (not that they did much) regardless of whether or not you believe in electoralism. (The pushback against my idea that "hey, maybe we should think about planning for the new landscape that would occur if Obama is elected" disillusioned me from serious political involvement for 10 years. In retrospect, I maybe should have pushed harder but I was super shy at the time, and felt like people thought I didn't belong because I majored in STEM.) So, in other words, no challenge at all.

[ashi]

There is no longer any meaningful left in the US or Canada...

I think you meant to say there is no longer any meaningful left in the US (was there ever?) and no meaningful right in Canada.

Canada is left wing as fuck these days. Budget deficits sky high, free money for everyone and the answer to any and all problems is to throw (borrowed) money at them. Aboriginals and anybody with an oddball sexual orientation are practically worshiped like gods in the mainstream media. Social justice is pretty much all the Canadian media focuses on these days, with global warming alarmism mixed in on slow days when no new 100 year old colonial transgressions can be found to be dragged out for scrutiny under modern 'sensibilities'.

Neoliberal hand-wringing isn't Marxism, chum. How can you call a cultural shift that sees feminists being attacked in the courts and secularism denounced as racist something "left wing as fuck". We had a proper leftist revolution and all that was tossed out the window in favour of American identity politics bullshit. Where is the labour movement anywhere in Canada? Who does anything more than placate environmentalists? Did someone end poverty and make university free while I wasn't looking? You may notice that every time Trudeau appears on TV in a pride t-shirt shedding a single, perfect tear over the horrors of residential schools nothing actually comes of it. Indigenous women are still experiencing sky high levels of sexual violence and disappearing in alarming numbers. Empty speeches are made, but nothing is done. Feminist events and rape shelters are protested and defaced by the supposed left and women are blamed for provoking them. Pornography and prostitution are celebrated as conduits of liberation while African women are denounced as hopelessly privileged for criticising the identity politics of delusional white men.

I know things can be drastically distorted through the lens of "left == bad" or "right == bad", but whatever you call it that is all some kind of fucked up.

[Senseye]

Ah I see. I could not recall if you (@ashi) were Marxist/socialist in your definition of left.

I guess from your perspective there is no left as you define it. However, I would argue, at least in Canada, it's still more left than it has ever been. So I would still take issue with your sentiment there is "no longer" a meaningful left. I would say the left is as politically powerful as it has ever been, although, yes, if you are looking for a full blown Marxist/socialist revolution one is not imminent as far as I can tell.

[ashi]

My use of "Marxist" there was not in reference to my own politics or desired immediate outcome, but an allusion to right wing weirdos decrying anything and everything as socialism/marxism. I will take full blame for that misunderstanding but I don't see how it obscures the rest of my point.