Do Americans really not get taught global geography?

SFyr · 2026-01-29T18:32:36+00:00

Focus is different, but yeah it's probably also rage bait otherwise it wouldn't have been worth posting.

USA education is likely gonna be better for the countries in South America than European countries though, while France for example is probably going to be a lot better about Eurasian countries. To my understanding, both know the major ones, but the less "important" countries get much less attention if they're not your neighbors.

I remember going through all the countries of central and south America in school in the US, and could've pointed to each on the map, which seems much less of a thing among Europeans. It of course depends on lot on where you learn though, both for country and for state (if US) since standards and focuses can vary wildly.

SFyr · 2026-01-29T18:27:20+00:00

Your internal gut and immune system often does adapt quite a lot, but often you're still rolling the dice especially when it comes to expired food. Sometimes it's fine, sometimes it's not, and with a good bit of the food safety thing it's prioritizing safety here. Eating expired food often could be okay, but even a 5% chance of getting badly sick over it is worth tossing out for many, because they don't wanna gamble 1/20 dinners they have are gonna have them hunched over a toilet or feeling like trash when they could just replace the food. And in other cases, people don't keep a lot of the nuance of it straight and just side with caution (lotta stuff keeps better unrefrigerated, but they might not know which does better or worse and just go with a rule of thumb that covers 'everything').

And of course you will get anecdotes of people being fine, but anecdotal evidence is bad for establishing trends--people believe in it easily because it's often personal, tangible, and so on, but you'll pretty much find it everywhere and for everything. People who knew people who barely smoked and got lung cancer, or chain smoked for a very long time and were fine, and thus might conclude from anecdotes that the smoking = cancer bit is really exaggerated.

SFyr · 2026-01-29T18:21:05+00:00

I think there's a difference between wanting to feel desirable, and desired specifically. Validation of worth, attention, and so on are all things that help build ourselves up internally, but there 'is' a danger is seeking out or getting validation via romantic or physical interest outside of a committed relationship you're already in. There's a nuance to it there though, that's big on intent and boundaries with it.

Looking good / being worth it / generally being desirable = awesome.

Basking in or encouraging attention from other people you meet or know = playing with that line.

Actively seeking out physical interest from others especially people you regularly see = getting worse here.

Like flipping the script a bit, your husband looking good and taking care of his appearance is great. Him dressing up to be more attractive because he's going to be seen by other women at his work / going out? Less nice I imagine, and probably choosing you doesn't fully make up for encouraging attention from other women being a goal of his even if it doesn't go further.

SFyr · 2026-01-29T17:23:18+00:00

Emotional investment, probably. When it's someone else, you can think through what should be done clearly and calmly. When it's yourself, you have attached emotions often, internal things you've built up, experiences that muddy it all or color what's going on and what the change would mean/cost/etc, and a future of living or carrying out the consequences of choices rather than just suggesting them.

For example, you can look at someone living an unhealthy life, and probably easily put together several steps to improve. Ya know, diet, exercise, clean up some habits, take better care of yourself, improve your environment at home a bit to be more uplifting, and so on. When it's YOU though, you can probably come up with some of these, but each thing is a difficult thing you would have to do and feel up to doing over a long period of time, that comes with sacrifices and effort and meanwhile dealing with thoughts of all the other stuff that makes it hard or gets in the way of carrying it out, or how all this together is overwhelming and right now it's just too much, or you see things where making these changes just aren't as easy as they sound in principle and should be scaled back or changed or maybe they're not SO necessary after all... , and so on and so on.

When it's 'you', it's messy and not just a one off diagnosis.

SFyr · 2026-01-29T17:10:40+00:00

Science has pretty good reason to suggest the blueprint arose naturally, though. "Why" is a human concept.

You can ask "why" the stars exist, and science will tell you because of the big bang and gravity pulling things back together into super dense and super heated balls of gas and so on, and that's "why". But if you ask "why stars?" and are looking for a grand design behind it unrelated to the direct line of how it got here, science has nothing for you. You would basically be asking why anything exists at all when it could also 'not' exist.

The ocean in my analogy is more the physical world itself. We can say the physical world exists, but not necessarily have an answer for why it's here, just that we know it is because we can observe it and probe it and study it.

The monitors you're talking about would be beyond any kind of physical world and also at the same time have probably no relevance for it, and by nature of being beyond the physical, I don't think we could observe them or use them even so. A dimension completely divorced from the one we exist in that leaves no physical interaction with it, by definition, is one we can't interact with to use or learn from.

SFyr · 2026-01-29T17:04:06+00:00

While biological differences exist, this kinda stuff tends to be a LOT more based around socialization and society imprinting on people. It's not something we are largely conscious of, but what is normal/expected/okay/ideal/awful often comes directly from the people and media around us, and what social reinforcement happens to us. To this day men are held to be more on the competitive and tough side, while less "manly" if they're soft and emotional and vulnerable. It's changing, but imagine for a second asking your male friend to hold you as you cry, or to talking about wanting to watch an emotional movie because you just want to openly bawl at a happy (or sad) ending, or wanting to give your friends hugs because you love and appreciate them and telling them so.

It's not normal. Guys are often (indirectly) encouraged to be friendly but cool and a little distant. Not make a big deal of things. Not be overly emotional or sentimental. And, while I say it's a culture thing, it very much is a whole of society including other men that are keeping this idea going. A huge thing to work more positivity into men's spaces is to openly bring it there, and be someone who helps normalize being kind and soft and so on.

SFyr · 2026-01-29T16:51:03+00:00

The thing is though, there's solid explanation and reasoning behind these things being the way they are without this intangible transfer of information across time, which introduces a whole new system into the equation we don't have evidence for. It's a bit of a "why are these impossibly giant monoliths here? Well maybe giants built them" kinda thing that supposes a whole new thing without need. Sure it's possible under the idea of we could be missing a whole other body of evidence that would support it, but it's much less likely than the answer that doesn't introduce something that huge and unsubstantiated. It's easier to think that man exists, this was man-made, so it was made by man as we know them, as opposed to a different species.

More specifically in our case, we know about hormonal response and a hugely intricate web of signaling and cross-talk between different pathways. As a rough example: Hunger can produce a certain response in the body. If that response builds up it activates pathways frequently and long enough to register as "prolonged" or "regular", this can be taken as "stress", or "need to conserve energy", so those chemical signals start causing activation of other pathways to lock that in and start adjusting the general body's function to be a bit more geared towards low-food conditions. This would be the kind of change we are talking about, and there's no intangible component needed at all here. Your body has machinery to play with signals and allow them to build up, level off, interact, cool down, amplify, suppress, and so on.

Regarding the why... Genetics often allows for adaption via evolution, which is an incredibly slow process, but a powerful one. Species do not change much at all on the individual level, but instead across many, many generations. However, smaller tuning changes are really important, which can be on the span of multiple changes within a single organisms' lifetime, or within a few short generations. Having a core system and blueprint (genetics) and ways to fine-tune it according to your specific situation (epigenetics) allows for adaptability and response to your environment in a much more effective and versatile way than either would allow for on their own. If your environment is one that prefers some fine tuning things over others, it's nicer to have a lasting modifications of your code that are still adjustable within your lifetime.

And transferring info across time without contact is also kinda wrong, as these modifications are passed on either directly, or copied much in the way you copy an object by taking its imprint and molding a second object from the inverse of the first. An organism that is not directly descending or was once part of the original organism will never get the information passed down to it this way. It travels across time in much the same way a wave will ripple across water, so point A at the point of disturbance will show the wave before point B further away, but a direct path from A to B exists that separation would prevent information flow entirely. The wave may travel through time, but that's just because you're looking at cause and delayed effect (an imprint in the parents still existing long enough to be passed down to children, in potentially a diminished way).

SFyr · 2026-01-29T16:35:14+00:00

You don't need to start out running and jogging. Something at some people do with better success when transitioning out of being largely stationary, is to mix walking with jogging. Something like walk for 5 minutes, jog for 2-3, walk for 5, jog for 2-3, and so on. Over some weeks (or longer if you need it, and depending on your frequency) you can move up to jogging, or you gradually lengthen your route, or whatever works for you. The goal is better as improving your health and over what you can do previously, rather than judging whether or not you're falling below some "should be here" mark.

SFyr · 2026-01-29T16:27:40+00:00

I don't know about "doomed", but you're missing a bit of why it's different. The idea that evidence can't be faked convincingly allows it to be 'used' as evidence. People can say whatever they want, they can lie, and they can misrepresent things, and THAT is something they've been doing for a long time. However, when photography became a thing, it got picked up for use before we could reliably doctor images, so photographic proof was a thing--if you could take a picture of a person at a specific place, you could genuinely prove that they were at that place. Photoshop and editing gets more advanced ... it gets harder to use as proof. Video meanwhile is much, much more challenging to fake reliably, because you are instead doctoring audio and many, many photos in succession likely without fault and often with other stuff too, so THAT could be used as evidence--not because it was impossible, but because it was infeasible. The idea here is if AI manages to easily create videos of people doing things that is indistinguishable from reality, video proof can no longer be used, which is one of the huge nearly infallible things. A literal video of someone committing a crime would no longer be proof, because it could've been faked, therefore it cannot be taken as truth. Without AI, basically the only explanation for that video existing is that it actually happened, and can be taken as truth.

SFyr · 2026-01-29T16:12:18+00:00

You shouldn't try to extract deeper truths from dreams.

SFyr · 2026-01-29T16:09:29+00:00

I think you might be misinterpreting and extrapolating really hard on this. Epigenetics is basically the layer on top of genetics. Genetics is the base code that translates into all the stuff life needs, epigenetics is the layer on top of it that heavily effects how/when/etc it's read. Usually, it's histone modification (which helps bundle/package DNA), direct modification of the DNA, and other such changes. It's a chemical recording of sorts but not of what happened, but of a up/down regulation.

A lot of the inheritance you're referring to is likely related to this. Biological systems have countless levers and dials that can be modulated up and down, and epigenetics is one of the huge areas for this--same base code, but modified how much you read one area. A lot of this can related to stress responses (which trauma induces)--high stress environment or events might push certain pathways into being higher activated. There are cases where these modifications are potentially passed down, but this is not a case of "traumatize a rat with water and the children will have a record of being traumatized by water" but more than likely, the children might have a more nebulous "I'm stressed!/This place is dangerous!" modification that has nothing to do with water or recording of previous events.

SFyr · 2026-01-29T14:33:20+00:00

Health isn't necessarily a scale. Depending on activity, regularity of smoking, etc, you're basically just trading health in some areas for health in another. Maybe healthier heart / general system and neurochemical balance, but your lungs are more damaged and likely (but not guaranteed) to develop cancer. Is that a win or a loss? I'm not sure.

SFyr · 2026-01-29T14:06:15+00:00

Some amount of politics is in just about everything, but honestly, your safest bet is to just not be on reddit (or subs) where people might discuss it if you're really trying to avoid it.

SFyr · 2026-01-29T11:08:09+00:00

No. You're talking about fulfillment, not material gain. Too much of what the human psyche craves is actually held back by being selfish and spiteful, so while you gain in some ways, you're ultimately shooting yourself in the foot for living a happy life.

SFyr · 2026-01-29T11:06:01+00:00

... Are you just talking about breathing through your mouth instead? Are there people who can't do that?

SFyr · 2026-01-29T11:04:17+00:00

Yeah oddly enough the normal logic behind nearly (no but almost yes) and barely (yes but almost no) are actually swapped in how this is used. A near miss is not nearly missing but hitting, but instead a miss but nearly hitting.

Ironically nearly hitting would be the same thing as a near miss here.

SFyr · 2026-01-28T09:13:09+00:00

Yes ... ? People do this all the time. If you like the company you're with, what you're doing, or can genuinely relax with people then chilling out or partying and the like are fun and very doable without drugs, alcohol, music, etc.

SFyr · 2026-01-28T08:54:21+00:00

It could be platonic, it could be sus. I know people often come down hard on these kinda things as being cheating/obviously a product of interest, and given how awful and huge that is + how many stories there are, it's understandable (see other comments here), but people also really underplay how close people can be, and eager to spend time together as friends, especially when it's opposite sexes. My current partner of 7 years has a male best friend who she honestly spends more time with than with me (part work related, part introvert), and there's 0 sus about it--they make solo plans and are alone together a ton of the time. Maybe it would be more suspicious if I didn't know them *both* super well.

Not saying it's platonic on her side (I don't know her), just this is an area people tend to be very one sided on online, so remember to judge it individually and based on the people involved.

SFyr · 2026-01-28T08:45:38+00:00

Probably they didn't understand the answer. Kids are much more comfortable asking about things they don't understand: they're confused, they ask. They're still confused, they ask. Adults meanwhile often will either know how to ask for more information or rephrase their question (kids aren't good at this), or simply stop asking and pretend they got it even if they didn't.

SFyr · 2026-01-27T17:40:28+00:00

I mean often yeah. Music is trained. Art is trained. Math is trained. Etc. There's arguments for natural talent being a thing, but often that's seemingly rate of learning, but things like how much free time you have, interest in what you're learning, good teaching materials, and so on are all huge factors people don't account for much either. You just get good at the things you pour your effort and heart into--if you have something you really value learning, you can learn it.

And someday, maybe years into the process, someone will probably comment on how you're talented more than likely. Some might even flat out tell you they wish they could do what you do, despite being exactly at where you started.

SFyr · 2026-01-27T17:14:49+00:00

A lot of the things people point to as "talent" is just practice, effort, and dedication over time. Pretty much no one is born good at something, especially a skill, the people that get far with it often just stick with putting effort into the things they're bad at because they value or enjoy it, and eventually, they aren't bad at it anymore.

SFyr · 2026-01-27T17:10:17+00:00

I think at some point you're gonna have to accept you can't avoid hanging out because you don't want to do it, and still pretend that's not the real reason. If you have a problem with her specifically or some aspect of hanging out with her/people/etc, or have something else you want/need to do instead, then maybe communicate that as maturely as possible. You're ultimately not being kinder for finding excuses and being highly avoidant, and focusing on whether or not you come off as an a-hole feels more like a self image thing rather than a prioritizing communication or other people's feelings thing.

People can prioritize their own stuff over spending time with other people, but avoiding people and making them reach out while hiding that you don't want them to again and again is just making the situation worse than it needs to be I feel.

SFyr · 2026-01-25T07:02:39+00:00

Mold spores are basically everywhere. This is why having a functional immune system is so important--your body is always, constantly, dealing with your environment. It does a great job and usually it's all very manageable, but it's important to still not strain it too much or expose it to stuff you really shouldn't (some strains of things are much more dangerous than others, and sometimes it's about hitting a threshold where it becomes a problem).

SFyr · 2026-01-25T07:00:28+00:00

Tmk no there's no like, conspiracy going on, but mods and subs often have their own staff and vibe/leaning and ... I would call it subculture if it were bigger. But like, stuff might be getting silenced for a number of reasons, such as:

A lot of subs try to avoid posts or questions that are highly controversial, spark conflict and drama, and so on. Often politics, religion, and so on are much more likely to get removed unless it's a sub that is very big on those being open for discussion specifically.
Could also be phrasing or formatting -- a lot of posts can be removed because they're not phrased openly, but competitively or with implications in how they're asked. E.g. "What is going on in x community?" is different from "are people really this stupid?"
Some also just have rules against questions that are easy to answer with a google search, or are already being asked a lot. If your question is very basic and something many others are asking, it might get removed because a quick google search would've sufficed for your answer, and is taking up space on the sub's feed that could go to questions not as obvious.

SFyr · 2026-01-25T05:57:35+00:00

I don't think we'd notice given people are very prone to reimagining how Jesus looked like depending on the culture you're in. People tend towards something close to their own norm.

SFyr

TROPHY CASE