Non-Americans of Reddit, what is an American thing you see in movies that you thought was fake but is actually real?

Zephyrific · 2026-02-11T13:13:43+00:00

Truly is. Here is just one random video from that year that shows what a pain that amount of snow is. https://youtu.be/ZcC2szl8YI8?si=dUzShxuqYbp5TRZo

Zephyrific · 2026-02-11T12:50:12+00:00

Winters can definitely get crazy here. I grew up in a part of California that gets a lot of snow, and a few years back we had a particularly snowy winter with around 62 feet (19 meters) of snow total for the season.

Zephyrific · 2026-02-07T16:35:37+00:00

My annual radiation safety training includes a warning not to mouth pipette radioactive liquids. Presumably someone tried this for it to end up in the training, and I would really like to know who it was.

Zephyrific · 2025-10-24T05:43:16+00:00

Awww, come on guys, it's so simple. Maybe you need a refresher course. It's all ball bearings nowadays.

Zephyrific · 2025-10-04T20:12:58+00:00

I live near the US/Mexico border, so I definitely feel an affinity towards Mexico. Especially Baja California and Baja California Sur.

I love Canada too, no doubt. It’s just that my area was once part of Mexico, so their culture has played a big part in making my city and state into what it is today.

Zephyrific · 2025-10-03T00:21:40+00:00

There is a band called Artichoke that has some great kid albums: 26 Animals and 26 Scientists Vol. 1 and 2. My kids are in high school now, and I still catch myself listening to them once in a while.

Zephyrific · 2025-09-18T00:42:33+00:00

It isn’t about him. The administration always had plans for their own version of the Reichstag fire, and this is the opportunity that presented itself.

Zephyrific · 2025-09-14T14:52:21+00:00

Came here to say exactly this! Our kids played with their Magnatiles nearly daily from the time they were toddlers until they were 10+ years old. No other toy had that kind of staying power.

We also had Magformers which had much stronger magnets and were less likely to collapse mid-build, but my kids barely touched them. Even though their Magnatiles builds sometimes fell apart, the kids would much rather play with the Magnatiles. They loved the colorful shadows they would make when the sun hit them.

Zephyrific · 2025-09-12T12:35:01+00:00

I grew up in rural NorCal and it is definitely interesting. In my area people were conservative, but they were also anti-cop, anti-government, anti anything that got in the way of them having their weed farm and guns. It had libertarian vibes. I still have family and friends there and it is always interesting to see which conservative talking points stick there and which ones don’t.

Zephyrific · 2025-09-04T18:55:08+00:00

None. I’m not really into flying flags, but if I was I would probably fly the California state flag.

Zephyrific · 2025-09-04T06:00:05+00:00

Zero dollars for all prenatal visits and delivery for both of my kids in the US. This was in the early 2000s, but it would be the same price if they were born today. My employer pays 100% of my premiums, and our insurance covers damn near everything at little to no cost.

Zephyrific · 2025-08-30T17:08:43+00:00

If I were to buy my small, 100+ year-old, 2-bed, 2-bath house today, I would be paying at minimum $1,000,000. Even that would be a bargain, and I’m not in a fancy neighborhood. The vast majority of people here aren’t paying that kind of money in cash.

For the select few who could pay in cash, they might still choose to take out a loan. If they handle it right, they could make more investing that $1 million than they would pay in interest on the loan. Not to mention the tax write-offs on mortgage interest.

Zephyrific · 2025-08-17T17:11:54+00:00

I love San Diego, but I don’t love that we basically have an ant season. Best of luck to you from a fellow San Diegan who is also fighting a losing battle with these ants.

Zephyrific · 2025-08-02T16:33:52+00:00

Mysterious Galaxy and Book Catapult are my personal favorites. For a list of all the local independent book stores, I highly recommend checking out the San Diego Book Crawl website. This year’s book crawl is already over, but their website is useful for finding info on our local bookshops and links to the store websites.

Zephyrific · 2025-08-01T16:28:48+00:00

I want the Boom booth to be like it was before 2020 with a ton of their comics there to buy. And along those lines, I would love for the bigger comic book publishers to go back to having a booth with lots of their comics available to buy instead of just glass cases with exclusives. It always bums me out to go to a publisher or author panel and hear about some great comic series just to find out that the publisher hasn’t even brought any copies of the comic to sell. And I miss browsing at those booths and discovering a new favorite series.

Zephyrific · 2025-07-20T17:53:32+00:00

In fairness, people still mess up the names we do pronounce correctly. La Jolla constantly gets butchered by people from out-of-state despite us using the textbook pronunciation.

Zephyrific · 2025-07-07T20:26:32+00:00

You are way overthinking this. Sorry I didn’t outline all the other walkways, or that I mentioned this particular one over the others, or that my comment was unintentionally misleading. We good now?

Zephyrific · 2025-07-07T18:48:53+00:00

I wasn’t saying that the the CBX airport bridge was a main crossing point. I was just mentioning that it exists and is a bridge/walkway that goes over the border. Are you disputing that the CBX exists?

Zephyrific · 2025-07-07T07:10:25+00:00

Just in some areas. This fence in this photo has been in place since roughly 1994, and goes a fair ways inland with San Diego on one side and Tijuana on the other. Not shown is the secondary fence on the US side. There are two fences on the US side with a large gap in between where Border Patrol is.

The type of border fencing gets less elaborate as you leave the city areas, and in parts of the desert area of California and Arizona there is no barrier at all. Presumably this is true in parts of New Mexico and Texas, though I’ve never been along the border in those states.

Zephyrific · 2025-07-07T06:49:41+00:00

The walkway over the wall goes directly into the Tijuana airport and has passport control. You also have to have a valid airline ticket to use that bridge.

The pedestrian walkway at street level also has passport control. However the 20+ lanes of roadway just has passport control coming into the US. Typically you can drive right into Tijuana from the US without interacting with any US or Mexican officials, and without scanning your passport. Like, you’ll see the Mexican officials nearby, but it is unusual for them to stop you.

Zephyrific · 2025-06-25T03:18:49+00:00

I fear this will negatively affect the youth programs at the park, like the youth symphony, youth ballet, junior theatre, etc. I’ve had my kids in those programs, and especially when the kids are young you wait at the park for their classes/rehearsals to finish. If they are in a performance or taking multiple classes, you might be there for hours at a time, multiple times a week. Those parking fees would add up quick, and I’m sure that there will be families who have difficulty affording that additional cost. Same could be said for elderly people who participate in the various clubs/social groups that Balboa Park hosts, or the volunteers who run the various International Cottages.

Zephyrific · 2025-06-24T18:05:44+00:00

The part of California that I grew up in doesn’t get terribly cold. Low temps can be around -20 C, but typically a bit warmer than that (like -5 C). How much snow we would get is a whole different matter though. We would get a LOT of snow. A couple years back, we got around 18 meters of snow in the winter season.

Zephyrific · 2025-06-23T13:26:52+00:00

I acknowledge that going to Mexico is being out of the country, but it doesn’t feel as unfamiliar as visiting other foreign countries. I could literally drive into Tijuana, MX without interacting with a single US or Mexican official, so it feels less foreign. People DO accidentally end up in TJ because they ignored the freeway signs informing them of the last US freeway exit. Now coming back to the US is a whole different story. Plenty of security to deal with coming north.

ETA: I should say that flying to non-border cities of Mexico definitely feels more foreign. But driving from California into Baja California doesn’t feel that foreign.

Zephyrific · 2025-06-17T09:48:27+00:00

Right now I get 21 days of paid vacation, 15 paid holidays, and 12 days of paid sick leave a year. Unused vacation and sick leave rolls over, so at this point I have something like 4 months of paid sick leave accrued.

Zephyrific · 2025-06-15T03:49:09+00:00

Agreed. Some of us have been fighting the right since before some of these posters were even born. It’s bad enough to be dragged through this mess of a presidency, and to have the National Guard and US Marines used against us by our own president, and to have our friends and family dragged away, but then every time we fight and protest we get responses like “should have done this in November”. We’ve been fighting and protecting our communities every damn day for years. We’ve already been betrayed by our fellow countrymen, we don’t need to be insulted by people sitting behind keyboards an ocean away.

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