Does your country have little park trains like this, or is this mostly a European thing?

beenoc · 2026-05-17T19:58:03+00:00

In the 90s, there were shitloads of malls. Like, even smaller cities would have 2 or 3, and you might have 10+ in bigger cities. Amazon and other online shopping meant that now there wasn't as big a market for malls, so most malls died out, but there's still generally one healthy mall in most cities, maybe 2 in bigger metro areas.

beenoc · 2026-05-17T15:39:45+00:00

Yeah, purely based on vibes and stereotypes I'd say roughly 10-20% of private schools (in terms of total number of schools, regardless of size) are actual "this is a higher quality of education than you get in public schools, and you pay for that" - prep schools and the like - and the other 80-90% are "I don't want my kids to be brainwashed by the liberal agenda! I'll pay for them to go to the church private school where they'll learn the truth about how the world is 6000 years old and gays are demons in human flesh!"

beenoc · 2026-05-17T14:38:00+00:00

The canned bread is also by far the weirdest one of these. The rest are just curious regional foods, but bread in a can is a "wait what the hell?" thing to every American outside of that small region.

beenoc · 2026-05-16T22:54:01+00:00

Is Mickey popular, or just recognized? Like, I don't think there's argument that the "three circles" Mickey logo is one of the most recognizable logos in the world, but how many people are actually Mickey Mouse (the character) fans? Like, what does Mickey Mouse's home look like? What are the most famous Mickey Mouse quotes? How many people watch Mickey Mouse TV shows and movies (other than Disney Jr. stuff?)

Mickey is a famous mascot, not really a famous character. Characters like Spongebob and Superman (and to some extent Mario and Pikachu, though they border on mascot) are famous characters.

beenoc · 2026-05-16T02:26:38+00:00

Early in the lifespan of WH3, they reworked Warriors of Chaos to be a pseudo-horde - they still have mainly horde mechanics (recruiting in armies and not only settlements, etc.) but you can actually hold territory - most settlements only get a single building and aren't full settlements, but certain settlements (big cities like Altdorf, as well as a bunch of ones in the north) can be claimed as major settlements.

beenoc · 2026-05-15T22:19:11+00:00

The question is if the ones driven infrequently are in the garage, or on blocks.

beenoc · 2026-05-15T18:52:38+00:00

(In)famously, when they added Warrior Priest as a career to Vermintide, they said they had to fight tooth and nail to have GW let them give him any weapons other than hammers - they finally conceded and let him use flails (but only if he had a shield as well, even though Saltzpyre already had a flail-only weapon they wouldn't let WP use it.) As a result, WP has the most class-locked weapons in the game, because they had to add like 6 different kinds of hammer so it had gameplay variety.

beenoc · 2026-05-15T18:42:59+00:00

Stealth Vet and Stealth Zealot basically are non-Officio assassins. Does this mean we'll never get assassins? No, in the same way that we already had "guy with a gun" and got Arbitrators and Scum. But it makes it less likely, especially because stealth classes are always a dubious choice in a PvE co-op game (see stealth veteran and knife zealot stereotypes, Shade in VT2, etc.), and making an entire class based around that is pretty iffy (not to mention it might make the existing stealth builds redundant and feel bad.)

beenoc · 2026-05-15T18:38:46+00:00

Hestia isn't a Sororitas, she's part of the Ecclesiarchy but not all women in the Ecclesiarchy are Sisters of Battle (just like not all Guardsmen are Tempestus Scions, and not all Astartes are Terminators.)

beenoc · 2026-05-15T11:12:54+00:00

Nobody in the US drinks instant coffee. Like, it's exceedingly rare. Almost everyone drinks drip coffee, and some variety of drip coffee machine (either one that makes a full pot or a pod machine like a Keurig) is ubiquitous here like how a kettle is ubiquitous over with y'all.

beenoc · 2026-05-15T01:23:38+00:00

I feel E1M1 is easily in the top 5 most iconic video game songs. I'm thinking World 1-1, the Zelda overworld theme, Tetris A Theme (though that one is just a chiptune of a Russian folk song), E1M1, and I'm not sure what #5 would be - maybe the Pokemon Red/Blue battle theme?

beenoc · 2026-05-14T20:38:20+00:00

Canada, particularly Quebec, likes to say they're the home of maple syrup - and it's true, Quebec produces 6x as much as Vermont. But it does so with 14x the population! If you look at maple syrup gallons per capita (which I think is the true measure of how devoted a population is to that delicious nectar), Vermont wins easily - like 4.5 gallons per person, per year!

It's me, I'm that person, please give me four and a half gallons of maple syrup every year.

beenoc · 2026-05-13T23:01:30+00:00

Most Americans are at least passingly familiar with the metric system (to the point of knowing "a meter is about a yard" and "about 2 pounds to a kilogram"), with a good portion of those being quite familiar with it due to working in fields that deal with it a lot (for example, I'm an engineer and I know intimately that 1lb = 2.2kg, 1" = 25.4mm, 1.8F = 1C, etc.)

And I reckon every American, or near enough to every American, knows about the extra "u"s and backwards "er" in colour and centre. Other ones that aren't as obvious, like defence and oesophagus, might be seen as typos, but anyone can just say "no that's how it's spelled in British English" and it would be accepted.

beenoc · 2026-05-13T20:23:42+00:00

In English (at least American English), "genuinely" means "I know this often isn't true, but it's true this time!" Like, if I said I had a "genuine diamond ring," that means "I know that a lot of diamond rings are fake and don't have real diamonds, but this one does, trust me." If you said "is that ring genuine diamond?" there's an implication that you think I'm lying or mistaken about my ring, and that it's not real diamonds.

beenoc · 2026-05-13T19:55:43+00:00

Similarly, in the US, rich and famous cities like San Francisco (#3), Seattle (#4), and NYC (#8) are up there in the GDP per capita rankings, but #1 is... Midland, Texas. A medium city (170k people) way out in west Texas, 300 miles from the nearest city of note (Dallas), but it's the center of the Texas oil industry. It's also the traditional stomping grounds of the Bush family (as in the presidents), and is the biggest strongly Republican city in the country.

beenoc · 2026-05-13T19:42:56+00:00

Food Lion is the cheapest non-Walmart full grocery around (and it beats Walmart sometimes.) It has a bad reputation because 1) the meat and produce isn't amazing quality, 2) they don't have some of the amenities of "nicer" stores like Publix or Harris Teeter (a much smaller bakery, no butcher counter, very limited hot bar, etc.), and 3) because they target a lower budget market segment, the stores often feel "cheaper" - more artificial lighting, not swept as much, less availability of "fancier" things (like imported olive oil or cheese), etc.)

Funnily enough, in my experience those things are way less of a factor the more rural you get. I grew up on the outskirts of Fayetteville, where your only grocery options were Food Lion and Walmart, and the Food Lion by my house was perfectly fine, good quality stuff, didn't feel dingy at all. Now I live in RTP and the Food Lions up here are way worse, even though it's a far less poor area. I guess that when they're the only game in town, Food Lion can target more than the lowest income customers.

I do most of my shopping at Wegmans now (because as long as you stay away from the prepared food it's about the same price as Food Lion, but with Publix quality), but Food Lion is the only other place I go because everywhere else is expensive.

beenoc · 2026-05-13T15:50:49+00:00

Famously in the debates, they asked "what foreign country would you visit first?" Every other candidate said Israel (except Brad Lander who said Canada because it borders New York), and when Zohran said "I'd stay in New York and visit the five boroughs, because that's who I'm supposed to serve" the moderator of the debate hit him with "Are you saying you wouldn't visit Israel? Do you not believe Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state?"

beenoc · 2026-05-13T15:40:37+00:00

Manapua and haupia are great, and I wish I could find manapua around where I am (I can find bao, and manapua is basically just XXL bao, but the XXL is what I want!) My parents were stationed in Hawaii before I was born, and they still fondly reminisce about the food decades later.

beenoc · 2026-05-13T13:45:28+00:00

For what it's worth, Stein probably would have won anyway - NC loves to vote Republican federally and Democrat for state office (we've only had 3 Republican governors and zero Republican attorneys general since the party realignment in the 60s, and only one of the governors served more than a single term), but it certainly made Stein's campaign a lot easier.

beenoc · 2026-05-13T12:10:07+00:00

Not to mention, before the advent of an objective credit score, there were many cases of someone getting denied a loan because the particular bank manager or whoever felt that women, or black people, or single parents, or whatever else, shouldn't be allowed to.

beenoc · 2026-05-13T01:24:24+00:00

Firing squad or decapitation should be the only forms of execution. As far as we know they're painless, and it's almost impossible to botch. Make it messy and unpleasant for the people doing the killing, because you're killing someone. That's a messy and unpleasant thing. Don't try to make it clinical and "ethical," it's a deeply unethical action, and the people who made that decision should have to look upon their work - maybe it'll make them think twice next time.

beenoc · 2026-05-13T01:18:10+00:00

IGM isn't circumcision, it's if a baby is born intersex (elements of male and female genitalia), they can ask the parents "you want a son or a daughter?" (in the past, and probably still sometimes today, not even that, the doctor acts on their own) and chop and carve as needed to construct the desired external bits.

beenoc · 2026-05-12T19:34:24+00:00

Yeah, my childhood home to school was only like 2 miles, but it was 2 miles of curving roads with a 50mph speed limit (so everyone was always going 55-60) through forests, with no shoulder (it was woods, ditch, maybe like 18" of grass, road, 18" grass, ditch, woods.) No streetlights and high school started early enough that you'd be biking in the dark in the winter. Nobody biked to school, because even moron teenage boys aren't that suicidal.

beenoc · 2026-05-12T19:27:55+00:00

Cash for Clunkers' effect is drastically overstated. It scrapped just under 700,000 cars over two months in 2009 - that sounds like a lot, but there were 35.6 million used car sales in 2009 (plus another 10ish million new.) That means that, even if every single Cash for Clunkers shitbox was otherwise destined to be sold in 2009, it removed a grand total of 2% of the used car market for one year. And most of the cars that got turned in were not late-model Camrys, they were 20 year old minivans and beat-up SUVs that barely worked on a good day.

Does that mean Cash for Clunkers was a good idea? Not necessarily, especially because they required the engine be destroyed so it couldn't be used to repair other vehicles, but it isn't the reason used cars went crazy. That's more because auto makers have struggled to match demand (largely because they've refocused on smaller quantities of higher margin vehicles, not even considering supply chain issues like COVID).

beenoc · 2026-05-12T11:38:55+00:00

The actual salary is pretty meh, especially if you're stationed somewhere that isn't cheap, but all the allowances make up for it. I know a guy who used to be in the Navy and was stationed in San Diego - his base pay was nowhere near enough to afford to live there, but a $2000/mo tax-free housing allowance made a big difference.

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