pc

[pcpersonal]

---------- Forwarded message --------- Date: Sat, Oct 19, 2024 at 1:13 AM Subject: 

i think this might be too long, maybe ill just choose stories from here when im up there lols, any suggestions which ones to leave? 

im and i was a health education , around ten years ago. i asked to be put somewhere rural, because i wanted to learn a lot lol, plus that is also a tropical region, and that was the most different from what i was used to. i studied art history because i liked connecting to people through something like art. so, it was neat to keep connecting in pc. 

we actually got placed in our country by surprise, and mine was a pleasant surprise! mada has nice landscapes, and the people are fun, kind of serious at first?, easy going, and surprisingly straightforward .-i miss its foggy mountains, -beautiful but carsickness-inducing, neon flowers in the capital, neighbors dancing to upbeat music without shyness, and watching babies grow, whose mothers i advised with local health educators, and who i met when they were still in their moms bellies. it was so much to know, i dont think id ever tried so hard at something before then lol, n havent tried so hard at anything since ! 

so, the first time i my my host family, pc'd barely taught us any malagasy beforehand! one of the only things we learned were the words for "whats this". that was pretty much all i said , trying to learn new words . we got picked up, and mine found me, pale with nervousness, and language-less, but she took my bag on her own tiny shoulder, and held my hand reassuringly, the whole way home-even though my vocab was narrow, we connected in nonverbal ways. some things are just universally funny or relatable, no matter how well theyre verbally articulated. like, i brought a deck of cards to play, but it was hard to use them, without knowing how to explain games. instead, my brothers and i played songs on the radio and danced, using brooms as air guitars, so my host mom called us the "backstreet boys kely" aka little backstreet boys. 

after living w them, at site before dinner, i kept my window open, and everyone else did too, and we'd each be singing our own pop songs to ourselves, kind of loudly, while cooking - i found people in my region to be, kind of surprisingly, expressive ! :) then, like ten neighboring kids'd come to my door and come in to chat every night, for like my first two weeks there, cause i was a novelty ! they sat on every little surface in my tiny house. they tried on my chacos and headlamp, joking that theyre me, drew me pictures which covered my wall, taught me to make rice while clambering through all my silverware, after id tried myself, but overflowed it , to my disappointment, :p, and practiced singing songs and accompanying dances with me, for when we go to the town's next party. they grilled me in gasy nightly, full of thoughts and questions lols, two of us sitting on my pc trunk, and thats how i ever learned how to speak smoother sentences lols. afterwards, i heard them playing in our sand street under the highest moon ive seen, which was bright enough that it shined through the slats in my walls lols :) later, either the cries of like four of my future fav babies who were born together at my neighbors houses, would wake me up, or stray dogs fighting outside each night, and their vicious barking woke me, leaving me spooked like a nightmare !

in mornings, farmers call out, "watch it!, my herd is coming!-"a omby!!". so i wake n bike to my favorite local health educator, who lets me call her "grandma", and holds onto my waist, to help cover me with her little parasol, when we shuffle with our health info notebooks, knocking on doors, to tell everyone what to watch out for this season - mosquitos, poop in the kabone, etc.. id sometimes lose my sandals, stuck in wet road, or one floats away during a big storm lol , and id meet eyes with a girl who face planted while running, through the same rainy season mud, and we exchange surprised, somewhat amused expressions lols.  later, everyone usually went home to lie shirtless in their dark house, trying to sleep through mid day heat, and eat liches, cause at least hot season is also liche season!

in the afternoon, id go to market. my entire way through the village, little groups of kids, who i dont even know, would call out my nickname as i pass them, "mituvetuve !"- somehow, children as far as in the next town knew my nickname! i think its good natured, and its a funny story: my first week, i was talking to my neighbor kids, and mispronounced the word for "similar"- its supposed to be "me-tov'tov', but i misprounounced it, "me-too vee too vee", so they called me that, and called it out whenever they saw me, and i responded back w it, even from all the way down the road! xD 

i approach the market, and i was told to get to know my community. so, we had one isolated paved road, that went westward across the country. most food stands, passing buses, and the market are there. and when you get there, it smells of cow poop, fried bananas, bus diesel and cooking-fire smoke, which sounds like a.. distinctt combo, but id recognize it fondly, if i smelled it lols. so i went all the way up this road, the section spanning my village, stopping at stands and making the lamest, but best conversation i had the vocabulary to muster : whats this food, where does this road lead? but we connected eventually! we got to jokes, like my friend, who ran the food stand at the bus stop and sold fresh juice, asked me, you like tamarind juice ? i didnt know how to say sour, so i just gestured, to say, it makes me go *shivers!* she laughs, and shivers back jokingly, at me xD. it iss an acquired taste - which i did eventually acquire!

so, at the end, i was on my way home, eating a snickers bar in the back of a taxi when i got to the capital, which i always bought myself first thing, every time i finished a long trip between my site and the capital, as a reward for idk, - not barfing on the long twisting road ? i choke on gasy words all over again now, if my host mom calls, which is frustrating since id worked hard to speak well! but i went there to learn about others/myself, and now im again relearning my place in the world, through the lens of what i saw there, about curiosity and connection, in a similar, but also different way, from during pc. 

[reasonsforhope]

Good news: Tiny urban green spaces can cool cities and save lives

A recent World Meteorological Organization report called heat waves the “deadliest meteorological hazard” from 2015 to 2019, affecting peopl

"A recent World Meteorological Organization report called heat waves the “deadliest meteorological hazard” from 2015 to 2019, affecting people living on all continents, and setting new national heat records in many regions.

‍Canada’s top weather event in 2021 was British Columbia’s record-breaking heat, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada. The temperature in Lytton, B.C., hit 49.6 C on June 29. The following day a wildfire destroyed 90 per cent of the town, killing two people and displacing 1,200 others.

Heat waves also exacerbate existing health issues, including cardiovascular and respiratory disease. They’re associated with increased hospital admissions, psychological stress and aggressive behavior, as well as excess mortality.

During heat waves, the highest temperatures are often found in urbanized areas. Urbanization is almost always associated with an increase in paved, impervious areas, and often a decrease in greenery. Concrete and asphalt roads, and other built materials readily absorb, store and release heat, raising city temperatures, a phenomenon called the urban heat island.

Many studies have shown that urban forests can reduce the urban heat island, and many policies focus their attention on large green spaces.

Small green spaces, such as yards, rooftops and small parcels of undeveloped land, can make impressive contributions to lowering urban heat, but they are often overlooked when developing strategies for urban cooling.

The effect of small green spaces

Cities rarely have the opportunity to add large green spaces to help counter the effects of heatwaves. Smaller vegetated spaces, however, can still meaningfully decrease local land temperatures.

Small green spaces, such as yards, rooftops and small parcels of undeveloped land, can make impressive contributions to lowering urban heat, but they are often overlooked when developing strategies for urban cooling.

A recent study in Adelaide, Australia, found that tree canopy cover and, to a lesser extent, grass cover decreased local daytime surface temperatures by up to 6 C during extreme summer heat conditions. Further inland, suburban yards and gardens can decrease local surface temperatures up to 5 C.

At a quite small scale, on the order of tens of square metres, trees reduced daytime surface temperatures twice as much as grass cover. But grass and other small, low-lying plants, grow relatively quickly, compared to trees.

Cities should adopt short-term and long-term strategies to respond to extreme heat, including the replacement of paved and impervious surfaces with grasses and turf, and increasing tree plantings to boost canopy coverage.

Amplifying the cooling effect

Furthermore, when managing small green spaces, city planners and foresters can select tree species based on their ability to cool the environment. Green spaces with a high diversity of tree species have a greater cooling effect in spring, summer and fall. They also have a larger maximum drop in temperature in the summer, compared to spaces that are less diverse.

For example, tree canopies with large leaves and high transpiration rates — the evaporation of water from plants occurring at the leaves — could provide more cooling.

Planting a variety of species, of different heights, can have a larger cooling effect than tall trees alone.

The structure of green space may also influence its cooling efficiency. In summer, a plant community with multiple layers of trees, shrubs and herbs can further decrease air temperature by 1 C on a sunny day and 0.5 C on a cloudy day, compared with an area only dominated by tall trees...

But overall, trees usually have a stronger effect on cooling than grass. Planting trees in groups, not individually or in lines, is recommended for regulating the microclimate (local climate conditions near the Earth’s surface).

Small green spaces can offer a lot of summer cooling in cities. And cities can learn to manage the configuration of small green spaces better to get more cooling benefits and minimize the trade-offs."

-via GoodGoodGood, July 4, 2024

[pcpersonal]

this is something id do if there was a pc here xD that and like youth like emotional intelligence and life skills or something

[ultrafacts]

[pcpersonal]

im x and i was a health education pcv in madagascar, around ten years ago. i asked to be put somewhere rural, because i wanted to learn a lot lol, plus that is also a tropical region, and that was the most different from what i was used to. id studied art history because i liked connecting to people through something like art. so, it was neat to keep connecting in pc. we actually got placed in our country by surprise, and mine was a pleasant surprise! mada has nice landscapes, and the people are fun, kind of serious at first?, easy going, and surprisingly straightforward .-i miss its foggy mountains, -beautiful but carsickness-inducing, neon flowers in the capital, neighbors dancing to upbeat music without shyness, and watching babies grow, whose mothers i advised with local health educators, and who i met when they were still in their moms bellies. it was so much to know, i dont think id ever tried so hard at something before then lol, n havent tried so hard at anything since !

so, the first time i met my host family, pc'd barely taught us any malagasy beforehand! one of the only things we learned were the words for "whats this". that was pretty much all i said , trying to learn new words . we got picked up, and mine found me, pale with nervousness, and language-less, but she took my bag on her own tiny shoulder, and held my hand reassuringly, the whole way home-even though my vocab was narrow, we connected in nonverbal ways. some things are just universally funny or relatable, no matter how well theyre verbally articulated. like, i brought a deck of cards to play, but it was hard to use them, without knowing how to explain games. instead, my brothers and i played songs on the radio and danced, using brooms as air guitars, so my host mom called us the "backstreet boys kely" aka little backstreet boys.

after living w them, at site before dinner, i kept my window open, and everyone else did too, and we'd each be singing our own pop songs to ourselves, kind of loudly, while cooking - i found people in my region to be, kind of surprisingly, expressive ! 🙂 then, like ten neighboring kids'd come to my door and come in to chat every night, for like my first two weeks there, cause i was a novelty ! they sat on every little surface in my tiny house. they tried on my chacos and headlamp, joking that theyre me, drew me pictures which covered my wall, taught me to make rice while clambering through all my silverware, after id tried myself, but overflowed it , to my disappointment, :p, and practiced singing songs and the accompanying dance with me, for when we go to the town's next party. they grilled me in gasy nightly, full of thoughts and questions lols, two of us sitting on my pc trunk, and thats how i ever learned how to speak smoother sentences lols. afterwards, i heard them playing in our sand street under the highest moon ive seen, which was bright enough that it shined through the slats in my walls lols 🙂 later, either the cries of like four of my future fav babies who were born together at my neighbors houses, would wake me up, or stray dogs fighting outside with vicious barking woke me, leaving me spooked like a nightmare !

in mornings, farmers called out, "watch out!, my herd is coming!”: -"a omby!!". so i woke n biked to my favorite local health educator, who let me call her "grandma", and held onto my waist, to help cover me with her little parasol, when we shuffled with our health info notebooks, knocking on doors, to tell everyone what to watch out for this season - mosquitos, poop in the kabone, etc.. id sometimes lose my sandals, stuck in wet roads, or one’d float away during a big storm lol , and id meet eyes with a girl who face planted while running, through the same rainy season mud, and we exchange surprised, somewhat amused expressions lols. later, everyone usually went home to lie shirtless in their dark house, trying to sleep through mid day heat, and eat liches, cause at least hot season is also liche season!

in the afternoon, id go to market. my entire way through the village, little groups of kids, who i didnt even know, would call out my nickname as i pass them: "mituvetuve !"- somehow, children as far as the next town knew my nickname! i think its good natured, and its a funny story: my first week, i was talking to my neighborhood kids, and mispronounced the word for "similar"- its supposed to be "me-tov'tov', but i misprounounced it, "me-too vee too vee", so they called me that, and called it out whenever they saw me, and i responded back w it, even from all the way down the road! xD

i approached the market, remembering i was told to get to know my community. so, we had one isolated paved road, that went westward across the country. most food stands, passing buses, and the market are there. and when you get there, it smells of cow poop, fried bananas, bus diesel and cooking-fire smoke, which sounds like a.. distinctt combo, but id recognize it fondly, if i smelled it lols. so i went all the way up this road, the section spanning my village, stopping at stands and making the lamest, but best conversation i had the vocabulary to muster : whats this food, where does this road lead? but we connected eventually! we got to jokes, like my friend, who ran the food stand at the bus stop and sold fresh juice, asked me, you like tamarind juice ? i didnt know how to say i dont love it cause its sour, so i just gestured, to say, “it makes me shiver”! she laughs, and shivers back jokingly, at me xD. it iss an acquired taste - which i did eventually acquire!

so, at the end, i was on my way home, eating a snickers bar in the back of a taxi when i got to the capital, which i always bought myself first thing, every time i finished a long trip between my site and the capital, as a reward for idk, - not barfing on the long twisting road ? i choke on gasy words all over again now, if my host mom calls, which is frustrating since id worked hard to speak well! but i went there to learn about others/myself, and now im again relearning my place in the world, through the lens of what i saw there, and still exploring curiosity and connection, in a similar, but also different way, from during pc.

——-

wanna know wat i left out. I was shy to go bc i didnt wanna feel sad abt it remembering it but when i got there it turne dout like half the ppl who talked went home early too! And had sad stories too abt their host mom dyin this year and she choked up sayin it or a girl getting malaria and one who married the guy who dig her an emergency poo hole when she had diahrrea lmaoo. And we all came up to each other empathetically warmly and sympathetically afterwards it was surprisingly healing and made u feel connected.

i shoulda thought of wat id like to hear if i was a prospective pcv but its hardd to conceive wat thats be wats approps and the right amount of expectations. Dif stories for dif audiences depending if theyve gone to pc or not lols. but i might want to tell prosp pcvs that some of the most imp things were u have to be v independent n have experience w idk self structuring ur day or some kinda community dev or program development and networking n especc delf defense/situational awareness!! would help . Well for my and ag sectors. The only thing thats keep i there is like ur dyinn to learn stuff and know ppl n language. A hard part is u are alwaysss like mostly disoriented bc nothings familiar and thats uncomfy sometimes to not feel at home.

but my experience was that ppl who do pc are some of our countrys like best? Ppl well at least patient curious and adventurous so we have a lot in common and u bond uick and deep bc u got thru it a lot together-i liked. U have to love challenging urself but its help to be honest and know when ur at ur limit and want to gracefully excuse urself to go home . Gives u so much important perspective to see another v diff country so intimately and thoroughly. Weather and potential or actual sickness is so much to get used to! Many health rules to get used to using so u dont get sick so request a site thats got good access to a town or the capital so u can get help. Does prepare u for harder situations in ur future tho since even tho its hard it didnt feel likee idk so paralyzing ? cause i knew i could just go home any time or my pcmo would helicopter to help me or send me home if its important emergency. But u need mental health of steel bc they dont have mental health reaources and if u tell tgem u need em theyll send u home so best case u can try just calling ur u.s. ther but the signal might be just ok n u probs dont wanna be isolated if ur not confident in ur health/mental health. Butt profound if u lovee learning and making friends and patient w inconveniences.

[inkskinned]

i love when words fit right. seize was always supposed to be that word, and so was jester. tuesday isn't quite right but thursday should be thursday, that's a good word for it. daisy has the perfect shape to it, almost like you're laughing when you say it; and tulip is correct most of the time. while keynote is fun to say, it's super wrong - i think they have to change the label for that one. but fox is spot-on.

most words are just, like, good enough, even if what they are describing is lovely. the night sky is a fine term for it but it isn't perfect the way november is the correct term for that month.

it's not just in english because in spanish the phrase eso si que es is correct, it should be that. sometimes other languages are also better than the english words, like how blue is sloped too far downwards but azul is perfect and hangs in the air like glitter. while butterfly is sweet, i think probably papillion is more correct, although for some butterflies féileacán is much better. year is fine but bliain is better. sometimes multiple languages got it right though, like how jueves and Πέμπτη are also the right names for thursday. maybe we as a species are just really good at naming thursdays.

and if we were really bored and had a moment and a picnic to split we could all sit down for a moment and sort out all the words that exist and find all the perfect words in every language. i would show you that while i like the word tree (it makes you smile to say it), i think arbor is correct. you could teach me from your language what words fit the right way, and that would be very exciting (exciting is not correct, it's just fine).

i think probably this is what was happening at the tower of babel, before the languages all got shifted across the world and smudged by the hand of god. by the way, hand isn't quite right, but i do like that the word god is only 3 letters, and that it is shaped like it is reflecting into itself, and that it kind of makes your mouth move into an echoing chapel when you cluck it. but the word god could also fit really well with a coathanger, and i can't explain that. i think donut has (weirdly) the same shape as a toothbrush, but we really got bagel right and i am really grateful for that.

grateful is close, but not like thunder. hopefully one day i am going to figure out how to shape the way i love my friends into a little ceramic (ceramic is very good, almost perfect) pot and when they hold it they can feel the weight of my care for them. they can put a plant in there. maybe a daisy.

[highlandvalley]

The most beautiful footage of strangers dancing in public… https://twitter.com/Thorayaaa/status/1660180658646568967

[kendrixtermina]

its like a real life version of that children’s song with the magic bridge that you had to dance across

[prismatic-bell]

Highlights: --all the old people --one dude who starts doing the Cotton-Eye Joe and has the steps on lock --quinceañera girl with a dress bigger than the circle --lots of kids but particularly the dude who's doing the helicopter with his little girl --an entire section of Millennials doing dance moves I recognize, oh the nostalgia

[mapsontheweb]

The black areas represent the remaining natural dark skies in the United States

[largedad]

[impossiblepackage]

I’ve been in the middle of the ocean at night and now live in texas and it is so hard to explain to people that no, they have not ever seen the night sky. It is so hard to explain to people that what they think is a proper night sky is fucking pathetic. A disgrace.

People talk about how you can’t see stars in the city and yeah, that’s true, but their concept of “seeing stars” is being able to make out orion’s belt.

So, so few people have see the sky in all its glory and it’s not sad. It’s a fucking crime. Seeing a perfectly dark night, no clouds, not a hint of light pollution? That’s a fucking religious experience.

The sky the vast vast majority of us grew up with is not the sky that inspired us to look up. It is not the sky that inspired constellations. You can’t even see most constellations.

Your ancestors looked at the night sky and said “surely, that is where the gods must live.” And you might be lucky if you can see hardly more than a handful of stars.

The sky is full, fucking FULL, of stars, and you’ve never seen them.

[anarchistmemedistro]

light pollution is also actively harmful to many species of birds, mammals, and insects

[neil-gaiman]

I took these photos on the Isle of Skye, in a place with no light pollution. Skies can look like this.

[pcpersonal]

Outcool

[ladysparklefists]

idk I just love how we Young People Today use ~improper~ punctuation/grammar in actually really defined ways to express tone without having to explicitly state tone like that’s just really fucking cool, like

no    =    “No,” she said. 

no.    =    "No,” she said sharply.

No    =    “No,” she stated firmly.

No.    =    “No,” she snapped.

NO    =    “No!” she shouted.

noooooo    =    “No,” she moaned.

no~    =    “No,” she said with a drawn-out sing-song.

~no~    =    “No,” she drawled sarcastically.

NOOOOO    =    “No!” she screamed dramatically.

no?!    =    “No,” she said incredulously.

[allthingslinguistic]

I’ve been calling this “typographical nuance” and I have a few more to add: 

*no* = “No,” she said emphatically. 

*nopes on out of here* = “No,” she said of herself in the third person, with a touch of humorous emphasis.

~*~noooo~*~ = “No,” she moaned in stylized pseudo-desperation.

#no = “No,” she added as a side comment.

“no” = “No,” she scare-quoted.

wtf are you kidding no = “No,” she said flatly. “And I can’t believe I have to say this.”

no no No No NO NO NO NO = "No,” she repeated over and over again, growing louder and more emphatic. 

nooOOOO = “No,” she said, starting out quietly and turning into a scream.

*no = “Oops, I meant ‘no,’” she corrected, “Sorry for the typo in my previous message.”

[whenimgod]

I cannot express how strongly I absolutely love language and writing and communication but if anyone asks why I will be showing them this post from now on

[stevetomjohn]

this is great, but I got to “no no No No NO NO NO NO” and immediately started singing “mamma mia, mamma mia, mamma mia let me go”

[headjudgelen]

no no no nO (no no no)= “No,” she said, sticking to the status quo

[the-haiku-bot]

no no no nO (no

no no)= “No,” she said, sticking

to the status quo

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[aqua-regia009]

Moonlight by Valfrid Nelson (1849–1930)

[shoku-and-awe]

South Carolina followers: free green beans on I-95!

[sylren13]

[alecsgrg]

Last light | ( by Niklas )

[clickbeetle]

a lot of pieces of media will show characters catching fireflies with just their bare hands. in some cases they will just land on the persons fingers. to gently be placed inside of a jar..

for people who live in areas who don’t have fireflies, i want you to know that is not made up or exaggerated for those scenes. fireflies are really like that. they are slow and not cautious at all. while camping i would just walk up to one flying in the air and grab it. and it would sit on my hands like “oh ok.” they are my friends.

[clickbeetle]

also i think it’s funny when fireflies are portrayed as round light bulb-ish shapes. they are skinny.

[clickbeetle]

also their butts are yellow even when not lit up. they’re not just all black until suddenly lighting up yellow! they always got little yellow asses!

[clickbeetle]

they are such friends

[exceptionerroralex]

fireflies our beloveds <3

[toasty-bat]

Thought people might appreciate this video I got of a firefly that landed on my mom’s ring and sat there flashing for about a good minute or two. They really are just like that

[systlin]

🔥 on american culture

There isn’t any.

America stripped the cultures away from all who came here in order to hammer them into the good little uniform consumers that were wanted.

The culture of America is one of endless consumption and breathtaking arrogance.

[kyidyl]

That’s....not really true. Because it’s literally impossible to have a group of humans and not have a culture. But is hard to see your culture from the inside. And, yes, there are negative things about American culture. I mean obviously. But after spending >year outside the US, here are some things I noticed about our culture:

We are casually generous. “I’m going to the store, you need anything?” Does not carry a requirement of paying us back. The other Americans in my program thought nothing of buying one of our British friends a soda or something, whereas when our British friends got each other a drink or something they paid each other back. And if you’re in trouble, Americans will literally offer you the shirt off their back. Or - in the case of one Brit I had a conversation with - a job to a stranger who needed it.

America is brightly colored. I don’t know how else to phrase it. Europe isn’t drab but like the US like brightness, light, and color. It’s the first thing I noticed when I got home - everything was more saturated.

We are genuinely curious. We aren’t always as polite about it as we should be, but usually if we’re asking about your culture, it comes from a good place.

We genuinely love cars. I’m not saying this is a good or bad trait, just that it’s part of our culture. We like to drive a lot more than people in Europe.

We are diverse. I was walking home with one of the other Americans and we were chatting like idk...a couple weeks after we’d met and she was like “ok I don’t want to be weird or anything but like....is it just me or is it SO WHITE here??”. We agreed that, yeah, it was but that y’know...White people came from somewhere and the uk is one of those places. But when I was gone I really missed seeing faces that looked nothing like mine. There are, of course, other ethnicities in the UK but compared to the us where literally half the population isn’t white, it’s definitely a striking difference. And as a consequence of this, our food is way more diverse. We didn’t strip these things from their cultures. The vast majority of restaurants that have, say, Chinese, or Thai, or sushi, or Indian, are run by people who immigrated here, brought their culture here, and adapted to the goods available to them in their new country. That is a natural, normal process and a long-existing part of human migration. And because we have so many more cultures here, we are lucky to be able to take part in what they share with us. It isn’t always a benign process but it’s just wrong to say that it’s always about “us” stealing from “them”.

We talk about our problems. IE, we’re very self-critical. We aren’t always good but we spend a lot of time looking at our culture and our country, breaking it down into pieces, and examining those pieces. We argue about how to make them better. A lot of times we suck at it but at least we’re having the conversation and the argument.

We hate authority. It doesn’t matter what your politics are, chances are you dislike and distrust the govt. we’re rebellious and few things make us more pleased than giving the man the finger or seeing someone else do it. British people protest - I literally saw an anti-Brexit protest march by my window - but they plan a time, politely show up and politely voice their displeasure, and then go home after cleaning up behind themselves. Americans? We fucking RIOT. Part of the entire point of the mall in DC is to yell at the govt every time we don’t like what they’re doing. We hate that we need a permit to do it. We’re always looking for new and creative ways to question authority. I think this is why it bothers a lot of us when people from other countries are like “why don’t you do something about _______”. Like, we’re trying. Trust me, we’re trying.

Idk that’s just some random stuff I noticed after living somewhere else for awhile.

[physticuffs]

yes!!! other things: 

- Americans smile a lot. Europeans can tell the American in the room just because the American will auto-smile at random passerby. smiling is a greeting as much as “hello” is, and it’s a way of talking. when i talk to American friends, i’m nearly always smiling slightly and my tone rises and falls constantly. my European colleagues do not smile nearly as much, and have much flatter speaking tones. 

- Americans are ultra-casual. after you graduate from school, everyone is going to introduce themselves by their first names. actually, sometimes even in college, professors will do that. Euro and Asian colleagues tell me that in their home countries, professors act like gods and it’s very difficult to disagree with them. one side effect of the casualness also plays into friendliness; Americans are what Europeans consider friendly on a very frivolous surface level, and colleagues of mine have been confused by strangers who they thought spoke to them like friends, but it’s just the American attitude of being casual toward everyone. a German colleague told me that even the notoriously “rude” parts of this country, like the Northeast, are still “friendlier” toward strangers than most of Europe. 

- building on what @kyidil​ said about “Americans love cars”--ROAD TRIPS. road trips are such a staple of American culture. Americans are much chiller about driving long distances than typical for Europeans, and cross-country road trips are a staple of American media, often considered almost a rite of passage.

- and yes, Americans often have a much deeper-seated distrust of authority than Europeans. it often doesn’t look like it, especially due to the Trump phenomenon, but even that’s a type of backlash against authority. it also doesn’t express itself well; our government has eroded a lot of freedoms that Americans are relatively unaware of, but mostly in the realm of privacy. for both good and for bad, the particular form of the American obsession with freedom comes very much in a “don’t tell me how to live MY life” way--regardless of enforcement. ie, i have a strong sense from growing up in this country that if everyone knew they were spied on all the time, but the government actually did nothing with that information, that would be fine. on the flip side, if the government set “how to live your life” laws in place but didn’t check up on anyone or enforce it, Americans would be rioting in the streets. basically, it’s a libertarian streak that runs through the entire political spectrum.

ADDITIONALLY, it’s difficult to talk about a monolithic American culture because our entire nation is nearly as big as the entire continent of Europe, so it might be more fair to talk about regional cultures. (for example, the note about diversity being part of American culture strikes me as a very regional thing, and very urban.) but it’s ridiculous to say that America has no culture when each regional culture is, definitionally, an American culture. as the person above me said, it can be hard to notice your own culture until you move elsewhere, but then you notice it hard. i moved from the Northeastern megalopolis to Colorado--different areas, different cultures, but both are American cultures. i guarantee any American that if they left the country entirely and went to live in another country for a while, they would start to realize what pieces of culture they no longer encountered, both in quintessentially “American” things and in quintessentially “my region of America” things.

[whetstonefires]

Mostly via Hollywood, America has also followed Britain in the tradition of casually exporting its culture so extensively that pieces of it become...internationally cosmopolitan, as it were, which further complicates the process of identifying 'American culture' as such but still doesn't actually unmake it.

Oh also, complement to the casual generosity thing: while the details of this practice vary a lot regionally, a great way to communicate to an American that you don't like them and are refusing to be their friend/friendly is to politely decline whenever they offer to do you a small favor, like grabbing you a drink or giving you a ride on their way to somewhere.

It doesn't matter how nice you are about it or how cordially you act in general, if you say 'no' to all offers over time without at least coming up with an equally easily fulfilled counter-offer to one of them, you are cutting your American acquaintance dead. Depending on how sensitive they are and why they were trying to bond with you, a grudge may even result, and you may be labeled 'fake' or 'cold' or 'a snob' or some similar thing.

It's permissible and even welcome to later reciprocate such offers in kind, but settling them in money or even being too anxious to balance the scales exactly communicates the desire to keep things impersonal. Unpaid debts that are never called in is how you know your friends.

[fantastic-nonsense]

Also, in terms of more tangibly visible aspects of American culture that you don't normally think about but are definitely American:

Music: Jazz, Hip-Hop, Rap, Country, and Blues are all inherently American music styles that have spread worldwide

Religion: many of the various major Protestant Christian denominations that exist were founded in the United States. Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, Quakers, the AME and other African American churches....you just do not get the same Vibe™ anywhere else. The history of Christian evangelism/evangelical churches is embedded in our culture. The American South is called "The Bible Belt" for a reason, and that reason is the existence of a particular unique culture that gets exported elsewhere.

Also...Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons. Both are "fringe" but largely inescapable parts of American culture.

Architecture: Art Deco, skyscrapers, the concept of American suburbia

Technology: the pervasiveness of Apple/Apple products as a cultural signifier of wealth and status

Clothing: wearing a baseball cap abroad is literally the easiest way to get identified as an American. Also, our 'casual clothes' culture compared to most other countries

Holidays and Traditions: Thanksgiving and Memorial Day are the two most notable holidays with unique cultural characteristics and traditions

Sports: American football and baseball, but also "regional" sports like ice hockey, rodeos, and lacrosse....also, frankly, the way that sports and sports teams are integrated into the school system. That's largely unique to United States culture. The concept of Homecoming straight-up doesn't exist in most other countries. Related: the Kentucky Derby and horse racing as social events, golfing as a part of American business culture

Literature and Media: Disney, caped/masked superheroes, the Transcendentalist movement, Slavery narratives, the Beat Generation, late-night talk shows

Other general pieces of American culture: driving at 16, high school prom, car and driving culture, volunteerism, gun and hunting culture, and our weird cultural relationship with alcohol and drugs due to the history of the Prohibition movement and the War on Drugs

It's important to realize that it's often difficult to see a culture when you grow up in it and doubly difficult when your country is a culture exporter (sometimes in the name of cultural imperialism, sometimes in the name of making money, and sometimes by complete coincidence). But the United States definitely has a (or a series of) culture(s), and it is in many ways a sign of American exceptionalism to pretend we don't.

[pcpersonal]

pc learned so much + felt and gave so much love

[war-photography]

[chthonic-isabelleadjani-deactiv]

The idea of english as a mother tongue is so strange to me, in my head english is how ppl communicate when there's no way in common to communicate, so english as a mother tongue sounds a bit like idk email as a mother tongue ykwim? Like english to me feels like the stuff that's used to fill the empty spaces between languages

[carnivorine]

Ok English is my native language and unfortunatly the only one I know yet, but this reminds me so much of that passage in Flights by Olga Tokarczuk

[nimbus-tatze]

I'm going to maybe exaggerate a bit but the thing that gets me about english is that it is utilitarian(?) and that's it. I feel no emotion, no history, no instinct when I speak english and even after a decade of speaking english as my third/fourth language I'm still surprised at how void it feels sometimes.

I find myself starting conversations in english but switching to the other languages when i get emotional. English poetry doesn't do it for me, neither do songs or many of the novels that were originally written in english. I have to feel them with the emotions I've learned from the others.

English is just... there and it does it's job, it's conveying an idea and it is probably best at being a tool for smth like a group project bc it's quick but.... The best comparison I can make is with a meal. My other langauges, they feel like a hearty meal or a lovely conversation, they are really nourishing and comforting in and of themselves.

English feels lifeless in comparison. It's a tool and a tool only.

[kasaron]

Interesting; I can honestly say that's not the case for myself, I delight in twisting and shifting and mutating the language into viscerally unsettling extremes for the simple and plain sake of it.

Though English may be tough, through enough thorough thought, know now no word will be misread when you read it readily.

That sentence is...utterly insane and an example of what sort of antimechanical insanity lies lurking beneath the surface.

I can literally drop visual images and raw emotion into the brains and hearts of people with this odd, sputtering patchwork language, and also ellicit groans of pain from illicit abuse of the amount of puns, idioms, axoims, homonyms, and the other various sorts wordjankery available.

But, your mileage may vary.

[xphilosoraptorx]

Take for example the English ability to turn anything into a verb. If I say, "I found my brother batmaning around the house at 3 AM", I don't need to explain anything, you immediately know exactly what I mean. I made use of culture, history, and art to describe my brothers behavior in a single word.

[chthonic-isabelleadjani-deactiv]

those are things that are, in this or similiar ways, universal to all languages though

[germanpsychiatrist-deactivated2]

I love some of the romantic English poetry, but it is still mostly utilitarian to me

[celestial-bat]

The different perspectives on langauge are interesting. I think I'm somewhere in a middle of all that. I know that I definitely feel emotional disconnect from English (not when I'm reading it but when I'm speaking or writing myself). It makes it easier for me to talk about emotional stuff I feel uncomfortable talking about in my mother language, it's less personal, it's further from my core (and that's why 80% of the time j switch to English when I'm talking about emotional topics with my best friend, also Polish like me).

However, I do know what you all mean by seeing English as utilitarian. I think it changed in my head more when I started reading most of my books in English and using casually but I still have a bit of a hard time seeing the beauty of the langage. Like reading a book and seeing that it is beautifully written. And I useally don't feel English poetry but I've never been much of a poetry person to begin with

I do like certain flexibility though. Lie turning everything into verbs easily or gender neutral language (and even puns but I can't tell them lol)

[pcpersonal]

I love thinking about peoples dif relationships to language. Obviously if somethings not ur first language itll feel more utilitarian and probs harder to feel connected to . Any language can feel only utilitarian if u, personally, use it more for funtional instead of personal uses, so feelingg personally like english is just for getting stuff done isnt really a diss , everyones just different in their experience w languages

ar as i know i dont feel like something is Lacking in my ability to communicate the rightt amount of emotions that i feel, i think english is finee i have no likee complaintss lols. I never find myself feeling likee boy if OnlY my language could express this and that thing more 🤷🏻 Idkk, what elsee do ppl talk about ?

it has a lot of particular nuances probs like other languages like sarcasm and irony

its interesting how its hard to translate exact ways a message feels though like it has one feeling in one language and u sometimes have to thinkk of particular other words - but the direct translation wont do lols-in another language to get the same effect acrosss