Tumblr hot take of the day (derogatory)

I love making fun of the US-centrism on this site

[yaoiblackmold]

Whenever people ask me "why don't you know xyz, it's so popular" well see it's because

[burgundyflowers]

The world doesn't revolve around one country. What is popular over there might not be the same in another country and it's totally normal but pop culture for example is a global thing like most people know Ariana Grande. This is just an example.

[lydiardbell]

Yeah pop culture is universal and most societies like the same stuff, just like how everyone knows who Zhou Xuan, Dhanush, and Mia Guissé are and we all know and love the classic holiday season movie Al-Risâlah

[theweirdwideweb]

Dudes healthcare is so fake. My ADHD meds are $940 without insurance. But they gave me a website of "coupons" which straight up looks like a scam website, and I got it today for $60! Just a coupon from a random website and it was $900 cheaper. America, I am confusion!! America explain!!

[theweirdwideweb]

For all my uninsured judys out there it's for Walgreens only: walgreens.rxsense.com

[theweirdwideweb]

[handsmotif]

as a pharmacy technician i can share with you some websites that give you those "coupons" for your meds!

goodrx is the most well known one, but if i'm trying to find the cheapest price for a patient i compare it to scriptcycle, and use whichever is offering the best price. you just type in the medication (PLEASE make sure you're getting the right drug, dosage, and quantity) and your zip code and they will spit out some offers for you

some pharmacies may have their own discount card to compare to as well!

if you are getting a name brand medication, you can also look at the manufacturer's website to see if they offer any evouchers for you to use too

good luck out there 👍

[bitchesgetriches]

How to Pay Hospital Bills When You’re Flat Broke

[rayneydayss]

another one is singlecare.com, brought my duloxetine from $240 a month to $20

and there are coupons for hrt on there as well :) different options for different pharmacies

[hereissomething]

dollarfor.org saved my broke ass, it can save urs too

[benihana-circumcision]

[imsobadatnicknames2]

Extremely weird how many people decided to respond to this post by instead bragging about their Ignoble Despicable Savage view of appalachians

[help-help-i-need-an-adult]

I just have a healthy fear for the terrifying cryptids that could only come out of a place so ancient and nothing but mad respect for any humans who manage to live there too.

[jockohomomorphism]

every place is ancient that's how the earth works

[project-catgirlpiller]

[tiny-space-whale]

Reblog if you are a human rights extremist who believes that all humans are equal and has no sense of loyalty to nation states.

[anarqueeen]

"Hey american journalism how you doing"

American journalism:

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

[completeutterwonderfulnonsense]

An article from February 2025 about DOGE recklessly cutting software licenses by WIRED

Pulptastic was the most reputable source with a mobile functional website I could find linking the software license purge to the Epstein file redaction issue specifically

[mikkeneko]

@capriceandwhimsy this one

[galileosballs]

The thing about aggressive age-verification procedures is that they're a sign of a low-trust society. It's the sign of a society that expects people to be lying a lot. That's not a good thing for a society to be, even absent other factors.

I've spent the past few months living in Austria, and one of the things that has really impressed me about this country is how much it... trusts me. Transit works via the honour system. Nobody tries to card me when I buy beer. When I explained my usual prescription to my doctor here, she didn't try to persuade me I wanted something else instead. You can buy a vibrator from a vending machine.

And it all just works. The transit system is well-funded, the ERs are not full of dead drunk teens (it's hard to do too much damage to yourself with the weak-ass beer here, especially if comparatively few people drive), and nobody seems particularly fussed about it. This is the safest, cleanest, and happiest city I've ever seen. I live in what is broadly considered to be the worst part of town, and it's miles more pleasant than the nice parts of some North American cities I've lived in.

Nothing destroys trust more than enforcement. And if you have enough trust, you don't need enforcement. Isn't that better?

[cherrytry]

this is cool and all but like. Australia is literally passing a bill for under 16 to not access social media like at all. still waiting on how exactly they’re gonna enforce that, but like. Australia isn’t exactly the pinnacle of trust and freedom lol.

[galileosballs]

You might want to re-read my post a little more carefully, there, Oida.

[loveridden1999]

bring back shame

[loveridden1999]

peer reviewed tags

[wherelibertydwells]

[bogleech]

We don't talk enough about America's permanent ongoing saturation of "Stranger Danger" hysteria. It's like this country's whole social ecosystem teaches full grown adults to perceive an invisible army of rabid bogeymen lurking around every fucking corner. And it's everywhere. Absolutely fucking everywhere, top to bottom, from true crime media and urban legends like the old Poison Halloween Candy thing to our sadistically rage-fueled, revenge-based justice system and immigration policies. The NRA and the war on drugs and post 9/11 airport security and mccarthyism and satanic panic and just E V E R Y T H I N G in America, everything that has defined its history for 100+ years is constantly nothing but this fucking FEAR TERROR FEAR TERROR.

[sternentinte]

Just found out they sequenced fucking Hitler's DNA

Hmm, what is the best way to understand the most prolific believer in eugenics of all time?

Oh, I know! *checks notes* Let's check his genes!

[mariacallous]

[iamthetruenhaz]

Hoo BOY.

I'm Bulgarian, same as Prof. Popova here. My country was among the least affected by the fallout in the Eastern Bloc but still affected severely enough for us born after the disaster to have to be given mandatory iodine pills at school in the late 90s/early 00s to not "get goiter" (to expel any residual iodine 131, the radioactive isotope released in the disaster).

So my mother told me that not only did the communist top brass (those who didn't flee to western Europe, that is) get food imported FROM HALFWAY ACROSS THE SOVIET UNION, from fucking KAZAKHSTAN, but also that normal people were left completely in the dark to eat local irradiated produce, oh, and the annual May 1st rally? It took place while rain was falling. Radioactive fucking rain.

The communist authorities left the proles to get exposed to radiation while they took all measures to protect themselves. But the kicker? NO ONE KNEW A THING until much later. Rumors, maybe. But there was a complete media blackout. The communist governments kept mum about it.

[snovyda]

My mother, who was a student in one of Kyiv's universities, was forced to attend that May 1 parade in Kyiv. It was mandatory attendance under the threat of being expelled.

However, all the foreign students except for the East German ones left the university (and the country) very quickly.

Oh, and in the following weeks, her university's dormitory had the rule where one of the people living in each room had to stay in the room "on duty" and wash the floor every couple of hours. So in practice, you'd wash the floor by hand with a wet rug, then hang that rug outside the window to dry in the air, and then use the same rug to wash the floor again. Which, should any particles by on it, would have only helped spread them. That's basically all the precautions there were.

And I'm not even going into detail on events like the people in Prypyat, actually going out to watch the sight of the plant burning, because the glow of it looked pretty, having no idea of any danger to them whatsoever... because people knowing about the real dangers would cause panic, and we can't lose face like that, we're a utopia. Not to mention the cleanup....

[swedishjazz]

Everyone should read Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich, a heartbreaking collection of interviews with people who lived through the disaster and its fallout - women who tended to their first responder husbands as they died in agony, workers still shaken by having to shoot or bury alive pets left by the people who were told they were coming back in a day, people still missing their homes, and on which the "anti-soviet propaganda" show was based. It's one of the best books I've ever read and you couldn't pay me to go through reading it again. Just because it's not america doesn't mean it's automatically good, the world doesn't work on discord callout culture rules

[creidart]

[asharkapologist]

Baffling how Ukraine gets victim blamed for…*checks notes* not wanting to get slaughtered by the thousands and having the audacity to defend itself. These people want the entire Ukranian government to deliver themselves to Putin, the entire army to surrender and disband, and Ukraine to joyfully welcome their oppressors. Okay then. These people’s logic is crazy, plus the benefit of the doubt they give to a mob boss dictator who’s been running Russia for over 20 years.

[dancingindreamlight]

Yes. Capitulation emboldens an invader which has 0 respect for international laws or morality

And what do people think? They're invading just to spread peace and love and once Ukraine gives in they'll stop killing people? That would only be the beginning. If you really look at what russia is like, it's not some beautiful utopia. There is no free speech or independent media. People who dare to say anything contradicting the government's official position are imprisoned for long terms. Arrest, interrogation and imprisonment often include torture.

In the occupied areas of Ukraine it's even worse. Fot the most part there's an information blackout but we know what happens to people from former prisoners of war and civilian prisoners. Take a moment to listen to them.

[ceausescue]

amateurish first effort

[unitedstatesofidiocy]

?

[pjharvey]

im american and i knew that like in kindergarten so i think some of you are just stupid sorry

[decadent-hag]

"US curriculums don't talk about-" ok? And? Are you guys not absorbing literally any information from the outside world? Tv, movies, books, people talking around you? Hello????

[athena-cat-wizard-official]

I'm sorry do people need to be taught that other countries have metropolitan cities in school or is that information you can kinda infer from like. existing in real life

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Absurd that people will just say shit like this with their whole chest. If I had somehow gotten through life to age 21 believing that my country had cities but my silly primitive sepia-toned neighbours didn't then when contrary information came up I'd keep my mouth shut and head right to wikipedia. I'd take that misconception to the fucking grave.

[darkenedyeastextract]

For USAmericans who care to listen; the issue here is not that you were never taught or exposed to facts about the world but rather that ignorance is used as a shield for criticism. This is considered a dick move as you're basically saying you know you're ignorant, you're saying you don't want to learn.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

If you're older than fifteen and not currently trapped in or recently escaped from a very overbearing cult then "I wasn't taught that at school" isn't an excuse for beliefs that reveal that you fundamentally don't think of other places as real or important. "It wouldn't occur to me to put 'USA' on my address for international shipping because I just expect everyone in other countries to know where my state is even though I don't know theirs" "I just assumed that other countries on my continent wouldn't have cities for some reason" "naturally I just assume that having states is a US thing and other countries either don't have them or they don't mean anything, other places don't have regional differences like we do, we're so varied and everywhere else is a Country Of Hats" THIS IS A YOU PROBLEM. We all have shitty education systems, yours isn't special. We all have racist governments and nationalist propoganda machines, yours isn't special. Your American exceptionalism isn't suddenly cute and humble if you try to make it about your country being extra bad instead of extra good. You just learned you made a stupid assumption due to inherent racist or nationalist or whatever beliefs? Now you have better information. Maybe think QUIETLY TO YOURSELF about what other dumb assumptions you have because of that and spend some time on wikipedia or watching foreign movies or something instead of crying to the internet that it's your fourth grade teacher's fault for not making you memorise a list of foreign cities.

We all believe dumb shit and don't know anything. You think I know anything about your states? I don't. When people from non-English-speaking countries started buying my books online I couldn't understand the address formats to post them; I had to learn. I don't automatically know which countries in the world are larger than mine, I look up the info if I need it. Sometimes I say make a bad assumption and dumb shit and people are like "Derin what you said is wrong actually" and tell me otherwise and then I learn that. This is not an issue of having information. Everyone can be wrong about stuff, but your "uphill in the snow both ways" ranting about how nobody should expect better from you because Your Uniquely Bad Culture And Schooling is at fault for every problem is getting old.

[thedragonrabbit]

Y'all don't seem to understand that, for a lot of Americans, the first time they experience truly global thinking is University. That's why Universities are so dangerous to certain political factions. It's not rocket science, but education is IMPORTANT and not all educations are created the same. I would encourage you to try to understand that an alarming % of the USA is illiterate or has a very low level of education. That's not necessarily their fault. Be kind. Understand that the world SUCKS and some people need a little help seeing that the world is this huge, complicated, interconnected machine that runs BETTER with kindness.

[cumbiamurguera]

[lady-wildflower]

I need USAmericans to understand that "global thinking" as they put it to the rest of us is just. common sense. Consciously processing the mere concept of other countries. Like, your education system is not the root problem here, your exceptionalist culture enabling that level of stupidity and incuriosity is - there comes a point where kindness runs into the fact that you are proudly describing being truly as thick as mince and the rest of us are all kinda side-eyeing each other.

There's a reason there have always been jokes that atlases do not exist in the United States. You have a culturally enforced nationalistic narcissism and on the whole do not care to know anything about the outside world. And your nationalistic elements benefit from that; it's easy to say the US is the best country in the world when you don't comprehend that your next door neighbour has fucking cities.

As Derin said, not only do we all have shitty education systems, but we also all for the most part have universities. The experience of encountering wider demographics at a non-local educational institute is not unique to USAmerica.

[naamahdarling]

I'm American.

The idea that someone could sincerely not realize there's, like, big cities in other countries is utterly bananas to me.

Why would you not assume other places WERE like here, where we have cities and running water and so on? Why would you not just ASSUME that most places are basically the same level of varied as where you live, with urban, suburban, rural, and largely uninhabited areas all mixed in? I don't get it. Is it movies? That if TV doesn't show it to you, it isn't there? Were people not taught that TV stories are not real and the things that happen in stories are not the only things that happen and that some things are inaccurate because stereotypes are a thing?

I was a bright kid and read a lot, and I had a lot of privilege. But I really don't think that explains or excuses thinking there are no cities in places like Mexico. I was not taught anything about other countries when I was a child, I didn't read about other countries. Wasn't interested, was interested in animals and natural history. I needed geography and history classes. But even before that, like, I knew that other places have cities? That is fucking crazy to me.

We aren't any more stupid than anyone else, fundamentally. Like in terms of our capacity to know things. We are all human. So why are we like this? I don't get it. I hate it.

I will say I do think we have some areas of shittiness going on with our schools that people who have not lived here don't quite get. Maybe I'm wrong. But even assuming that is true, that doesn't explain all of it. It is neither explanation nor excuse. It could be TOTALLY true and not explain the lack of human curiosity.

I do not understand.

I don't get it. There's something wrong enough here that if it were, like, replicated in small scale, like all the USA was condensed to one town, I'd wonder if we all had fucking lead poisoning or something.

We aren't without the same capacity as anywhere else! We just don't do a very good job of thinking outside the box OR of imagining other people as being like ourselves. What the actual hell is going on. Where did we lose the plot? How do we get it back?

[a-calico-rabbit]

One of þe biggest reasons for it is þat þe states are just so… big. You drive for two days and you’re still in america. You have to do so much to go to anoþer country þat it feels like anoþer world. I imagine someþing similar happens for chinese and russian citizens, but I don’t know enough people from eiþer to say (a problem. My problem) i’ve been around þe world and to oþer countries. In america, þat’s considered a privilege. You don’t deserve to go. You’re allowed to. Also doesn’t help þat our culture is entirely based around our massive collective ego.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I'm Australian and I'm trying not to be mean I really am but you need to shut the fuck up with the "oh but our country's so big and most of us don't get to take holidays overseas it's not fair" :(. It's even more tired than the "I wasn't taught this in school a decade ago so why should I know or care about it" complaint. Other countries don't feel like "another world" because the USA is big, they feel like "another world" because half of you think of yourselves as the centre of the fucking universe. My country is the approximate size of the contiguous US, has a far, far lower population density, and is surrounded by water so it doesn't just take longer than 2 days to drive to another country, it is literally impossible to drive to another country. And if I reached 21 years old assuming that New Zealand didn't have any cities in it, I'd be embarrassed by my own racism, not blame my schoolteachers from years and years ago for not explicitly sitting me down and going, "Derin, did you know that other countries also have cities in them? They do! New Zealand even has electricity just like us! :) :)"

[geeoharee]

Americans can't recognise their TOTAL FUCKING GLOBAL HEGEMONY the way FISH have no word for WATER and it makes me very tired even though as a British person it is basically our fault.

"uwu idk I just thought that the United States was the only thing that mattered in the entire galaxy" WE KNOW.

[headspace-hotel]

people in the notes of my dandelion posts keep talking about having the cops called on them for having dandelions????? because they have an HOA??????? Are y'all okay?????? Do you need to be rescued from a cult?????? Is this kind of repressive dystopian regime tolerated broadly by people????????

I feel like the average human reaction to something so ridiculously petty and draconian is to go to the person that runs the HOA and burn their house down?????????

Can city ordinances literally require you to use pesticides?????? These places are not appropriate for a child to live

[headspace-hotel]

Weeds and random plants were so essential to my childhood I can't even imagine how I would have played outside with just sterilized grass

[gudamor]

Not just HOAs. Nearly 3 million Chicagoans live under ordinance 7-28-128 which says, in part:

  (a)   Any person who owns or controls property within the city must cut or otherwise control all weeds on such property so that the average height of such weeds does not exceed ten inches. Any person who violates this subsection shall be subject to a fine of not less than $600 nor more than $1,200. Each day that such violation continues shall be considered a separate offense to which a separate fine shall apply.

Parts B and C of the ordinance further clarify that the city has the right to cut those weeds, charge you 3x whatever it cost the city to cut them, and that said charge constitutes a lien on your property.

[headspace-hotel]

And nobody burns city hall down??????

[tlirsgender]

We gotta take dna tests away until white people can be normal about it. If you didn't find out you're mixed with something through like family history it's just gone. It doesn't count anymore. You can be 2% zesty if you're gonna be normal but you can't be claiming cultural heritage or something cause your grandad got frisky in like the 1500s with the swarthy milking wench

[tlirsgender]

I'd even say it betrays a weird way of thinking about heritage and etc. Family & culture aren't like innate biological things. Race science isn't real. So on and so forth. Anyway most of those services are run by mormons because they're really really weird about it so keep that in mind maybe

[crittizen]

most people of european descent are 1-5% neanderthal dna too, but you never see people tripping over themselves to claim that they’re neanderthals