Ask Lemmy

People in the UK drink so much tea (or coffee these days), that breaks in soap operas (such as Eastenders) cause the national grid to be on high alert, due to the incredulous surge of power from so many kettles being turned on at once.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup

• Not being able to afford healthcare and insurance.
• Half of the population worshipping a felonious, racist, homophobic sexist as if he’s a deity.
• K.C. Barbecue.

school shootings (being common)

Losing a war with flightless birds.

Going to the forest to pick mushrooms, nuts and berries. Going to the beach to pick up washed out amber. Having a lot of people grow their own food, even the city folk.

Churches the size of castles full of people preaching humility.

Being atheistic as the norm. Sky daddies don't hold much power here.

Our "solution" to gun deaths is to add more guns.

• Car insurance is optional
• Kids get govt subsidised dental care until they’re 18
• Most common prescriptions are $5 or free
• We did away with pennies because they’re pointless
• It’s common to go barefoot into shops and grocery stores
• Most kids in elementary school go barefoot
• Semi automatic weapons banned
• Kids get 20 hours govt subsidised daycare per week
• When you sell your car the license plate typically goes with it
• Most gas stations serve hot food and it’s good (by American standards)
• Online banking allows instant direct cross-bank money transfer, so nobody uses Paypal or Venmo
• Nobody pays by check, nobody carries around a checkbook
• It’s not unusual for public parks to have exercise equipment
• For short domestic flights, time between entering the airport and boarding the plane can be as short as 60 seconds
• The milky way is still visible in good sized towns
• Praying mantises are still common
• Money (bills and coins) feature women, nature, and explorers not war generals, bankers, and buildings.

Almost as many saunas as cars. One sauna for every ~1.7 people.

Proper Poutine

Okay not my country of residence, but you can choose to burn at the 4th hottest global temp of 54C (129F) or you can also freeze at -65C (-85F).

Optionally, you can also enjoy staring directly at the sun as it rises or sets due to the air pollution.

Oh and you can also find this funni river dolphin:

We start our spicy food tolerance early, our candy is spicy.

Living below sea level for generations, and only remembering when you see other countries flood.

You are save to eat raw meat. I Love Mettbröttchen with Zwiebel.

People playing and hearing songs with looped beats and vulgar lyrics through a bass boosted sound system which costed them several months worth of minimum wage to pay for having it on their cars. They generally drive slowly through streets near beaches in order to exhibit their "fancy sound systems" while all the vulgarity plays repeatedly. I guess it's unique from this green-and-yellow country where I live.

I could also say wearing flip-flops and bermudas on a daily basis, or one of the highest usage and dependency of Meta's WhatsApp worldwide, or the country with the most welcome (often too nosy) people. Or, through a more positive lens, the richest land where crops easily grow when you sow something, the highest ecological diversity (especially plants, it's so common to find exotic plants here), the highest climate diversity (you can travel south to meet snow, then travel north/northeast to meet hot climates, without leaving the same country), etc.

Cheesesteaks. And no, a steak sandwich doesn't count.

Going bankrupt due to medical bills.

Death from not being able to afford medical care

Constant mass shootings.

UK. Cold and hot water coming from separate taps. WTF? I was once told that it is because hot water boilers used to have their tops open to the outside, which meant the hot water could contain some debris, so it was important to use it only for washing and not let it mix with cooking water. But in bathrooms in some modern builds that definitely don't use that kind of boilers you still get separate taps. I told one of my British colleagues about how it's been bothering me since I moved here and she said "oh yeah, I never realised that I've never seen that in any other country". She also told me that kids are just taught to wash their hands quickly under the hot tap, so that they don't run the water long enough for it to turn scolding hot. WTactualF?

That's actually really tough in this global age. I live in Japan so things like tea ceremony and Shinto practice come to mind, but there are Shinto shrines and practitioners in many places and people do and teach tea ceremony in other places now. Many would call it the home of sushi and, at least for the common types today, it's probably true (though certain methods that led to sushi are thought to come from Viet Nam in the past).

Tanuki exist in other parts of Asia. I assume onsen (hot sprint) monkeys do as well. Maybe something with Wasabi, but I doubt it. I'm not sure, really.

Edit: thought of one: seeing the Iriomote cat in its natural habitat (although that's really hard since they were nearly hunted to extinction for their pelts at one point). Speaking of Okinawan islands, you can also see Taiwan on a good day from the westernmost point of Yonaguni. That was neat. I took a picture with my phone at the time and it's really hard to see anything, but I could see land with my eyes.

Horrible Past.

(Fossil) Vehicle production as economic livelihood.

Bread fetishism. "Beer purity law".

Semi-ironic calls for a kebap price limit

I can tell if you're Catholic or Protestant by the way you pronounce the letter H.

There are like 4 days a year everyone just puts their old sofas, broken TVs and other junk outside to be collected by a garbage truck the next day. As this furniture is mostly usable, people in white vans go around to collect the most valuable stuff, which makes up most of the traffic in villages on those days and causes old people to complain about Polish immigrants.

The village children also have a look around if the weather is nice. Village adults don't, not because they are above it, but since there is a genuine risk a neighbour you've known for decades will sue you for stealing; the garbage does belong to them still as the courts have determined.

Edit: Sorry for forgetting the most important part.

If you go far enough, you will see deserts, tropics, and taigas. I think that's unique to us, at least...

The most popular pop culture in the world