My favorite thing is that Europe is spooky because it’s old and America is spooky because it’s big
“The difference between America and England is that Americans think 100 years is a long time, while the English think 100 miles is a long way.” –Earle Hitchner
A fave of mine was always the american tales where people freaked out because ‘someone died in this house’ and all the europeans would go ‘…Yes? That would be pretty much every house over 40 years old.’
‘…My school is older than your entire town.’
‘Sorry, you think *how far* is okay to travel for a shopping trip?’
*American looks up at the beams in a country pub* ‘Uh, this place has woodworm, isn’t that a bit unsafe?’ ‘Eh, the woodworm’s 400 years old, it’s holding those beams together.’
A few years ago when I was in college I did a summer program at Cambridge aimed specifically at Americans and Canadians, and my year it was all Americans and one Australian. We ended the program with a week in Wessex, and on the last day as we all piled onto the bus in Salisbury (or Bath? I can’t remember), the professors went to the front to warn us that we wouldn’t be making any stops unless absolutely necessary. We’re headed to Heathrow to drop off anyone flying off the same day, then back to Cambridge.
“All right, it’s going to be a long bus ride, so make sure you’re prepared for that.”
We all brace ourselves. A long bus ride? How long? We’re Americans; a long bus ride for us is a minimum of six hours with the double digits perfectly plausible. We can handle a twelve hour bus ride as long as we get a bathroom break.
The answer. “Two hours.”
Oh.
English people trying to travel around Australia and wildly underestimating distance are my favourite thing
a tour guide in France told my school group that a particular cathedral wouldn’t interest us much because “it’s not very old; only from the early 1600s”
to which we had to respond that it was still older than the oldest surviving European-style buildings in our country
China is both old and big. I had some Chinese colleagues over; we were discussing whether they wanted to see the Vasa ship (hugely expensive war ship which sank on it’s maiden voyage after 12 min). They asked if it was old, I said “not THAT old” (bearing in mind they were Chinese) “it’s from the 1500s.” To my surprise they still looked impressed, nodding enthusiatically. Then I realised I’d forgotten something: “…I mean it’s from the 1500s AFTER the birth of Christ” and they went “oh, AFTER…”.
My dad’s favorite quote from various tours in Italy was “Pay no attention to the tower – it was a [scornful tone] tenth century addition.”
My last boss was Chinese, and she said when her parents came to visit her from Beijing they pronounced Chicago “A very nice village.”
This post keeps getting better
What I’m getting from this is both distance and time are Utterly Terrifying
I think the most relatable older sibling thing Justin Mcelroy has done was, while crying about how much he loved and missed his younger brothers, say “i hate you both as people”
Working off of the labor of others, only there because of being born into capital and pre-existing familial or business relations? Yep
And people still try to defend this shit with ‘Well they MUST work REALLY HARD to earn THAT kind of money!!!’
I assure you they don’t. I assure you the people earning the least money are working the most. I don’t see CEO’s doing 60 hour weeks just to keep food on the table. They don’t do that, because they don’t have to, because they get paid so much they aren’t desperate enough to have to.
If you follow me, reblog this. It is an important piece of data. I would love to see one for the annual tax expenditure of minimum wage versus CEO’s as a proportion of their annual income.
This is the aggregation of labor. This is what it looks like. It has happened before. It will likely happen again unless it is changed.
I like how they added “and the world” because it’s true, the rich are bastards everywhere.
Hollywoods idea of a trans man is a pouty woman with short hair wearing ace bandages and hollywoods idea of a trans woman is a lanky birdlike man in bad lipstick with a wig and a limp floral dress
“We don’t want them to be seen as transgender, we want to make it very clear these are cis people playing dress up” like yeah, we get it
now get ready for the Screaming 20s – coming to a decade near you in 2020
is it too early or can we start screaming now
There’s actually a fair deal of overlap between cultural decades. So not only is it acceptable to start screaming now, we can keep screaming up to the mid 30′s.
I discovered something useful today, taking breaks or exercising never helps me but THIS does, sharing to save a life
I just found out that some pro artists that work for companies like Dreamworks etc sometimes hold their pens this or similar way so it gotta work. Recently I spent 5 days on drawing for long periods of time (we talk about min 5 hours in one go to max 12 hours long crunch) and not once did my hand bother me.
QueerGalaxies 