• BarrierWithAshes@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    One thing that came as a culture shock for me is that I’m used to driving like 4 hours to see relatives. And this is usually several times a year. Then I heard from some Britons that they have rarely visit their relatives who are only like a hour drive away. Really messed me up the first time.

    • The Picard Maneuver@startrek.websiteOPM
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      11 months ago

      I’ve heard similar things. Like, I’ve had work commutes that are an hour long before. (Not that that’s healthy or ideal, but it’s far from rare)

      • ByteWizard@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        And they say we should all just switch to electric bikes like in the Netherlands. I tried showing them a comparison of the states using a map but turns out “I am just being difficult”

        • AggressivelyPassive@feddit.de
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          11 months ago

          The “map” is not the problem, you just completely fucked up your city planning. Size of a country has zero impact on your daily commute.

          • ByteWizard@lemm.ee
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            11 months ago

            Size of a country has zero impact on your daily commute.

            Lol Ok. Guess everyone has to crowd together in comparatively tiny little cities. All this usable land outside the cities is now uninhabitable. Genius.

            Let me guess, we will own nothing and be happy, right? Oh and don’t forget about eating bugs!! Yum yum!

            Go slink back to hexbear.

              • ByteWizard@lemm.ee
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                11 months ago

                Here I’ll speak slowly

                We have a big country. Big spaces mean longer commute. City design can't change physics of space-time.

                • AggressivelyPassive@feddit.de
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                  11 months ago

                  That’s not how cities work. That’s just how America decided to approach that problem.

                  To spell it out for you: your commute is always in your local area. The size of your country is not relevant to your local area. What is relevant, is density. Density though, has nothing to do with the size of your country. Unfortunately, you are about twice as dense as Hong Kong.

    • chumbalumber@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      11 months ago

      I would make the point (not necessarily for an hour’s drive) that the roads are often more tiring to drive on in the UK – that is, they’re not as flat, wide or straight as freeways often are, so require more concentration. Driving for an hour along Welsh country lanes doesn’t feel the same as hitting the freeway for an hour. Just my two cents/tuppence

  • Riyria@sopuli.xyz
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    11 months ago

    I hate that people treat the US as if it doesn’t have a wide variety of accents. I can drive an hour in any direction and the people sound different than where I live. A lot of states have their own accents, and there are regional accents within them. I live in Illinois and people from No. IL and Central IL sound completely different from people in So. IL.

    Accents get even more differentiated the further North or South you go. PNW sounds different than NE. Etc. The real difference is that a lot of the accents in the US aren’t based on indigenous languages spoken in that region (even though some are), they’re largely based on the group of Europeans that settled in the region.

    Americans are very very good at code switching, which is why I think a lot of people think there are only one or two accents.