“In Silicon Valley, wearing a full business suit marked you as unsophisticated and not ‘with it’ in terms of tech and innovation. This caused the dress code requiring a suit to be inverted and it eventually reached the point where you can’t wear a suit and be taken seriously in Silicon Valley.”

https://www.raconteur.net/talent-culture/when-wore-it-best

Have you looked into gardening? Healthy, rewarding, easy to get started, room to grow (if you’ll pardon the pun)…

To add another: ‘pants’ means trousers in the US, but in the UK it means underpants. Can lead to some funny misinterpretations.

Hey now, don’t rope the rest of us in with the USA’s bizarro puritanical approach to TV censorship. You can blaspheme to your heart’s content on TV in the UK.

My friend used to bring Game Gear instruction manuals in to school. We’d sit and read them in the playground.

I never owned a Game Gear but somehow have nostalgia for those games - the instructions created these perfect versions in my imagination that never got shattered by having to actually play them.

Because sports teams aren’t just indistinguishable entities; they’re complex organisations with histories, tendencies, and traditions, and that’s before looking at individual players and coaches/managers.

Who dat! ⚜️

People support teams for all manner of reasons. Hometown is one of them, sure, but you don’t have to live somewhere to support a team there.

I’ve known plenty of people who supported distant teams because they visited once and liked it, because one of their parents support them, or even just because they like the uniform colours or the mascot.

I follow the New Orleans Saints and I’ve never been there.

Cynically? Because what they want to do rarely aligns with what people actually want. It’s far easier to just push through unpopular legislation and spin it retroactively than it is to run a full propaganda campaign ahead of a referendum and still risk losing.

Politicians only run referendums if they’re sure the outcome will be what they want, or if their hand is forced by the opposition.

I’d call it a mix of jazz and trip hop.

Not really an answer, but the definition of a ‘regular-ass house’ is very different in the UK/EU compared to the US. American suburban homes are huge.

Do You Dream in Colour? by Bill Nelson.

Great song, to be fair. My dad always insists that Gary Numan was a Bill Nelson ripoff with less talent. Personally, I think Bill has kind of a weak voice and was never destined for big success, but I do enjoy much of his work and Bebop Deluxe are hugely underrated.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine being strongly influenced by the original pitch for Babylon 5 is a pretty famous, if variously disputed, example.

No that’s not normal. Sounds like they’re incredibly insecure and emotionally manipulative.

Sorry for your experience but I assure you we do have freezers. Freezers are in fact very common, just not in small apartments where space is at a premium.

Vast, American-style double-fronted fridge freezers are uncommon, but I’d venture a guess at most UK & Western European households having a freezer of some sort - either a tall fridge/freezer unit or two separate under-counter units.

It always makes me smile when this community lives up to its name

I think people make fun of it because to a non-American it comes across as deeply insecure. The trope is that the USA has no history of its own and so its people latch onto the smallest scraps of foreign heritage as a way to give themselves some cultural context and cachet.

I don’t think it’s invalid - in many cases the ancestry is genuine, even if distant/fractional. If it helps them find meaning or feel connected to something then I’ve got no issue with it. Humans like to feel connected to other humans, and it’s fun to discover that you have things in common.

The issues only really arise IMO if someone starts weaponising that ancestry or insisting they now have the authority to speak for a people they have no tangible connection to.