Hmmm, being from Europe and having driven on a holiday in the US, I'd say that people are more careful and respect rules better in the US than in Europe (certainly than Southern Europe, but even in parts of the North). Driving in US reminded me of driving in the UK.
Of course, US is a big country and my perception could be not very typical. Extrapolating from one data point is dangerous. It's like comparing driving in Naples and Amsterdam. Both are Europe, but the driving experience is fairly dissimilar.
I agree, driving in the US (only went to Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia) is more relaxed than in Germany and driving is less aggressive (yeah, there is the occasional nutjob in Atlanta). I like the four-way stops in the US, which forces people to communicate with each other.
I know, I know. English speaking countries refer to the continent as "the Americas" rather than America, as the rest of the planet does but, then, the rest of the planet refers to the "United States of America" as the "US" and (normally) not as "America" .
Now seriously, America is a given name for the whole continent (with Noth America and South America as its two subcontinents) and was never meant to be used as the name of any one of its 35 countries.
Many in the EU are often doing the same chauvinistic thing, refering to themselves as "Europe" forgetting that there are 23 European countries that are not part of the EU. That case is slightly (just slightly) less annoying because at least is 27 EU European countries vs 23 non EU European countries, so at least they can claim to be the majority of countries. US case is one country vs. 34, so objectively even more absurd.
This comment seems confused. In English, "the Americas" isn't a continent nor are North America and South America "sub-continents"; rather, North America is a continent, South America is a continent, "the Americas" refers unambiguously to the collection of both continents, and "America" refers unambiguously to the United States of America (and "American" refers unambiguously to a US citizen). The only chauvinism occurs when speakers of other languages insist that the English language adopt their model of continents and the corresponding toponyms and demonyms (for example, many Spanish speakers use "Americano" to refer to inhabitants of the Americas, and since that word looks like "American" in English, many of these Spanish speakers believe English speakers should modify the meaning of "American" to mirror their "Americano").
Using "Europe" to refer to the EU member states in English is different because "Europe" in English traditionally refers to the entire continent and referring to the EU as "Europe" introduces ambiguity. I don't think this ambiguity is a significant problem and I wouldn't call it "chauvinism" but perhaps I could be convinced otherwise.
> "America" refers unambiguously to the United States of America
When people say "Columbus discovered America", it most certainly is referring to the entire landmass and surrounding islands (he technically landed in the Bahamas).
By the way, one thing I always wondered? Are Canadians annoyed by that usage, or more or less accepted that they're not "American" in English? (I would especially appreciate if a Canadian shared their thoughts about this)
My two cents is US people are the ones who have an unusual take on the word "America". Outside the US, it's not very idiomatic to call the country "America", or even "USA". "US" is more common (and in both Spanish and Portuguese, it's almost always called "Estados Unidos").
The term "american" is mainstream both in Canada and elsewhere. I imagine that's probably at least partly a function of "unitedstatesman" being too much of a mouthful. (BTW, if you think that's a ridiculous word, in portuguese "estadounidense" is an actual word, albeit with a connotation of being something a "woke" person might say).
> many Spanish speakers use "Americano" to refer to inhabitants of the Americas, and since that word looks like "American" in English, many of these Spanish speakers believe English speakers should modify the meaning of "American" to mirror their "Americano"
Spanish speakers, or, rather, the Crown of Castille created the word "America" and "americanos" to refer to the new continent and their people. English speakers adopted the same word, but with a different meaning.
Not saying that it's wrong for US people to refer to their country by anh word that they chose. They are free to do so. But it is useful, I think, to understand that people for other countries of America, who call themselves "americanos" because that's what they are, can be surprised to be told they are not "Americans", even though they are "americanos". I guess it's confusing for them, at the very least.
Just imagine that Colombians started to call their country "America" and when you went there they would insist that you are not American ("americano"). I guess you would not be amused. I don't know.
I'm not "americano", but European, so it doesn't really affect me. Just trying to give some context to better understand others. Peace! :-)
That's what I wrote, that in English speaking countries you refer to the whole continent as "the Americas".
The name "America", though, was given to the whole "New World", which is what we now call "America", the continent. British started using the name just for what is now the US, so in English speaking countries, the usage is different nowdays. In other countries "America" continues to be used for the whole continent (it is still considered one conti nent, not two).
The pure text editing is just a tiny detail. I exclusively use vim keybindings inside Emacs, as many others do.
Emacs makes extending the editor a breeze. As a new user this just means that you have packages (like VS 'extensions' or IntelliJ 'plugins') for, well, everything. For a more advanced user it means you can automate away many things that are a pain in the ass to repeatedly do in your daily work.
I'd suggest you try Doom Emacs when you have a couple of free hours to get a taste of what a properly configured Emacs can do. And, once you are on it, just press "SPC f p", select 'init.el' and check what popular packages you can activate just by uncommenting a line and doing a 'doom sync'. Then press "SPC f p" and select 'config.el' to check how even "configuration" in Emacs is just elisp code. You are just running a piece of code you can edit and even debug from itself _while_ you are running it (although that'd require a bit more explanation of how it's done) . This should give you a taste of what Emacs is about.
> Italy, like the rest of south europe is hobbled by an army of bureaucrats doing busywork and their jobs are the first to be threatened by an AI speaking fluent Italian. So it helps them to keep unemployment from getting even higher
I wonder whether there are real hard numbers supporting this statement. Not saying it's not true, just wondering whether it actually is.
I checked once for another country of South Europe and the reality was that both France and Germany had more "bureocrats" (public servants) per capita, contrary to public perception.
There are many things we all think are true that, when actually checked, turn out to be false. Sometimes it's a matter of false stereotypes and sometimes it's something that was true at some point but it's not anymore.
For example, about social mobility: USA is known as the land of the opportunities and a much more open and meritocratic place than Europe. That was certainly the case when it was founded. But the reality is that in the last decades (Western) Europe's social cohesion system created a much more favourable environment for children of poor people to prosper somewhat equal opportunities to children of medium and high earners (good and cheap/affordable public education, strong social network of public services,...), while the opposite trend took place in the USA. The results are quite outstanding:
You are right: here in the EU we often refer to ourselves as 'Europeans', thus implicitly excluding people from the non EU part of Europe. That's inacurate (and a bit disrespecful to non-UE Europeans, if you ask me). For that reason I try to always use the expressions 'EU' and 'EU citizen' instead of 'Europe' and 'European'.
Which reminds me that USA != America, also. It would be perfect we should not have to deduce from context when 'American' refers to anyone from the whole continent, from Canada to Chile, or just someone from the US. I guess it would be more practical to use 'US' and 'US citizen', for clarity...
Exactly. Brexit long term net effect could be a few points off their GDP. That's not the end of the world, but it's certainly significant and it will make British people a poorer, which of course has an impact on public services. Whether this is worth it's up to British people to assess.
My personal suspiction is that UK citizens were mislead about the consequences of leaving but, hey, democracy is about taking decisions with incomplete information. People have spoken and their decision is sacred. I wish the UK the best luck and it's with sadness that I believe they will need a lot of it.
If your definition of Democracy requires no deception or falsehood in politics then there likely has never been a Democracy in human history. The voters never work with perfect knowledge, and the politicians always lie.
Euro Area inflation is significantly lower than UK, same as Germany, France, Spain, ...
In the EU as a whole it's slightly higher because of the East countries (Hungary, Romania, Latvia, Estonia, ...) where inflation is crazy high because of their dependency on Russia for energy.
UK is in the very West of Europe, not East, and not reliant on Russia as East countries are. The economic impact of Brexit has just been significant, as it was supposed to be. Everybody knew it would be. Brexit was never about economy, but mainly sovereignty. That's a legitimate trade-off, of course, and many in the UK prefer to be a bit poorer in exchange for less dependency on their neighbours. I respect that. But it's important not to fool oneself thinking that leaving the highest economy in the world (EU economy was bigger than US' before UK left) was going to be good for the UK economy. That's just nonsense.
Exactly! In fact, it would be wonderful if you had some standard way of producing different units at different scales for a given magnitude, upwards or downwards, so you could use the best in a given context. Perhaps you could even randomly chose a fixed easy multiplier to automatically produce these derived units from the fundamental unit, and then use the same factor for every magnitude. You only need to chose some base unit for every magnitude and then, boom, you get a full family of units at different scales to chose from depending on your context.
How cool would that be? I'd suggest to use a factor that is the easiest to multiply by, in order to simplify operations. I guess the optimal factor would be 10. What is easier to multiply or divide by than 10, right?
I think I need to patent this bright idea. It's amazing nobody has thought about it before.
Of course, US is a big country and my perception could be not very typical. Extrapolating from one data point is dangerous. It's like comparing driving in Naples and Amsterdam. Both are Europe, but the driving experience is fairly dissimilar.