Non-Americans: what do you like about America?

Cryophilia@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 36 points –
69

The national parks? I'd like to visit one.

Don't forget about the National Monuments! They're not sculptures etc, but cool stuff like walls of dinosaur bones and canyons!

There are quite a few impressive state parks as well.

Totally worth it. The ones you've actually heard of though are too popular and generally require a reservation and waiting to visit. But there are a LOT of National Parks that are "less popular" that are just as amazing that don't require reservations or possibly even entrance fees.

Sure. Oftentimes it's the not so popular places that have their own charm. And I mean the USA is kind of a big place 😆 There are lots of very different experiences to choose from.

Using the period as a decimal separator rather than the comma

Just curious...why?

I'm used to the dot from all programming languages. And also the comma interferes with the CSV (comma separated values) file format. For the thousands separator, my favourite is the apostrophe.

Content. Without it there wouldn't be an abundance of free learning material. I'm already feeling the pain of trying to find any decent lesson about my interests after Russian government blocked YouTube.

How are things within Russia?

Like for the past 23 years. In my life literally nothing is changing. (For the exception of this fucking censorship)

I have met some Russians in my community (MA) and they have all mentioned that they are scared of the censorship their relatives are now facing in russia. I remember hearing one of their nephews got a visit from the local police department for their social media activity.

This was at a local repair cafe, and I was sharpening tools. Got to see some cool old Soviet shears, scissors and knives.

Yea, censorship getting worse day by day. Not sure about the cop situation, but I think it is probable, since I got cops called on me once for calling one annoying woman a few hearty names.

Any plans to move, or stuck with your cursed citizenship?

I don't have any money sadly, and it's very hard to find a job for some reason (personally, my friends don't seem to have this problem). There was only one person that hired me in 6 years, and only paid 20k rubles a month for back breaking labor. I would pretty much like to move, but that's probably gonna stay a pipe dream.

That fucking sucks. The Russian/Slavic community here (new england, USA) is very hospitable, and many Ukrainians and Russians moved here after the "special military operation". The local bazaar was even handing out free care packages to displaced Ukrainians.

Good to hear that folks have succeeded in moving 🙏🙏

As many have said, our National Parks are incredible, and even outside of them most of the western US is pretty awe-inspiring. I live in a place where, within an hour or two, I can go to desert badlands, alpine forests, coastal tide pools, and even skiing resorts for decent chunks of the year. I was recently up at 11k ft altitude in the Sierras and at -250 ft in Death Valley a few hours apart. The US is HUGE and big parts of it are still very wild. It's something worth fighting to preserve.

Edit: Also we can't read, I am American. Look, I didn't say the education system was good.

Don’t worry; as a person born and raised in New Mexico most people would consider me an immigrant so I can say that I agree with your sentiment that the land is truly glorious. We got a freakin northern coast and a temperate massive grassland for farming all the food anyone could ever need (barring tornado or big agriculture ruining it). Not to mention a great trench in which to cast dissidents or non-virginal women who dared to miscarry their pregnancies. We also got The Big River and then built the bigger car-river! Truly, a wondrous land.

The national parks. I visited Yosemite Valley two years ago and it was amazing. We don't have acces to nature in this scale in central europe.

I'm an American but I remember talking to a gentleman from Belgium years ago while visiting Muir Woods. He said something along the lines of, "You all have some of the best national parks in the world. You should be very proud of them."

That conversation gave me a new appreciation for our national parks. We are fortunate to have some pretty amazing scenery in the US.

I criticize our country for a lot, but the National Parks we did right by. I'm so glad we did that.

No matter how much you disagree with someone, there is always a possibility to shoot them in their face

The influence into rock music in general is nice and one of the only reasons why I'd like to visit the states, e. g. Seattle, Nashville, Chicago and so on.

  • Cultural influence: music, cinema, social movements of the 1960s and 70s
  • Beautiful nature
  • Agility in business environments (although I might have a limited sample)
  • not without criticism but I think NATO is generally a positive thing
  • Food (no not junk food, there's several fascinating regional cuisines)

Movies/TV Show.

Sure, with the 75 different steaming services all trying to produce content the majority is horseshit, but even if just around 15% is decent, that's still more decent content than the output of entire other country's film industries.

Cars, probably a controversial one, but we don't really have "muscle" cars like the firebird and mustang in the UK, and I've always been a little fascinated by them.

As machines they are cool. But they just encourage people who can afford them to drive like complete twats.

I think you're confusing them with pickup trucks, our official badge of douchebaggery.

Without the American innovation of deep frying a wrapped dough something within another wrapped dough something and serving it in a bucket, I don't think civilization would be on the positive path it is on right now.

Wikipedia says people have been doing that since at least 2000 years before Christ!

Your individualism. Of course I'm aware of the huge downsides, but my understanding is that personal freedom has been a vanishing rare thing in human history. As I see it, some very odd circumstances (puritans and the frontier) generated the USA, which morphed into something even weirder still: a libertarian superpower. Which then, in extremis, saved the rest of us from authoritarianism of both right and left. Probably temporarily. I predict that after it all collapses, and with better hindsight, we'll appreciate the USA more than we do today.

Whatever we did during the campaign to get kids to stop smoking cigarettes managed to work wonders. Even counting vape, the nicotine users numbers are way down. There are other countries with legal weed who still have more tobacco smokers than us too so I think its more than just the availability of weed, although that clearly helped a lot.

I managed to quit smoking via vaping!

Aaaaaand then we banned all the flavored vapes, including those without nicotine. So I fell back into cigarettes. So stupid.

The answer is a whole-society approach, AND heavy regulation. You provide information from a whole host of sources, government and private, and you basically ban disinformation (read: advertising) from contradicting or subverting it.

Right on red
And T.J. Birrya y Mas in Missouri City, Houston

Right on red

Not a cyclist, I see.

Maybe if cyclists would stop at right lights like they're fucking legally supposed to, they wouldn't get run over by cars doing what's perfectly legal.

Never been, but american culture. Music, film, food. Americans seem to be really good at small talk and usually pleasant to meet when I'm on holidays.

IDK to be honest... media I guess, most of my favorite movies are from the US.

It’s the entertainment center of the world. Shows, concerts, festivals, and all the popular entertainment events happen here. I wouldn’t have been able to see my favorite artists/bands in person back in my home country.

The shopping! You can't beat prices at a department store on clothing on a long weekend with a coupon for 25% off everything. I don't bother clothes shopping in Canada at all, I save my US cash and go on Black Saturday, where the prices are pretty much as good as Black Friday and not as crazy, or on Memorial Day weekend and come away with reams of clothes and shoes for under 500 dollars. And somehow they always have your size,unlike Canadian stores which tend to be picked over as hell, and I've never had to have pants shortened from the US. I like clothes shopping a whole lot.

Relative to other countries, the US has much more competive industries and space for new entrants to grow. In Canada for instance many industries (banking, grocers, telecom, media, etc.) are each dominated by a handful of uncompetitive companies that exploit consumers.

To be clear I know that the US has this issue too to some extent, but it's better there than elsewhere.