this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2024
141 points (93.8% liked)
Asklemmy
43747 readers
1517 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Americans assuming everyone else is from America and knows everything about America.
The American mind cannot comprehend this.
Americans can’t see this comment chain.
Edit: or should I say “Ameri-can’t see this comment chain”
But if Americans can't see this comment chain, how USA-ful is it to the discussion?
Idk I've had the impression that this is not as bad here as it was on the place that shall not be named.
It is. I still wish it "Politics" would default to WorldPolitics" and USPolitics was it's own thing, instead of the other version where Politics and News is US stuff and the general topics need the "World" prefix.
Lemmy.ml has US Politics as a comm, and World News as a comm.
Fair point.
You should ask your instance about that, bc right now it's just mirroring the US-centric reddit trend where the politics community is all just US-specific politics. Same for news, etc.
It's better than on Reddit, which was usually justified by "it's an American site", but it's definitely still here and annoying on Lemmy.world.
Well, I also have the feeling that most people here are from the U.S. or Germany. And I only identify the latter as such, because of their usernames. Not sure if I’m right, but I surely feel isolated on Lemmy at times.
Here in Europe there are a lot of country-specific instances (e.g. feddit.de or feddit.nl). I can confirm the German one has quite a lot of members and some large German subreddits moved to Lemmy when the blackout happened. Germans are quite privacy focused in general with a generally higher Firefox market share and a lot of shops only accepting cash (not proud of the latter haha)
Oh, die Bargeldsache geht mir auch auf den Sack. Fühle mich nach jedem Auslandsaufenthalt als wäre ich 20 Jahre in die Vergangenheit gereist * g *
Fühle mich nach jedem Auslandsaufenthalt so, als wäre ich 20 Jahre in die Zukunft gereist lol
feddit.de is dead, long live feddit.org!
...ich_iel?
Reverse for me.
Talking about an American politician.
In a thread about American politics.
In a community about American politics.
On an American instance.
Cue 200 "UGH WHY IS EVERYTHING SO AMERICA CENTRIC WHY AREN'T YOU TALKING ABOUT EEEEUUUUUURRRRROOOOOPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPE" butthurt comments.
Or just the random snarky shit they think is so clever.
"America, are you okay?" for the 500th time is not clever, just like it wasn't the first couple hundred times it's been posted.
Yeah, it's contextually appropriate most of the time. I doubt there are many American users posting American politically specific ideas on posts about non-american politics.
The only real validity to this complaint would be an overabundance of posts regarding American politics; to which I would say, down vote those and post your own. I, for one, promise not to be upset.
I’ve done my best to include °C conversions of all my °F. What more do you people want.
Since we’re here, I had covid one time and had to shop online for stuff that came in ounces, quarts, pints, and liters, and even without brain fog, I can tell you that comparing prices and sizes against apples, oranges, and furlongs (⅛ miles (≈⅕ km (but this is an argumentum ad absurdum))) is the most unsatisfying garbage that has ever been.
In conclusion, ~~what if~~ God ~~did~~ bless America ~~?~~
Wait we still don't have a bot for that?
Honestly imo lemmites are better at this than any other social media site.
Same but with being fluent in english.
Like nobody is "dumb" for not being an expert at speaking English, let alone just speaking 😭
I make sure to list any weights and measures in both US and metric.
I also try to include a fair amount of content focused on other parts of the world.
Lemmy is small enough that even though I'm guessing it is majority US, that it is likely less US-centric than most social media. It's just good to have some stuff for everyone, and I know I like to learn about things outside my country, so I want non-US focused content myself on a regular basis.
Regarding weights and measures:
I don't think in metric, and there's a strong possibility that I never will. I came of age in an educational system that taught metric units alongside imperial, but also in a day-to-day world that heavily skews towards imperial units.
If I see metric units that I can't immediately interpret in my head, it's absolutely trivial for me to get the conversion by other means. It's equally as trivial for someone who uses metric to make the opposite conversion.
Anyone losing their shit about it is acting performatively.
The triviality is what makes me just do it myself. If I'm the one sharing something to a global audience, it makes more sense for me to do it once than to have everyone else go do it if they need to.
I was talking in another thread today, possibly one in response to this one, or at least one similar, and I basically said I want Lemmy to succeed, and my content is easy to source, but getting regular visitors and commenters is the hard part, so I'm willing to do a little pampering to positively reinforce my "guests," especially at this stage of the game. It's just some extra consideration, to show people I'm being thoughtful of them, and to make it feel like a place they can come to get facts without having to google them all the time.
My big issue with Lemmy at the moment is I think we're testing what level of civility we're willing to give to and to tolerate from others, and I don't see as many commenters being helpful to each other and I feel mods are scared to steer conversations back to more polite conduct due to the overbearing rep of Reddit mods. So I'm just trying to be the example of what I want to see. That's the real thing I'm looking to provide. The unit conversion is just a slice of that you could say.
I still have people downvote over nothing or make smartass comments occasionally, but I can't prevent it all. I'll do what I can though to make things pleasant and positive for who I can.
I agree with all you've said, and I tend to add both systems when expressing a meaningful measurement. My statement is pointed more towards situations where someone hasn't done so and it throws some poor soul into a meltdown.
Yes, it is a strange thing to make a fuss over.
The one that gets me is when people complain about paywalled articles. I agree it doesn't make sense to share one, but this is a tech savvy group here, and I kinda expect 95% of people to know how to deal with that by now. Even mainstream sites have shared how to get around that stuff long ago now.
I don't put the conversions in my comments, usually because I don't even post measurements in my comments, but if I did and got a reply asking for it, I'd tell them to go ask Google.
Americans assuming 'America' means 'U.S.'
Canadian here. "American" means from the US. People from the rest of the continent don't care. They're the ones with the dumb country name that doesn't have a more obvious demonym. But we've all collectively agreed that that's what it's called.
If you want to refer to someone from South America you say South American. If you want to refer to someone from North America you say North American.
Most americans (IE the americas, which include central and south america, and the carribbean), really dislike the usonians usurpation of the term "america" to refer solely to the United States, which really only started in the early 1900s as the US got really forward about its imperialist interests. You're only hearing "americans mean only US citizens" from the nation that excludes most americans.
Counterpoint: there is no continent named "America." "North American," "South American," and even "Central American," or "Latin American," for added specificity, are completely sufficient demonyms for the denizens of the continents (and subreigon) writ large.
Very true, all the more reason why we shouldn't allow one country in the americas to lay claim to the term.
The US doesn't even have most of the most populous cities in the americas
Non-American here: In English it typically does. The collected landmass of North and South America (or just the continent, if you consider them to be a single one) is usually called "the Americas"
This isn't a hard-and-fast rule of course, and with all the different dialects of English out there I'm sure there are some that work differently. I assume you prefer "US" or "USA" as a short name for the country?
I, as an American, write "The US" the refer to the country specifically to avoid confusion. But there's not really another good demonym that's not an slur. "Estadosunidenses" is too much of a mouthful and "Statesman" has another meaning.
It always feels odd to me that the Spanish demonym specifically is that when Mexico is also "Estados Unidos Mexicanos", or the United Mexican States
Usonian?
How would that be pronounced?
Like "Usonian", not like "USonian", I'd guess? Flat U, non-"yoo"-ed; stress on the O; the "nian" more or less like "nyan" but 'murrically less cute.
TIL that this architectural style came from Frank Lloyd Wright's use of this neologism, which seems to have originated with Scottish writer James Duff Law in 1865. And, that people have been trying to make this change happen for over 150 years. (Seems to me a review of the tale of King Canute and the tide is in order.)
Hey, I love calling my Canadian friends "my fellow Americans" or saying "hey, we are all Americans here!"
And I think they really like it too! 🤣
I'll say it again, if you don't like the demonym of "American," feel free to refer to us by our state and territorial demonyms instead.