• Whelks_chance@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Pledge of allegiance in school is quite unusual.

    And how you have flags on everything, including outside people’s houses.

    “Central air” is a term I only learned the meaning of recently, but American TV assumes everyone knows what it is. Which is fair, if you all have it. Same with the hand blenders you have in your kitchen sinks.

    • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      It’s seriously funny how freaked out people get from garbage disposals.
      They’re quite safe. They don’t have spinning blades. They have something closer to a dull grater and arms on swivels that catch loose food and push it against the stationary grind plate.

      You shouldn’t put your hand in one because the little weighted arms are going very fast and could hurt your fingers if they got hit, but it’s unlikely to push them into the wall.

      They’re great if you have proper sewage treatment, since it keeps the trash from getting stinky and it basically just gets turned into fertilizer like a more efficient, roundabout compost heap that I don’t need to remember to poke.

        • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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          2 days ago

          Like this?

          If you look a little closer, you can see the blades are on pivots, and the holes are for water and food particles.

          • NannerBanner@literature.cafe
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            1 day ago

            It’s been long enough that I don’t trust the memory to be correct. Too much muddling from imagination, time, and popular culture.

    • YawningNostalgia@thelemmy.club
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      3 days ago

      When I was in public elementary school we had old textbooks and one of them was trying to talk shit about the Soviets by saying that their educational system was creating robotic, unemotional children who obeyed instructions unquestioningly. They juxtaposed a picture of Soviet students standing uniformly with a picture of American students all doing different things. I questioned it at the time and said if they took a picture of us doing the pledge it would look the same as the commies. I sound 100 years old but this was only 20 years ago.

      Central air and garbage disposals are amazing and should be the norm

      • drath@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Central air and garbage disposals are amazing and should be the norm

        After juxtaposition with Soviets this one got me real confused, thinking what kind of central garbage disposal you meant? And air disposal? Surely you must’ve meant central (i.e. district) heating and garbage chutes? And I was like no you do not want these, only then I realized you referred to the things from previous comment.

      • FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Your garbage disposals are absolutely terrible. They offer a little convenience for the individual at a far greater, unseen cost than people realise (so, very American)

        Central aircon isn’t uncommon in modern houses in my country, but it’s difficult to retrofit to hundred-year-old homes in the major cities

        • YawningNostalgia@thelemmy.club
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          3 days ago

          Why, because it fucks up the plumbing? I haven’t seen an issue with it and don’t shove huge amounts of food down it regularly. My least favorite household maintenance task is sticking my hand in the sink and picking up little scraps and gunk so I’m attached to mine.

    • backalleycoyote@lemmy.today
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      3 days ago

      Someone didn’t grow up in the Cold War era. They drilled that shit and followed it up with “duck and cover” in case the Soviets nuked us. As if your desk provided cover from the nuclear holocaust.

    • Wataba@sh.itjust.works
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      3 days ago

      ATLA ironically may have desensitised me to the pledge thing by trying to show it as a creepy thing in the Fire Nation school. Instead, it just became part of the narrative flow, which was somewhat opposite the intent.

      Then again, I’ve probably come to associate it with singing shitty school songs and national anthems in Australia anyway.

      • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        I hadn’t said the (US) Pledge of Allegiance since the 1970s but I attended my local school board meeting last year and they kicked off with it. I couldn’t even remember which fucking hand to put over my heart, let alone the actual words of it.

        • YawningNostalgia@thelemmy.club
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          3 days ago

          I tried to refuse to say it because it was unconstitutional with the under God part and they made me do it anyway, which I tried to dispute because it has been upheld as a right under the First Amendment but I didn’t really care enough to pursue it. That teacher was a geriatric veteran and would have been stubborn too.
          It’s burned into my brain now.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      3 days ago

      “Central air” is a term I only learned the meaning of recently, but American TV assumes everyone knows what it is. Which is fair, if you all have it.

      It’s why no one has air conditioning in a lot of Europe. You’d have to have a separate system for each room, it would get very expensive very quickly, or I can buy a fan for the equivalent of $20. I know in places like the south of Spain they actually do this, but it’s not common.

      • In Spain we often have an air pump (sometimes two) in the house that can pump cold or hot hair depending on what you set it to. Mostly for cold in summer, but it comes handy when radiators aren’t enough in winter.

        • RidderSport@feddit.org
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          3 days ago

          Air pumps will become the norm in Germany in a few years to phase out gas heating in private homes. Some also use it for cooling in summer. Although the one family I know that has it cools a water tank that is circulated in the ceilings of the house to cool it down without wind or noise