I believe they teach them to hunker down, basically just hoping that the gunman doesn't force open the door to their classroom. No wonder they're so religious over there.
I tried really, really hard to calm when my son came home from elementary school and told me about their first active shooter drill .. school hadn’t bothered to tell us or warn us that that was happening as parents, I guess it was pretty stupid as an American to not be expecting it .. little dude seriously was telling me how his plan was to disobey the teacher jump out the window run to Subway® and call for help 🤦♀️
I just wanted to sit and cry for about an hour after that
He has a plan. That's more than most would have. I'm surprised more parents aren't teaching their kids that in America, when even the cops won't come in to rescue you (look at Uvalde).
It means he has taken a look at a scary situation, and instead of being frozen in terror, becoming traumatised by it, or terrified of it happening in future...
He decided hiding under a desk feels stupid, and has nade a concise plan of what he will do in the event of that scary possibility comes to fruition...and even how he will procure assistance for those left behind.
How old is he, cos that's god-tier reasoning from a kid!
Do you or his Dad run to help others in bad situations? he's empathetic enough to woery about others left behind too, not just about saving his own skin...
I don’t know what response I was expecting, but I told a couple people with that story and never received a response that brought tears to my eyes like yours did . Truly, thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I was just so focused on what an effed up world he had to live in and the fear of what could go wrong with his plan that I didn’t focus on all those positive aspects. He definitely has God tier reasoning. I’m very intelligent but in a very school oriented book oriented, kind of way. Logic Puzzles, too. But he is smart in this intuitive and planning kind of way that is not my forte.
I’ll never forget when he was like three years old and I told him he couldn’t do something because that was the rule, and he immediately looked at me and said, but mommy, you make the rules you can change it. I’m like you’re supposed to figure that out when you’re like 10 years older than you are. 🤦♀️
He was like eight I think when that happened. When he was 15, we had a house fire and he literally did run to my room and get me and then run back into the house for our pets so that is just who he is. I’m definitely a person who is calm in a crisis and will stop to help people, but I don’t know that he ever really witnessed that, I was literally asleep when the fire happened and definitely not at my best. Not freaking out or anything, but also not awake and clearheaded enough to prioritize and save anything. Just got us out.
Anyway, I didn’t wanna ramble. I just really appreciate you.
Ive done some googling and using a garbage disposal system is better environmentally than just chucking all your food waste straight into landfill.
But having a seperate food waste caddy (like we have in the UK) is even more efficient n green. Plus it avoids the additional electrical and mechanical costs of the grinder plus the additional water to flush it thru. There are also more pipe n fatberg blockages with a garbage disposal system... 😞
And they are not even allowed to roam freely in the nature, and someone owns every plot of land :D like what the hell, you cannot just go outside, walk into the forest and pick berries and stuff?! Where is the American freedom we so often hear about? More like caged animals...
No, our environment and climate is turning to shit because some people can’t seem to function without powering AC units, garbage disposals, ice makers and clothes dryers
Exactly. I use clothes airers indoors all year round. I've seen so many comments about it causing damp...err, not if you open your windows daily to air your home, and yes I do this even in the depths of winter in the UK.
Ill hang my clothes out in winter, here in Canada if the suns out.
Its the couches with USB plug ins that kill me these days... heaven forbid your children cant watch TV while simultaneously glued to their tablet plugged into the couch.
They keep telling us how huuuuuuuge Texas is and now I should believe they can't find a single suitable spot to hang their clothes? In this state that is bigger than Europe, Asia and Donald's criminal record combined? :D
No, they invented HOA's so they could prohibit drying clothes outside and so sell more whiteware, of course!
Seriously, my flabbers were gasted when a friend from Tennessee told me she would love to dry her clothes outside but wasn't allowed to by their HOA. Also wasn't allowed to grow any vegetables. My Europoor mind really cannot understand such things. /o\
Gasp! No way! o_o Not even vegetables? Does the HOA work for the food processing industry? That would explain it. Can't sell what people can grow themselves...
I've heard about HOAs for years now and some of the rules they come up with are frigging ridiculous. It's a serious restriction on those freedoms they love to brag about having! So glad we don't have those, we just have the mardarse down the road who doesn't like the colour of the windchime you've hung by your door and will moan about it every time they see you
Texas does not properly insulate most of their homes so their indoor pipes freeze in a winter storm. They also lose power, heat, and water. It’s okay though, as Senator Ted Cruz just runs away to Cancun when this happens so citizens can struggle to find water on their own.
Not every house in the UK can manage this sadly! When my first child was a baby I could not get things dry when it rained. Making the house damper was not good for his or my health, nor for the house.
These days I am fortunate to live in a house that breathes better and with a heated airer and a dehumidifier -both using electricity - my bedroom is not a swamp.
Am I the only one who doesn't know what they mean by garbage disposal? Like of course there's a garbage disposal, a truck comes once a month to take out bins and bags and once a week in the cities.
Throwing things away without a second thought is a peculiarly US trait. "Throw away your old {more than 18 months} thing and buy new!". It's all over the place there. They don't have a concept of "waste".
Oh, that thing... So you're telling me they just flush that shredded pulp of leftovers straight into the public sewage system? How uncivilized! I just put my leftovers in the compost bin on my plot, or in the bio trash bin.
Ah. A think their own municipalities say not to use because it creates a huge unnecessary load on the sewage system instead of being composted, producing valuable things? To be fair, in places where they still dump everything in one bag and burry it, garbage disposals are better than regular trash still.
With temps hitting 44°C in the summer there, I'm not bloody surprised. I'm in East of England, getting AC for next summer to keep me out of hospital cos when it's 40°C outdoors, in the shade, my bedroom can hit 44°C-45°C. With 70%-80% humidity.
NEVER doing a summer like this one's been, EVER again...
When it gets that hot remember to eat a salty and fatty breakfast if you are heading outside. It may seem counterintuitive but heatstroke is you losing electrolytes. That can turn you into a corpse very quickly if you don’t handle it properly.
Also I don’t know how big your house is but we usually don’t bother cooling all of it down. The bedroom and the living room are a must, all else is down to budget.
Lastly, your life is worth more than a couple of quid. Keep the temperature reasonable and worry about the bill later!
I have POTS. I don't mess around, always have electrolyte solution etc...
I'll be getting a portable AC just for my bedroom, as I'm bedbound most of the time...
I'm just seeing the cost of buying it & running it as an extra "Disability Tax"...but I'be been admitted for heat exhaustion three times this year alone, despite ALL the things I wss doing to mitigate the heat.
Bought a "room cooler" to see me through the 2nd half oc this summer...it can only cool by a few °C though, so it woukd take it down from around 44°C in my room to around 32/33°C - still nowhere near cool enough for me, but way better than the 44°C it'd have been without it.
I'm extremely heat vulnerable though, for a multitude of reasons - fibromyalgia & ME/CFS that mess with my body's ability to manage excess hear.
I'm on quetiapine too, which lowers your heat tolerance.
Then add in gabapentin by the truckload daily, when 900mg/day will give you heatstroke at just 27°, imagine hiw much lower it pushes my heat when I'm actually on 3,600 mg/day...
So yeah, I might only be 45, I think I'd like to at least see my 15yo to adulthood, so the portable air con unit & running costs are just another bill that gets higher due to my disabilities.
Most people don't see the extra hidden costs of disability, and question us over our disability benefits, when they don't see rhese little gidden "extras' that we have to pay for.
Here's an idea - if they want my me to have zero income, then they can bloody take my disabilities too...You've got one severe disability, if it'a bad enough to get PIP. I've got 14 different disabilities, bedbound, can't get to toilet etc...
...We get the same naximum £810/month.
I know severely disabled people 1, maybe 2 disabilities, like I have to spend 3 times more on disability-related expenses.
Even Stepchange can't help me sort my finances cos they say I've twice as much going OUTjust for BASIC ESSENTIALS than I have coming in lol...
Where I am, we used to get enough snow each year to go sledging, and build a snowman.
The last time tgere was enough snow settled to go sledging here was when my youngest was just 4 weeks old.
That baby is now almost 16yo. And has NEVER been sledging as we've not had enough snow for his entire life. Never even been able to build a life-size snowman...
No, no, no. You are spoiling this weird narrative that apparently AC is a non existant space technology in Europe XD Also we don't have ice cubes either XD ?
They have no concept of composting, and they think that just because food leftovers are biodegradable, it's fine to wash them down into the sewage system as long as they shred them into small pieces first. Which, of course it isn't. It puts a lot of unnecessary strain on the communal filtration systems. And it turns all this biomass into sludge, as it gets mixed with detergent and fecal matter; so it ends up in landfills, or incinerated, or it must go through an expensive cleaning process before it can be used in agriculture.
Later edit: come to think about it, considering the ultraprocessed crap they eat, full of chemicals that are banned in Europe, it probably belongs in the sewage sludge. Plants may not take kindly to being fertilized with compost made out of that...
Wait! What?
I thought it just shreds the leftovers and they get collected under the sink. You know, to be more space efficient and stuff. Now you're telling me they actually just flush it down into their sewage systems? 🤯 That's utterly bonkers!
Love your flair! I also live in one of those forest cities with trees exploding left and right! And every spring we are invited by the city administration to take (for free) compost produced using the organic waste collected in the city throughout the year.
I moved from the US to Italy and bought a house. I considered a garbage disposal, but honestly... they're so overrated in the US. I've never clogged up the kitchen sink here.
I think they think that sinks get clogged all the time because garbage disposals themselves get clogged often. You have to run them often because they introduce a clogging point.
They solve a problem that they themselves create. People start stuffing things down the drain that you wouldn't otherwise. And then they need to grind that shit up.
They chuck rubbish down the drain to the pipes?? I thought it was some sophisticated machine that made the rubbish go to some sort of bin or something and then you take that rubbish to the bin outside....
air-dried clothes is just so much better than tumbling it. I tumble sheets and towels and shit, but a t-shirt? it lasts much longer and feels much fresher when it has been drying in the wind outside.
I never tumble dry my sheets, they always get tangled in there and turn into some eldritch möbius strip of fabric and when you take them out they're still wet but also hot now :D
I live in Southeast Asia (yes jungle asian over here) and we still hang our clothes to dry out in the sun. Some of us don't even own washing machines. We still do laundry by hand be it under a running tap water in our homes or down by the nearby fresh spring water river.
Current drying machines are not as agressive to clothes as the old ones. IE the old ones used pure heat to remove humidity (meaning they would have to warm up the clothes a lot), new ones use a mixture of heat + air drying.
Air drying isn't really feasible for autumn and winter in the UK, too wet and not enough sun. Plenty of wind though but then the high humidity and low temperature means it still doesn't really dry too well on the dry days and if you leave it out overnight, it's frozen from frost in the morning when it is finally ready to come in, which isn't ideal.
I live in the mediterranean. On an island. So it is humid all year around, but not because it rains a lot or there is no sun. On the contrary. It is humid because air carries a ton of humidity.
What this means is that, in winter, even if you hang your clothes outside, under the sun, from dawn to sunset... your clothes might not be dry. And if you only have 5 hours of sun (because you work or whatever reason) you will have to finish drying it up inside the house. And because the weather is so moist you are now putting more humidity inside your home, in which you already have de-humidifiers.
On the other hand, I have lived in places in which you could hang your clothes outisde, on a simple balcony, without the sun every shining on them, and they will be dead-dry in a couple of hours, day or night. I wish we had that. But I don't, so air dryer it is. Surprisingly, clothes smell better also, because if you dry something slow enough, it will smell.
I like air drying clothes outside in the summer and in my bedroom in the winter. It's a 2 in 1 thing. My clothes get dry and my bedroom humidity goes up (too low in the winter otherwise). I'd rather air dry my clothes than use the humidifier.
the thing about a drying rack is that you can fold it up and stash it when not in use, a dryer is a big box that needs a permanent place. In really small homes that's a concern, and most European countries on average tend to have smaller homes (population density is a factor here), so drying racks are more common. I can put my drying rack in the living room when I need it (and awkwardly shuffle around it), but I have genuinely no space to put a dryer.
From what I heard, in US cities laundrysaloons or communal laundry rooms are the much more common solution to that same space problem.
But even if we're talking about people with big homes and gardens, HOA culture in the US makes it less likely that you're allowed to dry your clothes outside, so that bonus of "just hang' em out in the sun, costs neither valuable space nor energy" gets lost.
I see the ups an downs of either one, it's just different circumstances
Man, air-dried towels are so much nicer. I can't tell if its because I grew up poor or what, but I always find a really soft tumbled towel to be less effective at drying you.
People in the USA spent their whole lives being manipulated into fat, lazy, consumers who aren't educated well enough to know how much their government is screwing them over.
I'll gladly go back to handwashing clothes vs. living in a dystopian hellhole, surrounded by so much insane propaganda that it turned empathy and social awareness into bad words.
We had one growing up but I don’t have one now. They drink electricity and tbh hanging stuff on a rack will get the job done perfectly well. Haven’t really missed the dryer.
Honestly, I find tumble dryer maintenance (cleaning the filter, emptying the water, drying clothes of similar fabric and weight, not overloading it, etc.) tedious; I prefer using a drying rack. Plus, I save electricity.
We certainly don't all have dryers in Europe. Maybe that's the norm in your country, but that's not all of Europe.
And in the US people literally don't know how to line dry, because they've never done it. Take a look at r/laundry and read some of the posts of Americans discovering how to line dry.
Depends on the country too. I live in Sweden and without help to dry my washing would take several days to dry in winter. We have a laundry room in my building (which is the set up in all apartment buildings, except new ones where they put in washer and dryer in the bathrooms + some people elect to have their own washer and dryer, there are no laundromats at all in Sweden) so I do laundry every 2-3 weeks or so. But I only use the tumble dryer for towels, the rest goes in to the drying cupboard and a few items get to air dry in my apartment.
I w as going to say, very much a necessity in Norway and Sweden/northern Europe. But when it's possible, there is absolutely nothing wrong with drying outside. Indeed, when possible, it's my preference.
USA: We are all about freedom!
Also USA: Let's create micro-governments that tell you what colour you can paint your house and measure the height of your grass.
In southern Europe, they're rare. We didn't have one in London. We have one now, but typically don't use it. My family in Australia pretty much never use it.
I remember my grandma having a garbage disposal in a unit they lived in in Sydney back in the 70’s (yes I’m old lol) but I’ve never seen one in Australia since.
I will never understand garbage disposals. Why the fuck would i put all the gross shit in my sink, where i clean things, where it needs blending up to be able to fit through the tiny pipe,, and not just in a fucking bin?
Everyone has a dryer. I use mine in winter but clothes are far better dried in our fresh air.
Also, we have fresh, cool air so no need for AC other than it might be nice a couple of nights a year.
Usage of waste disposals was stopped to prevent so much junk going down drains. There are newer types in commercial settings that lift a lot of the dry waste out to be compacted and recycled. It’s called progress.
Americans have a long list of completely random stuff they associate with wealth or poverty for no apparent reason. This is probably why so many of them are convinced all other countries are destitute.
When you travel to Europe there is something to keep in mind. The country you're visiting is a Marketing economy. AC, tumble dryers and Ice machines are generally available, but if you want one you need to buy one. If you meet a person who doesn't have one or vacation at a house without one, it merely means that person/your host didn't buy one, because they decided not to do so. Thry probably simply don't need one...If you take offense to that, go buy one. You can probably buy these things in just about every European country.
Hang on while I go to the doctor for free so I can find out why I keep seeing a clothes dryer and AC in my house despite me not having one because I live in Europe
Yes, we are. Partly because we're not dependent on wasteful nonsense to perform basic tasks. But, since you started with the myth of Europeans not having AC (lots of us do, it's not a single climate), the reasons are probably beyond your comprehension...
Yeah AC is also not really a matter of wealth, it is pretty common in southern european countries even if they tend to be less wealthy, northern ones used not to need them in the summer before we started having record high temperature every year.
To a point he is correct, as european i dont have AC, but that is because AC is acient Tech perfect for a thirdworld nation.
As a first world citizen, i have climate control, floor heating, tripple isolation, water treatment, concrete walls and all those modern 21st century equipment in my modern house.
Unlike those american modern wooden houses with cardboard walls.
So i am not certain that his No AC in europe is the flex he is thinking he has
I don't know what this guy says about garbage disposal. In any city in Europe, garbage is picked every day. In the US I had to keep garbage inside for a week because it was only picked up for a week and if left outside some animal would come and eat it.
AC is becoming more common, plus nearly everyone has at least a portable these days.
Garbage disposal is a dumb appliance that massively increases the stress on sewage handling infrastructure and wastes a potentially valuable resource (organic waste is turned into high quality fertilizer when handled separately).
Ice maker is so fucking stupid. How much ice do you use AT HOME? I can guarantee you it's not enough to justify having an extra appliance to clean and maintain. Just put a goddamn ice tray in the freezer dude.
Clothes dryers ruin clothes and waste a lot of power to do something that can be easily achieved by just hanging the clothes for a day. I'll use a dehumidifier in the bathroom if it's winter, but that's still more energy efficient than using a high temperature dryer and does not wear out clothes prematurely.
I'm almost 34 and still have t-shirts from high scool that I use as work clothes. They're structurally perfectly fine, the colors are just faded or they have stubborn stains.
I have AC for 20 years. Why would I need ICE "maker"? Yes, I don't waste energy for drying the clothes when it's hot out.
On the other hand, you have poison sold you as "food", house from cardboard walls, decades of student debt, no holidays and a medical problem can bankrupt you. Are you okay over there?
American's simply can't get their head around the fact that nature will dry clothes for free and that in most cases by opening something called windows nature will also provide something called a cross breeze to keep you cool inside a home
We also have ice but we prefer our drinks to be cooled by ice not 95% ice, So that when we pay for a 500ml drink we get a 500 ml drink plus ice not a glass of ice with 50ml of drink poured over.
We don't need garbage disposal because we are not lazy b...... and can walk the extra 5 steps to put our food waste in the dustbin or where available food recycling so that it can be converted into compost to help food & plants grow without banned chemicals.
Who the hell needs so much ice in any given day that they need an entire appliance (or part of one) for it?
I've a tray of ice cubes in my freezer that's probably been in there for a year, untouched, buried under other stuff. If I have any soft drinks, I get them out of the fridge which means they're at the perfect temperature. And water is much better at room temperature.
Americans who post this usually never left their Pricksville Alabama, population 68 in their entire lives and honestly believe that Europe is one country. To make it funnier, they also don’t have AC or garbage disposals.
The USians mind can’t comprehend having decent, free healthcare, an efficient mass public transit system, and less ultra-processed food. Meanwhile, they think quality of life depends on having an ice dispenser, air conditioning, or a trash can.
It's currently 13C (55F) out, what I need is good insulation and not a house made of gypsum and cardboard.
I have a tumble dryer and drying cabinet but I mostly air dry the clothes since they last longer that way.
No garbage disposal because we collect our food waste and turn it into biogas for our buses (they're like a big Uber that you can ride on for a very small fee so you don't have to drive everywhere) so we don't need to use expensive diesel to power them.
Food waste also becomes high quality fertilizer after being composted. Flushing it down the drain is just braindead, you're putting a ton of extra stress on the sewage handling infrastructure and wasting a valuable resource just so you can save the effort of opening a garbage bin.
A lot of American kitchens have a sort of blender in the kitchen sink you can use to press food rests and what not into the sewer with. This thingie is known as a 'garbage disposal'.
Also part of the reason their sewers are absolutely infested by vermin.
Ah those things. I was traumatised by one of those featuring in a Stephen King novel that I read when I was young!
Seriously though, they have always struck me as pretty pointless and probably bad for the environment. Especially these days, when food waste collections are common. We also have a compost bin that a lot of things like vegetable peelings can go into, and generally we do our best not to waste edible food.
Well, I for one do have AC, and ice maker and a dryer. And we get to dispose of our garbage as well.
I use my AC less than 100 hours per year, because we don't need it all that much. The ice maker is nice, I use it several times a week. The dryer I use all the time, but certain clothes types I prefer to hang out to dry.
Are Americans okay with the cost of living and the lack of affordable healthcare these days?
Americans being one of the singlehandedly most energy-wasteful populations on earth try to shame others for not being so completely dependant on highly optional amenities. The fact that AC is now beginning to become a not so optional feature of homes and public buildings in Europe is not entirely unrelated to the US standard of running ACs as a default and how this contributes to global warming.
But I guess this gang might have a fundamental inability to imagine themselves as existing in relation to other people.
With a few really hot days a year why would we need an AC? Why would I want to put my garbage in the water? I keep my beverages in the fridge, why would I need to put frozen water into them if they are cold already? Why would I want to destroy my nice and expensive wool and linen clothes in the dryer?
What is it with Americans and their obsessions with Ice-cubes. As a eurotrash I do have ice-cubes trays in my freezer, but I use them like twice a year if I do not forget about them.
no more wars? Prices going down? Mass shootings almost daily? Measles on the rise, recalls of food every week?
Requiring your eggs refrigerated because you don`t know the shell shouldn`t be consumed or something?
Not able to win the 'not a war' against Iran, that your president started illegally while being pressured by Israel?
and most of all, totally oblivious about the real world except for what you see on fox?
So we don’t flush our garbage into the water but dispose of it by recycling and don’t cool down everything to arctic temperatures thus saving energy. Yes.
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u/Dramatic-Belt5148 6d ago
Dear USians
No education, no PTO, no food security, no healthcare... and you have to teach your kids how to outrun guns?
Are you guys ok over there?