ruler

There are two countries - news, and world news.

They're the same place.

As an American living in Germany: I won’t say any of that if you please just stop joking about school shootings to me in every context.

A) I’m clearly okay living in a scenario where guns are more restricted, and

B) I’m from not too far away from sandy hook (elementary school, 2012, ~25 kids and teachers died, the first one Alex jones convinced people was fake), and know multiple families who lost a child to it- your edgy joke just brought them to mind at eight am at work. It’s fucking tragic and I can’t laugh about it- the only reason you can is that it’s not real to you.

Wait, so people IRL find out you're American and start making school shooting jokes at you? I thought I was supposed to have bad social skills.
- Yeah. To be totally fair, it’s not a lot of people percentage wise, but it’s a lot of jokes for me to experience because I work at a busy bakery, and chat with easily a hundred people in a shift. I probably get ~10 casual jokes about mass shootings in a week, most of which are about schools, but not all.
  It happens more in social gatherings like larger parties or when playing with strangers at a game store, but I can push back more there, so it’s not as bothersome.
I remember living in France during a movie theatre shooting, and they were like "how do you live like that? It must be horrible". It was also like 2k miles away from anywhere I'd ever been
Meanwhile, in the few months I was there someone decapitated a clerk in the nearest post office (just walked in during working hours) and my host found a human torso in the park like a mile away
That is awful, but you know what they say: fight fire with fire and start joking back about the Cologne School massacre.
- how the fuck does that help
- "This traumatic thing happened in my life and I wish people wouldn't joke about it"
  "Wow that sucks here's a joke about it"
  Why? to what end?

The "50 countries in a trenchcoat" thing is so stupid.

No other country in the entire world does federalism apparently.

most of the time i hear about it, it’s not even that, it’s about the US’s internal variety, as in the variety of dialects, culture and the such
which is very funny because for a country of it’s size and population, the US (white, colonial) culture is shockingly homogenous. even england, just england, has more internal variety! and that’s not even mentioning countries like india or china
the claim that the US has a ton of cultural variation would make sense if we were talking about Indigenous people and diaspora communities. but it’s never about them, strangely, it’s always about how north texalifornia says scrimble and west massachuvania says jonkle…
- There's more variety in language in the freaking Basque country, a subregion of France and Spain. We have our own language with 7 variations, inside those there's major sub variations from town to town, and then we have all the other Spanish and French languages.
  They speak of differences between states when their states are the size of countries, and inner state variance is minimal. Compare Texas to Spain, we have several regions with wild cultural and language differences...
  It's laughable.
- Is it soda or is it pop? Or is it a coke? Or this one will get ya, is it soda pop? We have so much variety in America /s
- It's a common refrain that the United States geographically is one of the most heterogeneous places in the world, but we way we build our cities and towns and how we choose to operate as an overall society is super homogenous.
  Although I disagree with the notion that there isn't diversity within the US (some states may be less diverse than others however), there is a degree of truth that we tend to have the same people doing the same things from Alaska to Florida. That's not to say there aren't tweaks to the system depending on what the populations want (Compare California's government policies to North Dakotas for example), but we have sort of accepted a homogeneous lifestyle as the way to do things, for better or worse.
  Great video from Wendover Productions explaining this
- Yep,
  And things like Reservations are also always conveniently left out of debates about the electoral college and states representation in the US senate. Like, I'd like to hear them advocate for representation for the first nations before I buy that they really believe the bullshit they spew about "states rights" and "small states need to be protected from big states".

There are three countries now, USA, Europe and China

China is the "other" that Americans don't talk to.
Australia used to be the fourth, but when a bunch of people claimed we didn't exist we realised it was easier to not correct them

hamburgr shall not be touched. (by a european, from europe). i will tell boris jonson about not to touch ur burgr.

will touch pretzels 🥨 instead-

also hiiiiii chloooeeeeee~ ~ ~ ~ <3 heyhi!!! hiiii!!! 👋👋👋👋👋👋👋👋 hello!!! heyhi hi there chloeee!!! <3 <3 🥕 💖🌸 <3 hello hi chloe hiiiii!!!!! hey hi hello im here!! and u too!!! hello chloe!!! we r both here!! on the internet 🛜! hiiii chloe from the internet!!!! <3 🛜🍼💖🌸🍓🍰🧛‍♀️👩‍🍼🌌 welcome chloe to this comment!! the comment welcomes u to reading it:

"hello chloe 🥕, i suggest u read me"* the comment

on the internet, everything is possible. third spaces "video games" (those r ki da like games - but totally digital and stuff... feels weird - but its real!... and feels less exciting to play than real ones 🩱 - but still!). imagine the internet is a ppace where things happen - its like real life (which is not merica, not europa and not even real, but also real) but not real!... which is not exciting. chloe, i want u to feel greeted. u make me wana buy a scarf 🧣 too. u make me wana purchase nice clothes for the winter. u makee wana hug u. wishes go out from europe (from me, the european) to u, dear chloe (mayb a european, mayb not - but certainly nothing else, cuz theres just merica and europa). i got no idea what those 50 sub countries r btw- sounds kinda sketchy. like - what do they do - control 50 countries with a single president? or control each sub-country with different leaders, who r gona have diffrnt onions 🧅? both options sound kinda real bad.,.. but yea, all that merica stuff is kinda goin over my head anyway - cuz im a european who doesnt know what a sub country even looks like-

touches hamburger (person from Hamburg) instead
- JFK: Ik bin ein Hamburger
hello maria :3
- awwwwww hiiii chloeeee <3 <3<3<3<3<3 hellooooo chloeee ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ , ~~ ~ ~ <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 hiiiii!!!! hiiiii chloe ~<3 im greeting u again from europa to chloeland <3
  i believe that in chloeland, theres caféèééèés and tea drinking places and bakeries and comfy libraries and fren places ~<3
Take my upvote smorty. It don't mean nothing but it don't cost nothing either. You might be European but you sure know your Internet's all the same. That's a real wall of slag you left there for us (/¯ ಠ_ಠ)/¯

Can I buy some whitespace?

Whitespace is European propaganda. Don't fall for their deceptions.
Black space matters!

I feel this so much in Australia. If a people on the internet remembers that Australia exists it is always like one of the same 3 jokes and nothing else ever.

On the topic of cultural variation, Australian states are really far apart, but population wise very small (mostly in the low millions). I have a friend in a different state and we just keep running into odd slang that is specific to a single state.

What are the 3 jokes? I'll guess:
upside down
prisoners
dingo ate my baby
- SHRIMP ON THE BARBIE
- spiders and snakes is definitely on the list
  prisoners i don’t get so much
- drop bears
- No emu war?
Is the Michelin star KFC in Alice Springs one of them?
- That's crazy, how have I never heard about that. Maybe I'll have to check that out.
  One of the specific things i can remember is Meatbox and AB Pack are the same thing, just called that in WA and SA respectively.