Americans used to pronounce Z the same as the rest of the world until someone wrote the ABC song and decided it needed to rhyme with V, and then an entire generation grew up saying it wrong and it stuck. At least that is what I've heard in Canada.
It's also why there is a Canadian version of Sesame street where the last verse doesnt rhyme because up until the late 90s our TV censors used to straight up nope things that would cause kids to be confused about how things should be pronounced.
Pan fried shawarma is something Im still trying to get used to. The Lebanese Shawarma places in Ottawa all stack the chicken on a stick rotisserie and it is cooked exactly like the lamb or beef kebabs, they then slice thin portions off of it just the same.
It wasnt until I moved out west that I ever saw Shawarma done any other way, and everything out here has been disappointing by comparison.
Canadians pay it and are hopefully turned to other options, smaller companies, and hopefully Canadian ones. That would drive Amazon's business down, and that hurts the billionaires more than the tax.
What I already see around me is more and more people moving their files and identities offline into home NAS and filesharing setups, like Nextcloud. Their conversations are moving to Signal, Mastodon, Lemmy, Nextcloud Talk, or just plain text. For now its the more technically savvy, but even non professionals with low levels of admin experience are reaching out and asking now, and non technical people are looking for access to those private resources.
The snowball isn't big yet, but it is rolling. How far it goes and how big it gets, we'll see.
However what surprises me is that this did not happen sooner and due to ads, but rather it is AI and the complete uphill battle it is becoming to keep your private data out of the multitude of inbound AI vectors that is finally pushing people down the hill.
Its what makes it more secure. Why do you need a chat app that allows your parents to accidentally stumble into a group of con artists or kids to stumble into things they shouldn't be exposed to? It's a messaging app, not gamer group chat.
Americans used to pronounce Z the same as the rest of the world until someone wrote the ABC song and decided it needed to rhyme with V, and then an entire generation grew up saying it wrong and it stuck. At least that is what I've heard in Canada.
It's also why there is a Canadian version of Sesame street where the last verse doesnt rhyme because up until the late 90s our TV censors used to straight up nope things that would cause kids to be confused about how things should be pronounced.