Asklemmy

Grape jelly is more popular than jam, but we have both. Grape jelly is kind of an essential foodstuff in a lot of houses for making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which is a common food for children.

We have both blackberries and grape jam. Though grape is more likely to come as a jelly rather than a jam.

We definitely have blackberries. We don't really have blackcurrants though, may be thinking of that?

We absolutely have blackberries. In my neck of the woods, there's apparently 2 species of blackberries, one of which is highly invasive. I was going for walks about a month ago, specifically routed to pass by as many wild blackberries as possible, and they were very delicious!

We aren't big tea drinkers, so we only need hot water for food preparation.

The coffee machines make their hot water for coffee. If you don't use a coffee machine to make coffee, you might use an electric kettle or the microwave if you are derrainged.

LOL, we has 2 and have never used them. One is at camp, where we have a gennie, and we sold the other at the flea market.

The only hot drinks we make are coffe and we have 3 machines for that. If we need hot water to cook, we heat it on the stove top. I just can't see why we would want one. Am I missing out?

They do exist here, just not very common. But in my family at least, every person has one in their kitchen. We are big tea drinkers though. I use mine a lot to heat broth for Ramen.

It's not that much slower. Our 20a outlets give 2,400w, while yours gove 3000w. And, it's still faster than a stovetop kettle. Its more that we don't make hot tea very regularly, while drip coffee was the dominant hot drink for so long.

We do love our flag, especially post 9/11. Michigan is definitely a place where you would see more American flags than average. If you were in San Francisco, you would see far less.

In Belgium mostly the only time you'll see anyone with the flag on some piece of clothing is at some international (sports) event.

The statement for my wife's first month-long hospital stint was upwards of $957k.

While I agree with the essence of what you are saying. I want to say, if you have insurance the "bill" might be hundreds, but my share might only be 20 usd, if anything at all. If my "bill" was thousands, I might see my share be a couple hundred usd at most. It is possible for it to be far less then a couple hundred.

The other thing people don't mention is, if I honestly can't pay my share. I can walk into the billing office at the clinic /hospital and explain I honestly can't afford my share. The hospital will bill the insurance what they can, then look for extra funding. Most hospitals have a charity fund. It is based on my income. If I am broke and make crap wages, my share might be reduced to 0 usd.

Should we have a better system? Yes, but many times there are real options out there.

Drive through rural Mississippi. The wealth gap is nuts just from what you can see on the highway.

As an American, it drives me crazy. Then there’s those heathens who lay on the bed with shoes on!

Only place I've live where this is taboo is Chicagoland. And that's to be expected with the muddy snow.

Here in the South we usually don't have carpets, no reason to take our shoes off.

I grew up in a home where we just never thought about wearing, or not wearing, shoes in the house. Like, we obviously didn't track mud all over the place if our shoes were that dirty, but if we were wearing our shoes inside, nobody said anything or cared, it was just whatever. Married a Kenyan who put her foot down and was like, "Are you crazy?" It's apparently a big thing elsewhere in the world. In Kenya alot of roads aren't paved, things get dusty, and it's just common sense that you don't walk all over the house with dirty shoes, so I get it from that perspective.

It took me (an American) going to Ireland and Northern Ireland to realize how odd the excessive flag waving is. Still odd, but those two have the US beat.

Americans don't read.

Just before boarding my flight I was told that I need a visa for the US [...] This nonsense made me miss my flight.

I WOULD HAVE FUCKING LEFT IF YOU'D LET ME ASSHOLE

W.r.t. water bottles, I think it's because people don't look at or think about the signs that are often posted. A loud person yelling specifically at you is much more likely to make someone stop and ask themselves if they have a water bottle.

I'm definitely not defending it, but that's my take on the matter. The whole water bottle thing is just security theater anyways.