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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • It’s whatever floats your boat at the end of the day. I’ve seen people with unique usernames being super chill in one community, and then appear in another spouting off like they’re two steps away from annexing Poland. It’s wild.

    I do my absolute best not to block people or communities though. I worry that my account will just end up as an echo chamber for whatever I’m interested in, and I’ll just end up disconnected from the Real World™️, as tempting as it sounds sometimes.

    Sometimes seeing and hearing shit that wasn’t top of your agenda keeps you grounded - but it’s an entirely subjective view.





  • Nah that’s fair enough, I get it. It’s a reasonably common thing in the UK - either the person who takes it is a local rogue who’ll flog the travelcard for a quid, or it’ll be used by someone away out on the piss for the night.

    I just found it odd is all. Like, if you take it and it works, happy days - you’ve saved yourself a bit of cash. If the ticket gate spits it back at you, then oh well, back to plan A.

    It’s cool to hear your take on it though, thank you.


  • Hey thanks for your insight.

    Maybe in the UK we’re super used to fast fashion shite like Primark or Asda George. I mean, the designs are cool but the quality rivals that of the Looney Tunes ACME products.

    Maybe you’re right though, maybe I’m looking at them through rose tinted specs. I rather like the Old Navy stuff or American Eagle. The material just seems to last a tad longer than the supermarket pish in the UK.


  • Oh man, I forgot the ESTA. A travel plan for your travel plan for your travel plan.

    We’ll have the ETIAS to do soon as well. Won’t be long before the dude at the border in Gibraltar will be like “¿que tal bruv, where’s Travelling With Authority Treaty form?”.

    Oh well. We did it to ourselves 🙁

    edit: forgot to say, thanks for the addition.

    Definitely worth calling your mobile provider beforehand - I think I had an add-on where I could pay £2 per day and use my contract allowance as usual. It worked nicely.





  • Hello fellow Brit.

    Everything is bigger. That’s an obvious statement, but the knock on effect is that nobody seems to have a sense of “nearby”. I frequently went out running on the pavement around two or three blocks, and people either looked at me as if I was possessed, or honked their horns like a “run Forrest run!” type thing because there was literally nobody else out putting miles on tarmac.

    Retail parks are a cracking example. I was out with a friend who knew the area well, and we wanted to go from one store at one end of the retail park to the other. I was happy to walk the three or four hundred metres and back, but they were positively horrified at the thought of not taking the car to another parking spot there.

    Speaking of driving - know your rules. Four way intersections are a cool invention. Roundabouts traffic circles are fucking wild going in from the right.

    See those 300, 200, 100yd marker boards on A-roads and motorways allowing you to figure out what lane you need to be in to take your slip road? Purely optional in the US. Be ready for people in lane three (or four, or five, or six) to see their exit and cut straight across. Blind spot checking is for nerds and communists.

    Things have changed lately, but go out with two or three changes of clothes, and that’s it. The clothes in the US are generally much cooler and much cheaper, it’s a good excuse to get new gear. Depending on where you’re going though, it’s hard work getting particular stuff - asking for Under Armour’s heatgear stuff if you go running in winter will get you some real fuckin’ weird looks in Florida, where even the vests are sometimes hotter than a duffle coat.

    The border: know your shit - where you’re going, how much you got, who you’re with. The border force agents (whatever their unit is called) are generally super cool, but they ask super intrusive questions. That Marks and Spencer ham baguette you got in Gatwick/Edinburgh/Manchester? Eat it quick, because it isn’t going through customs.

    Not sure how long you’re going for, but get a Post Office multi-currency card, or a credit card that specialises in the US Dollar or low international currency fees. While you’re at it, feel free to wow them with contactless payments. Last time I went to CVS, I had tapped the card before the cashier had finished his spiel about swiping the card, and refused to believe I’d actually paid for a few seconds. It’s like a magic trick with none of the effort.

    Overt generosity is mostly viewed suspiciously. I left the DC metro system at a gate, and tried to hand off my all-day travel card for someone else to use for the day, and was looked at like I’d shit on their station concourse and drew a Greek flag in it. It’s not like the tube.

    Tylenol: get shitloads. It’s basically paracetemol wrapped in bubblegum. Outstanding for hangovers.

    Enjoy it! The Americans are friendly enough even if the majority of them make some pretty wack political choices, but that’s another discussion. They’re generally sound as fuck, and find the British accent something of a novelty, so feel free to use it as a get out of jail card if you make a social faux pas. (edit: I don’t mean literally, I haven’t tried it on police officers)

    Have fun, let us know how you get on!









  • Some of them may be hardware related - any time I sign in to one of my TCL TV’s with a Premium account, the first result in any search is always one marked Sponsored. It’s gash, but it doesn’t happen on any other of my devices than that TCL TV which makes me think it’s some sort of vendor problem.

    Either way, YouTube/Google/Alphabet/whoever won’t give a fuck so if it’s that bad, then vote with your wallet.