Also, slaying corrupt local authorities
94Where eating the rich might also come with alchemical benefits
29
And pretending imperial measurements are better than metric!
35As a non-American who didn't grow up with imperial, I still prefer it for fantasy. Metric sounds too modern and scientific. Also I feel like I have more room to fudge distances because it already sounds imprecise.
Would be a fun bit to make the players use metric in a magitech world though.
24Don't care. My sheets have all the measurements without major mechanical significance listed in SI units. Length of hempen rope? 15 metres. Darkvision range? 18 metres. Character weight? Kilograms. The only imperial unit I keep using is speed (ft/turn)
7Permanently Deleted
1Most of them I guess, I only just learned there's 2 types, one for Americans and one for whoever else is dumb enough to not use metric. Imperial units are dumb, inconsistent, arbitrary increments that make little sense. Metric is uniform, even increments of ten/hundred/thousand no matter how far up/down in scale you go.
Measuring distance, the smallest increment imperial has is the inch. 12 inches make a foot, and 3 feet make a yard. The next increment up is a mile, which is 1780 yards, why the giant leap?
Meanwhile with metric, no matter what you're measuring, the next step up is just a multiple or factor of 100 or 1000 of whatever you're measuring. 100cm = 1m, and 1000m = 1km.
And don't even get me started on Ferenheit vs Celsius, nevermind the fact that Kelvin is better than both.
I say all this as an American who grew up struggling with our dumb ways of doing things.
12
I know it's a joke about Americans not speaking a second language, but they aren't too bad at it. They land at about 23% and seeing how the EU average is 25% that's rather good. https://www.americathebilingual.com/the-surprising-truth-about-american-bilingualism-what-the-data-tells-us/
34That site is so weird. And whoever wrote that article is also mathematically illiterate. Not to mention they didn't link to any sources. So here is one they claim to have used:
This source says that 65% of 25-64 year old spoke at least a second language in 2016. The much lower number of 24% is when asked about proficiency, which can't be compared with the US given Americans' notorious overestimation of their own qualifications.
Most of the 25% of Americans (I couldn't find a source for this) claiming to speak a second language is immigrants. I guess it needs to be said, but when people comment on the monolongualism of Americans, it's about those who are not immigrants or first generation born in the US.
In my experience, most non Hispanics claiming to speak Spanish in the US struggle to hold even a basic conversation. And I have been to 35+ states, including door to door canvassing, etc.
52It’s worth noting that the lack of second language proficiency isn’t a result of laziness or ignorance
In Europe, most people are a short train ride from another country. There is also a lot of cultural exchange between countries within Europe.
Most Americans are multiple days of driving from the nearest non English speaking country, and that’s just to arrive in an area of Mexico where the people they will interact with overwhelmingly speak English.
In that context, there is little utility for most people in learning a second language. It’s also very difficult to achieve true proficiency when you are so rarely exposed to native speakers of a language.
30Oh thank the gods, I was worried we might have lost our #1 spot in monolingualism.
3It is easy to find many other sources with the same statistics. These as I understand them are people who speak 2 languages and not people who have simply learned some of a second language. There are a lot of American people speaking Spanish in the US, of course there are also for example, 1.5 million who speak vietnamese.
This is broadly true with white Americans when their immigrant background is there already for generations... but a huge part of america does not even speak English at home. America is a melting pot of people from everywhere in the world and they naturally bring their languages, food, and culture with them. It is easy to forget, especially when only looking at specific demographics of a diverse country.
2
Yet overall, only about 60% of Swedes use a second language every day.
So not at all a second language, but people using a second language every day...
Bet 90%+ of adult swedes speak at least 2 languages... I have never met an adult swede not being at least quite okay with the language of shakespeare, and I'm swedish & grew up there.
22This is Lemmy. The Europeans love to paint Americans with the same brush our media paints us with.
I'm convinced many of them are just completely misinformed. As an American, I'm offended by this because that's OUR thing. Get your own thing, Europe!
12Europe gets information about Americans from American media.
14
And getting 8 hours of sleep a day
30But you only actually sleep for six of it. You spend up to two hours of it doing a light activity like keeping watch and reading. And yet you're still fully rested and healed of all damage.
21
I've owned property in WoD, and been a vagrant that never goes hungry in GURPs. Truly the male fantasy.
26Never goes hungry, you say? I literally took instant mashed potatoes from the laundry room today…
17
And unliving others, mostly
11Who is that reporter?
8Philomena Cunk played by Diane Morgan
26I'm convinced that Philomena Cunk is actually playing Diane Morgan the rest of the time.
15
Don't do this to me, man. Don't bring real shit into my escapism. 😣
8and you can work from home or your friend's home
7And functional healthcare?
6Nah it is magic in dnd just like it is with American insurance
6
!cunkposting@lemmy.world is leaking
5
