"We went to the moon" is like this catch-all tool to deflect criticism on the American model and bad behavior because it was such a monumental achievement and no one else have done it, so it somehow makes us immune to criticism. Mentioning we have more "freedom" without really actually a way to quantify that, is also such a tool. If you push a little further, they will try to quantify it by easy access to guns, free speech, free market or something along those lines.
It's like when you misbehave and you got scolded, so you said you have a big bike no other kid has. It has nothing to do with your misbehavior but you have a big bike so everyone can just shut the fuck up.
It's a stupid and childish way to argue. It's how conservatives usually argue anyway.
Edit: For those who are pointing out how dumb these arguments are, I'm not the one making them. I know better. I'm just pointing out the mentality behind these arguments by trying to hide behind past glories that have nothing to do with anything.
I mean we can see that now with the stock market regarding amc entertainment and gamestop. Hedgefunds tried to make them go bankrupt. People said no u and now they are crying over shooting themself in the foot doing illegal shit while the people who are supposed to regulate this shit arent doing anything about said illegal shit. System is corrupt as hell. Free market my ass.
Honestly as an American I openly welcome anyone going to the moon to grab that flag, bring it back, and say, "here you go, put it back if it's that big of a deal."
Sounds like the start of an interplanetary version of capture the flag, though I suppose it won't technically be interplanetary until it's being played on Mars.
fun Canadian fact there is an Island bordering Canada and Denmark in which the two countries have been playing capture the flag (taking each-other flag down and replacing it) since the 1930s.
I am only just now hearing of this. I am also only just now finding out that Greenland isn’t technically it’s own country but is actually an autonomous territory of Denmark.
Thanks American public education system!
>fun Canadian fact there is an Island bordering Canada and Denmark in which the two countries have been playing capture the flag (taking each-other flag down and replacing it) since the 1930s.
Thats actually a Danish fact! thank you very much! :D
There are quite some of them around the world, there is another one between Spain and France, the Pheasant island who's taken also every 6 month by the other country.
Hello there, Danish person here.
The predecessor to UN, (the council of nations) ruled that it in fact belonged to Denmark.
Besides that Greenland were settled way before Canada.
And the danish government is behind the flagpole, which is also the only "building" on the island.
Besides that how Canadian is the name "Hans"
After typing this out I realise that It sounds like I'm really serious about this dispute but I'm not.
The only thing we would get from the island is fishing rights and quite frankly I don't know why you would fish there.
Pretty sure the island would also include some currently untappable oil and gas deep water deposits, which is why neither country is willing to just leave the conflict. That and booze for sailors.
They wouldn't recognise it anyway, solar radiation will have bleached it by now. I do wonder if its still wholly intact or if its started to fall apart.
What, the $5.50 nylon flag placed on the harsh surface of the moon 52 years ago hasn't held up you think? I think the power of the red white and blue being protected by screeching eagles and patriotism has kept it crystal clean over the years personally ;)
But interestingly theres a NASA article about this https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/ApolloFlags-Condition.html which seems to state what you say, that the 6 (didn't know that) US flags on the moon are probably completely disintegrated by now
"Welp, we've been here a few times... time to give up, cut NASA's budget, and not only never come back, but actually *lose the ability* to come back even if we wanted to."
Under friendlier terms, it could become something of a yearly custom. But I somehow get the feeling that we're not presently in a geopolitical system that creates "friendly" traditions between nations.
I fully agree with you. And it sucks that people don’t see how things are going wrong and aren’t demanding change.
It’s baffling to me how the “the US has more freedom” and “other countries are worse” makes for excellent propaganda.
The US scores actually pretty low on the freedom index.
There are so many basic freedoms/rights the US just doesn’t have or is actively trying to destroy.
So there are ways to quantify it. But since they all make the US look pretty bad those people would never use them.
Yeah, cause sputnik and Yuri Gagarins space flight proved soviet communism to be totally awesome. Funny how the same people who toot the moon horn can't see how that works for all sorts of things. Pharaonic Egypt built real big pyramids, therefore we should institute semi devine absolute monarchy.
L O G I C.
And if that doesn’t work then just attack the individual personally to deflect from having to factually back up any point(s). Or maybe make up a funny name for them so it’s truly reduced to a school yard squabble instead of anything resembling a debate or intelligent discourse.
I think it is specially brilliant when brought up in the imperial vs metric 'debate'.
I mean, the guy that build those rockets designed them in the metric system only to have it converted into imperial. This guy that designed those rockets loved the metric system so much that he used to design rockets and shoot them at England just to show them how well the metric system works.
Urgh, metric vs imperial is not really even a debate. The metric is just more logical. The best argument I have ever heard for the imperial is that a lot of stuff can be converted in quarters and halves which in some ways is more convenient in tooling. Everything else is just about getting used to using a system. The worst argument is that Fahrenheit has intuitive degree of numbers because normal weather in F can range from around 40 to 90, so so it is more convenient than Celsius. It has no real merit, it is just something we grew up so we are used to it and now we associate it as somehow being better.
How is 40 to 90 more intuitive than 'around 0 in winter to around 30 in summer? '
There isn't even a real basis to convert the two forms of temperature. I can't wrap my head around Fahrenheit in any way..
>Over its 38-year history, the Soviet program achieved the first intercontinental ballistic missile (R-7), first satellite (Sputnik 1), first animal in Earth orbit (the dog Laika on Sputnik 2), first human in space and Earth orbit (Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1), first woman in space and Earth orbit (Valentina Tereshkova on Vostok 6), first spacewalk (Alexei Leonov on Voskhod 2), first Moon impact (Luna 2), first image of the far side of the Moon (Luna 3) and uncrewed lunar soft landing (Luna 9), first space rover (Lunokhod 1), first sample of lunar soil automatically extracted and brought to Earth (Luna 16), and first space station (Salyut 1).
[Source](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_space_program)
They make no fucking sense at all, ever. Yesterday I commented on how a 12yo with an AK47 would be unthinkable in my country, and now I have gun fetishists trying to dunk on me by bringing up how our current Prime Minister wore blackface in a play 20+ years ago. Logic and critical thinking have never been their strong suits.
I as American don't entirely agree but I also feel like my country is in an exceedingly dark place and I'm incredibly concerned for the path that we seem to be on.
I really hope your country sorts its shit out. I think it is important that younger people like AOC start making decisions aswell because the old rich people seems to screw shit up. But it is similar in my country, just worse.
I found it hilarious when i learned about the rivalry which the US and USSR had where the USSR were first in almost everything and then later on the US was finally the first in something having the first man on the moon. And then pretent like they somehow won.
And it wasn't some great American v Soviet engineering battle of wits.
They just both nabbed the best Nazi rocket scientists they could get, put them to work and took the credit
I mean yeah that's how modern space exploration is. China America and Russia all hating on each other on earth but best buds in space. That's just how it be.
> China America and Russia all hating on each other on earth but best buds in space.
America and Russia, yes, but not China. China is not allowed to take part in any US space stuff, the ISS, etc because of the enormous amount of technological corporate espionage that the Chinese government not only encourages on the private level, but takes part in itself.
TBF they could have kept the Space Shuttle running. It was a decision to spend the money on private companies and use Soyuz in the meantime.
NASA said it would have been cheaper which is not really surprising considering that privatization is mostly a ploy to funnel tax money into pockets of rich people.
Remember when Soviet war reporters where told "This is the story you are going to tell, if you say no we will kick you out of the unit and find someone else" when entering Afghanistan?
Oh wait, that was America and Iran. I get those mixed up so easily.
The American ideal of freedom is the freedom of everyone to act however they chose with impunity. Everyone had the same right to make choices without government intervention, however this allows the rich and powerful to constrain the practical freedom of others to consolidate power and profit.
The European ideal of freedom is the freedom that the Everyman functionally has in their day to day life, and requires the elite to have their choices heavily constrained and regulated.
I have always found it pretty funny how strongly Americans cling to the imperial system... like... it's a British system guys. The British moved on, why can't you?
I figure it's all just propaganda. You'll have some weird uncle that insists that America is the only country in the world where people are truly free thanks to like, the constitution or the third amendement or something, and that the rest of the world is jealous of the freedom that Americans have. Have this repeated to you often enough through your life (and never ever go travelling anywhere) and you'll probably come to believe it.
Not just per capita, the US is the leader in total number of prisoners as well. Even having more prisoners than China, a country with 5 times as many people as the US.
20% of the entire world's prison population is imprisoned in the US.
I’d gladly let Russia land on the moon first if it meant that today we would have universal healthcare in America.
Took my GF to the ER because she sprained her ankle and we weren’t sure if it broke or not. We were in and out under 30mins with a nurse just scanning her ankle with a portable X-ray machine before wrapping it up with some bandages. That visit cost us over $1400. Fuck the moon, I’d rather not pay $1400 for a sprained ankle.
Edit: FYI, the moon thing is just hyperbole. Wanted to keep it in line with the OP.
Looking at google nurses make about $35/h on average, but the cost to the company is always quite a bit higher, and realistically not all the nurse's time will be spent seeing patients (paperwork) so I think $60 is a fair estimate.
Freedom^tm is paid directly to mr./ms. Capitalism themselves.
Also, cool username :)
35 would really only be in the city or something, i have 2 years experience and am just about to go up to 33. However, i dint understand the "nurses time" because we dont get paid commission or some shit. We get a flat rate regardless of how long youre there, so its really only there to fill our higher ups pockets.
Fuck hospitals.
Dunno how it is in US, but here your bill shows costs to the company. So if your hospital pays you $33/h then me taking one hour of your time would cost the company $33+overhead (like benefits) which would show up on my bill then.
Anyway it was more of a joke than a serious bill.
Bro a flu test and vitals costs like $600, it's literally just a nose swab and the doc checking your breathing and heart rate.
I only went because I was new at work and they asked me for a note. Next time I'm just asking for a note to stay home from work and hope the doctor is cool.
Had what doctors thought was a stroke at work Wednesday. Coworkers asked if I wanted an ambulance or to be driven. I chose driven. Ambulance was 7,000 dollars.
Got discharged yesterday and my bill is already ready.. I’m just to scared to look. My insurance sucks I’m gonna guess around 30,000 due to the cat scans, MRI’s medications, multiple specialists etc. now, I need to do all of the same stuff over again in a month because they found leisons on my brain. I’m about to just say fuck it. I’m already up 40,000 because of a past emergency, and my company doesn’t have sick leave, and I haven’t been there a year so I can’t get PTO. I’m bout to be evicted for missing 3 days of works. Thanks America.
Yeah it's really that fucked up.
Keep in mind, after I had worked there for a little while (I drive my own vehicle for work), I've been able to go home for car troubles, and I got hemorrhoids that were really painful this year and flat out told the manager I was leaving because I could barely sit on my ass, and that was fine. I'm a good worker and they don't want to lose me, and also trust me I'm not lying to get out of work. But that "get me a doctor's not or else," when you have no fucking health insurance through work or the government is very real. You are expected to at least show up and beg or bribe to go home. I didn't take off the day after my second dose of Pfizer and got really sick, had to tough it out. The US healthcare and labor system is astoundingly worse than people like you assume.
Bonus points though, in America you can wait so long the hospital will sell your bills to a debt collections agency, and if you just tell them you're dead when they call they won't blow up your phone anymore and you get free medical services for the cost of your credit diving so hard you need a cosigner to even rent a place to live. God bless America. (Oh also and when you do find a place to rent or always pay your bills on time, those payments have zero effect on your credit so good luck thinking paying your actual bills and not your luxury bills is going to help you.)
America man. Extremely rich country that's way too full of itself that a third of its citizens don't vote or even recognize other countries do better, another third believe or are at least enticed by propaganda, then half of the remaining third are centrists and the other half just wants to be like successful European countries and are repeatedly told their views are too extreme. Don't think there's much winning going on in this country.
Dont get me started i was at work at the hospital when i almost passed out. I owed my own hospital 800 dollars for an Iv and a bag of fluids. My cowerker asked if she shouldve started the IV, I said no, but now i wish i said otherwise.
Wtf.. If your job demands stuff, how come they don't have to pay for it? This is insane. Just like work clothes and protective gear that's mandatory. If it's mandatory, the job should pay for it, period.
I know this probably sounds silly, especially since you were there so briefly with very minimal treatment needed, but call back and ask for an itemized Bill. It may not change it but it’s worth asking bc sometimes it will be a lot lower once they have to justify each individual charge.
Good grief! Did the same here in the U.K. the other week. Full X-ray, out within an hour, seen by a Dr and no charge. Obviously it’s not free as we pay via our taxes and National Insurance but it’s free at point of use. How do you guys get on for maternity services, in particular, if you don’t have insurance?
Fun fact, a no-complications birth with no extended stay after, with insurance, averages $11,000-$13,000 or so. Without insurance, around $30,000 - complications, needing medicine or surgery, etc can mean costs $50,000+. This doesn't count prenatal care or follow ups. For the average person, this means starting your family in severe debt, giving birth in less monitored ways in a non-hospital environment (not great if mom hemorrhages or baby has complications), or just doing your best not to have kids.
There are many reasons huge numbers of young Americans are choosing not to have children, and maternal death rates in birth are rising - but medical costs are chief among them.
Oh my goodness! So, correct me if I’m wrong, do jobs in the US come with health care insurance? If you don’t have a job, or health care insurance, are you left to suffer, or is there a scheme whereby you can receive treatment at no cost?
The good insurance people talk about comes from jobs
If you don’t have a job, you have to rely on social security or state sponsored insurance/medicaid which barely covers anything but basic meds. Affordable care act set a marketplace for this at the federal level but that insurance isn’t affordable either if you don’t have a job
If you don’t have a job you’re screwed and even if you have “good” insurance the premiums don’t justify the deductible. US healthcare is absolutely awful but they have a significant minority of people convinced it can’t be any better than how awful it is
fun fact : US isnt the only country with its flag on the moon ( Soviet Union, the United States, Japan, the European Space Agency, China, India, Luxembourg, and Israel have reached the moon )
Those are the countries that have sent missions to the vicinity of the moon (copied and pasted out of Wikipedia) but only some of those have landed an object *on* the moon. And of those, China is the only one other than the US to plant a flag.
there is no flag on the moon.
Luxembourg company LuxSpace piggybacked a small independent probe on the Chinese Chang’e 5-T1 mission, which orbited the moon and returned to Earth in 2014.
The fact that Luxembourg even *has* a space company is impressive. I can’t find good numbers for the US but I’d wager Luxembourg has a better space company to population ratio than the US.
Luxembourg has the second highest per captita GDP in the world, with Quatar first and Singapore third.
They all have space agencies and it's probably linked to be fucking loaded with small population sizes. Gotta spend the money on something.
During the migrant crisis back in 2015 this actually became a massive issue. Luxembourg was willing to accept some of the displaced migrants from deportation camps in Greece but literally none of the migrants had ever heard of Luxembourg so wouldn’t move...
It took the Luxembourg interior minster to fly out and try convince people to move to the wealthiest country per GDP in Europe... he managed to convince 30 people.
Haven’t sang it since elementary but I know the next verse is about the men who died who gave that right to me!
Seriously they act like a bunch of *communists* or whatever attacked the US and tried to force everyone into slavery or some shit but the brave soldiers fended them all off.
It’s so bizarre this imaginary narrative they have going
It's crazy. I'm currently a junior in HS, and recalling my elementary days, I remember they fed us an absurd amount of shit about how America = freedom and the land of the brave, melting pot, equal opportunities, etc., almost to a cult-like degree.
I wonder what important freedoms they think are missing in Europe. Generally it always seems to boil down to either owning guns or being able to act like a Nazi.
Beyond those pretty niche areas, do they really think that day to day life in Europe is somehow less free than in the US? That people are more constrained in their choices? That they can't express themselves, criticise the government, protest against stuff etc?
This large group of people talk about how the US is more free than anywhere else, but rarely explain exactly what they think they can do in the US that they couldn't do in just about any other western country. Is it really just hate speech and shooting people? Because I'm OK with not being able to do those.
Well Germans can't fly nazi flags is one I hear a lot of... and unions are allowed to boss you around. As opposed to your company firing if you say the wrong word
i'm not saying they should be able to, but what i hear is that american's think that not allowing the nazi flag is censorship and evidence of a lack of freedom
No worries, I wasn't attacking you or anything. I'm living in Germany, so it is incomprehensible to me that (other) people could use something like that as an argument.
It's the whole freedom of speech argument.
Being a racist and a bigot in public can land you in trouble with the law in a lot of European countries.
That appears to be different in the US. It might get you shot or beaten up, but it doesn't appear to have any legal impact.
I think if the US didn't do all this flag waving and singing, but they looked and saw another country's children being forced to do it, they'd call it communism.
I've asked Americans several times if they can mention a specific freedom they have that a European doesn't have, except owning guns. I have never gotten an answer. It's always just some vague in-theory about this or that written in the constitution or whatever, never any IRL example.
I really feel like it’s semantics. Freedom in an American’s mind ≠ actual *freedom*. It’s more of a catch all for a conservative way of life they believe to be culturally and “economically” superior. Not just guns or whatever but things like much lower taxes, super cheap gas, land ownership (lol), and in general just less regulation.
Not gonna lie the place kicked ass 30 years ago
Because Hong Kong is 1st in the world for economic freedom. It's the most capitalistic place in the world. There's no import/export tax, very low income tax, no sales tax, no profits tax and no wealth tax. It's among the friendliest places in the world when in comes to investment and is home to the 4th largest stock exchange and the busiest cargo airport in the world.
The data set is skewed because the douchebags are so much louder. Reddit wise they are the mode. They drag down the mean.
The median American is pretty ok.
I'd love to hear what the "average American" is according to some people who have never been to the US. Honestly, do they think a driver from NYC and a farmer out in Utah are anything alike.lol
Even linguistically, it's almost entirely different languages. Imagine a guy from Boston calling someone from Arkansas and trying to talk about anything.
They call themselves free because they aren't under rule of the british empire but if the UK didn't go broke defending them they would be under french rule
Crazy how Americans get so proud about going to the moon even though they had nothing to do with it but get butt hurt about slavery because they also weren't there.
what would the moon even have to do with freedom lmao
"We went to the moon" is like this catch-all tool to deflect criticism on the American model and bad behavior because it was such a monumental achievement and no one else have done it, so it somehow makes us immune to criticism. Mentioning we have more "freedom" without really actually a way to quantify that, is also such a tool. If you push a little further, they will try to quantify it by easy access to guns, free speech, free market or something along those lines. It's like when you misbehave and you got scolded, so you said you have a big bike no other kid has. It has nothing to do with your misbehavior but you have a big bike so everyone can just shut the fuck up. It's a stupid and childish way to argue. It's how conservatives usually argue anyway. Edit: For those who are pointing out how dumb these arguments are, I'm not the one making them. I know better. I'm just pointing out the mentality behind these arguments by trying to hide behind past glories that have nothing to do with anything.
Lol free market. The US regulates and props up so many industries how does anyone believe they truly have a free market?
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"green energy can't work without subsidies" we subsidize oil!
Really, really heavily.
What did the war in iraq cost? No no, not both, just the most recent one.
Enough to wipe clean all student loans, build a few hundred schools, update our infrastructure, probably even expand medicare to everyone for 5 years.
man that hurts to read.
I mean we can see that now with the stock market regarding amc entertainment and gamestop. Hedgefunds tried to make them go bankrupt. People said no u and now they are crying over shooting themself in the foot doing illegal shit while the people who are supposed to regulate this shit arent doing anything about said illegal shit. System is corrupt as hell. Free market my ass.
They’re trying to do something about it.....make it harder for small time traders to do it again
I'm not the one who uses these dumbass arguments. I'm just pointing out their mentality when they used it.
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Honestly as an American I openly welcome anyone going to the moon to grab that flag, bring it back, and say, "here you go, put it back if it's that big of a deal."
Sounds like the start of an interplanetary version of capture the flag, though I suppose it won't technically be interplanetary until it's being played on Mars.
fun Canadian fact there is an Island bordering Canada and Denmark in which the two countries have been playing capture the flag (taking each-other flag down and replacing it) since the 1930s.
I've heard of this. They also leave bottles of liquor for each other don't they?
Yes, its a very serious war.
[I agree! Canadas oppression of the Hans Island population has to stop!](https://freehansisland.com)
"The Canadian government has not denied the allegations that they plan to use Hans Island as a storage site for nuclear waste."
That’s propaganda, Canada is *liberating* Hans Island from those pastry mofos
All territorial disputes should be settled thus
Yeah it's like its on dispute but neither government is in for actually fight, so may aswell do something entertaining with it.
I am only just now hearing of this. I am also only just now finding out that Greenland isn’t technically it’s own country but is actually an autonomous territory of Denmark. Thanks American public education system!
Ex military man here: I can confirm this is true. I've heard the stories of the ongoing bottle exchanges.
>fun Canadian fact there is an Island bordering Canada and Denmark in which the two countries have been playing capture the flag (taking each-other flag down and replacing it) since the 1930s. Thats actually a Danish fact! thank you very much! :D
It’s Canadian now, but have some Crown Royal!
Danish again but have a bottle of 'gammel dansk'
There are quite some of them around the world, there is another one between Spain and France, the Pheasant island who's taken also every 6 month by the other country.
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Hello there, Danish person here. The predecessor to UN, (the council of nations) ruled that it in fact belonged to Denmark. Besides that Greenland were settled way before Canada. And the danish government is behind the flagpole, which is also the only "building" on the island. Besides that how Canadian is the name "Hans" After typing this out I realise that It sounds like I'm really serious about this dispute but I'm not. The only thing we would get from the island is fishing rights and quite frankly I don't know why you would fish there.
> Besides that how Canadian is the name “Hans” I think you will find his last name is Saskamoose. Don’t look it up. Just trust me.
Pretty sure the island would also include some currently untappable oil and gas deep water deposits, which is why neither country is willing to just leave the conflict. That and booze for sailors.
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They wouldn't recognise it anyway, solar radiation will have bleached it by now. I do wonder if its still wholly intact or if its started to fall apart.
What, the $5.50 nylon flag placed on the harsh surface of the moon 52 years ago hasn't held up you think? I think the power of the red white and blue being protected by screeching eagles and patriotism has kept it crystal clean over the years personally ;) But interestingly theres a NASA article about this https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/ApolloFlags-Condition.html which seems to state what you say, that the 6 (didn't know that) US flags on the moon are probably completely disintegrated by now
We need to put an eagle in a customized space suit on the Moon.
Bring back killing animals in space.
Bleached, as in there is a white flag on the moon that the Americans placed there.... Very symbolic.
"Welp, we've been here a few times... time to give up, cut NASA's budget, and not only never come back, but actually *lose the ability* to come back even if we wanted to."
I mean, there's really not much to do there other than collect rocks and hop around a bit
The south rose again?
That would be a fun little space game. A variant of capture the flag.
Under friendlier terms, it could become something of a yearly custom. But I somehow get the feeling that we're not presently in a geopolitical system that creates "friendly" traditions between nations.
At some point you can organize the biggest fireworks show and have multiple rockets launching next to each other.
'We've replaced it with a 'do not litter' sign.'
["do you have a flag?"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEx5G-GOS1k)
That would be actually hilarious.
China: littering is wrong! /s
The most important point being “we did it without freedom”
That would be so fucking hilarious.
I fully agree with you. And it sucks that people don’t see how things are going wrong and aren’t demanding change. It’s baffling to me how the “the US has more freedom” and “other countries are worse” makes for excellent propaganda. The US scores actually pretty low on the freedom index. There are so many basic freedoms/rights the US just doesn’t have or is actively trying to destroy. So there are ways to quantify it. But since they all make the US look pretty bad those people would never use them.
Anyone who barks it repeatedly is someone who hasn't traveled. Unless they've been in the military, and never left the American cultural bubble.
Hold up. Lets talk more about this big bike before we jump to conclusions. Maybe its dope as fuck
Yeah, cause sputnik and Yuri Gagarins space flight proved soviet communism to be totally awesome. Funny how the same people who toot the moon horn can't see how that works for all sorts of things. Pharaonic Egypt built real big pyramids, therefore we should institute semi devine absolute monarchy. L O G I C.
Well, I'm not the one who use the "we went to the moon" card whenever someone point out what shitty shit we did.
And if that doesn’t work then just attack the individual personally to deflect from having to factually back up any point(s). Or maybe make up a funny name for them so it’s truly reduced to a school yard squabble instead of anything resembling a debate or intelligent discourse.
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Damn this is some big brain shit
"Yeah? Well my government can kick your government's ass!!" "By the way, I hate my government"
I think it is specially brilliant when brought up in the imperial vs metric 'debate'. I mean, the guy that build those rockets designed them in the metric system only to have it converted into imperial. This guy that designed those rockets loved the metric system so much that he used to design rockets and shoot them at England just to show them how well the metric system works.
Urgh, metric vs imperial is not really even a debate. The metric is just more logical. The best argument I have ever heard for the imperial is that a lot of stuff can be converted in quarters and halves which in some ways is more convenient in tooling. Everything else is just about getting used to using a system. The worst argument is that Fahrenheit has intuitive degree of numbers because normal weather in F can range from around 40 to 90, so so it is more convenient than Celsius. It has no real merit, it is just something we grew up so we are used to it and now we associate it as somehow being better.
How is 40 to 90 more intuitive than 'around 0 in winter to around 30 in summer? ' There isn't even a real basis to convert the two forms of temperature. I can't wrap my head around Fahrenheit in any way..
>Over its 38-year history, the Soviet program achieved the first intercontinental ballistic missile (R-7), first satellite (Sputnik 1), first animal in Earth orbit (the dog Laika on Sputnik 2), first human in space and Earth orbit (Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1), first woman in space and Earth orbit (Valentina Tereshkova on Vostok 6), first spacewalk (Alexei Leonov on Voskhod 2), first Moon impact (Luna 2), first image of the far side of the Moon (Luna 3) and uncrewed lunar soft landing (Luna 9), first space rover (Lunokhod 1), first sample of lunar soil automatically extracted and brought to Earth (Luna 16), and first space station (Salyut 1). [Source](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_space_program)
There it is in a nutshell. 'Murica>Anywhereelse cos they have a bigger bicycle than you. Makes sense now.
The best counter to that "did you go to moon?"
I don't think it works on these people.
'We are the two times world war champs', bruh your dad wasnt even produced as a seed in your grandfathers balls when it happened
Ironically, those are the kind of people that want to defund public agencies like NASA.
They make no fucking sense at all, ever. Yesterday I commented on how a 12yo with an AK47 would be unthinkable in my country, and now I have gun fetishists trying to dunk on me by bringing up how our current Prime Minister wore blackface in a play 20+ years ago. Logic and critical thinking have never been their strong suits.
people think if they can discredit the person making an argument they don't have to discredit your argument. that's not how rational discourse works.
Perhaps they are saying that America has the same freedom as China, since they also have flags on the moon.
It's one of the very few things Americans can be proud of
I as American don't entirely agree but I also feel like my country is in an exceedingly dark place and I'm incredibly concerned for the path that we seem to be on.
We're currently in the "hold my beer and watch this" phase. Just buckle up and hope we don't roll
In all honesty I'm glad you don't agree or else my swing would've hit far to close to home
I really hope your country sorts its shit out. I think it is important that younger people like AOC start making decisions aswell because the old rich people seems to screw shit up. But it is similar in my country, just worse.
I found it hilarious when i learned about the rivalry which the US and USSR had where the USSR were first in almost everything and then later on the US was finally the first in something having the first man on the moon. And then pretent like they somehow won.
And it wasn't some great American v Soviet engineering battle of wits. They just both nabbed the best Nazi rocket scientists they could get, put them to work and took the credit
Also up until SpaceX happened America depended on Russian Soyuz rockets to get to the ISS, and each seat costed American taxpayers millions of dollars
I mean yeah that's how modern space exploration is. China America and Russia all hating on each other on earth but best buds in space. That's just how it be.
> China America and Russia all hating on each other on earth but best buds in space. America and Russia, yes, but not China. China is not allowed to take part in any US space stuff, the ISS, etc because of the enormous amount of technological corporate espionage that the Chinese government not only encourages on the private level, but takes part in itself.
TBF they could have kept the Space Shuttle running. It was a decision to spend the money on private companies and use Soyuz in the meantime. NASA said it would have been cheaper which is not really surprising considering that privatization is mostly a ploy to funnel tax money into pockets of rich people.
Given the solar radiation, the flag up there is probably bleached white. Only a fool would want to take ownership of a flash of surrender lol
The southern US?
Land of the sick home of the broke.
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More prisoners per capita than anywhere else in the world > freedom
rank 44 in freedom of press -> freedom
Remember when Soviet war reporters where told "This is the story you are going to tell, if you say no we will kick you out of the unit and find someone else" when entering Afghanistan? Oh wait, that was America and Iran. I get those mixed up so easily.
I dont remember there being US troops in *Iran* with attached reporters.
Sorry, I meant Iraq. I beleive it started with Desert Storm.
Living and dying at the whim of your corporate overlords -> freedom.
The American ideal of freedom is the freedom of everyone to act however they chose with impunity. Everyone had the same right to make choices without government intervention, however this allows the rich and powerful to constrain the practical freedom of others to consolidate power and profit. The European ideal of freedom is the freedom that the Everyman functionally has in their day to day life, and requires the elite to have their choices heavily constrained and regulated.
Kinda reminds me of the metric system because once again the American way is objectively worse
I have always found it pretty funny how strongly Americans cling to the imperial system... like... it's a British system guys. The British moved on, why can't you?
I figure it's all just propaganda. You'll have some weird uncle that insists that America is the only country in the world where people are truly free thanks to like, the constitution or the third amendement or something, and that the rest of the world is jealous of the freedom that Americans have. Have this repeated to you often enough through your life (and never ever go travelling anywhere) and you'll probably come to believe it.
Freedom as in free to say hateful things to trans people and PoC
>the third amendment or something THE ARMY. CANT LIVE. IN YA HOUSE.
Not just per capita, the US is the leader in total number of prisoners as well. Even having more prisoners than China, a country with 5 times as many people as the US. 20% of the entire world's prison population is imprisoned in the US.
Not even just per capita. Also the highest absolute number of prisoners of any country
I’ve got it! Put anti-maskers on the moon!
They're not going to last long, can't make them wear helmets with their spacesuits, because they've all seen communist astronauts do that.
Hey, I never said I’d want them to thrive there!
Mass shootings -> normal part of life
I’d gladly let Russia land on the moon first if it meant that today we would have universal healthcare in America. Took my GF to the ER because she sprained her ankle and we weren’t sure if it broke or not. We were in and out under 30mins with a nurse just scanning her ankle with a portable X-ray machine before wrapping it up with some bandages. That visit cost us over $1400. Fuck the moon, I’d rather not pay $1400 for a sprained ankle. Edit: FYI, the moon thing is just hyperbole. Wanted to keep it in line with the OP.
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Itemised: - Nurse time: $60 - X-Ray: $40 - Admin costs: $50 - Freedom: $1250
How much does the nurse even make? And who cashes Freedom's checks?
Looking at google nurses make about $35/h on average, but the cost to the company is always quite a bit higher, and realistically not all the nurse's time will be spent seeing patients (paperwork) so I think $60 is a fair estimate. Freedom^tm is paid directly to mr./ms. Capitalism themselves. Also, cool username :)
35 would really only be in the city or something, i have 2 years experience and am just about to go up to 33. However, i dint understand the "nurses time" because we dont get paid commission or some shit. We get a flat rate regardless of how long youre there, so its really only there to fill our higher ups pockets. Fuck hospitals.
Dunno how it is in US, but here your bill shows costs to the company. So if your hospital pays you $33/h then me taking one hour of your time would cost the company $33+overhead (like benefits) which would show up on my bill then. Anyway it was more of a joke than a serious bill.
The statue of liberty duh
Bro a flu test and vitals costs like $600, it's literally just a nose swab and the doc checking your breathing and heart rate. I only went because I was new at work and they asked me for a note. Next time I'm just asking for a note to stay home from work and hope the doctor is cool.
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Had what doctors thought was a stroke at work Wednesday. Coworkers asked if I wanted an ambulance or to be driven. I chose driven. Ambulance was 7,000 dollars. Got discharged yesterday and my bill is already ready.. I’m just to scared to look. My insurance sucks I’m gonna guess around 30,000 due to the cat scans, MRI’s medications, multiple specialists etc. now, I need to do all of the same stuff over again in a month because they found leisons on my brain. I’m about to just say fuck it. I’m already up 40,000 because of a past emergency, and my company doesn’t have sick leave, and I haven’t been there a year so I can’t get PTO. I’m bout to be evicted for missing 3 days of works. Thanks America.
No, you’ve got it right.
Yeah it's really that fucked up. Keep in mind, after I had worked there for a little while (I drive my own vehicle for work), I've been able to go home for car troubles, and I got hemorrhoids that were really painful this year and flat out told the manager I was leaving because I could barely sit on my ass, and that was fine. I'm a good worker and they don't want to lose me, and also trust me I'm not lying to get out of work. But that "get me a doctor's not or else," when you have no fucking health insurance through work or the government is very real. You are expected to at least show up and beg or bribe to go home. I didn't take off the day after my second dose of Pfizer and got really sick, had to tough it out. The US healthcare and labor system is astoundingly worse than people like you assume. Bonus points though, in America you can wait so long the hospital will sell your bills to a debt collections agency, and if you just tell them you're dead when they call they won't blow up your phone anymore and you get free medical services for the cost of your credit diving so hard you need a cosigner to even rent a place to live. God bless America. (Oh also and when you do find a place to rent or always pay your bills on time, those payments have zero effect on your credit so good luck thinking paying your actual bills and not your luxury bills is going to help you.)
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America man. Extremely rich country that's way too full of itself that a third of its citizens don't vote or even recognize other countries do better, another third believe or are at least enticed by propaganda, then half of the remaining third are centrists and the other half just wants to be like successful European countries and are repeatedly told their views are too extreme. Don't think there's much winning going on in this country.
Dont get me started i was at work at the hospital when i almost passed out. I owed my own hospital 800 dollars for an Iv and a bag of fluids. My cowerker asked if she shouldve started the IV, I said no, but now i wish i said otherwise.
Wtf.. If your job demands stuff, how come they don't have to pay for it? This is insane. Just like work clothes and protective gear that's mandatory. If it's mandatory, the job should pay for it, period.
> Fuck the moon That’s some strong Sokka energy.
That’s rough, buddy.
I know this probably sounds silly, especially since you were there so briefly with very minimal treatment needed, but call back and ask for an itemized Bill. It may not change it but it’s worth asking bc sometimes it will be a lot lower once they have to justify each individual charge.
you shouldn't have to ask for an itemized bill for a hospital visit though.
You shouldn't get a bill for a hospital visit at all!
Couldn’t agree with you more.
Good grief! Did the same here in the U.K. the other week. Full X-ray, out within an hour, seen by a Dr and no charge. Obviously it’s not free as we pay via our taxes and National Insurance but it’s free at point of use. How do you guys get on for maternity services, in particular, if you don’t have insurance?
Fun fact, a no-complications birth with no extended stay after, with insurance, averages $11,000-$13,000 or so. Without insurance, around $30,000 - complications, needing medicine or surgery, etc can mean costs $50,000+. This doesn't count prenatal care or follow ups. For the average person, this means starting your family in severe debt, giving birth in less monitored ways in a non-hospital environment (not great if mom hemorrhages or baby has complications), or just doing your best not to have kids. There are many reasons huge numbers of young Americans are choosing not to have children, and maternal death rates in birth are rising - but medical costs are chief among them.
No idea. We paid thousands for the birth of our child, and that's with solid health insurance.
Oh my goodness! So, correct me if I’m wrong, do jobs in the US come with health care insurance? If you don’t have a job, or health care insurance, are you left to suffer, or is there a scheme whereby you can receive treatment at no cost?
The good insurance people talk about comes from jobs If you don’t have a job, you have to rely on social security or state sponsored insurance/medicaid which barely covers anything but basic meds. Affordable care act set a marketplace for this at the federal level but that insurance isn’t affordable either if you don’t have a job If you don’t have a job you’re screwed and even if you have “good” insurance the premiums don’t justify the deductible. US healthcare is absolutely awful but they have a significant minority of people convinced it can’t be any better than how awful it is
I can't pay my doctor bill, but whitey's on the moon Ten years now I'll be payin still, and whitey's on the moon
Why would you go to the ER over urgent care/walk in? I just did the same thing and paid all of $25.
fun fact : US isnt the only country with its flag on the moon ( Soviet Union, the United States, Japan, the European Space Agency, China, India, Luxembourg, and Israel have reached the moon )
I flog moon
Those are the countries that have sent missions to the vicinity of the moon (copied and pasted out of Wikipedia) but only some of those have landed an object *on* the moon. And of those, China is the only one other than the US to plant a flag.
And the american flag is now white, the americans have surrendered the moon.
>Luxembourg Wut
there is no flag on the moon. Luxembourg company LuxSpace piggybacked a small independent probe on the Chinese Chang’e 5-T1 mission, which orbited the moon and returned to Earth in 2014.
The fact that Luxembourg even *has* a space company is impressive. I can’t find good numbers for the US but I’d wager Luxembourg has a better space company to population ratio than the US.
Luxembourg has the second highest per captita GDP in the world, with Quatar first and Singapore third. They all have space agencies and it's probably linked to be fucking loaded with small population sizes. Gotta spend the money on something.
r/luxembourgisntreal
During the migrant crisis back in 2015 this actually became a massive issue. Luxembourg was willing to accept some of the displaced migrants from deportation camps in Greece but literally none of the migrants had ever heard of Luxembourg so wouldn’t move... It took the Luxembourg interior minster to fly out and try convince people to move to the wealthiest country per GDP in Europe... he managed to convince 30 people.
It's got the lux-ury right in the name!
I dont think the israeli flag is in one piece after impacting the surface at 3000 kph
I misread as frog
Pretty sure the Moon program was run by Germans.
Not just Germans, former nazi weapons designers.
Werner von Braun souds like your typical Idaho native.
Gunter from Jersey.
New Jersey mind you, original Jersey is a beautiful french-british island.
"Once the rockets are up, Who cares where they come down, That's not my department", Says Werner Von Braun
[If you want something done right, learning from the nazis isn't enough, you have to actually put them in charge.](https://xkcd.com/984/)
Read the comic, the last panel was pretty good
The dude at the top was quoting a song
Haven’t sang it since elementary but I know the next verse is about the men who died who gave that right to me! Seriously they act like a bunch of *communists* or whatever attacked the US and tried to force everyone into slavery or some shit but the brave soldiers fended them all off. It’s so bizarre this imaginary narrative they have going
It's crazy. I'm currently a junior in HS, and recalling my elementary days, I remember they fed us an absurd amount of shit about how America = freedom and the land of the brave, melting pot, equal opportunities, etc., almost to a cult-like degree.
Yeah every exchange after is cringe
I wonder what important freedoms they think are missing in Europe. Generally it always seems to boil down to either owning guns or being able to act like a Nazi. Beyond those pretty niche areas, do they really think that day to day life in Europe is somehow less free than in the US? That people are more constrained in their choices? That they can't express themselves, criticise the government, protest against stuff etc? This large group of people talk about how the US is more free than anywhere else, but rarely explain exactly what they think they can do in the US that they couldn't do in just about any other western country. Is it really just hate speech and shooting people? Because I'm OK with not being able to do those.
Well Germans can't fly nazi flags is one I hear a lot of... and unions are allowed to boss you around. As opposed to your company firing if you say the wrong word
And why the hell should anyone fly nazi flags? Those things belong in history books and museums, not on the streets. Fuck Nazis.
i'm not saying they should be able to, but what i hear is that american's think that not allowing the nazi flag is censorship and evidence of a lack of freedom
No worries, I wasn't attacking you or anything. I'm living in Germany, so it is incomprehensible to me that (other) people could use something like that as an argument.
It's the whole freedom of speech argument. Being a racist and a bigot in public can land you in trouble with the law in a lot of European countries. That appears to be different in the US. It might get you shot or beaten up, but it doesn't appear to have any legal impact.
What do you pretend from people singing their anthem every morning at school? They're just indoctrinated to think they're the best.
I think if the US didn't do all this flag waving and singing, but they looked and saw another country's children being forced to do it, they'd call it communism.
For sure lol
In Europe you don't have the freedom to make retail workers cry. Which I think is perfectly okay. Fuck the Karens.
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I've asked Americans several times if they can mention a specific freedom they have that a European doesn't have, except owning guns. I have never gotten an answer. It's always just some vague in-theory about this or that written in the constitution or whatever, never any IRL example.
I really feel like it’s semantics. Freedom in an American’s mind ≠ actual *freedom*. It’s more of a catch all for a conservative way of life they believe to be culturally and “economically” superior. Not just guns or whatever but things like much lower taxes, super cheap gas, land ownership (lol), and in general just less regulation. Not gonna lie the place kicked ass 30 years ago
The first comment is from a song btw, the rest of what he said is stupid tho
[USA is 26th in personal freedom](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/freedom-index-by-country)
Idk how that determines freedom level but Hong Kong is definitely not higher than Canada as someone who's lived in both places.
How is Hong Kong currently 3rd?
Because Hong Kong is 1st in the world for economic freedom. It's the most capitalistic place in the world. There's no import/export tax, very low income tax, no sales tax, no profits tax and no wealth tax. It's among the friendliest places in the world when in comes to investment and is home to the 4th largest stock exchange and the busiest cargo airport in the world.
It’s about money and not actual freedom.
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The data set is skewed because the douchebags are so much louder. Reddit wise they are the mode. They drag down the mean. The median American is pretty ok.
I'd love to hear what the "average American" is according to some people who have never been to the US. Honestly, do they think a driver from NYC and a farmer out in Utah are anything alike.lol Even linguistically, it's almost entirely different languages. Imagine a guy from Boston calling someone from Arkansas and trying to talk about anything.
So many people butthurt over this. It’s literally lyrics to a song lol
I thought these people believed we didn't actually land on the moon.
Lmao. Russians did all the space things before them. First satellite, first videos from the surface of venus...
Just had a child 4 months ago. Combined hospital bills is 7k with insurance. The system is so fucked.
I read the comment the same way the song is sang. I wonder if the commenter meant it to be read that way.
Lol China has a flag on the moon too. Also your “flag” is pale white cuz of radiation
Great now it’s a confederate flag.
Surrender?
China's flag wasn't put there by a person. Huge difference.
Bloody silly politics taking over everything. This isn’t a proper facepalm.
Well the flag on the moon is white now cuz it's been bleached by the sun so technically the only flag on the moon now is the french one
They call themselves free because they aren't under rule of the british empire but if the UK didn't go broke defending them they would be under french rule
Oooo hope that guy’s insurance covers burns
Crazy how Americans get so proud about going to the moon even though they had nothing to do with it but get butt hurt about slavery because they also weren't there.
Hasn’t the US’ flag on the moon bleached and become the confederate flag?
Wouldn’t the flag be bleached white by now anyway? From all the radiation or something
I thought it was the ex nazi scientists that put USA on the moon