Obesity. Americans are so obese that they don’t even recognise anymore that they are fat when they are fat. Every time US based tech people come to the UK or Europe for conferences it’s incredibly eye opening what they think is healthy and how they see themselves. Plenty of folks who think they eat and drink healthy and are in a good body condition and all I can see is a big wobbly man with barely any hair on their head drinking diet cokes like water. They think eating Mexican tacos is healthy and eating a big KFC is unhealthy. In comparison to here, we think eating home cooked food is healthy and eating a greasy cheesy Mexican taco is unhealthy fast food and a KFC is just plain disgusting.
The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England
281–290 of 399 posts
Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
The full text of the amendment is pretty clear that "a well-regulated militia" depends upon "the right of the people to keep and bear arms", it does not limit that right. In order to train farmers and craftsmen into an effective reserve fighting force, they have to have weapons of their own they can practice with. Times have changed, obviously, and civil society no longer depends on citizen firearm ownership. You can…
> We should probably repeal and replace the First Amendment while we're at it, and tie up some loose ends like Citizens United and the inability of U.S. governments to criminally punish hate speech. I am not a gun nut, and have little interest in owning/shooting guns. I've done it, and found it boring. But my defense of the 2nd Amendment is based on the domino theory that if the 2nd can be ignored, there goes the Fir…
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Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
Drivers in the US just seem incredibly aggressive to me. I remember crossing some street in downtown Pittsburgh, and a car coming towards me. The guy was clearly seeing me, and accelerating instead of slowing down. I jumped forwards and survived.
Ive lived around the country and the driving culture varies significantly from region to region. East Coast cities are the worst, whereas I find Seattle, where I live now, very east going. Having moved from the east coast, it shocked me to see drivers just stop for pedestrians, even outside of marked off crosswalks. Try that in NY and you’re dead. I saw the same thing in Europe, southern Italy was very chaotic roads…
Italians can't drive.
Every other nation in Europe manages to keep the car between the white lines, Italians can't even manage it when parking.
Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Deaths by billion vehicle miles in UK UK driving test is difficult, and I suspect drunk driving is much lower because distances are lesser and public transport is better. > suicides Much easier when you have a gun around
And DUI is treated much more seriously in the UK, consequences are stricter (for example, no "oh you need a car to get to work so you can carry on driving but only too and from work" loophole) and there is greater social opprobrium to drink driving.
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Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England
#285This seems unsurprising given the drastic differences in typical diet and exercise levels, and the availability of healthcare.
Eh, we Brits are no models of good diet and exercise. According to [1] while Americans have the highest obesity rates among major countries, Brits have the third-highest obesity rates. [1] https://metro.co.uk/2018/03/21/british-people-fat-no-denying...
American breakfast cereal is probably a good example of the problem. In the UK, don't you have to buy stuff like Cinnamon Toast Crunch from speciality outlets? I was under the impression much of what passes for breakfast in the US is considered confectionary across the way.
Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England
#286Anyone in the US (or just anyone really) considering visiting Blackpool to see what is driving this equivalence from our end - don't.
Historically, it was a pleasant seaside resort town. The rise of cheap flights combined with a decades long neglect of northern England has meant that all of these Victorian era holiday destinations have fallen to ruin, with Blackpool falling the farthest.
Left alone, it would just have been a shabby, run-down place - but to make matters worse, the cheap guest houses and B&Bs became the ideal place for drug addicts to live, or homeless people to be shoved out of the way. Blackpool hangs off the bottom of the rest of the UK districts in terms of life expectancy because of the normal health downsides of poverty, combined with the extra problems associated with excessive levels of drug and alcohol abuse.
Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, well, as long as I can sling code for 100K+ a year in this fine country, it’s not my problem what happens thousands of miles away over in Mississippi. —HN
Do you understand the irony of saying this when we're literally on a thread discussing and caring about the problem that is obviously more affecting the demographics that are non-HN'ers?
No. I don’t understand the love people have for molesting the word “irony”.
That was a meta-comment about what 99/100 threads about “why is Europe poor” or “why do schoolchildren have to practice mass shooting drills” are about (i.e. classic Europe/America culture war fodder); people talking about their precious FAANG jobs and how they couldn’t mine data for 200K annually in their native Moldova. Well, sure, people are dying of preventable disease but, y’know why are they making such bad choices? People should just apply themselves (like me) and learn to code.
Then of course people disagree with them. But the locus of the conversation is still about the upward mobility opportunities of tech nerds.
Then out of those thousands of comments there are “other side of the tracks” observations (I mean stats) about how those who didn’t apply themselves are doing.
Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, well, as long as I can sling code for 100K+ a year in this fine country, it’s not my problem what happens thousands of miles away over in Mississippi. —HN
You do realize some people on this message board live in Louisiana and Mississippi
Okay Mr. periodless.
Could have fooled me since we’re apparently just talking statistics, not relaying personal experiences.
Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. We should implement policies that prevent guns from getting into the hands of children, regardless of whether they're gang members or not.
That'll be very very difficult. Even very restrictive weapon ownership countries like Netherlands and Sweden have a big violent gang problem. And a policy as strict as they have is just totally unthinkable in the political reality of the US. So a policy stricter than the US can have isn't enough to solve this problem. That's why it's better to aim at reducing accidental underage gun deaths which is much more achievab…
Don’t know about Sweden but the Netherlands does not have a “big violent gang problem”.
It has a problem with a few small and very violent gangs that occasionally gun down people in broad daylight, in the middle of the street, completely disregarding the safety of the people around them, which is bad but nothing like the gang problems in the US or Latin America.
Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England
#290Anyone in the US (or just anyone really) considering visiting Blackpool to see what is driving this equivalence from our end - don't. Historically, it was a pleasant seaside resort town. The rise of cheap flights combined with a decades long neglect of northern England has meant that all of these Victorian era holiday destinations have fallen to ruin, with Blackpool falling the farthest. Left alone, it would just hav…
Actually, turning cheek and looking away is the opposite of what such parts of society need.