I am never sure since I am American so know lots of Spanish from osmosis. But of course in any large European city there will be plenty of people who know enough English to help out. So yeah, he probably approached every interaction with stereotypical British arrogance and annoyed the people who would have been happy to help him otherwise. 🙈

My parents’ house had such a room! I always thought it was weird to dedicate a room as a shrine to some mythical guest who would someday come and honor it with their presence.

I believe it.

I worked with an Englishman who has lived in the Netherlands for more than 20 years without learning Dutch.

We had a work trip to Madrid, and he went the weekend beforehand for a short vacation. I ran into him on Sunday night and asked him how it went. He said it was terrible, because he’s a vegetarian and couldn’t eat anything because nobody spoke English. He didn’t know what to order or how to ask if something was vegetarian. He was outraged that nobody spoke English. In Madrid. The capital of Spain. 🙈

Political revolutions usually involve a wealthy class being kept away from political power, combined with a particularly unpopular and stupid absolute ruler.

In the US, the wealthy are the political class, and while Trump is stupid and unpopular he has only been in power a year. Most people think he will be gone in 3 more years, and even if he jettisons the Constitution and stays in as President, he is old and unhealthy.

Just to be clear, you probably don’t want to take it during the flight.

According to that site meat consumption in Europe has dropped by 19% but grown by 10% in the US.

I have a friend who is also a foot anti-fetishist. I find being revolted by feet equally inexplicable to being aroused by them, but both are fine I guess.

Increases in productivity go to the owners, not the workers. Even imaginary increases in productivity.

Mostly accurate, although the flight delays tend to be announced one short delay at a time. “We’re going to be a few minutes late pulling out from the gate.” “We missed out takeoff window, so we’re going to have a 20 minute delay.” “We need to refile our paperwork, so we’re heading back to the gate.” “Ground crew changed shift, so we need another 45 minutes.” And so on…

One reply to this is that God can do anything possible.

Now, ideas about what is possible vary. For example Descartes could not conceive of a triangle where the angles did not add up to 180°. However, even in Descartes’ time it was known that a triangle on a sphere will have angles that add up to more than 180° (you can make a triangle with 3 right angles on a globe and those angles add up to 270°).

So the idea might be refined to be more that nonsensical things remain nonsensical. As in, you can ask the question, “Can God change the color of a flower to Tuesday?” But even though it is perfectly correct English, it doesn’t make sense, and your question is bogus, not God.

Nuclear wars before the UN: 1

Nuclear wars after the UN: 0

Saying “please” when asking someone to do you a favor isn’t excessive, IMHO. It indicates that you are making a request and not issuing an order, and recognizes that you are grateful for the assistance.

That and the century of humiliation.

Presumably you had to travel to get there. It’s likely you didn’t have anything to drink while travelling. So they offer you a drink.

Also, it’s nice to sit and chat while enjoying a drink, whether that is a warm drink (coffee, tea, whatever), a cold drink (water, juice, soda, whatever), or an alcoholic drink (beer, wine, whatever).

Edit: Also why are you annoyed? If you don’t want anything a simple “nothing for me, thanks” is fine and shouldn’t put you out too much!

Totally off topic, but man that is one terrible table design. 😆

Possibly because in the past there was a notion that doctors would lie to their patients “for their own good”, and that the doctor’s decision about your care was something you had to just accept.

The notion that patients could advocate for their own care arose during the boomers’ lifetime.

Didn’t the Ultima series start in the 1980s? My friends and I spent ages on Ultima III!

AI wouldn’t be so bad if the planet wasn’t being turned into computronium.

Uru isn’t the strongest on its own, but it takes well to enchantments.