What, did you think that was the one bit of Americana that didn’t cross an ocean?

Traditional spiceless dishes, like Christmas pudding?

I think you have it backwards. The UK conquered the world, in part for spices (although that was more a Spain and Portugal thing), and used them. Then, you stopped importing them for a few decades as government policy and switched to “grease as the primary flavour”.

Does a steamed pud from a container count? Those things actually do kind of slap.

Man, imagine being the person at the Pentagon or the FBI in charge of stopping the Israelis from messing with American affairs. Talk about a Sisyphean task.

Also, Thomas+Allison.

It was one-sided and played for laughs, but it’s pretty much always there, so you might count it.

TIL. Did any of them deviate much from the original set-up, or is there a too-nice scoutmaster with an arrow through the neck in all of them?

Seems like that depends on a group of screenwriters with a masochistic enjoyment of denial. You have to think it would be a very tempting subplot to start.

As a result, most of the ideas people here have involve like three main characters. I’m not sure about 30 Rock.

You had to see that coming OP.

They even recycled a lot of the same basic characters and plot points. It’s has a pretty different feel though, so I’m not sure whether to be mad.

One nice thing about nature is that it has totally different problems than we do. Like, we should be glad we’re not wild deer, but they never have to deal with bureaucracy, or subtle mean girls shit.

Well, there’s no real reason to think it was a forced meme, as opposed to just people living it up when they suddenly could, and it started well before the Cold War. When you watch something set in the Old West, and they’re driving cattle east, that’s what it was about. It’s worth saying it was cheap-er in America than Europe or the undeveloped world, with all that freshly “cleared” land to graze on. Still more expensive than plant crops, though.

There’s a few sides to the Soviet shopping thing. Price controls in the USSR meant that the shopping experience was very different in general. You could afford everything, but anything unusual or desirable tended to sell out immediately. There were indeed empty shelves as a result, although on a rotating basis. Later on, as the system was collapsing, that became permanently empty shelves. People in the West tend to conflate the two, and the famines that happened before the space race period, 'cause propaganda. (There also were no one-stop-shops, and everything was behind the counter and collected by staff, but that’s a digression)

On the other end, there just were a lot more food categories in the West, and the USSR itself acknowledged it. There, a new product couldn’t exist until some government boss sponsored a project to create it, and fudge pops or whatever probably weren’t front of mind for what the Union needed. They spent a lot of time copying Western consumer products as a result. When it came to military equipment or civilian infrastructure, where the requirements are more concrete, they did far better.

I’m curious about the opposite statistic now. Presumably, the number of people eaten by chickens wasn’t and isn’t zero.

Which is probably why insectivory hasn’t caught on. If the West could adapt to sushi it could adapt to mopane worms, but in the 80’s or whatever vegetarianism was still a joke. Now it’s influential.

Beef was not cheap in 1961. At least, not for most people. The American everything-with-meat diet started basically as conspicuous consumption, because living on gruel and forage (mostly in the old country, but also the Depression) was in living memory.

This stat probably reflects that most of the world isn’t on the edge of starvation anymore, like it was in 1961. (Now it’s just a notable minority)

It should have to light up when recording. Like, at a hardware level.

Surveillance at critical points like arrests seems important in order to have basic accountability. Surveillance all the time if you know it or not is more of a slippery slope.

I encounter negativity when discussing politics online. Somehow quite a few people get insulting and expect me to change my view after. It’s irritating and hinders my will to be open minded when discussions are tinted with insults.

In some cases, it has to be people that just get off on conflict. Trolls, but like a kind that pretends to be a normal community participant. In other cases it’s more like they’ve forgotten there’s someone real on the other side.

When you have a good conversation with someone you don’t agree with at all, that shit is fascinating, though.

Is mindfulness what you’re getting at?

I haven’t seen “look on the bright side” yet.

That’s frequently dumb, unhelpful advice, because it’s presented as a cure-all. But, the way anything negative gets amplified, it’s worth considering if you’re overlooking the good stuff.

Like, most Lemmings have flown on a plane, at near the speed of sound above all the clouds. Cavemen would have killed for that opportunity. When we look at the stars, we know what they actually are. We’re not having more and more kids unsustainably anymore.

Edit: Oh, never mind, I just missed it.

Maybe I’ll just add the abstract idea of hope, then. Things still could turn out okay even if they’re bad now.

“On the internet nobody knows you’re a dog”

If you’re noticeably weird in some way, any way, IRL can be harsh. On the internet, there’s more hostility total, but it’s not usually directed at you.

It has to be.