Headlines: Only in America

Just a fun place to post uniquely American headlines.

Such as measuring your wildfires in Texas by football fields consumed per minute. Or FFPM’s I guess.

Quote by RowanThorn

Just a fun place to post uniquely American headlines.

Such as measuring your wildfires in Texas by football fields consumed per minute. Or FFPM’s I guess.

To be fair, most people can visualize a football field in their mind's eye. Can you see 1.3 acres of open land that way?

I’m from Ohio and grew up next to farm country so yeah… I recognize it’s not common. But I think saying 8.5 miles would be even easier to conceptualize that 150 fields end to end.

Quote by RowanThorn

I’m from Ohio and grew up next to farm country so yeah… I recognize it’s not common. But I think saying 8.5 miles would be even easier to conceptualize that 150 fields end to end.

But you're presuming a straight line? How about 30 deep and 5 wide? Or vice versa? It is a simple, generally understood mental reference, so I can't fault it. Is it any different than saying the fire consumes 5 city blocks a minute to a New Yorker? I doubt anyone there judges distance traveled by feet/miles/kilometers.

Similar expressions are used here in the Netherlands, only here football refers to actual football, the game where the ball is an actual ball and is played with one's foot.

Quote by noll

Similar expressions are used here in the Netherlands, only here football refers to actual football, the game where the ball is an actual ball and is played with one's foot.

You were probably a shit football player, I just know it.

Quote by noll

Similar expressions are used here in the Netherlands, only here football refers to actual football, the game where the ball is an actual ball and is played with one's foot.

Is that the one where you grab your shin and roll around till the stripy gentlemen tells everyone else to stop being mean?

Quote by Magical_felix

You were probably a shit football player, I just know it.

LOL, I was. Funny to see you all butt hurt over 'football' though.

Quote by RowanThorn

Is that the one where you grab your shin and roll around till the stripy gentlemen tells everyone else to stop being mean?

Only when you get paid copious amounts of money for it it seems. But it's one of those sports where you don't dress up in full armour, so yeah.

Quote by noll
But it's one of those sports where you don't dress up in full armour, so yeah.

How many jousting grounds in a football field?🤣 How many hockey arenas in a cricket pitch? I mean, if we are going to measure things in terms of sporting venues, we could get really crazy and create a whole new measurement system. 😜

Quote by Seeker4

How many jousting grounds in a football field?🤣 How many hockey arenas in a cricket pitch? I mean, if we are going to measure things in terms of sporting venues, we could get really crazy and create a whole new measurement system. 😜

The thing is that most people have some idea about distance, whether that's in kilometers or miles, because we've traveled some. But with areas it's different. Maybe not for folks who work the lands. But apart from living space inside a house, or maybe a garden, most folks don't have to deal with areas, so they lack reference. Common sports fields are just that: a reference that most folks know.

Here they sometimes use whole provinces as reference, like when a big chunk of ice breaks off of Antarctica for instance. In recent news Gaza got compared to a Dutch island, size wise. And when there's news about the deforestation in the Amazone, it's often the Netherlands as a whole that's used as reference for the affected area.

While not based on sports, the non-metric systems, like the British imperial system and the US customary system, are kinda like what you described.

Quote by noll

LOL, I was. Funny to see you all butt hurt over 'football' though.

futbol*

This is beginning to remind me of the discussion in Monty Python and the Holy Grail about swallows and coconuts.

Where else in the world does this kind of shit occur on a frequent basis? A M E R I C A leads by a fair margin.

https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/owners-of-lighthouse-christian-academy

It’s not the first time a Christian boarding school in Missouri has come under fire for alleged bad behavior. In the past several years, there have been investigations into the “Circle of Hope Girls’ Ranch and Boarding School” and Agape Boarding School in the same state.

A lot of this happens because religious boarding schools in Missouri are largely unregulated, relying on their religious label to win the trust of unsuspecting families. These facilities assure parents their troublesome teenagers will receive a much-needed, faith-based rehabilitation if they simply hand over custody and pay a hefty fee. Instead of making things better, though, the Christian ranches often become a hotbed of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse that leave the kids far worse off than when they entered.

Quote by WellMadeMale

Where else in the world does this kind of shit occur on a frequent basis? A M E R I C A leads by a fair margin.

https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/owners-of-lighthouse-christian-academy

It’s not the first time a Christian boarding school in Missouri has come under fire for alleged bad behavior. In the past several years, there have been investigations into the “Circle of Hope Girls’ Ranch and Boarding School” and Agape Boarding School in the same state.

A lot of this happens because religious boarding schools in Missouri are largely unregulated, relying on their religious label to win the trust of unsuspecting families. These facilities assure parents their troublesome teenagers will receive a much-needed, faith-based rehabilitation if they simply hand over custody and pay a hefty fee. Instead of making things better, though, the Christian ranches often become a hotbed of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse that leave the kids far worse off than when they entered.

Religious boarding schools…

I can go into this for hours of the retched history of these colonial tools in the US. There’s a long history of child trafficking and abuse in these things, but it all really starts with their government funded inception to erase the indigenous cultures in America’s cultural genocide of the indigenous people.

The whole concept of ‘kill the Indian, save the man’ made it illegal not to send your indigenous children to these places. Children were not allowed to stay with their parents and learn of their families practices. Instead they were sent to packed boarding schools that taught them whiteness and beat the indigenous teachings out of them. This went on in full swing up until the 1970’s. There are survivors today who deal with the ramifications of the abuse. I read one particularly horrific story of a nun hitting a seven year old so hard she snapped his neck. The students had to carry on through the meal, stepping over his body.

Children were sold off and never returned to their homes frequently. Tens of thousands of children went missing and were never seen again. And when all the information came out practically no charges or official investigations were done. With plenty of clergy alive who had participated in and covered up the abuses, the government never filed charges. In fact they were frequently inspected by the government who were more interested in stamping out the cultures of the children than their safety.

Religious boarding schools were and are hotbeds of child abuse.

YouTube Music contractor finds his team got 'laid off' during union's pay negotiation testimony at US city council meeting

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/108204024.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

A conservative propaganda group that focuses on targeting children is approved as an education resource in 4 states.

Highlighted in the article is a video telling kids it’s unfair to judge slavers as bad people because ‘being a slave is better than being killed.’ Gosh, wow! Thanks for that!

https://www.npr.org/2024/03/07/1234491074/prageru-schools-videos-growth

this will happen, one day...

https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-investigations/dhs-officials-texts-show-unfiltered-reaction-to-january-6/

Think about how much information (complicit and criminal) was deleted by all the 'official Trump government' agencies when those agencies authorized the deletion of text messages recorded on official government supplied smart phones.

Then tell us all how there was no active conspiracy afoot on January 6, 2021.

Quote by WellMadeMale

https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-investigations/dhs-officials-texts-show-unfiltered-reaction-to-january-6/

Think about how much information (complicit and criminal) was deleted by all the 'official Trump government' agencies when those agencies authorized the deletion of text messages recorded on official government supplied smart phones.

Then tell us all how there was no active conspiracy afoot on January 6, 2021.

I’m not sure if conspiracy is the right word for it. It’s all done so blatantly with middle fingers raised to the public.

Be careful people, there is a lot of bad merchandise out there and unscrupulous businesses.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/stupid/indiana-meth-069345

Oh! Damn! That news video of P. Diddy Combs beating the shit out of his girlfriend, kicking her on the ground and dragging her around.

another mass shooting

Quote by Steel_Heather

another mass shooting

Does that even rate a headline any more?

Quote by kistinspencil

Does that even rate a headline any more?

Apparently not. If she’s referring to something that happened in the past few days nothing was on the major news cycles.

Quote by RowanThorn

Apparently not. If she’s referring to something that happened in the past few days nothing was on the major news cycles.

maine. 18 people in a bowling alley. just business as usual, sorry to say.

Quote by sprite

maine. 18 people in a bowling alley. just business as usual, sorry to say.

Damn, lack of headlines only in America. Where 18 people killed in a mass shooting doesn’t crack front page on any news network. Ick.

Quote by RowanThorn

Damn, lack of headlines only in America. Where 18 people killed in a mass shooting doesn’t crack front page on any news network. Ick.

Kind of my point, sadly.

Quote by RowanThorn

Damn, lack of headlines only in America. Where 18 people killed in a mass shooting doesn’t crack front page on any news network. Ick.

Except, this happened last October and was extensively covered by all networks for a few days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Lewiston_shootings