The evil trinity of American excellence:
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Healthcare System
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Banking System
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Temperature Units
I didn't know just how fucked up it all was until I moved to Canada.
this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2025
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Also:
- Car dependency
- Tax filing companies
As an European I never understood what's wrong with Fahrenheit besides no one else using it. Unlike feet/miles/pounds there is no need to convert them to anything else so.. why?
Water freezing/boiling point being 0 and 100 is neat but nowhere near being fucked like American distance units
Check out Chicago: where you can ask for directions and 'a couple blocks' could mean 500 feet or 3/4s of a mile, depending on what part of town you're in .
I'll still take a fairly straightforward grid over the spaghetti road map that many East Coast/European cities have.
American here raised on the Fahrenheit. My rational mind knows that we should all use SI and/or metric units for everything (using Celsius over Kelvin is a pretty easy sell). And there are other units of measure like energy that depend on how big a "degree" is, so your reasoning doesn't even apply in all situations.
However, living in a temperate northern US climate where we get a full dose of all four seasons, it IS pretty damn neat that 0-100 F is basically the scale of the outdoor temperature I can expect to see in a given year. It can get colder than 0F or about -18C, but that is an insanely cold winter day. Likewise, it can get above 100F or about 38C, but that is an insanely hot summer day.
Insanely hot or cold for this area, of course. Somebody who lives in Dubai or Greenland might not think it makes so much sense.
Actually, for hot places like Dubai, a 0-50C scale for temperature extremes probably makes more sense!
edit: used to say "but that is an insanely hot winter day" which I guess IS true...
I pull out a crisp $5 bill from my wallet and hand it directly to the other person.
I call it HumanPay.
I don’t want to touch that fake ass poop paper
I've heard of this. It's sponsored by the human fund, is that the one?
Would you accept a crisp high-five?
Second time I've heard about taler in two months. A new record. I'd have to look into it again, but I can say is that if it soceeds, I hope it brings gnunet with it (except gns. It sucks and doesn't make sense
Serious question to Americans: why don't you pay your friends in cash instead of dealing with this bullshit?
I do. It's literally the only reason I carry cash around. I'm not comfortable banking on my phone.
We don't usually work with cash. Most people I know don't carry cash at all, and it's a pain to get, since most paychecks are direct deposit. You've gotta head to an ATM or the bank, or ask for cash at checkout at the store.
It’s the same in Europe (salary being bank transfer), but ATMs are ubiquitous and if you use cash when buying e.g groceries at the local farmer's market, the seller doesn’t have to file it (I mean legally they have to, but let people enjoy life a little). Nice thing to do with ultra small businesses where the owner is the only employee or maybe they have like 1-2 other people. Same with small garages and such, they may even give you a discount if you pay cash - and some won’t even have a card terminal. All things considered, if I’m paying 40 euros to get my tires changed and the guy pays himself a salary, about 25 euros to the tax man. If I give him 40 euros cash, he keeps all of it.
Am I advocating tax evasion? Maybe. Well, I’m advocating letting ultra small businesses decide how much income they’re gonna claim. So I like to carry a little bit of cash for that. Grocery stores and such, I just tap my phone or card.
Many ATMs here take a fee, so using em when there is a feeless way to do it requires both finding an atm and shelling out an extra $2-4. Add in that most only do $20s, and your friend may also not have cash to pay you back any difference makes electronic transfers preferable.
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Record of payment is one of the pros of electronic transfers
Can't deny that you receive the money when the other person can pull out receipts.
Banks love it too, because then they can sell your purchase history records to the big data surveillance capitalism companies, they also have a really good idea of who your family and close circle of friends are due to repeat small payments - valuable data for the same data companies.
The same thing that leads to dealing with all the other kinds of bullshit & enshittification: convenient and free! Just sign here and tell us about yourself!
Honestly though once you're set up it seems like it's pretty simple. I don't actually use any of them, but my wife uses Venmo and Paypal for some stuff. There's a small business that I order my hobby supplies from, and I just ask my wife to send whatever dollar amount to the guy who runs the place when I text him about what I need. He could just invoice me and I could pay like you would on any online store, but this is somebody I've worked with for years so I'm not worried about preemptively sending the money over.
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It can be paid over Poob. Poob pays it for you.
paid over Boob
At first I misread it this way, and I was like "ah yes, the world's oldest payment system"
I can see the memetic advertisement by now! "Tested with ur mom", etc.
Easier to just give your friend a BJ and call it even. Several if it’s a big bill.
I've gotta quit hanging out with ducks.
Just use a bank? Why all these regulation dodging strange alternatives. Most banks even do email/mobile/tap transfers these days.
My guess is that USAian banks charge stupid fees for any sort of transfer between different banks
Bank transfer wouldn't be instant. A lot of banks incorporate Zelle, so that's kind of the bank's third-party etransfer. Unless your bank is not one of the ones who has it, or you prefer to use CashApp because that's what your friends all use, etc.
cash app is only "instant" because its an internal transfer. Internal transfers within banks are generally instant and interbank is still pretty quick these days. I think its hourly.
You think Canada's approach is better?! TELL CARNEY. The government's push for Open Banking and increased fintechs is literally them wanting to bring in all these nonsense variant fintech apps... for reasons unknown.
Made a trip to LA with the kids this summer and the surfing lessons guy made me pay extra for paying him on PayPal because that's the only payment app I can use as a Canadian.
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