tocopherol

That sounds like a very reasonable way to view it haha, plenty of parents do view the things their kids do in that way and teach them to be sensible, I was lucky to be raised that that way. Many parents here are not that reasonable though and will use as much force as they can to keep their kids from doing things they don't want them to, and are happy to use the law to help with that, one way by supporting strict enforcement of drinking and drug laws. From the last stats I remember seeing the US actually has worse rates of alcoholism and alcohol related illness than Germany also!

Yes in the US honestly I feel anxiety thinking about the cashier being too nice and not responding appropriately friendly enough haha, there is such a pressure for good service for any retail worker that I feel like it's somewhat rare for them to be straight up 'rude', at most they will be quiet. Like you mention though it does vary a lot region to region from what I've seen.

There are pretty strict alcohol laws in the US compared to a lot of countries, I couldn't see this system working here because people would argue teens or whoever would use their parents card or ID. The drinking age being 21 here makes it different I think, there aren't so many under 18 that would really want to drink that would abuse the system, but since you have to be 21 to buy alcohol there are plenty of people in the 16-20 range that would take advantage I'm sure.

If it always has issues it makes sense you wouldn't like it, where I use it there are rarely any errors and there are usually regular cashiers still if you don't want to self checkout, personally I'd rather scan my groceries than have someone else do it. I do agree it would be much better if they had an RFID system like you mention though.

I have a lot of anxiety, sure I can just 'get over it' or ignore it and go to the actual cashier, but I love having the ability to scan things myself, it is also much quicker because I usually have less items than most. They still have the employee there, there are still other cashiers so I've never seen it get too hectic where I go.

Sounds likely, even in WW2 the Brits bombed French ships when they thought they were going to let them fall into German hands, lives really don't mean much to anyone making these decisions, and it seems like it's usually the most unhinged fucks that get into positions to have any say in this stuff.

Yeah idiots, didn't they learn anything from the Gold of Tonkin incident?

They have wet suits and may have a boat nearby they could swim to, they would probably be more likely to survive than to continue boarding, though I read somewhere else it could be they were discovered and killed and the US just calls it an accident which seems possible.

Daymn so that romance novel I read actually was accurate O: they can raid my ship any day <3

I wonder what an Israeli nuclear attack would look like? I've seen a few different scenarios of what the US or Russia would do, but with such a small nation, would it possible for their nuclear capability to be destroyed if Iran or someone struck first?

At a protest in 2020, on one of the first days an 'organizer' was being shady saying thing like "I don't want to stand out here all day, I don't want anyone to get hurt or anything" and trying to encourage people to leave before anything even really happened, happy to hold a sign for half an hour and go home, clearly trying to diffuse more militant anti-police activists. They said shit like this interviewer is saying here, it was discovered later this person was being paid by the city. The city paid for this because it was so effective, there were similar people doing it all over the country. It added a lot of mistrust.

edit: Just want to add emphasize on how fucked this is, I don't think people even at the protests around the US realized how prevalent this sort of thing was. In one of the most 'progressive' cities in the country, our tax-dollars went to funding the active disruption of collective action against brutality and racism, that was only one of many parts of the psychological warfare against the people protesting too.

When I grew up learning about the Boston tea party and colonial rebellion, I was like "oh apparently property destruction and violence are two key founding ideals of this country", even a child can understand this! That's not even getting into the long history of political violence since then. I don't think there are many ideals you could say are as American as political violence.