You're viewing a single thread.
I'm from Australia and don't mind engagement with the (mostly) US content.
Let's face it, the US election is the most interesting event on the planet anyway.
also one of the most concerning ones
My favorite answer when internet Nazis asked "How could the Nazis have won?" used to be "Be America."
It's not as funny anymore. They listened.
Stop giving them ideas.
I'm sorry, the rise of American fascism is all my fault :(
I just wish Americans would have a little self awareness when engaging in foreign content.
I was in a comment thread for a video on a report by the ABC about ADEs. Now I will give Americans the benefit of the doubt, we both have ABC networks, but ours clearly says "Australia", the news presenter has a Australian accent, and was talking about the Australian minimum wage, there were references to Centrelink and the Australian government repeatedly. If you watched the video and couldn't tell me what country the video was about, you need to go back to primary school, your media comprehension level is dysfunctional .
I mentioned a clarifying point in the the comments about ADE being different from DES and giving numbers for each (you don't need to know anything about these acronyms), and someone starts arguing with me that when they were in the disability program they got xyz and they didn't have to do any of this. I replied saying that these processes have been unchanged for 20 years, I don't know how they're getting what they're getting, they have a unique case. They come back telling me everyone gets that, that's how it is, I need to do my research before I make stuff up. I explain that I work in the sector, I'm looking at the cases software, if they are indeed getting those services through that program, they are the only one of 40,000 people in the program getting that, because that's not how the service works. They tell me 15 million people people use the program. I finally realise what's happening. "there are only 25 million people people in Australia....you're a lost American aren't you?" and sure enough ,they politely reply with "oh yeah, I'm not Australian so I don't know, maybe it's different over there".
And I just can't with that level of American stupidity.
You can came into an Australian forum and assumed I wasn't Australian, assumed I wasn't talking about Australia, then came to the conclusion that "maybe it's different over there" when I had explicitly just informed you that ,yes, the law is different here.
Now many times could I have used the acronym DES before the American thought to themselves "maybe this person isn't talking about SSDI".
And this is just the example from the last hour. I end up in a lot of international PD sessions for my work, and something like this is a daily occurrence, only with the Americans.
Canada, you are sadly not excused from this, nor sure why but it's always "okay, where are we all from? "Australia" "Belgium" "Brazil" "Indonesia" "Fort Freedom" "Edmonton"
Those are cities and provinces, clearly the rest of us are doing countries, some of us are big enough that we could name states if we wanted to, but we're being polite, you've got 50 (10+3 🇨🇦 ) of them and we didn't memorise a silly song in school to learn your states.
The fact that I know how many states the US has and how many provinces and tertories Canada has, but an American would be stabbing in the dark to guess how many states and territories Australia has, even though our biggest state is 3x bigger than Texas and Australia as a whole is a comparable landmass to the contiguous 48.
And I just can't with that level of American stupidity.
Not just Americans, most people don't read/watch the link
The fact that I know how many states the US has and how many provinces and tertories Canada has, but an American would be stabbing in the dark
Not surprising given our influence on your culture is far greater than the other way, landmass is worthless when it's full of the Outback (a beautiful place for sure)
And you'd be surprised how many of us know it's 6, I bet. Californians get to play with you guys online if we stay up past our bedtimes, after all.
The more fun part is going to be me trying to name them and see if I still can: Queensland, New South Whales, Western? Australia, Northern? Australia, Victoria (you already HAVE ONE NAMED AFTER THE QUEEN THOUGH), Tasmania? Is that one you guys?
This is a good point about cultural export, majority of modern content use American, and the majority of childhood content at least for me was Canadian.
I'm often surprised how little I know of the UK compared to the USA when I think of how much is imported to Australia from the UK ....including my family.
Thank you so much for giving me your guesses at state names, we did make it easy for you with just a bunch of cardinal directions.
You are bang on with 6 states, and almost bang on with their names.
The place you've dubbed "Northern Australia" is the "Northern Territory" and is not a state, the state you are missing is South Australia.
We have two major territories, Northern Territory as mentioned, but then similar to the USA, our national capital is not located within a state.
Our capital city is in "The Australian Capital Territory", or just "the ACT"
We are super creative with the names. Hence why we named 2 after the Queen (then stupidly named the capital city of Victoria "Melbourne" instead of "Batmania", which was totally an option on the table!) but also America can't talk, how many important places have you named after Washington and Columbus?
Tasmania is indeed ours, ours lonely Island state. Not so fun fact, Tasmanian Devils are endangered because they keeps biting each other's faces off and giving each other contagious facial cancer.
There's another internal territory no one really talks about, Jarvis Bay, it was formed mostly so the ACT could have access to a port without needing to use a state's port.
We have 7 external territories, the main ones being the island territories of Norfolk, Cocos, and Christmas Islands.
My stab in the dark is 8. That feels about right
oh god, no
I find a squirrel climbing a tree a more interesting event
Not to worry, I'm sure that there are websites around that cater to your squirrel tastes
To be fair, squirrels are pretty interesting.
Could not disagree more.
It's a pathetic state of affairs that people here care and know more about US politics than our own country's, and I'm personally sick of it.
Glad everyone else is enjoying the show at least. Half of us here are terrified we're about to lose the country to maniacal egotists with a penchant for a bit of racism and monarchy.
As a Canadian, we're feeling it too. I'm sure it's not as significant as what you're all feeling.
It's weird having a half deranged megalomaniacal neighbor, where they're fine most of the time then occasionally go completely off the rails.
I've often wondered how concerned ya'll might be. Sorry about the mess. For whatever it is worth, a lot of us are trying to clean it up.
We're hoping that happens, and you don't get stonewalled by idiots. We're cheering for your efforts.
To be fair, we have our own share of problems, including, but not limited to, hardline conservatives pulling similar crap, and even the odd Canadian Trump supporters, which always confused me.
We're coping okay. Hopefully it doesn't get any worse.
Trump supporters outside the us are the absolute weirdest anamoly to me. I barely get why some Americans like him. But seeing avid support for him elsewhere just blows my mind. Good luck though! Rooting for you guys too!