wheels

What is cultural is how much meat eating seems reasonable. I love meat, but both my own ethics and those of my social group basically tell me not to eat too much of it. Same for say, something like drinking beer. People like beer. But drinking too much of it too often isn't socially acceptable.

I'm from a family where one of my grandfathers was a cattle rancher and the other one a butcher, still I only eat about 1 kg of meat a month. I was terrified recently to learn that that's 10% of average American consumption. But I go in for the good shit. A little smoked meat goes a long way in altering the flavor profile of a dish. I love cooking myself a €20 steak, but I only do that every couple months. I save my fat caps and off-cuts to make sausage every few months. I only buy organic or meat with another animal welfare certification. It's expensive. As it should be.

IPA was significantly revived by west coast US brewers and basically wasn't drunk in the UK at the time it caught on in the US. The modern "craft" (under that name) and explosion of styles and experimentation was very much an American cultural export. Europeans have brewed a lot of styles in regional breweries since forever, but the creative explosion of the last few decades happened in the US.

Comment significantly changed since I replied, so adding:

Actually the original American beers did have a lot of impact. American Adjunct Lagers are brewed in a lot of countries:

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/styles/38/

I don't like them, but they've certainly had a major influence on world beer. Most of the world's 10 most popular beer brands are American Adjunct Lager.

Those are only universal because they were so successful. The things that are most universal in the US are also the ones that have been the most exported. Hamburgers and fried chicken weren't common in Europe before the US was involved in European wars and reconstruction. Honestly, even finding high-quality hamburgers in Europe outside of the Anglophone countries is something that happened in the last 10-15 years.

There are a lot of things like that -- you find chili in Europe, but you don't ever find good chili. Same with, say, pies. BBQ even less. And zero gumbo. Or fried okra. And so on.

Ooh, here's a fun one! Craft beer. It's pretty interesting watching American beer styles migrate over to Europe.

(I've spent about equal parts of my life in the US and Europe, and am a pretty avid cook.)

While your list is true, it's not a great list to make your case. One responder said that the hamburger and hotdog don't fit, because they're German, but that's only appreciably true for the hotdog (which is effectively indistinguishable from a bockwurst).

Gumbo, jambalaya, barbecue, cornbread, chili, clam chowder, fried chicken, pancakes, biscuits and gravy, pies (any sweet sort, not just pumpkin), cheesecake, brownies, fudge. The US is also one of the three great pizza countries (along with Italy and Argentina).

And that's just the some of the stuff that's relatively decisively American. In practice, as I said in my original post, things are incredibly fluid, and a lot of American dishes are heavily based on other cultures, and a lot of other cultures' mainstays are based on New World ingredients. American and Italian versions of "Italian" cuisine significantly co-evolved, and it's virtually impossible to separate one from the other.

That's a pretty bonkers statement. Cilantro is much more used worldwide (by about an order of magnitude). They look very similar, but don't taste anything alike. You might as well say basil is better than oregano. It's just not a very meaningful statement.

In a lot of the world flavor is about stacking complex flavors to get a melange of them. With the establishment of the top end of European cooking as French haute cuisine, there was instead an emphasis on simple, clear flavors. In that style, parsley, as a much more subtle herb, shines.

Just on a practical note, if you're looking to buy dry beans in Germany, every Turkish supermarket has a whole aisle dedicated to them. You can get a couple dozen kinds of dry beans there, including pinto. Most organic grocery stores have them too, but for 3x the price.

A contributing factor in that is that Germans eat less and less traditionally German food. I'm wondering if fries are counted among the processed potatoes (I suspect so), as those are seemingly – like in many places – the most commonly observed form of potatoes.

In general, most cuisines and culinary trends are far more modern than we tend to assume. Until the last 3-ish centuries:

Italy didn't have tomatoes or basil. Nor was there corn for polenta. India didn't have chilies. The Irish and Germans didn't have potatoes.

For all of the other folks here saying ibuprofen isn't strong enough: I have the same, and only with ibuprofen (vs. other over-the-counter drugs like aspirin or paracetemol): if I catch it early enough, sometimes it staves off the full blown migraine development.

I've had migraines since childhood, fortunately only every couple months for 2-4 hours. Weirdly, I'm so used to the pain at this point that I kind of take it in stride.

The downside is that ibuprofen also often upsets my stomach, and in the bad ones, I barf from the pain, so there's a gamble as to which route to go down.

This isn't dead reckoning: there have been multiple attempts to domesticate zebras and dogs, and it's worked twice with dogs and zero times with zebras, thus, yes, one can say that wolves are approximately ideal. It just turns out that what we think of as necessary qualities are potentially wrong. There have been lots of attempts to domesticate zebras because they're so similar to horses and donkeys.

The computer my family bought about 1-2 years before Doom came out (and which I eventually played Doom on) had Soundblaster, stereo speakers, SVGA, a CD-ROM drive. I feel like folks are mixing up eras a bit here.

I think you read more into my initial point than I was trying to say -- there are two things:

- PCs were always used for games (softening that: at least by the 286 era that was already true)

- By 1993 PCs were also designed with games in mind

But it doesn't follow that PCs were always designed with gaming in mind. They weren't, but since they were always used for that, even if they weren't designed for them, after a decade of such usage, it became a design concern.

I'm not saying PCs were especially good for games, but that that was one of the main things they were bought and used for, at least at home. Again, we're talking 90s, not 80s. By the 1993, Windows had already won, and a home computer was almost always going to be an x86 running Windows or DOS. Saying they weren't meant for gaming is paramount to saying computer games weren't a thing in that period. We're way past Commodore being relevant by then.

That was the era of Lemmings, Prince of Persia, Dune, Sim City, Wolfenstein 3D, Leisuresuit Larry -- plus a bajillion other smaller games. It wasn't the best gaming platform, but it's bonkers to say that computer games weren't really a thing then, or that the designers of computers were blind to that.

We're at that point at the era where "multimedia" was a buzz word, and I remember getting CD-ROMS with edutainment stuff that had real video in it -- that was a big deal around then.

That's not really true. The era of IBM designing computers was like the 8086 era. Clones were already dominant by the time the 286 came out, and Doom came out about half a year after the Pentium, or 586. That was very far into the era of "IBM compatible" machines being gaming machines.

There's more than a decade gap between "IBM compatible" clones taking over, and Doom coming out.

> In the early ’90s, when id Software first began publishing games, the games had to be programmed to run efficiently on computers not designed to run them, computers meant for word processing, spreadsheet applications, and little else.

That isn't really true. Games were there pretty much for all of the PC era. I was using a computer at the time Doom came out, and there were a bajillion (obviously less graphically sophisticated) games in common circulation, and gaming was a significant and widely accepted part of home computer sales.

> Unless they’re incredibly talented instrumentalists (usually not the case, they find bands) at a certain point it becomes either a jam sesh (not interested) or you become a producer for someone who isn’t very good.

For the case of instrumentalists finding bands -- the times I've used sites like this in the past are right after a move or considering stepping out of the music scene that I've been in (going from techno back to bass).

Also I feel like the Tinder-like mechanics would be suited to cities with big music scenes. You're right that it's easy to just stumble into everyone in smaller places. What I've enjoyed some on musician-finding sites is the ability go genre shopping to some extent. Sometimes I run across stuff I think I'd enjoy playing that probably wouldn't have popped out of my social network.

Are you a musician? Have you ever used a site like this?

My comments are literally based on the disappointments in using similar sites in the past. Most people don't add audio. Profiles without audio are useless. Making (and possibly providing minimal vetting?) people post audio would already be a big step in the right direction.

I've used sites that are trying something similar to find bands in the past. So I think I'm pretty close to the target market (or have been in my past). I don't want to post bass-player-looking-for-band on Craigslist or such -- did it once, and you get swamped by shitty bands who mostly still don't send any audio.

As a bass player, I want to hear if the singer can sing, and if the sketches of songs are good.

I can also play all of the standard band instruments at varying levels of competence, but I'm not much of a songwriter. What people expect from bass players and drummers is that they are good at catching things quickly and writing interesting parts.

I work in the music industry. An important thing said once to my arrogant twenty something self by a product manager: "Our market is amateurs. The pro market is a unsustainably tiny." There's basically no product in the music industry that can be supported by just pros. There just aren't very many of them.

And again, most drummers and bass players don't create complete tracks on their own, and they're the main thing people are looking for. And honestly, a lot of drummers and bass players don't want to come into a band where the guitar player has already decided what the bass and drum parts should be. You can get a lot from listening to sketches / noodling. (By noodling I mean mainly improvising something unaccompanied, not necessarily trying to win the gold medal at guitar gymnastics.)

I'm a bass player. A younger version of myself lived from playing bass for a couple years. I still play quite a few gigs. I very, very rarely produce tracks (one every few years), and there's very little of my bass playing online.

You're missing the bulk of the already small market if you're assuming people signing up for your app will universally have Spotify tracks up or their own YouTube channel. Soundcloud is more likely, but still not a given, as it's geared towards mostly finished tracks. Hint: the most sought after band members are bassists and drummers, and they don't tend to do solo tracks.

You want people to be able to have a low quality video of them noodling or playing along to something for 30 seconds.

There's a simple website for where I live (Berlin) which is basically musical want ads. Biggest problem is that while it allows it, most musicians don't include an audio clip. People self-describing their musical ability is almost entirely useless.

I did do a chargeback, because after 2 months of contacting the booking agent requesting a refund, I got nothing.

But the flight was canceled with less than 24 hours notice, so there were also statutory damages of €600/person (EU law), which in my case only covered the cost of my ongoing flight (booked separately, but same airline). It took two years to have the statutory damages rewarded, and after the legal fees didn't even cover the cost of the missed flight.

Companies should actually follow the law without having to be sued. Having to sue companies by default to get them to follow the law isn't a fundamental property of the rule of law. There's even a whole industry just created to enforce airline claims, because the companies ignore them with such impunity.

Because the law says that you have to pursue the claim with the flight operator.

That's not true. Read the rule. If it starts outside of the EU, then it's only applicable if the carrier is an EU carrier:

https://www.eccnet.eu/consumer-rights/what-are-my-consumer-r...

The European legislation is also something of a joke. Most of the time the airlines just ignore them unless you sue. I recently won a case against American Airlines for a canceled flight, but it took two years, and lawyers ate half of the money. Just a couple weeks ago KLM canceled my flight and bumped me to Delta, who also canceled my flight, but then washed themselves of liability because Delta isn't an EU carrier (and the flight originated outside of the EU).

Berghain has quite a few regulars. I don't know so much what the mix there inside is anymore. I went a handful of times in its earlier years, and never really loved the place, but haven't been back since the last 2-3 times I waited in the line I didn't get in (which never happened before). There's kind of two poles in Berlin techno style and aesthetics kind of represented by Berghain and Kater / Bar 25, and I was always more in the Bar 25 camp. Berghain is very dark and industrial; Kater is more playful with lots of bright colors and odd objects. The music coming out of their labels is different in the same way.

I think the yelling at tourists is mainly going to be if you're doing something stupid (though some of those are non-obvious: e.g. taking pictures in clubs is mostly a no-no). I probably wouldn't mess with trying to get in to Berghain. Other places you'll have a decent shot. If you want to go like a pro, show up from 4-6 a.m. instead of midnight with the tourists. The pros come out late, and the lines are shorter and the dancefloors are less packed -- if you actually like to dance, later is better. I'll sometimes even go out on Sunday afternoon.

Those are probably all listed in Lonely Planet at this point. Renate and Butkze had stints as scene clubs, but that was like 15 years ago when they were illegal. Sisphyos still has some scene-y-ness, but is a mix of tourists and locals. It only managed to stay off the radar for a couple years when it was only an outdoor location. But it's so big that it can absorb the crowds better. Birgit, on the other hand, was purpose-built for tourists. I actually like going to the biergarten there since it's right around the corner from where I live, and have played there a couple times, but it's unabashadly a club built to look like Berlin clubs except be more accessible for tourists. There was never a point that it was a scene spot.

Potsdam has almost exactly the same GDP per capita as Berlin (€45,378 vs. €45,074) and is ranked only 63rd highest GDP per capita of the 110 large-ish cities in Germany. I'm not convinced. ;-)

I think with the references to "promoters" a few times it's clear you're talking about a different metric than I am. Clubs in Tirana and Zagreb feel gltizier, more what one would expect from Balkan clubbing (which obviously exists in Belgrade too). Belgrade has some grittier clubs where both the decor and crowd feel like they're taking style cues from Berlin.