usa

This is not a joke and I'm not delusional. I'm also not contesting that Donald Trump has won the US election. But he's only going to become president in two and a half months. In the meantime Kamala Harris could still be president if Joe Biden steps down. She is in a very unique position as a...

In four days American citizens will decide whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris will be the next US president. The race is so close that it's impossible to call. Even the best political forecasters that got the previous elections right are divided about 50-50 this time. Whoever wins, it's going...

Puerto Rico has be part of the United States since 1898. To put this in perspective, five U.S. states were admitted into the Union after that time - namely Oklahoma (1907), New Mexico (1912), Arizona (1912), Alaska (1959) and Hawaii (1959). In fact, Alaska and Hawaii only became U.S. territories...

With the looming US presidential election, I thought it would be interesting to post about an important trend in US politics, namely that religiously active people are considerably more likely to vote than the the inactive and unaffiliated. This trend was identified by Pew Research in 2019. In...

I was wondering how various countries compared in their murder clearance rates, so I had to look at the data and found something rather concerning. In the US the percentage of homicides that have been solved has been steadily declining since the 1960s. This graph shows that it declined from 91%...

I am a young and inexperienced Genealogical 'hobbyist' from the United States. I have taken a 'qualitive genotyping' test with tellmeGen to try and discover my Ancestry origins, more interest specifically in my Paternal Haplogroup, and it returned the following results: Your paternal haplogroup...

Americans like to think that they live in the freest country in the world. While it is not even close to being the case, as I've explained here, there is one thing for which the US may be the freest country in the world and that is freedom of speech. I found this video that explains the...

I mentioned food swamps in another thread about American supermarkets. Here is an interesting article that explains the phenomenon. New study at the Georgia Cancer Center sheds light on the danger of “food swamps” "Food deserts have become a relatively common term referring to areas where...

Ashton, an American woman from Illinois with a PhD in human geography, urban planning and architecture, who moved to Freiburg in Germany 5 years ago, decided to compare how much money someone would earn in the US vs Germany was a similar job and life situation once all the taxes, social security...

Another very high quality video by Ashton. The difference in system is mind-blowing.

It has long been clear to me that the whole American society and economy is designed to increase corporate wealth, very often to the detriment of the population's well-being. That's why Americans work much longer hours than other Westerners, have much less holidays, much less workers rights...

Another very interesting video. What is your opinion of gated communities? I can understand their popularity around Los Angeles where a lot of celebrities live and want to keep away from potential stalkers. But this is a much wider phenomenon. About 15 million Americans now live in gated...

I often hear that American supermarkets are much bigger and have a greater diversity of products than in Europe. For example this American guy who has lived 5 years in the Netherlands (but apparently nowhere else in Europe) says that he prefers life in general in Europe, but that the shopping...

One of the things I've heard the most times from the mouths of Americans about their country is that they live in the freest country in the world. That may have been true when the US became independent in 1776, but that is no longer the case. For example the Freedom in the World Index for 2024...

I like comparing countries. I have lived in many countries (Belgium, UK, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Japan, Australia) and visited about 50 countries worldwide, including the US and Canada. When I travel I don't just go sightseeing, but also like to check supermarkets, public transportation...

It's a well-known fact that city is in the US and Canada are very car-centric. But what does that mean exactly and why is that a bad thing? Here are several videos that explain very well why life in such cities is much less pleasant, less convenient, more time consuming, and even more dangerous...

It may sound like a strange question. Many Westerners still have an image of Sub-Saharan Africa as an underdeveloped place where people live in huts and hunt with spears like in the early 20th century. But even if some tribes of hunter-gatherers survive in isolated parts of the continent, this...

War is expensive. It is all the more expensive when one's military uses the latest military technology as the US does. Since 2001 America has waged war especially in Afghanistan (between 2001 and 2021), in Iraq (from 2003 to 2011) and in Syria (2011 to present). A report from the Costs of War...

Whereas riding high-speed trains has become part of daily life for European, Chinese and Japanese citizens, Americans still do not have a single high-speed railway. The California High-Speed Rail between Los Angeles and San Francisco was approved in 2008 and construction started in 2015, but it...

Republicans impeach Mayorkas in historic vote https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4466356-republicans-impeach-mayorkas-in-historic-vote/ The House of Representatives have narrowly voted to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas. Just like the impeachment of Donald Trump, this will ultimately amount to...