McDonald's is fucking expensive these days. They have some value menu stuff, but even that is twice the cost of what it was six or so years ago.
McDonald's is also working to squeeze human interaction out of the experience. You need to order on the screen and pay with a credit card. Not always, but some of them don't have anyone at the counter.
Going inside almost any fast-food restaurant around here sucks now. The employees always seem irritated that you're disrupting the drive-through business.
...which probably means everywhere is just generally understaffed, I guess.
the far larger "normies"
I see what he did there.
I hate this guy
They don't fully appreciate that "being a valued member of something larger than themselves" is one of the foundational quarks of a person, a constituent of our Telos.
Who is this "they" that doesn't understand this? Maybe some University of Chicago economists?
Growing up I never went to McDonald's because it was the fancy fast food. We ate at Burger King, with the hoi polloi.
As a sneering coastal elite don't eat at McDonald's because it's too expensive. I can get a Starbucks breakfast sandwich or sushi at my grocery store for less than a combo meal. For about the same price or maybe slightly more I can get a fast casual meal. For way less money I make lunch at home.
I'm anti-McDonalds because there was a Sheetz across the street, not because I think he should have gone somewhere upscale.
Starbucks, when there's no strike, is my main fast food. It's cheaper than McDonald's by quite a bit at breakfast and much better quality. Assuming you order a brewed coffee instead of a sugar bomb.
If you do something bad enough that peep hates you you are for sure going to hell.
I just checked the website and saw I could get a double cheeseburger for 50 cents. You must all be ordering the fancy food at McDonalds.
11: No, I'm probably just getting bitter in my old age.
You cannot get a double cheeseburger for $.50.
The regular cheeseburgers are over $2 now. Still worth it.
14: https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/download-app.html -- maybe this was special for me, to tempt me to give up on being a vegetarian.
Granted, it is a special offer.
When I was back there ion Unfogged
There was a person there
Who put forth the proposition
That you can get a double cheeseburger for $.50
Get a double cheeseburger for $.50!
Get a double cheeseburger for $.50!
You cannot get a double cheeseburger for $.50!!
!
He definitely has a shtick, he sometimes pushes it too far, but he is also doing something interesting.
I think this post leans in the direction of, "stupid liberals don't even get McDonald's" but still thought it was worth reading.
I've certainly moved on to benign indifference. But they are replacing the McDonald's at Haight and Stanyon with housing, and that seems like a win.
I couldn't figure out how to actually see all the prices. I was even going to pretend to order food, but it seemed like I could only do that via the app, and what would my high-class friends say if they knew that I downloaded the McDonald's app???
16: That's their payment to you for using their app, not the price of a double cheeseburger.
I used to visit my neighborhood McDonalds occassionally on weekend mornings to get my wife an Egg McMuffin which was her hangover food of choice, and I would always see a group of grizzled old men at a table and I figured out (I don't remember what made me think this or if I was right) that they were in Alcoholics Anonymous.
17 brings back memories. The Jim Morrison cult was strong when I went to college. "He's hot, he's sexy, and he's dead" as the Rolling Stone cover said.
They are really trying to channel people into using the McDonalds app. I could see $.50 double cheeseburgers as a loss-leader to get people to use it.
But double cheeseburgers are not as good as two cheeseburgers.
Even parking meters want me to use an app these days. No way. I simply can't be bothered.
Everyone wants me to use an app and I'm resisting. I will use the airlines apps, because that's a major transaction, but I'm not letting big tech intermediate my lunch.
Airlines let you check in these days 24 hours in advance, when you aren't even at the airport. That makes no sense to me. That's not what a check in is.
I fucking hate apps. It's not even enough to sign up for the loyalty program, now they want you to use an app too. I stopped shopping at Walgreens for a million reasons* but one of them is all the deals are now only with an app. Fuck you, you already have my phone #, just give me the deal.
*Mostly due to the choice to lean into the USSR 1988 shopping experience.**
**Relatedly, I was at my Target, which on the whole has really bounced back from their covid doldrums. They still have deodorant and vitamins locked up, but they've started putting the really expensive deodorant on the end displays not locked up. I guess they want me to steal the $15 organic deodorant but not the $6 carcinogenic stuff? Thanks for thinking about my health, Target.
The CVS I use doesn't lock up much at all and they give me the deal with just a phone number. So I keep going there.
28: at least you no longer have to confirm your flight three days in advance by phone. (That never made much sense to me. I paid a huge amount of money to go on this flight, you should probably assume that I still wish to do so.)
Visiting other cities is the fucking worst because of all the extremely specific apps they want you to download for your two days there. Did you want to park in an unfamiliar place? Did you want to do a thing, any thing? Wrestle with your phone for ten minutes first.
Install Our Business In Your External Hard Drive Brain, Please!
You can usually pay for parking on a web page.
When my phone broke last year, I realized that without it, I couldn't park near my work legally, and I couldn't log in to work from home.
34: On your phone. Because you're downtown and trying to figure out how it works already.
This has some weird - is the word availability bias? Selection bias? Spotlight bias? "I decided to spend a lot of time in McDonald's locations because they were so convenient for what I wanted to see, here's why I've found they're America's default community center." Not necessarily wrong, I know what he's getting at, but it still seems blinkered.
I have actually seen a lot of critique of this guy as basically engaged in poverty porn, at least in his photographic projects, seeking out the most arrestingly ugly substance users and calling that art or insight.
The particularly annoying thing about apps: the vast majority of them could be mobile web sites, and apparently in fact are, you just develop a website as such & then use a standard tool to enclose it in an app.
At least he's not actively making substance abusers uglier.
I recall (but cannot find now) a thing where Arnade and JD Vance ended up at the same McDonald's in Portsmouth, Ohio during the 2016 campaign. I posted something somewhere (not here) about the fatuousness of it and took shit from ... Bob McManus 9again not here) for not differentiating between Arnade (who he liked) and Vance (who he did not).
Bob was still here in 2016? Wow. That seems much longer ago.
42: No, not here. At some other blog place.
I'm with peep in 6.
One notable community center in my neighborhood is at this bench a couple blocks away from me. I think the bench used to be a bus stop but has been taken off-line. It's across the street from a public housing apartment complex, and in the evenings, old men -- five or six, as many as will fit -- will sit on the bench, tightly packed. Oftentimes a guy in a wheelchair will pull up alongside the bench, right at the end, so it looks almost like his chair is an extension of the bench. They sometimes talk to each other, but they're all facing the same direction, which isn't that conducive to conversation. Mostly when I walk past them, they're quiet, just gazing across the street.
Across the street, in front of the apartment block, is another bench, which is usually empty. But sometimes -- maybe like 5-10% of the time -- the bench will be full of old women, sitting in the same formation as the men. I usually walk on the men's side of the street, so I haven't been close enough to hear whether the women talk to each other, but it seems not.
Anyway, there are a lot of other places they could go to hang out, where they could face each other and talk -- there's a nonprofit community center a couple blocks away, with outdoor tables, there's a neighborhood rec center that's also really close -- but for some reason it's always this bench. I don't know what's going on, but I like that it reminds me that I live in a society, with rules that are sometimes not visible to me.
The last time I heard from this guy he was shouting the odds on twitter about how American sprawl was great and Europoors couldn't understand it at the same time as he was blogging about Phoenix being hell on earth, without any apparent awareness of a contradiction. Mind you he had also managed to set out to trek across it in summer without bringing water, which has enduringly reset how much I want to hear from him
Phoenix being hell on earth
Sounds about right. Per Wikipedia, "Average high temperatures in summer are the hottest of any major city in the United States. On average, there are 111 days annually with a high of at least 100 °F (38 °C), including most days from the end of May through late September. Highs top 110 °F (43 °C) an average of 21 days during the year. On June 26, 1990, the temperature reached an all-time recorded high of 122 °F (50 °C)."
My in-laws moved to the hellscape farthest flung suburbs of Phoenix a few years ago. It's super fucking depressing aside from the amazing cacti.
They are snowbirds, of course, and do not subject themselves to the oven side of the temperature range.
I just recently realized that LA and Central Texas are not equivalently awful in temperature whatsoever. I somehow assumed that it was equally awful in LA in the summer. It really is not.
It's only hot away from the coast where the poors live.
I learned this from "Depth Takes a Holiday. "
McDonald's is wildly popular with every group of Americans, uniting every demographic in the US -- it crosses economic class, race, gender, urban versus rural -- with the single exception of the highly educated, especially academics. They alone as a group have moral issues with it, and while they might use it, they do so grudgingly, usually to appease crying kids or for a rest stop on a long trip.
I would love to see a citation on any of this, especially the thing about academics, because that sounds like he's just made it up. This article https://www.thetakeout.com/average-mcdonalds-customer-white-middle-aged-woman-1847458773/
claims that:
"the average McDonald's customer is a married white woman who lives in the Southeast and is between 41 and 56 years old... This hypothetical woman, let's call her Imaginary Sue, also comes from a suburban area, has a household income of over $80,000 a year, and likely has some college education, if not an undergraduate degree. Imaginary Sue also really likes breakfast: it comprises nearly half of the orders she'll place during her 44 annual visits to McDonald's..."
His descriptions of walks in England, in places I know, make me think that, well, maybe everything he describes happening actually happened? There's no single incident that is actually implausible. But the sheer density of entertainingly quotable lower-class "broken people" he encounters is... statistically improbable.
Also I think the "college people have a down on McDonalds" is dated? As in 80s dated, when Keir Starmer was defending the McLibel Two dated, probably Arnade's formative years dated.....and yes! He is an E-registration (old style), 1965 model, consequently, an unruly, Maccas-craving teenager in the first half of the 1980s whose parents were a professor and a university librarian.
(Fun McLibel fact: one of the points at issue was that Steel and Morris claimed the burgers didn't have enough meat in them. Yes, the problem with McDonalds is the lack of calories!
But ridiculous people have rights too.)
Chris Arnade is the day's main character on Unfogged again? One, two, many.
(Incidentally, we had a lovely time in Phoenix this June seeing Brittney Griner play basketball, which reminds me of another deep cut from 2016.)
McManus got bounced shortly after 45's inauguration.
This has some weird - is the word availability bias? Selection bias? Spotlight bias? "I decided to spend a lot of time in McDonald's locations because they were so convenient for what I wanted to see, here's why I've found they're America's default community center." Not necessarily wrong, I know what he's getting at, but it still seems blinkered.
Yes; I think his observations about McDonald's are interesting and I wouldn't take too seriously the implied comparison of, "McDonald's serves a unique role." He doesn't necessarily have any expertise about other places that could serve a similar role.
I have actually seen a lot of critique of this guy as basically engaged in poverty porn, at least in his photographic projects
That was definitely my impression before reading any of his work. I don't know if he's become more conscious of that over time, but I think his current writing is most responsible in the way that he handles images of poverty (and part of what he wants to write about is that there are a lot of variation within the category of "poverty" and some people are doing fairly well (and have a community) and other people are really hurting.
The last time I heard from this guy he was shouting the odds on twitter about how American sprawl was great and Europoors couldn't understand it at the same time as he was blogging about Phoenix being hell on earth, without any apparent awareness of a contradiction.
I think this says more about Twitter (or him on twitter) because the piece that he wrote is more careful: https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/p/us-is-better-than-europe
Now there are things I would change with that tweet, which was attempting to compare the modal (or most common) European experience to the modal US experience. For instance, I would switch Jacksonville Beach to Jacksonville, or Houston, and Marseille to Bucharest or some other Eastern European city.
Yet, I stand by the intended larger point, culled from years of talking to people all over the world, which is, what the US is selling (space, freedom, meritocracy), has a lot of buyers across the globe, including in Europe. Or to put it another way, the rest of the world (other than academics) really really love the US. Or, at least they love the idea of the US.
...
There is a big educational divide in how the world views the US, and it's lifestyle, with the less educated being largely positive towards it, while the highly educated generally favor a more European lifestyle (walkable urban environments with smart regulation), including those in the US, who cluster in the most European parts of the US5.
And this was actually interesting: https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/p/no-the-world-doesnt-hate-america
That American English, and along with that, American culture, now permeates and dominates the world, ...
I see it all the time, including in Uganda, but most recently in the faux Irish pub in the Faroe Islands, where the Bosnian bartender asks all the customers what they want in English, including the locals who rarely answer back in Faroese, and where the tables, a Star Wars-cantina-like mixture of Faroese, Europeans, and Asians, all chat in English. Or at the "hipster" bar down the street (Sirkus Bar), where a Greek couple who seemed intent on spending their honeymoon sitting in the same two seats talking with other customers, and the bartenders, one a young man from Sweden, another a life-long Faroese, the third a young women from Ghana, about American music, movies, and TV, all in English.
One of those customers was a thirty-ish year old woman celebrating her recent wedding engagement, who I assumed from her accent was from the US. When I asked her why she and her friends had come so far, and why she'd chosen this place to celebrate, and what state she was from, she looked at me surprised and said, "I'm from here, the Faroe Islands."
After congratulating and complimenting her, I asked how she had learned her perfect English, and as I expected she said "from school and watching TV shows." I didn't really need to follow up with which show, because as I've seen all over the world, including Mongolia, I'd rightly guessed she spoke with her place-less US TV accent because she'd watched Friends over and over and over, in her case all ten seasons fifteen separate times.
Chris Arnade is the day's main character on Unfogged again? One, two, many.
I mean, whether you think he's doing it well or poorly, he is doing something interesting.
I spend a lot of time as a pedestrian (or bike rider) and it really is a different experience of the world than driving. You may feel like he's turned that into stunt journalism, but the basic idea of, "I'll spend a few days (or weeks) walking through part of the world and see what I learn" is an interesting topic.
I suppose I should add that I don't think the Phoenix post was a particularly good example of why he would be interesting. His experience was so bad that it obviously doesn't generalize very well.
I wonder how many languages this guy speaks? Because if he mostly engages with people speak English and who are willing to talk to an American guy about their attitudes towards American culture, hmm, I can imagine some selection bias there. I mean, the conversations I have in Korea with people who people who assume I'm Korean, vs. with people who have already discovered I'm American, are somewhat different.
Korean people always figure out I'm not Korean very quickly.
McDonald's is now sponsoring Pokéstops. You can't get much more American than Pokémon Go.
I think my uninformed view is that global opinions about the U.S. are often fairly positive, or at least constructively critical, while opinions about its native-born population (individually and collectively) are overwhelmingly some version of "they're the most obnoxious people on the fucking planet," with 10,000 available reasons, very much including cosmopolitan liberal U.S. academics who don't have any kind of halo. There are charming, charismatic individuals in every population, though, and maybe Arnade is one of them.
The real hamburglars are the Americans we met upon the way.
Arnade is basically echoing Ortega Y Gassett's analysis as he has done for a while. The very short version is a political revolt of the uneducated against a class they don't belong to, technocrats/experts, rather than traditional right vs left, though the winners are always righties (original analysis on who supported Franco). Adam Tooze mentioned it recently:
Thinking in terms of an alignment of anti-PMC forces is, of course, a simplification. But it offers us the chance to go beyond the realignment-dealignment dichotomy. It helps to explain Trump's ability to mobilize both working-class votes and business support. It also helps to explain the self-righteous rigidity of the Democrats.The besetting weakness of the PMC-Democrats is to imagine that there is nothing beyond their bubble, as defined, for sake of argument, by the weekend edition of the New York Times. Beyond lie only ignorance and sin.
Beyond also the McRib sandwich. I am a Popeye's client, will get McD fries when traveling
My acceptable fast food places are Burger King and White Castle because they have Impossible Burgers. Taco Bell should be ok, but I always have a hard time figuring out what to order there.
Reading Ortega Y Gassett's in Spanish class resulted in my best Spanish pun. "El hombre de carne y queso."
I really like visiting McDonald's when I travel, to see the special things on the menu. Like how in Hawaii they have haupia pie, and in Korea they have spicy garlic burgers. The most special was one time I went to the McDonald's in Brno, and it was so fancy and nice inside, and they had espresso drinks and the most beautiful tiny bombolini, filled with raspberry jam or nutella.
while opinions about its native-born population (individually and collectively) are overwhelmingly some version of "they're the most obnoxious people on the fucking planet," with 10,000 available reasons
I'm not sure that checks out. If we're talking about perception of people when actually encountered, I think there is definitely obnoxiousness in the mix, but there's also a lot of perception of us as sunny / cheerful / somewhat kind, even annoyingly so, so we end up in the middling category of perception all put together. Germans abroad are probably viewed worse, for example.
I'm a whole lot less interested in endless explorations of the various motes in the eyes of the liberal elite while ignoring the fucking beams in the eyes on the non-elite. Especially as our patrimony and our planet is about to get bludgeoned into oblivion by those beams.
I like Burger King better.
I've stopped a couple of times in the last year at Arctic Circle -- we don't have that chain near here, but they have them in Idaho.
Our go-tos around town are Taco Cabana and Subway. We're all extremely sick of Subway, but it's the only fast food restaurant located very close to the elementary and middle schools, which makes it ultra-convenient on nights when there's a performance of some kind and we're all hurrying directly from work. There are two dozen such nights in December.
69 last -- it's been some years, but I've seen folks light up in both Italy and France when they hear, from my accent, that although I drove up in a car with German license plates, I'm from the US.
Germans abroad are probably viewed worse, for example.
It's a low bar, but I'll take it.
I used to go to McDonald's pretty regularly, especially about ten or so years ago when they had My Little Pony toys in the Happy Meals, because my coworker and I collected them for the office (an effort which sadly went unappreciated by our other office mates). Now I only go once a year on Good Friday, to pick up Filet o Fish for my and M's annual ceremonial observance. The inside of my local McDonald's sadly kind of sucks now, it's mostly empty and the decor looks like the elevator lobby at a Holiday Inn Express.
When I was a kid McDonald's was so fun, with the ball pit and the rocking Grimace rides, and cakes on your birthday decorated with balloons made of packed hardened sugar. I hate being the kind of old person who goes around saying how everything was so much better when I was a kid, but the truth is the truth.
I see it all the time, including in Uganda, but most recently in the faux Irish pub in the Faroe Islands, where the Bosnian bartender
Wonder if he was the inspiration for "Justin" in Parks and Rec. Or maybe the other way around.
I thought I had seen some survey data backing up my take in 69, haven't found that precisely yet, but here's international attitudes toward the US (under Biden) - 22 of the 23 countries surveyed had a net favorable impression (only exception Hungary), median +29 favorable (59-30).
My one fast food view that codes liberal is that I feel bad when I go to Chick-fil-A. But they have kept their food's quality the same over time and no other fast food place near me can say that. But I'm still boycotting because I don't go very often.
Popeye's wings are appalling, stay away from those, but everything else is great fast food, just be prepared to drink a lot of extra water after eating. The KFC in Prague is actually good-- touchscreen order and payment, but they fry the chicken fresh for you rather than reaching into a bin of uncertain freshness. McDonalds in India has the Aloo McPuff, which is eaten, not smoked.
Responding to a bunch of things while I don't do some writing I need to do:
Arctic Circle
I'm pretty sure I've been to the McDonald's in Rovaniemi, or at least I remember seeing it when I was visiting the Arctic circle. I've also seen the outside of the Burger King in Tromsø but it wasn't open at that hour. I don't have generalizations to draw from this except that American fast food chains were in a lot more places than I expected when I first went to Europe in the late 90s. The one that surprised me most was Pizza Hut, which I didn't think of as a global power.
I really like visiting McDonald's when I travel, to see the special things on the menu.
I saw some weird specials in Europe in the 90s when I had a Eurail pass and a desire to get food at odd hours in the day outside of normal meal times. There was a McDonald's in either Lausanne or Montreux that had "western"-themed burgers, as in the American West. And in Vilnius they served some kind of egg roll meal.
McDonald's in Brno, and it was so fancy and nice inside
Don't know if it's still there, but the Budapest McDonald's in the Keleti train station is probably the most beautiful fast food location I've seen.
Anyway, I guess I find the excerpted Arnade* annoying in ways that will keep me from reading him. Walking and observing are interesting to me. Hearing about what "normies" and "academics" supposedly don't understand, along with other petty resentments of his, much less interesting. Nothing wrong with observing that lots of people speak English to each other without themselves being native speakers or Americans, but I'm not going to seek out someone who couches the observation like he does. My limited observation is that in countries where people learn English as an additional language and English-language tv isn't dubbed (but may be subtitled), you're more likely to find people with really good North American or British accents.
*I think I have one of his books from about a decade ago. In keeping with my previous comments about souring on social media, I'm more likely to read that than his online writing, even acknowledging that substack is long-form.
(only exception Hungary)
Makes sense that they would share the US right-wing's dislike of America under Biden.
When we went to a KFC outside Tbilisi I was surprised to see it served hard alcohol. Vive la différence!
Inside of Tbilisi, it's too dark to drink.
Outside of Tbilisi, an 8 Pc. Chicken Bucket is a man's best friend.
You better start a substack first.
So if you go down to GTMO on a habeas clearance, you have to go to either McDonalds or Subway for lunch. When I've gone down on a PRB clearance, I can go to the faux Irish "pub" for lunch or dinner (and the officers club for Thursday Mongolian BBQ). The "Irish" place has a burger with pepper jack etc called the 'code red.' So the server comes up with plates of food and says 'did you order the code red?' You're goddam right I did! Servers have heard this more than once, I'm sure, but are too young/cool/foreign to pay any attention.
Anyway, we always stop at McD in the morning, after the ferry ride across the Bay, for coffee and something for the client. My colleague an older DC guy hadn't been to McDonalds much in his life orders an egg mcmuffin this one time. Only to be lectured by the shocked client that it's got ham in it! Going to McDonalds is research, and should be billable.
The survey data in 76 is fascinating. I had no idea Australian views were so negative.
In 17 countries, including Canada, Australia, South Korea, Israel and nations in Europe and Latin America, we asked people to place themselves on an ideological scale ranging from left to right. People on the political right generally have more positive views of the U.S. than those on the political left. The exception, again, is Hungary: Hungarians on the right of the political spectrum - particularly those who have a favorable view of the ruling Fidesz party - are less likely to view the U.S. positively.
I admit I don't interact much with international members of the political right, although sometimes I recall the "como sospechas/ SOY DE DERECHAS" song from a terrible viral video in 2008 Barcelona.
63 my experience living overseas for almost 10 years now is almost exactly the opposite, many I meet people loathe the US government (for good reasons) but love Americans.
I remember reading a Lonely Planet guide, maybe for a state in the US or the US in general?, that said something along the lines of "many Americans you meet will not know that much about the world outside of the US but don't be surprised if some know quite a bit" and that sounds about right.
"We're a simple people. We dance, we sing."
I guess I have to tell this story in the McDonald's thread; apologies if it's an old one. In 2006 I was studying in Germany, taking a summer class with a bunch of mostly U.S.-based college students (many were from Columbia, for whatever reason), plus some other Europeans and a few postgraduate students like myself. We were returning from a weekend trip to a city in a neighboring country, on a motorcoach. Everyone was starving because the trip had not been well planned, including meals. The students decided to start chanting that they wanted McDonald's. This went on for a while. I gave another hungry student my snack food in the hope that she would be quiet. The adults in charge conferred and, as we were pulling into a reasonably large city, announced that we would indeed be making a stop at McDonald's (deafening cheers), but everyone had to get in and out in 15-20 minutes. We parked at the McDonald's and dozens of jubilant students flooded into the unsuspecting McDonald's, leaving (I think) me, a Bulgarian guy, a girl from the Netherlands, and the only grad student older than me aboard the bus to wait for the next hour or whatever. We knew each other and chatted in a mixture of German and English; they were nice and gave me sympathy for parting with my snacks. The Bulgarian guy looked over at the McDonald's scene at one point, then at me, and said, "I don't know what to tell you about your countrymen."
Anyone want to guess the city?
In America, first you get the chicken, then you get the breading, then you get the little plastic containers for the sauce.
I'm not quite able to convey how annoying the McDonald's chants were, am I? Maybe you had to be there. The entire weekend had sucked so much, although I did end up with a couple of precious souvenirs against all odds, and I could hear my last few nerves snapping in real time.
80.last: Are you maybe thinking of Nyugati? The Budapest train station that M. Eiffel designed.
83: Where else did you go in Georgia?
92: Agreed. Most Americans couldn't tell you where Armenia is, but Los Angeles has more Armenians than anywhere else in the world outside of Armenia. (Where it isn't too dark for Moby.)
97: Oh, you're right. I confused the train station where I arrived with the train station across the street from the hostel where I stayed.
Most Americans couldn't tell you where Idaho is.
98: No worries! Impressive that you retained both names after a presumably shortish visit.
100: I think most Americans know that Idaho is in the United States.
New Mexico, on the other hand....
99: No, but you're not too far off geographically. Think larger.
Agree with 91. I think the general stereotype of Americans over here, even the Jews, is that they're cheerful, friendly, optimistic, loud and not particularly bright. A lot of jokes told about them that would elsewhere be "dumb blonde" joked.
A favorite indirect overseas characterization of USians. Directions to the train Station in Geneva. "Follow the fat people."
No, but you're not too far off geographically. Think larger.
I hope it's Essen.
(I know that's not larger, so it must not be.)
Oh, wait, you meant Frankfurt off main.
103 I was thinking it had to be either Berlin or München, the idea of stopping at McDonalds prior to arriving in either being completely ridiculous.
I think the general stereotype of Americans over here, even the Jews, is that they're cheerful, friendly, optimistic, loud and not particularly bright.
Doing my part to defeat stereotypes by being only two of these.
I did try to get dinner at a Burger King on the Autobahn two weeks ago. Outside Würzburg, if that affects the ridiculousness of it. It closed at 7pm on a weekday.
More like Burgher König, amirichtig?
97.2: Stepantsminda and the Tusheti NP area were the most memorable parts, especially due to the week of gastroenteritis I experienced after eating some dodgy food in the later.
i am here to say one thing: i am a highly educated ex-academic and i fucken love mcdonalds
There were a couple of years where I'd eat at McDonald's four or five times a week. That was when there were 2 for $5 breakfast sandwiches or $1 McDoubles for lunch. Obama made a great country, but we lost it.
Filet o Fish were $1 on Fridays during Lent. Wonderful times.
I did not look forward to those. I ate them, because I worked at a McDonald's during Lent and am Catholic.
One summer during college I lived in a house with a bunch of older quasi-hippies that were all vegetarians and we took turns preparing dinners that were vegetarian and organic. So, naturally on the one day a week we didn't make dinner, I would go to McDonald's.
(for those keeping track, that was about 7 years before I became vegetarian)
They have the Fillet o Fish for vegetarians.
The app does throw good deals at you pretty routinely not just when you first sign up. 20% off, free fries every Friday with purchase, $1 for 10 Mcnugs. I see the 50 cent double cheeseburger deal there now. I usually only go when a kid wants something (a shake is our go-to bribe for something like a double hockey practice) although I wandered into one while killing time before a show and got the $1 nugget deal. It also accumulates rewards fairly quickly- I think I've spent $10 there in the last three months and I have a free burger or cone available.
The worst app-to-store quality ratio is Costco. The app is slow user-hostile garbage that you can clearly see is just calling a website.
Even when I was a kid, McNugs made me feel sick. I just deleted the Costco app from my phone yesterday.
A memorable childhood story was when our babysitter took me and my brother to McDonald's and we ordered a 20 piece McNuggets. Opened to find there were 24, hooray! So many we couldn't even eat them all! But after eating nearly as much as we could, we bit into one and it had some chicken bone. We took it to the counter and showed them and they of course offered us a replacement with 20 more which was the last thing in the world we wanted at that point.
I hate it when I order scallops and find that one still has a bone.
116: Awesome!! I visited Stepantsminda numerous times, but the closest I got to Tusheti was seeing the start of the Omalo road where it branches off from the larger road along the main Kakheti valley. Please tell me you hired a driver for that part of the trip. Lots of folks said Tusheti was the most gorgeous scenery in all of Georgia.
117: Gut gespielt.
We are the Replicaters. You will be ussimilated. Resistince is fetile.
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
Was at another eating establishment yesterday and saw on the (muted) TV an ad for the $.50 McDonalds Double Cheeseburger.
Growing up there was a relatively early McDonald's (from early 60s) relatively close to us. A very simple menu and basically about on par with White Castle. I do recall stunts in high school like trying to fit a whole burger in your mouth at once.
We did counterprogram McDs with our kids, calling it McYucko's, but that only kept them from wanting to go there all the time. On trips we sometimes end up at "OK, I guess it will be McYucko's."
73: Ironically, this is what the Germans said about the Maginot Line.
Very belatedly: I read cheerful, friendly, optimistic, loud and not particularly bright and think "so, basically, the most obnoxious people on the fucking planet?" Kidding... mostly. I love people.
There are weird norms, though... I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I realized at a restaurant meal in Berlin that I'm accustomed to saying "thank you" to the server after every single interaction in the U.S., and the German servers seemed puzzled at first, then a little annoyed, until I stopped. Why does it feel normal to me to be obsequious towards the waitstaff? Because they're paid so badly in the U.S., and everyone knows they're paid so badly, that it's pretty close to being a non-economic interaction, ending with a big pile of semi-compulsory charity? It's bizarre. Extra gratitude went over fine in Japan and Korea, however.
The way I learned it as a youth, in France it's garçon and in Germany it's Herr Ober.
Not so long ago I had to meet a German client whose surname actually was Ober - literally Herr Ober. I decided to stick to English for fear of some sort of terrible catastrophe of awkwardness
So to say head waiter, it's "Ober Führer"?
In Southern Europe it is infinitely better to be American than German.
I feel like the Bush years were the height of anti American sentiment. Since then the Americans who make it to Europe are not the really irritating ones. I feel like after Trump we're viewed with pity or as the "good" ones.
I've found outside of Europe, Germans are often viewed more highly than other Euro/Americans. Australians have a terrible reputation in Asia.
136: I don't think it's exactly obsequiousness or about how waiters are paid, I think it's just that in American manners "Thank you" is a tag for politely ending a superficial interaction -- after you say "thank you" you have signaled that you're going to stop paying attention to your interlocutor and they can stop paying attention to you. If they do that some other way in Germany, with body language or something, it would look unnecessary, but it's not excessive gratitude.
Yeah, that seems right. It feels like obsequiousness out of context, though!
I think a lot of the early annoyance at Americans was driven by being the only country with enough rich people to travel in numbers that annoy people. Now that other countries can afford to travel a lot and are also annoying, we don't look so bad anymore. Australians are like extremely drunken Americans, so of course we look better by comparison.
I think "obsequious" is the wrong word, like I see how it comes off as obsequious to other cultures, but in American culture it's not displaying obsequiousness, it's just being polite.
Texas ->US : Australia -> World
I think that was on the SAT, but it was "Texas ->US : US -> World." But I know they have updated the test since the 80s.
McDonald's fries are still my favorite fries. I wish that I could get them with beef fat.
Everything else there is expensive compared to a lot of independents. At least one Dairy Queen location was super expensive this year too. The other was moderately expensive. I stopped on the way back from taking my dog dock diving, because I was in an unfamiliar area. (For active breeds there is a whole world of dog sports I was unaware of; they tire out their bodies and brains.)
I'm finding he independent shops to be much cheaper.
Is it like diving into water or just off a loading dock into the tarmac?
Texas ->US : Australia -> World
If you think the site software isn't sophisticated enough to detect an analogy in this format, you're wrong, buddy!
140: I remember being in Rome, renting a room and taking Italian classes. I remember stopping by a local baker. My Italian was pretty basic, so I apologized for my limited abilities. The proprietor asked if I was English, because I think there were a lot of English tourists in the area. I said that I was American. He asked me where in the US I was from, and when I said "Boston," he grinned and said "oh, I have a cousin in Boston." Being from Boston, MA seemed to be preferable to being from the UK. Similarly, when leaving Portugal, the attendant was super helpful. We had to fly to JFK, but she explained that in the summer they run direct flights to Boston, because there are so many Portuguese in Massachusetts.
Soylent GreenThe site software is people!
147: you throw a toy into the water to fetch a toy and they swim and get it. They compete on distance. There is also a version where they jump for a toy in the aire above the pool. https://youtu.be/SxaoJ17LYz4?si=f_rw1_dclkeOuIL_
My dog Lucy apparently is pretty promising, but not like that dog. We only go once a month, but she liked learning to swim so much that we look her back.
I 110% associate McDonald's with being tormented as a child by my classmates during field trips, vomiting after I found out even the fries have beef in them, and generally being hungry and miserable during road trips as a teenager. As an adult I have only ever used them to go to the bathroom. Taco Bell is my toddler appeasing food, all the way.
"I kind of suspect most of us are over hating on McDonalds, and have moved on to benign indifference."
Not me, I still hate it! It serves unhealthy food that makes people die faster. Being anti-anti-homeless goes a long way in my book though so if the article's claims about that aspect of McDonald's are correct, I'll have to reduce or stop my hating.
Btw: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Circle_Restaurants
Thanks. I had been misunderstanding that.
I figured it must be a chain but I free-associated it to septentrional fast food locations.
Taco Bell is also our go-to fast food (at least when Shake Shack isn't available).
Tim's best friend for. High school had a part-time. The stories put Tim off Taco Bell forever.
All those Canadians go for Tim Horton's.
I feel like Shake Shack is a different tier of restaurant -- really more "fast casual" or whatever, than fast food. It's more expensive, and it serves beer. One time I went with my absentminded friend and he left his laptop in a plastic grocery bag on a table to "reserve" it while we went in to order, and when we came back out it was still there. I feel like at a proper fast food restaurant someone would have taken it or at least scolded him for his stupidity.
I like to think of myself as someone who still eats at fast food restaurants, but to be honest I only really go to In N Out, and even that only when I'm driving up or down the 5 between LA and the Bay Area. We do McD's on Good Friday and when we travel. And when for some unfortunate reason we have to drive to Nevada we go to the Del Taco in Barstow, but I don't know if that really counts. It's a very beautiful Del Taco, and everyone should try to visit it at least once.
Taco Bell is my go to. But I really liked Del Taco when I lived in Houston (over 40 Years ago). Just have not been around them since.
I think of Steak Shack as more on the order of Five Guys, which we all like as well.
I got to Taco Bell twice a year. Almost without fail, it's good the first time and makes me feel kind of sick the second. I've only gone once this year, last week.
A Shake Shack is being built near where I live. I've only really liked it at airports and train stations.
I'm going to the desert next week. Not sure if I'll go through Barstow but I'll keep the Del Taco in mind.
Elke and her friends love Five Guys, and they love it when I buy them food there, and the credit union loves the second mortgage I took out to pay for Five Guys meals for teenagers. We're some kind of something for sure.
Five Guys is great. Steak Shack is O.K.
160: I used to love In N' Out, but their fries are nit the greatest. I also thought it was kind of lame that in 2023 they told employees they weren't allowed to wear masks.
We do McD's on Good Friday
It is a festival about penitence, guess.
I liked the 5 Guys in DC 20 years ago, but I feel sick going there now.
I really don't care for Shake Shack. I don't mind the fish sandwich at McDonalds. In Maine, they sometimes have lobster rolls. I actually prefer McDonalds to Subway and got it on the way back from PA. Their coffee has gone down hill since they stopped using Newman's Own branded coffee.
Five Guys is a ton of grease. If you normally eat reasonable meals without a ton of grease, it will probably not sit well.
I can report I went for a quarter pounder with cheese after ballet class and no particular insights into the nation came to me.
I guess Brexit means Brexit if they don't call it a Royale with Cheese.
I have developed reasonable eating habits over the years, and once you start on that path, McDonald's is basically the first thing to go. I have barely eaten at McDonald's for decades.
But reading this thread, I sure could go for a Big Mac. I am deeply suspicious of people who try to claim that McDonald's doesn't taste good.
It's not as good as it was. They microwave stuff very often now.
I priced a double cheeseburger at our local McDonalds yesterday and it cost $4.59
What's a McDouble cost? I like to keep track of the difference as it's the implicit price of a single slice of American cheese food.
I vaguely recall the McDouble was around $3.89. Regular cheeseburger was $2.25.
I went to Five Guys for the first time in a decade last month. Burger too greasy, but the fries, while also at the greasier end of the window, were way better than those usually available.
Chipotle is my go-to fast chain food. We have a local chain Taco del Sol that I like better, and they do fish and Cubano as well as what you'd see at Chipotle.
You don't see "Imperfect" as an advertising tagline all that often.
The Chipotle by us decided to start sucking.
It's called the "le McDouble" in France
We had a place that was part of a small regional chain called Local Burger that just up and closed this summer. A huge loss, it was way better than 5 Guys. And I like 5 Guys.
There was an article about a year ago with the cost of a Big Mac at different McDonalds locations in the US: https://pantryandlarder.com/mccheapest
I am slightly ashamed to say that I have purchased the Big Mac at the most expensive location - a highway rest stop on I-90 in Massachusetts, just before crossing into New York.
I've always liked McDonalds but never liked the Big Mac.
I liked McDonalds ok, but as a kid I was pretty insulted if somebody thought a treat was getting a happy meal. My favorite food was lobster, but shrimp scampi at a steak house was more my taste. Brie was my favorite cheese. In fact, I used t9 go to Brigham's, because they would let you get Swiss or cheddar on the quarter pounder and not American "cheese" product.
Same crook-victim combination twice in the same place. Appreciating fast food means understand the vibes from the regulars?
190: that sounds kind of like me -- I was a kid gourmet. My mother was so proud! But at some point I rebelled and decided food snobbery was ridiculous. At some point I realized that everyone had become much more knowledgeable food snobs than I had ever been, so I turned against it even harder.
OT: I need a War on Christmas present idea for a 5 year old boy. In like the next five minutes, because I'm on my last shopping nerve.
I don't want my sister-in-law to stab me.
Retractable stage knife for the kid to share with his mom?
I got the Franklin's Expedition Cooking Set.
Melissa and Doug came through again.
Ah, then you missed an opportunity to curse the kid's parents with a toy that makes electronic noise.
192: I always looked young, so at 5, I probably looked two and a half, and said at church "Look, Daddy they have Brie." And people marvel led, I was just more insulted when adults got steak and I was offered hamburger, just because I was a kid. Not really a snob about it.
191:
"So every couple weeks, this guy comes into the restaurant, puts a gun in the face of a middle-aged guy, takes his wallet and runs off?"
"Yeah. But they didn't have to beat him down like that."
"I gotta ask. Why'd you let him in?"
"Huh?"
"If every time he comes in, he robs this one guy... why'd you even let him in the McDonalds?"
"Got to. This America, man."
At age 11 I practically reduced my mother to tears by insisting on a hot dog rather than the $3.00* whole lobsters at the Deer Island 4th of July picnic in coastal Maine.
*1965, but still.
201: after a holiday spent absolutely obsessing on "Guide to the Seashore and Shallow Seas of Britain and Europe", my brother, aged 6, was standing on the jetty gazing into the water and a random lady came up to him and said in a noticeably patronising way "See that down there in the water? That's a je-lly-fish" to which my brother replied casually "yes, Aurelia aurita."
re: 205
I love that. It's also typical little boy behaviour at around that age.
I had a kids book--something from the RSPB, I think--about birds that included lots of garden birds and other common UK wild birds. When we are about 9 we had to keep a bird diary in which we recorded all the birds we saw over a week, and where the other kids had three birds in theirs--crow, sparrow, magpie--mine had about 20, including all these relatively uncommon birds* that genuinely did turn up in our garden or on walks.
* some species of red start that's only normally found in passing in the UK (Black redstart, I think), some less common finches, various birds of prey, etc. **
** ironically, I see way more birds of prey living where I live in London than I ever did in semi-rural Scotland.
About this period his father took him [Macaulay, aged 4] on a visit to Lady Waldegrave at Strawberry Hill... After some time had been spent among the wonders of the Orford collection, of which he ever afterwards carried a catalogue in his head, a servant who was waiting upon the company in the great gallery spilt some hot coffee over his legs. The hostess was all kindness and compassion, and when, after a while, she asked how he was feeling, the little fellow looked up in her face and replied: "Thank you madam, the agony is abated".
206: you get a surprising number of species in cities! My father kept track of birds seen in or from his garden in Edinburgh and the total count was over 50 species (over a period of several years).
I'm pretty sure the people with bird lists are just making things up. So many birds are basically the same.
A scarlet tanager showed up in England, Yorkshire I think, last month and drew quite the crowd. Getting blown across the Atlantic is some bad luck.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c789v6dg5pdo
Probably just a sparrow with a bad dye job.
208: Looking at eBird, my accumulated count for my yard and immediate neighborhood (close-in suburbia with surrounding woods) is 67. Of those, about 20 or so are one off migrants).
And you people made me try McDonald's for the first time in a long while. Pretty good, in particular the fries--which are generally way too salty for me--were very good.
Have some lisinopril for a chaser.
217: I got moved off of lisinopril a month ago. On some other thing whose name I've forgotten. An angiotensin II receptor blocker rather than a angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor.
McDonald's fries are so good. There used to be a bar around here that served basically a fancy version of a McDonald's Quarter Pounder - thin beef patty, warm pickles, fluffy bun - but with higher quality ingredients. The verisimilitude was errie. It was really delicious, and better than McDonald's because you could have a beer with it, but the fries - although good in their own, fancy bar fries way - were different and kind of brought the illusion crashing down. I know McDonald's fries are whole potatoes that are cut and frozen before frying, but they really taste like fried extruded instant mashed potatoes.
I enjoy coughing, so I'm not switching.
There's a place near me that does McDonald's-but-beer-and-better-quality. It has very did fries.
219: I think they are par boiled or cooked sous vide before freezing.
So, actually, they are blanched in 170 degree water, then briefly fried before being frozen.
I have always depended on the kindness of 170 degree water.
I like McDonald's fries but the quality can vary widely according to how long they've been sitting in the vat. I actually like some of the fries that people seem to hate, like In'N'Out's. Except for the location near the San Jose airport. I stopped going there because its fries were routinely disgusting.
"San Jose" is one of those places that I never heard of, but turned out to be a huge city.
You didn't get a big hint to look up how to get there from Dionne Warwick?
I thought she just made it up for a rhyme.
It's true that she was born and raised in NJ, but Bruce hadn't yet made that cool.
The key was singing about Nebraska.
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https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/12/9/haiti-gang-killed-110-people-over-witchcraft-accusation-rights-group-says
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They think they're in Massachusetts.
226 is maddening.
Moby.
It would be POINTLESS to ask Dionne Warwick. You could ask Julie Andrews, or General MacArthur, or Harry Styles, and that would be reasonable, but the WHOLE POINT OF THE SONG is that Dionne Warwick has NO IDEA how to get to San Jose. You would have a better chance of success asking an Ethiopian if it's Christmas, or Meatloaf if he will do something for love (because statistically, whatever you ask him to do is probably not that).
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Pig at the Crossing is super slow but rewards your patience.
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NMM to the appalling Igor Kirillov, whose name and appearance both adequately reflected his character.
On Telegram, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote that Kirillov "spent many years systematically exposing the crimes of the Anglo-Saxons".
Better late than never!
232: The song came out in 1968. You don't think someone told her by now?
I would ask Scott McKenzie, who seems very familiar with what to do if you're going to San Francisco and what sort of people you'll meet there - seems a safe bet that he knows the general Northern California area pretty well and could probably direct me to San Jose.
I'm thinking that Mobes would have looked it up, being a friendly and helpful Midwesterner.
I only recently learned that We Built This City was written about Los Angeles.
I've heard of Los Angeles. I remember the tar pits fondly.
Pig at the Crossing is super slow but rewards your patience.
I did wonder if Butcher's Crossing had a prequel.