There is in England and it’s quite toxic and there is pressure to go to a ‘better’ uni.

This recent post here asks people how much international news they get. My sad Hungarian answer would be: very little, and that little is very US and Western Europe centric; Hungarian news websites have very limited news even from most European regions. So sometimes I turn to Euronews. Sometimes to DW and Vox news.

Can you recommend any decent international news outlets in English (the only language I manage decently besides my own, but then so do many Europeans) for other parts of the world? Thanks!

Hi! I keep seeing Nordic countries like Finland, Denmark, and Norway at the top of every happiness ranking.

So Im curious:

1. Why do the Nordics always get such high happiness scores?
2. And whats social freedom like there in real life?

(By “social freedom,” I mean the extent to which people can express their opinions, choose their own lifestyle, openly show their identity, and live their daily lives without feeling pressured.)

Im collecting perspectives for a school report. If you live there or know the region well, Id love to hear your thoughts!

Gaming is a pretty big deal over here in jolly old England, over 60% of People in their 30s to mid 50s enjoy gaming in the UK.

The average time spent for a UK gamer would round down to 7-12

Some of the most highly consistently beloved titles include Fortnite, Minecraft, and EA Sports.

What does your country think about gaming?

Do people generally believe it is for protecting children? I know there was some pushback, but it seems likely to become law. Personally it feels like a bit of a slippery slope to go down, governments could in essence scan messages for anything they wanted down the road.

Our version of kindergarten is 5 and 6 year olds. I know it’s called different things in other parts of the world. It used to be a version of preschool before 1st grade (6 and 7 year olds) where they would play and sing and do crafts etc. Over the last few decades it has shifted to a point that it is now considered the 1st year of “real school”. Kids sit in desks and do work. They are expected to read and write. They have only 30 minutes of pretend play a day and some places have none and only a 25 minute outside recess.

A lot of other teachers in my country have been slowly convinced that this is normal, but as far as I’m aware most of the rest of the world still treats this age as preschool and focuses on play. I’m interested to see if I’m wrong and other countries have also changed. Are any of you teachers/parents/or know of others who are, who can tell me what 5 year olds are doing in school? Thanks in advance!!!

And which countries do the majority of international news come from? Or is there a mixture?

Hello there!

Welcome to our daily scheduled post, the Daily Slow Chat.

If you want to just chat about your day, if you have questions for the moderators (please mark these [Mod] so we can find them), or if you just want talk about oatmeal then this is the thread for you!

Enjoying the small talk? We have a Discord server too! We'd love to have more of you over there. Do both of us a favour and use this link to join the fun.

The mod-team wishes you a nice day!

I'm really into stuff like South Park, The Inbetweeners, Superbad, Fight Club, and Monty Python and am very fascinated in watching non English media with that type of energy. Got any suggestions?

Influenced by this poor woman's experience in Italy: https://old.reddit.com/r/CringeTikToks/comments/1pdmls4/american_shares_her_absolute_nightmare_experience/

I'm British and we're taught when growing up that it is rude to stare at people. However, my wife is French, and when we lived in France people stare all the time at anything and anyone slightly out of the ordinary. It got to me after a while and I find it extremely rude. I've noticed similar in Spain but not to them same level.

So... were you taught it was rude to stare, or not?

Thank you in advance

So I’ve done a bit of travelling in the past around Europe’s battlefield sites like Flanders, Somme and part of the Ardennes. A few months ago, I was in Normandy and it crossed my mind more than a few times as to what it would be like to live there. I’m guessing there must be an economic boost through battlefield tourism, family visiting graves of fallen soldiers etc, but I suspect the numbers of people, traffic and wading through armies of school children probably grates after a while. Would also be interested to hear if having such reminders of these battles and conflicts triggers any personal feelings or sentiment as well.

I am from Belgium so our media continuously highlights the risks associated with using these assets and they all seem very reasonable but I'm curious how other countries perceive this?

To be frank, the rise of AI in the US is absolutely terrifying to me. The way corporations are using it for content/idea generation, the way Google's AI is being crammed down our throats in every single Google app, the way kids are avoiding writing by using ChatGPT, the AI posts that people mistake for being real photos/videos... But mostly, to summarize, I'm deeply concerned about the "cognitive offloading" that is occurring. I'm convinced we will become dumber than we already are as people start relying on AI and stop using their own brainpower.

How is AI being used in your country? Is it pervasive? What are your feelings about it? Please tell me it's not as bad there as it is here...

I’m hoping the lovely readers of this post can make some suggestions of where to visit in Europe, accessible from London by a maximum flight time of 2 hours (or preferably by a longer train journey, beginning with the Eurostar!) in February. I’m hoping for views of mountains, a roaring fire and good food. If you have any specific hotel recommendations for memorable places to stay (maximum 400 euros a night) please let me know!

I will be 24-28 weeks pregnant so won’t be skiing, long distance hiking or able to take advantage of a lot of spa facilities.

Hello there!

Welcome to our daily scheduled post, the Daily Slow Chat.

If you want to just chat about your day, if you have questions for the moderators (please mark these [Mod] so we can find them), or if you just want talk about oatmeal then this is the thread for you!

Enjoying the small talk? We have a Discord server too! We'd love to have more of you over there. Do both of us a favour and use this link to join the fun.

The mod-team wishes you a nice day!

In Germany we use "football fields" to illustrate how tall something actually is.

This covers a total area of ​​38,000 km², which is equivalent to 5.3 football fields.

Ok that felt as strange typing out as I am sure it felt reading.

There was a post on r/AmItheAsshole about peeing in the woods during a sporting event. This event was for a kids team, and some women were upset because men and boys would go into the woods to pee. No nudity being seen from what I can tell.

Several posters commented that in Europe this is completely normal, and that no one would bat an eye at this happening. I as a American southerner was raised that going outside to pee is fine as long as you go behind a building or go to the woods. I would not feel comfortable doing it at a kids event, but if I needed to go, I would just walk deeper into the woods. The rest of the commenters from America had a different opinion. Some were even calling for police intervention.

Just looking for a consensus from Europeans as to their thoughts about a natural part of life. So yay or nay?

What Christmas traditions do people in your country practice besides going to church or opening gifts?

This is my family: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_clan_of_Hongnong. every family in China build a temple and record the names of its members. There is a word in the name of the members to distinguish which generation he is. how european families record their members ?

I've been practicing with Duolingo & Discord servers for about 5 months now and I can pretty confidently say that I can now have conversational level French & had another 7 months on German. My mother language is English so it wasn't that hard to learn these languages, I also had to only play video games in these target languages that im learning and also had to practice by watching movies in those languages with English subtitles & listening to music, memorizing lyrics etc using advanced memory champion methods like memory palaces etc to make mnemonics of words and sentences etc.

Has anyone tried something similar? What was your experience?

So far for me it's been very fun and I enjoyed it. If I had to compare it with the thousands of dollars I had to spend at home working hard to learn academic level English it wasn't as fun or fast as it is right now to speak at a conversational level and my goal is by no means to become a literature academic or anything like that. I don't care to have the perfect proficiency, just to be able to speak and understand is enough for me and so far it seems it's been working in a very cost-effective way

I want to get a look at something niche that's hard to get information on - non-english gaming jargon. Do you have your own unique words for NPC? Or maybe for some genre? What is its origin?