Good luck ignoring social media nowadays. Whether you use them or not, you live in a society that does use them and you are impacted by its consequences.

And good luck trying to buy a new television that isn’t “smart”. Even cars are getting like that.

Yeah, and the amish aren’t exactly a positive example in terms of personal freedom, especially for women and queer people. Though those were never their goals anyway, so a more modern luddite community might be nicer to live in.

Cyberpunk authors have been introducing progress-hostile/‘go back to the past’ movements and factions since the 80s, arguably it’s older than cyberpunk-style technology itself (cyberpunk-style technology definitely being a thing that already exists, arguably since the www-internet but nowadays with VR, AI and electronically enhanced prostetics we’re definitely getting into the flashier stuff). And remember that the cyberpunk genre paints the future as bleak, in terms of how the common people live most cyberpunk worlds are clear downgrades compared to the actual 1980s.

And e.g. the amish rejected the industrial revolution.

Quark ist pretty tasty! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark_(dairy_product)

I suppose we have pumpkins, too. At least this holiday is pretty fun, even if no one actually celebrates it here (there’s little chance it gets adoption here, where I live we even have a hard time getting into carnival, even though that holiday has native tradition).

Anyway, late August christmas sweets are way better than any Halloween-themed food or drink.

What is it with mothers accidentally using the wrong names? It’s not like most mothers nowadays have 5 children who all look nearly the same.

Yeah, it’s going pretty damn hard. There’s so many different things it fits on, like all the different kinds of bodyshaming (e.g. fat shaming, calling something “small dick energy”, talking about Trump’s small hands).

That’s interesting, what did the original use instead of kobolds?

I AM smiling!

Does the Dungeon Meshi world really have gnomes?

Be the change you want to see.

Take a look at the nutrition values of the various kinds of cheeses (where I live it usually lists the macros right on the package). Milk is about 3% carbohydrates/sugar (i.e. 3% lactose), while most cheeses that aren’t white have about 0% sugar.

The pictured cheese is very likely practically lactose-free.

I don’t expect people even in border villages of Czechia, Slovakia or Hungary to speak German

German is actually a fairly popular foreign language in countries east of Germany: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Foreign_language_learning_statistics#Upper_secondary_education

Though learning a second or third language in school is probably not quite what OP envisions here, and there’s a big difference between getting language lessons in school and actually being able to speak that language (shoutout to my Spanish lessons in school, I should probably have picked French instead).

Or is it more if you lived even like 500 meters of a border do you learn the language of the country your in?

That tends to be how it’s done. States tend to be rather protective of their official language, and it’s generally impractical to send your children to school in a different country. Being somewhat proficient in the other country’s language is quite common, but to truly be bilingual you pretty much need to be some kind of ethnic or religious minority.

Also depends a lot on the relationship between the countries and languages; some borders are easier to cross, and some languages easier to learn.

Possibly, but the distinction here is that the differentiation of Dutch and German didn’t happen that long ago, and this would be a lot more obvious if the German dialects that are closest to Dutch weren’t nearly dead.

You mean something that sounds dumb in English also sounds dumb in Dutch? Wow!

A few hundred years ago, their language was a German dialect!

This “cuck” is probably an anglicism.

Also, the barrier between English and Dutch is pretty flimsy.

pee is stored in the nuts