DrQuickbeam

I’m an American that lives in Italy about half of the time. I was being facetious a bit, but it is true that there is a cultural differences in how people think about this, it’s not just words. Someone else commented on the German words for it, which (as is typical with German over Romantic languages) is more appropriately descriptive.

“Go up 3 floors and turn left.” in the US would put you on the fourth floor, but in Europe each floor you go up is the number of the floor you are on. It’s more common in the US to say “Go up to the 2nd floor.” unless you’re not starting on the 1st floor.

In Europe if you say “I want a building with 7 floors.” no one will be confused, they will know that you want a ground floor and 7 above ground floors. They would probably also know what an American means when they say it. Only the Americans would be confused and they hilariously are as they look for their AirBnB’s here on vacation!

Americans always focus on facades, and think about buildings as commodities. The logic is that in the American conception, each floor is a floor-to-ceiling architectural layer, as viewed from the front of a building. So you think:

B2 - Second layer below visibility B1 - First layer below visibility 1 - First visible layer 2 - Second visible layer 3 - Third visible layer

“How many layers am I paying for, when I buy this building? Sir, If you buy 7 layers at this low, low price. I will throw in an 8th layer for free!” “OMG did you hear Frank’s new house has 4 layers! Frank has way more status than Bob and his paltry two layer building.”

Whereas in most countries, the conception is that a floor is each literal floor you pass as you go up or down while traveling inside a building.

-2 - I’ve descended two floors -1 - I’ve descended one floor 0 - I haven’t gone up or down since I entered this building 1 - I’ve ascended one floor 2 - I’ve ascended two floors

Exactly. In most countries, you reason that you never need to count floors unless you are going up or down. If you are walking up stairs, each floor you go past, you count it: F1, F2, F3, etc. If you are walking down stairs, you count each floor you go past: B1, B2, B3, etc.

Americans think about it more like a cake. Each “story” or “floor” is a ~3m or 4m, floor-to-ceiling, architectural layer. You don’t look at a 3-layer cake and say “that cake has a ground layer, then a first layer and a second layer” you say “that cake has three layers”.

Make a small spray paint stencil or vinyl sticker that represents your crew, or inspires people to think differently, and put them around your town or natural areas in subtle, cleverly inconspicuous locations.

Explore your area with Alltrails, or a similar app, finding new hiking or biking trails.

Urban exploration: creep through abandoned buildings, climb fire escapes to reach the rooftops, use catwalks under bridges to cross roads and rivers, scurry through large water drain pipes and abandoned steam tunnels.

Start a lucid dreaming competition with your friends, and share your experiences every morning. As you all develop more dreaming skills, you can share them with each other, and slowly become the masters of your dreams.

Come up with scavenger hunts that guide people into the coolest, hidden areas of your town, using clever clues, and share them online, similar to geocaching.

Pick up rubbish off the ground, one area at a time.

If it doesn’t exist publically in your country, get equipment to either test air or water quality at several spots around your community, and then share them online through posts, or by hosting an Ushahidi map. Encourage others to chip in.

Get your gang to volunteer together to help homeless, elderly or disabled people once or twice a month. You will both bond with your buds and gain new perspectives from the people you work with.

Arrange spontaneous dance parties in public with little flash mobs made up of your mates. Try to get strangers to join in on the fun. Disperse after one song, so you don’t get in trouble.

Learn to identify the 10 most common trees in your area, then the 10 most common flowers, the 10 most common weeds, the 10 most common birds and the 10 most common insects.

Explore local theater, try to find weird niche performances at churches, swingers clubs, primary schools, corporate retreats, futurist festivals, government events, and street corners. Make sure to cheer loudly and throw flowers.

This was my first thought. VC’s always expect 4 out of 5 projects they invest in to fail and always have. But it still makes them money because the successes pay off big. Is the money and resources wasted? Welcome to modern capitalism.

Praise the sun!

Lebanon is a beautiful country and Beirut is a fun city, but man their government bungled things for so long that everything is falling apart and all the money is leaving the country.

I wonder if they had to exclude farm equipment from the bill to get it passed.

American in Italy here! I am not justifying this, just explaining it from an Italian perspective. First, the paper is not mixing up her Indian heritage here with Native American. They took the idea that she is seeking a white male VP running mate and wrote “hunting for a white man”, which conjured up a “funny” homage to native Americans in spaghetti westerns, while giving a nod and a wink to the racism inherent in making the VP pick race-based. Second, this paper is a sensationalist rag sold in grocery store checkout lanes, with no expectation for the stories to be good, or free of any number of unsavory isms.

Short answer: Yes! Partially!

Long answer: Belief is a feature that humans have that can give you confidence both in proven outcomes and in the unknown. It stems from our prefrontal cortex survival capabilities to remember past experiences and simulate future experiences. Aka imagination. We can believe in anything we choose to.

Yes belief is psychologically comforting. Certainly a lot more than worrying about the unknown. It’s even more comforting if the belief is shared by a social group, reinforcing it to each other.

Other aspects of religion make life easier too. Rituals, traditions, stories and social ties.

Those things can help with depression! Depression is a cognitive-affective response to a body that isn’t living the way our bodies were evolved to live. Key factors of that include: Daily socialization, getting the right nutrients, sleeping well, getting enough exercise, getting enough sunlight and having strategies to keep our minds from worrying. Belief can do the last one, as can meditation, or triggering flow states by engaging in activities. Religion can also help with the socializing one.

Hope this helps!