Thanks for the recommendation. Giving it a listen currently.

It’s about 300+ visitors per hour averaged out over the whole year given opening times / holidays. It’s a small assed island that requires a ferry to get to so honestly not bad. IMO.

It’s also very very far from Europe where I guess a decent chunk of US visitors come from.

Oh I meant as a tourist attraction :) last time I was in SF was 2019 and and it was still open to the public. I misunderstood your comment

Oh wow. Didn’t know it had shut down. Guess I’m in the lucky gang to have seen it while it was still a tourist attraction. Definitely one of the cooler things I saw in the US.

I’m surprised it wasn’t making money. It was very busy when I was there which was in September (1998 iirc).

Lost tourist revenue from that would surely be enormous.

Edit: apparently not. Wikipedia says:

Operating costs still remain one of its biggest challenges today.

Ireland ticks most of your boxes. If any of your grandparents are Irish you can get dual citizenship. English speaking and lots of cultural crossover etc.

Closer for trips back too. Think it’s only a 5 hour flight to New York for example.

Enjoy it and really, congratulations!!

I’ve been the young dad at school and now I’m the old dad. There are 21 years between our youngest and oldest. I wasn’t quite your age when we had our happy little accident but I’m so happy to have him and it sounds like you are too.

I’ll offer one piece of advice and that is to start looking after your health if you’re not already. You’re going to want the extra, high quality years with your kid that good diet and exercise bring and being fit really does help with the parenting adventure (in my experience anyway).

Enjoy the ride! It’s so much fun. I’m really happy for you.

You wear your dark blue suit son. It’s obviously respectful. That’s all that matters.

Where I’m from only close friends and family would wear a suit and dark blue would be absolutely fine. Black jeans and a nice jacket would be spot on here too in nearly all circumstances.

I’ll tell you what though if you got an invite to the pope’s funeral I’d bet you money you’d pony up for black. That’s all folks are saying here.

deleted by creator

I find it hilarious that you show graphs that entirely support my point as sone kind of gotcha. The other poster put it well. Europe as a whole has given more.

The EU as an institution gave cash and the US has given more arms total. That EU cash comes from the member nations so there are two levels of contribution for each EU country which you can see from the German arms deliveries that are not counted under the EU contribution but it’s still partly German money being sent when an EU contribution happens. It’s conceptually similar to a US state sending separate funding or arms beyond the federal contribution.

The pie chart you show has exactly the same percentage for the US as mine (42.7%) so it’s just a different representation of the same data. That “other” section on your chart (23.1%) includes contributions from 26 other EU countries beyond their EU money which, when coupled together will conveniently bring it to the total in the graph I posted showing Europe (including non-EU like the UK and Norway) as a whole contributing more, as it should.

Yeah definitely. There was an urban legend in the same company about Saudi visitors before my time and they went WILD. Strip clubs, 5am finish, the works.

And yeah yer man just was not used to drink in any way. Poor bastard. I’d say the fear and hangover combo must have been something else to wake up to.

No it didn’t. Europe ponied up mostly cash to keep the country running while the US donated arms and intelligence because they had more of it but total value Europe was ahead.

Yeah to be honest I feel like there was a decent bit of social pressure that he felt. The CEO was a fairly hard character in general but the lad in question was well liked. The “fuck off” did shock us all though.

Like none of us would have been surprised if he’d been let go but it would have affected morale generally, laws here are generally worker oriented and he was a good worker, plus the added effect of visa removal has to be part of the decision process.

The guy who wrestled him into the taxi definitely put in a good word too. He’s a good soul.

Edit: the belligerence was only half the story on the negative side. We were all very embarrassed that the staff had to clean up the puke but they were absolute champions about it. I’ve worked as a waiter for a good few years in college and you do tend to just pass these things off as best you can, especially for large groups that are going to leave a solid tip.

JAYSUS 😂

Just for clarity… The lad shaved his pubes, lobbed them in a bag then brought them into work and sought your counsel on whether or not he had crabs? Is that right? because I’m rolling around here picturing the absurdity of it.

European and I love the Aussie and Canada communities. The Europe ones are good too but I feel like there’s more banter in those other ones. The Ireland one is picking up steam which is great.

[email protected] too for the Star Trek memes. I watched TNG through with my now 18 year old when she was about 10-11 and I’m in the middle of it with my 11 year old now so I send them on and we have a good laugh.

They’re both amazed that new Star Trek the next generation memes are still being made on the daily.

I also get silly laughs out of [email protected] and [email protected] .

Shout out to /u/PugJesus for the Roman memes. I try to throw OC in there if I ever dream any up but that’s not often.

Christmas party, of course. We had an Indian dude join the company. Really nice lad that I got on great with.

There’s a company meal kicking off at 7pm not far from where we work so the entire office (about 40 odd people) decide we’ll get a few scoops in beforehand.

Well this lad was quite small and very obviously not used to drink. He was fairly toasted before we even got to the restaurant. He kept drinking then became belligerent.

Proceeded to puke all over the place half way through the meal. He went out to get some fresh air and the CEO went out to have a chat with him and suggested he head home.

Promptly told the CEO to fuck off and leave him alone.

My bestie was his boss and at that point basically wrestled him into a taxi. The CEO took it well in fairness. It was totally out of character so he kept his job (and his visa which was dependent on the job).

Fascinating stuff.

I accept that 100%. I’ve seen a decent bit the US and it’s such an enormous lump of land with so many different people and cultures that anyone trying to lump them together into some homogenous mass is off their rocker.

Sure you can travel an hour on a train in Europe and be in a totally different world culturally. The distance for those changes is bigger in the US but holy moly do they exist.

I’m only across the water in Ireland and I can tell you from experience that ambulances arrive quickly, are free and so is the treatment. The UK health system is measurably better than ours so I feel like this is plucked from somewhere that the sun doesn’t shine.