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[Zorral]

48 minutes ago, horangi said:

Andalusia, where I think you were doing your gallivanting, is one of the poorest regions of Spain with an average salary around 1k a month).   For the sake of travel, its much better to be in your shoes than a resident of Grenada who wants to go visit, well most anywhere else. 

BTW -- do you speak Spanish?

Well aware of the above, very well aware.  Yet, everywhere we went the average person looked more prosperous than the average person in NYC.  Dental clinics for cosmetic dentistry are everywhere.  Maternal hospitals everywhere.  Not here.  And, in the Euro zone, a lot of what is taxed massively here is not taxed like that there.

Then too, one of our Spanish flight attendants told us, on the flight back to NYC, with not a single seat empty, these are not USians going back home, but Spanish going to NYC, because "All of the Spanish are crazy to visit NYC."

I cannot imagine their sticker shock.  Still, if they are that poor, relatively speaking, where is the money coming from for entire families of grandparents, children, infants and small kids to go to NYC?

Everywhere we went we spoke with the people who took our orders, etc.  They have all traveled all over Europe and Asia, and, less, South America.  Not many of them came to the USA, it seems.

Costs and so are relative indeed, but ultimately it looks as though the average (white) Spaniard is doing not so badly, particularly with health care and much else. Wherever we went too, it was Spanish who were the majority tourists, in every city, except Cádiz, where for the first time someone working in a tourist store told me how much he yearned to go to NYC, even though he'd traveled everywhere in Europe, Asia, and even in South America, but never yet has been able to get to NYC.

 \\\\\\\

  And the trains worked. Beautifully, despite the scandals of wrongly dimensioned for the tunnels -- and having ridden that many trains, I know what this means -- so they had to discard those plans -- at least the damned cars hadn't yet been built.

[Zorral]

p.s. if you check the latest numbers too, you're off on the average income of both NY and Andalusia.

[horangi]

20 hours ago, Zorral said:

BTW -- do you speak Spanish?

 

Enough to get along, but far from fluent.  

Regarding the stats- the NYC data was from 2022 NYC.gov and the Andalusia info was from 2020 from www.statista.com  I wont vouch for the later as a great source, but there are plenty of articles decrying the fact that Andalusia is lagging behind the rest of Spain economically.  And Spain as a whole is significantly worse off than in 2008 with household income stats I'm seeing ranging from 14k and as high as about 40k depending on methodology.  Regardless of where it falls in that spread, it doesnt really change the point.  As for the plane loads full of Spanish tourists- if you limit yourselves to the top 10% richest folks, thats still 4.7 million Spaniards, which is why I prefer using median income for comparisons.  

When it comes to viewing visible happiness and even basic services, it doesn't necessarily equate to economic prosperity- of all the places we've traveled, Nepal and Cambodia seemed to have the most outwardly content folks, who were nonetheless living on annual incomes under a thousand dollars.  Generally, the more developed and populated a metro area, the more miserable folks seem to be.  There is definitely something to be said for simplicity in life.

(I just recognized we are a bit off topic for this thread. So maybe better to carry on in one of the economics focused ones.)

[Spockydog]

Gotta love Kathy Burke.

 

[Zorral]

 

[Spockydog]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

 

No. No. No. No it wasn’t. Nope. It wasn’t seen.

Because even though you can see this flag with your own two eyes, everybody knows there is no such thing as crossover between the Israeli far-right yahoos, and any other historical group known for doing things the current Israeli government would very much like to be doing to the Palestinians.

To even suggest such a thing is anti-semitic and means you need to get cancelled. 

[Zorral]

24 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

such a thing is anti-semitic and means you need to get cancelled. 

More so because it was intended for the International thread and somehow I posted it here.  Argh.  Coz this is NOT the BEST THING ON THE INTERNET but one of the most tragic and horrible.

[Tywin et al.]

However, this very much is the best thing on the internet:

 

[Spockydog]

I don't think there was much need for that. That dude is getting sued.

Edited March 31 by Spockydog

[Tywin et al.]

13 hours ago, Spockydog said:

I don't think there was much need for that. That dude is getting sued.

Nope. He's security for the organization and once you go on the field of play in any sport you're essentially a threat to commit assault. 

NFL players openly say they'd love the chance to tackle a streaker. 

[Spockydog]

He was down one knee with an engagement ring in his hand. And you say he was a threat? To whom, exactly? Because if I was his lawyer that would be my first question.

If you think that is reasonable force then I don't know what to say. 

Edited April 1 by Spockydog

[Spockydog]

Hyper-violence, ftw! Eh, kids? 

[Tywin et al.]

No, he obviously wasn't a threat, but security did exactly what they were suppose to do and any suit would get tossed out.

The funny part is all he probably had to do was go to the team before hand, ask if he could do it in exchange for a large charitable donation and they probably would have been accommodating to some extent. There's a reason why the cameras always know when to pan to a proposal in the stands. This guy seems to have just gone YOLO. 

Anyways, the video is still hilarious.

[Spockydog]

The use of force has to be proportionate. If not, why not just shoot the guy in the head?

Edited April 1 by Spockydog

[polishgenius]

Well, they didn't shoot him in the head so... ? 

Or beat him up once he was down, or anything extra past tackling him. Which they didn't need to do, sure, but it was hardly some extra over-the-line act of violence. 

[Jace, Extat]

If my game got interrupted for something like this I'd be spittin mad

 

Edited April 2 by Secretary of Eumenes

[Spockydog]

5 hours ago, polishgenius said:

Well, they didn't shoot him in the head so... ? 

Or beat him up once he was down, or anything extra past tackling him. Which they didn't need to do, sure, but it was hardly some extra over-the-line act of violence. 

The force he was hit with could quite easily have caused an injury. It was completely unnecessary violence, but hey, that's America for you.

 

 

[dog-days]

On 4/1/2023 at 1:58 PM, Tywin et al. said:

Nope. He's security for the organization and once you go on the field of play in any sport you're essentially a threat to commit assault. 

NFL players openly say they'd love the chance to tackle a streaker. 

That may not read to everyone exactly as they might have thought it would. (e.g. as an assertion of their red-blooded manly vigour or some crap like that.) 

[Tywin et al.]

1 hour ago, dog-days said:

That may not read to everyone exactly as they might have thought it would. (e.g. as an assertion of their red-blooded manly vigour or some crap like that.) 

Rush a field and find out for yourself.

[polishgenius]

Creasing at these.