There’s definitely a huge difference in service work ethic in Japan, which probably leads to those reliability stats. I don’t even know if I consider it a good or bad thing, because it’s super-nice when you’re relying on them there, but I can also tell that waiting on people hand and foot wears on people’s mental health, and it often shows across that country.
It’s not quite the same thing, but I feel like not enough directors value the attention viewers give to the background.
Let’s say you have an animation, and plan a silly bit of slapstick where someone’s chasing a butterfly. Put it on shot, and it’s kind of over-focused on something rudimentary. But have two characters in the foreground, using 80% of the frame, conducting a boring conversation, and put that person with the butterfly in the background, and it’s ten times funnier because viewers feel a sense of ownership in being the one to “notice” it - even if the director knew fully well no one was focused on the conversation.
This is a really cool list since it gets a bunch of people in the comments to fight over which one is the best. Obviously several could somehow let you gain a million dollars, but money alone might not be the limit.
When I was in Venice I only tried a Diavolo at a local restaurant. It certainly could be my American expectations but nothing amazed me about it; definitely feel like a bit more could be done to mesh the ingredients. Or, maybe my American brain just craved sweeter, cheesier stuff.
Then again, I went to Germany and the bread there was fantastic compared to America, so unless they boarded the sugar train it feels like there must be something that can be done right with good ingredients.
It would be awesome if Steam could set up a store filter so games over a certain size are hidden from recommendations. I have that for the Roguelike tag.
Honestly, it’d be useful if the store could report to developers what the most common filters are, too, so they take that in their development considerations.
I seem to remember one techno-Asian-dystopia book that may have highlighted this, where every week all the major banks have a ceremonial exchange of tons of gold bricks, as a proof to solidify their claims of having money that’s owed/exchanged.
I don’t know if there’s a reason to this, but on a lot of sites, clicking “manage” and then “save” seems to give some good defaults - like maybe they need an affirmative action to “turn on” eating your babies settings.
The scary thing, then, is lessons like “Look both ways before crossing the street”. You fail that sort of lesson the hard way, and you don’t get a chance to learn anything.
I do not think it’s any easier to get people to do things when the building is on fire. People just become more stressed, and make poorer decisions for self-preservation. While you do see people support each other during disasters like floods, it’s not always the case.
Putting aside that I’ve seen some relatively old people continue to stay healthy on bikes (often as leisure, not utility), generally the hope would be that public transit would cover the needs for longer distances. As you said, many current forms are pretty bad, but that’s because our money is spent (that is KEY - we SPEND the money either way!!) on road maintenance and new parking garages, and of course individually on car maintenance.
We also have these long distances to cover to stores in part because of the big wide roads and parking lots that elongate our trips. As it turns out, civic centers don’t have to be so spread out.
I’d also expect most people not to need to go into the city for all forms of shopping. If you just need groceries for the week, but your town has nothing to offer in walking distance, it almost sounds like there’s a business begging to be built there, even if it’s a two-room local affair.