• Mr_Buscemi
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      1 year ago

      The size difference is getting to me too lol

      I used to drive a 200 mile round trip weekly to visit home while I was in college.

      Houston to East Texas is a fun drive.

      • teydam@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I had a german professor once remark to me about how different Americans are, like hundreds of miles is a day trip, hundreds of miles is a week long trip by car. Bet the trains are awesome though. Amtrak long distances seems way too expensive relative to my other options when factoring in time.

        • legion@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          “An Englishman thinks a hundred miles is a long way; an American thinks a hundred years is a long time.”

        • Mr_Buscemi
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          1 year ago

          Your professor said it the best way possible. I’ll remember that saying to help explain it all in the future if needed to others.

          I had a professor who loved Amtrak and would talk about his travels every month or so. He mentioned the price too as an issue. I definitely want to experience a train ride on Amtrak one day on an overnight trip.

        • Mr_Buscemi
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          1 year ago

          East Texas is more when it gets woody and Louisiana-lite. Houston is sorta on the edge.

          Lufkin/Carthage/Nacogdoches/Tyler is more east Texas than Houston.

  • ThisIsNecessary@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This map made me realize how small Great Britain really is. I drive 550 miles to visit my mom in the US, Great Britain is only 600 miles long from north to south.

    • Spacecraft@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      This weekend I drove over 500 miles to get to the Oregon coast from a neighboring state of which I live close to the border. The total distance I traveled could have taken me from Spain into France then into to Italy and then end up in like Switzerland or Austria or Slovenia or something. Could see Barcelona, Marseille, Florence, Milan, Zurich, but instead I saw hundreds of miles of nothing and then the Pacific ocean lol.

  • Sir_Kevin@discuss.online
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    1 year ago

    Man Europe is hilariously small! Don’t get me wrong, it’d love to abandon the US and live there. It’s just mind blowing the perspective this map gives.

    • Cthulhu1@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      With around 10.5 Mio square Kilometer surface it is a bit larger than the USA with around 9.8 Mio square Kilometer area.

      • docmark@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You’re comparing continents and countries.

        North America is over twice as large. So yes, from anyone on this side of the pond it’s tiny.

      • islandofcaucasus@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah Europe is a bunch of counties and an entire continent. United States is just 1 country and half a continent

        Not talking shit at all, I love how small Europe is. A few hours in a train and you’re in a brand new culture with a brand new language

    • Animated_beans@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The UK uses miles. They mostly use the metric system, but there are a few cases where they use the imperial system (like distance)

    • Ddhuud@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Other languages have words to describe lengths in a more “poetic” way.

      In Spanish we have “leguas” which I’m sure was a unit of length, but gun to my head, can’t tell how far one is.

  • A while back someone posted a meteor sim type web experience thing where you were given a map of the world and some settings where you could adjust the size, density, material, speed, angle and impact site of a meteor and then get shown what would happen.

    I dropped a Texas sized iron meteor at the max speed it went up to directly on a hotel in the downtown area of my city and got some circles like this. My home was juuuuuust on the outside of them, and I thought “Huh. I guess we’d be fine then.”

    Nope. That was just the size of the hole it would make. There was a next tab showing the explosion and it basically covered the entire United States, Mexico and most of Canada. lol