Happy Thanksgiving

hope everyones having an amazing thanksgiving day, also it was nice seeing this video from yesterday just in time for the early thanksgiving spirit. hope everyone has had an amazing day with there families and may you all have a grateful night, glad to be back to playing here

i believe you aussie say cheers instead of thanks, so perhaps cheersgiving might make more sense to you

it's also celebrated in granada you self centered united statesians

Extremely weird opening post.

I really wonder if Americans know that other countries exist. Maybe they know in theory, but that is not an active knowledge, and they often forget.

Very beginning of video "dum, da dum dum" (which is the dragnet theme song for those of you too young to know)

Yeah, if your black king is on d2 and it's not an endgame, you probably are dumb da dumb dumb lol

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I've tried this a few times in my life, setting up a board in a public place and playing people. It's mostly boring since most people are U1000, but sometimes you will run into a few decent people, and it's an easy way to chat I guess. People always have stories about how they learned the game and stuff like that.

Haha, funny you write this, because yesterday I was chatting with a guy from Hungary, and I asked something like "today is Thanksgiving in US, do you have that?" (he said no).

OP is still a kid, so don't be too hard on him.

US has outsized influence on culture, so it's hard to know sometimes... a few days ago I found out that other countries know about the Wizard of Oz movie. I thought that was strange, and people made fun of me because it was a big movie. Ok, I guess even in the 1940s everyone watched US movies.

Also US is very different from Europe... from California to New York is about the same distance from Portugal to Russia. The point being that many people in the US can travel a few thousand km in any direction and still be in the US... Canada is very similar to US. For us to find a different culture we practically have to leave the continent*, while many eastern Europeans can hop on a train for 2 hours an be in a different country. Many people in the US will never be able to afford international travel (which usually involves flying across an ocean), so it's comparatively easier for us to stop thinking about other countries.

*(Yes Mexico exists. One of the only non-American cultures many US people are familiar with)

spot on.

back when the u.s. invaded iraq, there was a nationalism that made me uneasy. tv shows were talking about how great the u.s. is. 

it is a dangerous place when people make decisions on things like war without a clue what is going on in other countries they couldn't identify on a map.

i wonder if the fiasco of vietnam taught us anything. 

award me pls

very cool that you would just play. 

not cool that you would beat people like me quickly. 

"heard"

fine. i guess this is surprising to you. why?

Eh, that's part of what makes it a painful process... I don't beat anyone quickly

I mimic their pace. So if they spend 10 seconds on move 2, I also spend 10 seconds.

You do meet some interesting people though. One guy asked if I'd be back again, and I said yeah, I'm trying to do this every week at the same time. He said oh, he wont be back next week, he's leaving the country. He was a foreign exchange student who was trying to soak up some culture before he left, and he saw me playing chess, and thought he'd play a game and chat even though he was beginner level.

Pho

thanks

When I was a kid back in the 1970s you did not need a passport to travel to Canada and there are significant culture differences in various parts of the country.  (more significant than Scotland vs London vs Wales or Berlin vs rural Bavaria).  The expense of long distance travel puts international trips out of the reach of many and the size and variety of the country puts international trips out of the interest of many that can afford it and are willing to travel.  Those looking for warm weather getaways have Hawaii, Florida, Southern California, New Orleans and Puerto Rico available.  Those looking for skiing have the northern Rockies and Appalachians available.  Alaska is available for a northern trip.  There are thousands of miles of coast line.  The Great Lakes are a large freshwater recreation area.  The Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio and Colorado provide long riverboat routes.  The Rockies provide a readily accessible mountain climbing region dwarfing the Alps and Pyrenees.  Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon and various national parks provide are viewable natural wonders.  For most Americans there is little interest in viewing history more than three centuries old and there is little or no need to know a language other than English for any day to day activities (used to be even less of a requirement).  The oceans make any invasion difficult and the last times a US state was seriously invaded was in the War of 1812 and the short-lived Mexican invasions of Texas in 1846 and Mexican rebels like Pancho Villa in 1915-1916 (the WW II invasion of Attu and Kiska and the attack on Pearl Harbor were strikes against owned territories there were not yet states).  When war is seen as something unlikely to occur nearby there is less interest in worrying about foreign countries.  US troops in Afghanistan is a distant foreign war.  Soviet troops in Afghanistan was a border war.  The most recent major battles in US states were more than 150 years ago during a Civil War.

well that was a nice thanksgiving for the most part, i remember making this video 2 days prior as a special one highlighting the past years of my chess career from 2018-2022 which was fun. i am grateful to be here with you all and can't wait for more new great things in this following year

I bet you still underestimate the influence of US culture around the world.

Sure, if the movie thing was any indication, then I definitely underestimate it.

It'd be hard to know without living somewhere else for a while.

We had steak because the turkey was thawed