There are plenty of reasons for people to use subtitles that don’t come down to poor hearing. I find a lot of TV and movies from Spain or France have really crap sound, for example, where dialogue is practically a whisper. I speak Spanish fluently and use it at work without issue for 40 hours a week, yet have an easier time understanding death metal lyrics than dialogue in some films and shows, for example. Somehow, Brazil figured out better sound design than most productions in either of those two countries, and I can watch Brazilian shows and films without having to turn on subtitles just fine.

You also have assholes like Christopher Nolan, who insist on mixes that result in sound effects blowing out your ear drums before you can actually make out the dialogue, despite it being spoken in my native English.

On the other hand, I find background noise much more disruptive to my comprehension in languages other than English, and would hardly be surprised if the same were true for those who speak English as a second language.

Also, I guess by your logic, people who are deaf or hard of hearing should just accept that they can never fully appreciate this sort of media, due to relying on closed captioning.

All around, it’s just an incredibly ignorant comment.

Probably all the knives and the room full of people who spend 8 hours a day cutting things to bits with them. After a while, you get pretty good at finding where to cut through joints, so it doesn’t take all that long.

Because, for many people, it’s not all that easy to get the requisite visas to go to Europe legally. As it stands now, I’m pretty sure I’m the only person in my household of 3 who has a few options to get skilled work visas based on my work experience. In another few years, when we’ve all finished our degrees, we’re looking at making the leap.

For other people, they might already have put down roots that hold them back before considering what a raw deal they’re getting. Even if someone can qualify to emigrate, significant others, kids or property can make it more difficult for them to decide to go for it.

And, of course, you have plenty of folks who drink too deeply of the Kool-Aid, and believe Fox News when they say Europe is overrun by communist governments that implement Sharia law in their gulags, and force you to be gay to hit the national quotas.

I, too, am far from being either of those things, but it sounds like you could just track purchasing power to get a rough idea. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding it, but it seems to me that, if inflation or other factors have eaten into your purchasing power and you haven’t gotten a corresponding raise to offset it, you can reasonably conclude that the economy is getting worse for you in your personal circumstances.

Nah, as in there’s no reason for anyone to bring up F1 as a comparison, for the reasons you listed, and plenty of other safety improvements.

I don’t think you understood what I wrote or the context it was written.

I understood what you said fine, but you sure needed me to spell it out for you that I was agreeing with your point regarding most forms of racing these days, so maybe cool it on these comments until you work on your own reading comprehension and grasp of context yourself, there.

Nah, F1 has come a long way from back in the day, and really done a lot for driver safety over the years. I’ve been following it since shortly after Jules Bianchi died, and the only time I thought “Holy shit, I’ve just seen someone die on live TV!” was Romain Grosjean’s crash, which he ultimately came away from with relatively minor injuries.

I think the motorsport equivalent would be something like the Isle of Man TT, or the motorcycle races at the Macau Grand Prix, where the approach to safety seems to mostly remain “Hey, don’t hit any of those stone/concrete barriers while going as fast as humanly possible, but if you do, there’s a doctor somewhere around, maybe they’ll get to you in time.”

Both of those events are, in all honesty, insane that they’re allowed to continue as is. The Macau GP seems somewhat better in terms of sheer death count, but despite being interested in motorsport generally, I don’t think I could ever make a holiday out of attending either one. I just don’t want to go somewhere that has a very real possibility of someone dying an avoidable death because “Ah, fucking health and safety have taken all the excitement out of racing, but we’re the real deal and hit stone walls at 200mph when we fuck up.”

And? That some people within a certain group have supported them hardly means you can say that it’s a problem with the group as a whole. I also saw a dozen metal bands who are explicitly pro-Palestinian, and have expressed that in their shows and online.

Metalheads as a whole haven’t done something to be a disappointment, some prominent figures within the community have.

I hardly think Sharon Osbourne represents metalheads. I’ve been to plenty of shows over the last couple of years where acts have made pro-Palestinian statements, and the only time I witnessed any pushback from the crowd was one guy at a hardcore show, who was promptly shouted down by the crowd when he called the singer of No Time a Nazi for saying he supported the Palestinians and calling Israel’s actions a genocide.

The metal scene has plenty of real issues to answer for (hello, NSBM), but Sharon Osbourne being an out of touch bitch is not one of them, in my opinion.

Edit: Also, before someone searches No Time and assumes skinheads in an Oi band must be Nazis, have the lyrics for their song “Everything You Hate” in the spoiler.