‘We will block the canals’: Venice divided as young protesters target Bezos wedding
‘We will block the canals’: Venice divided as young protesters target Bezos wedding | CNN
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“You’re telling me none of these people shop on Amazon?” said New Orleans native Jake Springer, who, along with his wife, was spending a weekend in Venice on a wine tour through Italy. “At least they are protesting peacefully. Americans could learn a thing or two from this.”
They found the dumbest possible American to give a comment.
To be fair, it's not that difficult.
At least they found one that could form a coherent sentence.
As an American, I think finding the dumbest of us would be hard given the amount of competition.
I didn't think it was that hard at all, he's in the news every day!
FFS, why does Trump look like he’s about to suck cock in every damn picture?
Muscle memory.
Wel statistically it's just more likely, hence yourself the outlier!
Unlike the president
Seeing as they are on a wine tour, it's probably another out of touch millionaire
Wine tours are maybe a couple hundred dollars. We do 'em pretty often. Great deal and you often get a tour of the countryside as well. If you're ever in the Kelowna, BC area, check it out.
A couple hundred feels like out-of-touch money to me.
Not exactly millionaire money, though. It's a fun vacation option and fairly reasonable as those go.
You're going to spend 1 to 1.8k or such on the flights alone when coming from the US. Plus of course, as a yank, being able to afford to have a free day at all.
I get it most yanks are broke but a couple hundred are not much in terms of holiday money. Cheap hotels are going to cost you 25 to 50 Euros per night alone. Mallorca 4-star all-inclusive incl. plane tickets about 1k per person, seven nights. That's groceries for a year if you know what you're doing, or a bit more than two months of German welfare (the raw disposable payout, rent, heating, and health insurance is separate). Monthly net income on minimum wage ~1.6k, you'll probably spend most of your holidays in Balconia but if you want, yep, the Baleares are affordable. Trekking from hostel to hostel? Even more so, that's student-level holidays. Drinking wine while doing it? Depending on country, cheaper than beer. So, no, it's not out of touch. It's just not ameripoor.
Couple of days in Venice? There's camping grounds all around, bring a camper (I know, investment, but you can also rent them) or a tent. Commute into the city, if you buy anything... well ideally just don't it's all a tourist trap.
The average American has less than $300 in their bank account. There is no county in the US where somebody making the median salary can afford the average cost of a house for that county.
Vacationing in Europe and going on wine tours would sound like a once-in-a-lifetime trip for the majority of Americans.
Pretty tragic. Though I imagine the USA has some wonderful places to visit, as well. I remember cheap flights to Vegas were a thing, they do that as a loss leader. Is that still a thing, or has the collapse progressed that far?
If you have a car (and being an American, you almost certainly would be car-poor), then that presumably opens up a lot of low-cost vacation options.
I can't say anything for sure since I haven't had a real vacation in 15 years (that wasn't just staying at the nearest major city for a 3-day holiday weekend), but the cost of flying is a very sore point even in the continental US.
There are tons of beautiful and fun places to visit in the US, but especially if you're driving, time becomes a limiting factor. I know people who drive from Massachusetts to Florida pretty much every year to go to Disney, and it takes 2 or 3 days of travel to get down there. The stats say that we have less vacation time than similar countries (Europe, Canada, etc.), and the average American will never leave their home state and will die within 25 miles of where they were born.
Oh I meant, that specifically wine touring alone feels weird for that type of cash, imo. A decently-thought out trip to the Balkans for a week costs a couple hundred as well (given that was with friends to split costs etc, and flying in from Germany), so maybe I'm underestimating how my much you get for such a tour, but to me it feels really odd.
Not that I hate wine btw, like it better than beer.
I've never been on an organised wine tour but my family made a habit of swinging by a vinyard on the way back up north. The wine tasting comes with the beds (also, Zwiebelkuchen) and you get excellent prices on boxes because you're cutting out the middle man. Kids get to taste different grape juices.
I suppose those kinds of offerings exist in all wine regions, an organised trip would then be visiting multiple of those places.
As someone from a region where we produce a little wine but don’t have it as a main industry, yes, they’re all over and admission price generally scales with the fame of the label.
Ones that don’t try to concentrate on international marketing can be quite reasonable.
Them protesting peacefully is exactly why Bezos will eventually get things his way.
Please notice that Brugnaro, mayor of Venice, is politically spawned out of Berlusconi's party, Forza Italia.
Italian lesson: "Dio li fa, e poi li accoppia": "God makes them, and then pairs them"
Man, talk about being fucking disconnected from the rest of the world.
Americans seem to overestimate how big Amazon is here in Europe. Most people I know rarely buy anything off Amazon, a couple have Amazon Prime to watch content on, but that's mostly it.
But even if you do buy on Amazon sometimes, why should that make you on board with surrendering your city to this billionaire? It's part of this toxic obsession of finding minor 'gotchas'/hypocrisies instead of debating substance. You MUST subscribe to every belief of team A and hate everything from team B.
Americans are fucking weird with defending and warshiping their millionaires and celebrities.
Both are probably wrong so would be nice to have data instead. Here in Belgium checking out from postal workers deliveries or on recycling garbage day I can see a lot of Amazon parcels unfortunately. Your observation is not wrong, neither is mine, so the question rather is how relevant they are when scaled to all of Europe.
You seem to underestimate it though. Amazon is pretty big here as well, even just considering the "buy stuff" parts.
It's of course impossible to know if it was intentional, but lets not forget - platforming the dumb drives engagement, one of the reasons our view of the world is distorted towards thinking people are worse than they are. (Don't get me wrong, people aren't great on average, and broadly follow the lowest common denominator trends - but especially with terminally online people, there is a huge problem with paranoia and defeatism thanks to that dynamic).
people aren’t great on average
Well, of course not. If 'great' was the average, it wouldn't be great anymore - it'd just be average.
Aren't great on... median? Majority fall below some arbitrary standard of "decent"?
I was listening to an NPR segment asking American tourists at a French vineyard what they thought of the tariffs and they also managed to find the biggest group of dipshit chads they could
The dumbest American with a passport.
Of course there are far dumber Americans but they aren't the kind who travel to Europe.
Very likely it's intentionally chosen or even fake to push the narrative that US protests are violent..
Palantir laughs quietly
May be on to something there. Only "Jake Springer" I see on LinkedIn posted from Port Aransas, TX yesterday.
Eeh, not a rare find when overseas. Most people don't "tour" overseas, but you frequent busloads of these people.
that is ok, none of these require cold turkey approaches. you start by protesting Jeff's wedding, you continue by replacing some of your amazon shopping with alternatives, next you know you are only using amazon a couple times a year at most. This would already be enough I think as amazon relies on a much higher level of consumerism.
They just checked voter registration. Easy pickins from there.