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Comment by vr46 | Hacker News Reader

As a fellow Brit with an American Studies degree, I follow US news and events to this day with a detached eye that really helps understand it, which I cannot possibly do with the UK, at least not politics, and having formally studied US history, culture, politics, foreign policy, means I know more about it than any of my American friends - so far - and I expect the converse to be true about Americans studying the UK.

This guy, however, is un-fucking-believable, because he's doing this for FUN and he possesses an amazing power that few people have - TO READ THE FINE MANUAL.

Simply awesome.

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It's fascinating how distance encourages both absurd curiosity (“How does that work?”) and some form of detachment (“At least it isn’t personal to me.“).

As a German I started following British politics in the Brexit years, first for the fun of an utterly funny parliamentary culture (“ORDAAAAH!”) – then a few months later I found myself looking into Erskine May. But I'll be never on that guys level, too easily satisfied after a small-ish dose of something different.

I'm American in the UK for the past seven years, and this resonates with me. It's nice to be outside the daily fray and constant social commentary in the US, but still have the ability to watch and participate when I feel like it. The funny thing is, I don't care about UK politics at all... I enjoy learning the procedures but I don't follow the drama.

Another point from the article that resonated with me:

> Another advantage of his geographic distance: Congress generally gavels in around 10 a.m., perfect timing for Surdy, whose classes are just coming to an end at 3 p.m. in the UK.

I absolutely love the UK timezone. It's my favorite part about living here. I work remotely for a global company, and by sitting in the UK, I get significant overlap with people from California all the way through Japan. It's particularly nice for me as a night owl, because I don't mind evening meetings and chats. But I would hate to wake up at 530am like some on the West coast need to do.

Sometimes living in the UK really feels like having a head start on the US... I like to say that I'm geographically GMT, but biologically EST :)

I've noticed this in a lot of fields. The people best at making money are often those who have no emotional attachment to it, and treat it just like a number to be maximized. Oftentimes the best surgeons are the ones who don't really care about patients as people (witness the Dr. House trope, or McDreamy on Grey's Anatomy) but rather as bodies to be patched up.

Personally I think my big-company employer is deeply dysfunctional, but I (unfortunately) seem to be relatively good at operating within it, wracking up launches and promos for myself and my team. I suspect this is because I don't try to pretend it's something that it's not: I know that I'm in a fucked up system and nothing I do has any meaning long-term and don't pretend otherwise, which lets me look at things as they actually are and determine my best course of action rationally. A lot of other people are blinded by the halo effect and try to operate within the company as they think it should be, which is self-defeating because that's not reality.

It might be the same for Americans trying to navigate the American political system. We're so blinded by the myths and propaganda that we've been fed since childhood that we can't see how the system actually operates.

Yes, British politics has been on an absolute roll for entertainment the last few years for anyone not effected by it, but that said, you can never accuse the Brits of ever, ever, losing their own sense of humour about it (Economist & the Liz Truss lettuce comment stands as an absolute masterpiece). And I quite enjoy listening to German news here describing Uk politics in a far more truthful - and expletive-laden - way than the UK press can ("complete fucking shitshow" as one German newscaster labelled it).

Haven't been able to get into German politics in quite the same way, mainly due to my rage against the current hypocrisy, but as my German improves, maybe I'll understand it better.

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