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Profotograf_555 1 point ago +1 / -0

I've lived Germany for the past 6 years. Anything "official" here is all in German and only German. I can say that the attitude of "we speak murican" is not really the best way to get people to assimilate to a place.

Because my German isn't absolute perfect and there is no other option other than speaking German when it comes to things like Visa appointments, getting a driver's license, paying bills, etc. I'm often hung up on over the phone, refused appointments, it flat out screamed at when I don't immediately understand something. After 5 years of this, I've not only started to actively avoid these interactions, I've decided I'm done with Germany and will be moving away in 2 months, despite really trying my best to live here.

Having an option to at least communicate in a common shared language would make me %100000 more willing to stay and "assimilate"

America is and always had and always will have an extremely diverse population and for those who have just arrived, having at least a way for them to navigate their assimilation process in a language they are maybe a bit more comfortable with would be a massive help and probably speed up the process.

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Profotograf_555 1 point ago +1 / -0

Forget roadways, I wanna see a decent functional passenger rail network re-established. The railways which used to exist across America are one of the main reasons many small towns and rural communities even exist in the first place and their absence is the reason many of them are sadly in slow decline.

Re building the rail network could be such a massive boost to the economy as well. If all production was done domestically, not only could we revitalize the Rust Belt but could bring back a ton of manufacturing jobs to the US.

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Profotograf_555 6 points ago +6 / -0

I live in Germany and I work in a pretty low level, yet pretty niche field. For me to get my work visa, my boss had to prove that they were unable to find a German for my position before I was even considered for my visa.

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Profotograf_555 2 points ago +2 / -0

A solid passenger rail network, and especially high speed passenger rail would be such a boost to small town America. So many Rural towns in America are slowly dying because the rail network that helped establish them no longer exists.

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Profotograf_555 1 point ago +1 / -0

Photographer here: No way that photo was shot at F/ 1.6. Just looking at the composition of the image, the reason Trump and the podium look so compressed is due to a long focal length (certainly above 85-100mm is my guess). At those final lengths, the depth of field you'd get from an f stop of 1.6 would be so shallow that you'd see visible blurring of the podium.

Even if you were trying to shoot in bursts (if you've ever heard photographers in something like a congressional meeting, you'd know how many shots these photographers rattle off every minute) there's absolutely no reason why you would shoot at 1.6 in this environment.

Using the sunny 16 rule, which states that in direct sun, you can shoot 100 iso at F/16 with a shutter speed of 1/125, you realistically can shoot 1/8000th of a second without major exposure differences at F/1.6 but again I don't see why any photographer would risk an out of focus subject by shooting this scene at 1.6 when they clearly didn't have to.