As a melting pot, the US takes in a lot of folks from countries that are not doing very well... so in a way, if we keep importing folks from cultures that failed without trying to integrate them to our culture, and instead celebrate their original culture, eventually our amalgam culture will fail just like theirs did.

Its why we have signs that say to "sit, not stand on toilets". You dont think we would need to write it down, but if you import hundreds of thousands of toilet standers, "the norm" goes out the window.

The melting pot is a way of integrating people into our country. It has been criticized as being too homogenizing; and now I think (for the better) most people see it as a nice lumpy stew. We shouldn’t ask people to give up all their traditions or change completely to become American, it is a give and take communication process that we both benefit from.

WRT toilets, I think it has been shown that squatting actually reduces the strain when using the toilet; I think those signs reflect the fact that we are integrating new toilet information. They are part of the natural back-and-forth pushing process. Hopefully we’ll converge on a toilet that is lower to the ground but doesn’t have accessibility issues.

> WRT toilets, I think it has been shown that squatting actually reduces the strain when using the toilet; I think those signs reflect the fact that we are integrating new toilet information. They are part of the natural back-and-forth pushing process. Hopefully we’ll converge on a toilet that is lower to the ground but doesn’t have accessibility issues.

Squatting toilets are fine, maybe they are even better. But the signs are about people squatting with their feet on the toilet bowl on a sitting toilet. That is dangerous (the bowl can easily break from the pressure of your feet) and dirty (you are very likely to leave the area around dirty, and there are typically no ways to clean the outside of the bowl in typical western bathrooms).

What I wanted to highlight is that this confusion, people coming to the toilet with different assumptions and misusing it as a result, is part of the process of improving by integrating additional information. Sure, they are being misused, but the way they are being misused gives us a chance to reflect on how they could be better.

If we want to be obnoxiously neutral, haha, we could just say there’s a mismatch between the design and the user expectations. Maybe we could look at retrofitting some of these toilets with a retractable foot platform, or something along those lines, instead of a sign.

If American culture "fails," I'm gonna blame xenophobes like you who are incapable of adjusting to a dynamic world, not the "toilet standers."

This comment is utterly inappropriate for HN - there's nothing xenophobic about the GP comment, you're just using that phrase incorrectly to emotionally manipulate other readers.

Your terms are acceptable.

Erm, how exactly do you think we’re going to educate people on the “normal” way of using a toilet, if it’s not educational signs above toilets?

Do you imagine some kind of toilet license? Where people have to take toilet train and demonstrate their competence in front of an examiner?

Or perhaps at every border, non-citizens are given mandatory toilet training.

Or perhaps you’re gonna follow everyone into to the toilet and tell them how to use it correctly.

Your issue is with people not learning your native culture, but your evidence for people not learning is educational material that teaches people your culture. So it does rather seem your problem is that your specific culture isn’t the world wide norm.

Bad example. I believe squat toilets are actually better for you (less strain to use) so really there is a case to be made we (those who do not use them) should follow those who do.

This was not about squat toilets, but about people who squat on sit-down toilets, which is dangerous and dirty.

I'd like to note that the United States is in fact extremely good at assimilating immigrant groups and has done so successfully numerous times.

Honestly, I see little evidence it is doing any worse at assimilation than in, say, the early 1900s.

you know that the melting pot analogy is meant to say that we integrate immigrant cultures into "our" culture by both changing the immigrant culture and the dominant culture. The contents of the pot as a whole are less changed than the individual components are.

I think you may be thinking of the Candaian conception of a cultural mosaic.

Go on, tell us more.