My theory is milk. Breakfast cereal is designed to be covered in milk, but compared to North America and Western Europe, milk and milk products are far less popular in most of the world. I think I remember reading that there's even a biological reason, ethnic Europeans have some enzyme for digesting milk (and cheese etc) that others lack.
This would imply that other milk-drinking Western countries would also eat a lot of breakfast cereal. And indeed it's something I notice when I go back from China to Belgium or the UK.
(Disclaimer: I haven't been to the US, so perhaps Americans like breakfast cereal even more than Europeans)
American here, I grew up on breakfast cereal (for better or worse). Cereal seems to be one of those things that exploded in variety and marketability in the U.S. I've never seen anything like an American cereal aisle in any of the other countries I've been to anywhere in the world.
What I find really interesting though is how that's slowly starting to change as other countries start to adopt more of the quick-eat consumerist culture similar to the U.S. What's more fun is that the local solutions to snacks and cereals are usually very interesting and designed for local tastes.
The first time I went to Europe, 20 some odd years ago there really was a slim selection, mostly variants of Muesli mixes. When I was in Russia in the 90s, I really wanted some breakfast cereal and there was a big effort to get milk and some corn flakes. In Germany I had more selection, but not hugely.
The first time I went to Korea about 15 years ago it was the same.
More recently I notice the amount and selection of breakfast cereals is exploding on those countries. Most of my experience has been in Korea, and there are now full-on cereal aisles with an entire list of different products. Not as many as the U.S. but definitely getting there.
So what's fun it that not only do I get to eat all the American varieties, but as other countries add other cereals to their cultural inventories, I get to try and enjoy those as well.
Yes, Scandinavian genetics are more likely to express code for lactase and so less likely to develop lactose intolerance.
US also subsidies milk production to keep prices reasonable, which may have a side effect of increasing the amount consumers will pay for associated products like cereal.
Academic teaching organisations too, for that matter. It's quite common for a college to also offer some degree-level courses that are accredited by a local university.
(Note to non-Brits: "college" in the UK is mostly for lower-level and vocational courses, it's not a synonym for university like in the US)
The average burglar wouldn't know that, and wouldn't have anything they could do with that information. They're a drug addict who wants shit to fence for a fix. Burglary of the average residence is an insanely stupid crime with enormous risks and penalties.
How would your phone give them access to any of that? All of that kind of thing is inevitably protected by more security layers they won't be able to break, and meanwhile, the phone itself is worth something once wiped. Worse, the longer they fiddle with your phone, unwiped, the longer they risk someone tracking that phone.
What I heard is phones are often sold off by burglars to organized crime who do know how to exploit the phone to its full potential (and not get tracked, and properly wipe it and resell it after properly copying off the data/login credentials which is sold to another party, which then package the data with other data and sell that, and so on).
Wish I had some better sources. All I could find from a quick google search is that the market rate for full personal info is $20 -- that is certainly something you can get with email inbox access (which is enough to get Amazon login which would have your full address etc etc)
Keep in mind most services only needs your email address and browser cookies for full access, only banking services etc are 2FA.
It used to work like that in an old version of Opera back in the day (perhaps Opera 5.0? I think it was the same version that introduced gestures),but a bunch of sites saw it as insecure and blocked Opera users from their sites so they backed down and switched to the standard method.
I live in Beijing and can assure you that there is no shortage of lazy Chinese people with degrees. If you're American, perhaps what you see is just a result of the type of people who make it through the immigration process
Lego is likely one of the few companies with sufficient clout and experience to actually work with Disney on videogames. Not only does Lego possess a valuable product that other companies can use as promotion material, but they also possess the experience of developing videogames which use other companies' IP (or at least, the experience to mediate between whatever company they contract to develop the game and the company possessing the IP).
I've been through security multiple times before (my daughter left her book in one of the groundside restaurants) and nobody cared. Anecdotal I know, but n=1 is better than n=0
This is not actually true. Although the conditions for permanent residence are pretty lenient on paper, they are hardly ever given out. Less than 5000 were issued in the 10 years to 2014 (in total, ie less than 500 per year). In practice it's FAR harder to get a Chinese green card than an American one.
Also, many of those 5000 "foreigners" are actually the children of senior Chinese officials who have taken foreign citizenship then returned to China. The number of "real" foreigners with permanent residence is even lower.
