… I almost never travel not solo, so apologies if I don’t know what the other side of the coin is like

I think the biggest advantage is the absolutely ridiculous amount of freedom, because you can cater to 100% of your own needs, and your own needs alone. Want trip to be cheap? Youth hostels and 10-hour Flix/Blablacar buses exist. Want to do nerdy things only you are interested in? No need to care for travel companions for “wasting” 10-hours in a modern arts museum or anything like that

I did hear that some people find traveling alone a bit lonely though… so maybe it is not for everyone. Oh and maybe booking restaurants can get a tad awkward depending on the place I travel to

I think I’d be a good person to answer this. I’ve lived in Houston (needless to say, extremely car-friendly) without a car for almost 2 years; currently I’m living in a city that banned cars within its city center in 2015 which resulted in very visible changes, but the rest of the country is still very pro-car and quite car-friendly

A couple of things that cars benefit everyday life that would be difficult to do without a car. There’s probably more but these are the ones I can think of:

• Accessibility to places that have difficulty justifying being served by public transit. These include poorer neighborhoods that are far away from city center, semi-rural natural preserves, extreme geographical difficulties, … Case in point, Houston has a lot of nature/green spaces that were 20-30 miles outside of the city center… good luck getting to these without a car (trust me, I tried once)
• For certain physically disabled people, driving would be easier than walking/biking/public transit… Especially in particularly hilly cities, centuries-old cities where roads were paved no better than playgrounds, or sometimes both. This can be somewhat mitigated with good infrastructure projects, but cars are usually an easier solution
• Car-free zones can get very crowded, very fast. This is usually a good thing in terms of urbanism… but some find it uncomfortable for various reasons. My current city is actually a rather extreme example: they are now considering banning bikes in the city center too, due to pedestrian injuries
• I know cars are prone to needing repair, but with how the road network functions, personal vehicles can reduce a lot of dependencies on external factors such as public transit being functional. Case in point, two months ago NL’s national rail company became essentially non-operational due to extreme weather, which would be rather devastating if your only way of commuting to work relies on the train

Also I think these two positive points associated with cars are actually quite doable without cars:

• Hauling stuff from point A to point B: delivery companies and car-rentals exist for a reason! This is surprisingly doable even without owning a car (you are technically using someone else’s car in this case). Of course doing it without your own car will be more expensive… but we do have the logistics for it, especially if the entire society shifts to a car-free model
• Not all rural areas need cars: some are actually quite doable by walking alone due to how small they are (I have a friend who lives in a rural American town like that: yes everyone drives, but everything is also 30-minutes on foot if you don’t mind walking). And there are quite a few parts of the world where rural towns are served by trains frequently
• Road trips: scenic railways exist for a reason… and unlike point 1 I made, sightseeing trains actually do make money, so there is pretty good justification for building them

• Slay the Spire. I have played quite a few roguelikes before StS but I never played much card-based games at all, due to me never playing boardgames or TCGs… so this was obviously a new experience for me. Almost 1000 hours on record now with the game, cleared A20H with every base game character (and did A20H on almost every Packmaster pack)… which should speak for itself
• Dancerush Stardom, that funny shuffle game. This is Konami’s attempt at making a beginner- and normie-friendly rhythm game… which never quite caught on (aside from random YouTube recordings having several million views). I wasn’t particularly fit & never knew about this game before at all, so it was a pleasant surprise to me that I liked it so much. I have 5-star cleared many of the hardest songs in this game so

Extremely niche, but https://iidx.org/

This is a single guide that teaches you everything you need to know about how to play Beatmania IIDX, a fun but brutally difficult arcade game. Guide covers everything from setting up a new player profile to clearing the hardest skill challenge in the game, and even includes some music theory

I can’t think of anything more helpful than this in terms of relative scale…

In STEM specifically? STEM field in particular is somewhat known for fostering Imposter Syndromes… Most people are smart enough, I wouldn’t sweat it too much

The best thing… depending on how I ask I guess. Either the day trip I made to two nearby towns (one of which is a rather well-known tourist spot) on Sunday despite the rainy weather, or the fact that weather rose to 20 C yesterday & was sunny so I made a nice stroll in the city

Not very well traveled yet but at the moment… either Prague/Praha in Czechia or Ljubljana in Slovenia probably

Both are pleasant places with beautiful architecture, all kinds of natural scenery as someone who has only lived in flat cities (mountains AND rivers in my city??). Bonus point that Prague has dirt-cheap beer that even comes in alcohol-free variety, Ljulbljana has a ridiculous amount of hiking trails and is within day-trip distance to some of the most beautiful scenery in Europe

I think this is a matter of the microeconomics concept of “scarce resources”? It’d be lovely if everyone in the US learns at least Spanish. But school can only teach a limited number of subjects, so in the US where most people don’t need to use anything other than American English, it might be argued that it is more beneficial to spend more time on, say, STEM and history, rather than getting kids to learn Spanish/German/Chinese… I guess there are foreign language electives for that reason? They are still highly valuable after all

Besides, learning and teaching a foreign language is hard lol. China used to (I’ve heard rumors that some places changed, not 100% sure) require mandatory English education from 1st grade elementary… social issues with the English teacher expats aside, the English literacy rate in China still looks like that. There are even multilingual countries in Europe where a good number of people struggle to learn/speak the other national languages so… Even if the US wants to do it, it’s not that straightforward

China. Much, much better, but it’s a bit unfair to compare someone who grew up in a typical modern society to someone who grew up in time of extreme poverty, subsistence farming, and famine…

Although, my parents did go to better universities & got better careers right off the bat due to a lack of educated ppl back in their days