I no longer remember which specific books were featured on Reading Rainbow, though there are certainly books that are well known across the whole English speaking world. And some educational children's shows are internationally known as well - I know there are country specific versions of Sesame Street broadcast in the local language even outside of the anglosphere, and Bill Nye has achieved meme status at this point. I don't think it's unreasonable to suppose that Reading Rainbow had the same reach.

Well that does rule out quite a lot of the world!

I've not heard of Bill Nye either....?

I did use 'Reading Rainbow' lyrics to successfully join insiminator.org.
You were right, it was underwhelming.
Unless I haven't found the easy way to navigate for cc downloads.
(Edit- have learned a bit more)

Also 'The Sims Resource' had promise but nothing new in about a Decade.

We had Playschool too! Although probably not the same as the Australian version, as one of our dolls was Maori. When I first started school I refused to go unless Mum recorded Playschool for me to watch when I got back home. XD



I think that not jaywalking is relevant to just about everyone!



I thought that I had, but then realised that I was thinking of Bill Nighy.



Of course the point was never that you should know the answer to that, or Reading Rainbow, or the capital of Assyria. The point was that you had proven that you were capable of searching for stuff on Google and therefore were less likely to piss Pescado off by asking questions that you could have found the answer to by yourself.

I think 'jaywalking' is a term used primarily in North America; here in the UK for example, it is not illegal for pedestrians to walk on the road, except for motorways and places where there is a sign for no pedestrians. I think most developed countries have pedestrian crossings and laws around the use of, but it's not necessarily illegal to cross elsewhere in other countries. In my city we have an area where there is shared priority for pedestrians, motor vehicles and bicycles, so in some cases cars will give way to people in the road. And recent rule changes mean that pedestrians and cyclists now have more road priority (for example, if a pedestrian is in the road a driver must stop to allow them to get to the footpath safely). 'Jaywalking' is not a word used in the vocabulary of people here, so as a child I hadn't heard it, and was puzzled because we children frequently played on the streets.



Pescado stated that he didn't want people registering! Although one lurker who never posted at all had legendary status, as the only user to be logged in for longer than Pescado.

Jaywalking isn't playing in a residential street next to your house (although that's still not the smartest thing to do), it's crossing a non residential multilane road at a place where there aren't signs of some sort to warn drivers that that could happen there. Jaywalking being an extremely minor crime also doesn't mean that it's somehow legal to just run over jaywalkers in the US.

Yeah, that's what I thought it meant.

Yes, that's why I mentioned 'as a child...'. I could cross the road freely wherever I liked in towns and cities, but Big Bird was warning me not to set foot in the road, illustrating my point that the culture of the USA is not necessarily the ideal thing to teach children of other nationalities. Honestly, I think we've really exhausted this conversation now, seven non-Americans and one American have not heard of Reading Rainbow, which shows that it's a really crap set of security questions for a forum you want people to join, but perfect if you want to deter registrations!

Teaching young children to stay out of the road and how to cross it safely is just plain common sense no matter where you are or whether jaywalking is considered a crime or not, IMO.

If you mean no new sims 2 items, they closed new entries to the sims 2 area some years ago, that is why. Of course they still have the audacity to make us wait and encourage joining lol.


You can add this Aussie to that list. We had 'The Book Place'.

Yep. It is mostly set up to deter bots, though....

(The answers have usually been easily searchable. Then again, I I have no idea how many times I've found a thing for someone in the first three results using the most obvious search words...)

I don't think Pescado has had much of a word in with what goes on over there for ages, possibly except from keeping the server afloat. The other mods (very) occasionally peek in and do a bit of maintenance. They're the ones who've set up the registration questions.

The thing with the Insim site though, is that the questions are on different lines, so unless you realised it was the lyrics to a song you wouldn't necessarily know to do a search on the whole lot. They look like individual, unrelated puzzles, and searching for each line on its own would probably not give the right results! So I think the point was to deter registration altogether.

I think you explained this before to someone, and that's how I remembered the song!

Neither do we, lmao. Are your intersections and pedestrian crossings really a half a mile apart? And here you are saying that our streets are not pedestrian-friendly enough! Like, for sure, it would be nice if the US weren't so car-focused, but this is a positively bizarre idea about what it actually means for our streets to be car-focused in practice.

Also, like even though jaywalking is technically illegal, people still do it all the time when they're in a hurry. I've never heard of anyone getting ticketed for it. It's a complete non-issue from a legal standpoint, it's just that everyone knows it's much safer to cross at a light.

I also love how American English is called "American English" and British English is just "English". If I did the reverse people would be lining up to badmouth the US, but I guess it's different when you live in the UK.

We have smaller towns that only have zebra crossings, some towns don't have lights at all (roundabouts for the cars are everywhere, though). Some places barely have crossings (they tend to fade away, and when/if they get repainted is anyone's guess). Still, the pedestrian is in the focus, and cars have to stop, though you're not meant to cause unsafe traffic situations even as a pedestrian. Kids are taught safe crossing from daycare/kindergarten age.

Our driver's ed is apparently much tougher than in the US, too...

Oh God, yes. WCIFs where I wonder if they ever opened Google lol.



Well British English did come first lol.

I looked up this Big Bird video, because I was only presuming what it said (which is a bad way to make an argument).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9AXMtSyN90#:~:text=Sesame%20Street%20%2D%20Big%20Bird%20talks%20about%20streets%20&%20sidewalks%20%2D%20YouTube&text=This%20content%20isn't%20available,safety%20of%20streets%20and%20sidewalks.

Apart from the hilariousness of every single person behind Big Bird jaywalking their little hearts out, it really only seems to say that you shouldn't walk along the road instead of the footpath. Doesn't say anything about where to cross the road.

Not anymore than chimpanzees came before humans. They are both descendants of the same version of English that was spoken 3-400 years ago.



I wouldn't even say that looks like a big enough street for jaywalking to apply. But I thought the complaint was about the actual term "jaywalking" being used, but he doesn't say it in there anywhere. He literally just says that when people say "walk down the street" they usually mean "walk down the sidewalk" and that it's safer to walk on the sidewalk. That's literally it. I can't imagine any cultural context where people speak English where this would be a strange piece of advice to give to kids. The intent is clearly to clear up any possible confusion that when someone says they want to walk down the street, the child might think they are supposed to walk in the street.

I don't, but my Sims have to take a taxi, just because I don't have the later EPs with the "walk to..." options! I always find it amusing when Andrew and Gloria have to order a taxi to go to the market, which is just across the road from their house. It's not as if it was even a busy road. Despite Veronaville Market being there, Chorus Court is really a very quiet cul-de-sac. And, since it is a cul-de-sac, if they really didn't want to walk on the road, they could just walk round the end of the road on the sidewalk/pavement. It would only add about half a minute to their walking time.

Even though I identify as European*, I think I know what PBS is. I believe it stands for "Public Broadcasting Service", and I see it as the nearest thing the Americans have to the BBC. It used to be one of the channels available on Virgin Media cable TV, and, as I recall, there were some quite interesting things on it. For all I know, it may still be available on Virgin. But since my mother died three years ago, I haven't had a TV Licence. About the only TV I watch now, is when I join my Sims in watching "The Yummy Channel"; I don't think I need a licence for that.

I wouldn't use the word myself, but I have known the word "jaywalking" since I was at school. I recall hearing about it on the TV (probably the BBC) some time in the 1960s, when the anonymous "they" were thinking of making it illegal here too. While I would always prefer to walk safely on a footpath, I don't like the idea of making the road only for cars; people walked along roads for centuries before motor vehicles were even thought of. Well, in Real Life they did; in the Sims world it seems that taxis were invented before walking!

NOTE: * I don't really identify as British, even though that's what it would say on my passport if I could afford one. I identify as Scottish, European and Veronavillian. Of the three I think the last is most important to me. When it comes to a Happiness Index -- how happy the inhabitants are with their lives, I think our Veronaville would take some beating as a place to live!

I've never felt a strong urge to join Insimentator. But it does seem a happier place than its neighbour MATY.

P.S. I love it when my Sims hug, kiss, hang out, and have pillow fights in the middle of the road. As wiser beings than us, they know that the street is really for playing in!!

No, I was referring to certain road in the United States.


Whut? I was referring specifically to the English spoken in most of England. British English is a bit of a misnomer I always think, as the dialects spoken in the North and West of the island vary hugely from what is spoken in the south. The island of Britain encompasses three countries, after all- and the UK, four. But to say English English sounds a bit superfluous. But also there are a lot of English dialects around the world, and they are quite different from American English too, so 'English' encompasses them all. English is quite different from American English.


I don't think that's the one I remember, but it was a long time ago! I remember they were on the sesame street set and there were kids playing basketball. This would have been early 70s.


That was before my time! We were traumatised by the Tufty road safety videos, do you remember these?

Chimpanzees did come before humans?

And I agree. But maybe simsample did see a different video. That was the only one that Google could find.



I didn't watch Sesame Street in the early 70s. XD Well, unless in a previous life.



Your sims miss out on a lot because you won't try the other EPs.



I thought that you were all Scottish!



Sims are pretty stupid lol.

Yeah, that's called British English. "British English" covers a variety of different dialects, just like "American English" does. Did you think your country was the only one where people spoke multiple dialects? American English isn't different than English, it's a subset of English, just like British English is.

No, they didn't. Chimpanzees are modern, currently extant species of great ape, just like humans are. They are not an extinct species of early hominids.

Lol, I had to dig up an old safety crossing video from the 70's in my state of Queensland Australia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JXCezYlPNE

Of course as a left side driving country we look right twice. Not left. Do Americans look left twice? Actually not sure, just thinking how it would be for right hand drive countries.

We (in America) are taught to look both ways as children. I can't remember if it's commonly taught to look twice rather than once, though.

The talk about 'American English' and 'English' reminded me of a story.

An American racing team bought a Porsche 962 and Porsche sent along an English-speaking mechanic.
One of the drivers was from was from New England (upper east coast) and the other driver was Texan.
The German mechanic had to translate between the two.

Why do they have to be extinct? They still existed before humans.



We always got taught to look both ways. Because once you reach the middle of the road the other way becomes important too!