The shopping centre where I shop frequently (Europe) has a large outdoor parking space and every 20 meters or so there's a little kiosk where you can return the cart. People do because it's actually easier to return it than to worry about crashing into it when you're getting out of the parking spot. From time to time an employee goes out and collects all the carts from kiosks and gets them back to the shop. I don't know if it's the same way in the US, maybe some people don't return it simply because they parked too far from the entrance.
Not so much a kiosk, but American grocery stores often have one parking spot every other row that is blocked off with a fence/barrier and marked as a cart return storage. But that has its own problems because if someone hastily shoves a cart in there instead of stacking them in line it takes up too much space and creates a dangerous extrusion into the adjacent spots.
Tried it is Safari, frustrating, confusing, spent some time figuring it out and closed the tab. I didn't say anything but the app kept "recognizing" some random words and "answering" tutor's questions... looks like pre-alpha version.
I think it was so popular in the Balkans because A) it was hilarious, B) people could actually watch it (on state TV, with subtitles). B is as important as A. Seinfeld would probably become very popular too, but no one could see it in the Balkans at the time.
I tell my kid that math is a language. You learn to speak it, just like you learn to speak any other language, slowly, by listening, understanding, speaking, intuitively recognizing patterns, rules and exceptions. When you start to become fluent you translate problems into math and solve them. At school they keep trying to make them memorize useful phrases, like a tourist that goes to Paris and learns how to say "where's the bathroom", "hello", "would you like to sleep with me", "thank you", "goodbye", etc.
If you are a physicist or an economist, you may be using mathematics as a language in the sense that you are using a mathematical description to convey an understanding of the natural world or the economy to your colleagues. But if you are a mathematician, you are interested in the mathematical objects for their own sake.
There is also a difference between the purpose of learning language and learning math. The goal of learning language is (often) to be fluent in it. In other words, the goal is to reach a level of proficiency which would allow you to not have to think about language and focus on the content of the conversation instead. On the other hand, the goal of learning mathematics is usually to be able to solve mathematical problems. Being able to do math without "thinking about it" is not usually a requirement.
"At school they keep trying to make them memorize useful phrases, like a tourist that goes to Paris…."
Like learning dozens of trig identities without any explanation about why one would need them. As I've mentioned elsewhere learning math for the sake of it isn't enough. For most of us math has to have relevance, and for that we have to link it to things in the real world.
It's super easy, don't listed to hypersensitive people who can't stand two seconds of sales pitch. The same goes for the Economist, when I unubscribed the rep asked me if I'd like a 50% discount on a yearly subscription, I politely declined and that was it. One advantage of this is that you can easily pretend you're canceling in order to get a big discount. Some people just love to complain about every little thing.
