The US invented the internet (and the UK invented the world wide web), so English is the lingua franca of the internet for better or worse. Most people on the internet who speak English as a first language are from the US, and with the algorithmic nature of most of our online interactions being borderless, people in the US get fed non-US content all the time. If there’s not anything obvious signifying that they are seeing content from another country, confirmation bias will lead them to think it is US-relevant content.

I will say, on the money thing, there are a lot of countries that use USD from an official (or unofficial) capacity. The US is also pretty cashless at this point, so it’s possible that people have used their card overseas no problem, and not realized that their bank was doing an exchange in the background. Then they get to somewhere cash-only that doesnt also take USD, and suddenly experience their money is not good. Still stupid to be a dick about it when it’s your own fault, but idiots all around the world respond poorly when subject the the consequences of their own mistakes.

I’m going off of memory here, but what I heard was that passenger rail was never really as profitable as freight, so the government basically had to force all the rail companies to keep doing passenger trains. The massive subsidization of car transit made it hard for them to compete. Amtrak was basically created as a way to take the responsibility for doing passenger rail away from the rail companies, in exchange for guaranteed priority usage of the rails.

The priority of passenger trains is unenforced, so they have to wait for slow freight trains all the time. Additionally, the math on speed is different for freight vs passenger rail. A freight train getting somewhere an hour faster doesnt matter nearly as much as a passenger train getting somewhere an hour faster, so improvements to facilitate faster trains falls on amtrak.

Amtrak does own some rails, e.g., the northeast corridor, which is nice and profitable. It’s also worth noting that the “unprofitable” lines are still vastly vastly vastly more profitable than roads.

For context, angel’s landing is one of probably the top 5 most famous hikes in the country. It’s so popular that they have timed entry, and you have to book a time well in advance. It would be very, very, very hard to get lost, you can see the spot you started from pretty much the whole way, you are part of a steady stream of people, and there’s cell service. There is no “alone” on that hike.

People have died on that hike, but if you exclude suicide and people who were intentionally going off trail to get pictures closer to cliff edges, it’s very unlikely. You are probably safer getting dumped there than at a restaurant in a part of town you aren’t familiar with.

I would not put that anywhere near the same category as guy who left his girlfriend on a mountaineering expedition.