Tomas

Will you?

I always thought my tastes in food, travel, reading, hobbies, etc, were very basic. Over the past few months, I've come to realise that my level of curiosity and openness is not singular but not, in fact, universal, and some people are content experiencing nothing new.

El español tiene la frase perfecta para mi situación: "No tengo el chichi para farolillos".

Me quito una drama de la vida y luego siempre me llega otra.

Midsommar is mid I just want a normal three day weekend.

The American corporate culture has taken something useful like Zoom meetings and turned it into a torture session where you invite more people than you would ever want into a physical meeting room to force them to sit through long meetings only to speak for "their" 2-minute update (or not at all).

With the exception that (at least up North) they're small by Anglosphere standards.

May happen!

Impressive if it can happen, but very sceptical that something planned by the EU itself can compete with the innovation of Google.

The precipitous drop in English-language songs in Eurovision this year must be a sign of its loss of prestige even as it remains economically significant. Most opted for national languages instead, but I think a new prestige language will emerge. Will French rise again?

For sure! I hate it because I feel ostracised, but more objectively, most people want immigrants to learn national languages but the current trend is on the side of "let's all just speak English" because people can't go into a cocoon and emerge with native-like fluency before talking to anyone

One thing we do not talk about (yet) in Europe is that if you learn English, you can have any ethnicity/name/accent and people accept it.

For other langs, having a non-matching name/face/accent means your language skills undervalued or ignored. You have to speak nearly error-free or not at all.

Currently job situation is giving me identity problems that will require therapy to deal with.

It's not, but I do feel bad for you!

Luckily it's also New Puppy Summer so there won't be any travel until September, anyway.

Looks like it's gonna be dental care summer (two wisdom teeth extractions 🥲)

Farmers are the sweet-spot of hyper-reactionary conservatives that enjoy popular and left-wing support.

I mean people just can't help themselves sometimes I guess 🤷

Btw it doesn't matter what the answer is, if you ask someone where they're from, putting on a face of dislike or disappointment is *incredibly* rude.

The UK has pursued a single-minded policy of "reducing net migration" ever since the financial crisis. It's not limited to one party and it is always rooted in the idea that foreigners generate problems that natives don't, despite the fact that the UK has realised huge benefits due to immigration.

Sorry I was unaware that everyone in a country was supposed to be related?

The greatest cities in the world have always been full of intersecting groups of people who don't know each other. They interact sometimes and great ideas emerge.

Apparently Keir Starmer wants a country of inbred villages.

All societies are by definition societies of strangers. The fuck is wrong with you people.

What a terrible idea

I went to renew my passport today and because I had lived abroad before. I had to fill out a form full of biographical data about myself, my parents, everywhere I had lived in since birth... to have my right to a passport reassessed.

People living abroad have to fill this out, but why me? WTF?

In addition to locking some people of out the market totally, restricting the supply of rentals forces others to buy when they don't want to, which is ridiculously inefficient and forces more indebtedness in households

tHe ChArAcTeR

This also ignores like... all the data? Even in Vienna and Singapore, state-funded building is always complemented by a light touch on planning rules and heavy private investment.

Dude buys a home for $100,000 and is upset that a developer now wants to buy it for $10,000,000 💀 Yeah buddy it's really about "home prices"

Not exclusively an American phenomenon, btw. If you scratch the surface of many NIMBY movements across Europe, you will find that what people don't like is the idea of "outsiders" sharing their space.

So far, I have done very well on practice exams for DELE, but I haven't done a practice module for writing yet... let's see what happens next.