This hits close to home for me. Recently I’ve been reflecting on this based on a similar situation.
(It’s not worked and still new.) I’m trying to force myself to find new hobbies and as a result interact with people while sober. I’ll report back, good luck to you!
I drank for the taste, not for the effect of alcohol (I did that 2 times on purpose in my life and I'm ok with that). Stopped around 20.
Honestly, most party chats are not that interesting.
Usually the interesting things happen at the end of a party when the amount of people shrink, then it becomes more interesting.
This is entirely subjective, just giving you an N+1
Remember that it cost a small rent to get this subscription until the 9€ experiment. Flat fee national transport, I don't remember the exact price but it's multiple hundreds a month in both the Netherlands (NS altijd/trein vrij) and Germany (Bahnkarte 100). Even my local subscription to go ~10km between two cities in Germany (NRW) cost 90€ a month until that experiment
A nationwide subscription for 60 euros is a steal, even when the long distance trains are excluded
Except for people who simply don't have 60€ a month easily, so they're left out. Also, it will absolutely not stay at 60€, it will become more expensive each year until the local tickets are cheaper again - defeating the whole purpose (if it won't be reverted outright after the next election, which the conservatives will win).
I'm not saying it shouldn't be free like in Luxembourg, just made the comparison with how it has been for decades until the recent 9€ experiment and now ~60€ subscription. It's already a lot better than it used to be, even if it's not perfect
Do you know how it works, actually, if you need to get to work but can't because of the cost? If you can't afford 60€ then you also won't be able to afford a car that costs probably >3x times as much for a barebones old model when you include the necessary insurance, road tax, and fuel. Bürgergeld pays your rent afaik but do they front e.g. costs when you get a job to actually get there until your first paycheck? Can one apply for a public transport subscription in low income situations?
I find the comparis estimate an overestimate. Take their VW Polo example. You would definitely not insure it for 1207 Fr a year and an annual service is not 3000 Fr a year. You take their estimate for VW Polo, put numbers a layman folk pays for, and you will get a number around 5000 a year. If you buy a second hand car, then you get a very competitive price to the GA, but also get more flexibility.
I am not saying anyone should by a car, quite the contrary, just stating the fact that 4000 Fr/yr is not competitive enough to car.
For a developed country, 59 EUR is not all that expensive if it helps you get to a job. Having it be too cheap would probably degrade the quality of service for busier routes and make it harder for future projects to pay themselves off.
Doesn't Germany have an extremely large social safety net?
Who are these poor people that don't have 49€ for a month of transportation, and how are they possibly surviving without that much money - given the cost of everything else in Germany?
Well you'll usally have 563€/month as a single or 506€/month if living with a partner. State pays health insurance and rent (up to a certain limit in size of the flat). In most cities it's further subsidized (25-29€ for the 49€ ticket).
If that's enough depends a lot where you live, if you have family or not and your livestyle.
You have to pay your energy bills (40-70€/month) and internet / cell-phone (40-50€/month) for yourself.
If you are a healthy single it's perfectly fine if you life a simple life. But you can't really put aside any savings.
> Doesn't Germany have an extremely large social safety net?
Yes, but people will still be greedy and complain about every little thing.
> Who are these poor people that don't have 49€ for a month of transportation, and how are they possibly surviving without that much money - given the cost of everything else in Germany?
Germany can actually be quite cheap on the basic goods. I mean, it's the country who invented the concept of discount-market and is now spreading Aldi&Lidl to the world. There are also many shops and programs for supporting poor people, selling stuff for lower prices or second hand, and such things. And of course this includes offering a lower price for the ticket.
The safety net also provides people with cheaper tickets. At least in my city, the ticket costs much less for people who depend on the social safety net.
That was a different Ticket. A highly subsidized time-limited offer. It was never meant to be economical. The 49€ is the economical viable solution, after a long discussion, which still is subsidized. And the 59€ is just the rise to fine-tune the price to actual usage and inflation.
> Really sad, as it isn't affordable for poor people anymore.
Poor people, as also students, get a lower price. Usually around 19-29€. And many workers can get it through their company, or can get something back from taxes. The amount of people who are really paying the full price themselves is probably not that high.
€59 is a steal. The goal is to move people to public transport and strengthen economy, not to be a charity to folks that want unlimited (!) transportation but don’t have € 60/month to show for it.
Even so, cities subsidize this ticket for the “poor”, so practically their costs are even lower.
Someone said in other comment that that 9 ticket was one time only
> That was a time limited earlier ticket. "The tickets were valid for June, July, or August 2022. The offer aimed at reducing energy use amid the 2021–2022 global energy crisis." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9-Euro-Ticket
The French like to hear foreigners speak French though, they're just terrible at understanding accents they don't hear often and terrible at adjusting their speech so the other person understands them. And too self conscious about their English accent to speak English.
I'm assuming you've been to France and particularly Paris? I wouldn't say every French person is unfriendly, but my anecdotal evidence seems to point to there being a higher rate of unfriendly people (towards tourists perhaps) in France (mostly in the south of France + Paris twice), compared to other places I've visited as a tourist.
It depends on the context and the age of the stranger. If it's at work (some random sysadmin or dev at a client, say) yes I would, in the street I wouldn't. In Québec it's more common to tutoyer strangers than in Europe, too.
Yeah it took me until B2 or so before I could get any Germans to really engage with me in German. My son grew up there and his German was quite good while we lived there, and even when I reached C1 he was perpetually ashamed of my accent and all of my grammatical errors. Of course, now that it's been some time since we've lived there my German has only gotten worse and he suffers even more when I try to practice
It depends how old you are. Skin loses its elasticity after a certain age. So weight is a problem you should spare no expense fixing sooner rather than later. Even if you do something about your weight at a later age, the health benefits for your heart for example will greatly outweigh the loose skin.
When I see something that says it's Open Source I assume it means https://opensource.org/osd - if it doesn't, I'm one of the "zealots" (to quote the linked article) who noisily complains about it.
I've noticed this a lot lately too. Convoluted install process for a non-production setup (without a guide for production quality), outdated docs; but only from open-source software that has a paid for SaaS variant (looking at you Supabase). Not that these companies owe me anything, but I do feel that these strategies diminish the open-source scene.
Agreed. Frustrates me to no end that some of the most loved OSS projects don't have quality helm/Kube guides and basically say "here's a docker compose, you're on your own." The "it's open source, but our operator is closed" makes my head steam sometimes.
I wish they would just go source available so they can provide a higher quality product.
It could very well be that they only get smaller, faster, or even worse when they accidentally start training them with hallucinations that spread on the web.
> 1. Many people aren't able to generating visuals in their mind.
Yes, but "picture a..." in this context is not specifically meant to talk about visuals. It means "recall the nature of..." and is a multisensory experience that is required for anyone to use language.
The point here is that if you have a word, it refers to SOMETHING and porn-sensitive companies don't always want an LLM to recall it.
I noticed, before I stopped drinking, I never was on a party where I didn't at least got tipsy.
Meaning, all my social skills relied on alcohol. It made it easier to talk to people, date women, etc.
I never learned to do all that sober, and so now that I'm pushing 40, I feel kinda lost at events.
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