Literary translator here. An average-sized book takes 4 months to translate, and I bill around 12k€.
90% of books don’t sell enough copies for the publisher to recoup the costs. And that’s books that have been picked amond hundreds because they’re good and/or might sell.

Additionally, you’d need armies of competent translators. It’s a complex skill that takes years to hone. Who would do it?

And if you don’t watch Stranger Things, you die.

Recently, I was house-sitting for friends, and the dishwasher broke. I had to pause it every few minutes to empty the water by hand. It amounted to 2 shallow oven dishes’ worth of water. And not filled to the brim, either: I had to be able to bring them to the sink without spilling.
It was a really, really small quantity of water.

Nah, that was funny.

I never listen to music. When I’m running errands, I listen to the birds and the wind. I watch the leaves change colors. I chat with people I know by sight. I stop by stores I don’t need anything from just to chat with the owners. I meet friends doing their shopping and we decide to go to see a play next weekend. I sit down at a terrasse to have coffee with my kid’s former piano teacher. Think the movie Amelie, but in small-town France instead of Paris. I love my life.

Churches? For real? Never occurred to me that was a possibility. Where are you from?

In my neck of the woods it’s city hall and schools. Public, secular buildings.

Was.

Read that as “the most suave president”, and you didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

I see what you did. Nice.

Butting in to say: your post may be the help I needed to actively consider switching.

As a French citizen it drives me nuts. Yes, my take-home pay looks low from a US perspective. But my 6 years at college/university were free, my monthly hospital stay for a chronic illness costs me exactly nothing, having a kid cost me around 100€, the way-too-expensive daycare was 400€ a month, Internet is like 15 a month…

So :
Yes, I wash up after breakfast anyway.

No. I resent even having to go pee.

I love not having to get up, saying toasty in bed (my house gets very cold 6 months a year–around 12C). Also, we tend to make better breakfasts in those cases. With a flower from the garden and everything.

Additionally, in my 9 year old’s case: since she was born, she had at least 80% of her breakfasts in bed. She likes to wake up slow, she reads for a while after waking up, and since she started middle school her days are hectic, so we pamper her that way. It’s twenty minutes of comfort before she starts her 10-hour days.

Probably Syria. Lived there for some years (had to leave because of the Arab Spring.) Amazing people, fascinating culture, loved the language, the open-mindedness, the thriving art scene in Damascus, the sheer beauty of the architecture, the desert, the mountain, the oasis.
Least favorite… Honestly, the US. I lived in DC for a year, moved back to Europe as soon as I could (and I could have gotten a Green Card). People were well-meaning and nice, but so fucking insular. Even the well-read, well-travelled, worldly people I knew honestly thought, at the end of the day, that their country was the best, almost by definition. Or… the one other countries had to measure up to.

Italy, Germany, the UK, Mexico, Iceland, Morocco, the US, Belgium, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Senegal, Switzerland, Denmark, Greece, Russia, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands.

I’d be against it even if we could magically know without a doubt the person’s guilty. Even if it had a negative cost. Even for raping a child.
Life is sacred, whatever “sacred” means for an atheist like me.
(And I was raped as a child, fwiw.)

I’m convinced it’s much less straightforward than people here say it is.

I hate Windows, but I only use my computer for OpenOffice, some liiiiight browsing, and old-school light pirating (light enough TPB fits all my needs), so meh.
My new neighbor is an old leftist techie though, and when my 9 year old laptop dies, I may ask him to convert me. Maybe.

Yuuuuuup. Still wondering, tbh.

I’m pretty sure it was a basic design at Ikea 10 or so years ago.

Lived in Paris for 40 years: buses, sure, but sidewalks? buildings? Always thought it must be hell for chair users.

I put on my seatbelt. I vote very, very left. I drink very little alcohol. I cut off toxic people.