Why France sucks - a serious post/talk about a topic everyone else refuses to speak about

Intro

yeah, I get it. Hating a country is pretty controversial nowadays, especially in the woke era. And to be clear, I think racial injustice/gender inequality are totally valid things to speak about (and in fact will be the two things I discuss here), but I fear we have gone into the opposite direction: basically now we can't criticize anything. It appears, at least to me, nuanced is dead, and you're either far right or far left. I think rather, we should be able to criticize things otherwise you come out with people who go way the opposite of the spectrum (dudes like Andrew Tate).

Why am I qualified to talk about this? I lived in France for 3 years, so yeah, I have some experience. I lived in both Paris and the south in Nice, and I promise you this is not just a "Paris" problem. I will post some links to other articles too, to make my point.

Racism

if you're not white or black (and a man), stay the fuck out of France, because you will have a really bad time. Hell even if you are white and black, make sure you don't get caught in the "wrong" hood. I have heard from many colleagues about the harassment they can receive if you enter the wrong neighborhood, with many people usually shouting at you but also there is a real risk of getting jumped.

When I lived in France, I literally could not leave my house for a single day without having racist remarks shouted at me. Not. A....

There is no Duolingo for Thai - but here are the alternatives

Unfortunately there is no Duolingo for Thai and it doesn't look like that's going to change any time soon. The two apps that I know that come kind of close are Drops and Ling:

• Drops
• Ling

They're not exactly great but Thai is not a popular language to learn so you'll just need to take whatever resources are out there. I slightly prefer Drops but you should give both of these a try and see which works better for you.

Thai alphabet

If you're learning Thai alphabet, I recently a started an AI account that writes an article about a different Thai letter every day. I set the bot up to write about each letter the way that makes it easy for me to learn it. First, it introduces the letter and its pronunciation, then provides some examples of common words with that letter. Finally, writes a simple sentence in Thai using each of the words and provides an English translation. I'm genuinely surprised how well it's worked for me so far. I'm finally starting to pick up some letters and I don't feel like it costs me a lot of effort.

Check it out here: https://www.sanity.media/u/learn-thai-alphabet

Is foodie beauty's downfall imminent?

there have been recent reports that foodie beauty's downfall is imminent. Her videos lately have been getting less and less views. And let's be honest, she's just...kind of boring now. Recently she even uploaded two videos of...a grocery haul?

The beginning

Foodie beauty's peak was during what people refer to the "Nader" saga. This was a time when she was dating a...rather questionable but unquestionably abusive and overall just not a bad guy. There was a lot of live drama between the two of them, basically the typical toxic, on and off relationship (with some substances involved) which people enjoyed watching. Mostly because we could see in real time this lady making poor decisions over and over again. It was mind boggling and it was hard to turn your eyes away. Chantal received little sympathy online because of how controversial she was and she was not liked online because of many of the things she had said. Chantal just came off as a mean person at the end of the day.

So what happened?

Chantal broke the golden rules of youtube.

1. don't be boring
2. don't be unlikeable/mean
3. don't fuck with cats

by breaking those 3 rules, you basically ensure your downfall on that platform. People generally don't want to support unlikeable characters. That's a given, people love cats, and people go on youtube at the very least to be entertained. You might be able to risk breaking some of these rules, but breaking ALL of them (and arguably, o...

The slow descent into postdoctoral madness

If you wont read any more posts or comments from me, youll realize that my descent into madness was a swift one. Im a last years phd student (in fact 6 months to go and 3 more months hopefully to write) in biology who is grasping to his last bit of sanity at the moment all the while sailing through the troubled waters commonly referred to as the "terrible last year". With work piling up from the last 2,5 years, multiple projects requiring attention and people expecting me to perform well, there is also a constant dread for my future career so the pressure is coming from the past, present and the future ready to gang up on you any time of the day. A general phd in life sciences (and i dont count medicine because its not a real science, sorry early falcon) includes 3-5 years of laboratory labor, depending where you live and how fucked or blessed you are with your supervisor. After the terrible last year, you are kicked out to write your thesis and depending where you life you can be lucky if youre still hired by then or if they lay you off to write your thesis on welfare (social programs yeeaahh am i right ?) By then you are ready to defend your thesis and earn your well deserved title, unless you have decided to quit at any of those moments, which i have seen people do from first year right up to only having to write everything together. Afriend of mine recommended me to start writing a journal book but im terrible with such things...

How I Maintained a Regular Exercise Regime for Over 2 Years

Let me tell you a bit about myself. In my other post, I talked about how I went from being a carb-addicted maniac to eating high-protein foods and thriving from it!

Well, another thing you might not know about me, which is a common trait among all of us humans, is the natural tendency we have to avoid exercise. I read 'Exercised' by Daniel Lieberman, and I really recommend this book to anyone else that hates exercise. I found it really motivating and not at all condescending towards those who did not exercise regularly or didn't like it. The long story short is that exercise was something we basically never evolved to do because it expends precious calories. However, as our society evolved and calories became abundant, we, as humans, never really adapted to this as we are still "evolved" to conserve calories. So, knowing this made me feel a lot less guilty about my exercise-aversion.

What really motivated me to start exercising regularly was having a goal that felt genuinely important and came from within me. During the time that I decided to participate in regular exercise, it was during the pandemic, and I was starting to feel sluggish from the lack of movement while being in lockdown. I also was doing something very difficult and mentally taxing at this time: I was learning a new language. I needed to learn it to at least B2 proficiency, fluent in other words. This was not at all an easy task, as any of you w...

Foodie Beauty's bittersweet return

Foodie Beauty's views are now starting to come back, surprising everyone who really believed (myself included) that her channel was on the downturn. What was the new shocking video about? well....it's official, FoodieBeauty has been diagnosed with type two diabetes. An absolutely devastating and difficult to control disease. This is quite sad, although personally, I never quite liked her so I don't feel that much sympathy. Let me be clear I'm not a psychopath that is happy about the news, I do find it sad, but at the end of the day, she is living the consequences of her actions. Her audience, doctors, literally everyone has been telling her this was inevitable.

In honor of (???) Foodie beauty's return I wanted to talk a little bit about type 2 diabetes that might be interesting to the readers

Diet, exercise and fasting are all great ways to reduce blood sugar. The ultimate goal is to lose weight, however, exercise, which i don't see mentioned often, increases blood glucose uptake due to up regulation of glut4 receptors on myocytes. I say that because I often see people might want to ignore exercise because "you can't outrun a bad diet" and while this is true, exercise serves other purposes than simple calorie burning. For more info, I definitely recommend checking out exercised by daniel lieberman. it's one of my favorite books about exercise and I definitely think it can be encouraging to the average person.

People seem to be shocked...

It all comes down to being overworked

I am really shocked by various different governments' denial of this problem. Look it all comes down to being overworked. the crisis of population (less people being born) which is a part of the problem of pensions essentially being a ponzi scheme, obesity and health problems in the world. It all comes down to being overworked.

I remember watching a documentary about how Japan was having this problem that nobody there was dating, getting married, having kids. This is a problem as there are not enough people to pay for pensions for those who are retired as less and less people are born into the world. The government was trying all different methods in order to increase dating and reproduction in the Japanese population. The odd thing, is that even though they held all these events for people to meet each other, all they would have to do is interview people to realize the cause of the problem. Nobody had time to date. Everyone was overworked. If you're leaving your house at 8am and coming home at 10pm every night it's no wonder you don't have time to date. how could you? it would be insane to think otherwise.

As for Obesity: this is also a problem of being overworked and lack of time. Dude for real, I think the general population/society is way too mean to fat people. it's not their fault. it's society and we are just directing our anger to the wrong place. You think those guys want to be overweight, have health problems, and be gene...

If we're talking about people

While impressive, a creature such as a human is simply an action generator that makes predictions about what actions would best fit the prompt it was given based on what it’s learned from ingesting huge troves of lifetime data.

oh my god, this is the worst one I've seen

jesus fucking christ this is absolutely the worst cringe material I have ever heard in my life. I audibly gasped out loud and had to close my eyes through much of it. This is the type of guy that would monologue over you if you ever went out with him, best case scenario. But he's also the type of guy that would be monologuing while dismembering your body in his bathtub.

Jesus Christ. This takes the cake. I'm getting off the internet now. Forever

Good bye

Hey I’m new here - I suck really badly at social media and I need someone to do it for me….