The good thing about English is that you can puke out the most half broken grammar and pronunciation and still be understood by most. I’m not aware of many other languages like that.

Yeah I’m not french of course but it seems quite positive if the review refrains from starting with “à fuir!” and refrains from ending with “honteux”

Ah French. I have to say the french are the absolute masters of Google reviews because they will knock stars off and complain about everything.

Spaniard review: * * * * * Gente maja, birra buenísima y poca aglomeración

German review: * * * * Das Bar ist super zentral gelegen und gut erreichbar

French review: * A FUIR! Attention si vous venez a plusieurs et que pas tout le monde consomme ceux là ne doivent pas s’assoir sinon vous êtes humilier devant tout le monde vos amis famille etc. En gros vous venez a 4 et que 2 consomme vous allez recevoir les foudres de la patronne bref horrible accueil pas commercial et a la limite de la propreté! Moi ma fille a voulu m’offrir un café juste 5 mn avant que l’école ouvre ben du faite qu’elle ne consommait pas elle a humilier alors que c’est ma fille qui a payé le café et les bonbons pour les 2 petits et tout ça pour 5mn assis HONTEUX !

Yes, a cartoon lesbian couple is highly inappropriate for the grandson of a drug huffing, ho banging gangster.

Russian thistle. These asshole things pop up all over the yard and driveway and I go around and pull them out of the ground with welding gloves. Sometimes I get stabbed even through welding gloves. I can completely understand why someone would blast a cancer causing chemical across their whole yard. I’ve been experimenting with everything else but I’m too worried about my dog to do roundup.

I agree with you. There’s something a little nostalgic about lawnmower noise, but if you live without it for a while it’s so much nicer. I don’t have lawns at any of my house- crushed coral and desert dirt- but it’s been nice to see everyone get irritated with draining gas and fixing carburetors every year and switch to electric mowers which are mutch quieter.

This guy RFPs for the DoD

Oh for sure Europe is maybe worse in this regard. I’m in the south of Europe now but have relatives in Paris and the cold gloom is not something I would like to live with every day. At least along the Mediterranean it’s mostly sunny for the short, cold days of winter!

I grew up there, but spent a long time in Colorado and have a place in northern NM. The snow, cold, all fine all doable, but it’s the dark overcast that gets you.

Depending on the region it’s a lot more interesting economically- lots of small businesses, plenty of summer activities. It’s getting expensive though, for what it offers. I think few people move to New England from outside new England though (except for the important cities). You will certainly get some funny looks when you tell people you moved from Arizona.

I would personally move to a town with a lively population but not a big city. Think Burlington Vermont or Binghamton NY or great Barrington Mass. Definitely different and if you can settle in there probably a better life!

This book has helped me understand:

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo27509064.html

American who did a road trip through Germany for the first time about a month ago (I’m based in France).

It’s great. Great roads, great food, great beer, friendly people, cheaper prices. German seems extremely hard but almost everyone I ran into spoke good English. Grocery stores had interesting products but seemed maybe a bit on the expensive side compared to France. It’s highly regional, so my feedback applies to Baden-Württemberg only. My understanding is that each state is pretty different. In some way, it felt a little like being in an extremely nice part of the US in some alternate reality where gore won in 2000 and built bicycle infrastructure and public transport and fixed the infrastructure.

I’m not who you are responding to, but I’m in the same position.

Interest rate on house mortgage is around 2%, currently looking to invest in an apartment in Europe. The current rates are ~4% here, so it makes more sense to keep the cheap money from the house mortgage than to trade it for more expensive money.

The big blue and purple states should already be doing this. The only reason we have GOP majorities in congress is because of GOP state level gerrymandering. Do not forget that the GOP is and has been representing a minority.

Gerrymander until the nationwide congressional delegation matches the actual party line votes of the population, if you want to be fair about it.

Sounds like France. There’s a whole industry of people charging a months rent or more just to make a few phone calls and assemble some basic documents. Not easy to rent a place by any means, but these providers do not offer a good value because they are not actually real estate agents.

Which one did you get?

My company added grammarly onto all our laptops which cannot be permanently disabled. So I have a grammarly suggester widget floating over everything I do on the laptop. I just accept all suggestions no matter how dumb and inappropriate and put garbage in slack conversations, code reviews, etc.

Spending a few hundred a week for the two of us to eat a basic equivalent diet to that available in Europe. I brought back all my shampoo, body wash, moisturizers, etc in a 50 lb suitcase which I loaded up at carrefour on my last trip to France.

Now that student borrowers aren’t getting a “free ride”, I want PPP loan recipients to be required to pay back the full amount, plus say, 9% interest, retroactively. Why should my tax dollars pay for your free business loan?

They will still ask him to invert a binary tree, just to be sure he can code