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I for one am all ears. Please?

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?

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.

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

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.

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

Everybody picked English as first or second foreign language. Most picked Spanish as second language, the best students (or kids from solidly middle-class families) picked German as a first language, to get into the “good” group. Latin was an elective for nerds, Geek for Über-nerds.

My middle school had English, German, Spanish, Latin, Ancient Greek.

You’re kidding, right? Right?

On dates, focus on whether you like them, not whether they like you.

Food preservation! Canning, fermenting, dehydrating.
Canning is a bit daunting at first, and you need some space in your kitchen. But fermenting is literally salt + water in a jar, uses no energy (unlike freezing or boiling), and you can do just one small jar with the half-onion that would otherwise die a slow death in your fridge, or three gallons with the squash that was on sale.

My partner of 15 years has a girlfriend of 25 years. She’s been married for 30 years. We’re happy.