Fluent in three languages. Mathematically speaking, there are enough people with my specific migration route (or even language combination) up until the point I left the US that there should be lots of ppl who think the same… But yes I do feel like my PoV can be a bit unique

The various forms of neurodivergence I have certainly don’t help… like for example I don’t have an internal monologue, which changes my PoV a lot. Actually the neurodivergence probably shaped my PoV even more than the languages; I never really fit in even at where I was born

If esports count, I’d like to be like this guy and get a contract to play rhythm games professionally

Otherwise… Probably swimming or race walking, not too many professional sports I could think of that one can do into their 60s without wrecking their body

Not personally, but my parents would pay much, much more for cooking utensils than what “it’s worth”. They live in China, and I don’t think the locals (especially their generation) trust Chinese manufacturing that much… so for anything food- or health-related my parents would just get stuff from say Japan, the US, or the EU. Quite sure mom side still insists on buying kitchen knives from Zwilling whenever she’s traveling

I guess this is becoming more relevant now that Temu is a thing

Brussels. Officially bilingual but most people speak French; English is commonly spoken but not official. I’m also legally allowed to get things in Dutch (the other official language) but I know even less Dutch than French… I promised myself to start learning Dutch once I get to B1-B2 French

Due to historical reasons, language is… a sensitive issue here. And since I work in academia (which were at the center of said language issue), my employer communicates everything in French, despite the fact that academia itself uses English (probably funnier at the Dutch-speaking unis but I digress). For example I think half of the HR and IT teams don’t speak English at all so all my work emails to them have to be in French…

It just feels like any regular Meetup tbh. The Japanese one I’ve been going to obviously has a much higher proportion of ppl who are into, say, anime and manga (since it’s a group of ppl who willingly chose to learn Japanese without external motives), but other than that they feel like standard Meetup events

Japanese is not an easy language: good luck!

Ohh nice! If you happen to be interested in manga: someone at my local Japanese language exchange recommended よつばと! which seemed like a cute & quite useful manga series for learning Japanese

I… don’t think I need motivation when my employer, my landlord, and even my government are legally obligated to establish all legal communications in French (facepalm)

I also suffered from motivation before moving here though, so I’d love to know as well

周杰倫(Jay Chou) - 青花瓷 (Blue and White Porcelain). YouTube link

So Jay Chou (Taiwanese actually…) was an absolute phenomenon in mainland China when I was growing up. Just about all of his songs are good & have mass appeal, but specifically I think this song was something I’ve heard just about everywhere and anywhere (including from a street performer when I visited again a few months ago!) so I’m nominating it as a must-listen

Also don’t worry too much about the lyrics; Jay Chou is known for rapping a lot & I couldn’t understand half of his lyrics when growing up…

Jokes on me there are close to a hundred million people with the same last name as me, I’m not changing

Yes they are… the reason I think that way is that I like to look at relative rankings; as in, it’s not accurate to just look at how many stars a place got, but rather compare it with other places around it

If I recall… at least in Chicago where good restaurants easily get 500+ ratings. I have never had a “miss” at a place 4.7 stars or above on Google, and the local “cult classic” was at like 4.9; 4.5-4.6 can be hit-or-miss; any fine dining below 4.5 is almost always a miss. Obviously since almost none of those establishments got below 4, just looking at the number of stars isn’t useful… but if I have adjust my expectations accordingly (>=4.6 is solid, <=4.4 is bad) it’s actually quite useful

Sadly I have no clue whether it translates to other places. Fairly certain ppl in my current city are a lot more critical (so maybe a 4.7 in Chicago would be… 4.4 here, or something like that)

Now that OP mentioned it, I just realized how few alternatives there are to Google Maps…

For reading reviews, sadly I think Google is still by far the best review aggregator especially for restaurants, in big cities especially the star ratings are scarily accurate (edit: with caveats). I guess expert reviews (such as all of Michelin’s ratings) are good too but they aren’t always available

For writing reviews, I sometimes order food with apps (recently using Too Good To Go) so I’d still leave comprehensive reviews on those. If the place is not on OpenStreetMaps I’d add it. Other times sadly I just don’t, I don’t really have a functional Google account at this point

… according to Wikipedia, body symmetry

Other qualities tend to rely on frequency of interaction and are not instant

I’d pick Berlin too. Frankfurt was mostly an afterthought and the only advantage it has for me is that it is interconnected so…

If I am being realistic, probably Berlin, Brussels, or Paris (maybe also Frankfurt). Specifically these cities, not anywhere else in the associated countries

I’m using the following metrics (and possibly some personal bias):

• A highly developed region that is internationally well-connected and has a strong passport… which leaves us with parts of Europe and some Asian countries. I’m personally excluding UK because of Brexit
• OP didn’t mention that “culture weren’t an issue”, so sadly most of Asia/Scandinavia/Central Europe are out due to difficulty for outsiders to integrate… and among the rest, choices are limited to large, diverse cities that are easy to integrate
• A place that is resilient to climate change, so the entirety of the Netherlands is out (or maybe I just hate NL)

The conclusion is that I should really get aggressive at learning French and German now just in case

I mean that is pretty much what AI bros want to do… and/or maybe already doing

From a researcher/developer perspective: the biggest bottleneck that affects current-gen AI is the lack of high quality training data; the more high-quality (a.k.a. human-generated and not complete shitposts) training data, the better. What people write on their computers would probably overwhelmingly be high quality. That means, without major technological advancements… if AI companies have access to the types of contents you just described, it is very much in their interests to use them

I don’t 100% agree with this view, but if you subscribe to Prof. Emily M. Bender’s thought of seeing AI models as plagiarism machines, maybe you can say that AI is “stealing your soul”

I did have a bit of a superiority complex in high school, but that’s because I was fluent in Japanese which was considered a “cool” language that basically no one else at HS was fluent in. But after that not much. Besides I don’t think most people would realize or care that I’m fluent in three languages

Now I live in a city where most people are multilingual and I don’t speak the local language (French) despite all the other languages I speak or understand so… I definitely feel inferior, but I don’t think that’s what you are asking

I am fluent in Chinese/Japanese/English; my Japanese got way worse after HS but I can still read news/play videogames and hold up a conversation. I’ve learned a bit of German and French so I have some basic reading comprehension

Lots of K-pop get people who don’t understand Korean at all to vibe; there’s also famous (infamous?) songs like the remixed Caramelldansen (which is Swedish), Tunak Tunak Tun as you mentioned is a good one too

Personally I… vibe to a lot of songs that don’t have any lyrics at all

Or how about ones with fictional lyrics? Such as siromaru + cranky: conflict (OK this might be a bit too niche…)

This amount is peanuts compared to the operating budget of the city I live in…

Realistically? I was pleasantly surprised by someone trying to make little tree pit gardens on the street where I live. $10,000 might be enough to make some of those on a few residential streets and kickstart a local initiative for the community to keep maintaining them. There may be some leftover money for acquiring a few communal trash bins to help with trash issues around the neighborhood as well

Replying as someone with diagnosed depression (“Major Depressive Disorder”, isn’t as bad as it sounds) which apparently first started in teenage years

For me “talk therapy” (such as CBT) has never been ineffective, but not effective to the extent that I considered my depression “managed” so to speak. I’d always have negative thoughts, bad feelings, etc… I was reading The Feeling Good Handbook and became open to the idea of medication, so I was put into contact with a psychiatrist a few years ago who decided to put me on a very low dose antidepressant (10mg fluoxetine/Prozac per day), later upped the dose (20 mg/day, still low)

A week or so after being put on antidepressants (a very low dose, mind you), a large part of my depressive symptoms just… went away. I’m no way near being “constantly happy” or anything; it’s just that the depressive thoughts left. And it was significant enough because I don’t think I’ve ever achieved that with talk therapy

There was an extended period a year and a half ago when I stopped medication due to relocation, and depression came back after like a month or so, but it could have been compounded by the fact that I got a bone fracture back then & was not in a good mood in general… but the symptoms went away again after a week or more of me restarting medication. I stopped medication again 3-4 months ago for another relocation, and depression hasn’t come back for me yet

My understanding is that antidepressants, depending on the type, alters the body chemistry… so depending on where someone’s depression comes from, antidepressants is sometimes the most effective treatment out there (for many others, talk therapy is the most effective). Since it appears that my source of depression is due to losing the genetic lottery, antidepressants probably was the perfect solution. But realistically psychology/neuroscience don’t have enough research funding despite how important and interesting they are, so we don’t actually know that much regarding how antidepressants work… just that they work quite well for some people

And to answer your question: no not really. It just “treats” depression and is not always effective. Happiness seems like something very much separate, but can probably be induced by certain controlled substances (which are highly addictive and bad for you)

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