gerryflap

Yeah exactly. I always looked forward to reading English books. And in German classes I'd also look forward to reading, though that probably had to do more with how bad I was at German. Dutch literature is just boring and depressing for most highschoolers. I'm sure for some older people it was exciting, and those must've been the people deciding that forcing us to read this stuff was a good idea.

The Dutch education system forced us to read many Dutch works of literature every year in the last years of highschool. This completely ruined my joynin reading, since imo most Dutch literature is boring. Interesting books like the Lord of the Rings or Dune were not allowed since they weren't Dutch.

The worst memory of them all was the book called "De Grote Zaal". Basically the entire book was about a dying old lady in the last years of her life reflecting on her life. It wasn't a thick book, but it felt like it took ages because nothing happened and it had exactly nothing in common with the average life and interests of a highschooler.

Before the last years of highschool I'd always read books for fun, even when school started requiring it, because it was fun. Books like Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter (fck J.K Rowling), Star Wars, and countless others that I'm missing were great fun. But Dutch literature is a lot about old people, WW2, etc. Dutch fantasy books were not considered literature because they were too much fun to read.

Because words have different weight for different people. I feel like Americans are so sensitive about words like "fuck" (and many other words). Here in the Netherlands I grew up with much more liberal use of swear words. So to me it's way less harsh to say "fuck this rain" or something, it's just a way to communicate my feelings about the rain, just like I'd say "kutweer" in Dutch. Saying it in a more eloquent way, i.e. "this rain is pretty suboptimal" would not accurately convey my feelings.

From the train dataset that was frozen many years ago. It's like you know something instead of looking it up. It doesn't provide sources, it just makes shit up based on what was in the (old) dataset. That's totally different than looking up the information based on what you know and then using the new information to create an informed answer backed up by sources

No. ChatGPT pulls information out of its ass and how I read it SearchGPT actually links to sources (while also summarizing it and pulling information out of it's ass, presumably). ChatGPT "knows" things and SearchGPT should actually look stuff up and present it to you.

It's not like I totally didn't enjoy it, but Red Dead Redemption 2. The game was good in many ways, and I totally get why it's so we'll loved, but I just have nothing with the setting. I don't like cowboys, I don't like playing as an asshole who makes bad decision after bad decision, and I also don't like a setting where women are basically property. Just not really my vibe. I just came from Cyberpunk 2077 and the contrast was quite big, even though Cyberpunk is supposed to be more dystopian

2K per year, subsidized by the Dutch government afaik, because International students pay way more.

Not anymore, since I got a real job.. They do sometimes give some money as a present to buy something nice, but it's no longer necessary. They did help me during my study though, paying the ~€2K uni fees every year and some other smaller stuff, so I could focus on rent, groceries, study material, etc. Combined with that, I had some side jobs to keep the study loan pretty small and manageable .

Based on anecdotal evidence, that was kind of the middle of the road. Some friends had very rich parents, who basically paid everything. Other people basically had to pay everything, which lead to huge loans. I think this level of support was pretty much optimal. It forced me to think about money instead of just buying everything I wanted, but also made it easy for me to focus on my study instead of surviving.

Even better

I'd like to think that I'd spend the work time on my hobbies. But realistically I'd spend most of the day watching YouTube videos and reading Lemmy because "I have to go to the store later so I can't start something big now". I'd definitely spend more time on my own programming projects, music production, running (or maybe other sports), and gaming though.

I'm not so sure that the laypeople will, but I do expect a shift. Personally I'm still running Windows 10 next to Linux currently. Most of my time is still spent on Windows, because it's generally a bit more stable and hassle free due to the Windows monopoly. Software is written for Windows, so sadly it's usually just a better experience.

But so many things I read about Win 11 (and beyond) piss me off. It's my computer, I don't want them to decide things for me or farm my data. I'm mentally preparing for the transition to Linux-only. 90% of the software I use will work out of the box, and I think with some effort I can get like 8% of the rest to work. It'll be a lot of effort, but Micro$oft has pushed so far that I'm really starting to consider.

Multiple friends and colleagues (all programmers) I spoke are feeling the same way. I think Linux may double in full-time desktop users in a few years of this goes on.

I generally feel like my sense of smell is quite bad. There's not really a lot of smells that I hate abnormally, probably due to the reduced sense of smell. I do like gasoline smell just like you, but honestly I thought that that was normal.