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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • I’d like to hear from people who read more on those devices.

    I started reading books electronically on my Palm Pilot III, later a Palm V, then a SONY Clie. I loved the convenience of it, especially because I didn’t have the shelf space for all my books at home and I’m into 800+page fantasy books that are a hassle to carry around. After reading on PDAs anything is a luxury. These days I read on my smartphone when out and 11inch iPad at home. It’s important to manage display brightness though to not tire the eyes, unlike eInk which depends on ambient light.

    I generally use Google play books, it syncs across devices and have translation which is good as I started reading French books. But these features are also available on other readers like Kindle.

    Interestingly I once worked on an eInk reader for a book chain competing with Amazon. I didn’t get any freebie though.




  • Yes, Bonjour is a magic word. La politesse/etiquette and respect for all people is very important in France. Here in NA when we enter a store the staff greets the customer and bows and scrapes for us, in France when entering a store the customer politely acknowledges and greets the staff with Bonjour - and not just in stores. And then there’s the other small phrases that goes a long way, like merci, pardon, s’il vous plait, au revoir, use monsieur/madame/mademoiselle, as in Excusez-moi, madame, etc.

    Dress a little bit nicely when exploring helps, don’t walk while eating, etc.

    When foreigners complain that the French are rude or snobbish it is often a misinterpretation; not adhering to simple etiquette, can be offensive or insulting and they will react to that demonstratively or “in kind”, more or less subtly…

    I rather like La Politesse and being respectful to everyone.












  • The unique problems for me with dogs is not just that they’re evolved to interact better with us, it’s that in many places where they eat them it’s believed that it tastes better if it was terrified and in pain when killed. So you can imagine how they’re treated when getting prepared to slaughter. No easy life or death for food dogs.

    Then there’s several places in Peru where it’s believed cats taste better if drowned.

    Not that we treat our livestock great in the west but some cultures take it to a horrifying level due to tradition.