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

I thought it would be so funny if any of the EU employees would go to a bar in Brussels (majority French-speaking) and have an aneurysm explaining what they do to a local in broken French. Not that it would ever happen… but it would be funny

Yes, but sometimes I wonder if it is just the nature of what happens when a social media network grows large. I did observe how some subreddits instantly get more toxic as they grow bigger too

… On the other hand though, coincidentally I did see some very recent comments that are decidedly more right-wing than the general Lemmy userbase. I personally try not to judge ppl’s political orientation but I do wonder if there’s something weird going on

Currently none; the country is known for having a very high union participation rate, but I don’t know what’s the situation is for researchers specifically… As in, I don’t even know if there ks a union for PhD students/postdocs. I’m convinced to do something about this though, we’ll see. Thanks!

I… learned something new today about Lemmy I guess

No that’s definitely not me, my workplaces may have asshole bosses but actually all have surprisingly little drama all things considered (and I hope I don’t jinx it)

… Thanks, is there an in joke that I didn’t quite get somewhere??

I did unironically tell my old mentor that I’d quit academia if my next job doesn’t work out, so there’s that… I have seriously introspected for the last position and didn’t resort to blaming my boss until like 6-8 months in and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t at fault. But rest assured I do introspect a lot. Maybe too much sometimes but that’s a separate discussion…

Frankly it helps… your experience tracks with mine as well. I did hear from one colleague that they adopted the Dutch explicit/super-direct communication style and I think it worked for them, so I will give it a shot too. My coworkers are nice so thankfully I believe I will have some ppl to talk to, I’ll make sure to do that

Seems most are on the autism spectrum, and that makes it hard to interact with

Funny you mentioned that… I’m Autistic and somehow the worst boss I’ve had so far was extremely ASD-coded, while the best one I’ve had was not on the spectrum but super understanding. And yes there are lots of assholes in academia

Thanks, that helps a lot… I definitely had an issue with just detaching from my work emotionally for the last job, hence why I literally got sick despite the job being really, really favorable on paper. I will try to do this more for the current job for now; the job is also quite favorable on paper after all. I did mention in another comment that it is unlikely I will get fired, so if I really want to stay I will try to adapt these concepts to the best of my abilities. Thanks!

Nice! I was on the unionization effort with my last employer too; I’d make a terrible leader but I have the skills for helping out. I am trying to get to know my coworkers better, so that is definitely not off the table

It’s the supervisor. I’d say it may be more close to the second one than the first: bossman was trained in German academia and it shows; they are from what I’ve gathered a micromanaging person with really bad management skills that also has pretty blatant favoritism, also heard from coworkers that bossman disallowed vacations previously. Not the worst thing in the world but does appear to be pretty nasty; if I don’t want to get fired there are ways I can adapt. My coworkers are honestly quite nice atm. I suppose I will try to do both then, apply for other things while use my… currently strong arsenal tool of dealing with ppl to get through things for now

I’d also be looking for an EU sugar mama as much as possible on the side

I eh will get on Hinge again and visit Luxembourg in the future 💀

Thanks. One of my colleague did suggest that, I suppose I’ll start being selfish & start applying now. The problem itself will only get worse unless my entire institution unionizes or something similar… but it’s unlikely that I will get fired (my skills are very in demand) so there’s that; I am also trying to get independent funding which would mitigate the problem a lot

Disclaimer that I’m not an economist

I believe I have heard a discussion about this before… that the “always grow bigger” model is not only not a necessity under capitalism, it wasn’t even the predominant economic model in the US for a while. Post war, FDR’s New Deal followed the Keynesian model, which from my understanding indirectly led to the type of regulated capitalism with a much heavier emphasis on shareholder/employee satisfaction… and also when the extremely high progressive income tax brackets happened. The always need to grow bigger idea may or may not have come from Milton Friedman of the UChicago school in the 1970s: one of the core assumptions of the Neoclassical model is that companies maximize profits.

Also this is definitely not just a US megacorp thing. Other countries have megacorps too. Case in point South Korea…

From what I remember from nutrition science research… our body fat are literally living, breathing cells. As in, fat cells which specialize into fat storage, which can grow/shrink, and are in fact very metabolically active. So not only do they get replaced over time, they are biologically quite relevant and probably more “active” than, say, the nearby muscle cells

Wikipedia does have a page for adipocytes, not sure how up-to-date it is but it explains better than I could. Beware that it is quite technical

Not to mention that the entirety of China, a singular political and military entity (a fairly strong one nonetheless), is somehow all +8 due to a technicality

Now all of China knows you’re here!

Well of course not. I don’t have physical discs or a steamer so steaming them is a bit difficult

Jokes aside, I have literally never used music streaming… First of all I don’t listen to that much music. Even when I did, I tried Soundcloud for a bit but then quickly switched over to Bandcamp. I’m not that big on having to listen to the latest music and I don’t like mainstream stuff, so YouTube is sufficient for discovery for now

I’m not very big on audio quality so I mostly just do yt-dlp these days on songs that I listen a lot… I could go back to Bandcamp (or pirate and leave personal donations) if I ever become an audiophile, but realistically a lot of musicians I listen to are financially stable if not wealthier than me (most of them probably have stable contracts from large gaming companies) so I don’t see a lot of point…

In a professional setting: disappointment is the strongest word I’ve ever said to someone

Outside that? I don’t know if there is a good cutoff between slur/not slur… The one I vividly remember was old Chinese social media users (before the blockage) calling some people “Wumao” (translates to 50 cents). This is implying that the person is being a troll, and they did it because they were so pathetic that they accepted a 50-cent commission from the government to say good/bad things on the internet. Probably still the worst insult I could imagine till this day; modern equivalent might be calling someone “nice job ChatGPT” or a “Russian bot”

Sooo I guess since others mentioned this, I would like to clarify a few things…

TJ is indeed marketed as a “boutique” grocery store, and I think I heard somewhere that their founder made the store in a way where their ideal customer would be a rich kid who graduated from Harvard (not kidding). But they have been bought by Aldi a while back and follow a similar business model. Because of this, their prices are quite reasonable especially for how “high-class” they feel. Drawback is that TJs tend to have incomplete offerings, but are really well-stocked and reasonably priced on essentials and some trendy stuff (for example, vegan food: I’m not kidding they had more tofu than the nearby mainstream grocery chains)

I thought folks here would hate TJ not because the price, but because of their union busting practices (I won’t judge anyone for shopping there, but it’s just a good thing to know)

This is interesting… I was not into coffee before COVID so I didn’t notice it before, wonder if it was indeed because of the pandemic as others mentioned

I don’t think Trader Joe’s is exactly a popular brand on Lemmy due to unrelated reasons, but if there is a Trader Joe’s near you, would you mind checking if they still have coffee grinders? I do vividly remember that my local Trader Joe’s store had one. Also I’m pretty sure most coffee roasters would still grind the beans for you (not that most serious coffee enjoyers ever use that service, but still)