I think, it's more like, it's not pure meritocracy as well. It's kind of a mix between meritocracy, community role model and a sprinkle of nepotisms.

While it's ingrained in the culture, to be the best you can be for certain communities, having tons of people with the same ethnicity/community/caste benefit you as well. People don't go climbing up the higher echelons on pure meritocracy.

There is a reason Indians are over-represented among other Asian ethnicities and that is not pure meritocracy.

The more you realize that for Japanese society, it's been the same as how it was since a long time. Zaibatus/Keiretsu is just a modern evolution of feudal era Daimyo/Samurai. As a rule of of thumb, they're trying to good for the masses but indeed they are (benevolent) dictator in some ways.

As a non-native English speaker myself, I still find native using contraction on "there's two cats" counter intuitive. Sometimes I use the correct grammar "there are two cats" but then it sounds too formal for the native to heard it. Then I have to adjust with the "wrong" way of saying it.

There’s nothing grammatically incorrect about “there’s”. The oversight is in confusing a contraction with an abbreviation. “There’s” is a contraction for either “there is” or “there are” and the precise one is given by context. It is not a mere abbreviation for “there is”.

Written contractions are meant to faithfully represent spoken English, in which people indeed say “there’s” for both the singular and the plural.

> “There’s” is a contraction for either “there is” or “there are”

But doesn't con-traction mean "pulling together"? You pull the last letter over towards the first ones, squishing out the ones between. Only there is no 's' at the end of "there are" to pull over next to "there".

So "there's" can't really be a contraction of "there are", AFAICS.

> Written contractions are meant to faithfully represent spoken English, in which people indeed say “there’s” for both the singular and the plural.

Sure, it may be a perfectly valid usage, so it's something... But as matter of terminology, whatever that something is, I don't think it's a contraction.

The way I've explained the correctness of the plural use to a non-native speaker, is that (to use the cats example) there is one group of cats, the group is singular even though its content is plural, so “there is” is correct, therefore so is the contraction. Not explicitly mentioning the group is just another abbreviation, because it is implicitly understood. This avoids the discussion of whether “there are → there's” is valid in written form (which tends to be more strict than verbal use).

I think that's pretty much aligned with Google reasoning back then. Go was designed to make it easier to onboard their fresh grads + scientists hiring,which were more familiar python to do systems stuff.

Interesting, do you do one gig at a time or multiple gigs in parallel?

At the moment I work full time as a Software Developer. At this point last year I was doing food delivery using DoorDash and Uber Eats for 12-14 hours per day, which has a sort of "GO GO GO" kind of feel to it. I'm fine with either, but it has to consistently be one of the other, which I feel is a pretty common trait with regards to people's ability to switch contexts.

I think Excel is the main moat on people/company keep using Office. Even the spreadsheet product on macOS is unmatched. I think it's the defacto tools in the salaryman-world for any backoffice work requiring some spreadsheet app.

I know an avid iOS fanboy that uses Excel on Windows for their main job, it's on a different level than its macOS counterpart.

Yes that’s true. There are better ways to solve all the problems that spreadsheets solve but no one way of solving them all in one place as badly that’s quite as good :)

That hurt to write.

you can't compare NZ and DK with US legislative member. The effect of their policy making in terms of nominal number ($$) is multiple order of magnitude different.

I agree with the OP, where in nuance, paying policy maker more would more or less reduce corruption. It doesn't guarantee that it'll work but at least worth the try, cost wise.

Just like in sports gambling, one of the most efficient way to tilt the favor to your bet is pay the arbiter.

dead-middle millennial here. Many of my friends been buying house circa 2016-2018 back when you can still get a 5-10k euro discount, even in Randstad/Eindhoven area. Not anymore. I was just start looking to buy a house and I was just giving up after 4 months and several attempts at bidding with crazy competitors.

I think most people were simply owning 1 house and doesn't benefit much from this housing crisis. Like you said, people who want to go out can't get in to a new house either. We're at the lowest point in NL history with fewest vacant properties available. So taxing all the property owner wouldn't do justice. However, I hope the government start to impose a progressive tax on entities owning multiple properties (hello Chinese/Prince/BlackRock investors?). They're the ones who benefitted the most from this situation. Though realistically, seeing how the current government track records, I kinda feel helpless that they'll help the younger generation. I even feel bad for Gen Z whose racking up student debt on top of it.

interesting point. I wonder if we need to separate the dichotomy within freedom. I definitely agree on the point of "anonymity" if it's part of the freedom. In the sense that I would have zero anonymity in the rural area on my activities or myself in general than in urban area.

On the other hand, we also have "personal activity/behaviour" that we could call a part of our greater freedom as well. In rural area, you are free to do "whatever" i.e having fun in your barn, whereas in urban area, you time and space and having fun definition is more constrained.

In this case I agree with OP. Yeah, you have much more control in the output when you speak. However, most of the case, it'll take forever to brute force your brain to compose the right words/sentences and even found no result most of the times when you're not fluent. On the other hand, in listening, you've built the pattern recognition during your study and easier to spot the speech pattern.

In my country, lots of people are bilingual due to the nature of the ethnic composition. I know way more people whose much better at listening than speaking with the language that they're not fluent with.