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

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  • 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.




  • Starting maps like this is hard. I remember many years earlier when Google maps was new and disastrous, sending massive truck detours through small sleepy villages and encouraging inattentive driver to drive into duck ponds. Then when Apple released their maps Google already had 7 years of improving theirs, and they had made good use of that time.

    It was a mistake not allocating more resources (/spending) to improving it sooner after the release turned out so badly. They always move slowly with their projects. Even now their new map updates are spectacular but the mapping vehicle fleet seems too small and is taking a long time.


  • Indeed and people often say “if an ad is annoying I’ll never buy that product, so ads don’t work on me, also they’ve never made me click on or run out and buy something” !

    However advertising is accompanied with thorough independent market research and sales numbers and companies can directly see the impact of their ad campaigns. It’s indisputable.

    In the long term it’s also about brand recognition, we see a “stupid ad” today and in a year when we’re looking for that kind of thing we are more likely to choose that brand over another and we don’t know why but “this jams seems better”. The effect is proven, scary and it’s something we’re relatively helpless against. It doesn’t help that our brains sometimes register things running in the background on the TV while we’re petting the dog. Product placement in movies works like that too, if we notice it we think it’s obvious and stupid, but we still notice it and even when we don’t notice it our helpful subconscious is right there helping us remember.

    Moving into even worse territory, on social media like Facebook they can profile us enough to know where we’re leaning politically and if we’re not entirely confident in our political stance they can show us ads that looks like product ads but are designed to nudge our political stance a bit to the side in the desired direction.

    The effect of ads on the subconscious is scary. It’s not complete mind control but it can influence us without us noticing.

    Not on social media ? No problem, they still build up shadow profiles. A Google executive once bragged at a conference that they know everything we’ve done since the first day we got on the Internet. Hyperbolic maybe but that confidence comes from somewhere.