To build up on it: think long term as well.

Nowadays, it’s a 20% pay reduction. How does it look for long term? Will you have growth options in the new position? Will it sabotage your resume? Will you be able to keep adding to your 401k? How likely it is that a rotten apple coming would spoil the mood in the new job?

And: are you really really absolutely sure that the new job would be more chill for you? Think about yourself and think about how you would feel in that job after 6 months to a year. Would you still appreciate it? Would you get resentful because you have little to do while you could do so much more? What would be your frame of mind after a while?

Good safety standards are wildly different in EU and US. In many parts of EU some form of raw meat or other is common, raw milk is not too unusual. Consuming these items in US is a small step away from voluntary food poisoning. Not considering all the cases of unsafe foods delivered to the US supermarkets. Anecdotally, I would say some call back or other happens once a month in US (would love more precise data, too lazy to look)

As a general statement: worrying doesn’t help, only raises your stress levels and negatively impact your immune system.

There are here causes for concern, and your fear is justified. Other than isolation from your wife, there is not much to do.

As a side note: being in constant contact with other humans raises your immune responses, because you are constantly trained to fight off mild infections. Coming back from full isolation was really rough on my partner, they kept getting “the flu” (something or other) every time they went to a crowded place, even just the supermarket at rush hour. It took them a year to develop a normal immune response again.

As long as you don’t have symptoms, assume you are healthy, and stray separated. Obviously, if you already got Covid yesterday, then that ship has sailed, but what if you didn’t? What if your immune system is still fighting it off and will give out in two hours? Chances are slim, but not none.

The role of school is not (only) to prepare for a job, but to develop your knowledge, such that you can build further from there. In this context, a lot of online working environments are counterproductive: they break down tasks to minimal, destroy overarching meaning, erode concentration. They don’t sustain learning, they oppose it.

Once I build a cardboard key holder with the same thought in mind, I spend a couple of hours on it. Still remember its existence only once a week.

Misplacing my house keys. I always swear I will start putting them “always in the same place”, but i never do, and it’s been now some decades I have my own house keys, that I scramble to find them every time I get out the door.

Good point!

Other hypotheses: we say “true happiness” when it’s sustainable (for a bit) without obvious negative effects. Thus drugs are stereotypically not sustainable and with negative effects, so they are not true happiness [obviously many would disagree, e.g. Baudelaire] and finding true love is true happiness. Thus, stories are also true happiness.

One year later: do you still recommend Black Sun? I already read Trail of Lighting by Roanhorse and enjoyed it.

Facepalming hard…. Thanks…

Doesn’t it miss an f?

I think the concept of “false happiness” is given by the ends result of such behavior. Doing fruits gives you a high, but also addiction, so in the long run it’s bad for you. Having a fake relationship does not allow you to develop a real one, thus being a negative over time. True happiness is something that should make you happy in the moment and in the long run.

For this reason, media is true happiness.

I wad happy reading the lord of the rings and I’m happy I read it. The happiness reading produced has kept being a source of additional happiness. I remember Bilbo’s songs, and think about them when I take a walk. I remember small little details, or big plot points, and I’m happy to remember them. Same can be said about films and video games (I am just less passionate about them, but that’s just me)

I agree on the first part, I am unsure about the meaning of the second one. Reading a book is for me a great source of happiness, and I wouldn’t completely replace it even given infinite resources.

Personal must try in Munich that hasn’t popped up yet: the Residenzmuseum. In general, the whole city center is incredibly pretty, but the museum of the palace of the “kings” (not always really king, I mostly forgot the story but the local area boss) is positively stunning. Each new big boss built a new section of the palace, making a very complex architecture with the specific intent on impressing the visitors. Even hundreds of years later, it still does its job.

Neuschwanstein is the Disney castle. Equally fake, equally magnificent.

If you go in September, you have to pass by the Oktoberfest. It’s a huuuuuge town fair, mostly centered around beer, rowdiness and chanting, but if you go before “drinking time” (aka 4ish pm) it’s quite family oriented, with plenty of food stalls and general fair flair.

Tollwood has already been pointed out, there is the summer version and the winter one. It’s a “hippy” festival centered around discovering world cultures. Lots of music, from local artists to world known (for which you need to buy tickets in advance).

If you go not in winter, you have to try out a beergarten, traditional places with beers and a limited selection of local pub foods. If you go in winter, the Christmas markets are fun, even if the Munich one is not particularly well known.

Have a good walk by the Englisher Garten, a massive park in the city center. Avoid eating at the Chinesiche Turm, that’s too much of a tourist trap.

As others have pointed out, you are in the middle of Europe, so you can easily consider small trips all around: Berlin, Paris, Vienna are all a direct train away. Rome, Madrid, Barcelona, London have direct flight connections.

“There is a homeless problem, look there”

“But if you don’t look you don’t see the problem”

Rents in NYC are rising higher than salaries, squeezing out the poorer segment of the population. This, between other symptoms, generates homelessness. That’s what I see in NYC.

I went through Penn Station more times than I would have wanted. Arriving and leaving from there twisted my stomach in a knot, I wouldn’t be able to handle it every day.

The pycharm AI integration completes each line. That’s very useful when you are repeating a well known algorithm and not distracting when you are doing something unusual. So overall, for small things AI is a speed up. I haven’t tried asking chatgpt for bigger coffe chunks, I haven’t had the greatest experience with it up to now and ii don’t want to spend more time debugging than I am already.

I could never live in NYC… the homelessness problem is too widespread in pretty much all of US cities.

There are some limitations though: often native speakers don’t have a deep understanding of the grammar rules they use, because they use them intuitively. So sometimes learning this way makes it a bit foggy. I often use this technique when I’m already familiar with the target language, At a basic level.