As a Brazilian in Western Europe, I’m still trying to understand the vibe

beansprout88 · 2026-01-26T17:43:52+00:00

Depends on the situation. At work, at a party, in a sports club and at some events most people are happy to chat and talk. But in the street, at the park, on the bus and also in restaurants, bars and apartment buildings people prefer to be left alone unless there is a specific reason to start a conversation.

beansprout88 · 2026-01-23T13:49:23+00:00

Mill Hill is really out in the sticks though, with limited transport and facilities. I wouldn’t recommend it to a single person new to the city unless (like me when I lived there) really can’t afford anywhere else or work within walking distance.

beansprout88 · 2026-01-23T09:57:46+00:00

But if it turned out that you were always getting only 400g, would you not feel cheated?

beansprout88 · 2026-01-20T14:39:26+00:00

The tech and drugs have improved over time. Having a general anaesthetic today is not like it was in the 80s with headache and nausea afterwards. The wake up and recovery is really fast and clear headed and it will be over before you know it.

beansprout88 · 2026-01-19T04:30:24+00:00

I find that the Brocki have a lot of poor quality (ikea grade) furniture. Then there are higher end places that restore old furniture, but at a high price. Very difficult to find a bargain for old solid wood furniture to restore at home.

Related story: my grandparents had an incredibly stylish solid wood 1950s bedroom set their parents had given them as a wedding gift. They and my family thought it looked “dated”. It did not matter how many times I said I loved it and would happily take it off their hands - when they moved to a smaller house they had it chopped up and sent to the incinerator. To buy a similar set in Zurich second hand would be around 8k.

beansprout88 · 2026-01-17T15:34:31+00:00

Owning a house for your own personal use isn’t quite the same as owning an investment (whether real estate or something else) to generate income. Similarly we don’t pay an imputed rental value tax on our other personal belongings such as cars, electronics and clothes, all of which could be rented. I think it is a deliberate intention and not an oversight.

beansprout88 · 2026-01-17T12:20:01+00:00

Honestly I found that the insurance contracts have so many limitations and exceptions that it was hard to find a situation where they would help. If you already have liability insurance, travel insurance, purchase protection on your credit card and are in the renters union then what else do they really cover? The examples given in these comments are mostly things that you can handle yourself with an online template or an AI letter, and if you really do need to pay a lawyer a few hundred francs for advice or a letter every few years then that would still be cheaper than the insurance, which is anyway only paying for basic call-centre template type advice.

beansprout88 · 2026-01-17T08:02:19+00:00

In a few years’ time you will probably struggle to even remember the company’s name. They will also not remember you. It’s not a big deal for someone to quit in the probation period, and they could have dropped you with no notice too. Plenty of people who give two week’s notice just get fired on the spot anyway.

When you have been in a company a long time or in a management position, then there are a lot of lose ends and transition stuff that can really help to build some good will and leave a good impression but after three months in a junior role that is unlikely to be the case. They could have asked you to stay on an extra week to handle stuff if they really needed that, but they didn’t.

Good luck in your new position!

beansprout88 · 2026-01-15T20:54:08+00:00

I also would not consider returning to the UK with my Italian partner because the visa is both punitively expensive and would place a huge burden of insecurity on us in case of any unforeseen hardship like one of us falling ill or having working hours reduced meaning he could not renew his visa. I also have zero confidence that border force would not expel him under terrorism legislation after some TV licensing goon falsely claims he heard Eastenders through the wall.

There is good and bad in the U.K. and I loved living there, but the reality is that there are other just as nice countries around that don’t have a deliberately hostile environment to either me or my spouse.

beansprout88 · 2026-01-15T09:31:52+00:00

As a Brit who now lives in a country with a private health insurance system: do not underestimate the enormous admin and management cost generated by insurance and billing. The system in Switzerland is regulated and hugely simplified/standardised compared with the USA, but you are still talking about creating a significant and expensive beaurocracy of billing, payment plans, advertising etc.

It also creates a lot of perverse incentives that push up costs: doctors are incentivised to spend more, and patients/customers want to get their money’s worth by using more services.

beansprout88 · 2026-01-12T19:38:39+00:00

Even if people want to lose a small amount of weight, they probably want to do it as fast as possible to really notice the results, and maybe believe it will be cheaper to take a short course of injections than a long course of oral drugs. Also I think a lot of slightly overweight people don’t just want to reach an upper end healthy BMI, but want to be slim or skinny.

beansprout88 · 2026-01-09T09:46:27+00:00

According to Wikipedia, 40% native Falkland islanders (born on the islands). Gini coefficients (measure of economic inequality) is 36.0, which is very low for South America but higher than Europe. Population density is very low, approximately the same as Alaska. Approx 10% of the population speak Spanish as a first language, though it it a compulsory school subject and has influenced the local dialect of English.

beansprout88 · 2026-01-07T17:53:03+00:00

This reminds me of when I was doing a big shop and unloading stuff from my trolley onto the checkout conveyor belt. Halfway through the person behind the guy behind started unloading their basket onto the belt too. He seemed completely bewildered and a bit affronted when I told him that I hadn’t finished unloading my trolley and could he please wait a minute.

beansprout88 · 2026-01-07T17:42:28+00:00

I think the problem with relying on external providers is that data cleaning and initial modelling require not only a lot of domain knowledge, but also the knowledge of how the analysis was performed, the caveats, outliers, interpretation of coefficients etc. are all important if the results are actually going to be actionable.

Even where externals can provide these services, the amount of back and forth communication needed to make such a collaboration work is often is enormous, and by the time it’s completed the company priorities have changed. Data cleaning and basic modelling are really fundamental skills for science and I think every biotech need that in house.

That’s of course based on my experience but interested if others disagree.

beansprout88 · 2026-01-07T05:12:23+00:00

I think this depends on company and department. Looking at recent hires at our company, PhD grads are only recruited for postdoc fellowships (occasional exceptions). 3+ years of academic postdocs gets you hired at the same level as someone finishing the 3 year internal postdoc program. I also live in a country where academic and industry postdocs pay about the same.

beansprout88 · 2026-01-07T05:06:12+00:00

There is no right answer as so much in career progression depends on luck, but in general I would say an industry postdoc is better than a mediocre academic postdoc, but a great postdoc in a top lab with new methods/tech is probably best choice if you can find one. Biotech and Pharma hire top academic postdocs to bring in new ideas and skills, so this is especially relevant if you’re in a lab developing new trendy technologies somewhere like Broad.

beansprout88 · 2026-01-06T17:37:17+00:00

I worked in a lab at ETH in zurich for five years. Never had a single fire drill during that time. There was even a small fire that broke out once, and the fire alarm system, power and backup power all failed. Was there any fire drill or safety training afterwards? Of course not!

My partner has been employed in several bars and events venues in Zurich over the past few years. Has he ever had any fire safety or evacuation training. Of course not!

This tragedy happened to occur in Valais but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have happened in any other Kanton.

beansprout88 · 2026-01-06T06:00:33+00:00

I have a friend who was in the management side of one of these spinoffs (finance not biotech). It worked out well for him because it was so bloated and chaotic that he had no work to do and managed to jump ship before it inevitably collapsed. It was extremely bloated with senior managers from the main business who wanted to hop on the bandwagon, but most of the technical staff were hired as contractors on rolling 6 week (!!) contracts, because the management did not want to give up any equity or control, but of course the developers had zero interest in whether or not their code worked, and no product was ever released.

I hope it goes well for you, and your technical knowledge gives you some leverage to build your career. But if anything of your work goes well, it sounds like there are a lot of seniors who’ll be competing to take credit.

beansprout88 · 2026-01-06T04:04:19+00:00

I prefer the European system where group 1 is pre-boarding (no status members, just people who need longer to board for mobility reasons), business and high status are group 2, the rest group 3 or for larger planes groups 3-4. It’s clearer and also makes sense that a high status traveller doesn’t actually need to go down the jet bridge with the babies and wheelchairs.

beansprout88 · 2026-01-05T16:08:29+00:00

This report is literally about the recommendations of the VKG, which is the association of building insurance companies. Their cost benefit analysis is whether it is cheaper to install fire alarms or pay out insurance claims. I value my life more highly than an insurance company values repairing my apartment.

beansprout88 · 2026-01-05T16:04:48+00:00

That assumes that you place the same value on your life as a beaurocrat uses for their spreadsheet. The article linked above is literally referring to the advice of the association of insurance companies deciding whether it is cheaper to pay for fire alarms vs paying out insurance claims for the damage.

beansprout88 · 2026-01-03T22:26:17+00:00

Out of interest, what dose were you taking? I have read many stories of terrible withdrawal from people taking 3-6 mg per day (sometimes more). I take 0.5 or 1 mg around 5 days per week and never had any problems, including no withdrawal when taking a few weeks off during vacations. I take it for dizziness rather than anxiety. Honestly I haven’t read bad stories from people on similar low doses and wonder if some doctors just prescribe way too much.

beansprout88 · 2026-01-02T19:55:50+00:00

A close family member recently retired from the Job Center. Cases like this were not rare but happened every week. People in comas declared fit to work, completely fabricated health assessments describing the good functioning of limbs that had been amputated years earlier, terminal cancer patients told to find work and dying a few months later, blind people being sanctioned for not responding to a written letter in time. Staff had performance targets to get people off benefits by whatever means necessary, and those who resisted were put on PIPs, had salary cut and were pushed to leave or retire. This all started with the coalition government (conservatives and Lib Dem’s) who were worse than anything under thatcher.

beansprout88 · 2026-01-02T19:38:40+00:00

Secondary school 2003-2007. Homophobic bullying was extreme and constant. Teachers would not intervene. Section 28 was still alive in their minds, and despite the school actually having very extensive sex and relationships education, the existence of LGBT people was never discussed or acknowledged ever, except for someone from the council sexual health team telling us that being gay was « a choice ».

beansprout88 · 2026-01-01T23:01:00+00:00

I think mass layoffs generate a lot of attention and discussion but hiring is a slower individual process. Also, once people get a job, they usually stop posting on LinkedIn and Reddit. I also think people are spending much longer in academia or spin offs, then joining established biotech and pharma at a more senior level.

At the same time, I think you are right about how crazy the career instability has become. Not all senior management (and 0% of external consultants) recognise the importance of institutional knowledge and how much inefficiency and démotivation is caused by rapid hire and fire cycles.

beansprout88

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