> Europe really needs to fix the funding issue and language fragmentation.
The language fragmentation certainly is an issue in the general workplace. But academia does use English as its lingua franca throughout most of the EU, though it might depend on the country. Certainly in places I've worked in academia - and yes, that has been in multiple countries in the EU - I've never had to utter a single word in something other than English in the workplace. But it is International English alright, which may be somewhat of a novelty to the native English speaker if they haven't been exposed.
> Even Amazon orders
That's wholly Amazon's problem. If I order something from BOL or Coolblue it arrives within 12-24 hours. Even small pop-and-mom webstores usually deliver within 1-2 business days. It's only Amazon that somehow manages to average more than a week (my last order at Amazon only arrived after 2 months. Guess why I no longer use their service).
> I've worked in academia - and yes, that has been in multiple countries in the EU - I've never had to utter a single word in something other than English in the workplace.
I have the same trajectory as you -- multiple countries in the EU, working in academia -- but different experiences for sure. Or at least a mixed bag.
Let me list them in order of how much English sufficed:
1. The Netherlands -- common knowledge is that their English is top notch and anecdotally it was the case as well, I also got by purely with English.
2. Germany -- their English is also good but I needed German in edge cases. One edge case was finding an apartment (not speaking German simply pushed you down the list of candidates, even with a full time job in academia). Another one were university rules and announcements; not every email was in English, but arguably easy to get by with modern translation tools.
3. Czechia & Poland -- English is good among the professors but the percentage of locals at the university level is so high that most internal meetings, announcements, local seminars take place in the local language. In my experience, non-faculty university staff (department secretaries, payroll, entrance security) usually strongly dislike speaking English or outright do not speak it at all.
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I've omitted some more cases where local languages are required. If you live in a country, you will eventually interact with the healthcare sector, where the language experience will likely mimic the experience at the workplace (for the countries above, it would be in the same order for the healthcare sector).
Another case is government bureaucracy. For most of the EU countries I've been to, the official language of the country is their local language and only their local language. This means that government employees are not required to speak any other language other than the official one to you, plus you might be required to fill in forms and communicate in the official language if you want to talk to them.
In my experience, the helpful/good ones may try to communicate with you in English but if you need something from them or if the bureaucrat had a bad day, you better start talking in the official language.
> Another case is government bureaucracy. For most of the EU countries I've been to, the official language of the country is their local language and only their local language. This means that government employees are not required to speak any other language other than the official one to you, plus you might be required to fill in forms and communicate in the official language if you want to talk to them.
This is true, and something I have indeed experienced. However, this is likely true for _any_ country where English is not the official language, not just those in the EU. Besides, understanding bureaucratic lingo is not just a matter of pure linguistics. Governmental concepts rarely translate 1:1 to another nation, even those with the same official language. If you migrate to another country, part and parcel of the experience is that you _must_ contend with bureaucratic principles, rules and institutes with which you are not familiar. There is no escaping that.
That said, at least here in the Netherlands, there is certainly a movement to provide more and more governmental information in English as well. I'm not going to dox myself, but for example my muni's English website looks nigh-identical to the Dutch one.
The problem is social life and informal discussions. I France or Germany you cannot have a normal life without a fairly good knowledge of the language.
Dutch cyclists also do all these things. As a driver in the Netherlands, you'll quickly learn that cyclists don't stick to any rules, they will cross red lights, use the wrong lane, use the sidewalk if it saves them 2 seconds, ignore yield signs etc, and in general they will come from every direction imaginable.
In a car, the onus is still on you to pay more attention. Defensive driving style is the norm - assume mistakes will be made and rules will be ignored. After all, you're driving a 1-2 ton machine whereas a cyclists will be generally be <100kg at slower speeds, bike included.
That said, road design of course matters a lot. In the Netherlands, bike lanes in 50 kph (~30 mph) zones are preferably separated by a curbstone. Meaning it is often physically impossible to cross into the car lane. Bike lanes for roads with higher speed limits are rare in urban areas, and nearly always curb-separated where they exist. Intersections will have islands for cyclists and pedestrians to pause. Most residential areas are 30 kph (~20mph) zones, where most bike lanes have dashed lines. Counterintuitively, cars are expected to drive with two wheels on the bike path in these cases. This prevents cyclists from being in the car's blind spot[0].
Is it really too much to ask cyclists to stay in the bike lane? not draft behind cars? don't wander into the oncoming traffic lane?
What good is a lawsuit going to do for a crippled cyclist?
I once took a performance driving class. One of the lessons is "be predictable". The other drivers have an excellent chance at missing your car if you're moving in a predictable fashion.
Cyclists rarely leave the bike lane for pleasure, it's usually either because a car is parked on the bike lane, pedestrians are walking on it, or because there's litter or a bad surface (bikes are much more sensitive to uneven road surface, but at the same time bike lanes, especially those that are separated from the road, are often built with lower standards than the streets).
Reading your comment one would think cyclists are just suicidal for the fun of it, but try to think of them as humans who have a goal to achieve and are trying to achieve it with the best efficiency/safety balance they can find, like other people. Cars are everywhere on the road, impeding and endangering cyclists, so it's often a matter of trying to find the "least dangerous" way to do something, and that might even involve getting on the wrong side of the road at times. But it's not for fun.
> Cyclists rarely leave the bike lane for pleasure, it's usually either because a car is parked on the bike lane, pedestrians are walking on it, or because there's litter or a bad surface
I see them doing it all the time, and I can clearly see there is no problem with the bike lane.
Also remember cyclists actually have to work to keep their momentum. Did you stop and check for crushed bottles? Glass will puncture your tires on a bike
> Cyclists rarely leave the bike lane for pleasure, it's usually either because a car is parked on the bike lane, pedestrians are walking on it, or because there's litter or a bad surface (bikes are much more sensitive to uneven road surface, but at the same time bike lanes, especially those that are separated from the road, are often built with lower standards than the streets).
Or you know, turning left (or turning right in the UK). Or entering a roundabout, where it's generally better to take your lane, if you are not leaving at the first exit.
Can you think of why it is a good idea for vehicles which weigh 2000kg and more to be used to transport 90kg loads all day long at needless risk to lesser road users?
Why can't the motor vehicle industry develop smaller powered vehicles sheltered from the elements for personal transport, something not much more than a 3 wheeled scooter with a canopy?
As a technically aware guy does that really make sense?
Motor vehicles as they are are primarily recreational vehicles and status symbols, not means of moving 100kg individuals and their handbags or briefcases if they are carrying any around town.
Do you ride as a commuter, or as a recreational cyclist or as Strava beater?
The point I'm making here is that a commuter cyclist is not supposed to be hyperaware or extra vigilant of the dangers they are surrounded by if they are not riding on a dedicated motor highway.
In fact riding on what in the UK we call the hard shoulder on the motorway (which is illegal anyway) is way way more safer than riding in the city, even though there may be cars whizzing by at 70mph.
Drivers going around town don't drive in a hyper-aware state for fear that they may be crushed by an 80 ton battle tank traveling at over 70mph for a minor lapse in judgement, or even carelessness. They even divert their attention to fiddle about on their mobile phones and their Tesla touch screens without coming to any harm.
Why should a cyclist making the 15 minute 3 mile journey in to work in an urban environment be in a hyper-vigilant mental state unlike the driver?
I'm not saying it is okay for cyclists to ride around in alackadaisical manner which too many of them do, but the consequences for such lapses should not be death or serious injury, especially if they are just riding around town.
When a cyclist says that they find their 4 mile commute to work more stressful than the weekend rides out of town where they may do a 100 miles in day, you know there is a problem, and this is an experienced cyclist.
Take a look at this clip and tell me where the young woman erred? In fact she didn't. If the driver had been ahead of her in the outer lane, checked for her presence before swinging out and waited for her to pass there would have been no danger. He just swung out from the inner lane assuming that she had noticed him, when she hadn't and had no cause to.
There is nothing to even suggest that the side of the cab had turn indicators that she would have noticed when he begin signalling only after getting alongside her - in the other lane -.
The comments should tell you the kind of dangers cyclists face, and it is usually drivers most of the time.
Please remember that not all cyclists by nature are as aware as you are, but they should still be able to ride their bikes just like drivers who may be even less than vigilant cyclists.
You say this as if cars adhere to the rules given at all times. The difference is that bikes do it at their own peril and cars do it at the peril of others. Give cyclists good infrastructure separate from cars and they'll use it.
I'm sorry but anecdotal evidence is barely any evidence at all. I could list a very large number of news reports of cars ramming in to houses an businesses, which I can promise you are not built in a lane.
Bike lanes and car lanes should be physically separated, sure for bikes to not veer out of lane, but more importantly to keep cars in theirs.
In any of these situations cars are still the ones bringing a 1.5k bundle of glass and steel to the fight.
Just take a quick look at https://x.com/WorldBollard for numerous examples of cars going all over the place and making a mess of it.
> Is it really too much to ask cyclists to stay in the bike lane?
Yes, this is like asking cars to stay in their lane. How often do you see a car outside of their lane? For me, every day.
Even if everyone had perfect intentions, mistakes would still be made. What then? Everyone has been operating on the assumption mistakes would not be made. So then, your assumption was incorrect. If you instead assume mistakes will be made, i.e. defensive driving, then you're better off.
That sounds like an odd setup. Any chance this was near the airport?
Also did you visit the Netherlands, or only Amsterdam? Because honestly, Amsterdam is in a league of its own with the hordes of tourists who have no clue what they are doing on a bike.
I cannot agree more, the cyclists and all the high speed scooters are crazy in Amsterdam. Horrible experience. Everytime trying to cross a roads it felt like I am risking my life.
In my first job out of university, I inherited a data pipeline that had been written in Make using ~40 Makefiles. Needless to say, it was a hell to debug.
This is the default in the Netherlands for many office jobs as well. Usually in the form of 'Subclause 2: The nature of the job may demand work beyond the stated hours in subclause 1. If this occurs, no additional payment shall be made'.
Never had a job where that wasn't a clause in the contract.
I was paying for both. Then I canceled both. I hate the fact that they sensor what I am trying to do or test. Everyone has a different career path. It does not tailor to me. I am in cyber security. I wish they sold consumer gpus with 80gb or 250gb of ram. Would live to run some large llms locally that could assist with code automation.
Had a similar experience. What killed it for me, is that no statistics can be gathered for JSONB columns. This in turn really messes with the query planner once you do something like `select a.* from a join b on a.id = b.a_id where b.my_jsonb_column ->> 'foo' = 'bar';`.
Given the lack of statistics, the query planner loves going for a nested loop rather than hash or merge join where those would appropriate, leading to abysmal performance.
There is an thread[0] on the PostgreSQL mailing list to add at least some statistics on JSONB column, but this has gone nowhere since 2022.
it's kind of dumb that postgres uses a nested loop join instead of a hash join there. hash join almost always has the best worst-case behavior, and without stats it should be the default choice.
The language fragmentation certainly is an issue in the general workplace. But academia does use English as its lingua franca throughout most of the EU, though it might depend on the country. Certainly in places I've worked in academia - and yes, that has been in multiple countries in the EU - I've never had to utter a single word in something other than English in the workplace. But it is International English alright, which may be somewhat of a novelty to the native English speaker if they haven't been exposed.
> Even Amazon orders
That's wholly Amazon's problem. If I order something from BOL or Coolblue it arrives within 12-24 hours. Even small pop-and-mom webstores usually deliver within 1-2 business days. It's only Amazon that somehow manages to average more than a week (my last order at Amazon only arrived after 2 months. Guess why I no longer use their service).