There is no allies to the US anymore, only clients that are expected to pay for protection and to obey.

(hi, from France).

I understand your reasoning, but 47 still sounds like a lot but that’s just me. Knowing my (old) eyesight do decline regularly, I would not order more than a few at once. But as someone who see little interest in changing for the sake of changing and is deeply allergic to the way glasses are overpriced around here… That’s quite smart, I must say.

I’ve never used Aliexpress (public confession mode on), may I ask if there is a way to also select the width of the frame? My head may now be bald as a baby’s bottom, It’s also fairly thick and broad and standard frames won’t fit ;)

Abonné à plusieurs quotidiens FR (et un US) et quelques magazines.

Je reçois la version papier par courrier et je ne lis pas en ligne, même si j’ai accès à la version digitale avec l’abo print, tout simplement parce qu’avec le papier il n’y a pas de tracking de ce que je lis ou comment je le lis (à part mon choix de journaux, bien entendu) et ça me semble particulièrement important quand il s’agit de s’informer et/ou de politique. Du moins dans une démocratie fonctionelle.

Edit: dans les magazines, il y a d’autres choses que politique et information: j’ai quelques hobbies, aussi ;)

astuce: (je viens d’arrêter à cause de mon déménagepment, mais…) ces 25 dernières années, avec un voisin nous partagions les coûts des abonnements vu que nous avions pas mal d’intérêts commun en terme de lectures. J’en payais quelques uns et les lui filait à après lecture, il en payait d’autres et me les filait.

Le plaisir est pour moi, merci de ta lecture.

What will people do the day they realize fascists and their sympathizers are breathing the exact same air they themselves breath? Boycott breathing?

I’m getting tired being shown that kind of FUD shit posts about whatever some CEO has or has not done regarding their personal political views and preferences.

Sure, that’s obviously a me issue (and, yeah, quite obviously too, I must be one of those assholes too), but since it seems rather difficult to filter out that kind of content from Lemmy/piefed without actually risking removing most other content at the same time, I will take that as a hint it maybe simpler to remove myself for around here.

I have most of what I need/want outside of the Internet (books, newspapers, people to discuss with, places to go,… even my music and movies are physical media/offline). I would get back a tad more free time, I guess which would probably be great ;)

I regularly read books in English and then in their French translation, out of curiosity. It happens less often the other way around (because there is, sadly for the US, a lot less French authors being translated into English) but I’ll do it on occasions. I don’t focus much on the cover, to be honest.

Why can the title be so different once translated (not all the time)? For the same reasons it a movie title can be so different too, I suppose: market studies and cultural context. The same with the cover design: what sells in the USA probably would not sell that well in a few European countries.

I don’t visualize it. It’s just there, just escaped from my head right onto the paper, and it’s written just how one is supposed to be writing it.

To me, it’s a question of practice. The more (regularly) you write the more it become a reflex, the more you enrich your vocabulary (read widely, read as often as possible) the more you will ‘know’ words and how to write them (also true for grammar and full sentences). I never think about crossing the t or put on accent on ‘à, é, è, ë, and so on’ when I need one… it comes naturally because I internalized the various (French, or whatever other languages I can write) grammatical rules.

BTW, it’s ok to forget them on occasions, provided the word/sentence remains legible. My handwriting is pretty shitty but I’m used to reading it so I need not write every single accentuation or diacritic sign in order to be by able to re-read myself. I also devised my own shorthand along the years and most of my notes will be written using that shorthand (meaning a lot of symbols instead of traditional words)… I would never use shorthand, and would take a lot more care with accents and punctuation (and grammar) knowing someone else will be reading what I write.

As for the signature, I just decided on mine when I was maybe 15 or 16 and have kept using it since then, now nearing my 60. So, yeah it just flows out of the pen without me thinking much about it.

As keen as I am to spend my day groveling to some mod, who’s probably as charmingly direct as your good self, to determine which petty rule my entirely vanilla post transgressed, I think I’d rather just get on with my life.

Then, why even bother mentioning it? Not trolling, it’s a real question: if it’s not worth you asking the concerned person their motivation/reasoning, what interest is there for you in sharing it online with random people like myself?

Can anywhere here please suggest me where I can find free help to start my own Marketing Agency?

You don’t.

You don’t create an agency from scratch, you create an Agency out of talents. SO you need some talents to begin with. Yours or some hired ones.

You need to show people what you can sell them before they will be willing to put a cent on your name… Even more so in the age of AI where every single person able to click a big fat mouse button and to type a few words in web form now consider themselves the best creative ever/ So, what can you give your customers no AI will give them in a couple clicks?

If you have zero money, you should still be able to find some time to develop your skills and your business… by yourself. Without help and without… much income either, if any. If you can’t, well that is probably what you should work on first as you will need a way to sustain yourself for a certain time.

To find customers, I would start by soliciting every single local businesses around my place, in person I mean. Local businesses? Yep the kind that most will probably not even consider potential customers because they’re so small and so not hyped. The thing is that you (nor would I, btw) probably won’t get an exclusive deal with Nike or Apple or Louis Vuitton tomorrow. By working with them you will 1) build expertise (here the real value is) 2) build a portfolio (look at what I can do) 3) build an address book (aka meet people who may want to hire you or that may want to work with you)

Also, keep in mind failing (over and over again) is at the heart of learning anything difficult. And becoming a pro in any endeavor certainly qualify as ‘difficult’.

Would you read it daily?

I read no book daily. I read a book until it is finished or until I’m done with it. I may read some book multiple times, some even on an almost regular schedule (a few I will read reach year or so) but I see no reason to read the same book over and over again while there are so many more books waiting to be read.

funniest book ever written

Good luck beating some of those I’ve already read ;)

It has funny pictures.

I don’t care much in a book.

Would you send it to all your friends urging them to read it?

Surest way for most of them to never read it. Instead, I would hint at that certain book I really enjoyed, sharing a few snippets or key notions.

Yeah, I suppose they’re easy to find in many of ‘western’ Europe at least. Probably a bit like the Bic brand for ballpoint pens?

Btw, thx a lot as I could not remember the word ‘stationary’… must be too hot around here at 38°c, brain must be cooking ;)

Living in France myself and Clairefontaine (and Rhodia, as they belong to the same group which may explain why the paper feel kinda comparable) being French companies, it’s quite easy to find them absolutely … everywhere (be it in a supermarket, an office supply store (fancy or vanilla stationary), even your local ‘épicerie’ will often sell some pack of looseleaf as well as notebooks in various sizes), at a price affordable enough for kids to use in school.
BTW, it is also my go to paper ;)

There’s like this weird, subtle one upmanship about every little thing and a lot of people are very nitpicky and judgmental

Like on any other social network, no?

The issue I see around here is that there are very few of us (we’re not Twitter or Reddit or whatever) so the negativity is always more visible and more noticeable. Then, any user that leave is a real loss because there are already so few of us.

It kind of takes the fun out of being on here, TBH. Or am I the only one experiencing this?

I would not have stayed on Lemmy/piefed had I not learned to filter out what I call its constant ‘noise’ (by blocking users, blocking keywords and by only showing content I’m subscribed to in my feed), removing all the hatred, all the high moral ground political/moral/judgmental non-sense, and also removing the constant flow of low effort posts, and mere trolls. It’s still not perfect but it’s so much better like that!

I’m a patient dude, I’ll see how Lemmy/Piefed (d)evolves in the long run. I wish it won’t crumble under its own political non-sense, it’s constant hatred of anything they disagree with, but if it does, so be it. I will know I’ll have given it a fair chance, and did my part, to show it was not just that.

Old dude speaking, here:

• if you’re inexperienced like you said you were, you probably should not let some random person pay for everything at least when you first start dating them… They may (I insist, conditional form) quickly come to expect something out of all the money they’re spending with you. Maybe not but I would not take any chance, if I were in your shoes.
• As an old dude (bis) I think I should mention I’m always willing to purchase books for younger people (boys as well as girls), even kids, provided there is no possibility for my gift being misinterpreted as something I certainly do not wish it to be.

That’s more or less what I 'm saying: we need to work on those tools, not on filtering who is allowed to use them.

Adults are not that smarter than kids, imvho, they too could very easily be considered ‘victims’ of those manipulative tools. And maybe they should, watching how they poorly behave while they’re pretending to show kids what it means to be a ‘responsible adult’.

The idea is to replace cash not VISA (Europe has been working working on its own system for years). Without cash I won’t be able to purchase anything anonymously (more or less so)

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I have pretty harsh views on social media so I tend to believe everyone is better off without

you won’t find me anywhere but here, so we very well agree on that question. I just try to consider the issue itself more than what I may or may not think about it ;)

I remember composing letters in college, just barely pre-internet. It was a lovely art. Next time I find a book of letter, I’m picking it up.

+1 because I can’t do more :)

I’m a regular contact type of person. This whole thing of “we don’t talk for years but then we have a phone call and catch up” is not for me.

• It needs not be years, it’s just a way of speaking.
• Like anything new, we learn to be good at it. Remember your first bike ride? Mine hurt. How you learned to write? Was it by writing an amazing poem in an not less amazing cursive or was it by clumsily tracing batons letters (and getting them wrong)? Me too ;) Remember how you learned to walk? Was it by running and winning a marathon or by falling, over and over again on your diapered bottom? That’s learning and that’s worth it. Bot saying you should do this or that, just that maybe it’s worth trying even if it’s not that great to start with ;)