napban

I remember covering this topic in a poster presentation at medical school. It's a perennial news article that, despite popping up on an annual basis, is always presented as a crazy new idea.

The fact that ketamine is a street drug makes it a prime topic for click-bait articles. It's a case of the usual bad science in media.

NYT is no better a source to cite for medical topics than the Daily Mail is for Computer Science!

This can work both ways.

Yes, I have occasionally missed out on things as I don't use Facebook, WhatsApp, etc.

However...

I find that instant messaging enables and promotes poor organisational skills in colleagues. Rather than processing tasks in a timely and professional manner, they have a safety net of being able to send a group message at 23:30 the night before a meeting the next day. I also find that instead of a well planned, concise email, these people will spam colleagues with a string of brain-fart messages until, 60 minutes later, a consensus is reached.

Funnily enough, when there is no option for this, people never have a problem contacting me in a professional way.

This is a myth, just as it's a myth that New Yorkers are rude horrible people who will yell at you in the street.

I'd argue that there is a surprisingly homogeneous distribution of horrible people throughout the big cities of the world.

I feel the need to comment on my original post to clarify (as it appears I may have been misunderstood)...

I strongly dislike Paris - the city - not Parisians or non-Parisian French living there.

I dislike it the same way I dislike London. To someone like me, more at home in the countryside, it's just a noisy, sprawling, unclean armpit of a place. My opinion (and one shared by many French people I spoke to) is that Paris is no longer French in the same way that London is no longer English. They effectively operate as city states.

I really dislike this cliche that Parisians are rude. It is absolutely untrue, and usually the product of tourists not understanding French culture and inadvertently causing offence. It is also a product of people only visiting the hellhole tourist areas. Like most French people I wouldn't dream of going to those areas unless you paid me!

As an unbias observer (neither a proper local, nor a proper tourist) I can definitely say that the rudeness of tourists far far outweighs the rudeness of the locals. In fact, I don't recall any direct rudeness from locals at all. On the other hand, seeing tourists behave in a disrespectful manner was a daily occurrence.

That's definitely true as evidenced by the huge numbers of people who can survive living in various countries without learning more than a handful of words in the host language.

The highest yield for me has been 1:1 video call tutoring (italki) by a long margin.

The big problem with Duolingo in my opinion is the computer generated French audio sounds nothing like actual French.

Written French sounds nothing like French.

Marketing hype from the makers of those resources, and people who have bought into the claims of instant, no effort, guaranteed results.

I second this.

I lived in a bland, boring commuter suburb of Paris for 2 months to improve my French. Completely different to central Paris which I came to hate as much as the French. Even my poor French trumped people's willingness to switch to English, and many people in the suburbs speak very little English. So it's possible to get immersion even in a city like Paris.

I'm just starting out in a medical career, but keen to pursue a career in Radiology.

I'm curious about your background with a computer science degree. Have you found opportunities to make use of your interests in relation to Radiology?

My knowledge with computing is just limited to messing around with Linux, but I'm keen to learn more (for fun as well as career development). Are there any pathways you would recommend as high-yield for combining with a career in Radiology? My primary motivation is just enjoying tech, but it would be nice to develop my skills in a direction that allows me to incorporate an element of computing into my future work (whether that be side projects, academic research, or just making me more productive).

I was also pleasantly surprised by this film. Very enjoyable.