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.

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 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.

Parisians are a whole different breed of people. Actually, that's too nice. They're assholes. I watched my Quebecois travelling companion speak in perfect French to a counter person, who virtually sneered at him before ignoring him completely and speaking to me in English. They've got being rude down to an art form, truly. Outside the city though, we got treated like long lost cousins - all due to his French. Same experience in Italy with an Italian speaking travel partner. Paris is, um, special, no doubt.

My wife speaks pretty decent French, which leads to amusing scenarios in Paris where she speaks in French to a person who insists in replying in (sometimes poor) English. Often they both persevere in the opposite languages to their own, leading to a weird inversion of what you would imagine would be the most efficient communications strategy!

I would guess there might be a few motivations for people to do this though, not necessarily just rudeness. Misplaced helpfulness, wanting to save face by not switching languages back, practicing English, who knows?

(What's really funny is when they finally give up and revert to French and then address a question to me - only for me to shrug with embarrassment and tell them I don't speak French.)

Does your wife have an alternative language to switch to? Maybe trump their English with a couple of sentences of German, or Spanish?

I wouldn't advocate being an asshole usually, but for Parisians speaking in English at you to be snobs, just compliment them on their impeccable English skills and suggest that means they must have some Englishman blood in them.

It may have also been what your friend said — French people are quite formal compared to Canadians and Americans — I know some French and was corrected a couple of times based on how I started the conversation: “Good evening” first, then start... most Americans at least don’t talk that way

Another 'politeness' example that can often trip people up is 'tu' offending people in France in situations where it would be perfectly normal in Quebec.

Everybody says this about Parisians, but I haven't found it to be true. I've visited Paris 3 times for a total of almost 3 weeks and met very few rude people. I've met a lot more assholes in Manhattan than in Paris. Of course, I follow the French rules of politeness. I always start with "Bonjour/Bonsoir" and always finish any visit with "Merci, bon journée/soirée, Au revoir." On the other hand, I've seen plenty of rude behavior by American tourists who just start speaking English to French people without any greeting or any attempt at French.

Canadian French is very different from France's, be it the accent, the idioms, the vocabulary.

As a native French speaker travelling in Montreal, I often found it easier to talk English with French speaking people, to my great shame.

I recall a simple transaction with a cashier in a supermarket, and having her repeat the simplest things (like "hello") a couple time because I had no idea what she was saying or if she even was speaking French, this was awfully embarrassing.

Although I agree, Parisians are asshole.

Parisians are SO awful. I studied abroad there for a year and was shocked to find that many of them (especially women my age -- and I'm a woman) were nastier than New Yorkers. All the French friends I made were a) not native Parisians and b) mostly male. But I spent Spring Break in the South of France and most people there were supremely kind and tolerated my accented French.

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.

Quebec French sounds very different to European French.

Weird. My partner and I visit Paris annually for weeks at a time. I've had maybe one or two rude experiences that I can think of. Everyone else I've encountered has been pleasant.

I am a very fat American tourist who has spent a total of two months in Paris in my life. I never met any impatience with my terrible terrible French from any Parisians at all.

How I truly wish I had had your experience. I'll be honest, I haven't been back in over a decade so maybe things are better now. That would be great.

I've been visiting Paris for 40+ years and I've noticed a distinct difference in sentiment over the past 5-10. Perhaps it's the younger generation or the freedom of movement within the EU or some other factors.

Good to know - I visited Paris at the end of the eighties, with friends, and it was a terrible experience. After two days we fled the city. I was yelled at when trying to buy metro tickets, because my pronunciation and word selection was slightly off - I remember I literally backed away several steps from the counter. Restaurants.. all bad. We met a total of two nice people, one young guy with a button which said he would speak English, and an old woman who didn't speak a word of English but still came running when she saw us studying a map. They were both very helpful. Everybody else? Not very much. Not at all, really. Train stations, other public services - speak perfect French, or get ignored (at best).

And at that time I had been travelling to lots of countries for years, and I never had any trouble communicating with people. Big cities, villages at mountain tops, desolated island towns. People were nice everywhere. Except for Paris.

If that has changed for the better recently then that's truly good news.

I confess I was surprised myself.

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.