I do all the time — and I have concluded that the current administration has done themselves no favors whatsoever in this regard. I really can no longer give them the benefit of the doubt and I think it's on them.

Volvo Cars is Chinese-owned. What did he expect? Tell me one quality and reliable Chinese brand in North America, just one.

You don't know what their intentions are.

They are like the police or the car salesmen: they do this every day or so, you do it once every 5 years. If you're not careful, you won't even know what happened there, not until you see the consequences. Protect your own career and interests.

The best thing one can do both for oneself and the remaining employees is vote with their feet. If enough employees do that, things may change. Don't burn bridges when you leave.

I work for a boss whose anonymous yearly reviews are atrocious every single year. Nothing ever changes, he's still running the department. The organization is rotten to the top, and no honest feedback will ever change that. I bet not even most of us leaving.

ROTFL.

I'm quite sure that's their main job, finding out who are the adversaries of the regime.

Do you have any sources of them actually doing it or is it just a feeling?

Türkiye was just a hypothetical example. “Might”

Because they are not American nationals.

My last border crossing, a few days ago: "What was the purpose of your travel? ... What are you bringing back with you? ... Welcome home." Took one minute.

Good for you I guess but my point was lawful permanent residents shouldn't have to worry about memes on their phones.

Legally they should, especially if those memes are anti-American. They are subject to immigration law, which is constitutional.

We are so nice to non-citizens in America that many of them actually do think they are legally a citizen's equal, except for voting rights. (I used to think that myself.) They are not.

Everyone in the US is protected by the Bill of Rights, including the right to free speech. Even immigrants.

Are the grapes sour?

I've been seeing Mullvad billboards for years, including in Paris.

I don't think that Europeans have language advantages over Americans. America is way more multinational than Europe, by design. There are few European countries with multiple official languages; most only have one, like the US.

It's just that most Europeans' native language is not English or some other language spoken by hundreds of millions or billions of people. So they have to learn at least one foreign language to function in the modern world. And many European countries require children to learn two of them. Some require passing language exams as part of the high school graduation.

I studied English and French in school. My native tongue is spoken by about 15 million people in the world, the official language of my native country (which I also speak fluently) is spoken by about 20. One gets a lot of motivation from knowing that, by learning English, one will be able to speak to billions.

I agree with this to some extent. I am from the UK, which is pretty monolingual and with the same advantage as the US: we're native English speakers. So I think we do have a slight advantage, or put another way the incentive to learn another language isn't always there.

I think, based on my own experience, it is harder to to from English to another language for a variety of factors. Many native speakers will jump on the opportunity to practice with you, understandably. Everyone has different motivations and some will ask why are you even bothering if you speak English. Since there's almost always an English source for what you want, you have to avoid laziness as much as you can. Lastly a great majority of entertainment is in English - things like french rap are basically a crime against humanity.

That doesn't mean that every European you meet is automatically multilingual or automatically has English in one of their languages. Go to rural France and you will find plenty of monolingual french people. Italy is also somewhere English is not as widely spoken as you might think given the tourism (in fact outside major tourist areas, good luck). Go to the mountains in Switzerland and you might find people who speak a couple of national languages but no English.

You can however go "the other way" and for major languages there is an abundance of materials. I agree 100% with the sibling comment that there is something about the act of writing things out that helps with memorisation. I've done this with a few languages and I don't think flashcard apps are enough. Can they help? I guess a little. Are they going to make you fluent? Not a chance. Absolutely nothing beats taking a course and being dedicated to it, in my experience.

More generally I think what I am saying is that there is no magic shortcut, except being born to parents speaking multiple languages at you.