cost(s) of living

Yesterday, Andrew posted an announcement for a postdoc position in Paris, at the national medical research institute (INSERM) on Bayesian approaches to high throughput genetic analyses using nonlinear mixed effect models and the comments went ballistic about the low salary attached to this postdoctoral position, namely 2600€ – 3000€. As I have already commented on the rather stale clichés on French academics, let me briefly reflect on the limitations of comparing 3000€ a month in Paris with say $5000 a month in New York City. (Which seems to be at the high end of US postdoc salaries.) First, the posted salaries are “gross” but the French one already excludes the 25% taxes paid by the employer. I do not know if this is the case in the US. Second, comparing absolute values makes little sense imho. Even if the purchasing power parity is about one between France and the US, I think the long term cost of living [as opposed to visiting for a week] is lower here than there. If only because the amount is similar to, if higher than, the starting academic salaries and around the median salary. Interestingly, the same appears to be true for the US, if less favourably for the postdocs there.

say their names [a New Yorker cover]

unorthodox

Another series I watched during quarantine is the short and powerful Unorthodox, by Anna Winger, featuring the fantastic actress Shira Haas as Etsy, fleeing her unhappy marriage and the stifling rules set by her Hasidic community in Williamsburg, New York, to seek refuge in Berlin, although ambivalent to get help from her distanced mother once there. I found the story quite moving and intense in the slow unfolding of Etsy’s progressive unraveling of her un-orthodoxy and of her desperate escape into a world she knows nothing about. While her difficulties in apprehending this new universe are well rendered, I however find the part of the story when she joins a friendly group of music students somewhat too lazy a plot, although her fight there for achieving autonomy by herself only is remarkably transcribed. I am equally quite impressed by the show immersion into the Hasidic community, which is putting a considerable effort in replacing their tradition into an historical perspective and exposing the outworldly separation between men and women, who are essentially reduced to becoming mothers. The main strength of Unorthodox is that it keeps away from manichaeism, with people stuck into a frozen tradition and not seeing the oppression it induces. As most often with fundamentalism.

New York still

Grand Central Terminal