This reminds me of a Neal Stephenson quote from Snow Crash which seems relevant:
"When it gets down to it — talking trade balances here — once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here — once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel — once the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity — y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else:
music
movies
microcode (software)
high-speed pizza delivery”
There's a very interesting video from Keith's Code's superbike school where they built a motorcycle with an extra handle bar that's fixed to the bike to prove that leaning doesn't actually turn the bike much at all.
I know this works for sure on a motorcycle, and I've tried this experiment on a bicycle too, you can turn a bike right just by pushing the handlebar forward with your right hand. Totally counter intuitive but it works and I'm pretty sure we do it subconsciously when we lean by pushing on the handlebar and we end up counter-steering.
Few examples I've observed on my 3 month visit there that I haven't seen anywhere else:
1. You can walk in the crowd at the shibuya crossing with your wallet sticking out of your back pocket filled with cash and not worry about getting pick pocketed.
2. Everyone carries around a portable ash tray with them when they smoke and never throw cigarette butts on the ground.
3. No one throws any trash on the ground. Garbage cans are hard to find too and everyone just carries their trash with them.
Steve Jobs was a fruitarian for a while iirc and he died from pancreatic cancer. I wonder if all the fruit juices he drank had something to do with him getting cancer of the organ that creates a hormone to control blood sugar.
If that's your answer then you shouldn't be applying for a job in the first place. It seems like your attitude would make you a difficult person to work with. Instead you should monetize and work on your own projects.
The problem is it's not that simple though because interviewers like to ask really language specific questions for example a C interviewer favorite: what are the different uses of 'static' in C.
This analogy sort of works because despite what we see in media, men aren't typically the choosers when it comes to relationships, especially when there's an oversupply.
In this case PhDs, like women, aren't choosing to settle either.
"When it gets down to it — talking trade balances here — once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here — once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel — once the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity — y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else: music movies microcode (software) high-speed pizza delivery”