I personally do not care about Problem 1. I mostly use Twitter in a passive way -- following people that are experts on the topics that I'm interested in. I assume if you want to get a reasonable following you need to put quite the effort in it.
Problem 2 appears but I've noticed that muting works well enough to avoid it.
Problem 3 does not seem to be Twitter-specific but again blocking and muting seems to work for me as well.
My personal take is that something brings value to you or not depending on how you use it. Here is a quote from (https://perell.com/note/the-paradox-of-abundance/) that resonates with me:
"The Explore Tab on Twitter is the most important newspaper in the world. It’s littered with celebrity gossip and exaggerated political drama — both of which yield a wide reach but incentivize empty content. And yet, as the Paradox of Abundance predicts, Twitter is also one of the world’s top intellectual communities. It’s the bedrock of my social and intellectual life. It’s a place to make friends, raise your ambitions, and connect directly with people at the top of their fields. And yet, most people use Twitter to consume information with no nutritional value."
1) This is anecdotal evidence but as far as I know it's difficult for non-EU people to get a work permit in Switzerland. I know quite a few students that completed the CS Master in ETHZ and that are from Egypt or China, etc. that could not get a job in Switzerland because it was hard to get a permit. Similar for Indian students that did their ETH Master in mechanical engineering, etc. All the students that I know wanted to stay and work in Switzerland.
2) Again, I might be wrong, but I feel a number of CS PhD students in ETHZ and EPFL are getting paid by European programs (e.g, ERC). So, it's not necessarily Swiss taxes that pay these people.
3) At the end of the day, the Swiss government or any government is making an investment on those students. As any investment, it might be profitable or not. Some students might stay in the country and pay back the investment by founding companies, getting good salaries and paying higher taxes, etc. versus some students that might just go back to their country. Actually, to me, it seems like a pretty good investment. If some student studies in China and then comes to Switzerland, Switzerland might have to pay for his/her education for a Master and a PhD, but Switzerland never paid for his kindergarten, primary, high-school and college years, etc., because for example China already paid for this.
4) Most of the papers getting published in universities (at least for CS) are published due to the hard work done by graduate and post-graduate students (with the help of their supervisor of course). Even if the students decide to leave Switzerland afterwards, they still increased the research-throughput of the Swiss university in which they worked. I believe we can agree that, that in itself is good.
To point 2): the EU research programs are co-financed by Switzerland. Otherwise, Switzerland wouldn't be allowed to participate in these programs. Hence, the EU research grants are still Swiss tax money in one or another way.
I have read most of the chapters in this book.
I would say it's mostly about learning the concepts themselves and in this regard the book is extremely helpful. Additionally, each chapter has a historical context about Lamport's work and how it influenced future systems, research, etc. It's more like a related work section in a paper. But you could easily skip these parts if you're not interested in them.
The book is not hard to read. Each chapter is written independently and hence the chapters can also be read independently. Each chapter presents in an accessible manner some ideas taken from a couple of Lamport's seminal papers.
In this sense, I believe reading Paxos from this book (chapter "Chapter 4 State Machine Replication with Benign Failures") would be much easier than reading Lamport's "Paxos Made Simple" paper. Actually, chapter 4 is a great read even if you know Paxos.
What I found really helpful in reducing Youtube viewing time, is to use a browser-extension that hides recommended video all together. This way, you only watch videos you explicitly searched for.
Not necessarily. To suggest that souvenirs are only used for showing off is pretty cynical. For example, I cannot fathom how people buying fridge magnets use them to let everybody know about their trip. I doubt they buy them with the intention of signaling to their house guests every time the guests look at their fridge.
A lot of people buy souvenirs (memorabilia) just for themselves because they evoke nice memories.
If the goal was to let everybody know that you went travelling, you can simply post pictures in some social media network.
Problem 2 appears but I've noticed that muting works well enough to avoid it.
Problem 3 does not seem to be Twitter-specific but again blocking and muting seems to work for me as well.
My personal take is that something brings value to you or not depending on how you use it. Here is a quote from (https://perell.com/note/the-paradox-of-abundance/) that resonates with me: "The Explore Tab on Twitter is the most important newspaper in the world. It’s littered with celebrity gossip and exaggerated political drama — both of which yield a wide reach but incentivize empty content. And yet, as the Paradox of Abundance predicts, Twitter is also one of the world’s top intellectual communities. It’s the bedrock of my social and intellectual life. It’s a place to make friends, raise your ambitions, and connect directly with people at the top of their fields. And yet, most people use Twitter to consume information with no nutritional value."