Same thing in France. I also live and Paris and don’t really know what the other commenter is talking about: bikes and electric scooters are not supposed to be ridden on the sidewalk, and from my experience rarely are if there’s an available bike lane. The only places I regularly see bikes on the sidewalk are those where the road infrastructure makes it too dangerous to ride a bike on a street

Sure, that’s great but it’s not even the point. Fundamental research and other type of “useless” scientific endeavors help humanity as a whole to better understand our universe but would never be privately funded because they don’t have any concrete and immediate financial benefits. This is precisely what a government should finance, because no one else would do it and yet it’s small stuff like that that make us collectively move forward as a species