Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right there with the 'both sides are the same' false equivalence... In case you're wondering why.
[deleted]
Oh look, video evidence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmaZR8E12bs
112 Gripes About the French
211–220 of 365 posts
Re: 112 Gripes About the French
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another thing that's been mostly sweeped under the rug wrt WW2 is that Russia both did the most damage to the German army and paid the highest price. America only started their offensive after Russia started winning and likely only wanted to deny them Europe. And the heavy casualties in the war likely caused Russia to fold on the cold war as well, there were just not enough able men after the war to create families w…
True but the USSR was ally of Germany, two dictator states started world war two.
The USSR and Germany concluded a non-aggression-pact in 1939 with a secret amendment to divide Poland and the Baltic states between themselves. This late became known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (or Hitler-Stalin-Pact, or Nazi-Soviet-Pact). With the Sowjet occupation of Bukovina in 1940 and definitely the German attack on the USSR ("Operation Barbarossa") in 1941, the pact was defunct.
In December of 1941, after Pearl Harbour, the US entered the war, and then you had the main combatants in place:
The allies with the USSR (Stalin), USA (Roosevelt), British Empire (Churchill), France (de Gaulle), Republic of China (Chiang Kai-Shek), against
The axis with Germany (Hitler), Italy (Mussolini), and Japan (Hirohito).
Re: 112 Gripes About the French
#213The opening paragraphs are lovely and absolutely not what I'd expected based on the name. This is the America we want to live in. "We insist upon the right to express our own opinions. But we also believe in the right of others to express their opinions. For the right to speak involves the duty to listen...We know that the truth can only be found through open and honest discussion, and that the common good is served…
xkcd doesn't agree with the "duty to listen". https://xkcd.com/1357/
That xkcd actually reinforces the duty to listen, but clarifies that nobody has a right to a specific response from listeners.
Re: 112 Gripes About the French
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
This website has serious problems with its voting culture. The serial downvoters should be banned from the site, but they never will be, because dang doesn't see the problem. You can't take disagree, and you can't agree. Whatever, I'm out. Life's too short.
I’ve found ‘chat’-style comments are downvoted i.e the internet equivalent of small talk.
Except when they're not. For example, when something about a specific retro computing feat is posted, people will just ramble about something very faintly related that they saw or did or purchased or dreamed about recently. E.g. topic is about an Amiga accelerator card, and there will be someone mentioning how they recently cleaned up the Amiga 500 they had in the garage -- like, who cares? Exactly like the comment we're discussing now: nobody cares except the author of that comment. Yet I never see those downvoted, and I know if I responded to them pointing out that this isn't their blog, I'd get downvoted.
I just looked at the front page, this is literally the first discussion I clicked on before even getting to search for "retro" or "Amiga" as I would have otherwise:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27864139
What is the content here? "For some reason I thought something else"... okay? Yet that isn't greyed out, it is the top comment. Why? Because of "Karnaugh map"? There are no replies because it offers nothing to discuss except more such ramblings about what someone might have encountered or lazily assumed (or pretends they have assumed so they can casually drop that they know a thing).
Re: 112 Gripes About the French
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This one could apply to our relationship with China maybe? This is absolutely nothing like the situation with China, which is definitely NOT an ally of the west. Shortly after assuming his position as President of the People's Republic of China, Xi Jinping disseminated a secret internal paper with his most important views and plans, including the 7 biggest threats to China in his eyes. In 2013, this "document numbe…
Isn't the republican party dismantling democracy right at this moment? Also, America is a friend of human rights mostly as lip service, see Hague Invasion Act. And the calling American corporate media independent is a stretch. If these are the most fundamental values to Americans, they do a poor job defending them.
If you're looking at the dismantling of human rights I think the left and right are equally culpable.
Re: 112 Gripes About the French
#216Impressive honesty in the first pages
Re: 112 Gripes About the French
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're conflating race with ethnicity and nationality, which makes all three concepts meaningless.
The connotations of the term race has changed. It was definitely common in the fairly recent past (WWI) for English people to speak of Germans as a different race, indeed using the term more like we would use ethnicity today. See also the English division of India into martial and non-martial "races". You are implying a use of the term which is more influenced by biology and some vague, folksy notion of genetic/darwi…
The definitions I've known have remained stable until very recently. I'll stick with Race: genetics; Ethnicity: the group/tribe one "grows up" or is most shaped by; Nationality: the country you're in/from.
They can all align to (mostly) one group, like in India and China, or can be mostly aligned like in northern Europe, or a melting pot like the US.
It's the "connotations" (i.e. conflations) that are the reason that almost everything is labeled "racist".
Re: 112 Gripes About the French
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
(European here) my grandparents bathed I think once per week, we often joked about this in the family. My uncle who is a commercial construction inspector/engineer arranged for a full bathroom model a couple years before they died. When we went to sell the house he complained the bathroom was unused and looked the same as the day he signed off on it. Despite this, they never smelled bad to me, they certainly had a re…
There might be other factors too, like changing into pajamas at night (possibly changing underwear or no underwear), and then fresh clothes in the morning? As for hair, there's a whole "no shampoo" movement, takes a few weeks for the scalp to adjust.
To what extent is someone's "smell" a product of their local dermal biome and what they've been inoculated with, so to speak, via sharing deodorant, clothing, activity level, diet, etc?
Re: 112 Gripes About the French
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This one could apply to our relationship with China maybe? This is absolutely nothing like the situation with China, which is definitely NOT an ally of the west. Shortly after assuming his position as President of the People's Republic of China, Xi Jinping disseminated a secret internal paper with his most important views and plans, including the 7 biggest threats to China in his eyes. In 2013, this "document numbe…
We have to make a distinction here. The book is about the French, the people, and how they are when you live with them in their own country. Almost all news about China are not about the people of China, but instead treat China as a single entity defined by its government. I think GP has a point is that we could get a better understanding of China by considering the people, their culture and how they live on a day-to…
== The book is about the French, the people, and how they are when you live with them in their own country==
But almost entirely through the lens of “they are our longest ally and have fought alongside us multiple times.”
Re: 112 Gripes About the French
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can't compare a nationality to an ethnicity/religion and a race, respectively.
Why?
Race operates on an individual regardless of their behavior. It is a construct that is based on physical appearance only. Race is something that an individual has no control over.
Culture and ethnicity are constructs derived from behaviors, including language, manner of dress, interests, etc.
Culture/ethnicity is something that depending on the individual, they can have far more (though not total) control over, via changing manner of dress, language, etc.
Discrimination can be based on either one, but the immutability of the former distinguishes it from the latter.