112 Gripes About the French • Hacker News Board

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#291

Post by jollybean » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 7:46 PM UTC

afr0ck wrote: post #232

ThePadawan wrote: post #9

> (...) tensions began to rise between the French and the U.S. military personnel stationed in the country, with the former seeing the latter as arrogant and wanting to flaunt their wealth, and the latter seeing the former as proud and resentful. Well. I mean... Joking aside, the text is amazingly blunt and honest, in a rather refreshing way. "The French don't bathe." The French don't bathe often enough. They can't.…

I like the fact that the French didn't like American presence on their sole and had offensive feelings towards that, while at the same time, they were forcefully present all over Africa with totalitarian and oppressive military administrations. In Algeria, many fought in WW2 as part of the French Expeditionary Corps (e.g; my great-grandfather) with the hope that in case the allies win, Algerians could possibly negoti…

Geopolitical ambitions were well beyond the daily awareness of French citizens, moreover, we don't know what the average French citizens view on those things would be.

Most of them just lived through existential horror.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#292

Post by jollybean » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 7:48 PM UTC

Same thing in the UK during the years long wait for D-Day.

Americans were very well paid relative to their UK peers and of course didn't have the existential angst of broken nation facing uncomfortable odds. American GI's would be jovial and upbeat while having definitely enough money to spend at the pub, which caused problems.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#293

Post by whoaisme » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 7:59 PM UTC

eplanit wrote: post #144

gambiting wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that it's actual nonsense. Not long after WW2 the congress tried to ban comic books for spoiling the youth,just couple decades later people were holding public protests against the Simpsons, and the first TV show to mention the word "period" was met with similar level of protests as if that's something dirty and unspeakable. No, it's the exact opposite - "back then" people were far more fragile and sensitive a…

Those are examples of a morally conservative society, in which a Judeo-Christian value system was in place, and when there was a stronger emphasis on conformity. I guess the sensitivity was in breaking those rules. In those times too, however, children were taught "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me". Now, everyone is comfortable with talk of sex and biological realities...but a book cr…

Yeah I wish we could go back to the days when people weren't so sensitive. Nowadays a black man can't even look at a white woman without getting hanged not to mention all the pearl grasping about the queers.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#294

Post by throwawaycanal » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 8:01 PM UTC

bumby wrote: post #288

throwawaycanal wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You'll get no disagreement on this from any liberal. Maybe in France but in the US you will absolutely get disagreement from liberals. >If you have to show proof to register then why do you need to show proof to vote? If you showed proof to get your driver's license then why do you need to show proof to drive? If you showed proof to purchase/register your vehicle why do you need to show proof of registration when yo…

> If you showed proof to get your driver's license then why do you need to show proof to drive? The general counter to this is that one is a privilege and the other is a right. Usually any hurdle to exercising a constitutionally protected is going to receive some pushback. The same goes for the firearm registration issue.

>The general counter to this is that one is a privilege and the other is a right.

True. People on both sides of the isle use the "privilege not a right" counter on various issues.

>Usually any hurdle to exercising a constitutionally protected is going to receive some pushback. The same goes for the firearm registration issue.

Exactly. Owning a firearm is a right so this example still works here.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#295

Post by memling » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 8:05 PM UTC

marbletiles wrote: post #132

rsynnott wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the text is amazingly blunt and honest It would likely have been written to be comprehensible to people with a fairly low reading level.

Which makes it all the more impressive that it's quoting Tacitus and such like. There's an important distinction between reading level and intelligence, and I think we conflate the two in modern writing. Simple language doesn't need to be simplistic.

> Which makes it all the more impressive that it's quoting Tacitus and such like.

There's a common trope about "8th-grade" education in the US, and a fairly common response to it, e.g., https://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/p_test/1895_Eightgr_test.h....

There are, of course, reasons for the differences that aren't merely reactionary "people are dumb now" or "technology FTW!!1!" I suspect some of the quoting of Tacitus is due to a more classical emphasis, even in early education (see, for example, the McGuffey Readers[1]), where Latin and Greek were more widely studied, and their authors more integrated into the grade-level curriculum. I didn't read Herodotus or Tacitus until college (a classics course) and was pleasantly surprised by how readable and accessible they were.

[1] https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14640 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGuffey_Readers

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#296

Post by acabal » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 8:12 PM UTC

bencoder wrote: post #101

ronjouch wrote: post #70

What's the copyright situation of this book? Say I want to restore it, clean it up, and publish a nice epub (using as source the PDF already linked in a comment here). Is it copyright infringement, or is its copyright expired now? "112 gripes" was published in 1945, thus sites like https://www.biblio.com/blog/2010/07/how-to-determine-if-a-bo... suggest it's expired . But also, it was republished in the US in 2004 (IS…

> Does this make it "freshly-re-copyrighted until 2004 + 70 years?", or is the year that counts for copyright the original publishing date? Any changes (spelling, typos, the typesetting) in the new publication would be under a new copyright term. In practice, if you make your copy from the earlier out of copyright edition then you're fine. (Assuming you are correct that the earlier edition is truly out of copyright)

This is incorrect. In the US new copyright is only awarded for acts of authorship. Minor spelling or punctuation changes, or typo fixes, are not authorship. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#297

Post by _xy8h » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 8:30 PM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #279

echelon wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to be reminded of this. The left and right are so divided that they're intolerable of one another. Neither side believes the other is worth listening to. It's a shame. We're all animals traversing a complicated landscape. There's daily pain and suffering, and then we die. We should remind ourselves how similar everyone actually is, and that the diversity of our views are humanity living and breathing through…

One side wants trans people to be able to use the same bathroom and universal healthcare the other side talks about shooting democrats and Myanmar style coups. It is impossible to be tolerant of the Fourth Reich or those who if they don't condone it will at best tolerate it for tax cuts. Our unresolvable division is because 10% is evil and 30% is nuts and the remainder can't have anything they want if they don't embr…

In Portland.

One side of the crowd holds signs like "Down with the Fash" and "Trans Rights are Human Rights."

The other side of the crowd literally wearing "RWDS" Patches (Right Wing Death Squad) and "Pinochet Did Nothing Wrong" shirts.

Some of the people in this thread: "Huh! I don't see any difference between the two. Both sides! Hurr durr."

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#298

Post by TMWNN » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 8:54 PM UTC

rualca wrote: post #123

Bayart wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vichy did represent French sentiment at the beginning. Things changed with time.

> Vichy did represent French sentiment at the beginning. No, not really. The Vichy regime was the dictatorship puppet regime imposed onto the remaining french territory after the third republic was dissolved, and enacted policies imposed by Nazi germany such as rounding up Jews to hand them over to them. It grossly misrepresents the french sentiment of the time to even suggest that France suddenly had a change in hea…

As Bayart said, you are mistaken. Although de Gaulle's forces claimed that the Vichy regime was illegitimate, it it very difficult to justify the claim based on either popular support (Vichy and Petain almost certainly had the support of the majority of French at the surrender of the Third Republic, and for years afterward) or diplomatic recognition (Vichy had recognition from dozens of countries, including the US and Canada). Conversely, de Gaulle himself had difficulty in justifying his claim that he was legally acting on behalf of the Third Republic.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#299

Post by baybal2 » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 9:00 PM UTC

smhost wrote: post #80

postingawayonhn wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No western democracy could have paid the human cost the USSR did. Arguably they only paid such a high price due to their industrial underdevelopment which was partly due to their economic and political system. It's often said that the war was won with British intelligence, American steel, and Soviet blood.

> their industrial underdevelopment which was partly due to their economic and political system I'm sorry? They went from a peasant society immediately to defending against multiple foreign invasions (including the U.S.) to fighting and defeating the fascists, all in three decades. That was achievable only due to their economic and political system.

> They went from a peasant society immediately to defending against multiple foreign invasions (including the U.S.) to fighting and defeating the fascists, all in three decades. That was achievable only due to their economic and political system.

This is old, debunked propaganda trope recited for a millionth time.

No, USSR never went to industrial giant overnight, for a reason it never been it. USSR relied on single digit of large factories for everything during the war.

Even tiny Eastern European countries USSR invaded were heads above USSR, to the point the first thing USSR did there were stealing all factory equipment, and relocating it to new factories in USSR.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#300

Post by FabHK » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 9:23 PM UTC

Delightful. Plus ça change:

> 49 "Why do they knock of work for two to three hours every day?"

> They keep their stores open two to three hours later than we do. (They did when there were things to sell; there's no point in keeping a store open if the shelves are bare.)

> The long lunch hour is a custom which is not confined to France. It is found in Italy, Spain, the Balkans and many parts of Germany. It is a custom we find annoying because it interferes with our comfort (as tourists) and because it differs from our way of doing things.

> The average Frenchman maintains that a lunch eaten at leisure is a lot better than a chicken-salad-on-toast gobbled down at a drugstore counter. "We take time to live as well as work," one Frenchman said.

ETA: It does take a more sombre turn in the chapters about France vs. Germany (Questions 69 etc.), which appears to indicate that many soldiers felt that they should have sided with the Germans rather than the French.