112 Gripes About the French • Hacker News Board

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#331

Post by danans » Sun, Jul 18, 2021, 1:28 AM UTC

seszett wrote: post #305

danans wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of the pamphlet is they shouldn't have to in order to be accepted by the American troops, but a white French person with sufficient linguistic and cultural flexibility could pass for a white American, and largely would in contexts where they did not have to speak. And black person could never do the same.

A black person could pass for a white person in contexts where did not have to show their skin colour, it's not that different or even rare.

> A black person could pass for a white person in contexts where did not have to show their skin colour

So basically on the phone or email only.

In every other scenario, like when walking down the street or encountering law enforcement, it's pretty much impossible.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#332

Post by dragonwriter » Sun, Jul 18, 2021, 1:31 AM UTC

anthony_barker wrote: post #330

tehjoker wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't China our biggest trading partner. This sounds like xenophobia.

Mexico and then Canada.

Nope, China, then Canada, then Mexico (the EU treated as a unit beats China).

Canada and Mexico are bigger export targets from the US, but the US imports much kore from China, making it a bigger overall trade partner.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_...

Huh, you may have been looking at curerent year-to-date goods-only figures, but aside from the problem of being goods only (services are traded to), there is seasonality to trade, so current year YTD figures aren’t a good measure.

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/highlights/t...

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#333

Post by ekianjo » Sun, Jul 18, 2021, 1:50 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #84

ekianjo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France is well know as being the little Russia and certainly a deep reserve of anti American sentiment. Mostly due to media and education brainwashing.

Spoken like a true American who only heard about those places from TV shows, movies, and mass media "coverage"... "media and education brainwashing" LOL

Funny because, actually, I'm not American. You might want to avoid ad hominem attacks when you want to make a point.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#334

Post by ekianjo » Sun, Jul 18, 2021, 1:52 AM UTC

fcantournet wrote: post #225

ekianjo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody worked 40 hours weeks after the war in France, except maybe civil servants.

That's not the point. It never was the point, it's never been the point of ANY law about ANY duration of the work week. It defines the LEGAL duration of a week's work because that's going to be used for calculating the PAY. Wehn we went from 39h -> 35h for instance with the same pay, we're just compensating for the massive increases in productivity that occured while salaries stayed flat for 30 years. And civil serva…

> And civil servants basically work the same hours per year as workers in the private sector, in France.

Not, not at all. They retire many years before the private sector and have way more vacation. You forgot that tiny detail.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#335

Post by tptacek » Sun, Jul 18, 2021, 2:10 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #290

esrauch wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your sentence is really the same divisive "other side is crazy" crap that everyone else is complaining about. Folks on both the left and right (under US definitions) will sniffily do that same thing and act like their positions are obviously correct and the other side obviously unreasonable.

When was that? 30 years ago? Try having a conversation today with a progressive about virtually any issue where American conservatives may agree with people in Asia or Africa (or even a big chunk of moderate Democrats). I noticed this particularly acutely in how progressives have rallied around Muslims but you can’t actually talk about a bunch of stuff my Bangladeshi mom and aunts believe. Same sex marriage is one ex…

I don't remember Obama being shouted down by anyone, for what it's worth.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#336

Post by mixmastamyk » Sun, Jul 18, 2021, 2:16 AM UTC

tinco wrote: post #127

eplanit wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true. Europeans of that era did not bathe everyday. My stepfather escaped nazi Germany, and moved to the us in the 40s. He grudgingly adapted to daily bathing (my mother's insistence), but remarked how very American that is. He was very 20th century European, for sure.

(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…

Smelly armpits are due to particular strains of bacteria that feed on sweat compounds and skin cells. If you haven’t been infected with the stinky ones you might last two days in moderate weather. Get infected and the time goes down to two hours. I found out the hard way, sharing a bar of soap. Avoid. :-/

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#337

Post by trepanne » Sun, Jul 18, 2021, 2:18 AM UTC

yarcob wrote: post #289

conceptme wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asians sweat less and their sweat does not stink as much for some reason.

I read that body odor is controlled by the same gene as the one for ear wax. People with wet/creamy ear wax smell. People with dry/crumbly earwax don't smell. I'm not sure if it's true in general, but it's true for me and my partner. One of our kids has creamy ear wax, and the other has crumbly ear wax. I'm curious if only one of them will need deodorant once they get to puberty... Genetics is fun.

https://udel.edu/~mcdonald/mythearwax.html

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#338

Post by mixmastamyk » Sun, Jul 18, 2021, 2:20 AM UTC

conceptme wrote: post #276

eplanit wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. Try Japan. They're clean, polite, and courteous. Crowded trains in August (like all year) are surprisingly absent of body odor (and litter, and noisy people, ...). Different folks are indeed different in some ways.

Asians sweat less and their sweat does not stink as much for some reason.

Sweat doesn’t smell. Bacteria strains common in Asia don’t produce stinky compounds.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#339

Post by sangnoir » Sun, Jul 18, 2021, 2:34 AM UTC

djrogers wrote: post #122

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.

Why? The US literacy rate in the 1940s was 97.1%, and the US military had special programs to teach the illiterate to read. During WW2, 95% of illiterate recruits achieved minimum literacy within two months through the special training units developed for that purpose. I know it’s easy for some people to think of a trigger puller as a dumb grunt - even more so one who served 80 years ago, but it’s not accurate or fai…

Literacy at what level?

From your first source: "In 1940, more than half of the U.S. population had completed no more than an eighth grade education." The manual had to be written at 8th grade level (at most) in order to be easily understood by more than 50% of the army.

Re: 112 Gripes About the French

#340

Post by michaelmrose » Sun, Jul 18, 2021, 2:35 AM UTC

echelon wrote: post #317

_xy8h wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

You're painting the entire right as Nazis though. That's not at all accurate. Some people just don't want to be taxed, want their guns, and are afraid of the theory of evolution. You're failing to see the huge distribution of people on both sides. There are Nazis on both sides, but there aren't many. The majority are closer to the middle, and the media uses the extreme examples to enrage and divide for dollars.

The people who aren't outright nazis will vote one in while either lying to you and I or lying to themselves about doing so. The threat of the rise of the original Nazi party in Germany did not turn on the majority of its boosters wanting to burn Jews and other victims like toast. It turned on them being first willing to overlook violent rhetoric and then later willing to cower in fear lest they themselves join the victims.

Absolutely the entire right are Nazis, collaborators, on their way out politically.