The real reason they got rid of trams in this country
French people are very serious about 2 things:
La Liberté et La Cuisine
Yeah, you stop believing in the first part when you see what they vote for.
As if they were one homogenous voting block? The reason the French government is in a stalemate is because the people vote for so many different things that no coalition can form a governing majority.
Trying to describe that as “they all hate freedom because of the way they vote” is kinda weird, and quite ignorant.
I don’t think any country can be described so singularly as “what the people vote for”. There’s always a diversity of opinions. Some countries suppress dissension, censor opposition, and only allow certain voting choices (e.g., Russia, China, Belarus, etc.); but even those countries have dissention, the dissention is just kept quiet by the repression and censorship.
But the French? Dissention is part of their culture. Political opposition is alive and well there. So try understanding what you’re talking about before posting something ignorant next time.
The whole country made a big deal about being sad about a nazi dying and you’re talking about political opposition?
Stay deluded.
You’ll have to specify what you’re referring to, and somehow quantify “the whole country being sad” about it.
Otherwise you’re just a troll.
I would like to see the rest of the comment about “climate accords polar bears”, please.
Yeah same I’m curious now.
I found those on a 💩website https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/climate-paris-2015-polar-bear.html?sortBy=relevant
But we need to know what were the bears doing!
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Well, you ever got stuck on a drifting shrinking ice sheet drifting into the ocean? Id sheet myself as well.
Hero, thank you
You can’t do that in USA. You don’t have the public transport infrastructure.
Ahhh but many cities and towns have some sort of rails in the streets, and bonus: they’re not being used!
Yeah but they’re all filled in and broken.
I just thought of how that would look on the San Francisco cable car tracks. Fast sausages.
Well, hot dogs are fast food.
Guys, take lessons, take lessons!
Excuses incoming in 3, 2, 1…
“But, but, but the us country is huge. We can’t be expected to protest about something all the way over there…”
“But, but, but, wait for the midterms. We’ll sort it then.”
“But, but, but, the protests are gaining steam now. It’s not easy to coordinate these things and we need time…{also we’ll conveniently ignore you when you point out that we live in a world of instant communication and that protests and strikes were coordinated decades ago when we didn’t have today’s technology}”
Here in Minnesota we’ve still been protesting every week…
Glad to hear - we don’t hear about it as much up in Canada lately. The news cycle is always desperate to keep up with whatever the orange buffoon is fucking up next
Oh yeah. That’s true. The news really dropped off once the federal government “pulled back” ICE. But they’re still doing the same shit. Still kidnapping. We’re still documenting and doing our stuff.
I mean in a certain sense they are a bit true, the French protested for so long that Paris has created the Rue in order to have some control over the crowds
The rue?
It’s a sauce used for thickening, but that’s not important right now
It’s more like a thickener used for sauce, but yeah, that’s also not important right now.
I don’t know the exact name but it’s these large streets
Edit: I mean boulevards
Boulevards? Grand boulevards?
I’m confused because “rue” in French is literally “street” in English 😁.
Yeah those
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“Rue” is just french for “street”, so, I don’t know what this is supposed to be saying.
With regard to point 3, ‘today’s technology’ is very much a double edged sword. Yes, you can communicate instantly but surveillance has modernized just as much.
As reductive as it sounds, I think part of the issue is it happens all the time in other countries because it happens all the time in other countries. The connections to each other already exist. The networks already exist. All the instant communication in the world doesn’t make a lick of difference if you have no idea who else to call. At this point, I feel like that’s the real benefit of protests. You gotta meet like minded people somewhere to get any real momentum and third spaces are pretty fucking dead.
I don’t think the issue is necessarily a lack of will to organize now, I think the issue was a lack of will to do so years ago. Hell, decades ago for that matter. So now the people that genuinely do care have to build their entire network from the ground up while under heavy surveillance which yes, is going to be fucking slower.
True…
You really get involved in France, if you want it or not. Great for democracy IMO.
“But, but, but the us country is huge. We can’t be expected to protest about something all the way over there…”
Oh, is all of Europe protesting in unity when protests are happening in Paris? i must have missed that.
I mean… What is a shitty little protest in Madrid gonna do to Brussels? You are comparing apples to oranges.
Protesting local matters, like French people being pissed about French shit makes sense. The French understand their power structure well.
Protesting continental matters is considerably more tricky, because of the distance involved.
Comparing all of the US to all of Europe is an apples to apples comparison.
And you see how well the anti isreal genocide protests are going… So appreciate you making my point for me.
Protesting in Houston does fuckall to Washington in the immediate.
Not at the moment. But that’s mainly because other countries shouldn’t really be invading each other over domestic issues!
However there was a huge ‘protest’ about 90 years ago when a useless dictator tried to overtake a massive part of the world. You really should look up history about it and see how they tackled that dictator, they didn’t have today’s technology and that ‘protest’ spanned a huge area.
It’d be very helpful, though that does require you putting a bit of effort in…
For what. To utilize all the rail lines in my city to grill.
Absolutely fantastic. Once you get over the initial chuckle at how novel a concept it is, its a god damn power play.
An army marches on its stomach.
Main thing that keeps me from fitting in in England is how much I love the French. 🇫🇷
We luv you too m8
I love the French because every other country I have been to besides France where I have attempted to speak the language, people are super appreciative of my efforts, even if I’m shit.
Not so in France. There’s often an air of arrogant expectation, because making an effort to speak French isn’t considered going above and beyond, but is expected (and if your French is mediocre, then you are not meeting that expectation). This isn’t always as abrasive as I make it sound here, but it is a sharp contrast to my experience in other countries.
I weirdly like this though. It’s a reflection of how British people travel about the world with a default assumption that many people will speak English. I have a Norwegian friend, for example, who said that when he was travelling, he was grateful that he knew English, because there would often be some people who could speak at least some English in most places he went. Attempting to speak French in France reminds me of how much privilege I have when travelling, because the French are as stubborn about expecting people to speak French as the English are about English. But the French are mainly like this within France, whereas English folk carry their expectations everywhere with them.
France feels like our sibling — we have a tumultuous relationship that could easily give the impression that we hate each other, but it’s far deeper than that. One of my interests is fashion history, and it’s so funny how many instances there are of a trend originating in France that people in Britain take notice of and want to emulate — in part because it is French: trends that are developing in a different cultural context, and are thus exotic and interesting compared to British fashion. Sometimes there’ll be attempts to stop trends from crossing the channel, but that just makes them seem cooler. If you want an example of one such trend, this video from Abby Cox is great.
But the cultural exchange happened in the other direction too; sometimes a trend would start in Britain and slowly diffuse over to France. Stuff like this is why I see the French as being our family. For better or for worse, we are joined together by history.
French language is the original lingua franca, it’s no wonder that if you admit that you don’t speak well yet, they will simply ask “Why not?” It’s probably not as far as we’d expect from the hauteur of English-speaking tourists, we just get our way more often I think. When I took my family to Paris last year I expected to get some of that high-handed treatment, but even out as far as Calais they were almost unfailingly forgiving of my decidedly mediocre attempts. I hope to go back soon, armed with a little more of the language.
“we just get our way more often I think.”
Exactly! That’s why I find it so refreshing.
What’s funny that if you’re a French Canadian, you spend most of your life resentful that English is everywhere. Quebec has laws doing everything possible to try to prevent English from becoming a major language in Quebec. But, as soon as someone from Quebec goes travelling, they’re probably grateful that they know English because it’s the common language of the world these days.
I grew up primarily speaking English. But, I don’t think I’m too arrogant about expecting everyone else to speak it. I’m always pleasantly surprised when there are signs in English in places where there can’t be that many tourists.
What I did kind-of take for granted wasn’t necessarily English, but it was the Roman character set. When I went travelling in East Asia, I came across Thai script, Korean, Japanese and Chinese. Previously when I’d travelled in other places, if I didn’t know the language, I at least knew the letters. So, I might not have known how to pronounce the name of a place, but I could still read it and match it to the place I was looking for. But, when I was in Japan, I had to try to remember that the stop I wanted was the one where the first symbol sort of looked like a box with some scribbles inside and a lid on top, then the next one looked like a T but with two bars at the top instead of one.
I learned a little Japanese in high school, and it’s a surprisingly easy alphabet to pick up… The actual language is another matter!
Hiragana and Katakana aren’t too hard, but Kanji is another matter, and Kanji is used a lot in the names of mass transit stations, for example.
In Holland everyone would switch to English immediately after I butchered the greeting in Dutch.
It made it super hard to learn the language
Do French protests always follow tram tracks? Otherwise, it seems like you could just use normal wheels.
If I just saw the picture and I knew it was a protest, I’d have figured that these people work for the tram and are protesting the tram company.
They don’t specifically follow the tram tracks, but in major European cities, tram tracks are simply everywhere. As the route of the protest has to be registered in advance, it’s very easy to plan for this.
With standard wheels on the barbecue, it would be far too bumpy to barbecue properly. And the risk of everything tipping over is 100 times greater.
I think it’s a brilliant solution.
the route of the protest has to be registered in advance
Wow, that’s dystopic. Very “you protest because I allow it” vibes. Nice for emergency services though
Registering a protest in advance is standard practice in the US and Canada, too. Cities can and do enforce basic rules for crowd control, rerouting traffic, etc. For example, you might be allowed to organize a protest in a public park during daylight hours, but if you do it at 2am in the streets of a residential area the cops are going to arrive and shut you down.
https://www.aclu-wa.org/know-your-rights/know-your-rights-guide-protests/
Normal wheels would be much heavier to push. Steel wheel on steel rail is basically zero effort, you just have to plan your protest accordingly^^
Are their tram rails powered? If they are, it could be using that power to cook while moving. I assume they aren’t, at least not the rails but maybe overhead power, but it would be cool.
Tram lines are not powered, that would be a huge safety hazard. Most tram systems use power lines that run above the tracks.
In some places they are powered. It’s generally much more expensive to do safely so it’s only done in historic places where overhead wires would ruin the place.
I know It’s the case in the centre of Reims for example.
And is some more eastern countries (like mine) would make it to easy to steal electricity ;]
They are not powered.
The French have been refining protesting since 1790.
Yeah, but it just hasnt been as good since “Kill’em all”.
Let them eat sausage.
Aspirational goals. Canada did not pick up enough Francais.
We have a whole Quebec political party that’s about not voting for federal elections… Want to protest against the libs or the cons? Vote for the Block!
As an Ontarian I appreciate the BQ. All I’m saying is Quebecois don’t burn nearly as much shit as the French. And the rets of us aren’t doing anything. Having a less capital-compliant part of Canada would be good for all of us.
So glad to come to the comments and not find this debunked
I wonder how the terroir affects the barbecue
If you’re gonna protest, might as well eat good while doing it.
And yet i’ve never seen a french protest where they had decent sound system. Not that important when the goal is to make noise, but they sure got their priorities
