Speaking English using French vocabulary is a real cheat code

For a group our size (we regularly have over 800 people on our mumble, peak is somewhere around the 1.3k mark if I remember correctly), it would also be very cost prohibitive to use TS

Not that I particularly care to defend the french government, but there was 3 referendums, with voting restrictions in favor of the kanak, as per an agreement between the government and the kanaks. The first 2 went against independence and the kanaks decided to boycott the third (the polling was going against independence, again)

Does that mean all is fine and dandy? Obviously not, but I don’t think the story is as one sided as “classic french colonialism”

It’s not magic, but it has advantages that are hard to beat in terms of resource usage. Renewables also have advantages, but you can’t handwave away their own problems and limitations anymore than you can do so for nuclear energy.

Yeah I’m aware legislation can vary a lot between states, I suppose I’m more talking about what one might call a minimum federal standard? To take an example, legal drinking age is technically free to be set by states, but the federal government will stop paying for highways if it’s below 21, or something along these lines.

I seem to have misread the license part as an additional requirement rather than an optional one with the criminal record, thanks for the correction

I’m no swiss law expert, but that’s not what wikipedia says regarding buying ammunition. And even what you describe is already more than what is needed in the USA isn’t it?

In Switzerland’s case, most of these “military guns” are not kept with ammo, so it’s not like Timmy can go on a shooting spree with a glorified pipe section. There’s also an actual license system for buying and owning weapons and ammo.

I always wonder why especially liberal/left-leaning people (not implying/saying you are one) are so opposed to private gun ownership

Well, there’s a pretty good example of why virtually unrestricted gun ownership is a bad idea in the USA. Are poverty, healthcare the bigger issues? Of course. That doesn’t mean you should compound them by making it easy for people to act with deadly force at the tip of their finger on impulse. Have a proper license system, make gun safes mandatory, don’t give licenses without good reasons (self defense isn’t one in 99.99% of cases), control ammunition sale.

It depends on where. In Paris itself, the metro network is quite a bit denser than the tube, but as soon as you exit the city limit and get into the “petite couronne” municipalities, it quickly drops off in density.

Absolutely, I think a lot of Americans don’t realise that when going to France, and end up having a subpart experience because of it. From our perspective, you are the asshole if you don’t greet people appropriately, which often means we’ll answer in kind.

The basics, bonjour, excusez moi, s’il vous plaît, merci should get you through that. Not assuming people want or can speak English can also be important, so if you can ask them “parlez vous anglais ?” before switching it’s not a bad call

There’s also obviously some people who are assholes or simply having a bad day, that’s a universal thing and France is no exception.

Unless you interacted with 90 year olds, it’s unlikely anyone would be mad about thinking you’re German these days.

It’s entirely possible you encountered assholes, they do exist, though they’re generally equally assholes to everyone regardless of country of origin so don’t take it personally.

Did you perhaps forget to say bonjour/excusez moi or other necessary greetings? That’ll make people look angrily at you regardless of how good your french is

None of these are in the UK? Maybe take a second to check the context of the meme before jumping to conclusions

Is Belgium also a surprising exception?

Laisse moi préfacer mon propos pour dire que je ne suis pas particulièrement pour les voitures autonomes dans leur état actuel, ni que je cherche à excuser quoi que ce soit.

Quand je lis ton argument, j’ai tout de même l’impression que tu préfères avoir un conducteur à blâmer, plutôt que de réduire le nombre de morts. Je te renverse la question : combien de morts de plus es tu prêt à accepter pour ne pas avoir de constructeurs de voitures autonomes à tenir responsable plutôt que des conducteurs ? Personnellement, c’est de l’ordre de 0.

En est on à ce point ? Aucune idée, et une réponse pointe correctement vers le manque de transparence et de contrôle des divers statistiques déployées comme arguments par les constructeurs. Un autre point important que tu soulèves, c’est que toutes les populations de conducteurs ne se valent pas, et que l’adoption inégale pourrait créer une surmortalité dans certains cas. Dans tous les cas, je pense que contrairement à ce que tu dis, il est plus important de regarder l’effet statistiques que de s’arrêter à une tragédie particulière plutôt qu’une autre.

Ça dépend, ça leur arrive plus ou moins souvent que ça n’arrive aux gens de conduire bourrés et de tuer un piéton de passage ?

Nice work

That’s incredibly generalizing. You seem to have had the misfortune of traveling with some assholes, that doesn’t mean all or even most of us have that kind of behaviour.

I find it an excellent scout as long as you were not planning on being quiet anyway. Can even cast some kind of crowd control spell through it before ever being in danger, if the situation allows.

C’est important de faire la distinction entre les dahu dextrogyres et lévogyres, ils n’ont pas les même territoires généralement