As far as Paris is concerned, we're actually extremely ill-prepared for high heats. Parisians have the highest risk of heat-related death in Europe. Hardware stores are packed with AC units every summer now because people are forced to start using them. Luckily we've had terrible weather so far this summer, fingers crossed it stays that way.

To be fair the supposed point of the snap elections is to make the far right seem impotent by forcing them into a divided government (which is already a terrifying "strategy": just give them the keys to the building and hope for the best?) They're just refusing to play that game. The fact that the president is playing around with the country's future like this is a fucking unconscionable disgrace.

I think probably all people dismiss what is obvious to them as not needing to be said, and for good reason: why overburden a conversation with obvious truths. Though given that we're all just apes with a superiority complex, we're probably entirely wrong about what's obvious or true 🙈

I study linguistics and a lot of different languages, and what you said made me think of how the difficulty in learning a second language depends on how different it is to our native tongue, or how accents within our own language are difficult to understand depending on how different and unfamiliar they are to us. Yet people tend to insist that certain languages are 'simply' hard, and insist that unfamiliar grammar or pronunciation 'make no sense', no matter how many millions of people use them naturally since childhood. I think it's very difficult to imagine things which are instinctive to us being anything other than immanent truths about the universe, and anything contradicting those instincts feels wrong. What is familiar feels simple and obvious, difference feels complicated and somehow malicious; it's 'unnatural'. What is natural is ourself, everything else is crazy.

I CAME HERE TO WRITE THIS.

Wait. Didn't?

I think it's just anger about being out of touch. You can't make comedy in a vacuum, it necessarily draws on contemporary culture, and Jerry's probably feeling a bit left in the dust. But he frames it in a way where he feels victimized. That's my reading for most embarrassing or offensive old comedians though, so maybe I'm painting with too broad a brush.

In France there are plenty of people who ask for Dafalgan or neurofen but have no idea what paracetamol or ibuprofen are.

Inherent*

The premise of your argument is 'why aren't people more rational?'. That's a silly premise.

I think the blade runner sequel had something like this too.

Not if they believe it won't affect them, and if they can turn their power into connections with rich people willing to part with their wealth in exchange for the promise their civilisational-risk-increasing industries can press on unabated.

I'm franco-american, living in france, and I regularly get people telling me they're sorry for insulting me for being american. It's so ingrained in the culture here to shit on americans it's something of a knee-jerk reaction. I get it, america's the hegemon, we're the big baddy, I just wish that didn't spill over into a kind of xenophobia that people are so comfortable with they regularly catch themselves being openly insulting to people they call their friends.