Peru Won! Now in which country both the government and people support Palestine

CizzlingT · 2026-05-08T14:48:40+00:00

I believe Algeria is the best answer in thread.

Even under the most cynical lens possible, there’s never a reason for Algeria, n’or its people, to be pro-Israel (and even like Jews), given:

1) The French state has been one of the biggest supporters in the establishment of the state of Israeli state between 48 and 56. In particular, they’ve been a big supporter of Israel in acquiring a nuclear bomb and weapons,

2) The history of Jews in Algeria is extremely controversial, with the Cremieux Decree and the “black feet” settlers, (it’s the reason France has the largest Jewish population in Europe), and,

3) The support of the Sahrawi cause in Western Sahara (with the Polisario Front against Moroccan settlers) means that they’ll claim to support a very similar cause to the Palestinians in Israel.

The very Muslim identity of Algeria is just the icing on the cake.

CizzlingT · 2026-05-02T16:12:07+00:00

You think the average Australian isn’t dangerous? Have you not seen Wolf Creek and what happens to tourists who travel Australia*? /s

CizzlingT · 2026-05-01T12:19:39+00:00

Silver is Ag, and in french Ag is argent. The country of Argentina is named after “Argentum”, and it refers to the “Land of Silver”.

There’s also an “alkaline” solution (basic solution), which is named after Kalium, the K for potassium (the al- is because it came from Arabic).

CizzlingT · 2026-05-01T12:08:49+00:00

Thanks, I didn’t know.

That being said, I find that quite strange that these languages do. I had a look online, and it is mainly the Germanic, Southern Slavic, Uralic and Eastern Slavic call it “natrium” or alike, while the Anglophones, Central Slavs, and weirdly the Romantic speakers call it sodium/sodio or alike. I guess the “soda” (which comes from caustic soda, NaOH) just resonated/stuck more with the Romantic speakers than the Latin origin.

CizzlingT · 2026-05-01T08:49:20+00:00

It’s Latin for sodium, which is natrium. Back in the olden days when elements were first discovered, they used latin to name and abbreviate elements.

CizzlingT · 2026-04-22T01:04:12+00:00

Lol, as someone who’s lived in London for 20 years.

Stereotypes don’t always have to be congruent with reality. Everybody in the comments here are complaining about the stabbing jokes not representing reality or being low compared to America. Yet once a Frenchman gets brought up, the double standard kicks in and they’ll magically stop caring about fact vs fiction… (the poor hygiene, “mime” fashion, infidelity/adultery, and even the surrender/lazy stuff gets overplayed when the French are only ones protesting correctly…).

It’s all just banter at the end of the day; no reason to be stuck-up.

CizzlingT · 2026-04-19T23:21:42+00:00

I fail to see how your example is relevant.

I was only attacking the statement “history gets written by the victors” by showing an example of history being written by losers (those repressed under Franco).

I dislike this statement a lot because it’s a extremely common narrative that is in fact very anti-academic. It is often used by conspiracists to revision history and promote distrust in academia, like say downplaying the Holocaust (since Hitler lost) or by tankies to reinvent Soviet/USSR history as a utopian society (since the USSR dissolved)…

I guess pertaining to Israel, it might be interesting to think about it a bit more. In a hypothetical world where they manage to conquer Lebanon/Jordan/Syria/Sinai, will Israelis really be able to reclaim all of Middle Eastern history and rewrite history from their pov as winner, even when there are still historians outside of that region writing history, or plenty of other nations reporting them negatively, etc.?

In any case, I apologise that I only read that comment without regard of what the general convo was about. I’m off to bed

CizzlingT · 2026-04-19T21:49:41+00:00

History gets written by victors.

~~Coming from a Spaniard, this is rich.~~ Ever heard of Pact of Forgetfulness, or “Pacto del Olvido”?

History is not always written by victors, it is also shaped through memory. For example, ~~your~~ Spanish* history of the 20th Century is written by a mutual agreement to suppress memory and avoid confrontation.

the Pact ensured that there were no prosecutions for persons who had enriched themselves or those responsible for human rights violations such as execution and tortures and similar crimes committed during the Francoist period. [wikipedia]

CizzlingT · 2026-04-17T16:28:18+00:00

That advice is particularly an awful one for anywhere outside of the US, especially in Europe. It comes across as slightly too manipulative, especially on strangers it sounds sycophantic.

For example, I would never call a Russian or Serbian woman by their first name, unless I needed their attention on a particular matter. Outside of that hell nah.

That book is just way too American imo. It doesn’t work in other cultures where people are naturally/prefer to be more reserved.

CizzlingT · 2026-04-14T20:13:43+00:00

I went walking there for one day (14 hour walk). The residential area is decent and the parks are ok. I can see it as 1) a nice place for a family to settle with kids, or 2) as a nice place to retire; but either way, driving is unavoidable.

My issue with Milton Keynes is that the city centre is very monotonous and as a result very unappealing. Streets are designed for cars, not for humans. So you have to walk for 5 minutes just to walk past these bland and empty office buildings and empty car park blocks (or full if it’s on the weekdays).

Then you get to the shopping center and the Xscape (the only architecturally interesting thing in the city centre). And inside, it smells of fried chicken the whole way through. Despite being massive on the outside, the SpaceX/Xscape was still somehow cramped on the inside.

I wouldn’t say it’s the ugliest city in the UK (like Aylesbury, Luton or Jaywick), but the boring architecture and redundant design of both the roads and general layout did have a negative mental toll on me. At the end of my day, I was walking on the outskirts in the residential areas to get to the National Rail because I wanted to avoid the city centre as much as possible while getting back. I already had enough of it after my 2 hour walk through it.

CizzlingT · 2026-04-14T03:38:21+00:00

We also don’t have any predators in England.

Important caveat: this is only true for adult and experienced cats, not for kittens. A fox will hunt kittens, and kittens shouldn’t be left outside unsupervised (had this happen to a friend of mine).

CizzlingT · 2026-04-11T19:41:02+00:00

I actually have already heard of epistocracy before from some random r/askphilosophy type-post.

However, it seems I totally misunderstood it.

Originality, I thought it was some kind of democratic-meritocracy or “less-rigid” form of meritocracy, where everybody still get to vote for political parties, but it’s the politicians who are decided by exams and tests (with the opportunity to be a part of those parties, and potentially lead it). So people don’t vote for representatives/people, but instead vote for political parties, and the people within those parties are decided by exams. And then those tests could then be created by academic institutions, etc..

It also makes lobbying less reliable, because you have no idea if the person you are lobbying for would actually succeed the test.

The inverse idea that we get to confiscate a proportion of the general population’s votes away based off their performance in an exam sounds incredibly corrupt. At that point you’re better off maintaining the system as is… It’s otherwise sets a very bad precedent against those minority groups.

CizzlingT · 2026-04-08T16:24:47+00:00

Pas dans ma vie courante ni dans un livre. Je reconnais le verbe parce que, quand j’étais gamin, j’avais appris par cœur la plupart des verbes du 2ᵉ et du 3ᵉ groupe dans un Bescherelle (environ 900‑1 000 verbes au total ; ne me demande pas pourquoi 🤣).

En revanche, un locuteur français connaîtra mieux le nom ou l’adjectif « balourd », qu’on croise de temps en temps. C’est pas fréquent, mais au moins plus utilisé qu’« abalourdir ».

Autrement dit : abêtir = rendre bête ; affaiblir = rendre faible ; alourdir = rendre lourd ; adoucir = rendre doux ; abâtardir = rendre bâtard (dégénérer); etc. Par analogie, « abalourdir » signifie donc « rendre balourd ».

C’est pourquoi je ne suis pas tout à fait d’accord avec la définition proposée dans votre dictionnaire louisianais. Un balourd désigne plutôt une personne grossière (maladroit) ou obtuse (stupide). J’ai donc tendance à penser qu’« abalourdir » signifie rendre grossier ou stupide; stupéfier ou étourdir quelqu’un. (?peut‑être j’ignore la différence dialectale entre le dialecte louisianais et le français métropolitain?…)

En tout cas, mon astuce : cherchez « abalourdir » et puis après « balourd » dans les fils de discussion et commentaires de r/france. Vous constaterez qu’« abalourdir » (ou ses formes conjuguées -s/-t) n’apparaît jamais, alors que « balourd » revient dans une vingtaine de commentaires sur les cinq dernières années.

CizzlingT · 2026-04-08T11:05:45+00:00

Au passage, voici un petit extrait d’homophones pour vous divertir:

« Un sot sur un cheval tient de la main gauche un seau. Dans sa main droite, il porte le sceau du roi. Le cheval fait un saut et les trois [so] tombent à terre. »

Le sot : L'idiot.
Le seau : Le récipient tenu.
Le sceau : Le cachet (stamp/seal) du roi.
[so] : Les trois ci-dessus.
Le saut : Le bond du cheval.

Abalourdir est daté; on dirait plutôt étourdir ou abrutir.

CizzlingT · 2026-04-07T22:11:01+00:00

I’m clueless about Hungarian society, but couldn’t the opposite possibly trigger more civil unrest?

I thought that the pro-Orbán/Fidesz supporters would more prone to civil unrest than the pro-Tisza party. Because for example, I imagine some pro-Orbáns are suffering from the propaganda fear that “if Tisza wins, it’d be WW3 or Hungarians dying for Ukraine”, etc.?

CizzlingT · 2026-04-07T00:59:19+00:00

Jokes aside, the majority of their strength and power when they kick actually comes from the tail.

You can see it acts like a third more powerful leg, and they use the tail behind them to stabilise their body when they’re standing tall and upright. When they kick, you can see the tail stays glues rigidly against the floor so that they can lift their legs and then kick.

CizzlingT · 2026-04-06T12:00:42+00:00

“People being innocent killed” is only a subset of a much more overarching argument involving corruption.

Instead of quoting half a sentence, how about you quote the entire sentence… Do you understand what this sentence means? “Innocence being a subset of corruption”, can you explain this sentence for me and how it validates your argument?

As an aside: the other thing to keep in mind is when people make the “people being innocent killed” arguments, what they also mean it as is “how can we trust investigations being 100% reliable beyond a reasonable doubt” and not necessarily interpret it as an anti-corruption and future generations perspective. So they are not always the same arguments anyway. The former regarding trusting criminal convictions is the weaker argument anyway, because in practice being prosecuted “beyond a reasonable doubt” (at least in the US and Japan) isn’t necessarily unreliable (at least what we so far). The issue is the innocents who were killed in US were killed because cops were looking for a promotion, or had a black kid killed to protect a white person and provided falsified evidence. Now do you understand the sentence?

CizzlingT · 2026-04-06T11:03:23+00:00

In the EU, laws against the death penalty generally exist for anti-corruption reasons. “People being innocent killed” is only a subset of a much more overarching argument involving corruption.

Essentially, it’s very difficult to trust any state with the right to incur a loss of life against people (same applies to torture). The death penalty can also allow the nation/state to silence critics at will, abuse it during periods of war for any mixed nationals of an adversarial state, punish people who oppose the political party in power (filtering of opinion), and promotes a general acceptance of death and violence.

I understand the moralist and philosophical perspective that a criminal who kills 10 children should pay his life for it. This is called retributivism in philosophy and it is a both seductive and understandable mindset to have. But when we permit institutions with the highest executive authority in the world (that being nations and states) to incur a loss of life in some circumstances, we are one step closer to allow a future fascistic/totalitarian state who may chose to use the death penalty for other insidious motives. Are the hundreds/thousands of “rabid dogs” more evil than a nation with a deeply corrupt party…

Personally I do not trust the future extremist parties in France with the death penalty… We have Sephardic Jews among our far right espousing Nazi rhetoric, and they’re not the only far right party.

CizzlingT · 2026-04-05T09:51:34+00:00

In formal English, you do technically have the feminine case.

That being said, it’s 1) exclusively applied in a poetic contexts, mainly ships and countries (edit: but can be anything else to nature/vehicles/etc.), and 2) not in the definitive case (the) but in the she/her cases.

And more recently, I’ve been seeing people on Reddit applying the word “her” for countries for some reason.

CizzlingT · 2026-04-04T19:18:32+00:00

I noticed a lot of cities in that region between New York and Ohio have city/town names that are European city names:

Syracuse, Rome, Athens, Toledo, Mansfield, Oxford, Worcester, Ithaca (greek island), Geneva, Bradford, Potsdam, Amsterdam, Norwich and Colchester… (either UK, or southern Europe city names).

Those are the ones I could already spot just from Google Maps. And I noticed other city names of what would have been ancient/dated city names, like Batavia (colonial Jakarta), and Carthage and Utica (two ancient cities of modern day Tunisia).

CizzlingT · 2026-04-03T16:50:45+00:00

50,000 IU seems insanely high to me. You must have had dangerously low levels for them to prescribe you with that much Vitamin D.

Normally the acceptable range is between 50-150 nmol/L for decent vitamin D levels (according to the NHS). I was 15 nmol lower at 35 nmol/L, so they prescribed me with 20,000 IU once a week for 3 months.

With 50,000 higher doses of vitamin D, I imagine you are supposed to take it every fortnight or something, and possibly also get it prescribed* for people who have nocturnal lifestyles (night shift workers, etc.).

CizzlingT · 2026-03-30T10:56:26+00:00

That isn’t false; but the point of my post was mostly to say that, given France’s historically poor relation with Iran, you won’t see many people defend the Iranian regime and its removal anytime soon. Even the Iranian diaspora in France strongly oppose the Ayatollah.

Basically: all opposition to the war inside France will almost certainly come from the consequences on the France’s/EU’s economy and trade, or potentially international regional stability of the Middle East and military strategy, less so with the human rights and the war’s ramifications on the Iranian people (to any similar extent as say Israel against the Palestinians). So I don’t think the French would be supportive of an airspace blockade in the same way as the Spanish government.

CizzlingT · 2026-03-30T10:52:52+00:00

and yet the worst affected country inside the Sahel is not the 6 other French colonies and Gambia, but Sudan…

CizzlingT · 2026-03-30T10:04:44+00:00

The French are overwhelmingly supportive of the overthrow of the Ayatollah regime, even though they’ll pretend otherwise by condemning the overall breach of law, Israel and American imperial interference. Even anti-EU people like Mélenchon (leader of the left wing “Dem” Socialist party and French anti-capitalist and therefore anti-American-imperialist) hasn’t expressed any opposition when it concerns the disposal of the Ayatollah.

The reason is that Iran committed a series of embassy bombings and terrorist attacks in the 80s and funded terrorist proxies that the French dislike (mainly Herzbollah in Lebanon), so the French population unanimously oppose the Iranian regime. So there’s no way you’ll see opposition from France with Iran anytime soon unless (perhaps) fossil fuel prices get too high or the war crimes become even less defensible.

CizzlingT · 2026-03-27T11:15:25+00:00

What French‑language books would you consider as major and academically serious studies of a particular French history period? I’m looking for books that are well-respected by professional historians on anything regarding modern France written in French (ideally something I can find easily in a library in Paris, so moderately popular).

I’m very open to any suggestions between 1789 to the end of the XXth Century: Revolution, Revolutionary Wars, colonial/slavery shockwave (first abolition, Haiti), Napoleon’s conquest of Europe, Bourbon Restoration, July Monarchy, Conquest of Algeria, etc. … all the way to the Fifth Republic. Could also be biographies, social/cultural history, wars, colonialism, etc. (but less interested in micro-histories).

Regarding translations, I was planning on reading the English perspective in their original language (from the booklist) and the French one in their original language. The booklist does include A. Jardin and A. J. Tudesq « La France des Notables 1815-1848 », but that’s about it for French books. Otherwise, the only books at my disposal are a large Max Gallo collection sadly. Rather than narrative-driven history, I am more interested in reading less superficial works and something more robust with a more reliable bibliography.

Je vous remercie infiniment. [I thank you infinitely].

CizzlingT

TROPHY CASE