Spahija

My father was a pervert towards my sisters, not only saying questionable sexual-related things but also on multiple occasions having very questionable physical contact with them (mostly this past year, though they have since told us that this sort of thing had happened earlier too on infrequent occasions, including when they were very young (they are still underage)). I don’t know the full details of this (I am unaware, for example, if anything happened that could be considered rape), and I was only aware of this after our mother became aware of it too, but we have cut contact with him when this came to light earlier this year; and given how deep a hole he’s dug for himself financially speaking (which also escalated to a breaking point this year) in the years following my parents’ separation, I don’t doubt that he is having the shitty time he deserves. I guess a slightly amusing thing in retrospect (in the fucked up way that any bit of this could even attempt being amusing) is that I remember him saying many years ago that when he was younger he considered becoming a catholic priest (which I always found strange since he isn’t religious, at least he wasn’t in the time I’ve been alive).

Meanwhile my last psychiatrist was like “Yes you do show many symptoms of ASD, but I do not believe in the usefulness of the medical criteria of the DSM-5 [proceeds to speak about Freud for 5 minutes]”; from what I’ve heard Freud is still a massive problem for psychiatry in my country (France).

Congratulations comrade!

My (source: am Fr*nch) reasoning is this: the reason why Macron lost many seats to the left in 2022 was because they rallied around a clear leader, Mélenchon, whose programme clearly answered some “radical” demands, and who had won so much votes in the last election compared to other candidates on the left that no one could credibly oppose his NUPES election agreement. The reason Macron is dissolving the National Assembly now is because it is the Socialist Party (PS) that won more seats than LFI (Mélenchon’s party) in the EU elections, while lacking the clear leadership Mélenchon had and likely not being willing to concede to the more “radical parties” like Mélenchon could towards the more traditional socdem parties like the PS in 2022. In other words, Macron knows the left is divided, and that its presumed leader, for the time being, is a neoliberal type from the party that gave us François Hollande, that is: someone he could work with. On the other hand, the far right winning big is not as big as a concern for Macron as prevening LFI from staying the major playor on the left in the next elections, since he knows he can work with the far right (hell, he kinda already does, just not officially) but not with LFI. So, in short, my belief is that for him it is worth the gamble of maybe having to concede another victory to the far right (also, since the legislative elections are in two rounds, he’s probably still banking on the “beavers” voting as a barrier the far right on round two like they’ve done until now) in order to contain the left.

I am an assessor at my local voting office, staying there from 7h30 to after the votes are counted (polls close at 20h00, it is only 11h20 right now). Making the most of a useless election…

Maybe the Communist party will suspiciously win 99.999% of the votes only at my voting office and nowhere else

I fucking looked at a trashcan and said “THAT’S A BIT SPD”

Most amazing sentence I’ve ever read. Anyways at least for me the EU elections have been an excuse to lecture my family members about how much of a hypocrite and a shitty human being Glucksmann is. Also for some reason my town has only now started to have posters that are not from either the communist party (why does the PCF have to be so watered-down uuugghhhh) or LFI, which I find funny given how right wing our mayor is…

The Snide cut

“Bamboula” […] (a racial slur, dating from colonial times).

So this is how I learn that “bamboula”, which everyone in my family uses to mean “a mess” (“c’est la bamboula!”) is a racial slur… I guess I’m thankful I haven’t heard the term be used in years, but still…

My condolences comrade, your father seemed like a great guy, I wish mine was even half as awesome as you portray yours here.

Don’t beat yourself for not feeling the way you’re “supposed” to, it is perfectly normal to have the shock of losing him only impact you later on. I lost my grandmother earlier this month (in fact the funeral is today). I was unbelievably close to her since I live at her house and lived with her for the majority of my life; but despite this I didn’t cry during her illness while her health declined so quickly, I didn’t cry when she died… I only cried when her body was taken away (which was surprisingly late because of the shitty way home-hospitalisation is organised in France), but when I did it was the most I’ve ever cried in my life. All this to say, I feel you comrade.

I often use the same argument but, being French, with the French Revolution, Louis XVI and Corsica instead.

Seeing a lot of people disliking EU4 in this thread meanwhile it’s my most played game on Steam by an amazingly wide margin… I guess I didn’t play any of the other EU games so I can’t really compare them (something something no investigation no right to speak), but I know I really enjoy EU4 (and I do way more than HOI4 or other Paradox games I’ve played; though I haven’t played CK and have just gotten into Vicky). Anyways, I hope EU5 will be good and not an unfinished game with beautiful maps.

Terrific song and album; not my personal favourites by Yes, but there are so many contenders so it’s not too surprising (if I had to chose I’d say my favourite song by them is Heart of the Sunrise and my favourite album is Close to the Edge safe picks, I know…)

and to think I’ve still been wearing my scarf and pea coat this week; I prolly should switch now huh

I’m a bassist and my favourite song to play is Spain by Chick Corea. I also play the drums, and when I first started playing music I learned classical percussion, but it has been a while since I’ve played a vibraphone.

Libya, Serbia…

Which google translate thought was “simplified Chinese”. I had to tell it Traditional Chinese to work.

Which is strange because it is in fact simplified Chinese; for example, Xi’s name in traditional Chinese is 習近平 whereas here it’s 习近平.

Je choisis de le garder en vibreur pour ne pas déranger mon entourage; par countre mon réveil est la musique qui est jouée par les radios dans Portal

I too forgot

I’m going to sell lilys with comrades in my town (is this a tradition elsewhere than France?), then prolly go to march in Paris in the afternoon

The ghost of Kiev