#French laws about that are...

[hamletthedane]

I vaguely remembered that I’d woken up last night at 2am and scrambled desperately for my phone to Wikipedia-search something I just HAD to know, then immediately fell back to sleep.

But for the life of me, I could not remember what I had searched. Curious, I opened my phone’s browser to see this:

You know that feeling: it’s 2am and you really really need to immediately read the biography of Maximilien Robespierre. We’ve all been there.

[hedgehog-moss]

Update on May 1st protests and how the french goverment handled them?

^ The May 1st protests were pretty violent esp. in Paris; two cops were set on fire (they're ok, one has 2nd degree burns), lots of destruction in city streets, and hundreds of injured protesters. The French gov is sticking to its M.O. of denying any police violence against protesters, emphasising protesters' violence and portraying it as mindless anti-democratic savagery rather than the result of their own anti-democratic policies.

There were more people protesting in the streets on Monday than at any other May Day protest in the past 20 years (by a large margin—7 to 10x more people than usual.) And the numbers are still impressive in terms of this current social movement—there were about 1.2 million people at the first protest against the pension reform in January, 900K at one of the February protests, around 1.1M on March 7 and I think 1.2M on March 23rd... We're in May and there were 800K people in the streets on Monday (using the police's probably low estimate). The first marches earlier this year were peaceful; people started destroying shit in March after the 49.3 (=the gov not letting elected representatives vote on the reform); in the following weeks we saw a brutal escalation of police violence + suppression of just about any means of non-violent protest, which results in more violence.

The vast majority of protesters are still peaceful, but in terms of providing context for the increased violence, well—people protested peacefully, peaceful protests got banned. People banged pots and pans, pots and pans got banned and confiscated. People started a petition on the National Assembly website which got a record number of signatures, the petition was closed before its deadline and ignored. MPs asked (twice!) for a national referendum on the reform to be held, their requests were denied. Electricity unionists cut power in buildings Macron was visiting, now he travels around with a portable generator. Unions tried to distribute whistles and red cards (penalty cards) to football supporters before the French Cup finale last week, so the ones who wanted could use them if Macron showed up (he ended up hiding and greeting the footballers indoors rather than publicly on the stadium lawn); the police prefecture tried banning union members from gathering outside the stadium to distribute these items (although the ban was struck down by the judiciary as it was illegal, like most bans these days...)

Confiscating saucepans was already so absurd it felt like a gratuitous fuck you, but now they're trying to prevent the distribution of pieces of red paper. Cancelling petitions that would have had no real impact anyway. Prosecuting people for insulting Macron. Arbitrarily arresting hundreds of nonviolent protesters to intimidate them out of protesting (guess who's left then?). The French gov is systematically repressing democratic or nonviolent means of making your opinion heard, and when people get more violent they're like "This is unacceptable, don't these terrorists know there are other means of expressing dissent??" Where? This week a 77-year-old man was summoned to the police station and will be forced to take a "citizenship course" for having a banner outside his house that read "Macron fuck you" (Macron on t'emmerde). Note that he would have been arrested (like the woman who was arrested at her home and spent a night in police custody for calling Macron "garbage" on Facebook) but they decided not to only because of his age.

So that's where we're at; on Monday two cops caught on fire (well, their fireproof suit did) after protesters threw a Molotov cocktail at them. (The street medic who tried to help them with their burns ended up getting shot by a cop's riot gun a few seconds later—with French police no good deed goes unpunished!) The media talked a lot more about this incident than about the fact that the cop who got most severely injured on that day (broken vertebrae) was injured by an explosive grenade that a colleague of his meant to throw at protesters (you can see it at the end of the video below). If police with all their protective gear get so badly injured by their own weapons, no wonder the worst injuries have been on the protesters' side. (nearly 600 injured protesters on May 1st, 120 severely, according to street medics.) I'm not including images of these incidents in the video but on May 1st a protester had his hand mutilated by a police grenade + a 17 year old girl was hit in the eye by a grenade fragment, may end up losing it (during the Yellow Vests protests, Macron's first attempt at repressing a social movement, 38 protesters lost an eye or a hand).

What you see in the video: cops charging the front of a march to tear a banner off people's hands then retreating and drowning the street in tear gas when protesters throw paint bombs at them (protesters have umbrellas because of police drones); at 0:30, a journalist saying "They're not even arresting him, just kicking him when he's down—they kicked him right in the face!" then police spraying with tear gas protesters who try to fend them off; at 0:46 when a protester being arrested asks a journalist if he's filming and starts reading out loud a cop's ID number, another cop shoves the journalist and throws him to the ground; at 0:54, an Irish journalist runs away from the police tear gas grenades that you hear going off, at 01:08, the incident mentioned above when a cop drops a grenade he tried to throw, which explodes in his group, breaking another cop's vertebrae. There's a lot more I'm not including, like how CNN said "there's so much tear gas in Paris, our foreign correspondent can barely breathe", how another journalist was hit by a sting-ball grenade (he was also bludgeoned on the head so hard it broke his helmet—even though cops know the people wearing helmets are journalists...), and yet another journalist who was calling out a cop for aiming at people's heads with his riot gun (which is illegal) ended up having the guy aim the riot gun at his head from 2 metres away (getting shot with this "less lethal weapon" from that distance would be lethal.)

All of these videos are from May 1st (most of them from this account monitoring police violence.)

So yeah, nonviolent protests followed by violent police repression and bans of nonviolent means of protesting result in more violent protests. The French government responds by a) pikachu surpris, b) condemning violent protesters and praising violent police to the skies, c) continuing to ban everything they can think of. Confiscating saucepans didn't work but confiscating pieces of red paper will do the trick! Let's prosecute people for bashing or burning an effigy of Macron, because banning symbolic violence always works to prevent actual violence! And this week after the May 1st protests we learnt that the gov is thinking of making street barricades illegal, because that'll definitely solve everything. It's going to be interesting for history teachers to teach students about the 1789 revolution that allowed us to take down an absolutist regime and become a republic, under a government that banned barricades because they see them as terrorist anti-republican structures.

^ Statue symbolising the French Republic (on Place de la République in Paris) dressed with a 'Macron resign' shirt by protesters on May 1st.

[ic-napology]

Randomly remembered about Murat's cuteness in The Coronation of Napoleon. It's just me or he's kinda smiling?

[mastersoftheair]

new stills for episode 4!

[alaiis]

The far right scored 40% in France for the European elections. We're the second country with the most seats. And many other countries have the far right leading too. This is a catastrophe.

Because of tonight's results, President Macron decided to dissolve French Parliament. We're called to vote again in 21 days. The left is scattered and all parties have suffered an incredible defeat today. The only result of these new elections will be to give majority to the far right in the French Parliament too. We'll have a neo-capitalist president governing with a far right prime minister.

I don't know why he chose to dissolve. Like the entirety of the left, I hate Macron. He's been conducting the cruelest class warfare and the bourgeoisie received several victories thanks to him. But I still prefer his majority to a far right majority. He called himself the shield against the far right. It was already hypocrisy and I've been saying for a long time his policies were just giving power to the fascists. Now he's literally doing it.

[anglerflsh]

my favourite passtime is making up incredibly unaccurate armour designs. That's a lie my passtime is researching but this comes at a close second

[jaguarys]

And on the note of my last post. I think everyone should have a best friend who likes completely the opposite media as you do but is equally unwell about and who's willing to engage in your interests as well. Incredibly humbling and also occasionally feels like a shark fin going by in the water

[hey-kae]

I genuinely wish i never started reading ig gossip pages because now i dislike most of the drivers as people and there’s no going back.

Charles has one of the worst entourage known to men with his friends and girlfriend blocking people who call them out left and right.

Lando sucks up to trump and blurts out offensive shit every few weeks.

Lewis hangs out with so many problematic and shitty people.

Daniel is misogynistic and has a weird age gap with his gf.

Carlos is xenophobic and joked about the swastika symbol.

Max’s gf might just be the worst person ever and he’s okay with that.

…

I still love watching the racing (which is the whole point ig) but I genuinely don’t think i like most of them as people anymore. It sucks cause i miss writing fics but I can’t get myself to.

(This is basically just a rant and i guess a bit of an explanation about why i don’t really write anymore.)

[ineffablydelighted]

[My humble contribution to the meme mania surrounding @neil-gaiman having pyromaniac tendencies]

Featuring: the reference you SHOULD understand, it was not that long ago, folks 😂😂😂

Also featuring: me, late to the party but here I am with my zero to none Photoshop abilities

(Hi, by the way 👋)

Just came by to drop this and disappear as quickly as I popped.

[boxwinebaddie]

nina! do you have a rlly weird random hc? <3

okay, this is a little Unhinged…

buuut did i tell y’all about the brief post!rm super best friend model era jersey hc where chanel invites him to walk for their fall collection at new york fashion week…

…In The Iconic Yérsey Chanel GLASSES?

( while ravenstan and crimson dawn are on their Epic Punk Rock World Tour…

— iN PARIS?!?! )

[6ebe]

Ah well the child labour exploitation juggernaut of the Spain nt will continue on for another round 😞

[tumblasha]

europe is so interesting. they treat me like a cute kid, backpacking across europe at age 21. the next second they ask me why i'm responsible for gun violence in the united states.

[the-busy-ghost]

Alright uninformed rant time. It kind of bugs me that, when studying the Middle Ages, specifically in western Europe, it doesn’t seem to be a pre-requisite that you have to take some kind of “Basics of Mediaeval Catholic Doctrine in Everyday Practise” class. 

Obviously you can’t cover everything- we don’t necessarily need to understand the ins and outs of obscure theological arguments (just as your average mediaeval churchgoer probably didn’t need to), or the inner workings of the Great Schism(s), nor how apparently simple theological disputes could be influenced by political and social factors, and of course the Official Line From The Vatican has changed over the centuries (which is why I’ve seen even modern Catholics getting mixed up about something that happened eight centuries ago). And naturally there are going to be misconceptions no matter how much you try to clarify things for people, and regional/class/temporal variations on how people’s actual everyday beliefs were influenced by the church’s rules. 

But it would help if historians studying the Middle Ages, especially western Christendom, were all given a broadly similar training in a) what the official doctrine was at various points on certain important issues and b) how this might translate to what the average layman believed. Because it feels like you’re supposed to pick that up as you go along and even where there are books on the subject they’re not always entirely reliable either (for example, people citing books about how things worked specifically in England to apply to the whole of Europe) and you can’t ask a book a question if you’re confused about any particular point. 

I mean I don’t expect to be spoonfed but somehow I don’t think that I’m supposed to accumulate a half-assed religious education from, say, a 15th century nobleman who was probably more interested in translating chivalric romances and rebelling against the Crown than religion; an angry 16th century Protestant; a 12th century nun from some forgotten valley in the Alps; some footnotes spread out over half a dozen modern political histories of Scotland; and an episode of ‘In Our Time’ from 2009. 

But equally if you’re not a specialist in church history or theology, I’m not sure that it’s necessary to probe the murky depths of every minor theological point ever, and once you’ve started where does it end? 

Anyway this entirely uninformed rant brought to you by my encounter with a sixteenth century bishop who was supposedly writing a completely orthodox book to re-evangelise his flock and tempt them away from Protestantism, but who described the baptismal rite in a way that sounds decidedly sketchy, if not heretical. And rather than being able to engage with the text properly and get what I needed from it, I was instead left sitting there like:

And frankly I didn’t have the time to go down the rabbit hole that would inevitably open up if I tried to find out

[arsonistbunny]

Things happening on qsmp and fans reminds me of that time dream had another brilliant idea of asking for speculative work for his icon and I said that it wasn't normal or okay and I had this discussion with an American person and at some point, they went "well when we want to enter a school we have to pay for the test to enter. are you saying this isn't normal" like a gotcha but like? yeah?? that's not ok?

In France, having to pay to pass a test to enter a school isn't illegal but your teachers will warn you: this is a sign of a scam. the scam being that the school actually sucks and is just trying to get as much money as fast as possible before eventually closing down due to being bad.

And I'm saying that because qsmp fans on twitter are doing their best to defend doing nothing to fix the situation. (The situation being free work by the way. And unsigned contracts. And abusive clauses.) And invoking things such as "oh the union that wants to take this to court are illegal" and things that appear to be normal in USA. And like, ok, listen I don't know a lot about how your country works but please question it!

You may not realize it but your worker's rights suck so much that you think a union fighting for worker's rights to be respected has to be illegal or nefarious??

[starsfromtoulon]

thinking about an AU where javert does quit the police force after montreuil-sur-mer and ends up working with sheep and a sheepdog. (he mentions thinking about labouring in the fields--- most likely, this is as a harvester or agricultural worker, but let me!!!)

not relevant to anything, i just need to picture javert out in the country with dogs and sheep. and yes, i know, this is so implausible because it would necessitate JVJ having dealt with champmathieu entirely differently.

[idissectgermanwords]

Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz (noun, neutral):

Rind (noun, neutral); bovine

Fleisch (noun, neutral); flesh, meat

Etikette (noun, feminine); etiquette

-ung (suffix, feminine); used for the nominalization of verbs

über- (preffix); over

wachen (weak verb); guard, watch

-ung (suffix, feminine); used for the nominalization of verbs

auf- (prefix); on, to

geben (strong verb); give

über- (prefix); over

tragen (strong verb); carry

-ung (suffix, feminine), used for the nominalization of verbs

sitzen (strong verb); sit