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[Ares Land]

Well, the President of the United States is not the only president in that country.

Good guess, but it's really the other way around.

We have lots of presidents in France too, the title is used for, well, president, but also for senior judges, CEOs and in general for all positions called 'Chairman' in English. (*)

And, during the Third and Fourth republic, we had the président de la République, who had pretty much the same role as the president of Germany, or the president of Italy.
But, we also had the président du Conseil (the Conseil here being le conseil des ministres): prime minister or chancellor, well the guy actually in charge.

Oh, by the way, the Italians do the same thing and Mario Draghi is really Presidente del Consiglio, and unsurprisingly the Italians call their president il Presidente della Reppubblica.

Oh, back in the day, the président du conseil was called the French premier in English. I know this when, to my surprise and amusement, I saw a plaque on Broadway commemorating French premier Pierre Laval, prominent Nazi ass-licker and generally a guy we'd all very much like to forget.
(They removed the plaque since. I suppose some French tourist probably got around to telling someone.)


(*) On the other hand, the American greatly overuse the title 'Vice President.' A few years ago, I worked regularly with American companies and a friend of mine and I petitioned (jokingly) to be Vice Presidents too, because we felt left out at meetings.

[MacAnDàil]

Here is a survey for non-native French speakers:
https://www.psytoolkit.org/c/3.3.2/survey?s=9Zjqr
If you speak French at a good level, above B1 (but it's not your native language), I invite you to take it.

I got an error message:

"Erreur:
This survey is currently not active.
It is possible that it is no longer active,
or that it is offline for a short time.
Sorry!"

[Jonlang]

I have no idea if this is true or not, but it sounds good: apparently, we now take as many photographs in a two-hour period as was taken in the time between the invention of photography and the year 2000.

[Moose-tache]

I have no idea if this is true or not, but it sounds good: apparently, we now take as many photographs in a two-hour period as was taken in the time between the invention of photography and the year 2000.

Something that has definitely changed since 2000 is the balance of viewing and taking photos. It used to be, you took a photo because you wanted to have it later to look at. The amount of time you spent taking the picture was dwarfed by the amount of time you spent looking at it. Now we collect whole albums that we never look at. There are pictures on my phone that I'll never look at, but I still had fun taking them. I guess it's like self-published poetry: entirely for the amusement of creativity, with no chance of it ever being seen by human eyes.

[Ares Land]

I have no idea if this is true or not, but it sounds good: apparently, we now take as many photographs in a two-hour period as was taken in the time between the invention of photography and the year 2000.

Something that has definitely changed since 2000 is the balance of viewing and taking photos. It used to be, you took a photo because you wanted to have it later to look at. The amount of time you spent taking the picture was dwarfed by the amount of time you spent looking at it. Now we collect whole albums that we never look at. There are pictures on my phone that I'll never look at, but I still had fun taking them. I guess it's like self-published poetry: entirely for the amusement of creativity, with no chance of it ever being seen by human eyes.

Oh, I don't know: I do look at them. I have to sort the pictures every couple of years or so (we like to print them out) and I do end up deleting most of them, but it's a pretty fun thing to do.
Kids love the album, besides. Going through the old picture is a great way to pass the time on a rainy afternoon.

It's a long term thing, besides. I look forward to going through these in 30 years, making fun of the 2020s hairdos and going 'oh, look a bird! Do you remember these?' (well, hopefully, not the last one.)

Plus, far-future archealogists won't be able to use the old 'must be a religious artifact / burial site' excuse. Hah!

[Raphael]

Some photos I've taken are part of my screensaver slideshow now. Two others serve as computer wallpapers, and a part of one of those is my avatar here.

[malloc]

Over the past few years, I have noticed that the Left seems increasingly negative toward atheism and skepticism. Many left wingers I know have defended astrology, come out as neo-Pagans, and criticized the atheist movement. As an atheist myself, I increasingly wonder if this tendency is putting me at odds philosophically with the left.

[Vijay]

Eh. I'm pretty left-wing and atheist myself. Some kids are left-wingers but also dogmatic. Fuck that noise.

[Travis B.]

I very much consider myself left-wing, and am most definitely an atheist, and to be honest tend to roll my eyes at anything "New Age"...

[Linguoboy]

Honestly, there's a lot to criticise in the atheism movement. I don't think it as a whole should be considered part of the Left or even closely allied with it. Not all conservatives are religious and not all religious or spiritual people are conservative.

[malloc]

Honestly, there's a lot to criticise in the atheism movement. I don't think it as a whole should be considered part of the Left or even closely allied with it. Not all conservatives are religious and not all religious or spiritual people are conservative.

Sure, there are plenty of terrible atheists and I certainly understand the criticism directed at people like Richard Dawkins and so forth. But fundamentally, I find the claims of religion thoroughly unconvincing. All the evidence I have seen suggests a materialistic universe that functions quite well without invoking the divine to explain anything. The fact that many people making this point also support racially profiling Muslims and oppose feminism is hardly an argument against it.

[Travis B.]

Honestly, there's a lot to criticise in the atheism movement. I don't think it as a whole should be considered part of the Left or even closely allied with it. Not all conservatives are religious and not all religious or spiritual people are conservative.

Just because there definitely are religious left-wingers and conservative atheists, and just because the likes of Dawkins are annoying, does not mean that being an atheist is incompatible with being a left-winger by any means.

[Linguoboy]

Honestly, there's a lot to criticise in the atheism movement. I don't think it as a whole should be considered part of the Left or even closely allied with it. Not all conservatives are religious and not all religious or spiritual people are conservative.

Sure, there are plenty of terrible atheists and I certainly understand the criticism directed at people like Richard Dawkins and so forth. But fundamentally, I find the claims of religion thoroughly unconvincing. All the evidence I have seen suggests a materialistic universe that functions quite well without invoking the divine to explain anything. The fact that many people making this point also support racially profiling Muslims and oppose feminism is hardly an argument against it.

I wasn't making an argument against atheism. I was making an argument against too closely identifying atheism with Leftism. These are completely orthogonal proposals; supporting one in no way entails supporting the other.

[Vijay]

Honestly, there's a lot to criticise in the atheism movement. I don't think it as a whole should be considered part of the Left or even closely allied with it. Not all conservatives are religious and not all religious or spiritual people are conservative.

Just because there definitely are religious left-wingers and conservative atheists, and just because the likes of Dawkins are annoying, does not mean that being an atheist is incompatible with being a left-winger by any means.

Dawkins isn't just "annoying"; he's Islamophobic. This is dangerous. When public figures like him smear Islam, the practical consequence in the real world is that people are all the more likely to kill us. When they encourage Islamophobia, more of us are killed as a direct result.

What happened just after 9/11? People went around killing Middle Easterners...and South Asians. This included Coptic Christians, Hindus, and Sikhs.

What happened just after Donald Chump got elected? Someone shot an Indian guy and a white guy trying to stop him and killed another Indian guy citing Chump as his justification.

[Ares Land]

Militant atheists got progressively more right-wing over the last twenty years. Right now, I'm sorry, but they're mostly islamophobes.
On the whole, though, I'd say atheists, agnostics and assorted non-religious people are much more likely to be left-wingers though.

There sure a lot of people into astrology these days, but you know, is it hurting anyone? Or does it really matter?
I'm very much a skeptic myself, but you know, if you want to live your life by the Toltec Agreements, be my guest.
To some extent, I believe skeptics need to know when to stop. We recently got our healthcare system to stop covering homeopathy, and I mean, yay for science and rationality! But if people still want homeopathic treatment now, this is not our problem any longer.

I dabbled into neo-Paganism myself, and backed away very very quickly. That scene's not left-wing at all: it's just packed full of neo-Nazis.

[linguistcat]

I think if someone's going to believe in astrology, they're going to believe in it. Just try to steer them away from anyone asking for money based on psychic abilities or card readings if you have enough sway that they'd listen to you.

[malloc]

I dabbled into neo-Paganism myself, and backed away very very quickly. That scene's not left-wing at all: it's just packed full of neo-Nazis.

Really? If anything, I have gotten the impression that neo-Paganism quite popular on the left. It seems like so many leftists I have met are pagans of one sort or another. Now granted, I certainly know about the fascist side of neo-Paganism as well.

[Raphael]

I dabbled into neo-Paganism myself, and backed away very very quickly. That scene's not left-wing at all: it's just packed full of neo-Nazis.

Really? If anything, I have gotten the impression that neo-Paganism quite popular on the left. It seems like so many leftists I have met are pagans of one sort or another. Now granted, I certainly know about the fascist side of neo-Paganism as well.

You two are from different countries. The English-speaking world might be different from continental Europe in that regard.

[Raphael]

Addendum: the more new-age-inclined parts of the Left seem to have moved closer to the far Right recently, though, with some of them becoming full-fledged Q followers.

[Ares Land]

Really? If anything, I have gotten the impression that neo-Paganism quite popular on the left. It seems like so many leftists I have met are pagans of one sort or another. Now granted, I certainly know about the fascist side of neo-Paganism as well.

You two are from different countries. The English-speaking world might be different from continental Europe in that regard.

Yes, I suppose things may be different in the US. Though I believed neo-Pagans were mostly left-wing too before actually checking out pagan groups.