I was smoking at 12 in France in 1999, I told tobacconists I was buying them for my mom. Pulled the same thing off in the states when I moved there 2 years later. And I was far from alone. These are far more recent (terrible, obviously) habits than you might think.
The inability to use words to say stupid shit does confer a certain air of wisdom, however.
I mostly agree with you, but "eh, who cares?" isn't the moral high ground you're trying to portray it as. I guess good for you for not raising your blood pressure over this stuff, but there are genuine reasons for criticizing the capitalist consumerism these minor celebrities push on their followers. Even if mkbhd's product in this case is virtual, it's part of a culture of unsustainable overconsumption and wealth hoarding. It's fine for you not to care, but that's not a more enlightened position, it's just apathy.
antepenultimate
Arabic, Arabian would refer to the geographic region of the Arabian peninsula. The dialects are on a spectrum, neighboring countries might understand each other reasonably well, but not countries further apart. Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian share a lot of features, same goes for gulf countries, Egyptian is pretty distinct but well known outside the country due to its output of movies, music and tv series, Algerian and Tunisian are pretty similar, Moroccan's kind of its own thing, Maghrebi dialects also include a lot of vocabulary from Berber languages, which won't be understood in other regions. Finally, in most countries, local dialects are not taught in school but rather Fusha, or modern standard Arabic, which is the language you'll hear on the news or read in the papers, and is common to the entire Arabic-speaking world. People don't speak it day to day but usually understand it well and can communicate in a mix of that and their dialects if they're speaking to someone from another Arabic-speaking country.
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 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.
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.
And then NY and SF are 5th and 6th with 36%... Did AI write this?