I only know this from a Quebecois perspective, I believe 16 is the age of consent in Quebec, but I doubt any of my cousins were still virgins by the time they were 14. I’m not sure on the logistics of this, but they were very promiscuous even at that age.
So absolutely none of this is shocking to me. This is just the way French people are.
I’ve been trying to get some stuff done at work on our infrastructure, and during the day there’s just too much going on with people getting in my way. So, I thought I’ll go in during the night shift and do some work when not as many people are around.
I’m in there at 11:00 p.m. running stuff. I’m on the scissor lift working on access points. I have my headphones in and can’t hear anything. I look over and one of the signs that denote a location for the scan guns is rocking back and forth like crazy.
That’s kind of weird, and I’m looking at all the other signs and not one of them is moving. There’s no vibrations or anything, there’s no air moving back there at all, and yet this sign is just a-rocking. So, I just look at the sign and say, “Stop that, it’s distracting,” and it stops.
Now that whatever it is knows that I know it exists, it’s trying to make me notice it even more. I’m hearing noises and all this other stuff that I haven’t noticed for weeks having worked there at night. I’m not scared, more like weirded out about the whole situation, and I’ve come to just talk to it now. That calms it down, I guess. I’m trying to see if I can just get a radio that plays in this back corner where everyone seems to avoid at all costs, and I was only there because I needed to be. So, I’m going to see what playing music does to the distractions.
I can’t say that I was a believer before, but I’m a believer now.
There’s a difference between propaganda and selectively presented facts.
The first graphic is misleading because it compares US war spending with Chinese infrastructure spending while ignoring American infrastructure investment and Chinese military spending. It’s a false comparison.
The second graph is from the legitimate Democracy Perception Index 2024. The numbers aren’t fabricated, but they measure how democratic people think their country is, not how democratic it actually is.