• NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone
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    23 hours ago

    The French invented sex. Before then people would just sort of split into two small people who’d then have to grow back to full size, and it was very boring and not very je ne c’est sais quoi.

  • cmder@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    So yeah why does the american/english don’t do more research about origins and call everything french ?

    • Pips@lemmy.sdf.org
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      It’s because deep frying was not very common in the U.S. Immersion in hot fat was considered a French style of cooking, so they’re French style fried potatoes. I think “fries” instead of “frieds” is dialect that caught on nationally in the U.S. in the 70s.

  • jaybone@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Yeah, it never occurred to anyone ever to stick their tongues in each others mouths until it was documented in ancient India.

    • 0ops@lemm.ee
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      Anon didn’t say that it started in ancient India, just that the fact that it happened in ancient India proves that it didn’t start in France

    • shawn1122@lemm.ee
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      We generally attribute discoveries to whoever documented it first. It’s almost laughable to attribute it to the French based on a kissing style that was widespread there in 1923. Surely people were doing it before then. Yet, the Americans and British found it so unique they referred to it as French kissing.

      Perhaps it was common before ancient India, but then the question is, why didn’t the ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, Chinese, Romans, and Greek document on it then?

      • Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca
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        1 day ago

        Arabic numerals came to Europe from India via Arabia. The Sine function does too, but it’s name is garbled and doesn’t mean anything.

        Venetian blinds came from Persia via Venice.

        Spanish Flu was everywhere, but everyone at the time was lying about it due to being at war, except for Spain.

        Many First Nations peoples are known by what other peoples called them (often pejorative names) rather than their name for themselves.

        Words usually aren’t authoritative declarations of truth, but rather snapshots of what was a useful distinction to someone somewhere a some time. Did the French think their style of kissing was a unique cultural phenomenon? Will Skibidi be known about in 500 years? No one documents graffiti, was it “discovered” by Pompeii?

        We live in a truely unique age, where nearly any question can have a relavent answer of some kind in moments. We can see people streaming everyday things from around the globe, or find the best research about what we know about ancient people’s daily lives. Is any of this worth carving into a monument though? How many copies of an archeological journal are going to survive the ages vs copies of Game of Thrones? I’d say there are countless things about our lives we think are special to today that even prehistoric people did, it just isn’t notable enought to build monuments to or copy manuscripts of.

      • x00z@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        That’s the thing. France and Belgium call french fries “frites” and “frieten”, which just translates to “fries”. It’s other cultures that gave them (wrong) names because of how they got to know them.

      • Shard@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        We barely document how we wipe our asses or shower because it’s such a mundane, day to day thing.

        Writing was limited, so I hypothesize that people would focus on important things like tax collections, kingly births or even that cunt Ea-Nasir. Less so on kissing or things they would find mundane.

  • minibyte@sh.itjust.works
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    2 days ago

    The French deserve some respect. If you want to know what a true strike or protest looks like, look to the French.

    • CTDummy@aussie.zone
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      More and more these days French disrespect feels like boomer shit. Look what the French did when the government came for their pensions. The industrial action within the transport sector alone.

      I was visiting Paris during some of the aforementioned protest. They’re out and about (in numbers) and will gladly get out to protest when they feel it necessary. Plenty of other western countries could learn, a lot, from the French people.

      • Asidonhopo@lemmy.world
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        A lot of it now goes back to the Iraq war, when France refused to join the Coalition of the Willing and invade. Nearly constant derision of the French in the media for a decade will do that to people.

          • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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            The American right would like to categorize it like that but it’s not communism at all, it’s socialism. I wish they could mischaracterize the correct political philosophy.

      • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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        Look what the French did when the government came for their pensions.

        For the record we did get it down from 65 to 64, but we still got +2 years.

        • CTDummy@aussie.zone
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          I appreciate that the outcome may not have been what was strictly desired. The French populace still get off their arse and do more than complain on social media while effectively doing three fifths of fuck all. More than what can be said about some others, especially those who are inclined to make brain devoid white flag jokes.

    • EnderMB@lemmy.world
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      Even today, they just don’t give a fuck about rules.

      In Southern France there are speed cameras being set up everywhere, and they’ll catch you for being even a few km’s over. The locals (mostly rural) have responded by either torching them, encasing them in hay bales, painting over them, or chopping them down. The police keep putting them up, alongside cameras to watch the cameras, and the locals keep destroying them overnight.

    • Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      Did you see the yellow jackets marching with their rolling barbecue fitted on the city’s tram line? Magnificent bastards.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      The important thing is to burn lots of people’s cars. Probably locals who are also protesting.

      That’s how you really get the attention of the authorities.

      • Pringles@lemm.ee
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        In France, but also Belgium and the Netherlands, you have a very malcontent population of 2nd or 3rd generation offspring (mostly male) of migrants who feel left out by the system and take any opportunity to cause chaos. It are these kids who set cars alight, not the protestors.

        Often when there is a truly large protest, they are there to “fight against the system” by getting into fights with the police and burning cars and just causing overall mayhem.

    • Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.works
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      Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon? The son of an Irish immigrant? He’s not the kind of guy who’d let facts get in the way of an opinion so we’re probably pretty solid saying that in front of him. If he did run his mouth, then I got your back, blud.

  • TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Britain is the land mass that includes England, Wales, and Scotland.

    William the Conquerer was the first Norman king of England and never had power over Wales and he was mostly successful in gaining homage from King Malcolm III, but never king over the lands.

    Edward I about two hundred years later almost pulls it off, but doesn’t quite get a firm grip on Scotland. James I in the early 17th century holds the crown for each of the lands. In 1707 they formalize the relationship with a treaty.

    So… No the French did not found Britain.

    • Im_old@lemmy.world
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      Also Normans were descendants of viking settlers. So French didn’t technically fund England either (yes, I’m being pedantic for the sake of the joke).

    • yesman@lemmy.world
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      The Anglos, Saxons, and Jutes were all tribes from what we’d call Germany. The Romans paved the first roads of London, and taught the Pagans about Jesus. And Rome was cosmopolitan, so it was a lot more than Italians in that army. England has also suffered under Danish/Scandinavian conquests small and large. The King Cnut was not a misspelling. His nephew, William is a Scandinavian settled in France.

      So… as far as “blood and soil” goes, Britain, and her people, were always more of a group project.

    • NateNate60@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      You could, however, accurately say that a French family founded the modern British monarchy. That much is still true. The UK royal family can still trace its lineage directly to William the Conqueror.

      • Leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        The Normans were Vikings - the then Frankish King, Charles, gave them land in north France if they agreed to shut the fuck up and stop murdering everyone in sight. They become known as ‘Northmen’ which contracted to ‘Norsemen’ which contracted to ‘Norman’.

      • RunawayFixer@lemmy.world
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        It’s not just the royal family, other descendants of the french conquerors are also on average wealthier than the descendants of those that had been conquered.

        One pretty striking statistic: “Furthermore, Norman descendants also enjoy other privileges, including attendance at the best universities. In a recent study that examined the enrollment at Cambridge and Oxford over the last thousand years, it was revealed that at certain times, Norman names were 800% more common at Oxford than in the general population, and more recently, were at least twice as likely to found in that institution’s enrollment.”

        https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/10/last-1000-years-families-owned-england/

  • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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    Nobody in France calls French fries or French toast “French”. We’re definitely happy to attribute the fries to our Belgian friends and nobody thinks something as ubiquitous as toasts could have a single inventor. I think those are Anglo-Saxon cultural elements.

      • thedarkfly@feddit.nl
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        As a Belgian, this is my position as well. Fries is part of the Belgian culinary culture, but it’s chauvinism to claim they were invented in Belgium.

      • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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        The article states hypothesis and guesses, it doesn’t seem to provide a definitive answer.

        Its conclusion, machine translated:

        In the first two chapters, we talked about the unlikely birth of the deep-fried potato, the result of a marriage between the potato, a popular vegetable par excellence, and cooking in a fat bath, reserved for high society. Where could this marriage have taken place? In a well-to-do kitchen with a fine frying pan? Impossible, as we saw earlier. Potatoes have no place there. In the home of the poor potato-eating bastard? Impossible too. They don’t have enough fat.

        Isn’t the answer to this question to be found in the streets of Paris, where in the 18th century, itinerant merchants carried their frying pans filled with dubious grease, into which they plunged meats and vegetables smeared with doughnut batter? Or is it to be found in a rotisserie with more extensive equipment? It’s a tempting hypothesis. As we know, the fried potato has spread through commerce. Wasn’t it born there? Is it not a purely commercial product? The inventor of the French fried potato will probably always remain anonymous, but we can guess his trade: a merchant. We can also guess his origin: Parisian.

        Pierre Leclercq

        March 2009 - December 2010

      • Valmond@lemmy.world
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        Like the espresso, invented by the French (express or exprés? nobody knows which one it was, but making 1 little cup at a time was new and fast), then the Italians improved it, especially with gruppo 61, group head 61. Now they have the best coffee 😔

          • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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            Maybe it is interchangeable sometimes, but English people would rather point at the UK, while Anglo-Saxons often abusively refers to UK plus majorly white former British colonies, USA, Canada, Australia and New-Zealand.

            • FozzyOsbourne@lemm.ee
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              Interesting. I’d probably call that “the anglosphere”, Anglo-Saxon is specifically the pre-Norman-conquest residents of what is now England.

              • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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                Wouldn’t the Anglosphere include every English speaking countries like South Africa, India and others?

                • FozzyOsbourne@lemm.ee
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                  23 hours ago

                  Maybe. There’s also “The Commonwealth” which includes them but which the USA explicitly opted out from (by gaining independence from the British Empire before it was cool).

    • Prunebutt@slrpnk.net
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      FIY: French toast is the english name for pain perdu.

      Also probably not “invented” by the French, but no one thinks they invented simple toast.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        Who the hell calls it a French press, I’ve never heard anyone call it that.

        • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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          I never knew there was a different name for it. The cafetière is a new one on me, and I did French in high school. Guess we weren’t talking about coffee much, though apparently french fries came up enough for me to remember pommes frites (they probably don’t fry apples much over there).

          • RunawayFixer@lemmy.world
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            Some fruits can be fried in the form of “beignets”, which is fruit covered with batter and then fried. Apples are traditionally the most popular beignet recipe I think: “beignets aux pommes”.

            • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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              The typical beignets aux pommes are made with apple compote (apples slowly cooked in a pan with a bit of water until they become liquid).

              • RunawayFixer@lemmy.world
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                I have never eaten beignets like that, where I’m from it’s always a recognizable apple before it gets battered and fried (in thick slices if it’s large or whole if small).

                If I search for beignets aux pommes, the 1st, 2nd and 4th result is without compotes, just apple slices like I know them. The 3rd looks to be the compote version. Adding compote to the query finds recipes for “beignets a la compote de pommes”, so I suspect that it’s a regional thing that those are called apple beignets.

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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            Until we collectively decided to be jerks about it in the early 2000s and called them “freedom fries” and “freedom toast.” I think it’s so weird that we’re closer to the British than the French when France totally helped us out in the early days.

    • InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world
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      Which gives rise to the true founding father of Germany. Napoleon.

      Without his restructuring of the HRE for management it would be even harder to unify later.

    • jabathekek@sopuli.xyz
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      Questionable: the 2023 movie Napoleon is entirely British and American actors. It is historically accurate. 🤔

    • Valmond@lemmy.world
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      A full revolution takes you back to where you started.

      Also, cinema was invented by the French. Kind of cool IMO.

      • Sylvartas@lemmy.world
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        Also, cinema was invented by the French. Kind of cool IMO.

        And then reinvented (with the Nouvelle Vague that went against “the Hollywood way” and largely contributed to revitalizing the entire industry)

  • To save anyone else the wiki trip

    “Some authors consider the recipe for Aliter Dulcia (translated as ‘Another sweet dish’) included in the Apicius, a 1st-century CE Ancient Roman cuisine cookbook, “not very different” from modern French toast, although it does not involve eggs.[10][11]

    In Le Viandier, culinary cookbook written around 1300, the French chef Guillaume Taillevent presented a recipe for tostées dorées[12] involving eggs and sugar.[13]”

  • FiskFisk33@startrek.website
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    This is not the French claiming ownership of stuff, this is shitty naming on the part of Americans who thinks all european food is from France. Or who really wouldn’t know the difference between Europe and France to begin with.

      • Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.works
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        I think they might’ve been referring to the left-right political spectrum. I believe the terminology comes from the seating layout of their post-revolution government.

        • Mubelotix@jlai.lu
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          In the first days, it wasn’t left against right but rather bottom vs top. People went on top if they agreed more with the people that lived in the mountains in ancient Greece, and called themselft mountainers. They were more radical and aspired to direct democracy. People at the bottom wanted a more monarchical/centralised government. They ended up winning but we keep thinking about how great democracy could be if mountainers could emerge again

          • Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.works
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            I was not aware of that - I assumed the terminology arose purely from the 1789 French National Assembly’s seating arrangement and had no precedent. I’ll dig into Wikipedia in a bit.

            I’m sure the day of the mountainers will come again - I just hope they grasp the opportunity when it happens.