I went to Paris last year and it was not a big deal, as long as you know the basics like excuse me/please/thank you.
A few times someone would correct us (eg "after 6pm we say bonsoir instead of bonjour"), but it never felt like it was done in a dickish way and people were generally pretty accommodating. Perhaps it helps that I went to Paris with low expectations, not thinking it'd live up to the hype, but I had a great time. Definitely don't let the language thing keep you from going!
Around 2015 or so they became a lot more accepted. From talking to teachers, a surprisingly large amount of the distraction is parents texting kids while they're at school.
> a surprisingly large amount of the distraction is parents texting kids while they're at school
We're entering pretty substantial numbers of parents who grew up or at least spent their entire adult lives with cell phones and the expectation of constant communication. In fact, from my anecdotal experience, the mid-older millennial cohort is the worst at expecting immediate replies at all hours to any form of communication be it social or work.
One of the things I realize I'm grateful for in hindsight is parents who didn't grow up with that, and had no problem calling the front desk of the school if there was a legitimate emergency that needed to involve pulling me out of school. And it turns out for anything short of that, the news could wait until 4PM.
I wonder how much of that is actually parents texting kids, and how much of that is that kids are using that as an excuse to why they checked their phone mid class.
That seems like one of the easiest excuses for kids to make that is hard to argue against.
Yeah, there was a recent NYT article about the ongoing phone ban/pouch discussion and one parent reported having a shared Google Doc for emergency communication with their kid to work around the lack of a cell phone. The nature of such emergencies was not discussed, but I cynically suspect it was along the lines of "do you want mac n cheese or nuggets for dinner?"
Consider how many people are clingy and/or just have questionable judgement about boundaries with their friends, family, and acquaintances in general, usually with a healthy dose of neuroticism thrown in for good measure.
Consider that lots of these people have kids, and when they do, they tend to have a very friend-like relationship with them. Like, they aren't just magically better at this stuff when it's their kid.
These situations are a source of a great deal of this behavior, and the "I can't contact my kid-friend!" anxiety.
It's some of both. Parents do text their kids during the day, but kids also pull out all the excuses when caught.
Even when I was in high school "I was responding to my mom" was the go-to excuse when caught using a cell phone. I had one teacher who would actually read what was on the screen (this was before locking your phone was common and probably lawsuit material today, but things were different) and call kids out when they were lying. The threat of having a teacher read your text messages was enough to put an end to cell phone usage in class.
My understanding is he said "Adams county sheriff's are crooks because they took my money" (which is not disputed)., and individual officers, who weren't actually mentioned by name, sued because someone else was responsible for taking the money
I think he tried to be the Libertarian presidential candidate and made a song about Hunter Biden, so people just assume he's full MAGA and doesn't deserve 1st amendment rights
Honestly it was pretty ballsy of Afroman to release songs during the trial (which did come up, but I think they sort of ignored due to some law that changed in 2024?)
Although funnily enough, when one of the questioned about if his wife had an affair with afroman he was like "I dunno". If he doesn't know it's a lie, kinda defeats the point of the defamation suit
To be fair, this raises an interesting question of epistemology. Can any man know for sure that his wife has never had sex with Afroman? It's almost always possible, however unlikely. One can and probably should trust that his wife hasn't had sex with Afroman, but it's rarely possible to be absolutely certain.
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