Yeah, onion soup is up there, too. Fish soup as well imo. There’s just too much good stuff 😅 good for your GF, I bet she’s in for some (expensive) treats 😁

Not OP, still huge fan of French cuisine. I’d choose Coq au Vin. It’s straightforward to do at home, all you need is a pot and a cooking plate. Combines red wine, mediterranean herbs and a good amount of butter with vegetables and chicken for an incredible dish. French people value fresh, beautiful ingredients and are willing to pay top money for A-class quality. That’s another secret to their cooking.

Then there’s of course more dishes that you can’t easily do at home:

• try a hand-made Croissant fresh out of the oven in the morning.
• Cheeses - there’s hundreds of them, eat them alone or with some Baguette and grapes.
• Galettes are thin wholegrain pancakes. They come with salty toppings, but also sweet varieties - salted caramel is a classic.
• Fresh oysters with a squeeze of lemon.
• Nothing compares to a good, aged French red wine. But also fresh white wines and roses are fine - locals buy them in 5 liter boxes in the supermarket, you put them in the fridge and are settled for a week. Just be mindful that they need to be fresh (last year’s harvest typically).
• Sparkling wines are amazing, too. It’s fine to settle for Cremant, it’s the same stuff as Champagne, but cheaper.
• I could write another list twice as long about seafood.

Best thing to do is visit France and experience it. No need to waste time and money in overcrowded Paris, foodies will be very happy in Bordeaux, Marseille, Rouen and affordable Provence area. You get amazing lunch deals (“plat du jour”, dish of the day) that typically include starter, main and dessert for around EUR15 in many places.

I am a bit too dumb to understand that graph and asked ai for an explanation. It helped me, maybe it also helps others:

This graph comes from a study by Gilens and Page that examines how different groups influence U.S. policy decisions. It has three separate charts, each showing how policy adoption (whether a policy is enacted) relates to the preferences of different groups:

1. Average Citizens’ Preferences (top chart)

2. Economic Elites’ Preferences (middle chart)

3. Interest Group Alignments (bottom chart)

Breaking It Down:

• X-axis:

• In the first two graphs, it represents how much each group supports a policy (from 0% to 100%).

• In the third graph (Interest Groups), the x-axis shows alignment, with negative values meaning opposition and positive values meaning support.

• Y-axis:

• The left y-axis (dark line) shows the predicted probability of a policy being adopted.

• The right y-axis (gray bars) shows how often different levels of support occur in the data (percentage of cases).

Key Takeaways & Surprises:

1. The top chart (Average Citizens) is nearly a flat line.

• This means that whether the general public strongly supports or opposes a policy has little impact on whether it gets adopted.

2. The middle chart (Economic Elites) has a rising curve.

• This suggests that policies supported by the wealthy have a much higher chance of being adopted.

3. The bottom chart (Interest Groups) also shows a strong upward trend.

• The more interest groups align in favor of a policy, the more likely it is to be adopted.

Big Picture:

This graph suggests that the opinions of average citizens have little to no effect on policy decisions, while economic elites and interest groups have significant influence. This challenges the idea that the U.S. operates as a true democracy where the will of the majority decides policy.

Ya interesting, your theory of mind checks out for me. I’m not “rich” as in “I have significant capital”, but I’m certainly more “rich” than “poor”. So yes, I don’t notice it when I pay ~30EUR per month for a newspaper.

Are there any independent newspapers in your country? I Germany, there’s taz, a daily newspaper that is owned by a cooperative. They certainly don’t give a shit about the rich & powerful’s opinion - for example, they publicly pissed off the editor-in-chief of Germany’s biggest and most-powerful news corporation, Springer, just for the sake of free speech. Would you be willing to give money to that kind of newspaper?

I see your opinion, I’m curious to hear how you think about the media’s role in society. Journalists work at newspapers and they need to pay rent. A stance “paywalls are paid for by the rich and the stupid” kinda means that one doesn’t want to pay journalists.

I am genuinely curious about your perspective on this. Would you prefer a world without newspapers? Or is it more of a question of money? When I was younger, I didn’t have the money to pay for newspapers. Nowadays, I’m happy to pay for newspapers that interest me.