Welcome to General Chat - GAW Community Area

This General Chat area started off as a place for people to talk about things that are off topic, however it has quickly evolved into a community and has become an integral part of the GAW experience for many of us.

Based on its evolving needs and plenty of user feedback, we are trying to bring some order and institute some rules. Please make sure you read these rules and participate in the spirit of this community.

Rules for General Chat

• Be respectful to each other. This is of utmost importance, and comments may be removed if deemed not respectful.

• Avoid long drawn out arguments. This should be a place to relax, not to waste your time needlessly.

• Personal anecdotes, puzzles, cute pics/clips - everything welcome

• Please do not spam at the top level. If you have a lot to post each day, try and post them all together in one top level comment

• Try keep things light. If you are bringing in deep stuff, try not to go overboard.

• Things that are clearly on-topic for this board should be posted as a separate post and not here (except if you are new and still getting the feel of this place)

• If you find people violating these rules, deport them rather than start a argument here.

• Feel free to give feedback as these rules are expected to keep evolving

In short, imagine this thread to be a local community hall where we all gather and chat daily. Please be respectful to others in the same way

Rules For the rest of the Site also accessible on the sidebar.

Yesterdays General Chat

With a culture as stubborn and storied as the French culture, the impending change seems to be infiltrating more slowly in Paris. There are still a million cafes, and bakeries, and cheese shops, and French people chatting at Brasseries, and boats taking tourists up and down the Seine River.

But there’s a layer of dust over the city.

Graffiti is everywhere, on ancient walls and trains and shop doors. There is more garbage on the streets, carelessly tossed water bottles and wrappers—thrown by people who don’t care about beauty, and have no respect for someone else’s land.

Immigrant children gather in parks, oblivious to the people around them, speaking in their native tongues, not in school, ignored by the Parisians passing them by.

Streets once solely French are being taking over by immigrants, and new restaurants have the smell of curry mingling with baking baguettes.

I sat next to a Chinese student at a Vivaldi concert in an old church. I was amazed by the number of Chinese in the city taking in Monet, crème brûlée, and music. They seem to love Western culture. They're in Paris to eat it up. They want the clothes, the food, the art. President Chi was visiting while I was there. Long tables of his contingency sat in historic cafes eating elevated French food—cafes where Hemingway once sat and wrote. They secretly covet the culture they were taught to dispossess.

I found it all bizarre.

The monsters ruling the earth are trying to do away with Western civilization—all of our artistic accomplishments, the architecture, the literature, the food, the beauty. Maybe people like the Chinese are trying to scarf it down before it disappears.

Student protesters were encircled three deep by the French police, and while these naive students have no idea what they are protesting for, I hated to see their right to protest stifled in such a way.

There are no customs agents at the airports. A machine takes your picture and scans your passport. Right out of the book 1984.

The last days of ancient sunlight. Those words kept going through my mind in Paris. Immigrants drive taxis, secure famous art, run the shops. Things are changing—begrudgingly so.

Left, still, was the quintessential French waiter. No one will ever take his place, until all the restaurants serve food that tastes like curry.

If I try to step back and look at the bigger picture, 40,000ft view. I can confidently say that Q is a psychological operation conducted by military and/or government officials with high clearance that Trump is aware of and has not renounced. It would also seem that Scavino is also somewhat involved based on posts and their timing.

As to the purpose, I would say it is to sway public opinion and provide some sort of direction for those seeking answers and truth. To give clues into the corruption that plagues the current governments of the world, especially the US. To what end, I do not know. My opinion is that the country needs something to unite it again, somewhat like the events of 9/11 united us. That leads me to believe that we all have to experience some kind of massive national/worldwide trauma or difficult period together where everyone feels it, to the extent that political alliance and divisive issues seem meaningless in comparison. Looking for opinions, I want to believe that Covid was that necessary event but people are still far from united. Do you think the eventual revelations of vaccine damages and the intentional release of the virus will be enough or are we still in for another period of some new pandemic/war before the dawn?

I was sitting in a local not-so-fast-food burger restaurant when 4 large, black, non-descript passenger vans pulled into the parking lot. Some older white men got out ahead of about 40 young Mexican men who disembarked and were lined up outside the building. One of the older guys, who were all wearing dark blue and polo shirts with what looked like some sort of small law enforcement logo on the breast, came into the building first. As the young guys entered and walked past him, he was telling them all to "just say number 3 combo, say number 3 combo..." It was the cheapest thing on the menu that wasn't a child's meal. It was evident they were being coached because they didn't know English. They all looked apprehensive and many were wearing the same shorts, sandals, and socks, but different shirts. All looked to be older teens to early twenties. This happened in my small red town, coming soon to a theater near you. All the patrons just sat and watched silently in disbelief. Our government is not working for us, they are working against us.