phtrivier a day ago

Roland-Garros, along with the Tour de France, is such a strong part of French culture.

Summer really "starts" when young people pretend to study for the "baccalaureat" exam, but are really just napping in front of a boring RG game (where the French players loose in the end).

Then it "peaks" when old people pretend to understand cycle racing, but are really just napping in front of a boring race (where the French racers are ridiculous in the end.)

And yet, we watch.

For a while, we watched because, well, TV would stop all regular programming to play the endless boring games and endless boring races, so we had no choice.

Now, we have the choice, and yet... we watch.

It still fascinates me. After all this years of knowing the winner from the very beginning of the competition, we still pretend.

"The glorious _certitude_ of sport."

  • wjnc 20 hours ago

    I read this as a poem to the French culture.

    • phtrivier 16 hours ago

      I suppose I mistakenly assume that the tropes of my youth still applies, though.

      Young people don't need to study for the baccalaureate - it's officially a giveaway now.

      The real "rite of passage" is surviving the stress of the lottery that is Parcoursup. (The impressively scaling web system that replaced any illusion of meritocracy with an opaque selection that makes night-clubs bouncers looks fair. And I can't even use this allegory on young people, since they've never been to a night club anyway.)

      And I guess, with TV dwindling, the Tour is going to be uneconomical to cast, soon. But, unexpectedly, people are still spending their afternoon on the road sides to be "part of the show", to get close to the podiums, the camera, the TV crews, etc... to watch the substance users drive past them (And sometimes the bikers too.)

      We're a weird bunch. "Ils sont fous, ces gaulois"

      • glimshe 12 hours ago

        What's the problem with Parcoursup? Im not French and had never heard about it. I just read the Wikipedia entry but it isn't clear why it causes so much stress to students.

        • phtrivier 10 hours ago

          Because there is no way to understand why you're accepted or not in a given training program.

          The system looks like it mimics what exists (or at least, what existed 25 years ago) in "Grande Ecoles" (Elite Engineering schools like Polytechnique, Centrales, Normale Sup), etc... - you make "wishes" to enter that or this program, and you're offered a spot in some of them and denied the spot in others.

          However, the huge difference is that the algo in Grande Ecoles is pretty clear: there is an entrance exam that serves as a competition. The exam is precise enough that you're going to be graded relatively evenly no matter where you live, and the examinators don't know you. In the end, you get a ranking.

          Then, depending on how selective they are, each training program is basically going to offer a spot to the first N people who wanted to join, ranked by the score at the exam. Very harsh if you miss the training of your dreams for half a points, but pretty simple to understand.

          Parcoursup, on the other hand, gives zero information about why you're accepted or not. It's very different from receiving a letter from Yale telling you "sorry, your grades are not good enough, your applying essay did not mention diversity / freedom / whatever, etc...")

          People fill the blanks with rumors ("they don't take people from this city", "they don't take people with that last name", etc...), heuristics ("it's better to be the first of a bad class in a countryside high school than being the fourth in a very good class in the cities"), conspiracy theory ("someone hacked the system to remove my kids names", etc...)

          Kids don't have a point of comparison, parents usually only face the kafkaesque system once, so it's hard to build a reformer base, and the system changes every two years anyway. (Which is the glimmer of hope: it might converge to something halfway decent in the long run.)

          It's entirely possible the initial plan was completely different from the current implementation - or maybe there is a missing piece that never came to exists (replace the baccalaureate with a ranking exam ?)

          Political opponents would tell you that it's on purpose to limit people entering university to lower the costs (I mean, we have pensionners to pay at home and abroad.) ; or that life is simpler if you're rich enough to enter private training program (where the algo for entry is "cash or check ?")

          The one good things is, that, as far as I know, once you've gone through the hurdles, most universities, engineering schools, etc... are still very cheap in France (to the level that USA would call it "free" in comparison). Even the most elite ones.

          The former system had drawbacks: you would basically register wherever your want to study whatever your want ; the first few classes of the university would be crowded beyond reason, and then half the student left when they discovered they did not really want to study psychology or history of art for a living, but, hey, that's youth ;)

atan2 a day ago

Love the favico.