Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

When we show up, we win.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about it’s history.”

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

In my day, never was longer.

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / End of the Weekend Open Thread: What Are You Doing with Your Soros Checks?

End of the Weekend Open Thread: What Are You Doing with Your Soros Checks?

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Best comment, so far: “Ideal buyer would be a wealthy fourteen-year-old.”

Or then, there’s this genuinely lovely Washington Post story — “Can a remote island in Canada become a safe harbor for those who want to flee Donald Trump?”

CAPE BRETON ISLAND, Canada —The first sign of what Rob Calabrese would come to think of as America’s unmooring began last year, just after Donald Trump won his first presidential primary and Calabrese published a $28 website that he’d designed in 30 minutes. “Hi Americans!” it began, and what followed was a sales pitch for an island where Muslims could “roam freely,” and where the only walls were those “holding up the roofs” of “extremely affordable houses.”

“Let’s get the word out!” Calabrese wrote, adding a photo of an empty coastline along the Atlantic Ocean. “Move to Cape Breton if Donald Trump Wins!”

It was meant as a joke — but seven hours after Calabrese linked the site to the Facebook page of the pop radio station where he works as a DJ, in came an email from America. “Not sure if this is real but I’ll bite.” And then another: “It pains me to think of leaving, but this country is beyond repair.”…

The emails kept coming, so many that soon the island’s tourism association brought on four seasonal workers to help respond to the inquiries, which were arriving from every state and hundreds of towns, until it seemed to Calabrese that America was filled with people who wanted to get away…

There were emails from a molecular biologist, a University of Oregon professor, a granite construction worker, a contractor for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a woman who said her home town was “Unfortunately, Alabama.” There were declarations and confessions about incomes, sexual orientations, goals for their children. Several included résumés. “I am so sick of what has happened to my beautiful country,” one letter began…

People passed around a five-page research paper that said the island needed to attract 2,000 people annually to remain viable. There’d been decades of failed attempts to rebuild.

The island had one new thing going for it — the website. More people knew about Cape Breton now. “We’re receiving thousands of emails,” one person said at the meeting. But that wasn’t the same as thousands of people moving there. Canada had strict immigration laws. People couldn’t just come because they wanted to. Applicants were scored based on age and skills and their ability to help the economy. Anybody who emailed Cape Breton was told they still had to apply through Canada’s immigration agency. They were sent a link to begin a process that could take more than a year.

So maybe some Americans would arrive someday, but they hadn’t yet. As the responses rolled in, Calabrese had revised the site’s text to make it less political — and less directed at Americans specifically…

True, the weather’s kind of inhospitable right now, but GCC will fix that soon enough. Read the whole thing — not least for the photos.

Reader Interactions

143Comments

  2. 2.

    Aleta

    The canapé we are instructed to eat first is a transparent ball on a spoon. It looks like a Barbie-sized silicone breast implant, and is a “spherification”, a gel globe using a technique perfected by Ferran Adriàat El Bulli about 20 years ago. This one pops in our mouth to release stale air with a tinge of ginger. My companion winces. “It’s like eating a condom that’s been left lying about in a dusty greengrocer’s,” she says. Spherifications of various kinds – bursting, popping, deflating, always ill-advised – turn up on many dishes. It’s their trick, their shtick, their big idea. It’s all they have. Another canapé, tuile enclosing scallop mush, introduces us to the kitchen’s love of acidity. Not bright, light aromatic acidity of the sort provided by, say, yuzu. This is blunt acidity of the sort that polishes up dulled brass coins.
    …
    The cheapest of the starters is gratinated onions “in the Parisian style”. We’re told it has the flavour of French onion soup. It makes us yearn for a bowl of French onion soup. It is mostly black, like nightmares, and sticky, like the floor at a teenager’s party. There are textures of onions, but what sticks out are burnt tones, and spherified balls of onion purée that burst jarringly against the roof of the mouth. A dish of raw marinated scallops with sea urchin ice cream is a whack of iodine. It is the most innovative dish of the meal, though hardly revolutionary. Sea urchin ice cream turned up on Iron Chef America back in the 90s.

    A dessert of frozen chocolate mousse cigars wrapped in tuile is fine, if you overlook the elastic flap of milk skin draped over it, like something that’s fallen off a burns victim. A cheesecake with lumps of frozen parsley powder is not fine. I ask the waitress what the green stuff is. She tells me and says brightly: “Isn’t it great!” No, I say. It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever eaten. It tastes of grass clippings. Parsley is brilliant with fish. But in cheesecake? They take it off the bill.

    Pictures of plates are snapped. Mind you I also take pictures, but mine are shot in the manner of a scene of crime officer working methodically.

    -Restaurant review at the Guardian

  5. 5.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I take this seriously, not literally. It explains trump’s delivery when he tries to read anything formal

    ormer “SNL” star and Donald Trump impersonator Taran Killam has confirmed everyone’s worst suspicions about the commander-in-chief’s time on “Saturday Night Live”: Trump “struggled to read.”
    Recalling the experience to Brooklyn Magazine, the actor said, “He was … everything you see. What you see is what you get with him, really. I mean, there was no big reveal. He struggled to read at the table read, which did not give many of us great confidence. Didn’t get the jokes, really. He’s just a man who seems to be powered by bluster.”
    Killam’s comments about Trump’s difficulties grasping the written language back up remarks previously made by Pete Davidson.
    Shortly after Trump’s “SNL” episode in 2015, Davidson told Opie Radio that the president “doesn’t really know how to read.”

  6. 6.

    efgoldman

    @Aleta:

    Restaurant review at the Guardian

    Hah, I assumed maybe New York, or some provincial English city like Birmingham or Manchester, or maybe Scots, like Aberdeen. But Paris? Holy crap!!

  7. 7.

    A Ghost to Most

    Cape Breton Island is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, but oh, those Winters.

  9. 9.

    efgoldman

    What Are You Doing with Your Soros Checks?

    I’m gonna’ go against the usual advice, and spend it all in one place.
    Maybe on a candy bar, maybe a pack of gum.

  10. 10.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Aleta: I liked this

    The dining room, deep in the hotel, is a broad space of high ceilings and coving, with thick carpets to muffle the screams. It is decorated in various shades of taupe, biscuit and fuck you

  14. 14.

    Aleta

    England:

    Darlene comes in with a steaming pot and three cups on a tray. “What’s that?” Slothrop a little quickly, here.

    “You don’t really want to know, Tyrone.”

    “Quite right,” after the first sip, wishing she’d used more lime juice or something to kill the basic taste, which is ghastly-bitter. These people are really insane. No sugar, natch. He reaches in the candy bowl, comes up with a black, ribbed licorice drop. It looks safe. But just as he’s biting in, Darlene gives him, and it, a peculiar look, great timing this girl, sez, “Oh, I thought we got rid of all those—” a blithe, Gilbert & Sullivan ingenue’s thewse—“years ago,” at which point Slothrop is encountering this dribbling liquid center, which tastes like mayonnaise and orange peels.

    “You’ve taken the last of my Marmalade Surprises!” cries Mrs. Quoad, having now with conjuror’s speed produced an egg-shaped confection of pastel green, studded all over with lavender nonpareils. “Just for that I shan’t let you have any of these marvelous rhubarb creams.” Into her mouth it goes, the whole thing.

    “Serves me right,” Slothrop, wondering just what he means by this, sipping herb tea to remove the taste of the mayonnaise candy—oops but that’s a mistake, right, here’s his mouth filling once again with horrible alkaloid desolation, all the way back to the soft palate where it digs in. Darlene, pure Nightingale compassion, is handing him a hard red candy, molded like a stylized raspberry… mm, which oddly enough even tastes like a raspberry, though it can’t begin to take away that bitterness. Impatiently, he bites into it, and in the act knows, fucking idiot, he’s been had once more, there comes pouring out onto his tongue the most godawful crystalline concentration of Jeez it must be pure nitric acid, “Oh mercy that’s really sour,” hardly able to get the words out he’s so puckered up, exactly the sort of thing Hop Harrigan used to pull to get Tank Tinker to quit playing his ocarina, a shabby trick then and twice as reprehensible coming from an old lady who’s supposed to be one of our Allies, shit he can’t even see it’s up his nose and whatever it is won’t dissolve, just goes on torturing his shriveling tongue and crunches like ground glass among his molars. Mrs. Quoad is meantime busy savoring, bite by dainty bite, a cherry-quinine petit four. She beams at the young people across the candy bowl. Slothrop, forgetting, reaches again for his tea. There is no graceful way out of this now. Darlene has brought a couple-three more candy jars down off of the shelf, and now he goes plunging, like a journey to the center of some small, hostile planet, into an enormous bonbon chomp through the mantle of chocolate to a strongly eucalyptus-flavored fondant, finally into a core of some very tough grape gum arabic. He fingernails a piece of this out from between his teeth and stares at it for a while. It is purple in color.

    “Now you’re getting the idea!” Mrs. Quoad waving at him a marbled conglomerate of ginger root, butterscotch, and aniseed, “you see, you also have to enjoy the way it looks. Why are Americans so impulsive?”

    “Well,” mumbling, “usually we don’t get any more complicated than Hershey bars, see….”

    “Oh, try this,” hollers Darlene, clutching her throat and swaying against him.

    “Gosh, it must really be something,” doubtfully taking this nastylooking brownish novelty, an exact quarter-scale replica of a Mills-type hand grenade, lever, pin and everything, one of a series of patriotic candies put out before sugar was quite so scarce, also including, he notices, peering into the jar, a .455 Webley cartridge of green and pink striped taffy, a six-ton earthquake bomb of some silver-flecked blue gelatin, and a licorice bazooka.

    “Go on then,” Darlene actually taking his hand with the candy in it and trying to shove it into his mouth.

    “Was just, you know, looking at it, the way Mrs. Quoad suggested.”

    “And no fair squeezing it, Tyrone.”

    Under its tamarind glaze, the Mills bomb turns out to be luscious pepsin-flavored nougat, chock-full of tangy candied cubeb berries, and a chewy camphor-gum center. It is unspeakably awful. Slothrop’s head begins to reel with camphor fumes, his eyes are running, his tongue’s a hopeless holocaust. Cubeb? He used to smoke that stuff. “Poisoned…” he is able to croak.

    “Show a little backbone,” advises Mrs. Quoad.

    “Yes,” Darlene through tongue-softened sheets of caramel, “don’t you know there’s a war on? Here now love, open your mouth.”

    Through the tears he can’t see it too well, but he can hear Mrs. Quoad across the table going “Yum, yum, yum,” and Darlene giggling. It is enormous and soft, like a marshmallow, but somehow—unless something is now going seriously wrong with his brain—it tastes like: gin. “Wha’s ‘is,” he inquires thickly.

    “A gin marshmallow,” sez Mrs. Quoad.

    “Awww…”

    “Oh that’s nothing, have one of these—” his teeth, in some perverse reflex, crunching now through a hard sour gooseberry shell into a wet spurting unpleasantness of, he hopes it’s tapioca, little glutinous chunks of something all saturated with powdered cloves.

    “More tea?” Darlene suggests. Slothrop is coughing violently, having inhaled some of that clove filling.

    “Nasty cough,” Mrs. Quoad offering a tin of that least believable of English coughdrops, the Meggezone. “Darlene, the tea is lovely, I can feel my scurvy going away, really I can.”

    The Meggezone is like being belted in the head with a Swiss Alp. Menthol icicles immediately begin to grow from the roof of Slothrop’s mouth. Polar bears seek toenail-holds up the freezing frosty-grape alveolar clusters in his lungs. It hurts his teeth too much to breathe, even through his nose, even, necktie loosened, with his nose down inside the neck of his olive-drab T-shirt. Benzoin vapors seep into his brain. His head floats in a halo of ice.

  15. 15.

    Major Major Major Major

    Bangkok update:

    I’m off to buy shorts at the mall Terminal 21, because as a white boy of Irish ancestry in San Francisco I only own one pair. Then I’m going to see what’s nearby from my list of recommendations, or just wander around. Thinking about booking a Kanchanaburi package for later in the week. Tonight is dinner at Gaggan, which we got a reservation at months ago after we saw the episode of Chef’s Table.

  20. 20.

    Lurking Canadian

    My father comes from Cape Breton. It is a bleak, cold, foggy, hopeless place that depended on under-sea coal mining for its survival, and is therefore doomed to more of the same.

    Still better than living under Trump.

  21. 21.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    I can’t believe how much Homeland has been ripping off Tinker Tailor and Smiley’s People the past couple of seasons. Sheesh.

    One of the most famous scenes in spy fiction is at the end of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, where Bill Haydon, unmasked mole, is sitting on the bed in custody being visited by Smiley for the first time since he was caught, and he says:

    “Really the pettiness of our inquisitors. They actually believe that I know the names of Karla’s other moles around the world. They’re utterly incompetent. I can’t talk to people like that.”

    In Homeland tonight there’s a scene (DVR SPOILER ALERT ) with Dar, newly unmasked mole/conspirator, being visited for the first time while it’s in custody, by Saul Berenson. Dar says this:

    “Every day the same bloody questions over and over, as if I’m withholding names, as if there were hundreds of us. Really. What can you do with asses like that?”

    You couldn’t help noticing the similarity in the scenes already, which is fine, but when I heard the dialogue I thought oh come on now. I mean there’s homage, but this is really just stealing.

    It’s partly because they did an even worse one I think it was last season, where someone said something along the lines of “Burning, that brings out the stubbornness in some people” which was almost a direct quote of Toby Esterhase from Smiley’s People.

    Sheesh guys. It’s not like these are just little spy motifs, someone actually wrote this stuff you’re using.

  23. 23.

    Hungry Joe

    @Aleta: “A screaming comes across the sky.” It’s pretty much downhill from there, but I got through it. Brilliant book, but a slog. Never tempted to re-read. That probably says something.

  24. 24.

    efgoldman

    @Major Major Major Major:

    I’m off to buy shorts at the mall Terminal 21, because as a white boy of Irish ancestry in San Francisco I only own one pair.

    Careful, or you’ll get badly burned knees.

  25. 25.

    Oatler.

    The Disgusting English Candy Drill! I also love Pynchon’s description of California Pizza in “Vineland”.

  26. 26.

    satby

    The irony of the Cape Breton story is that my mother’s father was born there, that’s where his family fled to during the famine. If there was a return program for the Canadian diaspora I’d go into it. And because I’m three generations removed from Ireland, I can’t do what HeleninEire is doing.
    Guess you’re all just stuck with me.

  27. 27.

    p.a.

    … a life-size medieval village…

    goddamnit Henri, I’m sick of playing a serf for his fucking guests. I’m way overdue to play a burgher’s wife…

  28. 28.

    Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)

    @Mike J: It would’ve been more subtle if everyone involved was wearing fucking pig masks and oinking throughout.

  29. 29.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @efgoldman: Paris is pretty hit and miss. Probably more uniformly good, even including cheap places, compared to most cities in the world, but definitely plenty of misses.

  40. 40.

    Sab

    @Major Major Major Major: Wow. I got sunburned on my whole legs wearing denim jeans canoeing in Minnesota (what sort of idiot wears jeans canoeing. If you flip the boat the jeans wearer sinks like a stone.) Didn’t sink or drown but did get sunburned.Must be nice not to be icky pale.

  41. 41.

    Aleta

    @Oatler.: Last week I was watching Escape to the Country. (Housemate took it up to escape the horrors and he’s right, it’s soothing). They cut away to a traditionally made English candy shop, 500 years old or something, and they had some of those candies on the shelf.

  42. 42.

    Quinerly

    Chuck Berry’s funeral was today here in St. Louis. I think it’s odd that Gene Simmons gave a long eulogy. A lot of our local musicians spoke. Bill Clinton and Paul McCartney sent nice letters that were read. The Rolling Stones sent a huge flower arrangement (giant guitar). Still don’t get why Gene Simmons had such a prominent role. No one I have asked tonight (locally) has a clue.

  44. 44.

    NotMax

    @NotMax

    Apologies for that extraneous D. Fingers not fully cooperating after the vibration of the riding mower this afternoon.

  45. 45.

    John Revolta

    Cape Breton is famous for its fiddle players. Not sure why, but I expect there ain’t a whole lot else to do there.

  47. 47.

    efgoldman

    @NotMax:

    Fingers not fully cooperating after the vibration of the riding mower this afternoon.

    You’re not supposed to put your fingers in the mower, Stubby.

  53. 53.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: It has been reported that he has reading glasses but won’t wear them anywhere that people can see him wearing them. In a group reading. When trying to read a teleprompter, etc.

  54. 54.

    Adam L Silverman

    @efgoldman: The high end restaurants in Scotland tend to have cordon blue trained chefs. Or at least they did when I lived there in the 90s.

  56. 56.

    efgoldman

    @Yarrow:

    If you’re wearing sandals all day as you walk around

    Or you could tell everybody you’re from Florida, and wear socks under your sandals.

  60. 60.

    Mike J

    In 12 hours I start my sailing instructor certification course. My books never arrived, but happily I’ve actually assisted teaching the course several times. Have to be prepared to teach gybing, the most dangerous basic[1] maneuver. Fun!

    Stomach in knots, have to sleep. and be ready to be alert and personable at 8am.

    [1] Not really THAT dangerous in a dinghy, but a risk of going in the water.

  63. 63.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Major Major Major Major: Do visit the entire temple complex and see the Golden Buddha. Also, take a canal tour and see where the Bangkok sequences of Man with the Golden Gun were filmed. If sex tourism is on the agenda, Soi Cowboy is fun.

  64. 64.

    Yarrow

    @efgoldman:

    Or you could tell everybody you’re from Florida, and wear socks under your sandals.

    Or Germany. Might be safer to say you’re from Germany these days.

  69. 69.

    Aleta

    @John Revolta: I think I was told this once by a Scottish fiddler: He went to live on Cape Breton so he could learn very old traditional Scottish fiddle tunes that had disappeared from Scotland, but were still being played on Cape Breton, having been handed down in fairly original form there for a few hundred years. Maybe remaining in the older form because Cape Breton spent so much time in geographic isolation? And for the same reason (my impression, don’t know much) the Cape Breton fiddle style (along with percussion style) is still one of the distinct ones today.

  70. 70.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Yarrow: Only if he’s prepared to get up before dawn and put towels on all the chaise lounges by the pool at the hotel so no one else can use them.

  74. 74.

    Fair Economist

    @Aleta: That’s a hysterical review, although I suspect somewhat exaggerated for comic effect. “We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read.” (fictional critic Anton Ego in Ratatouille). I bookmarked it, though.

  76. 76.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @schrodingers_cat: Interesting. I find both of those somewhat ridiculous but for entirely different reasons, but overall I like Homeland a lot more than The Americans. I hate to say it but my dislike of the Americans has a lot to do with how much I dislike the acting of the male lead, yikes. I heard him speaking in his natural accent once and thought ah okay, that works better. It’s not that he does it badly, they have such good accent coaching these days it’s kind of amazing. But in his case it seems to have given him a weird and sort of prissy sound that just irritates me no end.

    In the interview where I heard him speaking in his own voice, one of the things he said was that regarding his acting, in that show I mean, he feels like he’s spending 80% of his focus just getting the damn accent right. And I thought ah, that explains a lot.

  82. 82.

    Ruckus

    @Sab:
    I’d bet you don’t have an ego as big as, well his fat ass. Or as it has been said, all outdoors.
    An ego as big as all outdoors and not a micron of rational for it.

  85. 85.

    bupalos

    Just giving a little hat tip here for Josh Marshall et al, who I usually find a little pedestrian and possibly even a teensy bit lazy in his/their writing (as opposed to his/their research, which is probably best-in-class right now). He’s really starting to slash strong doubles to right field with nothing but the old rusty typewriter his grandmother gave him:

    On the tomahawk flip/flop:

    This is precisely what you’d expect from people who were probably apolitical or perhaps, if pushed, something like Bloomberg Democrats and then became executors of a far-right, blood and soil, racist nationalist political program. Words and policy have no meaning. What matters is protecting and maximizing the value of the new family acquisition: the presidency.

    “became executors…” is just dead on the screws. It would take 3 or 4 sentences to explicate just how dead on that is. That’s Charles Pierce stuff right there.

    In the same article:

    As Allen puts it, “Either Steve becomes a team player and gets along with people, or he’ll be gone.” To render this in the alt-Trump creole, Bannon can stay if he agrees to go cuck.

    Noice! And it seems to have been proofread as well, no major grammar gaffs or obvious half-edits.

    There are silver linings to this whole Trump convulsion. Folks are catching art.

  89. 89.

    Bill Arnold

    @satby:

    I laughed so hard I cried. Brilliant, now I have to go read the book.

    Likewise. A gap that now needs filling. (The review of Le Cinq is worth a click; the pictures complement the descriptions.). Tx Aleta.

  95. 95.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @John Revolta: Actually Americans as a whole speak in a way that’s closer to Elizabethan English than people in the UK do now, at least in some respects.

    They staged Shakespeare based on scholarship on the subject getting the sound as close to what the original would have been as they can surmise, and it’s kind of amazing, sounds like a mixture of American English and various other regions like Yorkshire and so on. Certainly very different from the sound of how people generally perform Shakespeare in the UK these days.

  96. 96.

    Millard Filmore

    @Major Major Major Major: Hi Major, I have not seen you complain so lugging laptops with you into the airplane cabin must still be allowed. May it remain so until my trip is done.

    Have a happy vacation.

  97. 97.

    Quinerly

    @John Revolta:
    It’s called “Hoi Tider” (High Tider accents). Unfortunately, it’s dying out…still can catch it from some old timers in NC around Ocracoke, Harkers Island, and Salter Path…the area I’m originally from. There are a couple wonderful PBS shows on the brogue. We have our own special words too…a favorite of mine is “mommick.”

  98. 98.

    efgoldman

    @Bill E Pilgrim:

    Certainly very different from the sound of how people generally perform Shakespeare in the UK these days.

    The re-enactors at Plimoth Plantation in Massachusetts claim to have approximated mid-17th century English speech patterns and pronunciation. It’s just about unintelligible.

  100. 100.

    seaboogie

    @Adam L Silverman: Maybe that. I’m pretty convinced he’s dyslexic. All the skating and compensating, it’s deeper than a vanity around reading glasses.

    And for all y’all gents here who wear reading glasses, I’ve always considered a fellow in reading glasses deeply sexy. Means you are literate. My forearms fetish is another issue entirely, but the two are not mutually exclusive…

  104. 104.

    Quinerly

    @Bill E Pilgrim:
    I have a bit of the Hoi Toider accent (that’s the correct spelling, spell check messed with me above). 35 years in St. Louis has probably smoothed it out. 20 years ago, I spent a month in England (mostly London). I’d guess that 9 out of 10 locals I chatted with assumed I was from New Zealand…constantly heard, “we have a Kiwi amongst us.” Go figure.

  109. 109.

    PIGL

    @Oatler.: I loved Vineland … stayed up all night reading it first came out. I did detect a trace of William Gibson it it.

  111. 111.

    efgoldman

    @NotMax:

    no one takes them to tafk for their ſpelling.

    Efpecially becaufe moft of the earlieft immigrantf were illiterate.

  112. 112.

    JCJ

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Oooh! Terminal 21 is my favorite place to go for a bite to eat! I usually get chicken stir fried with basil leaves topped with a fried egg. It is in the food court in the back left corner near where you buy the “tickets” for payment.

    If you have a chance in Kanchanaburi the Erawan Waterfall is beautiful. Hellfire pass is really interesting.

    Erawan waterfall on google images: https://www.google.com/search?q=erawan+waterfall&espv=2&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjp54vfkJnTAhVD74MKHRWlBfMQ_AUIBygC&biw=1331&bih=642

    Hellfire pass: http://hellfire-pass.commemoration.gov.au/building-hellfire-pass/hellfire-pass.php

  114. 114.

    efgoldman

    @JCJ:

    M4 should be quite content on the fourth and fifth floor with the San Francisco motif.

    Isn’t he on vacation from San Francisco?

  115. 115.

    bupalos

    Went to this yesterday in Kent OH:

    http://celdf.org/2017/03/ohio-pennsylvania-communities-rising-tour-defying-corporate-state/

    They’ll be going through Lancaster PA tomorrow, I highly recommend folks go. In Lancaster the folks are dealing with a pipeline set for construction this summer, they’re preparing for an attempt to physically block it. Thomas Linsey of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund will give his spiel on the corporate regulatory state, which I believe is something everyone should hear. Although I will say, in my personal experience, you can’t really HEAR what he is saying until you’ve brushed up against it yourself. We all tend to believe the environmental regulatory system (which Trump is of course openly gutting) is something at least INTENDED to protect the environment. CELDF’s (hard earned) take is largely that it is in fact a system designed to blunt and tire opposition to environmental degradation, that it provides the appearance of regular legal recourse to environmental injustice when in fact it essentially never does a single thing that isn’t in the interest of the corporations seeking to do the harms. It basically serves as a barometer to show corporations how far they can confidently go, and serves to insulate corporations from the anger of the minorities they target. The function of these agencies is thus to make these corporate depredations seem “regular” and “legal” to the majorities who are not targeted. I think it’s easy to kind of vaguely nod along with this, if you encounter it in person as I have with a real threat to your health and well being you start to really understand it.

    Also speaking is Ken Ward, who is one of the “valve turners” that is are now facing legal jeopardy for walking up to the pipelines pumping tar sands oil into the us and turning the shutoff valves. Despite providing the prosecution their video clearly showing that they did in fact break into the enclosures with bolt-cutters and shut the valves, Ken got a hung jury the first time around using a “state of mind” defense. He entered a full slate of global warming evidence to show that it was more-or-less reasonable for him to believe that the valves should be shut off. This was a watered down version of a defense the judge refused to allow, that it the balance of harms involved made shutting off the valves simply the correct thing to do.

  116. 116.

    Major Major Major Major

    @efgoldman: it follows me. On the connection from Guangzhou to Bangkok the person across the aisle was complaining about rent and techies.

    @JCJ: I’m allergic to chicken so I have to be careful around broths. As tempting as literally everything on that floor looked, I wasn’t 100% comfortable so I’m actually getting noodles just downstairs.

  117. 117.

    JCJ

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Hmm. Well, you can get pork stir fried with basil leaves as well. We often go to MK Restaurant on the floor below. The main attraction is cooking a bunch of different things in a broth. My wife and I like to get fish won tons, pork, tofu, mushrooms, napa, and other veggies. My daughter doesn’t like rhat as much so she always gets roasted duck with green noodles.

  120. 120.

    Scotian

    @Aleta:

    Maybe remaining in the older form because Cape Breton spent so much time in geographic isolation?

    Yes, that is clearly a part of it, but also the very stubborn Scots mentality about not losing touch with one’s roots/heritage. My mum’s mum’s family is from CB, and goes back to pre Confederation days (aka pre 1867) and I am well familiar with the mindset. It is also interesting to note that the Scots had to relearn Gaelic from those that still spoke it in CB because they were the last place left to hear it as a living tongue. So yes, the isolation certainly aided, there really was a lot of simple classic Celtic stubborness and sense of clan pride behind this as much as anything else.

    So when I find Americans looking at CB as the great refuge, I must say I find myself smiling. I may only be a mainlander myself, but my Caper roots are not that deeply buried. Still though, it really is amazing to know just how dedicated to retaining their language and culture the CB Scots were, and how successful for so long, in both song and tongue.

  121. 121.

    Bjacques

    Gravity’s Rainbow is still one of my favorite books ever. I first got it in a box of science fiction paperbacks, around 1980. Took me ages to get me past about page 70, then one day I roared through it. I’ve reread it at least six times since, and always gotten something new out of it. I’m about due for another read. I’m finally getting around to Bleeding Edge, his latest.

    Back to the Austin estate, Richard Garriott and I grew up in Nassau Bay, the village across the road from NASA (since his dad was Owen, a Skylab astronaut). Richard used to run our Dungeons & Dragons games, where Ultima began. I think I once played a primitive early version of Ultima in our computer class, but never the online versions.

    I don’t know when or why Richard added “de Cayeux” to his name, but there are worse names to add. Cayeux-sur-Mer is a pretty little town on the Baie de Somme in Picardy, and the first of a long string of little seaside resorts running west from Calais. It’s a lovely area, and well worth a stay. Nearby is Eu, the staging area for William The Conqueror’s invasion of England. The missus and I have friends there so we’ve been a few times. Also great vide-greniers in the region for flea market aficionados.

  122. 122.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Bill E Pilgrim: I can’t believe how much Homeland has been ripping off Tinker Tailor and Smiley’s People the past couple of seasons. Sheesh.

    and a healthy dose of Robert Ludlum

  123. 123.

    Bess

    Bangkok. The Wat Phra Kaeo area is my favorite. I really enjoy wandering around Asian temples, that’s where some of the best art is found. This is the original Bangkok city area where King Rama I established his capital in 1782. This was the fourth Thai capital. The previous three (Sukhothai, Ayutthaya, and Thonburi) overrun by the Burmese and the bow in the Chao Phraya river made for an easily defended city.

    Wat Phra Kaeo, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha and the attached Royal Palace is beautiful, but heavily touristed. No longer can one wander around taking it all in. Tourists have to follow a roped off path designed to keep people moving along. But do take some time to visit the paintings of the Ramayana along the Wat (temple compound) walls. Lots of interesting details.

    Just south of Wat Phra Keao is Wat Po, the Temple of the Reclining Buddha. A must see, monstrously large gold leaf covered Buddha statue. Spend time wandering the grounds. The stupas decorated with tile mosaics are spectacular. If the temple that contains the main Buddha image is crowded with group tours just wander a bit more and wait for them to exit. The tour buses tend to all arrive at the same time, rush their people through, and then load them up to take them shopping (commissions are to be earned).

    Just a bit to the east of Wat Phra Keao is the City Pillar. Interesting place to people watch as locals bring offerings and worship at the Pillar. Also in that area is a small stage where traditional Thai theater is performed. It’s become rare these days in Thailand, so try to take a look before it’s totally gone.

    Then further to the east is one of my favorite places, Wat Loha Prasat, the Metal Palace. It’s one of the most unusual temples in Thailand, unlike any other temple I’ve seen in Asia. There’s an open pavilion in the front. Make a point of checking out the ceiling. (Ignore the touts who may tell you the temple is closed. They’re trying to lure you to a jewelry sale.)

    The entrance to Loha Prasat is not obvious. It’s on the right side as you walk toward the building. Make a point of going to the upper floors. The building is basically a Buddha gallery with a Buddha statue in front of each beautiful red window along all four sides. Go all the way to the top so that you can see the elaborate metal casting up close and get a good look at the area from the high vantage point.

    If you need a break from the heat just walk through the market to the west of Wat Phra Kaeo and take the river ferry north (to your right) to Nonthaburi. The river ferries are fairly large (100 passengers or so). Just follow others and get on board. When the ticket seller comes by (clicking her change box) give her a 20 baht note and say “Nonthaburi”. It’s the last stop on the line (N30) and you’ll see a clock tower at the landing.

    Wander inland a block or so and you’ll encounter a wonderful food market. One of the best in Thailand. All sorts of excellent photography opportunities.

    Coming back get off at Tha Chang (N9) where you started or continue on down river to the Oriental Hotel (N1) and have an ice cream while sitting outside watching river life.

    Good ferry map – print it out.
    bangkok.com/attraction-waterway/chao-phraya-river-chao-phraya-river-pier-guide.htm

    And do make it to Wat Traimit. 5.5 tons (5,500 kilograms) of solid gold Buddha. $221,708,355 worth of gold sitting in a modest temple and unguarded. The Buddha was ‘lost’ for many years. While moving a large cement Buddha the cables broke, the statue fell, and the gold underneath the cement was exposed. Last I heard no one knows the origin of the Buddha.

  124. 124.

    Bess

    Keep your eyes open for a street vendor selling satay – pieces of meat on bamboo skewers.

    The pork satay is my favorite. Make sure you ask for a small bag of dipping sauce if it isn’t offered. (Just gesture dipping one of the sticks into the sauce.) Also get a small bag or two of sticky rice.

    After a long day of wandering the city a few sticks of satay, some sticky rice, and a bag or two of fresh fruit makes me a great dinner. Green mango sprinkled with a red chili/sugar/salt mixture is great. Same sprinkles on fresh pineapple. If the vendor doesn’t give you the sprinkles just mime sprinkling over the fruit. Watermelon is usually excellent.

    I’ve been traveling in Asia for almost 40 years. I’ve never had a health problem in Thailand. (Can’t say that about any other Asian country.) Thai street food seems to be very safe.

  125. 125.

    Anne Laurie

    @schrodingers_cat: Don’t know if this is apocryphal or not, but the story I was told is that the first American importers had to change the ‘snakes’ to ‘chutes’ because Bible-thumpers complained that snakes are Satanic!!!!1!! Seemed quite possible to me, because that was during the Great D&D Terror of the 1970s, and we get these outbursts of Talibangelical virtue signalling every 20 years or so, like a sociological outbreak of malaria or shingles…

  126. 126.

    frosty

    @Hungry Joe: I read it 5 times and got more out of it every time. Couldn’t make the 6th. But it was bits like this that eased the slog.

  127. 127.

    Origuy

    @Aleta: I was in Cape Breton a couple of years ago. There’s a Celtic Music Center there with exhibits and performances. I learned that the reason that a lot of the traditional music died out in Scotland was that fundamentalist preachers considered it evil and Satanic. The Highlands and Islands were (and still are) full of extremely conservative sects like the Free Church of Scotland (the Wee Frees) and the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland (the Wee Wee Frees).

  128. 128.

    Millard Filmore

    @Anne Laurie:

    Bible-thumpers complained that snakes are Satanic!!!!1!! Seemed quite possible to me, because that was during the Great D&D Terror of the 1970s

    I first encountered the game as Chutes And Ladders back in the 1950s, and never heard of Snakes And Ladders until Balloon Juice.

  129. 129.

    Anne Laurie

    @Millard Filmore: Yeah, bad phrasing on my part — I’d assumed the game came to America in the 1930s (Wikipedia says 1943) during an earlier moral-panic attack (parodied in Rowlings’ Fantastic Beasts movie).

    Milton-Bradley company line is that snakes were too ‘off-putting’ for delicate little American kiddies, although now I suspect it might’ve been more related to copyright issues.

  132. 132.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Bjacques: Utter idiocy. Gorka should be permanently banned from any position of influence anywhere in the West regarding the Middle East.

  134. 134.

    raven

    @Origuy: The Cape Brenton Fiddlers! If you don’t think it’s devil music you don’t know Ashley Macisaac !

    “this is an old puirt à beul from the Hebrides. There are old recordings on Tobar an Dualchais (before Mary Jane was even born) – look for “ciamar a nì mi dannsa direach” on their platform (the English name Sleepy Maggie is misleading, as usual…). But she did adapt some of the lyrics for this recording. Interpretation is what traditionnal songs are all about anyway ;)”

  138. 138.

    NorthLeft12

    @Lurking Canadian: I was there once as a twelve year old on a East Coast camping trip with my parents and three siblings. The only thing I clearly recall was visiting the fort at Louisbourg, and not being able to see more than three feet in front of me. The tour guide tried to explain what we should have been seeing. I am still trying to figure out how my Dad drove us there. I have never experienced fog like that before.
    My wife lived in Cape Breton [Glace Bay] for a year when she was around ten. She loved the area and still thinks of it very fondly. We are planning on a visit when I retire….hopefully in the next couple of years.
    But yes, I agree, great place to visit but I don’t think I want to live there.

  140. 140.

    Chris

    @Bill E Pilgrim:

    @John Revolta: Actually Americans as a whole speak in a way that’s closer to Elizabethan English than people in the UK do now, at least in some respects.
    …
    They staged Shakespeare based on scholarship on the subject getting the sound as close to what the original would have been as they can surmise, and it’s kind of amazing, sounds like a mixture of American English and various other regions like Yorkshire and so on. Certainly very different from the sound of how people generally perform Shakespeare in the UK these days.

    I believe it. Québecois French is still chock-full of words and expressions that haven’t been used in the motherland since before the Revolution. Not surprised that the same applies to American v. British English.

  142. 142.

    Origuy

    @raven: Yes, there’s a Scottish country dance to Sleepy Maggie; it’s anything but sleepy.
    ETA I saw Mary Jane Lamond at a Gaelic festive in a little town called Christmas Island on Cape Breton Island. It was an amazing concert; all these great musicians playing mostly for their friends and neighbors.

  143. 143.

    Ultraman

    @Bill E Pilgrim: Another Tinker, Tailor ripoff. Dar: There’s a young teaching fellow at GW– in the Classics Department, if you can believe such a thing still exists. I know he’d appreciate some news of me. Bill Haydon: Oh, and there’s one particular boy. A cherub, but no angel. Better give him a couple hundred – can you do that, out of the reptile fund?@Bill E Pilgrim:

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