I’m going to repost something I put in last night’s update and then expand on it because I think it might have gotten lost in the shuffle. Here’s the reposted bit:
Everyone please dial it back a bit in the comments. I get it, everyone is pissed off at Russia. Unfortunately, because of the nature of Putin’s Russia, we do not have any really good way of knowing how much popular support he has for this war against Ukraine, nor how many people really actually know what is going on. Being pissed at Putin, the oligarchs, siloviki, strongmen, political, and military leaders, as well as the repugnant people licking his jackboots in Russian state controlled media is all well and good. But it is important to keep a bit of perspective here and separate all of those horrible people and the Russian state from the actual Russian people. Because when all of this is over, those people who have been propagandized to believe we’ve been waging war on them for 30 plus years, are going to need a lot of our help, compassion, and charity. And that doesn’t mean that the Ukrainians are more deserving of any and all of that right now and won’t need it too.
Here’s the expansion: I know that some of you are Ukrainian Americans or Ukrainian nationals living in the US and other places outside of Ukraine and are just doing your best to get through this day to day. I know that some of you have family and friends in harm’s way with limited communication. You’re stressed, you’re sick with worry. We’re here for you!
I also know that some of you are Russian Americans or Russian nationals living in the US or other places outside of Russia and, like our Ukrainian American and Ukrainian national readers and commenters and lurkers, you’re also stressed and sick with worry. You’ve got friends or family living in Russia you’re worried about, maybe even in Ukraine. We’re here for you too!
We also have Americans who originate from other former Soviet states or readers, commenters, and/or lurkers who are from and live in other former Soviet states and you all are also worried. You’re worried will the war spread. You’re worried whether you or your friends and your family might wind up in harm’s way. We’re also here for you as well!
We, and by we I mean Balloon Juice, IS HERE FOR ALL OF YOU!!!!!
But that means we all have to dial it back and cut everyone a bit of slack. Or a lot of slack. I get it, I really do, everyone regardless of where they’re from or who they are are worried what Putin might do if push comes to shove and the end of that line of thinking is unsettling.
Trust me, I get paid to think about it and have been doing so since January 2014.
I would greatly appreciate it if everyone would make an effort to ease up. If it isn’t too much to ask, and it isn’t, which is why I’m going to make the ask on the front page right here, leave the “the” off in front of Ukraine, spell Kyiv “Kyiv”, and stop beating people up if they screw up. It is going to happen. I went to reread the assessment I did on this stuff in March 2014 just before Putin scarfed up Crimea and noticed while I’d not put any “the” in front of Ukraine, I had a few in front of Crimea. And my spelling of Kyiv wasnt uniform, I had a few Kiev’s in there too. Worse thing I’ve ever done? Definitely not. Would any of the people that assessment was for back in 2014 have noticed or thought it was an issue, most likely not (can’t say the same for the typo on p. 4…). Looking at it now after I’ve had eight years to work on this problem set and go from someone who knew a lot about oligarchs and kleptocracy and revolutionary protest movements, which is why I was writing the assessment, despite, at the time, knowing little about Ukraine or Putin, it grates when I read it. But we live and hopefully we learn and do better.
I’m asking everyone to try do better. Not by not making any errors in reference, though let’s get that learning curve moving in the right direction, but in recognizing that hammering each other here isn’t going to do Ukraine or Ukrainians any good. It isn’t going to stop Putin’s aggression, reinvasion, war crimes, or being ambiguous about his nuclear weapons to hold the world hostage.
I trust that we will not have to have this discussion again.
I’ll be back tonight with the update.
Open thread!
raven
Damn brother, a thread for old people!!!! sort of
tom
Thanks for this, Adam.
dp
Thanks, Adam.
Jon Marcus
There’s only one rule that I know of, babies-“God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
Most especially to each other here.
West of the Rockies
Kumbaya, my Lord, Kum–
Kidding!!
I appreciate your effort to de-escalate.
Eduardo
Thank you for this — and thank you for the daily updates
pluky
Repurposing a lick I was raised on: keep your eyes on the prize.
Mallard Filmore
Is it ever appropriate to refer to that area of the Earth surface as “the Ukraine”, same as “the MidWest”, or “the Indian Ocean”? Amonst the experts (outside of USSR or Russia), has “Ukraine” ALWAYS referred to the country and not the land?
My excuse for asking: I grew up in the Cold War era, and until G&T complained thought including “the” sounded more natural.
debbie
I’m still throwing things around after listening to a BBC interview with Maria Butina this morning.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@pluky: I keep mine on the sparrow
especially when the go-oh-oh-oh-ing
gets narrow
wvng
Thanks Adam. I was just thinking how thankful I am that Joe Biden is our President in this fraught time, and also how thankful I am to have knowledgeable and good people like you to keep me reliably informed.
smedley the uncertain
Well said Adam. And thanks for all the effort and info your putting in to your posts.
Dan B
Thanks for this and all your posts!
bbleh
Aw, and I had just finished my linguistic and typeface analyses and was all set for some flamethrowing!
(Some very suspicious kerning in the comments. You know who you are…)
MikefromArlington
After all the awful things Putin has done over the years and nobody has pulled out of that county to MickeyD’s pulling out, the Russian population has GOTS to know Putin has done something pretty bad.
Carlo Graziani
I have a Ukrainian friend, a professor of history at a Chicago-area University with whom I have a weekly beer session, and to whom I was making very confident predictions that Putin would never be so suicidally crazy as to actually invade, right up to the day that Putin did exactly that. I had excellent reasons to be confident, and I was dead wrong anyway. It was a lesson in the importance of guarding against certainty that I find myself having to relearn now and again.
I got another lesson, this one in grace, from my friend, who accepted my apology without resentment, and who continues to teach me things, and to gift me with great conversation over beer.
raven
@Mallard Filmore:
Mallard Filmore
@raven: Thanks.
Betty Cracker
@Jon Marcus: “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater”!
I thought of that book the other day and how the great sum of money on which the plot hinges, $10 million, doesn’t seem nearly as consequential now.
bbleh
@Mallard Filmore: Amateur here, but I would say the use of “the” connotes a mere landmass or geographic extent — eg “the Americas,” “the antarctic,” “the Crimea” — which at a minimum overlooks, and arguably denies, the existence of Ukraine as a political entity, a nation. It’s akin to using “that,” or even “which,” instead of “who” when referring to a person or people, eg, “the man that spoke” vs. “the man who spoke,” only maybe even more so.
randy khan
I think the general advice to be kind is spot on. I try to do that on social media, even with crazy trolls (and, if nothing else, it confuses them). It honestly makes me feel better about myself, too.
Grumpy Old Railroader
I am guilty as charged!
smedley the uncertain
@Carlo Graziani: “… great conversation over beer.” A Wondrous Gift, a Treasure.
Lyrebird
Hear, here!
Plus, some of our commenters are experts about combat, and some of our commenters are experts about protesting for peace, and I learn from all of them!
Question:
What’s the kind way to say to a non troll, “hey dude or dudette, if you don’t think the war in Ukraine is such a big deal, why are you doing literary criticism on the comments of this thread anyhow?”
rikyrah
Thanks for your posts, Silverman.
trollhattan
@bbleh:
Have mentioned another time this came up, The Gambia, which they’ve used themselves since liberation in 1965, something about a river.
Anyway, it was a source of amusement during discussions of the recent African Cup of Nations where, to everybody’s surprise The Gambia made it through to the quarterfinals before being taken out by the host nation.
That is all.
Betty Cracker
@randy khan: My mom used to say, “You’ll never regret being gracious, but you may very much regret not being gracious.” She and I both ignored that proverb more often than we lived by it, but it still contains truth, I think. :)
West of the Rockies
@Carlo Graziani:
What kind of beer? If you say Bud, I’m afraid we can no longer be friends.
CROAKER
Thx Adam. People need to be more thoughtful before typing and some threads need better moderation. Looking at you mid day 0.o.
More importantly a public service announcement
nie bądź dupą
Don’t BE a DUPA
Martin
Redundant. Need to reload after pausing mid-comment.
West of the Rockies
@bbleh:
Remember when during a debate McCain referred to Obama (gesturing rudely with his thumb) as “this one”? Maybe it was a generational thing, but to anyone under 70 even then, it seemed super assholeish.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Martin:
Sea level, perhaps?
Jackie
@wvng: Seconded! A compassionate president, well versed in international events and respected by the EU and NATO is very much appreciated at this time.
As are Adam’s and GT’s expertise.
Ohio Mom
@Jon Marcus: Like Betty Cracker, I also recognized these as Kurt Vonnegut’s words to live by. At one point, I was so smitten with him, I read everything he wrote in short order, the end result being that all his stories are mushed together in my memory. You might say they are somewhat unstuck in my brain.
On another note, maybe it is because I spent my formative years in THE Bronx that “The” sounds natural to me. Still, I make the effort to drop the “The” before Ukraine. Because it’s good manners.
Van Buren
@Carlo Graziani: I have a Ukrainian friend who was assuring me that nobody there thought Putin would invade, and who thought that Biden was war mongering. Now she somehow is making it though the day while worrying about her bedridden mother. Today she told me that she had spoken to her mom at 5 AM (In NY) and there were Russian tanks on her street.
Morzer
@West of the Rockies:
The trick to finding good Bud is to choose the cat you get it from with great care.
Alison Rose ???
@bbleh: To me, it also denotes a country which is itself a multitude, such as “the United States” or “the United Kingdom.” You don’t say “the Canada” or “the Brazil” or something. I mean, maybe some people do, but they are weird.
Martin
Haven’t seen anything out of Cheryl regarding the latest on Chernobyl.
So, Russia has cut Chernobyl from Ukraines grid, which has also cut the UNs ability to monitor the site. This isn’t necessarily urgent. The folks running Chernobyl know what they’re doing and it’s unlikely that Russia wants there to be an event there (at least for now).
The main concern seems to be the ability of the plant to cool itself, and its spent fuel. Nuclear fuel always generates heat, and that heat builds up. So it needs to be cooled and generally requires some degree of active cooling. Active cooling requires power, which Chernobyl may not have. They would have backup power for this purpose, usually diesel backup generators that automatically turn on, which Russia would need to make sure remain fueled. In the US, it used to be reactors needed 8 hours of backup power (yes, that’s all). Not sure if that changed after Fukushima, but that’s what it used to be. So how frequently that backup power needs to be refueled could be quite short. Because of the unique characteristics of Chernobyl, they could have substantial backup power available.
So that seems to be the current focus. I suppose it’s possible that Russia is hooking Chernobyl to the Belarus grid, which it used to be hooked to. Not sure what is involved in doing that. Don’t exactly have the greatest confidence that Russia is up to the task, what with the state of their military maintenance that we’re seeing.
WaterGirl
@Carlo Graziani: Thanks for sharing that with us.
Redshift
When I posted here about my trip to Kyiv years back, I wrote it as Kiev because although I was well aware of the proper Ukrainian spelling, I thought (in those days) that people would be more familiar with the older English transliteration (and that’s what it said on my plane ticket.) I got corrected by someone, which was fair, and I rolled with it.
I am concerned about the attitudes I’m seeing toward Russians and Russian immigrants in general (not here, just out in the world.) Things like bookings being down at Russian-owned restaurants and such. I know I’m preaching to the converted, but I wish more people would take seriously “our fight is not with the Russian people,” as well as the idea that Russians who are living here are (other than oligarchs and mobsters) are likely to be the ones who don’t want to live in Putin’s Russia.
Roger Moore
I think of this as being something like getting someone’s preferred pronouns wrong. It’s going to happen from time to time, especially from us older folks who didn’t grow up having to ask people about their preferred pronoun. If the person seems to be making an honest attempt to get it right, please cut them some slack. If they repeatedly and unapologetically get it wrong, consider using the pie filter rather than getting into a fight about it.
West of the Rockies
@Morzer:
Is that some sort of reefer joke, you hippie?
//
Tom Levenson
Thanks for this, Adam, and for all the insight.
I find your nightly updates required reading, and I want to echo your plea that we all treat each other as if we are trying to do the right thing, because in this community, that’s the baseline reality, which is perhaps chief among the reasons Balloon Juice means so much to so many of us.
Dan B
@Martin: 48 hours worth of diesel for the generators at Chernobyl is what media is reporting. Friday may be a tense news day.
Dopey-o
Yes, because writing THE Ukraine or KIEV is so ….. confusing. The Ukraine must be a mythical animal, related to the aardvark. And Russian tanks encircling Kiev Ohio!
The horror! Exterminate the brutes!
While we quibble over grammar, Missouri wants to criminalize crossing state lines for an abortion. This is why we can’t have
nicecivilized things.J R in WV
Adam,
Thanks for this. I’ve got the no article for Ukraine down pat now.
And I haven’t used any curse words regarding this newest war, so far.
No promises, tho !! Esp relating to President for Life Putinski~!!~
Tony Jay
@Martin:
Absolutely everywhere else. Seriously, the Mole Man visited and got a nosebleed.
Scotland also has ‘The Lowlands’, which is different from ‘The Highlands’ in that the Romans briefly considered keeping it until the hot wine and rotten fish juice frenzy wore off.
West of the Rockies
I’m sure someone somewhere is still referring to Peking, Constantinople, and Rhodesia.
And they’re probably a-holes.
But… it’s Smoky The Damn Bear!//
WaterGirl
Speaking of kindness, debit had a photo of Walter & Ellie that she loved, that was fuzzy and blurry, but it was a photo of a wonderful memory. I asked BillinGlendale if he could use his magic photo software to improve the resolution, and he did. Thank you, Bill.
Maybe we could all use a little Walter today. Walter and his best friend.
Rusty
Peace be with you.
Adam, peace be with you.
To everyone, peace be with you.
Roger Moore
@Tony Jay:
Death Valley erasure!
Dan B
@Tony Jay: I have rotten fish juice that I put in many things. High quality is essential. I had rotten shrimp paste that was revolting.
We’re the Romans around for Haggis? Which looks like it might actually be tasty.
Josie
@WaterGirl: Oh, thanks. That just made me chuckle out loud. Duncan (my corgi shadow) woke up and looked confused.
ETA: And thanks to Adam for everything you have written. I feel so well informed due to your hard work.
WaterGirl
@Dopey-o: I like you Dopey-o, so please don’t take this the wrong way. If you think the iissue of “the” Ukraine is quibbling over grammar, you might want to do a little googling.
dr. luba
@raven: Okraina (“on the edge”) is border area. Ukraina is country (“in country”).
No country calls itself a border area. They call themselves the country, the people, etc.
The usage of “the Ukraine” was the Russian usage, because they considered Ukraine to be a region (like “the” Midwest) and not a separate nation. Ukrainians have always felt differently.
Dan B
@Roger Moore: Dead Sea dissed!!!
bbleh
@trollhattan: and then there’s that pretentiously named country, the United States. [eyeroll] I mean, ok, the United States of America, but then they double down and refer to themselves as “Americans,” when there are almost three dozen other countries in the Americas. Ces Américains … [sigh]
@Alison Rose ???: I think the difference there is, with both the United States and the United Kingdom, there can be no misunderstanding that they are by nature political entities, and hence no possible interpreted / implied disrespect.
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: or maybe other nearby land, before they reclaimed the land below sea-level?
Alison Rose ???
@Dopey-o: You’re leaving this comment on a post about people being better in the comments?
Also, it is possible to care about more than one thing. You should try it.
Tony Jay
@Alison Rose ???:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that an side-effect of the War of Northern Aggression Towards Southern Dickishness? Before the WNTSD it was usually “these United States”, with loyalty to an individual’s state often more important than loyalty to The Union, but afterwards… well… the fashion doth changeth.
Ken
@Dan B: What is “rotten fish juice” when you’re not trying to make it sound revolting? Worcestershire sauce? Marmite?
Alison Rose ???
@Tony Jay: I have zero idea, so I will not correct you :P For me, the way to remember not to say “the Ukraine” was that I wouldn’t put a “the” in front of any other country name that wasn’t itself pluralized.
Yarrow
Thanks, Adam. It can be confusing to remember all of the shifts sometimes. Like, we’re now spelling it Chornobyl, not Chernobyl, which I understand is the Russian spelling. Add in typos, tiny keyboards, autocorrect and man, sometimes it just all goes wrong.
Ann Marie
@Morzer: Thank you for making me laugh out loud — I needed that today.
Professor Bigfoot
Can’t express how grateful I am to Adam and the Jackaltariat for understanding WTF is going on— as much as the fog of war allows one to know what’s going on.
A lot of us are on a hair trigger; especially those with loved ones in danger; it’s a good reminder to breathe, and cut each other a LOT of slack.
Tony Jay
@Roger Moore:
“The Man with the Quizzical Eyebrow knows our master-plan! Seize him and have him thrown quite hard into something pointy! Then bring me… some dip.”
Another Scott
@Martin:
Cheryl’s twitter feed has retweets like:
Thread:
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
BC in Illinois
Vive la France!
trollhattan
@WaterGirl:
Awww.
Need that button in “Criminal Minds” the tech uses anytime the boss says, “Enhance” (it may be labeled “Enhance”) and takes seven pixels and extrapolates into a perp’s car, sorry, unsub’s car, license included.
dnfree
@Carlo Graziani: entirely different topic, but the therapist of someone close to us stated very confidently that our loved one might talk about it, but was definitely not going to commit suicide, just before he did. My husband, also in the field, has often said that can NEVER be predicted with confidence, as therapists sometimes learn tragically. Same apparently for historians.
MisterDancer
I’ve heard that too, but can’t recall a sourcing offhand.
That said, I did just run into a fascinating article on that whole “War of Northen Aggression” naming convention. Much like a bunch of the Confederate Statuary we’re plagued with, it too is an artifact of Backlash to the Civil Rights Era, no older than Smilin’ Joe himself.
Y’all hold in your shock, please and thank you.
But seriously, two things:
1) If someone here posted that link, I lost your sourcing and apologize,
2) As someone with a Take-Umbrage Machine some of you have…encountered, we’ll say? I concur with this post’s assessment.
Geminid
@Dan B: I was interested to see that the Sea of Galilee, named Kinnereth by Israelis, is not that much higher than the Dead Sea. There was a lot of rain this winter, so Kinnereth is approaching a level of 209 meters below sea level.
Subsole
@Ken:
Garum. The Roman version of ketchup, basically. A condiment.
raven
@dr. luba: Take it up with Wikipedia.
Tony Jay
@Dan B:
Haggis is lovely, though according to the obviously entirely correct YouTube clip my square-eyed son was watching yesterday it’s apparently illegal in the US. Yes, even in Darkest Appalachia.
Unless that’s not true. Which is possible.
trollhattan
@MisterDancer:
Worked with a guy who grew up in Tennessee who was indeed taught the Wowah of Nohthehn Aggression in his public skoohs.
Ksmiami
@Redshift: and I’m concerned that Russia is in the process of murdering a sovereign nation. It’s pretty common once a bad country starts a war that the citizens of said nation in other countries are treated poorly- like the Japanese in 1941 America or Germans in the US in WWI AND WW2. It sucks, but is par for the course.
MisterDancer
There are many people here — myself included — who have been fighting for Reproductive Rights for literally decades. Indeed, a fellow former front-pager here makes that fight her day job.
You might wanna pull back on that ‘tude, and read the damn room.
Roger Moore
@bbleh:
I will point out that the USA is only one of several countries that formally style (or styled) themselves as United States of Something, but we are the only country that uses America as part of their name. So calling us Americans makes more sense than calling us United Statesians. I’ve seen people write “USAns” or “USAians”, but I’ve never heard either in speech. IMO, if you want a really pretentious name, it’s from countries that style themselves as some variant of “The People” or “The Country”, e.g. Deutschland.
trollhattan
@Tony Jay:
No way to post it here but I have an image from my phone of canned haggis, in three flavors, that I took here in California at the local Italian grocery. As one does.
“Flavors?” you rightly ask: Lamb, Sirloin Beef, Highland Beef.
ETA it may well be having the thing stuffed in “sheep’s lights” isn’t legal here. Organs are disreputable.
Redshift
@Ken:
Liquamen was the name for the sauce that I learned in Latin class, though I have heard other Latin terms as well. It sounded revolting until a friend listened to the description of how it was made and said “oh, that’s just Worcestershire sauce.”
dnfree
@Dopey-o: apparently “whataboutism” doesn’t only happen on the right?
What is the connection between being asked to refer to Ukraine and Kyiv the way people who live there prefer, and whatever Missouri is up to? It’s too much trouble to care about what are “little” things to you, even if they’re bigger to someone else?
Baud
@Roger Moore:
That’s how they say it in Spanish.
Estadounidense.
eclare
@WaterGirl: How sweet!
debbie
@Dopey-o:
To those who hold Ukraine and its independence in their hearts, referring to it as if it were just some district of some other country is a slur, whether intentional or not.
Tony Jay
@trollhattan:
I think you should melt that phone down to funny coloured glass and bury it under a rock on a Tunisian beach, because tinned haggis sounds so awful (worse than piccalilli, bleaugh) that I genuinely don’t believe any good can come of you continuing to possess it.
Free yourself!
Geech
In times like these, it’s hard to know what to do, so I decided to make a
dumb short little song mocking Putin. Dylan had Masters of War, and I
guess I have this (LOL) The only difference is that song is an absolute
classic, maybe the greatest anti-war song of all time. And this… is…
not.
https://youtu.be/q-yYWjn4S38
Subsole
@trollhattan: Which is a shame, because organs taste good.
I mean, I don’t get why everyone’s down on liver and onions. Liver is amazing, if you cook it right…
Subsole
@Baud:
There are days we certainly earn the “dense” part…
Gravenstone
Unpossible.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Subsole: it was one of my Mom’s go-to dishes, one of my Dad’s favorites, in the 70s, and I never knew why I was supposed to hate it. Don’t know why she dropped it from her repertoire, but my Dad kept on ordering it from time-to-time in those old school restaurants that still offered it.
Tony Jay
I wonder how many Welsh people realise that the non-Cymric version of their nation’s name basically means “The Foreigners/Strangers’ and was what the culturally Anglo-Saxon peoples to the east called the last Romano-British enclaves they didn’t conquer?
Baud
@Tony Jay:
I always thought Wales was a remarkably short name for an area that is famous for its very long hard-to-pronounce town names.
Geminid
@Tony Jay: This may not be a good time for you to answer, but I’m curious: what is going on with former Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn and his response to this war? Does he speak from conviction, or is he being bitter and stubborn?
Tony Jay
@MisterDancer:
That late? I’d have thought it crept in a lot earlier than that, probably around the start of the 20th century when the Lost Cause bullshit really started coming out of the woodwork.
If this was an episode of QI I’d expect to hear the klaxon going off right about now.
Baud
@Geminid:
What’s he said recently? Last I heard of him was from before the invasion.
Alison Rose ???
@Baud: It’s to lull people into a false sense of security
dkinPa
I’ve been running way behind on BJ posts and they’re usually dead, so haven’t had a chance to express my appreciation — thank you, Adam, for doing these posts! Have sent a couple off to friends, too. (Haven’t actually read this one yet; just realized that this was up and the post is under a 100 comments, so I wanted to get this comment in.) Now, I’ll try to read it this evening & won’t feel so far behind tomorrow!
Baud
@Alison Rose ???:
I figured it was because the future king of England didn’t want to be known as the Prince of Glahdeirueishrhhwjdhgs.
smedley the uncertain
@Martin: Saw a post earlier today saying the IAEA in Austria has lost monitoring of Chernobyl. Can’t find the site, sry
Geminid
@Baud: I don’t know if Corbyn has said much lately. I’m thinking of statements around the time of the invasion. He seemed to be placing blame on NATO expansionism.
Baud
@Geminid:
That’s what I saw. I figured he decided to stay quiet after the fighting started since I hadn’t seen anything recently.
Tony Jay
@Geminid:
Conviction. He’s not the kind of guy to get bitter about stuff (though fuck knows he’s got reason), so when he says something, you can be sure of two things. 1) He means it, and 2) The fucknuckles of the Right will misrepresent it.
I may not fully agree with him, but I have no doubt that the guy who was calling for Russian oligarchs to get booted from British soil and British politics back when such things were fringe lunacy doesn’t deserve the label he’s been stuck with by the very same people who’ve spent the last twenty years shaking their collective arses for fistfuls of crumpled roubles.
Steeplejack
@Ken:
These days it’s fish sauce.
Geminid
@Tony Jay: Thanks. I guess it is good that Corbyn is speaking from conviction. Hypocrisy seems to come very naturally to his Conservative critics.
tom
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: my German grandmother and great-aunts cooked liver all the time. My pre-teen and teenage self thought it was the most disgusting thing ever. But they thought it was good.
delk
Dziękujé
FlyingToaster
@Tony Jay: Not entirely illegal. I’ve had it, sourced from Savenor’s (Julia Child’s local grocery), complete with readings from Burns.
There are some sweetbread ingredients that don’t pass muster here in the states (generally, anything that might have Creuzfeld-Jakob, like beef brains and lungs).
bbleh
@Dan B: Had it visiting (of course) castles in Scotland. It was, in fact, reasonably tasty and very … hearty. And I’m guessing I had the tourist version. But it definitely keeps you warm clambering around the parapets. As you might expect for, ahem, a blood casserole.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@Ohio Mom: The Bronx is the only NYC borough with the “the” as part of the name. Apparently because it’s named after the river, or maybe the farm: https://www.ny1.com/nyc/bronx/news/2015/06/7/what-s-in-a-name–how–the–bronx-got-the–the-#:~:text=%22They%20looked%20right%20smack%20in,is%20named%20after%20the%20river.
@trollhattan: As with the Gambia
Finally there was a Ukrainian restaurant in the East Village for decades that spelled its name “Kiev,” along with another restaurant called Odessa and a bar called the “Blue and Gold,” all closed now.
Ohio Mom
@Roger Moore: When my sister’s family lived in Japan and then Portugal (for BIL’s job), their school-aged daughters attended private schools for children of ex-pats from various English-speaking countries. There, they called themselves USAians.
But other than that, I’ve never heard the term used.
bbleh
@Roger Moore: Just joshing. There’s even another USA, to wit, the Union of South Africa. And yeah, what else ya gonna call us? Although I was always careful to call it “the US” around my fellow grad students from Mexico and Central and South America, and to use “US” as an adjective rather than “American.”
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@Tony Jay: it’s always like that. The German immigrants to Penn’s Woods, asked what they were, answer “Deustch.”
So of course the Americans called them the Pennsylvania Dutch.
Tony Jay
@Geminid:
I’d say that their hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, but c’mon, these are conservatives (of whatever Party) they don’t pay for anything.
Corbyn is an anti-war pacifist who believes that we should always go the extra mile or ten for diplomacy before anyone gets killed because, like it or not, that’s were we’re going to end up eventually anyway.
Like I said, I don’t entirely agree with him, but I’m 100% sure he’s entirely honest about it.
trollhattan
@Tony Jay:
Continued quickly down the aisle and never saw it again (clearly, the word got out and it was all scooped up, right? Right?) Would have been a real commitment at eleven bucks for nearly a pound of…whatever was inside.
I imagine having it on an appetizer table, can opened with a big knife shoved into the contents and a mound of saltines on a platter next to it. “Dig in!”
Tony Jay
@FlyingToaster:
Having seen that X-Files episode I can’t deny they may have a point.
SiubhanDuinne
@Dopey-o:
The issue is not that using “THE Ukraine,” or spelling the capital “KIEV,” is confusing. The issue is that those are terms used by Ukraine’s antagonists. At this point, if you use them, you come across as antagonistic to Ukraine.
To me, the analogy is RWNJs in this country who routinely say things like “the Democrat party” or “Democrat President Biden.” It’s wrong, it’s insulting, and it’s unnecessary.
Tony Jay
@trollhattan:
“Second course is some tinned fish I got from a little Icelandic grocery. It’s supposed to be very pungent.”
And that’s how grandpa lost his sight, kids!
Geminid
@Tony Jay: Well, I’ll give Corbyn credit for his sincerity. I’ve seen some lefties over here affecting a pacifist stance, and then a little research finds them tweeting about tumbrels and guillotines. But those people are essentially political dilettantes.
smedley the uncertain
@Dan B: It is Laddie
Ohio Mom
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: It’s *the* Bronx because in the very olden days, a man named Mr. Bronck (might have that spelling wrong) was one of the very first white settlers there. Maybe the first?
As my mother explained, just like you go to *the* Smiths for dinner, back then you went up north, across the Harlem River, to *the* Broncks.
My mother’s story was confirmed in my elementary school social studies textbook. I imagine we can google a more detailed and possibly accurate answer but I’m sticking with that one out of nostalgia.
Even with that information, as a young child I couldn’t help but feel that it was *the* Bronx because it was obviously a very important place.
Tony Jay
@Geminid:
Oh, I have no doubt. Russian money wouldn’t confine itself to just the wingnut side of the aisle. The bulk of their investment may have gravitated there because of the immediate and easy returns, but you can be damned sure they also established networks of mouthpieces on the Left, at whatever convenient remove.
It would be information-warfare malpractice not to have done so, and I hear you can fall out of a window for that.
smedley the uncertain
@Tony Jay: Not true. I have celebrated Robbie Burns Birthday in many states. Each has served a proper Haggis served with proper respect. Piped with full band. As the Missus aid, We’ve been marched into dinner many times (military command performances) but this was a first for the dinner to marched in to us… Sasenach.
Adam L Silverman
@Dan B: Real haggis is excellent. If you can get it made with venison sweet breads instead of lamb, it is even better!
Tony Jay
@smedley the uncertain:
You can’t seriously be telling me that random YouTube gonks could be wrong about this. I mean, what the fuck, is nothing sacred?
Next you’ll be telling me that every single thing about the game they’re being paid to play isn’t “OMG so amazing!!” after all
…. wait a minute
Adam L Silverman
@Tony Jay: You know as well as I do that the tinned stuff is what they use in the chippies in Scotland. It is meh, at best.
But the real stuff, with sweet neeps and tatties and a whiskey reduction sauce, that’s good eats!
(Yes, I did go native when I lived in Scotland, why do you ask?)
Adam L Silverman
@Subsole: @Gravenstone: There is a Greek restaurant, or was, on the side of the road between Baumholder and Kaiserslautern between the switchbacks that makes an AMAZING lambs liver. The first time we ate there they gave us menus that only had Greek and German, so I ordered it without knowing it and you’d have no idea you were eating liver. It was brushed with olive oil, salt, pepper, and some other spices and grilled over coals. Absolutely delicious.
JR
@Ken: Marmite is made from spent yeast
GC
@West of the Rockies: The last time I was in a Greek train station they were indeed referring to Constantinople, and while it’s been a while I don’t expect that’s changed. Typically, the more famous a location is, the more likely the spelling (or the name itself) is to vary among different languages. Like Jesus instead of Yeshua, it’s not necessarily intended to be disrespectful.
On the other hand … English having become an international language, the conversation becomes more fraught. And everybody has a stake in it. It used to be just the Americans and British sniping at each other, and other variants going their own way but making less of a fuss about it.
Kelly
When I was young we had a small pasture where we raised a steer or two each year. A local butcher would pick him up for slaughter and Dad would bring home the quarters the following Saturday. We’d spend the day cutting and wrapping for the freezer. Dinner that night was always the the heart and liver which I liked. Rarely see liver at the meat counter and it’s never as good as I remember. Perhaps it best cooked fresh.
Darkrose
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: My mother ate liver once a week when she was on Weight Watchers. That’s when I learned to loathe it.
Geminid
@Tony Jay: And I’m glad that Corbyn is not bitter. As you say, he has good reason to be.
Carlo Graziani
@West of the Rockies: Oh no, perish the thought. It’s usually something German, or Czech.
Skookum in Oly
@Tony Jay:
I can confirm, haggis is illegal. Also, I can confirm it is delicious! My brother married in Seattle some years back, w/ all the regalia. It was quite the sight. And very, very loud, I was standing very near the fellow with the bagpipes. Afterward, dinner at a closed-for-the-night bar, a chef and supplies were brought in from Canada for the occasion. Authentic haggis was served. Most people wouldn’t try it, which is sad. I enjoyed it, and wanted more. My hearing came back a few days later.
SeattleDem
@West of the Rockies: Of course it’s Smoky The Bear. Every Park Service employee knows that, because it gives Forest Service staff the blue fantods when they say it.
Laura Too
Thank you Adam, your posts have been invaluable. I learn so much from you and all the comments. I have been communicating with my cousin using Google translate and for whatever reason years ago it would only let me use Russian. Yesterday I decided to ask for Belarus instead and it came up! It is an open communication source so we are always cautious but his response made me tear up. He let me know what it meant for me to use “native” language.
PrairieLogic
Thank you… from mostly a Lurker here.
I read this every day. You are a go to source.
stupa
14.5 — as in the (very Russian) heavy machine gun 14.5mm round?
Did I see what you did there, or did I do that?
Amir Khalid
@trollhattan:
Isn’t there anyone who calls it The War of Southern Treason?
Miss Bianca
@Betty Cracker:
Boy, ain’t that the truth! Living through one of those “regret moments” right now, meself. Yet another lesson in “shooting from the hip may feel great at the moment, but too often I miss the mark.”