I've had the "luck" (scare quotes intentional) of eating in several GR's restaurants through the years, both in New York City and in London (neither a gastronomical backwater). From the first to the last, I've been severely underwhelmed. Part of GR's shtick is to make simple food extremely well, delivered with excellent service. Of the three goals, I'd say the restaurants I've been in meet only one: simple food. I don't recall anything that I could describe as , sophisticate, original, or creative, only seen in a GR restaurant. In no occasion has this *simple food* been excellently cooked: overcooked, undercooked, poorly seasoned, all that, yes. Perfectly done, not even close. And the servers might have mixed up the name of the owner with their own. Not being Gordon Ramsey themselves, they shouldn't treat customers like GR treats cheftestants on TV, like we should be grateful the doorman allowed us in. After the fourth of fith GR restaurant, I decided it was not worth my time and my employer's money to give him another chance.
BTW, I feel the same about Jamie Oliver's restaurants, which I have tried in the UK and, of all places, Brazil, in that they are not worth my time and money. They are extremely overpriced for the supermarket market value of the ingredients. Having said that, JO restaurants succeed in doing what GR promises: simple food done extremely well. I think JO's Italian based food is actually simpler to cook brilliantly than GR's elaboration of British food, so it's easier for him to deliver that part. But it doesn't justify it being twice as expensive as the next best similar food in the location.
On Beef Wellington, I used to hate it, until I got it in a restaurant in a provincial city of Panama (David, if you want to know), owned by a retired Italian chef. I ate it in 2001, and it is still one of the best things I've ever eaten in my life. Alas, that chef died in 2005, an I won't be able to have it ever again. I think it is very difficult to make Beef Wellington in a way where the meat is not overcooked while the pastry is completely cooked. Tenderloin, which is what I've seen mostly used, is a very lean meat, and will dry very quickly if overcooked. Meat pies, Cornish pastries, etc. normally would include enough gravy or fat to keep the whole thing moist. Given my experience with GR's places, I would never trust them to cook Beef Wellington without giving me a dry piece of meat, the kid apparently is de rigueur in the current White House. To me, overcooked meat is a cow that died in vain
I think you are making Kristin's point, but I'm not sure if you are making it on purpose, or by accident.
It is true, that ”In the real antebellum South, there is a very high probability that Scarlet O’Hara would have had her land stolen by a rapacious entitled man or group of soldiers, raped in the process and found that the law sided with her tormentors instead of her.”. That was indeed what happened to many, or most, of the women that found themselves in a similar position as Scarlett's.
Scarlett O'Hara is fully aware that the odds are very much against her. That's what makes her story unique(r). She understood that no one would save her but herself. And she acted accordingly. She took agency for her survival, and her future wellbeing. That is what makes her, using Kristin's word, a feminist.
Her story is not the story of how Southern ladies were, in the hierarchy of society, higher than Mammy, but not nearly as high as the men in their lives. That's a different story, one that is worth telling, and has been told well several times (*). GWTW is, instead, the story of a woman who saved herself, and prospered, through courage, cleverness, and the adequate use of sex. It is, mutatis mutandis, very much the story of Cleopatra, another feminist woman that has fascinated mankind for 2,000 years
(*) Rod Dreher, of all people, has a fairly good blog post that touches this theme https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/sex-money-power/
I don’t fault (good) books for accurate descriptions, both of their characters or of their circumstances (*)
The antebellum South was racist, to say the least.
Scarlett O'Hara, whatever her other qualities or defects, was pro-slavery, and the book is written from her POV. It is not different that saying that Tony Soprano, whatever his other qualities or defects, is pro organized crime, hence The Sopranos has (has to have) a pro-Mob attitude.
It would be ridiculous (and make it a very bad book) to have a protagonist, call her Violet O'Shea, a Southern Belle who is totally anti slavery, holds campaign events for Lincoln in her plantation house, and cheers for the triumphs of the Union, because “they are fighting the good fight of our days”. Even worse, every white character in the novel vehemently declares in no uncertain terms the equality of black men, and black women, and black homosexuals for good measure (calling them black LGBT persons would be anachronistic, though), and talk to each other about how most of their best friends are black.
That was not antebellum Georgia. That was not what a Southern lady would have believed.
Scarlett O’Hara might have been wrong, but that’s her story. If you don’t want to hear it, read it, watch it, or learn about it, well, that’s your loss. You’ve made a smaller world for yourself.
Actually, this last one version could be very good.
(Apologies if by any chance this is exactly Outlander’s plot. I haven’t watched the series.)
(I hope it isn’t Outlander’s plot since I watched the first episode and found it trite and annoying, so as much as I like historical fiction, this one was a very hard pass)
(The reason I find it annoying is because I immediately identified with the Husband, who, AFAICT, was a decent bloke that really loved her. I’m a sucker for decent blokes. In rom coms I mostly root for the other guy, you know, the one that gets dumped through not fault of his own)
(Hey, perhaps Kristin would be kind enough to write a post from the POV of the dumped guy or gal who is decent and loves the protagonist but can’t sweep her/him off her/his feet. That’s a novel I would read.)
It is a pity that a perfectly reasonable and thought provoking comment about how technocrats are not political leaders is ruined by a completely unnecessary, completely wrong, aside
.... that California laws, regulations, and mandates made it impossible for PG&E to run a safe grid, something other states don’t have a problem with.
There’s nothing in California’s regulations that makes it impossible to have a safe grid. Like everyone else, from Albania to Zambia, from Alabama to Wyoming, California mandates, essentially, that vegetation be kept away from power lines, and that power lines withstand wind forces that can reasonably be expected to occur. California, like everyone else, allocates a certain percentage of the distribution tariff to cover the related expenses to achieve all of the above.
For some reason, most likely corporate greed, PG&E, who operates on a part of the country where strong, sustained, winds are common, and where wet and dry weather alternate, creating year.y piles of tinder dry dead vegetation, neither keeps the required clearance nor builds lines strong enough.
If anything, California’s failure hasn’t been to allow PG&E to ignore the regulations for many years, to the point where the state is crisscrossed by weak power lines running through masses of dry vegetation, lines that will fall to the ground with the next strong wind, or the one after that, and create blazing walls of flames that the same winds will push forward for miles.
There’s nothing special about California regulations. There’s local California weather, and it is up to PG&E to build and maintain their power lines in line with the local weather conditions, with the money California mandates customers to pay for specifically that.
Notice the one thing PG&E doesn’t say in their defense. They never argued that the money the tariff allocates is too little to pay for vegetation clearance and stronger lines. PG&E has never argued that California mandates them to do unreasonable things or things that the tariff does not cover. If PG&E had been earnestly trying to do all that California requires, and couldn’t because the tariff did not pay enough, PG&E would have been every day lobbying for ta4iff increases to cover for more vegetation clearing. But they don’t lobby for more money, because they are not even trying to do the required vegetation clearance.
Yes, technocrats can’t mandate engineering solutions to political problems. But they should be allowed to mandate engineering solutions to technical problems. Running utilities is a technical problem. One that involves externalities. Bush fires from tumbling power lines is one such externality. Pollution is another. There are technical solutions to minimize the impact of those externalities. Let technocrats do their thing.
As the (or as the most vocal of) OT resident Spaniard, I need to push back in oh, so many things.
First, and most important, it is El PueblO de Nuestra Senora de los Angeles de los Porciuncula”, not La Puebla. Angels might be sexless or genderless (not the same thing) or both, but Los Angeles identifies as male, and has chosen his pronouns as He, Him, His. This is California, pronouns are not joking matter, so Rod Dreher tells me several times a day (*)
(I’ll let Senora go for now, but let the record show the lack of the tilde is a microagression towards Our Lady. Actually, apparently, I’m not letting this go)
Second, you cannot bullfight on a vessel. Vessels are not round, they are oblong. And you need a round space for bullfighting. I agree bullfighting would make a long ocean crossing more fun, but the oblong shape makes sailing vessels easy to steer towards the other end of the sea. We all need to compromise.
On a more à propos point, I love this kind of sandwich. Can I suggest a change and a variation.
The change, instead of a hoagie, use a small crusty French bread style roll. The hard crust will help contain the jus, keeping the hands mostly dry, and make it easier, and cleaner to eat. I buy mine prebaked, in the frozen food section, and just needing 10 minutes in the oven before serving. Plus, the warm, fresh bread will elevate the sandwich to a different level. French bread, yummy.
The variation, is a steak sandwich. We call it many names, but in my part of the world it is called a Pepito. It requires a very thin strip of steak (I use skirt) quickly (about 3-4 minutes total) cooked on a pan with just (this is me) salt and pepper, and a dash of cooking oil. You put it, with or without fried onions, or fried mushrooms, on a French baguette style crusty bread, 4 inches or so long. Again, use prebaked bread that you finish in the oven. You can add au jus if you want to, or just let the bread soak in the steak’s natural juices. Do not, repeat, do not, overcook the steak, it must be juicy. It should be thin enough and tender enough than you can break it with your teeth, but you can always cut it into one inch wide or so pieces if you think it’s too hard to tear apart.
This is not party food, but it is a great, really fast (15 minutes from fridge to table) family meal that you can share on a weekend evening while watching the game or playing Trivia Pursuit (or looking for bullfighting videos in YouTube )
It’s a long shot, but not impossibly long. He’s halfway there, having already survived Beto, Harris, Castro, Gilibrand, and a lot of other also runs
yesterday I meant that Harris had picked early, and long hold, the coveted 4th place, but day after day she dripped support until Buttigieg caught up, and then passed her on to secure the fourth spot in all polls (including SC).
I wasn't expecting that today I would be able to pat myself on the back. Kamala Harris has joined the also runs. Good news to Warren, and Klobuchar and Booker, the last two now vying for the fith place.
McConnel is no technocrat, unless the definition of technocrat is “anything as long as not a populist”.
I doubt there’s any technocrat in the Republican Party, since they’ve made a repudiation of expertise and, you know, technical knowledge, one of their key values. Perhaps Chief Justice Roberts is kind of a technocrat, but I doubt he would be welcome in the party today.
I agree with you in general. I think Buttigieg’s path goes through Biden doing bad enough in IA and NH (3rd or 4th) that is raises the significant electability issues that should have risen before, that he can’t bring in neither the white working class votes nor the (white) suburban votes necessary to win in the Midwest/PA/OH/FL.
If that happens, and Klobuchar (and Bloomberg) fails to launch, then I would expect a lot of eyes would be focused on Mayor Pete as last moderate standing. Many of those eyes will also be minority eyes.
It’s a long shot, but not impossibly long. He’s halfway there, having already survived Beto, Harris, Castro, Gilibrand, and a lot of other also runs.
I've said before that most of the opposition to Buttigieg I see or read about is summarized as "how dares the 37 y.o. major of fishing South Bend IN dare run for President."
I rarely see any analysis about his policy proposals, his campaigning style, his personality (and obvious intelligence), his ability to reach to the white working class in WS, MI, PA (which used to be deemed a critical issue until yesterday).
Yes, being a Mayor is a relatively small job, but at least in an Executive branch job. But what makes us think that Bernie, Harris or Klobuchar's Senate career gives them any relevant experience on managing a large bureaucracy or balancing budgets?
Many people wonder why Buttigieg's campaign was able to catch traction whereas those of other Midwestern moderates like Klobuchar or Bullock's didn't. I think those people haven't taken the time to watch Mayor Pete's stump campaigning, His IA or NH polls are built on having convinced a lot of people that were able to go past the "How dares he?" to give him an hour of their time. He is an extremely effective campaigner, particularly direct Q&As with the public. You can't appreciate that in the sound bits format of the ten-candidates debates, but should work very well in the general.
Lastly, about his minority outreach, he's aware of it, and he's really trying, but I don't think anybody not called Biden is doing much better than him. Hopefully, A good placing in IA and NH would open some avenues for him to improve that outreach.
The Chinese, too, have discovered that the environment’s capability to absorb unlimited pollution is very limited. Calculations show over 15% of non violent/accidental deaths have pollution as a cause or contributing factor (how much it was in WV, in the halcyon days of steel, I wonder).
So now China is the world’s leader in wind and solar power generation. In 2018 China had 32% of the world’s installed photovoltaic generation, serving 3.3% of their demand (EU: 70% and 4.3%, USA: 11% and 2.3%, respectively). 45% of the world’s PV power 2018 additions happened in China. China leads also the world in installed wind power, with 36% of the world’s capacity (EU: 32%, USA: 16%).
2018 India, btw, is the 5th, and 4th country in the world in installed solar and wind capacity (6% of the world’s installed capacity in both counts), and the second, after China in installing new solar generation in 2018 (4th for wind, after China, USA, and Germany).
About 15 years ago China, also, implanted significant environmental limitations on any new coal plant to be built after that date. As an anecdote from another part of the world, in the early 2000s Turkey forbade coal burning for domestic heating in any city that had natural gas services (I.e, in most large and midsized cities).
Environmental concerns is not just for western liberals anymore.
The cost of that clean air today is thousands of jobs, livelihoods gone forever.
I’m sorry, but this sentence really grated me. You make it sound like a new Kheops or Louis XIV decided that HE wanted clean air the the howling of coyotes to enliven HIS evenings, no matter how many slave’s or peasants lives would be destroyed to please HIM.
The reality is much more different. Our planet, our environment, has a finite capability to absorb the pollutants those factories, no, that way of life, produced. The ozone hole was real, and was a real threat. SOx produces acid rain, that would slowly kill vegetation hundreds of miles away. More accurately you could have written : “The cost of those thousands of jobs, livelihoods, was life-sustaining air, almost (fortunately, for now) gone forever.”
E. T. Weir never planned to pay the full costs that steel making involved. Bumping the slush in the river when it was too much in the way was his solution. He never wondered what happened to people that drank that water. Peasants should not stand in the way of great men’s dreams. You can ask Louis XIV about it.
It took me ten minutes to understand you meant the Pope. I was trying to think which Francis I you meant, given that the last two Francis I of any note (King of the Two Sicilies, and Emperor of Austria, respectively) both died in the 1830s.
Pedantic interlude:The numbering convention for monarchs used to be that you add the number with the second monarch of the same name. It’s Pope Francis until we get a Pope Francis II /pedantic interlude.
Second pedantic interlude: King Juan Carlos of Spain went on as Juan Carlos I. Given that he was my own king, it grated me. Thank goodness I have a Felipe VI now as king /second pedantic interlude.
Say what you want about Johnson, at least you know where he stands.
He stands wherever Boris Johnson profits the most, which changes day by day. He wrote two op-eds before the Brexit referendum, before deciding which one to publish, because he didn’t care about the EU, but about what position would be better for him personally. And more recently, he threw the DUP under the bus not a week later than telling them he will stand with them for a UNITED UK.
That, of course, only makes him more of a turkey. But I can’t let than small whiff of a praise for Boris pass on under the radar.
I had the opportunity to visit Morgantown and the area around it, and I loved it. I can’t speak how representative of WV it is (being a college town and all that) but the place was beautiful, the area gorgeous, the people nice and friendly. The local Starbucks had great coffee (a must for me) For what it’s worth I thought it looked like a nice place to retire.
Having said that, it’s no secret in OT what I think about coal mining. Coal mining is dying. I take no particular pleasure in that (my life includes having run a coal fired power plant, and designing another), but I’m also not particularly sad about it. I understand the economic forces that are killing coal mining, and there’s no stopping them. WV will be better served if both politicians and voters acknowledged that fact, and planned, and acted, accordingly.
But you live in a beautiful state, and I wish the best for its people. Alas, I’m afraid that my wishes in this respect will take a long time to come true, but that’s not because of people like me (or people like Hillary, either). You can act like reality is real, or you can, honestly or dishonestly, act as if facts don’t matter. From my comfortable Houston perch, i5seems like the latter is what’s going on. That, too, does WV no good.
As a Pete supporter, it bugs me to no end that most of the commentary about Pete is rarely about his ideas, his proposals, his character.
Most of it is several variations of “Who does that upstart mayor of Whoville thinks he is?”
I confess I was one of those at some point. I turned out the invite to go to an in-person fundraiser of his exploratory campaign because, I, too, thought it a joke, fueled by an “a gay candidate, how woke!” mentality. ( I’ll always regret passing on the chance of meeting him in person)
But he refused to go away. And I started to hear some of the things he said. Things that were in line with what I wanted a Democratic President to be. And I looked for a more “serious” candidate in, as they say, “his lane”. And Beto was the only other one. And Beto, regretfully, and surprisingly, was full of hot air. And, there, still, was Mayor Pete.
I pulled out several stump preaches from You Tube (including one at a black community center in Harlem). The speech itself is good, but after the third time, it gets old very fast. I started fast forwarding to the Q&As at the end.
Fish, the guy is brilliant. He can think on his feet. He’s articulate. He’s respectful. He weaves whatever the question is into his broader narrative, while at the same time totally answering the question. He knows stuff. It’s clear he’s thought a lot about a lot of stuff. He’s not talking general feel good platitudes only. He puts real examples, real ideas, real “I have a plan for that” attitude, backed by teal facts, even if they come from his Whoville mayoralty experience.
I think the difference between his polling in IA and NH and in the rest of the country is that IA and NH have been exposed to him. They have seen him, heard him talk, asked questions, received answers, and found him the opposite of a lightweight. Like I did, some time ago.
It’s a pity that most of the commentary in the media, even the left of center media, is a variation of trying to put him down. Just read Clare Malone’s piece today in fivethirtyeight. You can read her contempt (quote: “the foreign languages, Oxford, yada, yada, yada") all over the piece, while she makes up (paraphrases, she’ll call it) things he never said or would have said. Their disdain for the Whoville mayor blinds them to the man and his ideas.
And if Buttigieg does not win the nomination (which is likely he won’t) we will end with a far worse candidate, either too old, too leftist, too coastal elite, too out of touch, or a combination thereof, neither of which bodes well for a 2020 election
(Thank God for small miracles, not even the GOP is bringing out that he’s gay as a disqualifier. Not even, except for the left of center commentators that assert black people would never vote for a gay person (yes, they do, see Houston, TX, Annise Parker, three terms mayor of)
I'm trough episode three (of four) in the series. I'm looking forward to the end (I have no clue) tonigt
A couple of obsevations
The episodes (59' each) are too dense. Too much happens (all exciting, all moving the history forward), which keeps you focused and in edge all the time - Half way through it you have to pause it because you (at least me) feel physically exhausted. Repeat again at about minute 45'.This series could ave used some meaningless fluff, to fill one or two more episodes.
David Morrissey (Borlú) is an excellent actor, something I hadn't realized before. You (I) feel Birlú, his anxiousness, his "when in Beszel, see Beszel" conditioning, and how he has to fight himself after Yolanda crosses and he has to fire his gun (book readers probably know what I am talking about). The Yolanda crossing scene and its aftermath it's an amazing piece of television.
The character's, Borlú included, are as well fleshed as can be when you only see a couple of days of their lives. Past Borlú's flashbacks, and present Borlú barely seem the same actor, and you can see how he went from there to now. The dinner at the Ul Quoma inspector's house shows how he longs for a similar family life. The flashbacks after that show how his past life might have been a self delusion (I trust the final episode will clarify that), where perhaps he loved his wife more than she loved him, and he's becoming aware of that possibility. I think it's only after that visit that he sees that perhaps he can move on from the past. I think it's that visit that allows him to later fire the gun.
The third city mystery is, I think, so far, the least interesting thing of the story. As an explanation for why Borlú's wife disappeared, it sort of makes sense, but I'm afraid that a third city ex machina will just destroy what, so far, is a compelling human story -with a twist. Good science fiction does not require a magical/technological solution. I don't care to know why the cities don't see each other. That's the twist. I care about the story of people for whom the twist is the normal. Please make Orciny disappear again before I watch the last episode
Plus the very famous The Sliced-Crosswise Only-On-Tuesday World by Philip José Farmer(1971) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sliced-Crosswise_Only-On-Tuesday_World, the concept which was the base for Farmer's later Dayworld trilogy
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Vote Now! Who Are You Rooting For?”
Mayor Pete never got any respect hehe
"
Is there a reason Buttigieg was not included in the first list? I already voted for him in early voting in TX
If it was just an accidental oversight, count me in for Mayor Pete also in the first list
On “Corn Dog: The Beef Wellington of Common Folks, On a Stick”
On Gordon Ramsey
I've had the "luck" (scare quotes intentional) of eating in several GR's restaurants through the years, both in New York City and in London (neither a gastronomical backwater). From the first to the last, I've been severely underwhelmed. Part of GR's shtick is to make simple food extremely well, delivered with excellent service. Of the three goals, I'd say the restaurants I've been in meet only one: simple food. I don't recall anything that I could describe as , sophisticate, original, or creative, only seen in a GR restaurant. In no occasion has this *simple food* been excellently cooked: overcooked, undercooked, poorly seasoned, all that, yes. Perfectly done, not even close. And the servers might have mixed up the name of the owner with their own. Not being Gordon Ramsey themselves, they shouldn't treat customers like GR treats cheftestants on TV, like we should be grateful the doorman allowed us in. After the fourth of fith GR restaurant, I decided it was not worth my time and my employer's money to give him another chance.
BTW, I feel the same about Jamie Oliver's restaurants, which I have tried in the UK and, of all places, Brazil, in that they are not worth my time and money. They are extremely overpriced for the supermarket market value of the ingredients. Having said that, JO restaurants succeed in doing what GR promises: simple food done extremely well. I think JO's Italian based food is actually simpler to cook brilliantly than GR's elaboration of British food, so it's easier for him to deliver that part. But it doesn't justify it being twice as expensive as the next best similar food in the location.
On Beef Wellington, I used to hate it, until I got it in a restaurant in a provincial city of Panama (David, if you want to know), owned by a retired Italian chef. I ate it in 2001, and it is still one of the best things I've ever eaten in my life. Alas, that chef died in 2005, an I won't be able to have it ever again. I think it is very difficult to make Beef Wellington in a way where the meat is not overcooked while the pastry is completely cooked. Tenderloin, which is what I've seen mostly used, is a very lean meat, and will dry very quickly if overcooked. Meat pies, Cornish pastries, etc. normally would include enough gravy or fat to keep the whole thing moist. Given my experience with GR's places, I would never trust them to cook Beef Wellington without giving me a dry piece of meat, the kid apparently is de rigueur in the current White House. To me, overcooked meat is a cow that died in vain
On “Gone With the Wind: The Great American Feminist Novel”
@Chip
I think you are making Kristin's point, but I'm not sure if you are making it on purpose, or by accident.
It is true, that ”In the real antebellum South, there is a very high probability that Scarlet O’Hara would have had her land stolen by a rapacious entitled man or group of soldiers, raped in the process and found that the law sided with her tormentors instead of her.”. That was indeed what happened to many, or most, of the women that found themselves in a similar position as Scarlett's.
Scarlett O'Hara is fully aware that the odds are very much against her. That's what makes her story unique(r). She understood that no one would save her but herself. And she acted accordingly. She took agency for her survival, and her future wellbeing. That is what makes her, using Kristin's word, a feminist.
Her story is not the story of how Southern ladies were, in the hierarchy of society, higher than Mammy, but not nearly as high as the men in their lives. That's a different story, one that is worth telling, and has been told well several times (*). GWTW is, instead, the story of a woman who saved herself, and prospered, through courage, cleverness, and the adequate use of sex. It is, mutatis mutandis, very much the story of Cleopatra, another feminist woman that has fascinated mankind for 2,000 years
(*) Rod Dreher, of all people, has a fairly good blog post that touches this theme https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/sex-money-power/
"
I don’t fault (good) books for accurate descriptions, both of their characters or of their circumstances (*)
The antebellum South was racist, to say the least.
Scarlett O'Hara, whatever her other qualities or defects, was pro-slavery, and the book is written from her POV. It is not different that saying that Tony Soprano, whatever his other qualities or defects, is pro organized crime, hence The Sopranos has (has to have) a pro-Mob attitude.
It would be ridiculous (and make it a very bad book) to have a protagonist, call her Violet O'Shea, a Southern Belle who is totally anti slavery, holds campaign events for Lincoln in her plantation house, and cheers for the triumphs of the Union, because “they are fighting the good fight of our days”. Even worse, every white character in the novel vehemently declares in no uncertain terms the equality of black men, and black women, and black homosexuals for good measure (calling them black LGBT persons would be anachronistic, though), and talk to each other about how most of their best friends are black.
That was not antebellum Georgia. That was not what a Southern lady would have believed.
Scarlett O’Hara might have been wrong, but that’s her story. If you don’t want to hear it, read it, watch it, or learn about it, well, that’s your loss. You’ve made a smaller world for yourself.
(*) I fault not-good books for a lot of things.
On “Fried Green Tomatoes and The Husband Problem”
Actually, this last one version could be very good.
(Apologies if by any chance this is exactly Outlander’s plot. I haven’t watched the series.)
(I hope it isn’t Outlander’s plot since I watched the first episode and found it trite and annoying, so as much as I like historical fiction, this one was a very hard pass)
(The reason I find it annoying is because I immediately identified with the Husband, who, AFAICT, was a decent bloke that really loved her. I’m a sucker for decent blokes. In rom coms I mostly root for the other guy, you know, the one that gets dumped through not fault of his own)
(Hey, perhaps Kristin would be kind enough to write a post from the POV of the dumped guy or gal who is decent and loves the protagonist but can’t sweep her/him off her/his feet. That’s a novel I would read.)
On “Boris Johnson announces that the Withdrawal Agreement has received Royal Assent”
Nothing says I’m not in the EU like a blue passport without the words European Union.
Finally, the UK will be allowed to have them
Oh, wait
https://www.croatiaweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Passport.jpg
On “Fried Green Tomatoes and The Husband Problem”
Whoa
This is one of the very best posts I’ve seen in this site in a very long time.
There’s nothing I can add, and any comment of mine would surely be superfluous. Except the following:
Thanks, thanks, thanks!!
On “Andrew Yang Overtakes Pete Buttigieg to Become Fourth Most Favored Primary Candidate: Poll”
It is a pity that a perfectly reasonable and thought provoking comment about how technocrats are not political leaders is ruined by a completely unnecessary, completely wrong, aside
.... that California laws, regulations, and mandates made it impossible for PG&E to run a safe grid, something other states don’t have a problem with.
There’s nothing in California’s regulations that makes it impossible to have a safe grid. Like everyone else, from Albania to Zambia, from Alabama to Wyoming, California mandates, essentially, that vegetation be kept away from power lines, and that power lines withstand wind forces that can reasonably be expected to occur. California, like everyone else, allocates a certain percentage of the distribution tariff to cover the related expenses to achieve all of the above.
For some reason, most likely corporate greed, PG&E, who operates on a part of the country where strong, sustained, winds are common, and where wet and dry weather alternate, creating year.y piles of tinder dry dead vegetation, neither keeps the required clearance nor builds lines strong enough.
If anything, California’s failure hasn’t been to allow PG&E to ignore the regulations for many years, to the point where the state is crisscrossed by weak power lines running through masses of dry vegetation, lines that will fall to the ground with the next strong wind, or the one after that, and create blazing walls of flames that the same winds will push forward for miles.
There’s nothing special about California regulations. There’s local California weather, and it is up to PG&E to build and maintain their power lines in line with the local weather conditions, with the money California mandates customers to pay for specifically that.
Notice the one thing PG&E doesn’t say in their defense. They never argued that the money the tariff allocates is too little to pay for vegetation clearance and stronger lines. PG&E has never argued that California mandates them to do unreasonable things or things that the tariff does not cover. If PG&E had been earnestly trying to do all that California requires, and couldn’t because the tariff did not pay enough, PG&E would have been every day lobbying for ta4iff increases to cover for more vegetation clearing. But they don’t lobby for more money, because they are not even trying to do the required vegetation clearance.
Yes, technocrats can’t mandate engineering solutions to political problems. But they should be allowed to mandate engineering solutions to technical problems. Running utilities is a technical problem. One that involves externalities. Bush fires from tumbling power lines is one such externality. Pollution is another. There are technical solutions to minimize the impact of those externalities. Let technocrats do their thing.
On “American Sandwich Project: French Dips, Drips, and Glops”
As the (or as the most vocal of) OT resident Spaniard, I need to push back in oh, so many things.
First, and most important, it is El PueblO de Nuestra Senora de los Angeles de los Porciuncula”, not La Puebla. Angels might be sexless or genderless (not the same thing) or both, but Los Angeles identifies as male, and has chosen his pronouns as He, Him, His. This is California, pronouns are not joking matter, so Rod Dreher tells me several times a day (*)
(I’ll let Senora go for now, but let the record show the lack of the tilde is a microagression towards Our Lady. Actually, apparently, I’m not letting this go)
Second, you cannot bullfight on a vessel. Vessels are not round, they are oblong. And you need a round space for bullfighting. I agree bullfighting would make a long ocean crossing more fun, but the oblong shape makes sailing vessels easy to steer towards the other end of the sea. We all need to compromise.
On a more à propos point, I love this kind of sandwich. Can I suggest a change and a variation.
The change, instead of a hoagie, use a small crusty French bread style roll. The hard crust will help contain the jus, keeping the hands mostly dry, and make it easier, and cleaner to eat. I buy mine prebaked, in the frozen food section, and just needing 10 minutes in the oven before serving. Plus, the warm, fresh bread will elevate the sandwich to a different level. French bread, yummy.
The variation, is a steak sandwich. We call it many names, but in my part of the world it is called a Pepito. It requires a very thin strip of steak (I use skirt) quickly (about 3-4 minutes total) cooked on a pan with just (this is me) salt and pepper, and a dash of cooking oil. You put it, with or without fried onions, or fried mushrooms, on a French baguette style crusty bread, 4 inches or so long. Again, use prebaked bread that you finish in the oven. You can add au jus if you want to, or just let the bread soak in the steak’s natural juices. Do not, repeat, do not, overcook the steak, it must be juicy. It should be thin enough and tender enough than you can break it with your teeth, but you can always cut it into one inch wide or so pieces if you think it’s too hard to tear apart.
This is not party food, but it is a great, really fast (15 minutes from fridge to table) family meal that you can share on a weekend evening while watching the game or playing Trivia Pursuit (or looking for bullfighting videos in YouTube )
Thanks again for this series, I love it.
On “Pete Buttigieg’s High Hopes”
J_A said, yesterday
It’s a long shot, but not impossibly long. He’s halfway there, having already survived Beto, Harris, Castro, Gilibrand, and a lot of other also runs
yesterday I meant that Harris had picked early, and long hold, the coveted 4th place, but day after day she dripped support until Buttigieg caught up, and then passed her on to secure the fourth spot in all polls (including SC).
I wasn't expecting that today I would be able to pat myself on the back. Kamala Harris has joined the also runs. Good news to Warren, and Klobuchar and Booker, the last two now vying for the fith place.
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McConnel is no technocrat, unless the definition of technocrat is “anything as long as not a populist”.
I doubt there’s any technocrat in the Republican Party, since they’ve made a repudiation of expertise and, you know, technical knowledge, one of their key values. Perhaps Chief Justice Roberts is kind of a technocrat, but I doubt he would be welcome in the party today.
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I agree with you in general. I think Buttigieg’s path goes through Biden doing bad enough in IA and NH (3rd or 4th) that is raises the significant electability issues that should have risen before, that he can’t bring in neither the white working class votes nor the (white) suburban votes necessary to win in the Midwest/PA/OH/FL.
If that happens, and Klobuchar (and Bloomberg) fails to launch, then I would expect a lot of eyes would be focused on Mayor Pete as last moderate standing. Many of those eyes will also be minority eyes.
It’s a long shot, but not impossibly long. He’s halfway there, having already survived Beto, Harris, Castro, Gilibrand, and a lot of other also runs.
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I've said before that most of the opposition to Buttigieg I see or read about is summarized as "how dares the 37 y.o. major of fishing South Bend IN dare run for President."
I rarely see any analysis about his policy proposals, his campaigning style, his personality (and obvious intelligence), his ability to reach to the white working class in WS, MI, PA (which used to be deemed a critical issue until yesterday).
Yes, being a Mayor is a relatively small job, but at least in an Executive branch job. But what makes us think that Bernie, Harris or Klobuchar's Senate career gives them any relevant experience on managing a large bureaucracy or balancing budgets?
Many people wonder why Buttigieg's campaign was able to catch traction whereas those of other Midwestern moderates like Klobuchar or Bullock's didn't. I think those people haven't taken the time to watch Mayor Pete's stump campaigning, His IA or NH polls are built on having convinced a lot of people that were able to go past the "How dares he?" to give him an hour of their time. He is an extremely effective campaigner, particularly direct Q&As with the public. You can't appreciate that in the sound bits format of the ten-candidates debates, but should work very well in the general.
Lastly, about his minority outreach, he's aware of it, and he's really trying, but I don't think anybody not called Biden is doing much better than him. Hopefully, A good placing in IA and NH would open some avenues for him to improve that outreach.
On “Pollution: Remediation and Rebirth, But At What Cost?”
The Chinese, too, have discovered that the environment’s capability to absorb unlimited pollution is very limited. Calculations show over 15% of non violent/accidental deaths have pollution as a cause or contributing factor (how much it was in WV, in the halcyon days of steel, I wonder).
So now China is the world’s leader in wind and solar power generation. In 2018 China had 32% of the world’s installed photovoltaic generation, serving 3.3% of their demand (EU: 70% and 4.3%, USA: 11% and 2.3%, respectively). 45% of the world’s PV power 2018 additions happened in China. China leads also the world in installed wind power, with 36% of the world’s capacity (EU: 32%, USA: 16%).
2018 India, btw, is the 5th, and 4th country in the world in installed solar and wind capacity (6% of the world’s installed capacity in both counts), and the second, after China in installing new solar generation in 2018 (4th for wind, after China, USA, and Germany).
About 15 years ago China, also, implanted significant environmental limitations on any new coal plant to be built after that date. As an anecdote from another part of the world, in the early 2000s Turkey forbade coal burning for domestic heating in any city that had natural gas services (I.e, in most large and midsized cities).
Environmental concerns is not just for western liberals anymore.
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The cost of that clean air today is thousands of jobs, livelihoods gone forever.
I’m sorry, but this sentence really grated me. You make it sound like a new Kheops or Louis XIV decided that HE wanted clean air the the howling of coyotes to enliven HIS evenings, no matter how many slave’s or peasants lives would be destroyed to please HIM.
The reality is much more different. Our planet, our environment, has a finite capability to absorb the pollutants those factories, no, that way of life, produced. The ozone hole was real, and was a real threat. SOx produces acid rain, that would slowly kill vegetation hundreds of miles away. More accurately you could have written : “The cost of those thousands of jobs, livelihoods, was life-sustaining air, almost (fortunately, for now) gone forever.”
E. T. Weir never planned to pay the full costs that steel making involved. Bumping the slush in the river when it was too much in the way was his solution. He never wondered what happened to people that drank that water. Peasants should not stand in the way of great men’s dreams. You can ask Louis XIV about it.
On “Turkeys and Drumsticks 2019”
2013: Francis I
It took me ten minutes to understand you meant the Pope. I was trying to think which Francis I you meant, given that the last two Francis I of any note (King of the Two Sicilies, and Emperor of Austria, respectively) both died in the 1830s.
Pedantic interlude:The numbering convention for monarchs used to be that you add the number with the second monarch of the same name. It’s Pope Francis until we get a Pope Francis II /pedantic interlude.
Second pedantic interlude: King Juan Carlos of Spain went on as Juan Carlos I. Given that he was my own king, it grated me. Thank goodness I have a Felipe VI now as king /second pedantic interlude.
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Say what you want about Johnson, at least you know where he stands.
He stands wherever Boris Johnson profits the most, which changes day by day. He wrote two op-eds before the Brexit referendum, before deciding which one to publish, because he didn’t care about the EU, but about what position would be better for him personally. And more recently, he threw the DUP under the bus not a week later than telling them he will stand with them for a UNITED UK.
That, of course, only makes him more of a turkey. But I can’t let than small whiff of a praise for Boris pass on under the radar.
On “Slummin’ in Appalachia”
I had the opportunity to visit Morgantown and the area around it, and I loved it. I can’t speak how representative of WV it is (being a college town and all that) but the place was beautiful, the area gorgeous, the people nice and friendly. The local Starbucks had great coffee (a must for me) For what it’s worth I thought it looked like a nice place to retire.
Having said that, it’s no secret in OT what I think about coal mining. Coal mining is dying. I take no particular pleasure in that (my life includes having run a coal fired power plant, and designing another), but I’m also not particularly sad about it. I understand the economic forces that are killing coal mining, and there’s no stopping them. WV will be better served if both politicians and voters acknowledged that fact, and planned, and acted, accordingly.
But you live in a beautiful state, and I wish the best for its people. Alas, I’m afraid that my wishes in this respect will take a long time to come true, but that’s not because of people like me (or people like Hillary, either). You can act like reality is real, or you can, honestly or dishonestly, act as if facts don’t matter. From my comfortable Houston perch, i5seems like the latter is what’s going on. That, too, does WV no good.
On “Pete Buttigieg Tops Latest Iowa Polling”
As a Pete supporter, it bugs me to no end that most of the commentary about Pete is rarely about his ideas, his proposals, his character.
Most of it is several variations of “Who does that upstart mayor of Whoville thinks he is?”
I confess I was one of those at some point. I turned out the invite to go to an in-person fundraiser of his exploratory campaign because, I, too, thought it a joke, fueled by an “a gay candidate, how woke!” mentality. ( I’ll always regret passing on the chance of meeting him in person)
But he refused to go away. And I started to hear some of the things he said. Things that were in line with what I wanted a Democratic President to be. And I looked for a more “serious” candidate in, as they say, “his lane”. And Beto was the only other one. And Beto, regretfully, and surprisingly, was full of hot air. And, there, still, was Mayor Pete.
I pulled out several stump preaches from You Tube (including one at a black community center in Harlem). The speech itself is good, but after the third time, it gets old very fast. I started fast forwarding to the Q&As at the end.
Fish, the guy is brilliant. He can think on his feet. He’s articulate. He’s respectful. He weaves whatever the question is into his broader narrative, while at the same time totally answering the question. He knows stuff. It’s clear he’s thought a lot about a lot of stuff. He’s not talking general feel good platitudes only. He puts real examples, real ideas, real “I have a plan for that” attitude, backed by teal facts, even if they come from his Whoville mayoralty experience.
I think the difference between his polling in IA and NH and in the rest of the country is that IA and NH have been exposed to him. They have seen him, heard him talk, asked questions, received answers, and found him the opposite of a lightweight. Like I did, some time ago.
It’s a pity that most of the commentary in the media, even the left of center media, is a variation of trying to put him down. Just read Clare Malone’s piece today in fivethirtyeight. You can read her contempt (quote: “the foreign languages, Oxford, yada, yada, yada") all over the piece, while she makes up (paraphrases, she’ll call it) things he never said or would have said. Their disdain for the Whoville mayor blinds them to the man and his ideas.
And if Buttigieg does not win the nomination (which is likely he won’t) we will end with a far worse candidate, either too old, too leftist, too coastal elite, too out of touch, or a combination thereof, neither of which bodes well for a 2020 election
(Thank God for small miracles, not even the GOP is bringing out that he’s gay as a disqualifier. Not even, except for the left of center commentators that assert black people would never vote for a gay person (yes, they do, see Houston, TX, Annise Parker, three terms mayor of)
On “Sunday Morning! The City & The City”
I look forward to your take about the novel and the series, and the differences - I hope you publish an update
I finished the series earlier - Without any further spoilers - It's good, it's very, very, good
and, before I forget again, thank you for bringing The City & The City to our attention. I enjoyed it
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I look forward to your take about the novel and the series, and the differences - I hope you publish an update
I finished the series earlier - Without any further spoilers - It's good, it's very, very, good
and, before I forget again, thank you for bringing The city & the city to our attention. I enjoyed it
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I'm trough episode three (of four) in the series. I'm looking forward to the end (I have no clue) tonigt
A couple of obsevations
The episodes (59' each) are too dense. Too much happens (all exciting, all moving the history forward), which keeps you focused and in edge all the time - Half way through it you have to pause it because you (at least me) feel physically exhausted. Repeat again at about minute 45'.This series could ave used some meaningless fluff, to fill one or two more episodes.
David Morrissey (Borlú) is an excellent actor, something I hadn't realized before. You (I) feel Birlú, his anxiousness, his "when in Beszel, see Beszel" conditioning, and how he has to fight himself after Yolanda crosses and he has to fire his gun (book readers probably know what I am talking about). The Yolanda crossing scene and its aftermath it's an amazing piece of television.
The character's, Borlú included, are as well fleshed as can be when you only see a couple of days of their lives. Past Borlú's flashbacks, and present Borlú barely seem the same actor, and you can see how he went from there to now. The dinner at the Ul Quoma inspector's house shows how he longs for a similar family life. The flashbacks after that show how his past life might have been a self delusion (I trust the final episode will clarify that), where perhaps he loved his wife more than she loved him, and he's becoming aware of that possibility. I think it's only after that visit that he sees that perhaps he can move on from the past. I think it's that visit that allows him to later fire the gun.
The third city mystery is, I think, so far, the least interesting thing of the story. As an explanation for why Borlú's wife disappeared, it sort of makes sense, but I'm afraid that a third city ex machina will just destroy what, so far, is a compelling human story -with a twist. Good science fiction does not require a magical/technological solution. I don't care to know why the cities don't see each other. That's the twist. I care about the story of people for whom the twist is the normal. Please make Orciny disappear again before I watch the last episode
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I actually only read the short story, when I was in college - I'm curious about the trilogy though
The concept of having different fashions, different TV shows, different culture, based on the day of the week, I thought was a cool concept
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Plus the very famous The Sliced-Crosswise Only-On-Tuesday World by Philip José Farmer(1971) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sliced-Crosswise_Only-On-Tuesday_World, the concept which was the base for Farmer's later Dayworld trilogy
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