I typed the entire thing (on my rented electric typewriter) misspelling that precious word [opthamologist] all the way through!
Posted by: juliania | May 28 2022 0:25 utc | 191
We were just starting out when we moved here, so I was looking for any kind of low-skill work I could scrape up. I answered a classified want-ad (remember classified want-ads? that one dates me!) for a secretary at the Polish Cultural Center in downtown San Francisco. I claimed to know how to type, and so my prospective boss handed me a mailing-list to retype. A mailing list full of Polish names, needless to say…
What with job-interview nervousness, and those consarn names sending my digits through unaccustomed combinations, I kept screwing up that list with too much whiteout, and starting over. Meanwhile, all these burly guys are loudly bouncing around — like a construction union hall in there, lots of noise. After my third try, I look left and right; the door’s just to my right; I grab my hat and slip out with no word to nobody.
And that’s just one of the miserable jobs that got away from me. I was also a catastrophically unsuccessful dishwasher in a mafia restaurant. That job I actually worked for three days.

Posted by: Aleph_Null | May 28 2022 8:32 utc | 203

re Uvalde–so some cops stopped some other cops (Border Patrol) from going into the school while the shooter kept shooting kids. massive screwup.

Posted by: pretzelattack | May 28 2022 10:14 utc | 205

Here’s an interesting “media studies” exercise: Google search “Russia zircon missile”
So La Presse has a neat summary on the Ontario elections, wisely asking the question if this is a preview of what’s to come in the provincial elections in Quebec. Compare the parties campaign promises, look at some pretty pictures…
https://www.lapresse.ca/affaires/2022-05-28/elections-en-ontario/un-avant-gout-de-la-campagne-quebecoise.php
Montreal’s population just grew by 400 as a plane of Ukrainians arrives.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/montreal-welcome-ukraine-families-war-1.6468907
“The Romanos are some of the Montrealers opening their homes to Ukrainians while they find their footing in Canada.
This weekend, the city will welcome around 400 Ukrainians, says the municipal councillor in charge of the file, Alia Hassan-Cournol. They will be arriving by charter plane on May 29.
“There’s been a huge wave of solidarity coming from Montrealers that wanted to welcome Ukrainian migrants in their homes,” Hassan-Cournol said.”
MK Bhadrakumar links to a piece from Canada’s Global News (which I thought was kinda cool so I’m posting it)
https://twitter.com/BhadraPunchline/status/1530389333953630209
Speaking of Global News, the Twitter account for consumer+investigative reporter Sean O’Shea alternates between coverage of the Ford election campaign and war crimes in the Kharkiv oblast. (And a bit of the shooting in Buffalo, not far from here you know 45 kms from the border) A stimulating read!
@ConsumerSOS

Posted by: Bruised Northerner | May 28 2022 13:01 utc | 207

In other news, Tony Accurso, former Quebec construction magnate, loses appeal and is heading to prison.
https://globalnews.ca/news/8872142/tony-accurso-loses-appeal-quebec-corruption/

Posted by: Bruised Northerner | May 28 2022 13:31 utc | 209

Zelensky has a GREAT VOICE btw, at least for speaking, and it adds to his charm as an Actor. A little 5’5″ guy with such a baritone voice, he makes Leonard Cohen sound like a soprano.
It reminds me of the those cartoons from the 1920’s (?) where the little fish sang the baritone parts.
Has anyone heard Zelensky sing ? Can he sing worth a shit ? The “Sluga Narodu” song is pretty catchy, makes me wanna learn it, just for fun.

Posted by: Featherless | May 28 2022 13:52 utc | 211

@ juliania | May 27 2022 23:18 utc | 188
thanks for your kindness juliania.. if i could send you some rain – i would.. it is overcast at present and it might rain more.. thanks for trying to help me understand why i didn’t enjoy maguarita and the master… some books are not for everyone!

Posted by: james | May 28 2022 14:56 utc | 213

ATTN: Fans of Scientific Racism, Order of Anachronists’ Estimates in a Range
Italian Scientists Sequence First Human Genome From Remains of Vesuvius Volcano Eruption Victim

The results proved that the man was Italian and also showed the presence of DNA from the bacterium that causes tuberculosis.

Posted by: sln2002 | May 28 2022 15:37 utc | 215

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs put together a timeline of crimes committed by the United States and Great Britain
https://mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/istoricheskie_materialy/1804894/?lang=en
It was linked in a Tweet about the Trail of Tears #NoStatuteOfLimitation (!)
https://twitter.com/mfa_russia/status/1530522064767139844

Posted by: Bruised Northerner | May 28 2022 16:34 utc | 217

I employed the term “Nazi [fascist eliminationist] psychology” to describe the virulent hatred spat at we human beings, by people who psychologically associate with rentier psychology. After posting, I was a slightly bothered that I might have gone a little overboard, equating landlords with Nazis. Then I see hate-speech such as this (from a thread near you):

Homeless person in San Francisco can collect several thousand dollars a month in benefits and live in a weekly hotel that was formally occupied by merchants sailors walk two blocks away to steal things from tourists and three blocks away are their dealers.

What solution do such rentiers propose for their betes-noires, the homeless, aside from recurrent incarceration until disposal? Just across the Bay from me is San Quentin State Prison, site of Covid policies tantamount to mass-execution, thanks to Governor Newsom’s pillar: the CA prison-industial complex.

Posted by: Aleph_Null | May 28 2022 18:09 utc | 219

“Homeless person in San Francisco can collect several thousand dollars a month in benefits”
and then they all drive around in Reagan’s welfare cadillacs? some bullshit never dies, it just gets old and dessicated like a cow patty.

Posted by: pretzelattack | May 28 2022 18:38 utc | 221

Posted by: Joe | May 28 2022 18:44 utc | 222
not clear to me why they delayed entry, or stopped the Border Patrol from storming the classroom initially. Various excuses have been trotted out, like having to look for keys (whut?) or that they didn’t know the guy was periodically shooting kids in the classroom, which sounds like bullshit.

Posted by: pretzelattack | May 28 2022 18:53 utc | 223

speaking of cops and the homeless, the Albuquerque cops have a brutal reputation. Several of them slaughtered a homeless guy who was guilty of camping in an unauthorized area.

Posted by: pretzelattack | May 28 2022 20:34 utc | 225

This morning I read the second chapter of TM&M, which is a complete contrast to the first with its spare, enigmatic hints of pending doom…Well, both chapters have that in different ways. james, do you enjoy Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique”? I have to admit I enjoyed it very much — before I knew what it was called, what it was about. And I am no fan of Mexico’s ‘Day of the Dead’ even though I know it is when families celebrate at the gravesites of their loved ones. Was it that sense of the macabre that you found distasteful? I would join you in that. However, if one perseveres one comes to the heart of the novel in the end, and to the experience of Margarita which goes beyond Dostoievski in suggesting how humans partake in divinity. Beyond but not alien to that ‘master’ since he himself is totally beholden to his wife and family as the ground on which his creativity, as he knows well, bears fruit. Family, as our parish priest liked to emphasize, is also at the heart of Biblical exegesis; and it takes a woman to bring that message home.

Posted by: juliania | May 28 2022 21:26 utc | 227

I also enjoyed Margarita and the Bear.

Posted by: Featherless | May 28 2022 21:54 utc | 229

I don’t want to sound too gloomy — there are many very funny bits — and I’m sure Russians can pick up more of those, as with some of Lavrov’s cryptic sayings. Language is featured more throughout than I had remembered, turns of phrase which probably don’t translate well for us ignorant westerners. And for Russians of that era, starved for any but regulated, ‘safe’ literature, it must have seemed like manna from heaven. Which it was.

Posted by: juliania | May 28 2022 22:11 utc | 231

there are many very funny bits
@ juliania | May 28 2022 22:11 utc | 231
Out of synch with Lavrov’s selection (I’ve got M&M on order), I wound up diving into Dead Souls. That’s a kind of funny which feels relentlessly Russian to me. For pages and pages you’re wondering what the heck Gogol thinks he’s doing — he keeps apologizing for writing so tediously, while unfolding every person, moment, and interaction as beyond perfectly ordinary. The funny in there becomes insidiously intense, sneaking up on you via the eventual shock of recognition: OMG, all these strange people are old friends of mine! Look, there’s me!

Posted by: Aleph_Null | May 28 2022 22:40 utc | 233

Before there can be any serious talk of “International Laws” or ‘rules based order’ the outstanding injustice of the international system must be addressed.
Posted by: bevin | May 26 2022 23:02 utc | 90
One can tackle issues in “logical order” or according to ability (preferably, “I will write about X because I know something about it”).
An unsophisticated reader of your words (an such happen even here) may get an impression that ILs and RBWO are related. But to me, there is no obvious connection, and I remember times before RBWO was used, in that ancient era (previous millennium), the collective West pretended to enforce ILs if it bothered with such considerations at all.
To my perception, EU ceased to be a useful organization when the leaders of France, UK (still in EU) and Germany protested Trumpian withdrawal from JCPOA and “maximal sanctions” and engaged in the most energetic action that they were capable of: imploring Washington to let them trade with Iran. The answer was “nope”, and that was it, in spite of some pretenses of doing something. In other words, self-admitted puppet. Why it was expedient to detach one of the fingers of this puppet to give it ostensible autonomy, is mysterious, but apparently it was useful in the internal politics of UK by emasculating Labour there, and few years later Labour was successfully converted to Twiddle Dum party, “vehemently opposed” to Twiddle Dee in power.
Right now, The Most Bright European Commission showed a microscopic flicker of independence by pursuing the embargo on Russian oil when USA did not advise to do so. This is normally typical for the French: instead of being a docile poodle, they behave like an energetic dog that at times runs in front of the master pulling the leash, and at times lags behind. After few weeks, this dog is in the lagging position, which is understandable: all those accelerations and decelerations lead to temporary exhaustion.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | May 28 2022 23:21 utc | 235

I heard on the news a wannabe failed long term serial liar one hit one term “El Prezidente”.
A man of many shady deals under his belt since he reached the USSA military draft board age.
He bombastically proclaimed. If one was to fully arm all teachers with loaded weapons in plain view. In front of the children they teach. This would , by some miracle. Reduce or prevent the prevalent multiple daily “Going Postal” events at all USSA Schools. Going postal events 2022. 212 in 144 days and still increasing.
A public school teacher. In the USSA require multiple college degrees. A large debt to pay after graduation. The average rate of pay is basically rubbish. For the teacher, the school equipment supplied. Is both old and obsolete. In many cases the teacher needs to hand out text books , pens and paper. Many parents deem that is an extra unwanted expense. Extra out of pocket expenses on a well below average wage..
For the unfortunate teacher. On a daily basis. Forced to use obsolete easily hacked computers . Receive verbal abuse from the up themselves corrupt school board members(your wasting that federal grant money), headmaster(stop breaking the well worn past the use by obsolete equipment) Parents and self appointed censors(most classics novels “Kill the Mockingbird” are bad).
Now, what could possibly go wrong to an armed with a gun public school teacher? When running late for their third job to pay off the student debt loans. When buttonholed by a drunken ignorant angry whining about nothing child’s parent. The very same child who destroyed supplied accessories. As their parent had spent all their money . Drinking at the local bar…………….
For Donny T. , oh I did not think about such scenarios were possible …….. Besides all school teachers are over paid any way…

Posted by: Bad Deal Motors On | May 29 2022 0:16 utc | 237

Below is a quote from a ZH posting

The largest wildfire in New Mexico history—which is still burning—was started by the U.S. Forest Service, federal investigators announced Friday.
The catastrophe began as two fires that merged into one. Both wildfires have now been conclusively traced to planned burns conducted by the Forest Service. Planned or “prescribed” burns are used to reduce the threat of extreme fires by reducing the amount of dry fuel in the forest.
So far, the New Mexico fire has destroyed 330 homes and scorched some 500 square miles. The cost of battling the blaze has surpassed $130 million, and rises another $5 million each day, according to the Associated Press.

Posted by: psychohistorian | May 29 2022 2:01 utc | 239

“Albuquerque cops have a brutal reputation. Several of them slaughtered a homeless guy who was guilty of camping in an unauthorized area.”
This is what happens to you when you engage in high risk activities, and in USA this includes sleeping. I recall several cases when people disturbing public order by sleeping were killed by police. Usually it is shooting, but sometimes police works pretty hard, like five cops who were beating David Silva in Fresno, California until he died. David Silva have fallen asleep in the vicinity of the local hospital after he was denied admission…
Without citing other cases, one can conclude clear and logical reason why SWAT team that came to the Uvalde school did not stop the shooting: the perpetrator was not asleep. Otherwise, it would be their time to shine…

Posted by: Piotr Berman | May 29 2022 2:54 utc | 241

My Prime Minister has spoken:
“There’s a term that gets thrown around a lot – keyboard warrior. It’s used to refer to someone who makes aggressive or abusive posts online, often anonymously. I like the name. In my mind, when I read something especially horrific on my feed, I imagine it’s written by a lone person unacquainted with personal hygiene practices, dressed in a poorly fitted super hero costume – one that is baggy in all the wrong places.”
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2022/05/28/thats-dr-cindy-to-you-keyboard-warrior-scumbags-imagine-if-wed-let-that-movie-we-cancelled-get-produced/

Posted by: tucenz | May 29 2022 3:22 utc | 243

Posted by: K | May 28 2022 7:28 utc | 202
Your version is actually what mine also is, sorry to have perhaps confused the indented area at 194. The order of Mephistopheles’ answer is simply reversed in my
version:

‘…who are you, then?’
‘I am part of that power which eternally
wills evil and eternally works good.’

My translator is also Pevear, and perhaps your version doesn’t have his footnotes?
Here is the footnote in mine:
“The epigraph comes from the scene ‘Faust’s Study’ in the first part of the drama Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1842). The question is asked by Faust; the answer comes from the demon Mephistopheles.
The version you have:

FAUST: Who then art thou?
MEPHISTOPHELES: Part of that power which still
Produceth good, whilst ever scheming ill.

It’s interesting that the verbal response is crafted differently – while the question dangles, without immediate reference to who the speakers might be in the version I have (though the note clarifies). There’s certainly a difference in emphasis – I think I prefer my version as more enigmatic, in keeping with the tone of the novel.
Hmm!
My very battered paperback is a Penguin edition, 1997. The novel was originally first published in serial form in the publication Moskva in Russia in 1966, 26 years after Bulgakov’s death.

Posted by: juliania | May 29 2022 5:32 utc | 245

I’ve written about this before: Jacobin has more detailed info beyond the Intuit example
Mass Arbitration biting its corporate sponsors in the butt

Last year, Uber turned a quarterly profit for the first time ever. But a major obstacle stands in the way of the rideshare company repeating that achievement: a $92 million bill owed to the American Arbitration Association over claims that Uber discriminated against businesses when it said it was waiving Uber Eats charges to certain black-owned restaurants after the police killing of George Floyd.
Uber has been trying to sue its way out of paying the tab — but a recent New York appeals court decision blocked their request for an injunction to stop the arbitration association from collecting the bill.
…
it turns out that companies that mandate arbitration often don’t like the taste of their own medicine.
Faced with this financial onslaught, some companies have chosen to settle the claims filed against them, to the tune of huge sums of cash. Keller Postman claims that it has secured more than $200 million for its mass arbitration clients.

What’s even funnier is that I just overhead a conversation between 2 East Indian guys talking on SF public transportation. I would guess they work for Lyft because the line I was on is nowhere near Uber but passes right by Lyft SF HQ, but this convo could apply to any of the “sharing” companies like Airbnb, etc. One guy was explaining to the other guy that there were hundreds of lawyers across the country fighting local governments over the right to conduct their business.

Posted by: c1ue | May 29 2022 12:02 utc | 247

Amusingly, this probably only affects regular people. Back when I still had cars – both my 8 series Audis had really thick liners covering up the entire lower side of the car.
Posted by: c1ue | May 29 2022 12:05 utc | 248
I think there is a word “normie” that saves the effort to type “regular people”. I use my garage for some junk and my bicycle, nobody tried to steal the catalytic converter. Bike part plus labor may add up, but reaching 1000 would take some effort. A converter contains 3 to 7 (seven?) grams of precious metals. Palladium is perhaps at least half, and it used to be at least twice cheaper than gold, but no more, ca. 70 dollars per gram. Platinum is a steal at 30-35 dollars per gram (especially if you steal it together with palladium?).
Recycling converter is a profitable business, but like other parts, converters should have some stamps allowing to trace the origin, but with dishonest shops may disregard that. If a huge batch of converters were in storage, finding a dishonest recycler may require time and effort…

Posted by: Piotr Berman | May 29 2022 12:47 utc | 249

@sean the leprechaun from Ukraine thread
You said:

after having bank accounts frozen over political ideology based on fake science…..please explain what real money is, and who owns it. All the money I have has the Queen’s seal so she really is kind to allow me to use ‘her’ money to keep myself housed and fed.

Real money is the legal tender of where you live. If you live in England, it is the GBP. There’s no getting around that.
The problem you’re having isn’t the existence of the legal tender or the “ownership” of it – it is the access to it. Your money in your bank account hasn’t disappeared, it has simply been rendered inaccessible.
There are multiple ways around it, but they all require preparation and significant extra effort.
The most common, legal way is a business. Open a business, then open a business bank account. If your credit is really bad, ask a friend to open the business. The friend needs to be a really, really good and reliable one because the friend has full legal access and ownership to the business and thus anything in it (your cash).
The business can also get credit cards. The credit card is issued to the friend, but the friend can issue another one to you as an “employee”.
So use the biz bank account to handle incoming payments; keep a significant amount of cash around as reserve; pay the credit card via the business bank account.
Need I say the friend has to trust you as well, since the “business” can affect their credit negatively?
Don’t pee in the well you drink at.
The above has extra costs to start with – setting up the biz, etc. I don’t know about the UK, but in the US – once a biz bank account or credit card is opened, the bank never checks again to see if the biz still exists, is still licensed, actually is still operating etc.

Posted by: c1ue | May 29 2022 13:36 utc | 251

@Bad Deal Motors On #250
You said

Fun fact : USSA imports 56% of oil consumed from Canada.

Please post the link where you got this from.
The US imports 3.6 mbd (million barrels per day) from Canada but officially consumes 18.67 mbd. And while the US does export significant petroleum product – I guarantee it is not 10+ mbd worth.
Secondly, I do know that the US generally imports oil from Western Canada but exports oil to Eastern Canada.
This Canadian government report says

In 2018, Canadians consumed 46 billion litres of gasoline.
…
The vast majority of this process occurs in Canada and by Canadian companies; however, in 2018, imports of oil represented 46% of Canada’s refinery inputs, and imports of refined gasoline amounted to 7.9 billion litres.

Which implies a lot of oil going into Canada (presumably from the US) as well as gasoline: 7.9/46 = 17% of gasoline consumed by Canada is imported, also presumably from the US.
EIA says 460K barrels/day exported to Canada from the US, so Canada is net exporting 3.1-ish mbd to the US – which is only 16.8% of US oil consumption.
Nowhere does any of this information jibe with your above statement, hence my question.

Posted by: c1ue | May 29 2022 13:50 utc | 253

And to be fair, 52000 over the entire US isn’t THAT much – but a jump from 4000 to 52000 in 2 years is a big change. And 2022 may well see 6 digits of stolen converters.
Posted by: c1ue | May 29 2022 13:39 utc | 252

More than 4000 such thefts in the Denver-Boulder area since the start of 2021. Either that’s anomalous or the national statistics are fraudulent. I’m guessing the latter.

Posted by: malenkov | May 29 2022 14:50 utc | 255