Glibertarians.com 2018 Archive

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  • Wednesday Afternoon Links – daedsiupa edition

    SIGH. AUDIBLE SIGH.

    Hank Azaria ‘willing to step aside’ from Simpsons Apu role

    Hank Azaria says he is “willing to step aside” from his role voicing Simpsons character Apu Nahasapeemapetilon.

    It follows a documentary made by Indian-American comic Hari Kondabolu that argued the Indian character is based on racial stereotypes.

    Speaking on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the actor said his “eyes have been opened” by the debate and that he never intended to cause offence.

    He also distanced himself from the show’s controversial response.

    Shopkeeper Apu has been part of the long-running animation series since 1990, with Azaria adopting an Indian accent to voice him.

    The character is one of several voiced on The Simpsons by Azaria – he is also the voice of Chief Wiggum, Comic Book Guy and bartender Moe Szyslak.

    There has been a focus on the portrayal of Apu since Kondabolu’s 2017 documentary The Problem with Apu.

    The director told the BBC last year that the character was problematic because he is defined by his job and how many children he has in his arranged marriage.

    I’d like to see them–at the end of an episode not featuring Apu–have Snake walk into the Kwik-E-Mart, shoot Apu in the face–brains hitting the Squishy machine–then turn the camera and say “Happy now, Hari? Happy now, fucktard?” and fade to black. And never mention Apu or the kids or the Kwik-E-Mart ever again. And memory-hole Apu out of syndication and DVD releases if the little shit-weasel says anything. Buzzards don’t get to complain about their meal, fucktard.

    Speaking of Fucktards, My Hate-Read Pick of the Day: Before Basic Income, Fix Capitalism

    blah blah blah Hamilton Nolan blah blah

    (He doesn’t deserve and except.)

    One of the less-than-helpful suspect sketches.

    East Area Rapist arrested in decades-old case, source says.

    Authorities are expected to announce the arrest Wednesday of a suspect in the decades-old East Area Rapist case, The Bee has learned.

    The suspect has been living in the Sacramento area and was identified after a renewed push of the investigation by the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department and District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, a source said.

    The East Area Rapist, also known as the Golden State Killer, the Original Night Stalker and the Diamond Knot Killer, is believed to have killed at least 12 people, raped at least 45 victims and burglarized hundreds of homes.

    Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, is listed in Sacramento County jail records as being booked early this morning on two counts of murder from a Ventura County Sheriff’s Department warrant.

    …

    Authorities believe he raped 37 people in the Sacramento area and Central Valley and killed two between 1976 and 1978. From there, authorities believe, he moved on to the Bay Area and Southern California.

    He is believed to have committed at least nine sexual assaults in Sacramento, six in Rancho Cordova and Citrus Heights, four in Carmichael, three in Davis, two in Orangevale and one in Antelope between June 1976 and July 1978.

    …

    True crime writer Michelle McNamara’s book “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” reached No. 1 on The New York Times’ bestseller list last month and drew renewed attention to the case. A documentary on the search for the killer aired at the Delta King Theatre in Old Sacramento earlier this month.

    Michelle McNamara is Patton Oswalt’s late wife, who died in an accidental overdose last year. And the serial rapist, serial murderer, and serial burglar may have eluded capture so long because he was a cop.

    And you learn to defend yourself from polar bear attack.

    Ok, this sounds pretty damn cool. Or maybe I’ve been watching too many episodes of The Terror.

    Alaska Olympic events mimic hunts, like sneaking up on seals

    JUNEAU, Alaska –  To most spectators, the term “Olympics” means world-class swimming competitions, downhill skiing or the 100-meter dash.

    But near the Arctic Circle, a different type of Olympics for young people pays homage to the region’s subsistence hunters and the methods they’ve used for centuries to feed their families and stay alive.

    This week, more than 400 high school students from across Alaska will gather in Anchorage for the Native Youth Olympics state championships, where 10 events will test their strength, endurance and agility.

    The games include the Seal Hop, where competitors bounce for as long as they can on their knuckles and toes, mimicking the act of sneaking up on a sleeping seal; the Indian Stick Pull, where two contestants fight for a greased dowel, simulating grabbing a slippery salmon from the water by the tail; and the Scissor Broad Jump, a half-long-jump, half-scissor-kick event that replicates leaping from one ice floe to the next in the Arctic Ocean.

    Towns and villages in Canada, Greenland and Russia also have Native Youth Olympics. Participants compete locally and at larger international gatherings such as the World Eskimo-Indian Olympics and the Arctic Winter Games.

    Someone Is Sending Mystery Potatoes To Fans Of Panic! At The Disco And No One Knows Why

    MOAR GBV

  • The Hyperbole’s Homebuilding Hullabaloo – Part B: Permits and Foundations or ‘CAN YOU DIG IT!!!?!?’

    Previously on H3

    Lots were surveyed and the corners of the homes carefully staked out, we learned (hopefully) that while the association which runs the development likes to tell people what and where to build, they don’t like having any responsibility for screw-ups, and thus CYA became their primary objective.  With the stakeout ‘approved’ the next step is to submit the building plans and permit fee and wait for our building permit. The evolution of this process has followed a similar path as that of the stake out process only more so, more redundant regulations and requirements, more costs, and little if any benefit to the homeowners. And thus, to avoid sounding like a broken record allow me to back burner that and jump ahead to the next stage, where we will encounter perhaps the most game-changing innovation to hit the home building trade in my memory.

    Foundations

    Pa, I can’t move level those this damn pigs Transit!

    A strong building starts with a good foundation and any foundation starts with someone pulling up to the job site in a dump truck with some type of excavating equipment in tow. In 1988 it was a hillbilly towing a rubber tired backhoe with a two-foot bucket, today it’s a citibilly hauling a track hoe with both a two and a four-foot bucket.  In both cases we would meet the excavator and pull strings from those precious corner stakes, paint lines for the digger to dig on, set up batter boards, and determine a benchmark, usually a nail in a nearby tree, that we can use to determine the depth to dig the basement, footer trenches, and drainage lines. How we know that they’ve dug to that depth is where the game changer shows up.

    As Mike S and NoDakMat have probably guessed it’s the Quad Laser. Well, it’s lasers anyway. In this case a self-leveling rotating horizontal laser. In 1988 we used a transit level which had to be manually set up and calibrated and checked and re-checked often. These are delicate instruments and they need to be carefully handled, bump one and your nice flat footer trench is now eight inches deeper at one end than the other. Also, they require a man to look through and read the story stick that another man is holding. Men make mistakes, the holder may hold the stick at an angle or the reader may get confused and decide the ditch is two inches high when it is actually two inches low. You get the picture. A self-leveling laser level not only self-levels, natch, but it requires no one to read, and in some cases (where the receiver can be attached to the boom of the excavator) needs no one to hold a stick, and most importantly it stays level and doesn’t get confused. The same laser level is used to set the footer forms and grade stakes after the digging is done. And again it turns a two or three person job into a one or two person job and while not eliminating human error it greatly reduces the potential for possibly costly mistakes.  A 12″ thick footer cost more than an 8″ thick one, and if you think the crusty old bricklayer curses on a normal day, wait until you tell him that the footers are off grade and he needs to gain or lose an inch or two.

    Game Changer

    But wait there’s more, before the masons can start laying block and yelling profanity-laced tirades at their bricktenders, we need to reestablish the house corners. Remember those carefully surveyed corner stakes we were required to pay for? they’re long gone. So now the same guys who weren’t competent enough to pull strings and measure offsets are now going to pull strings and measure offsets with the added bonus of plumbing down into a big hole and some ditches.  In 1988 this required someone on a ladder trying to hold a plumb bob line to a point on a string without moving either, another person down on the footer marking where the plumb bob centers out, or where it would center out if it ever stopped swaying. Go ahead, try and hold a plumb bob steady from the top of an 8′ ladder to more or less a point in space that’s an arm’s length away, add in a nice wind for extra fun. Repeat this step and with two corners now marked you can pull tapes and calculate diagonals or rely on the old 345 rule to set the other corners. Today we no longer rely on thousand-year-old tools, today we use, you guessed it, lasers. In this case, the 5-way laser, with this tool one man can set the corners easily with a precision a three-man team in the past would rarely achieve.

    Between the lasers and improvements in excavating equipment what once took a week or more can now be done in a couple of days, with greater accuracy and fewer men on the job. Thanks go to the government for requiring us to adopt these new products and technology with their rules and regula….oh wait, that didn’t happen. Amazingly saving time, effort, and money was enough of an incentive. Imagine that.

    Permit

    The Quint Laser

    Okay, back to bellyaching about paperwork. After the stake out, covered in part one, we submit a set of plans along with a check of course ($150 in ’88 near $2000 in ’18), In ’88 the plans were five pages of, well, plans… site, foundation and floor, elevations, a section, and a typical construction detail. They were mostly drawings with dimensions and some labels here and there, they were clear, easy to read, and any home builder would be able to construct a house from them. They were drawn up by a home designer my dad knew. I forget all the details but he was studying to be an architect or engineer when life caught him unawares and he had to quit school and punch the clock. He drew house plans for extra money, drew them by hand, some of our clients would ask for the originals or a crisp print of them and have them framed.

    The set of plans we recently submitted are eight pages. the basic plans are still there, hidden under blocks of texts and boilerplate details – schedules for light, ventilation, finishes, doors, and windows, diagrams for electrical, plumbing and HVAC, design load specifications for joist, trusses, and rafters. I draw them with a CAD program, they are jumbled and crowded, nobody will frame a copy of them. Like the stake out survey it’s all CYA on the associations part, no one reads all that fine print, but they have a checklist if it’s on the checklist it better be on the plans. None of this adds value to the home, it only wastes my time and a lot of paper and ink.

    We are required to keep the official stamped set on the jobsite but no one uses it. I make separate sets for the framers, stripped of all the filler so that they are readable. The electrician and plumber don’t need me to tell them what size wire and pipe to use or where to route it. You don’t need to tell a short order cook to fry the egg in ½tsp of butter for 2.6 minutes a side on a 253° griddle, and you don’t need to tell a carpenter to put studs 16 inches on center and what the rough opening for a 3/0 int door is. 98% of residential construction follows tried and true industry standards, in those rare times it doesn’t I make sure to discuss it on site with the tradesmen.

    Lastly, we have a meeting with the homeowner and a representative from the HOA. In ’88 it took, maybe five minutes, the rep would give the property owner a copy of the rule book and welcome them to the community and hand Dad the magic red laminated paper that allows us to start building. Lawyers must have gotten involved because in ’18 it’s an hour-long slog, the rep goes point by point over various and sundry rules and the owner and builder have to initial each page, the welcome to the community now seems more like a warning not to make any trouble. Luckily my dad takes care of that stuff he’s been through 60 of them and even when we are building a spec house when there is no homeowner and it’s just him, he still has to jump through the same hoops every time.

     

    That’s it for Part 2, next time we’ll get into some proper building, making sawdust and swinging hammers, we’ll have our first inspections and maybe just maybe, we’ll learn a little bit about ourselves along the way.

    It’s always something

     

    3  This is not a footnote, it’s an exponent as in H ‘cubed.’ There will be no footnotes in this article.

  • Wednesday Morning Where Did Everybody Go Links

    Seems like it’s just me here. Where is everybody?!

    Sloopy, BrettL, OMWC, Swiss, and SugarFree (my favorite)…gone. All gone. I hope the Glibertariat is not also…gone. Or I got up early to do links for humans who are gone.

    Hey, speaking of humans, on this day in history —

    2003: Human Genome Project completion announced.

    Which was really all put in motion on this day in

    1953: when A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid was published.

    1917: Ella Fitzgerald arrived to grace us all. Greatest female vocalist ever. Don’t argue; you know I’m right.

    In more recent events

    Thank goodness Chicago is a gun-free sanctuary, but the shooters using the guns-that-don’t-exist here need way more range time. Side note: must really suck to work in the ER at Mt Sinai Hospital.

    Is anyone really surprised by this result in Arizona?

    Bad news for some among the Glibertariat.

    Who the heck is attacking Rand Paul now?

    HM might need to dig out his checkbook for this. (Probably SFW)

    H/T to PudPaisley for bringing a singer/songwriter to my attention. Just in time for an album release show at one of our favorite venues in Milwaukee next week. I really like Wisconsinite Pat Ferguson’s style. We might hit the show if OMWC can stay awake past his typical OM bedtime.


    Have a super great day, kids! Try extra hard to be nice to all the stupid people you meet. They probably can’t help it.

  • Crinkled Grayness

    By Plisade

    I read an article the other day. Twin sisters had committed suicide together. Apparently, they were well-known in a certain circle for their debilitating OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). They would take ten-hour showers to cleanse their skin, as an example of the OCDness. Their condition first became known at a young age when it would take more than an hour just to get their shoes and socks on – the socks couldn’t be wrinkled, the laces had to be tied just so. Et cetera. Ad mortem.

    This reminded me of a regular occurrence of my youth, my last memory of it being before my age of 9. This occurrence would happen as I lay in between, temporally, having laid down to sleep and falling asleep, in the twilight betwixt wakefulness and blissful nocturnal coma. I would see, in my mind’s eye, an uninterrupted vision of crinkled grayness, the best visual analogy of that being a vast United States Geographical Survey topographical map of a mountain range of fairly uniform and frequent variations of elevation, complete with shading, but rather than the USGS-topo-white-background, a -grey-. This made me uneasy. Understand, the crinkled grayness made me uneasy. The crinkled grayness *alone and itself* made me uneasy. I would see this, this inescapable vision – for my eyes were already closed, and so rendered unable by any other means to block it out – and lie there ill at ease, unable to sleep. Eventually, however, the grey would noticeably smooth, and peace and sleep befall me.

    In time, I knew that the smoothed grayness was inevitable, the crinkles surmountable, for I (must have) learned (through trial and error) a physiological way to hasten its coming along with its desired calm and slumber.

    It’s been decades since I’ve had such an experience or even thought of it.

    But now, this OCD article has reminded me of it. And my now-experienced mind interprets it thusly. Assuming an understanding of the significance of abstraction in (human) evolution and thought, like the ability to make beautiful burst-on-the-scene and simply elegant cave paintings, and the mind-blowing significance of at least the conscious acknowledgment of that significance, the crinkled grayness is an abstract representation of all things that need to be corrected before a living being can be at ease.

    On the bell curve of the acquisition of humans’ crinkled grayness evolutionary trait, OCD would be on the far right, with far too much of it. Much as child molestation would be on the curve of the neoteny trait.

    The crinkles are unformed arrowheads to be flaked, sharpened… stones and twigs to be removed from the ground for a better night’s sleep… hide to be scraped and tanned for a well-preserved pelt.

    Conversely, the smooth is the landscape more easily cultivated. A friendlier sea to harvest. A peaceful sky to roam beneath. A path more easily walked. A line with only 2 points. A wall with but 4. A Fourier transform that is not merely the best approximation.

    The mind deals in abstractions to make computation easier. The sense of vision is the human’s most dominant. The crinkles must be eradicated for survival. And somewhere in there is a good beer buzz on a deck in the southernmost hinterland of metro Nashville, TN

  • Tuesday Afternoon Links – Nattering Nabobs of Negativity edition

    Finland – Where Goat Santa Claus sit on his throne of skulls

    Finland ends their experiment in universal basic income that wasn’t an experiment in universal basic income because it wasn’t universal or basic or, really, income, if you think about it.

    Finland has decided not to extend its trial in universal basic income, the first welfare experiment of its kind by a European government that gave citizens an unconditional monthly payment.

    The government rejected a request from Kela, the country’s social security agency, for additional funding to expand the innovative two-year pilot program, meaning it will come to an end in January 2019, the Guardian reports.

    The program, which Finland inaugurated in January 2017, saw 2,000 jobless people receive €560 ($685) per month without requiring them to work or seek employment. Recipients who found a job continued to receive the payments. In 2015, Finland’s unemployment rate had hit a 17-year high of 10%, prompting calls for welfare reform.

    I guess “unemployment benefits with no requirement to look for work or that ends when you find work” isn’t as hip a name as UBI. The article notes that Holland, Canada, and Kenya have tried this nonsense. They forgot about the thriving metropolis of Stockton, California.

    Dreary Partisan Dolt Ed Gilmore

    Nuance is for losers. Everyone knows that: How They Do ‘Journalism’ at New York Magazine

    In my recent Wall Street Journal essay on the politics of Twitter mobs, I noted that the episode was accompanied by a great deal of sloppy journalism—remarkably lazy journalism. Of all the mostly denunciatory articles about me that appeared in the big-name press (at least four in the New York Times alone) not a single writer of any of them bothered to ask me about my views on the subjects in question: abortion and capital punishment. Naturally, practically all of them got it wrong (see the corrections) never having bothered to perform the characteristic act of journalism and, you know, ask a question or two.

    Ed Kilgore, a dreary partisan dolt in the employ of New York magazine, thought he saw an opening, and sent me a one-question inquiry: “What is your ‘public policy recommendation’ on appropriate punishment for women having abortions in a hypothetical criminalized abortion regime?” As any reasonably intelligent person will immediately detect, that question isn’t actually a question; it is a rhetorical stratagem in the shape of a question, deployed for the purpose of lame partisan point-scoring in the form of blocks of texts shaped like journalism. It isn’t discourse, but a facsimile of it, the journalistic equivalent of the Gemütlichkeit Spamwich created by Lisa Dziadulewicz of Sheboygan, Wisconsin: Just not quite right.

    It is, as I have noted, a dishonest strategy, because the question cannot be intelligently answered in a single sentence or two. (The French law on the subject, for example, runs quite a bit longer than that.) Try to summarize it in sound-bite form and you’ll produce something that is easy to caricature—which is, of course, the point of asking the question.

    Why Kanye’s Rightward Turn Matters

    The episode is yet another example of how far we are through the looking glass: a man who criticized the then-sitting president by saying he “doesn’t care” about black people on national television in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is, in the topsy-turvy world of 2018, a cheerleader for a pundit who thinks black people ought to quit whining. This has been distressing to many of his fans. It has thrilled all the wrong people. “It is hard to put into words how significant and powerful this endorsement from Kanye is!!” a weekend email from TPUSA read. “When pop icons like Kayne start to compliment leaders like Candace, you know there is a sea change happening in America. Please consider a tax deductible gift today to help us WIN THE FIGHT!!!”

    There are as many fronts in The War on Creeping Uncle Tomism as there are people who need to be put back in their place. The time has come for you, Kayne. Denounce Taylor Swift or get in the back of the bus.

    Where have you gone, Mr. Barfman?
    A nation turns its lonely eyes to you…

    Our dear friend, author and former Jezebel staffer Lindy West, is having her best-selling memoir, Shrill: Notes From a Loud Woman, adapted into a Hulu series with another woman we love, Aidy Bryant.

    In late 2016, seven months after its release, Elizabeth Banks optioned Shrill with the aim of adapting it for television. Two years (and two additional book deals) later, the Shrill TV show has been sold and is currently being developed for Hulu by Saturday Night Live’s Lorne Michaels and Aidy Bryant.

    According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Hulu take is “the story of a fat young woman who wants to change her life, but not her body.” Bryant will star as West in the single-camera comedy. West, Bryant and Ali Rushfield penned the screenplay. No date is set for its release yet, but it’s safe to say we’re FREAKING OUT!

  • Miloš Forman’s The Fireman’s Ball

     

    Czech-born filmmaker Miloš Forman died on April 13 at the age of 86. Libertarians who want to think about anti-authority political messages in any of his movies would probably gravitate to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The People vs. Larry Flynt, both of which have fairly obvious messages on the subject and are movies which would be better known to Americans. But I have a soft spot for one of Forman’s early movies made back in his native Czechoslovakia: The Firemen’s Ball.

    The Firemen’s Ball was made shortly after Forman had finished Loves of a Blonde, both of which are set in smaller towns without much going on. In The Firemen’s Ball, the story centers around the now-retired chief of the local fire department. Last year was the 50th anniversary of his service with the department, but the department couldn’t be bothered to commemorate that event. Now, however, he’s dying of cancer. This was the bad old days when doctors thought the ethical thing to do was not to tell people they were dying of cancer, although to be fair to doctors back then, 23andme has shown that a lot of medical types still don’t want people to know about their possible medical conditions. Back to the movie, with the old guy dying, the current firefighters decide that the right thing to do would be to hold a big shindig in his honor and give him a ceremonial fire-ax.

    Or, at least, that’s the plan. We see right from the beginning that anything that can go wrong with the idea will: one of the firefighters, like a senior citizen who has gotten his first copy of Print Shop Deluxe, gets the idea that having a banner look singed will be a nice visual touch; the attempt to singe it leave another fireman dangling several feet off the floor. They set up a raffle, and items meant to be raffled off mysteriously go missing. Young people have other ideas about how they should be celebrating, and so on.

    Two incidents, however, linger much longer. First is when one of the firemen comes across a photo of a western beauty pageant, and thinks the idea of a pageant to determine which local girl should give the old fireman that ceremonial ax would be a brilliant idea. The only thing is, none of the girls look like either Ginger or Mary Ann, and worse, the boyfriends of the girls who didn’t get picked want their girlfriends in the contest. Whether the girls want to be in the pageant is another story.

    And then a fire breaks out. It’s here that the real uselesness of these hero first responders is shown for what it is. A poor old man is having everything he owns burn to the ground, and the fire company first has difficulty getting to the fire and then has the most inappropriate compassion for the poor guy. Don’t let him look at the fire — but move him closer to the fire to keep him warm!

    It becomes clear over the course of The Firemen’s Ball that the whole point of the ball wasn’t really to honor the old chief now that he’s dying; it’s about the individual firefighters trying to make themselves look good in the eyes of others. It’s a subtle statement on Communist-era “solidarity”, and shows how having power and prestige be prime motivators can warp actions in any government or bureaucracy. And when the chips are down, the state isn’t there to help you, but you make you fit what they want.

    With that in mind, it’s easy to see why The Firemen’s Ball was banned by the Communist authorities (it was made in 1967, a year before the Prague Spring and Forman’s subsequent emigration to the States after the Soviets quelled the Prague Spring). Forman, for his part, always claimed that he wasn’t making an anti-Communist movie, and frankly, his claims on this are plausible. I grew up in a small town where my father was a member of the local volunteer fire department, and as I watched The Firemen’s Ball for the first time, I couldn’t help but think of the similarities between the small town in the movie and the one where I grew up: the penny socials, the generations of families being prominent names, the extremely petty politics, and on and on it goes. The Firemen’s Ball could just as easily have been about any small town anywhere.

    Ted’s rating: 5/5

    Criterion released both The Firemen’s Ball and Loves of a Blonde to DVD, although their website states that The Firemen’s Ball is currently out of print. However, as of this writing Amazon has it on streaming video, and free for those of you who already have a Prime membership and can do the streaming thing.

  • Swiss 4 Day Pass Morning Links

    I got a 4 day pass! And I’m going to go… to a 4 day board gaming CON with a bunch of other nerds. Hey, at least we have many gallons of primo beer.  What can I say, I am a 51 year old married with children, white collar worker, and living in the suburbs. I can barely remember being a 19 year old PFC on pay day.

    So instead of tearing the town up…you get links.

    Sports – some hockey series supposedly finished (giving false hope to certain East Coast fans). Basketball rolls on, and baseball trudges toward the warmer times.

    Birthdays – William I, Prince of Orange (take that, Spaniards! 1533) Vincent de Paul (dude, your basketball program is a shambles! 1581) Robert Bailey Thomas (Farmer’s Almanac anyone? 1766) François Fournier (legendary Swiss post stamp forger. 1824) Philippe Pétain (Vichy!!! 1856) Benjamin Lee Whorf (shout out to HM. 1897) Justin Wilson (You go and add you a little un-yun. 1914) Richard M. Daley (1942) The Streisand Effect (1942) Omar Vizquel (1967) Kelly Clarkson (1982)

    Links –

    • Hey, I know certain Tex-Mex fans that would have recommended the death penalty instead of what he got. I wonder if he will work in the kitchen in prison?
    • Say, speaking of Kelly Clarkson… the tabloids just loves them this “sex cult” story.
    • More wonders of socialist medicine. Shouldn’t we all just love and respect a system that has results like Alder Hey say it’s in Alfie’s ‘best interests’ to die and judges have also agreed.
    • Immigration crisis…in South America. Irony? Definitely tragedy.
    Must. Reach. Front. Gate.

  • Glibertarians After Dark: My New Fetish

    Erotic fast food worker cosplay while hitting it from behind to the 90’s slow jams “Cold Drinks” and “Hot Drinks” by Wendy’s

     

    Next, you’ve gotta salt the meat
    From the back to the front and make the taste complete
    Not to little, not too much
    With a little finesse, you’ll get the touch!

  • Another 5 Minute Japanese Lesson

    障害の長男  檻に２０年
    監禁容疑  父親逮捕

    Last time I introduced you to Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji, but today I’m going to be solely looking at Kanji. Kanji are the Chinese characters stolen by Japan and NBA players that have bizarre neck tattoos. I’m not going to give the full explanation of each Kanji in the headline, but I will explain the basic meaning and by the time I’m done, you’re going to want to lock the asshole up in a cage yourself.

    “Like the tat?”

     

    障害

    This is pronounced “shougai” and means “obstacle”. It also is used to indicate that someone has a disability of some sort as in 視覚障害 or “shikaku shougai” which means “visually impaired”. The Japanese have also fallen victim to PC language and have tried to steer away from judgmental terms when describing people with disabilities, but for some reason “obstacle” person hasn’t been changed.

    の長男

    の is from Hiragana and is pronounced “no”. It’s the possessive “s” in Japanese, if you remember from the first lesson. 長 is the Kanji for “long” or “boss” and is pronounced “chou” when used in combination with another Kanji. 男 is a Kanji that you will see often. It is read as “otoko” and means “man”. Any guess what “long man” means? Nope, not that. It means “oldest son”. 障害の長男 means “the oldest son (who has) a disability”. It wasn’t clear from the article what type of disability is was, but usually it would indicate some kind of serious mental disability.

    檻に２０年

    檻 is pronounced “ori” and means cage and or prison. Maybe you’re starting to figure out what is happening. に２０年 is read as “ni nijyu-nen”. 年 means “year”. に is Hiragana and usually means something like “at”, “in” or “for”. So far we got a mentally disabled, oldest son that was locked in a cage for twenty years.

    監禁容疑

    “Kankin” is how the first two Kanji are read and means “confinement”. “Yougi” is how the last two Kanji are read and mean “suspicion”. Someone is under suspicion of illegal confinement of a human being. As a side note, 禁 means “prohibited” and you shouldn’t enter a door with it plastered on it. I remember back to my single days and a gal jotted 禁 on a napkin when I tried to hit on her at a bar. Rejection is a good way to learn and I appreciated her subtle rejection rather than getting slapped.

    父親逮捕

    Here’s where the story gets infuriating. You may have guessed that “oldest son” meant that it was one of the parents that confined to poor kid in the cage for twenty years. Good for you because you’d have been right. 父 is “chi chi” and means “father”. 親, or “oya”, means parent in this case. The last two Kanji are read as “taiho” and that combo means “arrested”.

    Disabled Son Kept in Cage for 20 Years. On Suspicion of (Illegal) Confinement, Father is Arrested.

    The whole is story is heart breaking. The mother died in January and the father, 73 at the time, called social services for help with the son. Evidently, he didn’t know what he was doing to the kid was wrong. He bathed the kid every other day and had a heater and fan set up inside the one meter high, two meter wide cage. Bathroom breaks included! What a dad. Only the introduction of the state could make this story any worse. When the old man called and asked for help, a social worker came and saw what was happening. Instead of removing the poor kid on the spot, the government worker set up another visit. At the second visit, the worker explained that they would be coming by three days later to take the kid into their custody. Any normal human being would have gotten that kid out immediately upon seeing how he was living.

    *Link to story in the Yomiuri Newspaper*

  • ¡Lunes por la Tarde Enlaces Mexicanos!

    Mondays are for chumps. The part about doing the Mexican news though, is finding out in comparison, Monday isn’t so bad. Need an few examples?

    10 people in Nicaragua (that’s south of Mexico…) killed when they found out for free stuff costs money! Or was it 25?

    El presidente de Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, anunció este domingo que revoca la resolución de aumento de pagos a la Seguridad Social que fue el detonante de las manifestaciones en el país.

    Al menos 10 personas han muerto en las manifestaciones que empezaron esta semana, según dijo la vicepresidenta Rosario Murillo al medio estatal El 19 Digital.

    No obstante, la organización sin fines de lucro Centro Nicaragüense de Defensores de Derechos Humanos (CENIDH) dijo en un comunicado que hasta la fecha se registran al menos 25 fallecidos y 67 personas heridas por las protestas.
    _____
    The president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, announced on Sunday that he revokes the resolution to increase payments to Social Security that was the trigger for the demonstrations in the country.

    At least 10 people have died in the demonstrations that began this week, said Vice President Rosario Murillo to state media El 19 Digital.

    However, the non-profit organization Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights Defenders (CENIDH) said in a statement that to date at least 25 people have died and 67 people have been injured by the protests.

    Sunday marked the beginning of the Mexican Presidential Debates. An item on the agenda: violence. Predictably, the answers had nothing to do with anything that might actually make the shithole parts of Mexico less of a shithole.

    El Trumpeñero

    Muy pronto, los candidatos empezaron a criticar una propuesta de López Obrador, realizada el 5 de diciembre pasado: “No descarto que se someta a discusión que se consulte al pueblo sobre la posibilidad de una amnistía”.

    Anaya arguyó que la estrategia se había intentado en Colombia, y había fracasado. Meade sugirió que al promover la amnistía servía a los criminales. Por su parte, Zavala dijo que la rechazaba “por respeto a la ley”.

    López Obrador respondió que “amnistía no quiere decir impunidad”, aunque agregó que “no se puede apagar el fuego con el fuego”.

    Su propuesta contra la violencia fue combatir sus “raíces”, refiriéndose a la falta de desarrollo y a la economía. […]
    Meade, por su parte, anunció que se enfocaría en la prevención, y sobre todo en la impunidad.

    Margarita Zavala dijo que el eje de su gobierno sería defender a los mexicanos, incluido defenderlos “de Donald Trump”. Y de López Obrador.
    _____
    Very soon, the candidates began to criticize a proposal by López Obrador, made on December 5: “I do not rule out the possibility of an amnesty being submitted to discussion to ask the people.”

    Anaya argued that the strategy had been tried in Colombia, and had failed. Meade suggested that by promoting amnesty he served criminals. For his part, Zavala said he rejected it “out of respect for the law.”

    López Obrador responded that “amnesty does not mean impunity,” although he added that “you can not put out the fire with fire.”

    His proposal against violence was to combat his “roots”, referring to the lack of development and the economy.

    “Violence broke out in the country because there has been no economic growth,” he said.[…]
    Meade, on the other hand, announced that it would focus on prevention, and above all on impunity.

    Margarrita Zavala said that the axis of her government would be to defend the Mexicans, including defending them “from Donald Trump.” And of López Obrador.

    Comò se what?

    Ever wonder what immigration will ask to make sure your marriage with an illegal undocumented dreamer the nice lady Estéban isn’t a sham? Telémundo with the help of the NY Times has the answer.

    Con la espalda contra la pared por la ofensiva del Gobierno de Donald Trump, muchos inmigrantes indocumentados confían en el matrimonio con un ciudadano estadounidense para salvarse de la deportación. Y mucho terminan en manos del Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas, que ya no perdona en tiempos de Barack Obama las órdenes de expulsión previas.

    Los inmigrantes deben demostrar además que su matrimonio es legítimo, que no se trata de un truco para salvarse de ICE. ¿Qué va a solicitar el Servicio de Inmigración y Ciudadanía (USCIS) para comprobar que efectivamente son ustedes esposos, que se quieren y tienen un proyecto de vida en común?[…]
    ¿Cómo se conocieron?
    ¿Cuánto tardaron en empezar a salir juntos como pareja?
    ¿Cuándo conocieron a sus respectivas familias?
    ¿Cuándo decidieron casarse?
    ¿Dónde compró usted el anillo?
    ¿Cómo fue la boda, a quién invitaron?
    ¿Qué hicieron después?
    ¿Dónde comieron?

    Recuerde, si le pillan mintiendo, pueden multarle hasta con 250.000 dólares. Además, le pueden condenar a no conseguir nunca una green card a través del matrimonio.
    _____
    With their backs against the wall because of the Donald Trump government offensive, many undocumented immigrants rely on marriage with a US citizen to save themselves from deportation. And many end up in the hands of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service, which no longer forgives in the time of Barack Obama the previous expulsion orders.

    Immigrants must also prove that their marriage is legitimate, that it is not a trick to save themselves from ICE. What will the Immigration and Citizenship Service (USCIS) request to verify that you are indeed spouses, that you love each other and have a common life project?[…]
    How did you meet?
    How long did it take to start dating together as a couple?
    When did you meet your respective families?
    When did you decide to get married?
    Where did you buy the ring?
    How was the wedding, who was invited?
    What did you do after?
    Where they ate?

    Remember, if you are caught lying, you can be fined up to $ 250,000. In addition, you can be condemned to never get a green card through marriage.

    Translation services provided by the Alpha Beta corporation who won’t even bother to ask if any of you work. They already know.