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Ghost of LL

Burnt Ends
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Everything posted by Ghost of LL

  1. I declared the right of jus primae noctis on my kids' candy bags last night. They protested, but I assured them "It is my noble right" in between bites of a Snickers.
  2. The clearest signal Kazahkstan has ever sent concerning its orientation toward the West vis-a-vis Russia came a few years ago, when it changed the official alphabet of the Kazakh language from Cyrillic to Latin. One wonders whether this is something the Ukrainians would undertake in the near future.
  3. Made it up to Dallas for the Stars game Saturday afternoon, and at the instigation of one of the other hockey degenerates in our group made it over to Maple & Motor before driving back. And damn, that's still a really good burger. And all the better for having Sculpin on draft.
  4. A couple things not mentioned: 1) You're really acclimated to looking up and to your right for your rear-view mirror. That's a tough habit to break. It took me several days. Until then, I was reliant on my right-side mirror and doing a bit of using the Force to change lanes. 2) Outside of Central London, signage really sucks. Google Maps ameliorates that to a large degree. But street signs are going to be on the sides of buildings or non-existent. So don't expect you're going to see street signs where you would expect to see them in the United States. By about the third or forth day of driving, you'll be perfectly acclimated. Particularly in the countryside, it quickly becomes no big deal.
  5. In complete fairness, nobody asked for the iPhone, and nobody knew that they wanted it or needed it before they had it. So there is some precedent for building something for which there is no present (or even anticipated) demand and just convincing people that they do actually need/want it. Still, I don't have the first fucking clue what the "metaverse" is. I don't think anybody really does (including anybody at Meta itself). I can see it having some real valuable applications. But even so, I don't know how they monetize it, or even if they have a plan for doing so. It's just all very weird and I don't understand it, so I'm not going to invest in it. But at the same time, I don't understand it, so I'm not going to sit here and naysay it and bet anything against it.
  6. To my point precisely--that wasn't in a debate. That was from a television interview that happened in August 2012. And that timing is part of why I say debates don't matter. In August, preferences are still fluid. But by late October, pretty much everyone knows how they're going to vote. There are very few late deciders, and those that there are don't watch/care about debates.
  7. This is correct. I challenge anybody to show me a single non-presidential race in the last 30 years in which a debate had a measurable impact on the outcome. It's meaningful for the Twitterati. But actual voters don't watch and don't care.
  8. As a Czech-American, this characterization is uncomfortably accurate.
  9. Speaking of which, let me tell you something I wish someone had told me. You need small Egyptian bills. Acquire them and horde them. Everything is baksheesh. Everything from beggars to guys who provide legitimate service for which you would ordinarily tip (e.g., the bellman at the hotel) are going to look for baksheesh. You'll learn this word quickly. Tell the beggars "La'a"--no. But very often, it's proper to give a small amount for some small service. But you don't want to over-baksheesh. Case in point: Mrs.LL and I went to a bar on our first night in Cairo. They had a cool hookah set-up, so we ordered up a hookah. All good. So there are these dudes walking around with fresh coals for your hookah. Our fire gets a little low, so we call over one of these guys. He gives us some fresh coals, and puts out his hand for baksheesh. Sure--that's fair. So I give him the smallest bill I had, which was a 20-pound note (about $1). Apparently, that was waaaay, too much. So the next thing I know, I've got every coal guy in the joint buzzing around me waiting to refresh my coals. I mean, they were all over us. Egyptian currency comes in notes of 25 and 50 piasteres and 1, 5, 10, 20, 100, and 200-pound notes. Those small denominations are tough to come by. But you're definitely going to want a bunch of them for your baksheeshing. I mean--I would seriously overpay for some of those small notes if that's what it took, just to avoid over-baksheeshing.
  10. I just really disagree with the conclusion that the letter is not crazy. The letter is totally crazy. There's more than a whiff of Munich to it, in that it distinctly implies that the Great Powers can get together and decide the fate of lesser states over their objections. And I'm sure you're going to say that's not what the letter says. But that's totally what the letter says. Because if that's not what the letter says, then what the hell is it saying? The only reason to write and send that letter is to encourage "direct engagement" with Russia. And direct engagement with Russia necessarily means the exclusion of Ukraine and the subordination of Ukrainian interests. And let's talk about something else that's crazy about the letter: sanctions relief. Nope. Sorry. At this point, we have interests that are outside anything that can be negotiated. Russia has committed war crimes, and those justify sanctions that will remain in place until those war criminals are brought to justice. We're not promising sanctions relief if the armed robber gives back part of what he stole, leaving dead and maimed in his path. And then there's the decision to release this letter two weeks before an election. That's not crazy. It's absolutely fucking bonkers. There's just no rational justification for it.
  11. I support Dominik Hasek's ideas, and not solely because he led Czechia to the Gold Medal in the 1998 Winter Olympics as 15-1 longshots, greatly enriching a young GOLL.
  12. Well, if one is going to step on one's dick, then I suppose you're right that the sensible thing to do is to get off it. But--and I'm just kind of shooting from the hip here--perhaps it would be better not to step on one's dick in the first place. This is an open letter to the president of your own party. Why on earth are you sending an open letter to a president of your own party two weeks before an election. Let's just leave aside the substance of it--why in the fuck would you be trying to pick a fight with the president on an issue of foreign policy two weeks before an election? But let's talk about the substance of the letter for a moment. It's wrong. And it's not just wrong, it's unpopular with a bipartisan majority of the American public. So what's the supposed benefit of this letter? Rescinding the letter is not embarrassing. Issuing it in the first place isn't "embarrassing," either; it's positively mortifying.
  13. I cannot imagine the amount of blowback that they got over the past several hours from the White House and from big Democratic donors who are pissed that they would drop that at all, much less two weeks out from an election. It was just an intensely stupid move, both on substance and on strategy. But that's also what I expect from the Progressive Caucus.
  14. I have a serious confession to make here: I didn't know aggy had lost to (not the real) USC until this afternoon. I was so distraught by our loss that I completely ignored college football the rest of the weekend. I really missed out.
  15. Ghost of LL

    Austin FC

    So, is there any room on this bandwagon?
  16. Anything's possible. I'm just thinking back as to whether anybody has ever stopped me on the way out and said, "hey, man--you can't leave with that drink." If that happened, it wouldn't be so extraordinary that I would necessarily remember it. But I honestly don't think it's ever happened.
  17. And the Project Connect bullshit was so completely predictable, too. I appreciate that people in Austin want to do something about mobility. But I wouldn't put Capital Metro in charge of a three-book library in Wynona.
  18. Yes--the next General Election doesn't have to be held until the end of 2024. So the Tories could conceivably use the next two years to get their shit together. The PM's power to call a snap election has been taken away by the Fixed Parliaments Act. Now, an early election is only triggered by (1) a no-confidence vote, or (2) a 2/3rds vote of the Commons to dissolve Parliament. That being said, we're in a really weird place where the Conservative Party is not longer a coherent single party. But even so, it's really hard to see a bunch of Tory backbenchers joining in a VONC against whomever the next PM is.
  19. Oh, and for the record--that has since stopped. We never had a mouse or a rat in a trap or anything. Just stopped with seemingly no explanation. I mean, apart from the exorcism.
  20. I have an entire bar full of highball glasses that I have stolen from various hotels around Austin. It always happens that I go to some event that has an open bar, and when it's time to go I get a fresh bourbon for the road. So I just walk out the front door of the hotel and hop into an Uber with a full glass of bourbon. I'm reasonably certain that I've never been stopped.
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