Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
·
Thursday, July 20, 2023
·
85 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
Follow Steven on
Twitter
Big discussion yesterday between MR and DK re anti-semitism and Israel, but what struck me as odd was so glaringly obvious, but never mentioned.
DK keeps harping about Jews supporting Israel, without ever mentioning how much more pro-Israel evangelical Christians typically are than the bulk of Jews. Why single out Jews without mentioning pro-Israel Christians? Huh?
I think I know.
@charontwo:
Perhaps because it’s the Jewish support that makes it bipartisan?
Evangelical (though not Christian pro-Israel in general) support is overwhelmingly Republican/
Jewish support pretty surely aligns more Dem.
Also, if debating policy and/or ethical grounds for a shift in US policy re. Israel, the evangelicals are less likely to be influenced by reasonable argument.
As a sizable number (hopefully not the majority) did not get there trough rational or even moral grounds in the first place but on a mix of dispensationalist apocalyptic doctrine and political shibboleth.
I didn’t have much chance to read the debate yesterday.
But I’ll make these responses to Mike Reynolds arguments that singling out Israel is disproportionate and possibly based on doubtful motivation:
– Israel is seen (rather inaccurately) as “Western”, and so both more open to Western influence/leverage, and, rightly or wrongly, expected to behave “better”.
– The view of Israel as a “colonial” venture; related to the “Western” perception; and likewise perhaps true in the 1930’s/40’s; but increasingly less so since.
– As part of the Israeli political reaction to its circumstances, it is developing a strain of far-right politics that’s troubling; and in which Likud are comparatively angels of sweet reason.
– The settlement policies, and their consequences in the West Bank, are morally obnoxious and politically toxic, both within Israel and beyond it.
There is no “ethnic” expansion/domination project similar to it anywhere else, except perhaps the “Sinification” of Xinjiang, that I can think of. And it is poisoning Israeli politics.
– In part related to those, but deserving of consideration from a purely interest-based perspective: Zionism and thus Israel in general, and the West Bank settlements issue in particular is politically and culturally neuralgic to much of the “Global South”, and especially to most Arabs and many non-Arab Muslims.
– Far less creditably, Israel is perhaps the last of the “old causes” of the radical Left from the 1970s/80’s. Opposition to it has become as much a touchstone for the Radicals, as support is for the “mainstream” Evangelicals.
See Corbyn and the Corbynites: some were (or became) anti-semitic; far more were willing to tolerate, or unable to identify, anti-semite “fellow travellers” because of their anti-Zionist obsessions.
@charontwo:
Either you’re deliberately not telling the truth or you cannot read. My comments never said that Jews supported Israel, let alone “harped” on it. Jewish views on Israel were irrelevant to the discussion, and in fact I only referenced Jews vis a vis Israel to mention that Jews who oppose the Israeli government’s deteriorating choices would be surprised at accusations of antisemitism.
Why lie about my commentary to falsely smear me as antisemitic? I think I know why rather than engage in honest good faith with my actual comments, you instead spun up a lazy strawman argument because you’re mad I won’t help people like you deflect from the Israeli establishment’s increasing fascism and white supremacy. I understand that as an intellectually-unintimidated young black gay male, I’m a threat to the yt male establishmentarian circle jerk consensus around here.
You tried it tho. You failed miserably, but you did try.
Today in Florida news: Judge orders Florida to stop putting children in nursing homes
I would say I can’t believe Florida would do this, but of course I can. It’s Florida.
@OzarkHillbilly: I’m willing to bet drag queens would be horrified at the thought of throwing special-needs children in nursing homes.
Florida Republicans swear gays are a threat to children. Unsurprisingly, these accusations are a confession.
NFT question spurred by Melania’s latest NASA NFT small potatoes venture: Why TF would anyone ever buy an NFT?
I get that Melania might be able to sell a few of these to the type of suckers that fall for the FOX News My Pillows, gold coins and Trump commemorative stamps scams, but that only applies to MAGA related scams, and there was a huge NFT craze way outside the MAGAs.
I’ve heard it said that they can be used to transfer illicit funds in the same way that (supposedly) criminal bosses become “artists” and sell their paintings to criminal associates for exorbitant sums rather than have a cash transfer, but I’ve never understood how that would work.
I first came across the NFT concept in my every-couple-years-or-so check in to see if there are any actually useful applications for blockchain technology (none yet!) and thought, “Man, this may be the stupidest blockchain idea I have ever heard”. I’m not surprised that there was craze, after all, ordinary people once spent thousands of dollars on high interest credit cards to “invest” in a Beanie Baby collection. But I’m still truly curious if there is any actual reason that somebody would buy an NFT other than “Crypto Bros tell me I’ll get rich some day”.
@MarkedMan:
I understand Melania had to spend $154,000 of her own money buying back her original NFTs (portraits of her) because no one else wanted them.
Just a furthur note here – there are reasons the Likud government meddles in U.S. elections on behalf of the GOP.
Also, Likud gets a lot of its support from immigrants from Russia over the past few decades – another country that meddles in U.S. elections.
@DK:
Tu quoque! Examples?
Oh please.
@JohnSF:
Does Russia’s behavior in Ukraine count?
Also, Russia is using mostly non-ethnic Russia minorities as cannon fodder, which appears to suit the Muscovites just fine, demographically.
@DK:
I’d argue that “white supremacy” is seeing this through an American prism.
The majority of Israelis now are Mizrahi. More than 60% IIRC.
In “racial” terms or most genetic markers they are utterly indistinguishable from a mixed group of other Middle Eastern “ethnicities” (Arabs, Persians, Turks, Kurds, Copts etc) and indeed often close to others of their former “host country” than to each other.
There are also Israelis who in the US might scan as “white” (Ashkenazi of European or American descent, western Sephardi). But Israel is not the US; the cleavage is primarily religous/national, not “racial”
@charontwo:
You first. Quote my comments from yesterday that show me “harping about Jews supporting Israel.” The word harping indicates this allegedly happened a lot, so I’m sure you’ll be able to provide multiple examples, no?
Or you can save yourself the trouble of looking for that which is not there, admit you made it up to smear me as antisemitic, and then apologize. But I won’t wait around for you to show decency and integrity by doing so.
Oh please indeed.
@JohnSF:
Well, you’re talking about all Israelis and I’m talking more specifically about the Israeli establishment/government, so I don’t think we’re even describing the same cohort.
But I’d argue that any government that trashes Obama, cozies up to his GQP harrasers, then sucks up to and champions Trump is either a supporter or tacit enabler of white supremacy and protofascism both.
@JohnSF:
Just an expansion on this and nothing to do with Israel: it may be better termed “Han-ification” or “CCCP-ification” and it applies all over China. The latest example is Hong Kong, where the turnover of positions of power to Han/CCCP is primarily seen in the West as about governance and toeing the party line. But it is more than that and is more comparable to the Russification of the SSRs that took place in the 40s through 90s and which we are still dealing with. In China, government power also comes with control over commercial enterprises and the wealth that comes from that, and the CCCP and Military is constantly seeking ways to reward its loyal members. They therefore seek excuses to replace local officials with their own. This both rewards their members and has the added benefit of ensuring they are resented and not accepted by the locals, so they remain aligned and dependent on the central government. This has taken place all over China, not just Xinjiang. Tibet is another obvious example that the West knows about but the unofficial policy has had a huge impact on the rest of Yunnan as well. Macau also comes to mind.
@charontwo:
Russia in Ukraine seems like “good old fashioned” European imperial chauvinism.
I don’t think they are fixated on displacing Ukrainians as much as in subjugating them.
Muscovite and Petrograders certainly see themselves as a superior; but again it’s more like imperial metropolitan dominance than ethnic nationalism. There are a lot of similarities to other multi-ethnic empires that focused on political/cultural loyalty, not ethnicity: eg Shoigu is a Tuvan.
@DK:
Mizrahi is Jewish of Middle Eastern origin; I left that out, but you probably got that anyway.
The Mizrahi were generally poorer and less privileged; but that has changed as the old European Ashkenazi sabra elite has aged out. And the decline of the Labor Party, which was their stronghold.
There are plenty of Mizrahi background people among the new elites in Israel.
As for the current elie, certainly some are fascistic in their desire to impose mastery by force; but “white superiority” is simply out-of-context IMO. I doubt they even think about it in relation to the US; though some recent American migrants might think in those terms.
@DK:
OK, so only one time. Even so, more by a factor of infinity times that you gigged anyone else.
@JohnSF:
You might could ask the people whose children were deported to Russia how they feel.
Which is why they are trying so hard to depopulate the country.
In addition to the goulash and rice this week, I got it into my head to make potatoes with hot dog slices and bacon in tomato and garlic sauce.
Pretty much it will be parboiled potatoes mixed with slices of hot dogs and tossed in oil. Set that to bake in the oven at low temp (abt 150 C), adding bits of bacon when they’re close to done. On a pan saute sliced onions, then add garlic, black pepper, and tomato puree then season with some spices.
@CSK:
Interesting. We’ve been wandering around central Ontario for a week, mostly Manitoulin Island and Algonquin Prov. Park and haven’t noticed any smoke. The only notice was on Manitoulin that had a ban on open fires.
@Sleeping Dog:
I’m beginning to think it all blew down here. They have it in the Carolinas as well.
@charontwo:
Where’s the quote showing this? Hours into this lie, we’re still waiting.
I can name off the top of my head two dozen different groups I’ve harped on and criticized justly and unjustly more than “Jews” (who I actually haven’t criticized at all) in these comments sections — starting with old white men, pro-Putin Russians, and MAGA Republicans.
So as I said, you’re a smear artist with no evidence to backup your fake news — predictably so.
@Sleeping Dog: @CSK:
Southern Ontario has plenty of the smoke as well. Today is better, Monday and most of Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty hazy. Of course today we have thunderstorm and tornado watches so some air is moving.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/02/nyregion/saint-anns-suicide.html
This article has been sitting with me since I first read it several days ago. I’m a NYC independent school teacher myself and there is just so much going on with this story and the way it is being reported.
I empathize tremendously with these parents. I know firsthand how difficult it can be to get the support needed for a child with learning differences, especially those that don’t fit neatly into a box (not that any ever really do). And the loss of a child is devastating no matter the circumstances.
I also struggle with how the school — both individually and to some degree as a proxy for all independent schools — is being portrayed. It seems both the parents and the reporter really don’t understand how such schools function. And while I can understand the parents targeting the school as they try to make sense of their tragic loss, I don’t understand why the reporter wouldn’t do more investigation into the role of all the players, especially the lack of scrutiny applied to the private evaluators who advised the parents. He also only casually mentions his own child went to the school in question, which calls into question is objectivity.
But I have to wonder about my own objectivity, since I do work in that world and have (though do not currently) parented in that world so I am entangled in all sorts of other ways.
I’d be curious to hear what other people take away from this story, both in terms of the facts as they are offered and the way in which they are offered.
John Rowley and Jim Trusty have resigned as Trump’s lawyers, coincidentally with Trump announcing that Walt Nauta has been indicted.
@CSK:
NYT reported that on June 9th (re: MAL documents case). Is there a reason this is news now?
Why aren’t more Europeans traveling by train?
Because it’s more expensive than flying.
It’s also not that simple. In some cases it can be cheaper (but the story provides no details). It also takes longer, but, again, not always.
When I consider the time it takes to fly from A to B, I also take into account the round trip to the airport, and the time at the airport. When you add all that up, a 30 minute flight can take over 4 hours. For the train you’d have to take trip times and time at the station as well. So ti will vary by where you live, where in your destination you’re going, etc. But sometimes the train could be as fast.
And then there’s all the other stuff about subsidies and under-taxation.
My bottom line is you won’t move large numbers of people from a more polluting form of transportation, like planes, to a less polluting one, like trains, if the latter is more expensive and overall less convenient in terms of travel time.
I wasn’t paying enough attention in the produce section and ended up buying Italian parsley instead of cilantro. I am an idiot. Didn’t even notice until I decided to make tacos for lunch and was prepping the mise en place.
Second time it’s happened, too. Friggin’ idiot! How hard is it to pick it up, look at it, sniff it, before putting it in a baggie? Yeah, I know they look similar at first glance, but c’mon, man!
At least I bought limes instead of lemons. I bought green onions instead of lemon grass.
Aah, it’ll get used up. I’ll adjust my future menu to accommodate. I hate wasting food. And it’s only 10% about Green consumerism and being a good world citizen. 90% is just sheer inbred ornery frugality. I really hate wasting food. It strikes me as fundamentally wrong and bugs me intensely.
By far my biggest gripe about my current grocery store is the pre-bundled produce is too large for a single person to use up before at least half goes off. Let me buy by the ounce, or provide two differently sized bundles.
@Kathy:
Yep, and it’s not just the expense, as you say, but the inconvenience. All things being equal I’d much rather take a train from A to Z. Unfortunately it is rarely A to Z, it’s more likely to be change trains in F and again in U before getting to Z. Every time we travel to Europe I start off on Rome2Rio.com trying to avoid boring planes and every time I’m forced to give up and catch a flight. Barcelona to Lisbon is either a single flight or four trains.
@charontwo:
There are three main strands in imperial or colonial conquest:
– conquer and rule and acculturation
– conquer but don’t acculturate
– settle and replace
Though they can often be blended.
Russia historically has tended to conquer and semi-assimilate with some settlement.
Rather similar to the Romans; or to the Spanish; or British in Ireland
The conquer and just rule; like British in India or Africa
Settle and replace, with varying degrees of elimination of the native population: British in Australia, America.
Even the Nazis in much of Russia, according to Generallplan Ost did not wish to exterminate the entire population, but to slaughter their leadership, destroy their culture, and reduce them to a slave class, from whom the “best” specimens would be selected for “Germanisation”. In Poland the Nazis also selected children for Germanisation
That’s why legal definitions of crimes of genocide include the deliberate destruction of an ethnic identity by means short of killing all its members.
And that, in my opinion, is part of the goal of Russia in Ukraine, insofar as they have a coherent goal at all (which is dubious): subjugate the west (Galicia) assimilate the centre, south and east.
@de stijl:
When I was working grocery, I constantly begged the produce manager to put out small portions when possible. Especially on Wednesday and Thursday–when the new sales flyer comes out, and we’d get swamped with little old ladies. I’d watch them pick up a full head of cauliflower and put it back down.
I managed the produce section for about a month before I got a real job. I’d make sure the case was full of small portions. And they’d disappear so fast I could barely keep up.
In the county where I live, 60% of households are 2 people or fewer. And the store is pushing “Family packs”. The days of large farm families are gone.
As for what to do on your end: Might I suggest freezing or canning? Most veg handle being frozen very well–especially for short periods. Same with meat. Leg quarters were on sale for 59¢ / lb last week. I cooked two, and put the remaining 10 into individual bags in the freezer. I’m set for the winter.
On a separate note: If you hate wasting food, might I suggest making home-made stock from all the leftover bits? All my onion tops & tails, cilantro stems, garlic skins, etc.–along with trimmings and bones from meats–go into a pot on Saturday morning (in the winter months), cook all day, get strained on Sunday morning, cook down til late afternoon, and get canned. I just gave away a gallon and a half because I have too much in the pantry, and It’ll only be a couple months until I start up again. Great for soups, gravies, stews, or ramen.
I won’t say what I want to say but I will relate that I walked off of more than one jobsite because of abusive foreman. It was that or beat them to death with my framing hammer and they weren’t worth it.
@JohnSF:
44% (according to wiki). The leadership has been dominated by Ashkenazi, most of which have slavic roots, for quite some time. They have heavily recruited in Russia and frankly, the standards were not tight. Just claiming some ancestor was Jewish is enough to get a ticket out of Russia and into Israel for decades, something a lot of Russians viewed as a way to get a foothold in someplace else and start a new life. The slavs really wanted to whiten up the place and have had a lot of success.
The whole race issue is bit of a mess in Israel. There is are no discernable genetic differences from the Levantine Mizrahi from the Muslims of the Levant, as so many of the Muslims were Jews or Christians who converted to shed Dhimmi status. Many a Palestinian family can trace back in their family history to the date their family made that decision and name the father(s) who made it.
It has become a religion in the Levant, not a race. To us Israel should be a nation, not a religion, but it’s too late for that.
@OzarkHillbilly:
WTF?! What possible justification did they put up for this?
@Mu Yixiao:
I’ve been dealing with a similar issue. I want small boneless skinless chicken breasts; mostly for sandwiches, but also for just lunch. All I can seem to get are these massive honking pterodactyl breasts. Like, why. I don’t need the worlds largest chicken breast for my lunch. I want a bunch of small ones. They cook faster and I need the portion control.
I think costco might have small ones in a giant bag but they come frozen which is no good. I’m pretty sure they are supposed to be cooked directly frozen which means I can’t season them at all. I’m super White, I’m not that White.
@Kathy:
Maybe the story skips details of when train travel is cheaper because the inclusion would have exposed the silliness of examples on which the Greenpeace analysis was based:
Well, yeah, because taking “the train” (the many multiple trains) from London to Barcelona would require crossing the channel, crossing the entire country of France, and crossing from Spain’s northern border to its Mediterranean coast — train-hopping the entire time.
You are right: that kind of long distance, triple-border route is not where train travel shines. I’d guess most Europeans know better than to use rail to travel from a North Atlantic city to one on the Mediterranean coast.
Where train travel can be cheaper and more convenient is short-haul trips. Berlin to Warsaw. Frankfurt to Brussels. Venice to Zurich. Madrid to Barcelona –
– equivalent of San Fran to Los Angeles.
Not London to Barcelona (Seattle to L.A.)
Greenpeace is headquartered in Amsterdam so they should know, but maybe the desire to push an agenda got in the way.
Last summer, Germany tested a pilot program featuring a €9 monthly rail pass providing unlimited travel intracity + countrywide on certain regional lines. The pilot was wildly popular and not nearly as chaotic as predicted, so Deutschland is trying to figure out how to make something similar permanent.
More expensive, less convenient to fly from Berlin-Brandenburg Airport (an hour+ from the city center) to Munich Airport (also far from its center) rather than buy a ~€9-20 rail pass to hop on and off trains that drop you in the city proper? Like, come on Greenpeace lol
@dazedandconfused:
I’ve seen varying percentages in varying places; I think the variance is due to whether you include “mixed” families, and to what degree, and also whether eastern Sephardi from the Levant get included or not.
The slightly ironic thing about the Ashkenazi ascendancy, is that in Britain, Netherlands and France the western Sephardi often tended to look down on them.
@charontwo:
No reason, if it’s old news. I juat saw it.
@Beth:
If you’re any good with a knife, you can slice the chicken breasts horizontally (I can get 3-4 slices out of a typical large breast). They still have the same shape, but are 1/3 or 1/4 the thickness. They cook very fast.
Chicken (contrary to what most people think) can last longer than beef or pork in the fridge. Chicken is usually dated 8-10 days if it comes in fresh, up to 12 days if it comes in frozen. Check the dates on the package, and get the ones that have the longest time on them. Then you can just keep the slices in the fridge for a week or so if need be. If it’s getting close to the “sell by” date*, pop what’s left into the freezer (they also thaw quickly because of the increased surface: volume ratio).
====
* Note: “Sell by” dates assume that the meat will sit in your fridge for a day or two. Give it a smell-test if you’re not sure. Humans are very good at detecting bad meat. That sour smell goes straight to our hindbrain.
@Mu Yixiao: FREEDOM!!! To work people to death.
@dazedandconfused:
Ashkenazi Jews from Slavic countries have little to no ethnically Slavic ancestry. Even though they lived in those countries for centuries, they were very isolated from the broader population. This is why they primarily spoke Yiddish, a Germanic language, rather than Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, etc. Intermarriage and conversion to Judaism was rare before the modern age.
There’s still a lot of debate over the details, but DNA studies indicate that Ashkenazim have a heavily Middle Eastern genome, and to the extent there’s European admixture, it’s primarily from Southern Europe, not Eastern Europe.
@DK:
I’ll have you know that we have one of the most diverse groups of middle aged white men around. We have zero agreement on which minorities to throw under the bus first, for instance.
In the early 90s I had vacation days to burn and not a lot of cash. Decided to take an Amtrak train the Seattle and back on the … crikey, I’ve forgotten, give me a sec… on The Empire Builder route. (Now that is a manifest destiny name!) I bought the cheapest ticket available that let me sleep in a berth alone. I was surprised at the cost. The official name for my accommodation was called a “roomette” which I found hilarious. The downside to a roomette is that you have to poop in a public toilet which I really dislike in general.
I wasn’t going to Seattle to do or see anything, that’s just where the track ran into the ocean. This was one of those it’s the journey, not the destination things. Never did it before, why not.
I enjoyed in immensely. They had viewing cars, restaurant car, bar car. The food served was a notch above elementary school cafeteria.
Took about two full days to get there. I bummed around downtown Seattle and gawked, and got back on the train 5 hours later.
Some of the sight-seeing is sublime. A lot of it is boring as hell. I saw the ass-end of Minot twice.
I would just zone out and look out the window. Read. Doze. Go to the bar car for a smoke and a pricy beer. Bullshit with the staff. Go back to the viewing car and zone out and watch the world roll by. Slept like a baby even, maybe because of, the endless clickety-clack and the jostling.
I enjoyed it a lot.
Couple of years later I did same type of trip from Thunder Bay to Banff. This time I spent a week there mostly hiking and camping. That was a better trip. Maybe that’s just that route, but the Canadian rail system was basically the same as Amtrak but slightly better. The food was a hell of a lot better. I had a “roomette” again, lol! The whole experience was a step above Amtrak.
The drive to Thunder Bay is a haul. The drive back is worse because you have the end of vacation blues where you know you have be at work tomorrow morning and spin the hamster wheel again.
@Mu Yixiao: To the degree that I can remember, it was “reasons.”
@OzarkHillbilly:
When people tell me the humidity or relative humidity in percentages I have zero idea what means. Give me the dewpoint. That is a number I can use. I know what a 65 dewpoint feels like, a 70, a 75.
Relative humidity as a percentage is a garbage metric and might as well be in Kelvin.
I hope that foreman goes to prison for negligent manslaughter.
@Beth:
Like @Mu Yixiao: says, buy the big-ass ones and butterfly them. In other words, lay it flat on a board and cut horisontally from side. Lay your hand flat on the top….
Screw my describing it. Go to YouTube and search “butterfly chicken breast”. Seeing it is way easier than reading.
@DK:
The other huge, massive, ginormous PITA about train travel on holiday that involves changing trains, is that it frequently in a “hub city” like London, Paris, Berlin, Milan, Madrid etc.
Where you have to get off at one station, then get to another on the other side of the city centre, by local rail/tram/bus/taxi whatever, all the while lugging your blasted luggage!
It’s interesting that in 19th century photographs of railway stations, once you actually look out for it, are the huge numbers of porters and their luggage trolleys swarming about.
And apparently at many stations there were large numbers of horse-drawn vehicles with plenty of luggage space in dedicated bays that ran shuttles between the stations.
Anyone with the money could get themselves and their baggage transferred from train to train far more easily than we can now!
My personal tech innovation dream scheme: a standard luggage pattern, on the lines of containerisation, with RFID tagging, related standardized luggage spaces on other transport, and robotic handling systems.
Objective: to make luggage lugging on mass transport as easy for the traveler now as it was in Victorian times.
The luggage issue was a major reason why our family used to drive to holidays in France rather than go by train or plane.
@de stijl:
The store I worked at (in the meat dept) actually sells “thin sliced” chicken breasts. They sell like hotcakes. It takes about 60 seconds to cut them, and they add 50¢ to the per-pound price.
It’s also a nice way to use up some of the not-so pretty pieces. Those pterodactyl breasts come from very-fast growth, and end up in “spaghettification” of the muscle tissue. It actually falls apart in strings. So… slice a few fillets off of the top, then chop the rest in to small pieces and sell it at a mark-up as “fajita meat” (for an extra mark-up, they sometimes roll the bits in fajita seasoning, and package with slices of pepper and onion (which got pulled from produce because they’re “ugly” and won’t sell).
@JohnSF:
I’ve learned to travel very light. When I was on the road for 26 weeks, I had a duffel bag (and a small backpack for my tools, but that traveled on the trucks). I moved to China with a single suitcase and a carry-on. Everywhere I travel now (for a week or so at a time) I do with a single, school-style backpack (not one of those giant hiking ones). It’s going to be even easier on my next trip, because I don’t have to carry a pair of “airplane shoes”. I used to have a lace-up pair to wear at the destination, and a slip-on pair for getting through security.
I’ve got TSA Precheck now, and can keep my shoes on. 🙂
@de stijl: Relative humidity as a percentage works for me. I can do dew point as well. Having spent most of my life both working and playing in the outdoors I am basically either “hot” or “cold” and take appropriate measures. That’s all I really care about.
@Mu Yixiao: My wife and I are light packers and just spent ten days in Portugal with a carry on and and a light backpack each, although we checked the cases rather than carry them on. It’s just a much more pleasant way to travel.
@Beth: If your meat department is like the one I go to, you have the mutant pterodactyl breasts in one section and the smaller, (but, alas, more expensive per pound) usually local ones in the single servings section of the meat case. Ours come from Foster Farms and are usually packaged in one-pound (or so) trays.
I don’t know where you grew up, but I never cook raw chicken, boned or boneless, straight from the freezer. You should be able to defrost your Costco chicken pieces ETA: in your refrigerator for cooking later without much drama. If you don’t want the meat to dry out too much, wrap the chicken with plastic wrap or a paper towel while you wait for it to defrost. And it’s possible that knowing that you can defrost the chicken before cooking it will encourage you to slice the pterodactyl pieces into your preferred serving size to save yourself a coin or two.
Fresh chicken (and turkey for that matter) is overrated. It’s all shipped frozen from most producers these days and defrosted for your convenience at the point of sale. (And I’m going to skip the distinction between “hard” frozen and “soft” (?) frozen for this discussion. Someone else can add that if they want.)
@de stijl:
To convert Kelvin to Celsius, simply subtract 273.
I find the number easy to remember, because zero Kelvin = absolute zero, or -273 Celsius.
@JohnSF:
When and where have people with the money ever not been able to get whatever they imagined the needed? (Outside the rare occasions in France when they were being “transferred” in tumbrils?)
https://nitter.net/jdawsey1/status/1682073948685582374
@Just nutha ignint cracker: I would so much rather get meat and fish frozen rather than “fresh” (defrosted). I don’t want it to begin decomposing in my fridge while I get around to cooking it.
@Beth: defrost it in the fridge — put it in a plastic bag in a bowl of cold water (get as much air out of the bag as possible) and it will defrost quickly all the way through, even pterodactyl slabs. I’m sure there’s some science thing about heat transfer, but it’s way faster than if it’s surrounded by aim. Water Demons, I assume.
@Mu Yixiao: “WTF?! What possible justification did they put up for this?”
Fighting wokeness.
@charontwo:
Why? Just say what you mean. We’re all friends here, except MR and DK (I kid, mostly).
It’s because the State of Israel needs to maintain a certain base level of antisemitism in American society so they can discredit criticism by pointing out that one of the critics is antisemetic, and therefore the entire argument is antisemetic, isn’t it?
No, that’s crazy, the base of antisemitism is pretty firmly established.
Is it because the theory of Christians trying to hasten the Armageddon and the return of Jesus sounds insane and so everyone discounts it?
@JohnSF: “Where you have to get off at one station, then get to another on the other side of the city centre, by local rail/tram/bus/taxi whatever, all the while lugging your blasted luggage!”
Went to London for the Chelsea Flower Show this year and then took the Eurostar to Brussels (for no particular reason other than that the train went there, we’d never been, and Paris didn’t seem like a good idea because of the rioting). Took at early train back on Monday morning and had a lovely trip back. But then we had to go to Heathrow, and of course the Heathrow Express leaves from Paddington, which demanded a subway ride, which was problematic because my wife has some balance issues which make the kinds of long, steep escalators they have in many Tube stations impossible for her.
Then I checked my phone and discovered that an Uber from St. Albans to Heathrow was actually cheaper than two tickets on the HE…
@de stijl:
It is of the utmost importance the hand not holding the knife stays on top at all times. Remember those knives are designed to slice into raw flesh, which happens to be what humans are made of.
I don’t think I’ve ever spelled out my cooking MO. I make an entree and a side, and sometimes a desert or a starter as well, over the weekend, and then consume it during the week. Yes, this means I eat the same thing for lunch the whole week. Of course, it varies weekly, and I cook only what I like to eat (of course, sometimes it doesn’t turn out well).
So, a big chicken breast or two don’t phase me, as they’ll be portioned out during over 7 days.
@Kylopod:
First off, culture is not a DNA issue, and anyone who thinks northern Russian Jews look more like middle easterners than southern southern European or Russian Jews needs to look again.
A very strong contingent of Israel’s extreme right are Russian speakers. The Soviet/Russian ex-pats brought their own culture and are heavily represented at the top levels of Israeli government. See Bibi and Lieberman.
I’d like to see the study you spoke of.
@de stijl: Agreed about the minimum size bundle of parsley or cilantro. My solution has been to take the whole thing and turn it into a pesto (herb, olive oil, salt) and freeze it in ice cube trays or little yogurt cups. Pull one out at a time, and use it wherever you would use the fresh item. Lousy as garnish, but good for pretty much anything else.
@Kathy:
Well, duh! Who didn’t know that? (Sorry!)
@Gustopher:
Water demons conduct heat at roughly 25x efficiency over Air demons. The fastest way to defrost by far is in standing water.
And do it on the counter-top or in the sink if you want to. It’s no big deal. No restaurant inspector is coming into your kitchen unless you invite them and I doubt they’d show up even with an invite. Gordon Ramsey, neither.
Defrosting in the sink is perfectly fine. Just don’t let it sit there for for several days.
Stick in a stopper, plunk the baggie of frozen meat in the sink, run some cold water, fill up a pot heavy enough to sink it, put the pot on top of the meat. Defrozen in 2 or 3 hours.
—–
One of my favorite movies is The Right Stuff. Levon Helm says a line about “the demons in the air” in an East Texas drawl about breaking the sound barrier / exceeding Mach 1 with the early X series planes.
“Hey, Ridley! Got a stick of Beeman’s?”
Number one ebbs and flows over time, wobbles and wiggles, but the second best movie I ever saw was and is The Right Stuff.
I’ve traveled by train exactly once, and it was short (Cambridge to London in 1985).
My closest comparison would be driving or taking the bus between cities. A guesstimate factoring airport round trips and time at the airport, not checking luggage, is that shortest flight I could take would be Mexico City to Guanajuato/Bajio, which would take almost 4 hours; 3 and a half if I were reckless. Flight time is about 30 minutes (I think cruise would be under five).
That’s for a round trip. Driving it takes me around 3:30-4:00 hours one way. So flying takes half as long. Distance is around 340-350 km. The last time I did that trip, I reset the average speed on the car’s dashboard, and it came out as 90 kph at the end of the trip.
A bus trip takes longer, because you have to add the round trip to the bus station. That’s mostly within the city, and bad traffic is Mex City’s specialty.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I am finding that a portable mobility solution for my mother, who can no longer walk easily, does not exist at any price. I want something that allows her to go anywhere, including by bus or car, and be able to get around at her destination, eat in a restaurant, etc.
In former times, there was a technology for this — it was two burly guys carrying a palanquin, who would wait outside for you when you got to your restaurant and carry you home again afterward. That solution is no longer widely available.
The wife and I cook for large groups. Along the way I have made knife sharpening a hobby. For the giant chicken breasts rather than butterfly them I just go all the way and cut them in half horizontally. Easy with a sharp knife. They are too big when you butterfly them. However, I have largely switched to boneless chicken thighs. Usually cheaper and it’s hard to overcook them so if you are busy they are much more forgiving. Great for sandwiches and kebabs. Mostly save chicken breasts for presentation dishes now. Still do occasional whole chickens but usually spatchcock them since they cook faster, especially on the grill. Try Alabama white sauce!
Steve
@Mu Yixiao:
@de stijl:
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
So I am hilariously* terrified of knives. I bought my partner a set of the super fancy Japanese ones and she makes fun of me cause I won’t touch them. They scare the crap out of me. I’m also not a skilled cook nor do I particularly like it. My partner has historically done the lion share of our cooking because she likes it and is very good at it.
Honestly, I’m willing to pay a premium to get the smaller ones. Hell, I was just at Whole Foods this week looking for them and couldn’t find them. I’ll frequently ask my partner to look for them at the store and she has trouble too.
On one hand, this is such a petty 1st world problems kind of complaint, and on the other hand, there is so freaking much food waste because our portions are so freaking insane.
@Kathy:
This makes a whole lot of sense to me. I’m a fairly picky eater, but one of the upsides of this is I can eat the same thing for basically a week. The whole reason I want small chicken breasts is so that I can make myself chicken sandwiches on the grill. I could probably eat chicken breasts at every meal for the rest of my life and it wouldn’t bother me much. However, I would rather die than eat chicken thighs. Man are they gross. the flavor, the texture, bleh. Hot Garbage.
* So, one of the reasons I don’t like knives is what Kathy said, they are made to cut meat and I am mostly meat. I watched my dad drunkenly impale himself with a Cutco knife as teen and man was that rough. Lucky for him he was drunk and a moron so he just put a bandaid on it and went about his night. The way more dark reason I’m afraid of my partner’s knives is that my mom used to scream at us if we touched her stuff and those knives have inherited that place in my brain.
@Kathy:
I cut off the tip of my left thumb while mincing an onion because I wasn’t paying attention.
It was a good knife – went right through the nail. Cut off a chunk about the size of a pea. Bled everywhere.
The grossest thing was after I’d stemmed the bleeding, disinfected, and bandaged I went back into the kitchen and a chunk of me was sitting there on the cutting board with a chip of fingernail attached.
@de stijl:
I have a scar on my left index finger. I got it cutting a lime, because it seemed faster to hold it in one hand while slicing it with the other, instead of taking the time to get a cutting board.
So, I don’t take things for granted in the kitchen.
@de stijl:
My partner cut herself pretty bad with those scary ass Japanese knives once. She was bleeding and calmly asked me to get her a bandage. I promptly fainted. I was down on the kitchen floor on my hands and knees with the world spinning. She calmly bandaged herself up and cleaned up the mess all the while making fun of me. She is a HARDASS. I am a delicate flower.
It’s like those tee shirts, “I’m not a top, I’m just tall”
@dazedandconfused:
The context of this conversation was where Israeli Jews fall on racial lines. That’s why it’s relevant to point out that Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe are not closely related ethnically to most non-Jews from that region.
I don’t know what this sentence means.
I wasn’t referring to a single study, but to the broad range of studies over the past few decades. This is a good place to start. To broadly summarize, while there is some conflicting data, there’s a broad consensus that the paternal line of Ashkenazim has a clear Middle Eastern (Levantine) origin, though the maternal line shows some European admixture, mainly Southern European.
Me, because I didn’t need to know that, even if I had read it a dozen or more times in the past.
@steve:
Thighs are way tastier than breast. I hear you brother!
The only time I use breast meat nowadays is in a big batch of red curry because it’s the pointless protein. If you overwhelm it with enough spice it’s palatable as a protein source.
@Beth:
Do you perhaps faint any time you see blood? It’s a reflex some people have, it even has some medical name. It happens. I think it needs to be blood in quantity, though. That is, no one faints if they see a paper cut.
I recall people fainting at blood banks when they see their blood being drained, some even when a sample is drawn for analysis.
I hardly ever notice shallow cuts, unless it’s a paper cut. Just a few days ago, I somehow got a cut on a finger while getting some yogurt. I noticed only because there was a small red smear on the yogurt’s lid when I was putting it back in the fridge.
@Gustopher:
Well, it IS insane, but I don’t think secularists* should be discounting it just for the insanity.
*I’m assuming that secularists are most of your “everybody” because the people on MY side of the divide seem to firmly believe that they can speed up Armageddon by environmental destruction and encouraging war in the ME. We’ve kind of cornered the market on some types of geopolitical insanity.
@wr: Riot season is ALWAYS the worst time to visit Paris. And August, of course.
@de stijl: I’ve always found that overnight in the fridge works fine. And that way, I’ve already planned the menu for tomorrow.
@DrDaveT:
Ubermensch and Lyftup. They’re the new tiers. A bit pricier than UberLux, but you can set preferences for non-sweating porters.
@DrDaveT: I know people who get around well in power chairs and scooters, but adding car, bus (and I assume train, if you were being exhaustive) complicates your ideal. Where I live, you can’t get anywhere on the bus so not an issue. A guy I knew who could still drive had resources adequate to purchase a van that lifted his power chair into the driver’s seat spot (I watched him enter his car once, fascinating). Still, even a palanquin was not a perfect solution because transferring the mobility impaired person from the palanquin to the chair they would use at their destination was still an issue from what I’ve read on the subject.
@Kathy:
Sometimes. I hurt myself frequently cause I’m a klutz. I don’t get woozy when I accidentally make myself bleed my own blood. However, I have to get a lot of blood draws and if I make the mistake of watching that I’m out like a light. I usually warn the tech about it so it’s not a surprise.
@Michael Reynolds:
This got a chuckle out of me.
@Kathy:
There are many weeks I eat the same food every day. Most of the times it’s a big pot of chili or a big batch of red curry. I cycle through a set of side dishes to keep it interesting. Yes, chitos count as a side dish for chili. Best is cornbread.
And fairly often have a sustained craving for a certain thing I make every day. Waffles recur often. Roast beef on rye with horseradish. Patty melts, too. (Dang, now I really want a patty melt with steak fries!)
I don’t think there is anything wrong with that at all. It’s adaptive and frugal when you have a big batch of something.
My brain decided during typing this out that I need to start a patty melt binge starting tomorrow.
@de stijl: My absolute favorite patty melt is bison burger on marbled sourdough/rye, with some horseradish/thousand island sauce. If I’m making them at home I put the swiss cheese on each slice of bread and add extra onions. Sooooo good!
And if I make them at home, I can make the patty match the size of the bread. No slippage or wasted bread!
@Beth:
I think it’s called “vasovagal syncope.” It sounds more like a fake condition from the 20s or 30s, something you take a snake oil tonic for.
It is quite real, though. Blood seems to trigger a lot of people.
One tip is to lie down with your legs elevated, which I grant is not easy to do at a lab while having blood drawn. It keeps blood from pooling in your legs, so your blood pressure might not drop as much or as quickly.
@de stijl:
I often get cravings when talking about food, too.
@Kylopod: We have different contexts. Mine was the dominance of Eastern european (predominantly Russian) ex-pats in the Israeli government of the last few decades. The slavic issue was, to me, not a DNA reference, but a cultural one pertaining to the casual brutality displayed by folks like Bibi and Lieberman.
Here’s a Brookings paper on the subject.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-other-tribe-israels-russian-speaking-community-and-how-it-is-changing-the-country/
@Kathy: I have vasovagal reflex. We discovered that it was still a thing for me one day when I was doing the spirometry test where you exhale as forcefully as you can and at the end of test one, it was a good thing that the chair was able to catch me. We did the balance of the tests sitting down (even though the results aren’t as accurate).
@Kathy: Left middle finger scar from cutting a carrots with no technique. Carrot rolled, lost a little chunk of flesh. I learned how to cut somewhat properly after that.