My friends have been complaining that it’s gotten harder to reach me lately. That didn’t bother me very much. But it was kind of annoying during my divorce when my lawyer was calling me during court appearances and I was not getting the calls.
It wasn’t be being over zealous in how I was receiving my call, it seems the iPhone has a “do not disturb” (“concentration” en français) feature that blocks calls from pretty much everyone. Normally, that would be an asset for me since I don’t talk to people I don’t want to talk to now that I can have a private life.
On the other hand, there are some people I do want to talk to. And they are on my contacts list. It seems the iPhone blocked everyone except for favourites, and it was blocking them as well.
My landline is pretty much useless since I am usually not at that location. I am thinking about getting rid of it. OTOH, you can get me anywhere in the world there is cell service.
Nothing like landing in a foreign country to be greeted with the correct time and a message that they are tacking a daily fee on your service.
SHUT OFF THE PHONE!!!
While technology has its upsides. It’s best not to be too wedded to it.
And definitely not trust it to make decisions for you.
My divorce is sort of final. We’ve agreed on terms, but the Judge needs to sign off on it. I’ve been living a nomadic lifestyle during this period adding nearly 200k points to my Air France frequent flyer account.
But that’s not really my point here. What is my point is that I am receiving notices for signing up for medicare at a place where I am not resident: other than visiting. My guess is that the data miners get my info since I tend to order things.
It’s annoying that the US doesn’t have strong data protection laws. I am protected by my EU residency, which manages to knock a lot of info out of their marketplace, but not enough.
Anyway, quite frankly, don’t trust the online background check vendors since there is no guarantee their information is correct.
There is next to no benefit to this practise and it was supposed to have ended a while back. A draft directive was adopted in March 2019 by the European Parliament to make an abolition of summer time effective in summer 2021. I thought the US had done something similar around that time. In March 2022, the US Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act. The intent behind the bill was to make daylight saving time permanent starting in the spring of 2023.
Nope. This insanity continues. This is despite 84% of European respondents being in favour of abolishing the time change. I’m not sure what the case is in the US, but pretty much everyone agrees that ending the time changes is generally a good idea there as well. Our bodies can be very sensitive to disruptions to our circadian rhythms.
Anyway, yes, indeed this ridiculous practise continues.
It’s an idiotic idea to move the clocks backward and forward with the seasons, especially since there are only 24 hours in a day. It also creates the worst type of glitch in Circadian rhythms. I find jumping between states and going between Britain and the Continent to be the worst for time change.
And it lasts for about a week.
Legislators talk about getting rid of it, but it seems like yet another year with it. Fortunately, most of my timepieces do the change for me.
Ever hear about the ten commandments? Here’s a review since some people want to say that people who condemn these sales are “anti-semitic”:
You shall not steal.
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
Or in Hebrew:
לֹא תִגְנֹב לֹא תַחְמֹד בֵּית רֵעֶךָ לֹא תַחְמֹד אֵשֶׁת רֵעֶךָ וְעַבְדּוֹ וַאֲמָתוֹ וְשׁוֹרוֹ וַחֲמֹרוֹ וְכֹל אֲשֶׁר לְרֵעֶךָ From Chabad.org, so you don’t say I’m making this up:
The 10 Commandments (or Aseret Hadibrot, “The Ten Statements,” in Hebrew) were communicated by G‑d to the people of Israel at Mount Sinai, 50 days after the Exodus from Egypt. The event is known as the Giving of the Torah. G‑d then carved the Ten Commandments onto two tablets of stone, which he gave to Moses. Moses smashed the tablets, and G‑d carved the Ten Commandments onto a second set of tablets, which were subsequently placed in the Ark of the Covenant.
The Ten Commandments are not the entirety of G‑d’s instructions for His people (there are 613 commandments). However, they contain within them the kernel from which the others emerge.
So, you are violating a couple of G-d’s commandments, but Zionism isn’t religious. Zionism is a political ideology, which is why it’s pretty antithetical to Judaism. But that doesn’t stop Zionists, who aren’t all Jewish, from trotting out the ad hominem of “anti-semitism”.
I wasn’t going to mention the three oaths since they are from Midrash and have some controversy, but:
The Three Oaths is the popular name for a midrash found in the Talmud, which relates that God adjured three oaths upon the world. Two of the oaths pertain to the Jewish people, and one of the oaths pertains to the other nations of the world. The Jews for their part were sworn not to forcefully reclaim the Land of Israel and not to rebel against the other nations, and the other nations in their turn were sworn not to subjugate the Jews excessively.
Among Orthodox Jews today there are primarily two ways of viewing this midrash. Haredim who are strongly anti-Zionist often view this midrash as legally binding, and therefore the movement to establish the state of Israel and its continued existence would be a violation of Jewish law, whereas Religious Zionists have the view that either the oaths are no longer applicable or that they are indeed binding, but the current movement is not a violation of them. Both buttress their positions by citing historic rabbinic sources in favor of their view.
In one story, Zukerman reported about a Holocaust survivor who had recently resettled in Israel, in the former home of an Arab family. The survivor became “openly obsessed” about her morality, Zukerman wrote, after her children found some of the evicted family’s possessions. “The mother was suddenly struck by the thought that her children were playing with the toys of Arab children who were now exiled and homeless,” Zukerman continued. “Is she not doing to the Arabs what the Nazis did to her and her family?”
Yes, stealing Jewish homes was an aspect of the holocaust.
Who are you calling anti-semitic????
You need to read the literature of the Zionists before you go around calling people anti-semitic.
After all, how many Jews did the Zionists save during the holocaust? I mean the movement had been around for at least 50 years when it really got up and running. For that matter, it was forming when the other nationalist ideologies were.
Let’s make Zionism the aberration it was before 1947 again. Zionism is not Judaism–never was, never will be.
And you have serious problems if you need a goy to tell you that!
The Mormons sent me something telling me about my “famous relations”. I’m not really happy to learn that Margaret Thatcher is one of them. I am surprised that I am far closer to the Queen (even without Diana being involved). I guess I get Churchill if I have Diana.
I have found myself in the Midwest. A place that could have quaint small towns. Or at least cities that actually were cities instead of ghost towns. The East Coast is similar to Europe in that the cities can seem similar to those in Europe, except there are skyscrapers. Especially skyscrapers inside of cities. Philadelphia didn’t have them and Washington, DC still doesn’t. Midwestern towns seem to be that people just threw buildings wherever. Malls, Strip malls, and parking lots make up what I see of cities in this area.
Which gets to my next gripe: next to no public transportation. Driving in traffic is frustrating. Even more frustrating when the other drivers are impatient. Toss in that either a tram (light rail, trolly), metro (“subway trains”), or even trains in general can get you places much faster and efficiently than driving in a car. Also, a train can go from centre city to centre city, unlike a plane which requires an airport outside of town. Which requires some way to get into town.
There are a couple of reason I find myself finally writing this post. The first being that I am in the Midwest, where the sprawl will end up becomming decay. And looking at the landscape taking off from Frankfurt Airport. Like Paris, Frankfurt is an urban airport, but both of them are not found in sprawl. There are in rural areas.
Unlike the East coast, Europe has a difference between urban and rural. You watch a European show and see something which would look like it was far outside of town in the US and the town isn’t. You see small farms, towns, and cities when you fly over Europe. OK, not so much when you go to London, but I Brexited. Still, you can get into rural without having to drive a couple of hundred miles.
I prefer to keep my rural rural, and urban urban.
Food is less of an issue except in the midwest. I am a total baguette snob and finding one that is acceptable outside of France or Belgium is really hard. There are some that come close. Likewise, steak frites should be hanger or skirt steak, not strip steak. And no hope on moules-frites. But the beer can be pretty good.
But my real problems with the US are transportation and land use (urban planning).
If you wonder why I don’t post very much here, it’s because WordPress has become a pain in the ass to use. Anyway, I was looking at some DNA history by something called Ancestralbrew on Youtube, which got me wondering what my roots were. The only surprise is that there is so much Italian and not a heck of a lot of German. I’m guessing that this may be my deep ancestral roots since Roman legionairies were stationed in the Rhine River basin (as well as a good portion of this map, which should feature the entire Mediterranean Ocean. On the other hand, I don’t have any Levantine or North-African ancestry. Not many surprises other than so much Italian!
There are a few reasons why I decided to dig into my family tree on my mother’s side. My dad’s is pretty well documented back to the Middle Ages, so no need there. I’m as British as the King on his side. Yeah, I am thinking about it. Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor and Lilibet Diana Mountbatten-Windsor make that comment even more interesting. Er, inclusive…
The first was the hope that I might dig up some Loyalists. While that still remains a possibility since I do have some ancestors who were in the South prior to the War for Independence, and they were also in strongly Loyalist areas. That unfortunately is undocumented, so my application to the United Empire Loyalists is also on hold.
I did find I am eligable for some other groups which don’t make me too happy: Mayflower descendant, Sons of the American Revolution, The Society of the Cincinnati,and a few others. I’m not going to boast about the last one since I prefer the vets who were on the Pennsylvania Line at Morristown to the ones running the show: especially given the latter really effed things. And I am sorry that my ancestors didn’t land on Bermuda instead of Virginia.
I’m sure my whatever iteration of Great Grandmother was not too happy to find out she was going to the Bermuda Hundred in VIRGINIA…
My mother’s family were pioneers in a lot of states. As I like to say, her family is the American Experience. Given I am first generation American–I guess that applies to me as well. Even though I would go back to Europe in a heartbeat, but it has to be EUROPE.
Le Brexit a été une putain de grosse erreur.
There were a bunch of photos lying around that I had no idea who they were of as well.
So, there you have it. Like it or not, I have a connection to North America.
I just received a letter from the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania telling me I was not compliant for the current CLE period. That was a little unnerving. So, I decided to call them up and make sure I was done with ever having to think about that subject.
I am.
The amusing thing is that there is a non-resident exemption, which I considered trying for, but I am currently in a nomadic state. I have returned my driver’s licence to Philadelphia, but it’s not really my residence. I’m not sure where exactly I am residing. Well, other than my EU residence, but that is another thing since I am not there as much as I would like. Which is too bad since my friends are sending me all sorts of pictures that make me want to be there.
Unfortunately, I have other business to take care of right now.
Let’s toss in that the US considers your last “residence” to be where you are “domiciled” once you emmigrate/return to another country. Which has me wondering whether it was a good thing that I was registered to vote in Philadelphia despite my not asking to be.
Well, at least they didn’t register me as a Democrat…
I’m trying to locate that picture of the fierce Varangian warrior with the dead hamster on his shoulder and came up with:
As we mentioned before, the Varangian Guard was initially formed mostly of warriors and adventurers from Rus who tended to have Swedish lineage. However, by the late 11th century, these ‘Scandinavians’ were gradually replaced by the Anglo-Saxons from Britain. There was a socio-political side to this scope since most of England was overrun by the Normans under William the Conqueror (post-1066 AD).
As a result, the native Anglo-Saxon military elites of these lands had to look for opportunities elsewhere – thus kick-starting mini waves of migration from Britain to the Black Sea coasts, and then ultimately to Eastern Roman Empire.
I knew there was a lot more movement between places in early history, but this is sort of a surprise for me. On the other hand, my heritage is pretty much Northern European with about a quarter being from the southern Mediterranean. Or Varangian stomping grounds.
My DNA isn’t really tied to a nation, unless it’s something like the Holy Roman Empire. Actually, the Hanseatic League pretty much covers where my ancestry comes from, which gets really interesting. I like where I have residency even if I don’t speak the language. Or at least much beyond my “Hello”, “Goodbye”, “How are you?”, “Please”, “Thank you”, “Where is the WC?”, and “Do you speak English/French/German?” The last one tends to be superfluous.
I made a comment about how people in Europe kill each other over what religion they practise or language they speak. Slavic languages have the added factor of varying alphabets, which is interesting when you deal with the pan-Slavic crowd. They sort of have a point in that the languages are similar enough that you can be understood about the way most Scandanavians can understand each other. Then you get to the Alphabets. The former Yugoslavia was torn apart by religion and differences in Alphabets. Likewise, Polish and Ukrainian are fairly similar until you get to the Alphabet.
This is the Polish alphabet.
The Ł is pronounced like Elmer Fudd saying the letter “W”. So, Wrocław is pronounced like Vroswav. In my opinion, the German transliteration of Breslaw (with a German accent) works better for non-Poles. The alphabet is a romanised version of Ukrainian/cyrillic.
Ukrainian and Russian both use the Cyrillic alphabet, but slightly different versions. There are four letters in Ukrainian missing from Russian (ґ, є, і, ї), and four letters in Russian missing from Ukrainian (ё, ъ, ы, э). Also:
One frequently cited figure is that Ukrainian and Russian share about 62% of their vocabulary. This is about the same amount of shared vocabulary that English has with Dutch, according to the same calculations. If you expand your sample by scraping internet data to compare a broader range of words than just those 200 ancient “core” words, the proportion of shared words declines. One computational model suggests that Russian and Ukrainian share about 55% of their vocabulary.
Using that higher figure of 62%, though, a Russian with no knowledge of Ukrainian (or vice versa) would understand roughly five in eight words. To understand this, have a friend cross out three out of every eight words in a newspaper and see how much of the text you can follow.
Anyway, the Cyrillic alphabet also was a force which prevented Russians from invading a good part of Western Europe. I mean, can most people read Cyrillic? Now, turn it around to the Roman alphabet for the average Slavic language speaker. You don’t need guns to prevent a Russian invasion–Road signs work quite well.
It was very weird for me to watch the coronations of Charles and Camilla on French TV. There was the distance caused by the language and commentary. Also, it seemed like something from the past, which it is. But it seemed even more anachronistic.
Toss in that it is way more ostentatious than any of the other European monarchies, there are 12 of them, six of which are members of the EU (Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden). Things have changed quite a bit since at the start of the 20th century only France, Switzerland and San Marino were the only European nations to have a republican form of government.
Unfortunately for the people who want to say the US is a republic, not a democracy, the only real difference between those two systems of government are that democracy has the ability to be a monarchy. Euronews has an interesting article: Politics and popularity: Why are there still so many monarchies in Europe? It’s not the only news source discussing European monarchies.
I’m not sure how I feel about monarchy these days. Although I do side with the comment that “There is no contradiction between a country being a monarchy and being an advanced democracy”. Also, “One of the roles for the royal family is to be a symbol for the nation as a whole and therefore the monarch as an institution has to strive to represent the whole of the nation.”
Monarchy unifies a nation as Clement Atlee said: “Far less danger under a constitutional monarchy of being carried away by a Hitler, a Mussolini or even a de Gaulle.” That’s an interesting thought to ponder in light of US politics.
Laci the dog's Blog 
