The View From this Side

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

When it comes to being “Latin” Portuguese are the Schrodinger nationality. One of my favorite comments from the left of the field about me was that I couldn’t be Latin, since Portugal was “solidly European.”

Sure, and potatoes are solidly vegetables but they sure ain’t greens. I will grant them that the EU has pasteurized Portugal and turned it into England’s idea of an exotic vacation spot. That’s not even vaguely the Portugal I grew up in, though. Even ten years ago, Europeans were not exactly quiet about saying that Portuguese were more Africa than Europe.

Missed in all of this is the left’s obsession with race, and with “Latin” being a race. Some insist to be Latin you have to have some amount of Indian blood. I actually do. Both kinds. Great grand grand must have brought home souvenirs, but that’s nonsense. It’s a tiny fraction — less than Norse — and Latin is not a race. It’s a cultural group. In the forms we feel, Latin is identified as a cultural group. Race is separate.

As far as culture goes — closes eyes and hopes her parents don’t read this — Portugal has more in common with Spain and vast swaths of Latin America than with anywhere else. Take Pope Francis (please? When Benedict died, a call went up from Catholics, “Oh, Lord, wrong pope!” (It’s a joke, son)) I understand his particular brand of idiocy perfectly, because I grew up around my brother and his friends, who were all Latin leftists. Which is to say “Oh, Lord, really?” intensely strange. A very weird brew of Latin machismo and chauvinism and accusing everyone else for the issues caused by the screwed up culture. (And it is screwed up. All cultures are, of course, in some ways, but really.)

Portuguese like to distinguish themselves from Spaniards, like Austrians like to distinguish themselves from Germans. Portuguese say they’re less cruel, less loud, less–

Is it true? Yeah, it actually is. Northern Portuguese in particular tend to be much quieter. Blame it on the British cultural influence because the North of Portugal was where Britain sent remittance men before they had an empire.

However, having spent most of my life in the US and acquired a certain feel from the outside, let me tell you it’s practically a distinction without a difference. Sure, from the inside it looks like a big difference. Heck, the North and South of Portugal look like a great difference. But on the ground, while visiting the North of Portugal from the US the entire country seemed unbearably loud and everyone gestured overly much. (Okay, that might have been just my sons.) It reminds me of Dan’s first visit to Portugal, to propose formally — something my parents insisted on before recognizing our engagement — and how he almost hid under the table, from what he was sure was a to-the-knife argument among my family. In point of fact, we were discussing…. where to buy shoes. It wasn’t even a mild disagreement, let alone a fight.

As for a commonality of culture: I find myself translating from Latin for American friends with Mexican or Argentinian spouses. Or laughing my head off at websites about growing up Cuban because I recognize about half of those, like the idea that the best thing to do when you come home late at night is have a warm mug of…. coffee with milk?

Are there differences? Sure. Myriad. As there are between every single Latin American country. It’s not even an argument. There are also differences in culture you only see from the inside. (Mexicans have a lot of opinions about the rest of Latin America, some of which will have Americans biting their tongues not to hold up a mirror.)

But if you’re going to make “Latin” an officially recognized cultural group, yep, Portugal and Spain should be thrown in. Spain, arguably a little less, since it’s become more Europeanized, having been more prosperous and more integrated into Europe, long before Portugal, for various reasons some of which make no sense.

Heck, there is an argument for throwing in parts of Italy. (But not France. France is its own thing, really.)

Otherwise, what you fall into is the ridiculousness of saying someone if a protected cultural minority, because they spell their name with a z not an s (Chavez, Marquez, Mendez — the list goes on.)

Of course, I’m me, so you guys know what I think of protected cultural minorities. What I think of immigrants and immigration, too. Being an immigrant, I think the whole purpose of immigrating is to become of the country you immigrate into. You’re supposed to learn the language to the best of your ability, (Unfortunately my going back to Portugal at 18 for four years probably set the accent in stone, but I do try to use English with native fluency, with some success. The typos and malapropisms to be fair were worse in Portuguese. Now Portuguese is… difficult.). You’re supposed to adopt the customs and habits of your fellow Americans, to the best of your ability (to be fair, habits and customs vary a lot in this great land, but there’s more commonality than you think.) You’re supposed to respect the history, the civic virtues and the cultural icons of your new country (I take a pass at movie actors. Simply because I can’t tell one from the other.) You’re supposed to do your best to be a good citizen, not a burden to your new homeland. And you’re supposed to love it above all others, and renounce every other allegiance. Or if you prefer, you’re supposed to “Fit In or Fuck Off.”

Therefore where you came from, much less where your ancestors came from should matter not at all.

However, if we’re going to play that game — and the left clearly is — we should play the game logically. Which — in addition to my finding out most people identify as Latin on sight, and also that it annoys the left, started calling myself Latin. But particularly because it annoys the left.

On the other hand I am Latin enough to be highly amused at the black comedy of the left trying to open the borders and toss in amnesty to please “Latins.”

First, most of what is coming over the border at this point is not Latin in any way shape or form.

Second, nothing will piss Latins more than opening the borders and letting the old culture reach and touch them again.

Because here’s the thing: there are good things about Latin culture: a reverence for family, for protecting children and women and the weak. There are double edged things: the concentration on family is good and bad. Good because it gives people more support than they have in looser cultures. Bad because it gives the tribe a veto on everyone’s path in life. Which has repercussions for the culture including making things more difficult for anyone starting or innovating anything.

There is also a certain built-in corruption, because the law is something notional. Things are done over and around it, through influences, connections and bribes. Connections and well bribes count for more than law or system of government. But mostly connections. There is a saying in Portugal “He who is without a godfather dies in jail” and I understand there are similar ones throughout Latin countries. In the same way there are words for Mordida. In Portugal it’s “gloves”.

Now you’re going to say “How will that be different than importing Italian culture?” Oh not much, except for numbers. the greater the numbers of a culture who come in, the harder it is to keep the culture from being everywhere. Also the fact that “Latin” is a protected minority makes enforcing FAFO harder. It still happens, but slower. Much slower.

I felt that frustration when our “classy” vacations in Denver were taken over by a previous wave of Latin migration. If you remember, being classy, and also of course “well off” — snort giggle — when we had little kids we went to Denver for the weekend and stayed at Embassy Suites, because they had a bonus room (of sorts) with a door between our sleeping quarters and the kids’s area. And because they had breakfast. Huge breakfast. Which meant if we pushed the breakfast time as late as possible (I think it was ten thirty on weekends) we could let the kids eat as much as they wanted and skip lunch so we only paid for dinner.

So imagine our shock when we came down with kids and found out that at ten they were already mostly clean of any food. They’d started cleaning up at 9:30, so they were completely clean by 10:30.

I know that culture. Retail and service positions are sinecures, run for the person working there, not the client. And I didn’t want that here.

That is one of the points of annoyance and a reason Latin immigrants don’t want to import every Latin country into the US and destroying the culture we escaped to, and chose to raise our kids in.

But I know the other side of this: legal immigration is difficult, and a considerable number of Latins, and other immigrants have come legally, either as refugees (real ones) or just through much effort at finding a job, being here for enough time, applying for citizenship, staying clean and making sure you’re not a liability of any kind.

I came here on the easy setting. I did have a job to take up, and I could have taken that route. But I happened to fall in love with Dan and we got married. But being a permanent resident with the right to work wasn’t instant or easy. It’s not like in the movies, where you marry someone for citizenship and it all works seamlessly and in weeks. It was six months before I had a green card and permission to work took longer. (A problem for a young couple living on almost nothing.)

My process was easy, relatively. It’s been almost forty years. BUT there was a lot of expense in applying for citizenship because of the papers to file, and the drive to the nearest INS center, and time off work. There was also crawling all over our life, to determine if we were “really” married and not somehow faking it. (The infertility probably didn’t help.)

It was still onerous and work, and nerve wracking. And neither of us — me, or Dan — ever considered allowing me to be a burden on American tax payers. I came here to contribute, not to be a dead weight.

So imagine how I feel about people coming over the border and treating what is handed to them as a sort of deserved reparations. On people coming in to be used as illegal voters and an enforcement army for the Junta (the second won’t work, but it is the intent.)

Imagine how I feel. Imagine how every legal immigrant, who worked and saved and integrated feels.

People whose ancestors immigrated much earlier might think they’re outraged.

Trust me, it doesn’t compare to what us later day Americans feel.

No, this isn’t a matter of pulling the plank after us. I’m not anti-immigration. I am anti open borders. I’m anti-invasion.

I do believe the US should bring aboard the best, most innovative people in the world, those wishing to become American and make a contribution. (We could use more Elon Musks, and a few Javier Mileis or heck, Nigel Farages wouldn’t hurt.) They should be identified and processed to the best of our ability. And then once here, they should be convinced to FIFO. Always.

But people just being allowed in and given every possible bene and care without having intention of fitting in, or respecting the local culture or becoming American? In fact, allowing people in who are actively hostile to America?

That makes my blood boil. I bet it makes the blood of every recent immigrant boil.

We came here to serve and be part of America, and to preserve this wondrous thing for our children.

To have it destroyed and undermined is the worst thing ever.

You see we know how rare America is, and how worthy of preserving. And we know there might never be another one. Not in our life time. So anyone risking destroying it, in any way makes us very angry.

Because America is stronger than blood ties, than cultural ties.

Trying to appease us with stupid pseudo-racist crap, by favoring a presumed race or culture is stupid.

The culture we’re interested in preserving is America.

223 thoughts on “The View From this Side”

  1. Current “Warning” is the number of Chinese walking across the border. long walk to Mexico from CCPland. supposedly a large number also have ties to the CCP or PLA. How many of those would you guess were arrested on the spot and locked away for suspicion of espionage?

    1. That arrested number is zero, JP.

      Unless they run into the Texas National Guard. Then they get turned over to the Feds, who of course put them on a plane to anywhere they want to go.

            1. Fleeing to where though? If the USA goes, there is no safe refuge. The totalitarian left knows this, which is why since the early days of the Soviet Union, they have sought to “fundamentally transform America” to borrow a statement from a red diaper communist who was installed in the White House.

            2. Very much united in attitudes towards Spain; Sporting fans may hate Benfica, and visa versa, but fans of both loathe the Spanish clubs (yes, club football as it is called there is a huge thing and gets lots of people riled up).

              And yes, thrilled that Sporting is ahead of Benfica on goal differential and with a game in hand.

              1. This was supposed to be a stand alone comment, but apparently once you reply to a comment, all other comments get added to the same thread. WP Delende Est.

                2. But of course. I would expect nothing less.

                  Usually, the more supporters of Benfica and Porto hate Sporting, the better Sporting is doing 🙂

                  European club tournaments are tough when Benfica and Porto are involved. Do I cheer for the Portuguese club to win even though I hate them because it shows the rest of the Euro clubs that Portuguese clubs are not to be sneered at, or do I cheer for their opposition because any time Benfica or Porto lose, it is reason to cheer. Well okay, against Spanish clubs I have to root for Benfica and Porto, just because, it is impossible to cheer for the Spanish clubs.

        2. TNG is not allowed to “throw them back over the border” so what I’m reading is that they charge them with criminal trespass, which allows up to a year in jail. I’m not sure if that helps fill up the busses, or what.

            1. Oh, they avoid them. However, don’t forget that TXDPS encompasses the Rangers, game wardens, TNG, and TSG. And all of them are arresting illegals on criminal trespass whenever they catch them.

        3. Toss, like, with a trebuchet?

          “Pull!”

          Hmmmm. If we use one to evict communists three at a time, is it a TrePinochet?

            1. ZOOOOM. There goes one.
              Hey, we could have a shuttle drop them so they flame in the atmosphere. On summer nights you could take the kids out to watch the flaming communists.
              “Look, honey, another one. Isn’t it pretty.”
              Sigh. My sense of humor keeps getting darker and darker.

              1. Good! Good! Your anger has made your humor powerful!

                Infantry humor makes the Dark Side look well lit.

                Most impressive…..

                (grin)

              2. Please don’t change; I love the dark humor. And it just reminded me of the time right after my Dad died. My sister, Mom, and I were at the undertakers, and my sister and I were laughing so hard we were crying–we were going to take Dad’s ashes, load them into little green army men with parachutes, then flying over “The Mountain,” (Mount Rainier) we’d toss them out of the plane, maybe with a cannon, do a whole platoon at one time.

                Mom was in shock, though I think she might have stopped something she was really opposed to. My older brother put his foot down and said no.

                I laugh just thinking about it. Would have been great.

                1. A deceased cowboy shooter asked to be cremated and scattered.

                  His friends loaded his remains into blackpowder shotgun shells and we covered the berm at his favorite range with his ashes, in a military style firing of three volleys by fellow shooters. I led the firing party.

                  Family was much pleased.

                    2. Tell me more about my eyes… ! That is what my hair would look like if I hadn’t waited… yeah. Time for a cut!
                      And thanks so much for the compliment. Always appreciated.

              1. Some of which are intended to be the bad examples of others.

                (grin)

                Probably not theologically sound.

          2. My younger DIL (well, give or take a month, looks like, so DIL. Saves time) says a ballista. She gave me a model ballista for Christmas, with a little balsa wood guy to toss with it. For practice.
            My sons…. have good taste in women.

            1. I was part of a campus Medieval org back in college 1.0. For homecoming, our float was a full scale working trebuchet on wooden wheels (cable spools).

              The team test fired it once after the parade. Engineering students carefully computed the needed counterweight to throw a cinder block about1oo yards.

              And forgot that the counterweight -bin- was half an old pressure tank, of 1″ steel. And that sling on the end? Not just an extension of the beam. Its a multiplier, not an addition.

              And the loader used a half-block, not the full-sized one.

              yipe!

              …..

              At launch, the team realized something was badly wrong when at the other end of the soccer field the projectile was still climbing. Thus -way- up high over the roofs of the neighborhood beyond.

              Test team tore that thing apart and disposed of the components pronto.

              Subsequent analysis with pro help suggested the block made it all the way to the undeveloped “annex campus” woods beyond the -four rows- of houses. There were no reports of casualties or “sky rocks” or other mayhem, so luckyluckylucky.

              Pretty sure the statute of limitations has run.

  2. You’re right about folk whose ancestors came her long ago. “Our” founding ancestor (pushed off land in Scotland) came in 1750 from England. At that time, the US wasn’t the US. It was England. So giving the lie to the “nation of immigrants” wheeze. But then, leftists, being innured to lying, don’t insist that words mean what they mean.

    1. I’ve always said that the Whole of the Americas is a land of immigrants. Most of mine came here from the 17th to 19th century (though there is a vague possibility of “native American” so perhaps 10-15k years ago). Honestly, as I said before EVERYONE short a few folks at Olduvai Gorge (Or perhaps on the flanks of Mt Ararat, choose your story) are immigrants.

      Is the current immigration law reasonable? Hard to say it is, it is too convoluted and not getting us the people we need as it tends to favor chain migration. Should we have open borders and let everyone it as the current administration does? No, in fact HELL NO. Vetting for past criminal activity in their country of origin as well as expulsion for violations of our laws (Including entering at other than a proper port of entry) must happen as an absolute minimum. Asylum should be dealt with holding asylum seekers at the ports of entry until at least there is an initial determination that they are valid asylum seekers. The whole thing of personal recognizance to return for future hearings is insane. We also really have plenty of unskilled labor available, what this does is depress that market and means citizens who may have needs are not getting them met.

    2. Not disagreeing, but to be specific and pedantic as heck, around 1750 parts of what’s now the U.S. were then actually England, France, Spain, and Russia.

      I don’t think Portugal had any claims though.

        1. And I just had a duh moment on something I already knew – the Treaty of Tordesillas signed between Castile and Portugal in 1494, which modified the prior Papal Bull basically doing sort of the same thing, divided the New World colonies along a line of meridian basically halfway between Portuguese Cape Verde and the new islands Columbus discovered, with Portugal getting what was east and Castile west, thus Brazilians speaking Portuguese.

          Wikipedia’s unintentionally humorous note on that treaty: “Portugal and Spain largely respected the treaties, while the indigenous peoples of the Americas did not acknowledge them.”

          Heh.

  3. What gets me is the blatant cynicism of it. The border crisis is about flipping Texas’s electoral votes, nothing more.

  4. While my family has been here a long time, (1609 Jamestown) the family has benefited from a steady stream of marrying newer immigrants including my Mom as 3rd gen Greek/Swedish. Truly mongrels. It is totally the illegal sort and the lack of assimilation or any attempts at that that galls me the most. And the rhetoric of ‘doing jobs Americans wont do’ spit. There is no job Americans wont do. What all of this has done is destroy the nearly traditional path to the lower rungs of the middle class through the trades and small business ownership of a trade business.

    This was a very honorable way to take care of your family and grow wealth. Strong work ethic etc lead to bigger jobs and ownership and middle class or better. Second generation or maybe third went to college etc. And built in pride that as a family you accomplished this. Amazing and like no other place in the world. Now with the flood starting in the ’80s too cheap and drove out some of our long time minorities as they were trying to do it right and were priced out by ‘cheap’ foreign labor.

    Now we have an opportunity to invite any threatened South African farmers in due to the racist leadership in that country. We would be wise to do so, but what do you think the odds of that are?

    1. What the unchecked illegal immigration has also done, is wreck those poor and working-class communities where the illegals settle among their like. Competing for jobs and driving wages lower. Bringing crime and various kinds of skiving off well-meant charity. Swamping public schools and medical care … making life measurably worse for legal and long-time cultural enclaves of poor and working class American citizens.
      All so the comfortably well-off can feel virtuous.

      1. Yes. Of course. And the “managers” will tell you that’s okay. the wealth from these cheap workers goes to support the natives in welfare. it never occurs to them that’s not what people want.

        1. Years and years ago, I heard of a book titled “What’s the matter with Kansas?” Apparently its argument was that people living in Kansas and similar states would benefit financially from an expansion of various government programs, so it was perverse for them to vote for candidates who opposed such programs. It struck me, then (before I ever dreamed that I might someday live in Kansas!), that if you said to a well off, college educated liberal that they would benefit financially from a flat tax, or lower income tax rates, or the abolition of capital gains taxes, or something of that sort, they would probably indignantly say that they voted for what was in the public interest, not as a way to get money for themselves (though realistically, an awful lot of government programs do turn out to bring benefits to the upper middle class, but that’s another story). But they could not imagine that poor people, or working class people, or small businesses, either could or should want to vote for things THEY thought were for the good of the country; they thought of them as motivated, and wanted them to be motivated, solely by immediate private gain.

          1. And if one of those Kansas voters argued it was in his best interest, they’d call him selfish.

      2. Despite the BS coming out of DC, Real private hourly wages are net lower since the beginning of the Biden admin. By comparison, real private hourly wages were up 9% three years into the Trump admin. Government employees, though, are doing very well, as are the rich.

        You’ll see reports that real weekly wages are up, but that because people are working more hours not because the wages are higher.

        It’s all so tiresome.

    3. The thing is, the “doing jobs Americans won’t do” are actually describing just about every entry level, temporary, or seasonal position in America. Traditionally, these were jobs that teenagers and young adults would take on while still living at home until they developed the skills and experience to take on full-time, better paying positions. Unfortunately, the combination of child labor laws, and minimum wage requirements, have gravely damaged that sector of our economy. And led to the black market of slipping illegals into these jobs, bolstering their lies of Americans not being willing to do them.

      2. Oh, there are jobs a country’s citizens won’t do — but they’re mostly jobs nobody should do, like administering ‘MAiD’ to people the Canadian health care managers deem unworthy of ‘wasting’ medical resources on. Third-world illegal aliens will do things no American would stand for.
        ———————————
        The Democrats are willing to burn America to the ground, so long as they wind up squatting on top of the ashes.

        1. Hear Hear !!! this “The Democrats are willing to burn America to the ground, so long as they wind up squatting on top of the ashes.” so much this.

    4. What it really means is, “Doing the jobs Americans won’t do for as little pay as we want to give them.”

  5. I’m a little puzzled at the idea of Portuguese being difficult. Except in the sense that all languages are difficult, each in its own way. But the spelling seems much more logical than that of French or English. Let alone that of Gaelic, which makes me think of the definition of golf as “a game played with implements ill suited to the purpose.” Are there nuances to Portuguese spelling that regularly confuse schoolkids trying to learn them?

    1. I suspect that Sarah meant “Once you’re comfortable with the Second Language, your First Language becomes difficult.”.

    2. Ah. Well, how things were pronounced in my region had very little to do with how they were spelled, but also I have a private war with double letters in all languages.
      And yes, there are “hidden rules” like the use of ao with tilda versus an or on. Oh, accents were just pure h*ll on the dyslexic. I can’t tell right from left so accute and grave are a non starter.
      RIGHT NOW? though. My brother says I’m an ex-speaker of Portuguese. I seem to have replaced Portuguese with English and relegated Portuguese to “foreign language where my fluency is dubious.”

      1. I can’t tell right from left so accute and grave are a non starter.

        Sorry, but that is hilarious coming from a multi-lingual writer.

        On the bright side, we speak/read/write American, so we (mostly) don’t know the difference. It’s “facade”. The “isn’t that precious” eye rolls from “faćade”, “faĉade”, “faċade”, “fačade”, and “façade” will all be the same.

        1. ex-multi-lingual more like. My other languages kind of rolled off with time. I can still understand a lot, but am hesitant to even try to speak.
          And yeah, accents were my bete noir.
          Every accent error counted as a quarter of spelling mistake, and you had more than 6 spelling mistakes per page of dictation you got the ruler.
          I think my palms have calluses….

        2. As an aside, damn you. I didn’t realize there was an actual blog linked (most people it looks like, but there’s nothing there.) And you’re baking. historical baking.
          Do you know how little I need the distraction and the calories?
          If this turns into a rabbit hole, I’m going to send you a dictation recording and making you type the books! (Joking, joking.)

          1. I’m a very intermittent poster, so you should have no trouble keeping up, if you even want to. It’s mostly a diary, not anything anyone else cares about.

            I’m going to try to get a heart-shaped cookie cutter for another batch of danishes, today. Should I succeed, there will be a picture and that’s about it.

            1. But…. food! Okay, fine, the issues, I have them. Actually more with a need to cook than to eat. Problem being now the kids don’t live with us, someone has to eat it….

      2. I’m only fluent in English. On the other hand, I just finished the French translation of Kingsbury’s Courtship Rite, Parade nuptiale, and I found that I was not deciphering it word by word, but reading it sentence by sentence, with pauses to look up unfamiliar French words. Those two processes have a very different mental rhythm; it’s possible to do the second for pleasure, but not the first (or maybe it’s the kind of pleasure one gets from doing puzzles). I suppose maybe that sheds light on the difference between people who can actually read, and people who really can’t.

          1. That’s how I learn ‘em. I find poetry to be a great way to set a language in one’s head. I can read and understand much better than I speak ‘em,

            Number one son can do any accent in just about any language. He may not understand a word, but he sounds wonderful. That’s his primary “knack” from being on the spectrum.

      3. Second languages in the brain are funny things. The Reader lived in Spain for 18 months as a kid and between a tutor and Spanish friends my age, got reasonably fluent, although his accent was an odd mix of Castilian from the tutor (the equivalent of the King’s English in Spain in the 1960s) and Valencian (the equivalent of white trash English) from his friends. Then took Spanish in high school with a teacher who learned Spanish in South America. Over 3 years she couldn’t ‘fix’ the Reader’s accent. Stuffed it far back in my brain and forgot it. Almost 20 years later I’m in Mexico (the Medium Sized Defense Contractor the Reader was working for then before it got swallowed up in the 90s consolidation) had a manufacturing plant there. The Americans assigned there all spoke Spanish but a lot of the technical support sent down didn’t (some funny stories about that The Reader will tell another time). One trip I’m down there for an entire week, and Friday morning he just started joining in conversations with the plant workers in Spanish. A lot of jaws dropped, because it had been assumed the Reader didn’t understand what was being said.

        1. I spent five years failing to learn Spanish. I had the devil of a time because I couldn’t think in the language. I had to double translate, first what they said into english, think of my reply, translate that back to spanish, and deliver it. It was painfully slow and frustrating.

          In college, on a whim, I took a little 2 credit class on Welsh…. when I tried answering the prof’s question, what came out? SPANISH!! I was angry enough to tear books in half.

          I really wish I had a gift for languages, but I don’t, unless you count translating geek into normal, or finance into engineer.

        2. The IC fab area in HP employed a lot of Philipina ladies, mostly expats from the islands. Thus Tagalog was the favorite gossiping/bitching language. One of the computer techs (worked alongside our department, but wasn’t a fixture in the fab) had a spanish surname, but he was nth generation Philipino. (No idea of the value of n, but I think it was > 1). He got a great laugh at the conversations going on around him, with the operators thinking he wasn’t aware of what they were talking about.

          One or two of the supervisors were Fhilipina, but most were not. Some of them were seriously despised…

      1. Back when I lived in San Diego, there was a book on linguistics I borrowed several times from the San Diego State University library: A statistical study of patterns of sounds in world languages. At the end of the book was an appendix with tables of sound patterns in several hundred languages. The ones for European languages were all broadly similar, with a few odd sounds in each language: th sounds in English, ü and ö in German (and the equivalent sounds in French), Spanish j/German ch, nasalized vowels in French and Portuguese. And then there was Gaelic, with a lot of really different sounds and with sound distinctions that no other European language made. Trying to spell it with the Roman alphabet should have been given up as a bad job; it ought to have had its own alphabet, the way a lot of the Slavic languages do, or Sanskrit. Or at least that’s the way that chart of Gaelic sounds made it look!

        1. So, a book written by people with letters after their names and too much time on their hands. 😉

          Now, it’s Irish I have, not the Gaelic of Scotland, and it has more sense to it than English, many days, and thrice in March. 😉

          I mean, listen to this:

          1. I thought it quite a fascinating book. I approve when linguists test their ideas about language against large numbers of languages, instead of basing them on a sample of one or two languages and ideas in their own heads. And your dismissal could apply more broadly to all kinds of books that I have found enjoyable and informative, on subjects from philosophy of mind to natural history to the historical development of radio. You need not share my pleasures but I won’t give credence to your denigrating them.

            As for Gaelic, I am not saying anything against it as a spoken language, or against any spoken language. I’m only saying that the Roman alphabet does not seem well suited to writing it; it was designed for a language with a very different pattern of sounds.

      2. My mother was a teacher in the Gaeltacht before she came here. I hardly know any Irish beyond reading the signs on the bus.

  6. I enjoyed this one. Having had the benefit of visiting Iberian, Mediterranean, as well as multiple Scandinavian, Baltic and Slavic countries on Uncle Sam’s dime, I can heartily concur with your cultural analyses above. Amen to the first AND last sentences as well.

  7. “…I couldn’t be Latin, since Portugal was “solidly European.” that sounds as stupid as “the French have no word for entrepreneur.” smacks forehead

    I’m guess what they mean is Latin American, which is still rather clueless as Atlantic coast Brazil is different than interior Peru is different than Panama is different than Trinidad. Canada is different than the US, even though we’re among the most closely related cultures.

    1. See my comment below. The differences are -foundational- and showing up pretty hard in 2024.

      Foundationally, Canada is the Old Boys Network and America is GET OFF MY LAWN. That’s the difference.

        2. What, the line about the French not having a word for “entrepreneur”? That’s what I was asking about.

            1. Okay. Does “George W” mean George Washington? Or George Walker Bush? Or someone else? And do we know who actually said it? Or was it just made up and attributed to whoever?

              My favorite misquote is “The exception proves the rule,” interpreted as meaning “If you present a black swan to me, that proves that swans are white.” It turns out the original Latin maxim means “The exception establishes the rule for cases not excepted.” That is, a sign saying “parking permitted Saturday and Sunday” implies that parking on weekdays is prohibited . . . The sort of practical matter the Romans were good at.

      2. Sounds kind of like the punchline of a joke my German/Spanish interpreter/translator girlfriend in Panama told: “Ich kann nicht die Englischen worter fur ‘Roast Beef’ errineren.”

        “I can’t remember the English words for ‘Roast Beef’,'” signifying that Roast Beef (which, IIRC, would be ‘bratfleisch’ auf Deutsch) has been fully adopted in German.

    2. Who said that? That’s truly marvelous.

      When I was a kid, we had an old economics textbook on the shelves, written by Alfred Marshall. One thing I still remember from it is that his word for the person who directs the affairs of a business was the Germanic “undertaker”—which is an exact calque of the French “entrepreneur,” though of course now it has a more specific meaning.

      1. “One thing I still remember from it is that his word for the person who directs the affairs of a business was the Germanic “undertaker”—which is an exact calque of the French “entrepreneur,” ”

        Kind of like “supervisor” and “overseer”.

        1. WPDE. In spades. With bells, whistles and an IED (no, not the variation of DEI or DIE; the other sort) or two.

  8. You said two things here that hit my buttons hard. (The big red ones that have a locking cover, right? You pushed them.)

    First: “Imagine how I feel. Imagine how every legal immigrant, who worked and saved and integrated feels.”

    Former immigrant here. Dear Americans, you are all living in DREAMLAND when it comes to your government. I know that most people here disapprove of government, and everybody loves to yell at #Brandon the potted plant. But to truly understand the bone-deep laziness, dysfunction, outright corruption and all-round -insanity- of the United States federal government, y’all need to speak to a legal immigrant. The truth about the US government is that nobody hates them enough. They’ve earned your best hating efforts, I assure you. You need to cut them back with a chainsaw. It’s a logging operation, the pruning shears are not going to get it done.

    Canadians also are living in comfy-cozy dreamland. Immigrants here, legal or illegal, are camping in parks this year and delivering pizzas as a job. Like, all of them. The Lord has gifted us a beautiful warm winter so not that many have frozen to death so far. I don’t use religious language often, this is a divine mercy upon the innocent as far as I can see.

    Second: “Second, nothing will piss Latins more than opening the borders and letting the old culture reach and touch them again.”

    Oh, holy crap my dudes. We left home and family to ESCAPE the insanity and get to America, where men have rights and guns to back them up. I lived in NY, MN and AZ, my vote goes to AZ where I have more practical freedom and less government interference as a VACATIONER, a foreign visitor, than I do at home in Canada as a born citizen. The difference is not subtle.

    Snowbirds do not come only for the weather, my friends. We come to visit YOU, the Americans, the free people. We come to breath in the breath of freedom. Do not think that I am exaggerating, the difference is not subtle. Americans are nothing like Canadians, not even in fully corrupt and socialized New York.

    So the next time you hear Some Guy yammering America needs to be more like Canada, or more like Europe, you need to deal with him. America needs to be more like America.

    1. We moved from California to Kansas for similar reasons.

      In California I had a business license, which cost under a hundred in San Diego and over a hundred in Riverside. So when we moved in here I called the city government and asked how I got a business license. And they asked a couple of questions, found out that I worked at home and got all my jobs over the Internet, and said, “You don’t need a business license for that.”

      Edgar Friedenberg, a leftish sociologist of the sixties with oddly libertarian leanings, moved to Canada around 1970. A decade later he wrote a book about the authoritarian strain in Canadian culture, titled Deference to Authority.

      1. Yes. Block Captains, busybodies and all government employees feel justified and empowered to make you do it their way. Down to how you park your car in -your- driveway.

        Which is why I live out in the country. The neighbors who think it is their business how I train my dog live far enough away that I can ignore them.

        Americans know they are being rude when they try to make you do it their way. Canadians think it is their right and duty, so they never, ever, stop.

        1. During the interval when we lived in Riverside, maybe a year before we left California, we had a woman come to our door who wanted to give us free cell phones, apparently sponsored by some government program. I looked at C and asked, “Do you need another cell phone?” And when she said no, I told the woman that both of us had cell phones already and didn’t feel a need for another one. She seemed baffled at the idea that we would turn down something “free”; it took a minute or two to persuade her that she should just leave.

          (If I wanted an additional cell phone for privacy of communications, I’d buy one for cash; I certainly wouldn’t take one given away by a government! TANSTAAFCPh . . .)

            1. Yes, even if I hadn’t had a cell phone, I would have rather paid for one than taken a free one from the government. Though I don’t need if they would have needed chips; these days that sort of thing can be software-defined.

        2. There is a law here in town, mostly ignored, that any vehicle parked on the street has to be moved every 3 days.

          So, one day I find chalk marks on the road and my van tires, and a notice that if it’s not moved every 3 days they’ll tow it away. Some asshole complained to the cops about my van being parked in front of my house. How’s that for a chickenshit busybody?

          So, every 3 days I have to drive down to the little traffic circle a couple of blocks away, around and back. A total waste of time and gas, and unnecessary pollution. What benefit is there for anybody in that?
          ———————————
          The one thing we need more of from the government is LESS!!

          1. I can do better than that. I had the city inspector around because of a vehicle parked in my driveway.

            The inspector intimated to me that one of my neighbors [cough-that guy over there-cough] had a habit of wandering the streets with a camera looking for infractions to complain about. We agreed that my vehicle was in fact a piece of landscaping, a “rustic structure,” in city inspector parlance, and he left happy.

            I put a crane in the driveway after that, just to be That Guy. Also a gate on the driveway. No law against a 12′ steel lifting frame or a very unsubtle gate, apparently.

            Later, a different neighbor called the cops because I was trimming dead branches from -my- trees in -my- backyard. The cop suggested I build a high fence and paint objectionable graphics on the side facing the complainant.

            I decided I’d better move, before I ended up in jail. If you go to jail, they win.

            And that is why I live half a klick from my nearest neighbor, behind a wire fence, with a big black barky dog. They still complain (for real, they do) but I don’t care because it is a -rural- property and I can keep cows if I want. Or horses, sheep, chickens, woolly mammoths, etc. One dog behind a fence isn’t going to get any action from the county inspectors.

            Or not yet, anyway. Who knows what the future holds? Probably nothing good.

            1. If the worst happens, maybe you’ll be lucky and get a cop like the one who suggested the X-rated fence, who’ll suggest you deal with the problem neighbor by allowing “barky dog” to enjoy a bit of exercise running down a free mobile lunch… 😈

                4. I tried 3 times to reply with suggestions for renaming him after more…ummm…assertive canines. WP (which DE) apparently didn’t like any of them and sent them to the bit bucket. Think of the Sherlock Holmes story about the glowing hound, or the Norse wolf, and you’ll have them. 😉

                    1. And he didn’t respond to his name by emulating his namesake? Well, that blows that idea. 😦 😉

            2. I really want a wooly mammoth to hitch a wagon to to go grocery shopping. Considering the cost of groceries, even a mammoth to feed isn’t going to make that much impact on the bill.

            3. We had a border collie and a lab-aussie who didn’t much like one of our neighbors and would bark at her when she’d walk with her dog along the shared private road. Our girls were behind a fence, and had some neighbors they liked, with the complainer in the other category. (Another complained, but we was a full-blown Arschloch. When he died, there was little mourning in town. Even relatives were less than upset.)

              Anyway, the first neighbor complained to the county Animal Control about our dogs. We explained the situation (fence, and only barking), and noted that her dog was not leashed and occasionally would make threatening moves when we were leaving our property. Since that dog weighed as much as our two combined, she was more of a threat.

              Told the officer that. I think he got back to the complainer and told her that we had a stronger case than she did, and to have a nice glass of STFU . She did.

          2. We have the same type of parking regulation here. Only the only time someone gets a parking ticket is if someone calls the PD to complain. In the cul-de-sac we used to live in there were only two legal parking spots, so everyone parked in the middle if there wasn’t room in the driveway. The cops came around all the time, but no one ever got a ticket.

            1. We have the same regulations here in Lane County too. Mostly to prevent RV/boat street storage, and homeless street camping. Doesn’t stop either. Homeless camping gets removed by the homeowner organizing the neighbors calling in complaints. Whatever. We, and other neighbors, just have two driveways. 1) Regular leading up to garage; and 2) one that runs along one side of the house or other. We get a lot of parking in front of the house at 8:30 AM and 2:30 PM (school drop off and pick up. House is close to grade school.) When the neighbor’s motor home is parked out front, it “steals” school parking.

              1. I recall grandma complaining about people ignoring the [NO PARKING 2-4 Pm] signs (her place was at least sort of near the high school) and being told by a cop, “Well, the signs are rather high and easy to miss.”

                She shot back, “If they said [FREE BEER 2-4 PM] everyone would be reading them just fine.

          3. Because of the people that park in front of other peoples houses leaking oil/trashed cars for days and weeks on end making it so that the folks that own the house can’t park on the street. Can’t have the trashy vehicles in front of THEIR house you know.

            Other take. There are reasons for every law, mostly boiling down to asshats playing rules lawyer’s and your not allowed to use 2×4 reasoning on ’em.

            Might be a bit of a hot take for me.

            1. Also, if the street is a little old and narrow, it can block modern firetrucks and ambulances from getting through. (Knew a neighborhood or two like that – street parking verboten because of the need for fire access.)

          4. That policy made some sense when I was going to the U of Redacted. Some of the student-owned cars were, er, reluctant to run and if not forced to go from one side of the street to the other, might have had trees grow through the engine bay.

            OTOH, it’s BS elsewhere.

            1. might have had trees grow through the engine bay.
              ………………..

              Might resemble that. Not quite that bad when we sold it. Had weeds growing up through the floor boards.

          5. Well, at least your battery won’t die that way.

            (Spoken from the Great Shutdowns of 2020 which killed, I believe, two batteries for the truck. Because we kept forgetting to drive it somewhere once a week…)

            1. Much like the story of a university that went from a first-come-first-serve lot to a limited locked gate lot. Well, if ONE lock is secure, a few more will make it REALLY secure. As I heard it, it was under two weeks (this in the pre-cameras everywhere days, of course) to get tired of dealing the added security every day.

    2. not even in fully corrupt and socialized New York.

      I first read that as “not even in fully corrupt and sodomized New York”. Actually, I think the first look was more accurate.

      Full disclosure, I was born and raised in upstate New York.

      1. Sodom on Hudson. It really works if you know the names of the various towns on the river.

        NYC born and raised am I.

            1. Spider Robinson did a parody of “That’s Amore” in one of the Callahan books. I’m brain drained, but “That’s Gomorrah” sounds like an appropriate song for Mordor on the Potomac.

                1. The movie theater in Flyover Falls hasn’t seen my body once. Haven’t gotten into any of the Marvel movies–read the comic books in college (rather liked Daredevil, but the Fantastic Four were a favorite), but that’s all long in the past.

                  1. Most of the Marvel movies are good, from the first Iron Man up to 90% of the way through Avengers: Endgame. Particularly the core sequence of alternating Captain America and Avengers movies is worth watching. After Endgame they go downhill pretty fast.

                1. Lungs are clearing. Getting some strength back. Back at work. So I am much improved. Thanks.

      2. I lived in Tarry Town and Lake Carmel. I loved living there, and I loved the people, but the government at the town and state level is -despicable- and needs renovation. As in, fire them all and start over. We fled for Arizona as soon as we could. It was a good call.

        1. We moved from MD to AZ for much the same reason. Now if Katie would try skydiving at the Grand Canyon wearing a backpack instead of a parachute…

      3. I thought “upstate New York” was still considered part of the US, and only the Hudson River valley from Albany down to NYC was the Democratic People’s Republic of New Yorkistan.

            1. That’s the last street in the Bronx, where the world ends and Spider Man can’t swing anymore? ~:D

              I street-viewed it, nice houses.

              In Toronto the world ends at Highway 427 in the west, Steele’s Avenue in the North and pretty much Markham Rd. in the east. That’s where you fall off the edge.

  9. We went through the immigration process twice for my wife (she’s Japanese). The people working at the embassy in Tokyo were lovely people, but the process was long and idiotic, and the first time we had to show up with a tiny newborn baby and pictures to prove we were actually married for real. The staff member who interviewed said she loved that part of her job because people’s photos are fun to look at and babies are cute, so like I said, good on the US Embassy in Tokyo.

    The second time we started in 2014 for our 2015 return. It took damn near a year, and it required Rumi flying back to Japan in July (my visa ran out in May and we had to leave) for two weeks for her final interview at the embassy. We had been married for 8 years and had three kids at that point. Why is it not cheaper and easier for people in her position to immigrate while basically any criminal a-hole is able to just stroll across the border with minimal “processing?” It’s galling.

    Were I to emigrate to Japan, I can immediately get a spousal visa and all it requires is I pay a (relatively) small fee and have a “Certificate of Eligibility” (there is a little effort required in getting a CoE, but not much, and most people I knew married to a Japanese person got their spousal visas there after arriving with a work visa). Then I can live and work there indefinitely so long as I keep it up to date.

    1. So, we didn’t have kids when I applied. We had been married five years. This brought up so many questions, despite shared home, having bought a house together, and shared bank accounts that it was ridiculous. They talked to our friends, they–
      So, we settled it by getting the bills and an affidavit from our very expensive (with an income under 30k we were spending $500 a month on diagnostic and treatment. Out of pocket. Beyond what the insurance covered) infertility doctor.
      Was it reasonable? Given all the “I married the maid so she wouldn’t be deported” fiction? MAYBE. But dear Lord. Now my hard-earned ability to vote is being diluted by illegals voting. And ask how I feel about giving up all the connections and my degree so my kids could grow up American when the old culture is invading.
      Sigh. I see red. I do.

      1. It must be worse for you than it is for us. We weren’t really trying to escape anything in Japan (just wanted to spare our kids the awful work-life balance there). And it is much more easygoing here than it is there which suits my wife a lot better. And since we’re so far north and isolated to boot the current crisis is still something we see mostly online. For now…

      2. And if I want to legally marry the maid that should be that, end of story.

        The moral authority of the immigration bureaucracy to question absolutely anything on any individual basis after their performance happily opening the border floodgates to the invading masses with at most token complaints about the impact on their days off is nil.

        Fix that flood before you even think of chasing any drips.

    2. Both one of my co-workers, and one of my wife’s, are immigrants from Canada. Both had been living in the US for years and held legal jobs here (police officer and primary school teacher) before applying for citizenship. Both had to drive down to the Twin Cities from North Dakota for a 5 minute interview. My wife’s co-worker had to drive from the rez in western ND, a 7 hr drive one way. You’d think they could have farmed something like that out to the people working the border, an hour away.

  10. And if we’re gonna play the left’s cultural games, then who was actually the first Latin Supreme Court Justice? Certainly NOT Sotomayer. Hint: there’s a law school with his name on it in NYC.

    1. He was of Portuguese-Jewish ancestry, and my mind is blanking on his name, because I need more coffee.
      Sottomayer is the first mentally disabled SC justice. But hey, we got Queijada Brown to help hold up THAT side.

          2. My memory is like a sponge, capable of holding vast amounts of information and losing it all when pressure is applied.

      2. The first nominated while mentally disabled, perhaps. 😋

        The other day, I mentioned another justice who retired due to mental health issues. But I got the name and the affliction wrong. It was Justice William O. Douglas, who suffered a stroke. He was only convinced to step down when he became aware that most of the other members of the court (White opposed the idea; I’m not sure if anyone else did) were planning to take steps to ensure that he was never the deciding vote on a case.

    1. James Woods is right up there, too, as is Tom Selleck. And there are many others, mostly from the ’30s-’60s.

  12. Neither my huisband nor myself speak anything but English FLUENTLY, because our immigrant ancestors were DETERMINED to assimilate. My mother remembers both of her grandparents saying “We are American now, we speak English” if the other one slipped and spoke German.

    Losing some of that cultural stuff is kind of a baby/bathwater situation, but let’s not go crazy in the other direction, because I think that’s called balkanization. And the two-anthems crapola is a signpost on that road.

    1. My kids don’t speak anything else fluently either. I’d intended to make them bi lingual, because it was believed to help, but since we speak English at home. (Dan speaks French — kind of, and so do I, but really?)… Anyway, I figured if they wanted to learn more they could do it on their own as I did.
      Weirdly the only thing they have that’s weakly Portuguese is food tastes. 😀

      1. Our hostess said “Weirdly the only thing they have that’s weakly Portuguese is food tastes. ” Could be worse Dan is of predominantly English/ UK ancestry right? I had the English/Irish / New England palate (Cook until gray no spices but salt and a BIT of pepper) until I married and my wife’s palate is predominantly Italian (thank heavens not Swede, other than their baked goods and Swedish meatballs they’re worse than my British Isles ancestry) and thinks any cooking starts with sauteing an onion and some garlic. After a couple years (and various trips to assorted ethnic restaurants with coworkers) my palate is far more flexible than it was.

        1. My shelf of spices for regular use has allspice, ancho chili, anise, basil, bay leaves, black pepper, California chili, cardamom, chipotle chili, cinnamon, cloves, coriander, cumin, fenugreek, five spice powder, garlic powder, ginger, lemon peel, Maharajah curry, marjoram, mint, mustard seed (brown), nutmeg (whole, with a little grater in the jar), onion powder, orange peel, oregano, paprika, parsley, rosemary, saffron, sage, sumac, sweet curry, thyme, and turmeric. Though I’m going to have to replace the Maharajah curry with something else, I think; Spice House isn’t listing it any more.

          (I stopped patronizing Penzey’s when they started sending me left wing propaganda.)

          The shelf above has a couple of odd items, such as rose water and arrowroot powder, mixed in with C’s boxed of herbal teas.

          All that is stuff I figured out for myself. When I was a kid we have a bunch of spices on a shelf, but my mother never used them that I remember, and that shelf was directly over the stove, so I doubt they had any flavor left. My maternal grandmother was born in New Hampshire . . .

        2. Sounds familiar. Mom’s mother was ‘murican, with the family mostly English (Breton beforehand, but in the Kentycky in 1830, then later in Iowa), and $SPOUSE was born Canadian, with much of her family from Great Britain (Northern Ireland/Scots/not-quite Welsh, and so on). Cook til it surrenders, use some salt, some pepper and call it done. The home spice rack almost never needed refilling.

          $SPOUSE uses Real Spices(tm), but in quantities that need analytical lab equipment to measure. She has a very sensitive sense of smell (not helped by the Fauci-flu), and reasonable quantities of red peppers drive her away. I had roommates who were heavy on the spices and kept the tradition. It’s faded, and my trial of fresh garden-grown cayenne peppers was quite painful. OTOH, I like the ground variety, and the pickled jalapenos at the taqueria are not safe from me. So, my palette is limited now, but still runs on the warm side.

          1. I go through massive quantities of both cumin and ginger. Lesser quantities of other spices; both C and I are sissies about hot spices, so we use quite modest amounts of chili or curry.

            1. The restaurant supply had large quantities of cumin one Cinco de Mayo, and I got well over a pint’s worth. Unfortunately, it bothered $SPOUSE a lot, so in the interests of domestic tranquility, the cumin got tossed. I was also getting tired of it.

              I use a good amount of paprika, though I’m trying to finish up the cayenne that’s been lingering in the pepper portion of the cabinet. I have to avoid the shop-made salsas at the taqueria (occasionally, the sous-chef thickens them with flour, and the effects are unpleasant), but I have siraracha–the Tabasco variant is rather different from Huy Fong, but a) it’s available, and b) reasonably tasty, Cholula, and Tapatio. I can get the Tabasco Sriracha and the Tapatio at the restaurant supply (no sales tax FTW), and two-packs of Cholula at Costco.

              1. Ah, you like the hot spices. I use modest amounts, but I take more pleasure in other flavors.

      2. Our kids had a pretty decent basis of Japanese before we left (oldest just turned 5) but that all ended when we got back. Our daughter has interest in Japanese but doesn’t put much effort into it. They don’t seem to care much for the Japanese food their mom makes (although I love it).

      3. I tell most folks that English isn’t my first language. Sarcasm is. At my house we speak a patois of Sarcasm and Movie Quotes, with a smattering of English thrown in.

        1. I’ve said more than once that my native language is written English. I can manage spoken English, but I have an accent.

          1. Oh yes, the words you’ve never actually heard, only read. So when you have to pronounce them in conversation, people look at you funny.

            Know the feeling all too well.

            1. Also sentence length, more formal grammatical constructions, and choice of a larger vocabulary of words I DO know how to pronounce (while I avoid various informal words). There are a lot of markers of the formal register.

                1. “You say this as if it were a bad thing.”

                  or

                  “Why, thank you for the compliment!”

                    1. I might very well have done the same. It’s way easier for me to think of an answer here, where I’m under no time pressure!

                    2. There’s a handy French term I can’t think of right now (of course, and apropos) translating as “stairway thoughts” where you think of the perfect bon mot as you walk up the stairs to your apartment after leaving the party.

                    4. That term is in fact “esprit d’escalier,” the one Sarah just used. “Spirit of the stairway.”

  13. Not on the post, but on the picture: It is a pretty nice picture overall, but as is common with a lot of the AI-generated art I’ve experimented with that involved rails, the track configuration here is crazy. But hey, at least in this picture, unlike some I’ve gotten from the Bing art AI, all the people have the correct number of limbs – three-legged ladies and five-armed couples are rather disturbing.

    1. I thought it was a different view point of the Trolley problem, from the perspective of the group of people. 🙂

      1. Looks like cable cars with the cable point to the right of center for the car. Apparently the street was too narrow for the cars to pass each other except for the wide spot in the background.

        It threw me off, because my memory of SF cable cars had the cable dead center in the tracks. This makes sense, however.

        Looking below: funicular, eh? That makes sense. The wide spot would be at a fixed (mostly) location. Don’t let the cable stretch. 🙂

        1. Specifically, this photo appears to be taken from near the top of the Bica Funicular / Ascensor da Bica looking roughly southward. The stretch that was wide enough for the tram cars to pass is about two blocks in the center.

      1. Thanks for explaining. I think I understand now, after looking at Google Earth imagery and reading the Wiki article on Lisbon tramways. In addition to normal streetcars, Lisbon has several funiculars that run in the streets, and have electric motors on the cars, instead of a trestle with a motor in a building at the top like the Pittsburgh inclines have and the long-gone Cincinnati inclines used to. So what is in the photo are two rails and a cable slot for each direction, for four rails and two cable slots total. The tracks are too close for trams to pass for part of the way, but that doesn’t matter because the trams are attached to the cable to counterbalance each other, and only need to able to pass at the middle.

          1. Asertugneayugepweredas? ;poiuwernbcakjhepruqot

            [Translation: Jase T. Cat says hi. The two-foots says, “Get down from there!”]

              1. I have gotten very used to working with a cat draped over one arm. This is especially problematic when I have to do something like typing or actual photoshop, because he likes my right arm. (To reduce incipient carpal tunnel, I have the mouse on my left for most things, but I still have to do art right-handed.)

                  1. When I work from my home desk, Miz Kitty will occasionally sneak into the gap between my back and the chair, then expand.

                2. I use a touch pad because of tendentious. Better when mouse at home because my arm is in the correct supporting position. But I’ve used a touch pad for so long at work that it is just easier.

    1. I read somewhere the first vote that one R swapped for procedural reasons to allow this vote to happen. I only saw that in one place. Everywhere else had them lumped in with the Rhino brigade. Scalise got back.

      1. Of course. Which was the whole purpose of persecuting him. IF his “crimes” were even true and not cooked up. I wish the idiots would stop being boy scouts.

  15. My better half is Portugese, her grandma used to say i was too, i guess i kinda am really because i grew up around a lot of them, osmosis eh,

  16. Lets see, roughly in order: Basic (various dialects), Fortran, COBOL, a tiny dabble in ADA, then C, C++ (a little, I was managing by then, and object oriented can be weird, so…), SQL, just a smattering of JAVA (object again, see above), various scripting stuff (JavaScript mostly), and a little bit of coding for MATHCAD.

    Does HTML count?

    1. Oh! Those type of languages. Though to be fair they are English adjacent. Similar lists for me, no for ADA and MATHCAD. Add Pascal, and a few others. Object programming isn’t that hard, and fun, if you apply the KISS principle and are willing to make adjustments when later connections become noticeable. I despise copy and paste programming. Otherwise, just West Coast American English for me. My “speak slowly” fluent HS Spanish has long evaporated from atrophy. I could probably still read it, haven’t tried in forever. Write it, or speak it? Forget it.

      Pretty sure former co-workers are taking my name in vain on some of my code. There were some programs that had code that duplicated in places. Given the opportunity of major changes to those features by the time the rewrite was done, that was no longer true. No more “It wasn’t changed” or “it was changed in A but not B”, not if I had anything to do with it. In addition the changes were extensive enough that the changes are not being deconstructed to the old method without a lot more work than it took to write the code to share correctly.

      Only 3 programs stumped me, because of the way the system module programs worked. Code was the same across the three programs, but the program wrappers to compile had to be different. Not a big deal if the change explicitly applied to one of the 3 modules. Big deal if change applied to all 3. OTOH make the change once, compile, and test in one; repeat until sure changed correctly. Then compile the other two, and verify test in them. Huge change on how long changes made and 100% eliminated misunderstandings with clients.

      1. I forgot Pascal! Of course, that’s because I’ve forgotten everything I knew about it back when I wrote code in it, but I once did know my way around Pascal. And I also did some stuff in assembly and various machine languages way, way back too. And I know what a JCL card is for a program loaded using IBM cards. And I remember when telephones used to have actual dials.

        Get off my lawn.

        1. I also did some stuff in assembly and various machine languages way, way back too. And I know what a JCL card is for a program
          ………………..

          I missed out on the assembly and machine languages. Didn’t deal with cards either, but they were being used in some of the classes when I had my first class. Old enough to have used a teletype for programming in my first class. Not the class that launched my career, 7 years later. Was the class that had me loathing anything, and I do mean anything, to do with computers.

          I laughed at the councilor when making the career change. Councilor looked at my transcript (with all that math and STEM) and asked why accounting? (Because if I can’t do what I want, might as well do what is easy – accounting.) Councilor said I’d be good at programming (sorry) “coding”. I laughed. Reality check had to take the Intro to Accounting three classes, and the Intro to Computers, regardless. After summer term done, let us reassess. Accounting classes were as easy as I remembered (seriously, was racing to see who of about 4 of us could get done fastest with highest score. Kind of hard to beat 100%+ in 10 minutes of an hour test.) Computers? 180 difference from original introduction. (Was it the teletype and mainframe VS keyboard, screen, and Apple IIe? Or was it +7 years. Do I embrace “And”?) Fell in love with coding and the patterns (wasn’t the math. I see patterns.) Rest is history.

          I think I am slightly younger than you are. I am still in the “get off my lawn” light. 🙂 🙂 🙂

          1. HS computer class had an IMSAI 8080, a teletype to the mainframe off in the district offices, complete with a punch tape reader for getting your program back in after you logged off since it didn’t store anything, and the last semester or so a brand new Apple II of some early vintage, a miraculous leap ahead over the others.

            So the first year university intro to programming 1 class being on IBM cards was a shock. You had to wait around in the programming lab for a punch machine to be free to punch out your program on cards, with one line per card, then put your card deck together with the correct JCL cards (Job Control Language – basically “program starts next card”, “program ends prior card” and “run program” sort of commands) and submit it to be run. If your deck was right, your results would eventually show up in the output bin as a printout on continuous-fold greenbar paper some indeterminate time later. If you made a mistake your printout would be your error codes, and you had to go figure out and fix what you screwed up and submit your deck again.

            They’d run out of JCL cards right when you needed one trying to make an assignment due date, so the trick was to run your own copies of the JCL cards (the real ones were on various colored card stock rather than the plain buff colored cards we had to buy packs of at the bookstore to do our programs on, but the punch machines had a copy function so you could run a bunch of your own).

            Intro to programming 2 was on some sort of terminal, with your own file storage on a mainframe somewhere. And instant error codes. No more JCL cards. What luxury.

            1. If you were taking college classes out of HS and Apple II were just on the market you are a little younger than I am. I went back to college in ’83. Graduated from first college in ’79.

            2. HS computer lab sound much the same, TTY hooked to the U of MN timeshare mainframe with a 30/60 baud acoustic coupler, program saved on punched paper tape. The year I graduated (and the school closed – no causational relationship, honest) we got an Apple II+

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