Borders

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Over my sixty years and a bit of life, I’ve crossed many borders. When I was a kid, shopping in Spain was a thing (because a lot of things were available there that weren’t in Portugal) so taking a bus to Spain to shop, with mom and all the other older village women was a thing. (I was along for two reasons: White Chocolate and mushrooms, most of them nearly impossible to obtain in Portugal at the time.)

I also traveled, by bus, plane, train and automobile. At the end of those trips (or in the middle) I had to haul out my passport or ID and show it to a bored border guard who would do the stamp stamp stamp thing.

But truly I’ve only ever crossed a border, one that can only be crossed once. Oh, sure, you can go back again, but the back isn’t there and what you’ll get is something third after crossing that other border. Which I have no intention of doing because I like who I am and what I am.

What in heck am I talking about? Acculturation. It’s an internal border which you cross mentally and emotionally over years. And once you’re done crossing it, you’re quite literally someone else on the other side.

I can’t imagine the circumstances that would force me to go back. Or rather, I can, but I’d rather not as it would involve a lot of deaths and devastation. But if I went back, I would be utterly foreign there. Other. I am when I visit. The country rubs me raw in a million small ways, and I’m sure I drive my surviving relatives — the only thing that would entice me to visit — bonkers in a million small ways that even they can’t articulate. Just “she’s annoying.” (I’d like to point out I was always annoying. BUT this annoying is deeper than the skin, something like fingernails rubbing on the blackboard of your soul.) My husband doesn’t feel it, possibly because he doesn’t have the scars where things were remodeled. To his mind, it is perfectly logical, should he retire in the next two years, if my dad is still alive, that we go over, say, for the whole summer. It’s warmer there, and we could go to the sea which both of us love, and I could spend time with my dad, whom he knows I love. Sure, it’s an alien culture, but he figures that’s okay because it’s temporary. I find myself in the curious position of explaining to him that after say 2 weeks I’d probably just start screaming and flipping off everyone and everything, and it wouldn’t be pleasant for anyone.

And it’s not that I hate Portugal. In the vast array of places I hate, for historic, cultural and justified reasons, Portugal barely moves the meter.

I’d say the discomfort is caused by the back of my mind feeling I SHOULD belong, and certain the people who know me expect me to belong. But I don’t. I don’t in a million small ways. I don’t even remember belonging, partly because our memories are plastic and unreliable, and partly because I never belonged very well (to be perfectly fair.) I never belonged as completely as I do here. And I left very young, and most of my life there was childhood or that curious transitional stage of “college student” which doesn’t have the same habits as an adult human being.

But the discomfort is real and continuous. It doesn’t bother me in other foreign parts (eh) where I’m curious but detached. I think mostly is the little of me that remains “Portuguese” culturally (maybe 5%?) is enough to feel like there are broken, jagged bits when exposed to the culture.

Which brings me right to what I want to talk about. Strap in, this is going to be a long one. In response to the inevitable (people or bots?) comments that I should be able to describe it in ten sentences, in precis format and perform it as a dance tune, I’d like to invite those making the comments to contemplate my middle fingers. I am sorry to deprive you of your pablum, but some things require complex treatment and adult humans know how to digest complex, often contradictory information.

Or if you prefer: an exploration of culture and acculturation partakes of the characteristics of the subject, which is complex, convoluted and not easy to standardize or summarize. Oh, and definitely not possible to summarize or shove into facile slogans.

So, my experience — from within — I am practically the ideal subject of acculturation (for a successful experience) and I had the best possible of circumstances in which to acculturate.

I came to the United States to stay at 22 when I married my husband. But before that, I’d been raised in the sphere of influence of an anglophile grandfather, surrounded by American songs and books. One of my earliest childhood iteneraria to what the world would be like was translations of Reader’s Digest, because my dad subscribed. I’ll point out that I have no idea if my dad knew I was reading them, but the words were accessible, reading material was in short supply, and so I read them cover to cover. (I also read my cousin’s bullfighter romances, so I wasn’t exactly a discriminating reader before 10.) Through it I absorbed a sort of idea of America as a golden land where wondrous things happened. In my mind, probably forever, is the image of one of those huge sixties landboat cars, with an entire family in it driving through the petrified forest. Oh, it was drawn because I think that particular issue was from the fifties, or maybe forties. Anyway, that was the background. I grew up — no revelation for anyone who is a regular — to love science fiction, and eventually grew up to prefer Robert A. Heinlein, with an intensity that means I practically grew up IN his books. Add to that the fact I’d fallen in love with English as a language, so despite having only 4 years when I came to the US as an exchange student, I was fluent enough that I started dreaming in English (the mark of having switched the language you’re thinking in, and a landmark we were taught to look out for) during my “orientation” the first week in the country. It never went back either. My dreams that have childhood memories have everyone speaking English. It’s weird. I came to the US at 18 and spent a year as an exchange student, and met my future husband. I only didn’t stay/make more permanent arrangements like getting married, because my husband and I met at 18 and we were geeks with very little dating experience. The attraction was immediate but the attraction itself caused us to almost run the other way because it was scary. Four years after I’d returned to Portugal and gone to College for English (and German) we got in touch by phone, realized we were being idiots, because this was the only other person we’d ever been able to talk to COMPLETELY and got married within six months.

Since then I’ve lived in the US, in North Carolina, South Carolina, Colorado and none of your business (not that the secret is particularly hard or fast, but there are reasons.) Yes, each time I moved there was a cultural adjustment, but not at the same level as coming from Portugal.

Despite more or less being mad in love with America, as much as with my husband, I didn’t naturalize until five years and change after I got married, barely beating older son at an American citizenship.

So: My case is practically ideal. I was acquainted with the culture at a distance. Now, most people are all over the world, because of US cultural dominance, but that’s mostly to movies which are often misleading, and besides don’t let you figure out how people are “ticking” to the level a book does. (Even if the person whose ticking you hear is most often the author.) And once I’d come to the US I was isolated from all Portuguese cultural influences, save for phone calls with family, which got more sparse with time because they were very expensive, and the occasional visit for a week or two, which also got more and more rare because money and the dislocation attendant in taking that much time off (often for both of us, when we were both in 9-5 jobs.) The person I interacted with the most is American, with no Portuguese background (yeah, his 23andme has different opinions, but it’s like saying I have a connection to Norway. Sure, but it’s from several hundred years ago, and whatever influence it has is buried deep in genetic propensities. I’ll probably find my obsession with axes comes from there. Never mind.) In fact, the Mathematician is so American his ancestors were here before the revolution (look, some really were here a while before) and one of them fought for the revolution during the revolutionary war. (Very proud.) Add to that that there was no Portuguese community near us, or if there was, I never heard of it. The only time I was contacted by a Portuguese “local” group was in Colorado Springs, and I declined to belong, mostly because by then I was raising my son, and there was no point confusing him. Having me for a mother is weird enough. BUT ALSO because they weren’t the same kind of Portuguese. They were from Azores, which is a related (obviously) but completely different culture. Kind of like if you lived in Germany and your only contact with the US was a group from NYC, while you were a born and bred Texan. If I had been longing for Portugal and very lonely, I might have signed up, who knows? But at that point, 8 years into my marriage, I was very firmly acculturated. I had no interest in attending Portuguese feasts (except for the occasional, strange desire for charcoal grilled sardines. I got nothing. That itch gets scratched when friend Mongo grills some for me. Note my husband despises the dish, so I never make it. Too much trouble to make just for me.)

This is particularly curious because in the four years after I went back to Portugal, after my exchange student year, I did in fact cleave to any displaced American or American raised person I could find. My university group of such had… A team watching parties on Saturday afternoon. Yes, it was that bad.

So, given all that, when I married acculturation was instant and easy. Wait. Wait. Okay, I had to get that laugh out of my system.

Acculturation was slow, torturous, and often felt like I was going insane or coming apart at the seams. It affected EVERYTHING from what I ate for breakfast, to initial approach to strangers, to asking for information on how to do something (if I could have had youtube!) to how I dressed, to how I walked, talked, stood. To how we resolved marital disputes, or more commonly minor disagreements. To medical treatment. To– EVERYTHING.

Being from a different culture — remember Portugal is at that a WESTERN European culture. I shudder at doing this from somewhere more distant — and trying to fit in — not just live as I always had, and damn the torpedoes — is much like being a centipede who has forgotten which leg to move first, and then has to think through every leg movement.

In the long watches of the night, when we revisit all the things we’ve done wrong, I often revisit what must have been baffling amalpropisms and social solecisms I committed the first three years in the US. Baffling for other people, that is. For me, they made perfect sense. I’ve only recently learned to start laughing at them.

Everything is affected? EVERYTHING. At a level you don’t fully understand until you come against every small thing you’re not even doing wrong: you’re doing it as if you came from another planet.

And you adapt. Step by step. Point by point. Sometimes without noticing. Sometimes with tears, screams and a great wish you were two and could throw yourself on the floor and kick and scream.

If you’re in a happy long term marriage to someone from across the country, you’ve experienced a very small and pale version of this. The adapting. Step by step. I bet if your self before you married met yourself now, he/she would be baffled at how different you are. NOT that you are different of course, you just really like bagels for breakfast now. What’s wrong with that?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. But you’ve changed. Well, now multiply that by a million.

In my case, once I was adapted enough that a visit told me I’d never fit in Portugal again, I went through citizenship. And I was — I want to emphasize this — fitting in fine for every day life. But there followed another five years of solid hell before I could “write” American. Before that writing an American character came across as “not even wrong.” (Look, no one was accepting the Elly chronicles. And frankly back then I wrote them so ALIEN that they wouldn’t have been enjoyable. I’m not sure the latest book, halfway done, doesn’t suffer from this, too. But the book is helping me, because my mind is unsettled with the approaching elections.)

This entailed not reading fiction — I read an awful lot of it, of course — but reading biographies. Oh, not important people biographies. Those are glossified to the point of not-real.

If you look in the dusty corners of your local library you’ll find “biographies of rando”. I.e. people write their auto biographies and give a copy to their local library. (Some have cookbook type ring bindings. Or did. It occurs to me libraries might no longer be accepting these. If so, it’s a pity. They were a real historical resource.) I read these compulsively at the rate of several a week. That helped.

Raising the boys also helped, as I experienced an American childhood second hand. Which is why I sometimes come across as having grown up in the nineties. Whatever, dudes.

Anyway, at this point, I am acculturated. Living in the US does not feel painful. It’s normal. If you drop me anywhere in the US with enough funds, I can establish my routine easily enough. (Though without my husband it would be weird, because it’s been 41 years and we’re a unit.) (I’ll also find the best diner in the neighborhood. Blindfolded. With my feet in a bucket. Except here, because this town doesn’t have a diner. Sad Sarah noises.)

Portugal? Ah… once, in an adventure in the mountains, looking for a castle (they’re better marked now that Portugal is super-touristic, but not back then) my husband and I about starved because the village was small enough not to have standard signs, and I couldn’t figure out which of what looked like houses was actually a tavern/restaurant. (Yes, there was one. My father laughed at my not being able to find it afterwards.) I could NO LONGER READ the cultural signs. So we beat feet to the nearest largish population center and bought sandwiches at a restaurant.

Am I FULLY acculturated? Oh. No. I’d rate it 95%. The other 5%, the parts that aren’t around food, I hit when I do something that my husband stares at and goes “Why did you think that was the way to do x?” And I’m so far off the beaten path that normal Americans can’t decode it. And, of course, I have the memories. And the scars.

Now, why did I put you through this? The usual “People running with stupid on social media and putting my eyes out.”

This one was a few weeks ago someone on Facebook, and I’m still smarting from it. First, she started by informing everyone we should unfriend her, if we agreed with what ICE was doing.

(Pinches bridge of nose.) Okay, I’m going to say it. Demanding other people unfriend you if they x y or z is one of the most stupid, arrogant, bizarre, backward things you can do on social media.

Why, what do I mean? It’s so common! Yes, it is. So is bad breath and spitting in public. It don’t make it right.

Look, social media, particularly the notoriously unreliable facebook, is not going to show your prissy, preening post to your entire “friends” list. On top of which some number in your friend list will look at your stompy foot fit and go “Whatever. You’re not important enough for me to navigate to your page and unfriend you or block you.” So if your intent was to really have these bad evil thinkers unfriend you, this is quite possibly the most stupid way to do it.

BUT that’s not what you want, no. What you want is to throw a fit and show how superior you are to those people who think ICE should be allowed to arrest those illegally in this country, and to be patted, cosseted and comforted by people as vapid and as stupid as you are.

Again, whatever dude(tte in this case) except that the wish to exhibit how stupid and ignorant you are strikes me as a weird form of fetish, but you do you.

How very dare I? Indeed.

I dare because this post was a weird combination of “reports of things that never happened”, inaccurate historical comparisons, and hissy fit that other people dared have opinions that diverged. And it was followed by comments just as deranged and bizarre.

This person was convinced ICE is roaming around the cities, arresting everyone who tans and putting them in camps. I don’t know how crazy you have to be, or in how deep in deepest whitest suburbia you have to live to believe that. Because you know, a casual stroll out my front door brings me in contact with many many people who tan darker than I do when I have been in the sun (about the color of well done toast with butter. If I’ve been in the sun, which I haven’t really in a while) and who aren’t cringing, hiding behind bushes, running from ICE or looking even vaguely worried. And younger son, who inexplicably is darker than both husband and I and as dark as my dad, has only had ONE unpleasant incident. And not with ICE, but with a neighbor where he used to live, who belligerently asked if he was Jewish.

So, I’d guess this person who posted on facebook lives somewhere where everyone is blond and blue eyed? I don’t know. Are there even places like that? Maybe affluent areas of Minnesota? Perhaps?

Then she objects that the people arrested are kept in “camps” in inhumane conditions. Now, I’m going to admit that having had people go into detention camps and report the water is fine is not proof they are decent, humane places. How can we forget Walter Duranty and his visit to the Soviet Union. BUT the people who have been taken to these camps to poke around are usually at least mildly adversarial. And there is, honestly, no footage from all the democrats who’ve BROKEN into the places that reveals they’re not. And there would be footage, when everyone has a phone in their pocket.

HOWEVER and besides all that: Why do these camps exist at all? Well, because bleeding hearts and their pet judges demand that illegals be kept in there while they’re given “due process” to reverse and illegal action they took.

And kindly refrain, as the idiot comments on this post told me, that coming in illegally is “A misdemeanor, like going ten miles an hour over the speed limit.” I don’t know the legal classification of illegal entry, but I can tell you the misdemeanor is for overstaying your visa under some circumstances. (Not even all.) I can also tell you under the conditions the mass immigration took place, particularly under autopen, it is impossible for an illegal to live in the US without committing other crimes, big and small, from stealing an identity, to claiming benefits you’re not entitled to, to much darker stuff, particularly since most of them were brought in by people affiliated with gangs who then demand repayment in various ways.

Going on about how they’re exemplary mothers and fathers, as though the ability to reproduce confers civic virtue is not only wrong but misguided.

Worse, by being brought in, most of these people are open to horrific forms of exploitation, ranging from outright slavery, to having to do a solid by driving something somewhere for the friendly drug lord in your neighborhood.

On top of which, as far as I understand, if people put in these camps say “I agree to go back” the “imprisonment” is done, they get their ticket and are (I think flown) sent home.

Comparing this to the Holocaust is not only offensive. It’s demented. Jews had to escape in dangerous, scary ways, if they could escape at all. Reading some of these stories makes your hair curl. And a Portuguese ambassador (memorialized among the Righteous Gentiles) got expelled from Germany because he was giving Portuguese birth certificates and passports to every Jew who asked. (And bless the man, he let his itinerary be known when he was expelled, took a stops-at-every-stop train and threw birth certificates and passports out of the window at the waiting crowd with name to be filled in by the person who caught it.)

Also most Jews had nowhere else to go, except the country that had suddenly and inexplicably decided to destroy them. They didn’t have a country they’d come from only a couple of years ago and where they still had relatives to welcome them with open arms.

Before you wave the historical bloody shirt, make sure it is the right bloody shirt. And stop ripping bloody shirts that don’t fit you off the back of people who weren’t in your little deranged club.

But more importantly, listen up: Mass immigration is a horrible deal. It’s a horrible deal for the country these people leave (no? I have reason to know. The Portugal of my childhood lost so many men that harvest was sometimes impossible, in certain regions.) It’s horrible for the country receiving them, where they depress wages at best, and become welfare recipients in a system they never paid to or are forced into a life of crime and/or degradation at worst.

And it’s a horrible deal for the people themselves. Without any interest in becoming one of us, adapting, or working to fit in, they’re thrown out into a vast, complex, alien culture. Most end up believing the people in the host country are treating them badly for no reason (not because they violate a million small rules. Or because it’s not bad treatment at all, just not what they are used to) and resenting the country and the people at a deep level, which often passes on to their kids and their grandkids. On top of which, few are fluent in English, so they CAN’T navigate the society or the integration in society and become AT BEST second class citizens, bereft of the opportunities they could have that. If this weren’t enough, they are often exploited by college-style marxoids who convince them they’re owed everything on a gold platter, which again just feeds the resentment and the feeling of being hard-done-by.

AND all of the above is ignoring again conditions of near slavery or sexual exploitation, or inducement into criminality at various levels, which is extremely common and easy for these people to fall into.

Which brings me to: Listen up: Yes, I approve of what ICE is doing. In my opinion they’re not doing enough of it. And also the petty judges arguing that people should have every measure of “due process” should be… disbarred. Yes, disbarred is a good term. The way of doing it going through my mind owes to much to my Roman ancestry and you don’t need to hear it.

The best, most humane way of dealing with this is to apprehend the person, do every possible due diligence to establish whether they have citizenship or a legal right to be here. If they don’t, yeet them over the border. By bus, train, airplane or car, of course. I’m not a monster. (Most of the time.) You don’t actually need to care where they go. They just can’t stay here.

And if you’re sitting there thinking it’s very weird for someone who is largely libertarian to say this…. Have another think.

Yes, in principle, people should be able to cross the border and seek a better life anywhere they choose. In an ideal, platonic world, this would be possible. Probably.

Because there remains another problem: There isn’t an ideal, platonic, ideal of humans. HUMANS ARE NOT WIDGETS.

Culture — which is the important meaning codified in Nationality — is not bestowed at birth by some sort of magical “be born on the right dirt” (which brings us to a whole other discussion.)

We are baptized into our culture from about ten seconds after we are born, by how we’re held, who nurses us, how we’re handled, who talks to us and how, who talks about us and how.

Before you can even talk a lot of internal impressions of how the world is and what to expect are formed.

Now, initially these are small and relatively easy to overcome. No, really. Take a child from China, a child from Sweden and a child from Uganda, all about 3 months of age, and give them to an American couple to raise. Other than getting very weird looks in the supermarket, this will be an American family. And the racists who are going to wail the results will be different for each child…. yes, they will. As they would to a normal family with different siblings. Look, yes, there might be some genetic propensity to some character traits, but those are traits like Openness and Neuroticism not “will love science.” And anyway, the propensity is only slightly increased in certain populations. Each region contains multitudes with it. (And most international IQ tests administered are administered with intent and malice. As someone who used to GIVE IQ tests to people, it’s so easy to get the result the tester wants. Like in most social science.)

However around age three, something changes. From that age on, it’s much harder for children to acculturate. And it becomes harder every year after that. (One of the reasons I’m mildly salty I didn’t stay at 18 is that I was losing my accent. But the four years back baked it into stone. I’ll never lose it.)

Now all this changes with individuals, of course, and as I said above, even an adult can acculturate, if willing to pay the price.

The problem is MASS migration. One or two people, or even a family will adapt, easily enough, enough for daily life. (Most people don’t want to be fiction writers. I know. It baffles me too!)

The problem gets harder with every person added to that group. I’m not dissing your great great grandmother who immigrated to NYC with her entire Italian village. But if you go back over that history, you find the family didn’t even fully acculturate until the third generation. Even if they didn’t speak Italian (Or Northern Scrolladian) at home, the kids had a foot in each culture, and it was only the grandkids who could integrate. If they married outside the group, if they went to college, if–

Now in the ideal state of affairs, this wouldn’t prohibit open borders and allowing a person and or his family to relocate to the place where they feel at home. As I did.

And in the ideal state of affairs, I’d enthusiastically approve. Because humans should be allowed to go where they want and feel happiest.

The problem is that the world is not ideal, and our world is very far from ideal. Due, partly, to dysfunctional cultures and partly to a socialist infection of vast portions of the world, including the West, including ourselves, most of the world is what can only be described as an economic basket case, with variations in how baskety the case is. We’re slightly better off than the rest.

Slightly better off is enough to make us an attractive destination for…. well, most of the world.

The problem is that those countries aren’t basket cases just because the magical location fairy put them in that particularly dysfunctional dirt. Or because they lack “natural resources” that were “stolen by colonizers” (Again, look at my middle fingers. Then ask Japan or Singapore about their natural resources.) In the end the most important natural resource is people. When infected by dysfunctional cultures — and socialism — humans create dysfunctional, shithole countries.

The problem is that the US — with open borders — will attract… everyone. And no one will acculturate. Nor can they, btw. Even isolated it’s very hard, and right now every part of the culture and officialdom CHIDES you and REVILES you for trying to. (Trust me on this)

And people bring their cultures in their heads. They can’t help it. Importing everyone just means the US will be like everywhere else.

And there’s nowhere else for us to go.

Oh, I’m perfectly willing that in the glorious future, where every place is free, there is no need for borders. I’d like that to happen.

That is not where we live.

So, for now, borders are a necessary evil. Immigration, if and when it happens, should be on an individual basis. Small family at most.

AND every immigrant should have his VISA stamped with FIFO. Fit in or Fuck off.

Or we’ll all find ourselves with no place to fit and no place to call home.

123 thoughts on “Borders”

  1. Funny enough, two weeks was about my mother’s limit for going back to Ireland. then she’d start to fret and things would get fraught.

    SPace-X earnings were excellent, AI especially. Some of the AI might be one time since they’re renting data centers out because the others can’t seem to get power, which has caused ca., $1 trillion in NVDA boxes sitting in warehouses but no fear, the appetite for still more expensive inventory is inexhaustible, just ask super micro.

    Space X went over on R&D and is a little behind on launches but given they did more in the quarter than NASA did in a decade I’m not complaining.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. OH, and anthropic is puking all over the place.. Latest revenue estimates for first half of year at $16 Billion, $80 billion loss. $750 Billion in Computer expense is being tossed around, but I have no idea what it relates to.

      Musk’s genius is profitable innovation. Very, very rare that is.

      Liked by 3 people

      1. I recall an early self-disbelieving comment after the commenter did the arithmetic on Starlink cash flows, something along the lines that Starlink alone would completely cover all SpaceX R&D plus the manufacture and launch costs (at Falcon 9 internal rates) of adding yet more Starlink sats to further expand service areas, speeds and revenues, plus all the ongoing manufacturing and infrastructure costs for the rest of the reusable Falcon 9 fleet, bootstrapping itself like crazy, turning the entire company cleanly profitable in some incredibly short amount of time after the constellation was complete.

        All from the latest “What the heck! Nobody can make money doing that!” thing rolled out by Elon.

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        2. And for cash flow, Elon just bought the company that owns most of the 800 GHz spectrum, and intends to use it for satellite to cell service that will work through / inside buildings.

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          1. Sorry, I just had a ‘huh’ moment on hearing 800 GHz.

            When I plug that into duckduckgo, I get a lot of results saying that he bought some access around 800 MHz.

            This makes a lot more sense to me than 800 GHz. Off the top of my head, I don’t really remember if (800 GHz) is microwaves, terahertz or infrared. (I’ve checked wiki since, and it is not infrared.)

            The best way to summarize my grasp of microwave physics might be ‘huge gaps’. I would be very interested to hear about people having the hardware to do much, or about the atmospheric propagation working for long distances at 800 GHz.

            800 MHz in comparison may be pretty well understood and solved.

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            1. 300 MHz is a one meter wave. Wavelength × frequency = speed of propagation (2.98 × 10^8 meters/second). So 800 MHz is a 3/8 meter wave, 37.5 cm or about 15 inches.

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            2. Yes, it was a typo, 800 MHz spectrum is what he purchased. 300 GHz and above is far infrared light / tetraherz with a wavelength of 1 mm or smaller. Not something that would penetrate from a satellite into a house effectively for cell phones.

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    3. On X today, someone was claiming that Musk has asked nVidia to provide SpaceX with chips that are less efficient. That would mean that they run about 20% hotter. I’m guessing that cuts down on the heatsink size in the chip, allowing more chips to fit into a smaller volume.

      Presumably this would react well with Musk’s plan to launch his datacentets into orbit.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Remember that space is not cold. It is vacuum, and much harder than the vacuum that keeps your coffee warm.

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        1. I saw an explanation of what the actual thinking is.

          Radiators in space apparently work better when they’re hotter. So if you use chips that are designed to run safely at higher temperatures, it allows the radiators to work more efficiently.

          Liked by 3 people

          1. They definitely do work better. Black-body radiation is the only way to cool things off if you don’t relentlessly throw away material to do so.

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      2. Something must be lost in translation here. Could you post the link please? I’d love to read the tweet.

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        1. The tweet that originally caught my attention wouldn’t make things any more clear. My subsequent comment on the topic is more accurate, and should be clear enough

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      3. It could also be a single-event-upset mitigation strategy – the older, larger feature size production nodes are where you get older hotter-running dies, and SpaceX has a track record of avoiding expensive space-rated parts and packages whenever they can get away with it, so buying older-node slightly-hotter-running parts that have a reliability edge in the LEO radiation environment, with a tradeoff of bigger radiators, makes some sense.

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      1. And tested. And how good the test suite was, particularly where robustness was concerned — that is, how graciously your thing handles things that aren’t supposed to happen.

        Liked by 1 person

  2. It could be said that the walls of your home are borders to keep out the people you don’t invite into your home.

    Thus the people who “hate borders” should have homes without walls so anybody can enter their home uninvited. [Twisted Evil Grin]

    Liked by 3 people

  3. When I lived in the Midwest, it was in a town that … was sort-of American and sort of European. The people came from an insular tradition, and were still that way. You had your choice of places of worship as long as it was a variation of the home country’s church (even though their ancestors left the home country a hundred years and more before). Food? Like home country meets US Midwest. Accent? Home country. Social mores? Home country as it was before WWII. It was like wearing an itchy wool sweater on a 100 F day in August. Some parts I liked, others rubbed me raw. I’m sure the feeling was mutual. People were polite, but I was and would always be an outsider, as much as when I lived in Germany.

    In both cases I tried to blend in, but as Sarah says, there were things I did that flashed a neon “not from here” sign that I never saw, and had not thought about. It was an odd, and valuable, experience. Acculturation is HARD, harder by far if you don’t force yourself to do it (or there is a community from Home that lets you avoid doing it, or that actively discourages acculturation).

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    1. You can get much the same effect by being a military brat.

      Change schools every two years; you’re always the new kid, always Odd – and worse, at least in my case, I had to treat people as temporary. Investing anything was too painful when ripped away.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Being a fortune 500 brat is similar in many ways – always being the new kid, and having a funny accent.

        Like

  4. 6 years after I got my Green Card I applied for citizenship (yes, one year past the minimum, it was an oversight). A simple explanation I gave to people is “I want to be a full member of the club”.

    I get the “acculturation” thing. As a gunowner and 2nd Amendment supporter (and supporter of the Constitution and limited government generally) I would be a very odd duck indeed back in Holland. A couple of years ago I found myself explaining the reasons for gun ownership to a Dutch high school student who was working on a class project on that topic; Oleg Volk and Joe Huffman were among the people who volunteered to contribute additional insights to this student. I’m not entirely sure how well the message sank in, but it was interesting to make the effort.

    Next time my sisters come visit I should take them out back for some target shooting…

    Liked by 3 people

  5. “Since then I’ve lived in the US, in North Carolina, South Carolina, Colorado and none of your business…”

    You should just call it “lower”.

    Liked by 2 people

  6. There are muchly less large one-way acculturation boundaries when moving between school and real jobs, and to yet lesser degrees between various corporate cultures, though some can be more of a change than others. But nothing as wrenching as what Sarah describes. But you still hit the “what the effing eff?” or the blank looks when you say something well within your experiential “normal”.

    And of course the past is a different country.

    All to say, well journeyed, Sarah. Nice to have you here at home, even if it was work to get here.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. the past is a different country.

      I’m starting to think “alien planet”. I just read Lessons of an Immigrant Father. It’s about perhaps the last cattle drive in the US: 1905 from Iowa to South Dakota (only 50 head).

      That’s all well and good, but it was a father and two of his sons – aged 12 and 14! With one riding horse and a wagon. WHAT?!!?

      Liked by 4 people

  7. Grilled sardines? How do you keep them from falling through that gap in between the wires… (admittedly, the only thing I know about sardines is they come in cans, packed in oil or mustard)

    Liked by 1 person

      1. And it’s possible to get grills that have smaller openings, almost like screens. Usually recommended for fish because a lot of fish turns flaky when cooked.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. A lot of children turn flaky when they go to college. Some of them could use screening (out).

          I have what looks like a large frying pan with lots of holes, meant for cooking veges on a grill.

          Liked by 1 person

      2. Now I wonder where to find such. And how much I feel digging out the charcoal grill and charcoal. I suspect $HOUSEMATE would declare “Weird!” and the neighbors dogs would be Far Too Interested.

        Liked by 1 person

  8. Until we live in an ideal world, immigration should be like what Ruth said to Naomi “Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God”.

    This not an argument for forced conversion by the way; I’m generally in favor of religious tolerance as a member of a minority faith myself. However, if your religion executes people who convert to other faiths, encourages the rape and slavery of people who don’t share your faith, and then has the audacity to cry victim when people point that out; I don’t want you in the United States.

    Liked by 6 people

  9. In the ’90s we had to take a seminar. I forget what it was called, but it included a section on “cultures”. A bunch of different groups in the company, for valid reasons, had their own sub-work-culture (which I never had problems navigating, because I knew that). One of the activities involved a card game. Rules were handed out to groups of 5 to 6 people. Discuss the rules given. Play the game. End of the game the “winner” moved to another table. Play the game, without any further discussion. I got my hands slapped. Yes, the game rules were different. Caught me by surprise because I was not expecting “differences” in that context. Should have.

    Fast forward a few years to the next company after we were bought out. Integration exercise with the two companies (between the two R&D engineering groups not needed, either bouncing between the two companies before merge, or we had couples each working for the rival company; same or similar R&D cultures). Same type of “seminar”. This time I did not get caught. Asked why, response was “Been here. Done that. Not repeating history.”

    Liked by 1 person

  10. How can you get the people that hate America to admit we have our own culture, even with the regional distinctions we’re all Americans. A Texan and a Ct. Yankee are both the same ugly Americans to the Europeans snobs and our own snobs who love to emulate them.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Heck there are subtle differences between a Connecticut Yankee (Which I started out as) and a Massachusetts Yankee (which I masquerade as currently). And even within the Yankee states, there are major differences; New Hampshire folk from Nashua are rather distinct from those up near the Kancamangus Highway.

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  11. One of the nurses in my son’s neonatal intensive care unit was from Scotland. She had the most beautiful Scottish accent. When I complemented her on it one day she mentioned that when she went back no one could understand her because she was “American ” and they don’t understand American accents where she’s from.

    This was in the early 90’s.

    I thought it strange because, clearly, she was Scottish. But she was an American citizen and certainly was happy her former countrymen recognized it. 😉

    My Grandpa was born in Iowa but had a German accent all his life. But he was American through and through.

    It’s the hear that matters.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. Same deal with “Television’s Craig Ferguson”.

      I miss him on Late Night TV. At this point I’d be recording and watching a day behind, but surrealism is My Favorite Reality Show.

      Liked by 1 person

  13. “…they weren’t the same kind of Portuguese. They were from Azores, which is a related (obviously) but completely different culture.”

    I would love to read more if you ever have the time and inclination to expand on this.

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    1. I’m not sure how, except to say before the internet and flights, an island culture separated from the mainland (almost halfway to the US) developed its own thing. Most immigrants to the US are from Azores. When people ask me for x recipe their grandma made it’s almost always from Azores. And I have no idea. Not even vaguely.

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      1. Possibly because the Azores are small, the families large, and the resources limited, plus their tradition of seafaring / fishing. From around 1900, many of the smaller American fishing ports had significant Azorean / Portuguese presence, as in San Francisco, Boston, Baltimore, and New England.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Judging from bumper stickers in the 1970s, a lot of Azorian (totally a word) people ended up in Silicon Valley.

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          1. Yep – orchards drew them here back in the day, then the orchards went away and they stayed. Friend of mine from HS used to get drafted in the summer with her brothers and all her cousins to go down the coast a bit to where the Portuguese-from-Azores family still had working orchards to pick fruit during the harvest.

            Another Portuguese-Azores branch I know ended up here via Alameda via Hawaii where they were in the fishing industry.

            Liked by 1 person

        2. Indeed Gloucester and New Bedford MA have large Azore Portugese contingents. There is an excellent Azorean restaurant in Gloucester that my wife and I have visited several times.

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  14. I would be fascinated to hear (and to learn, if my head is not too thick) how you came to fall in love with English.

    I’ve tried to imagine what English sounds like to a person who doesn’t know it, and the best I can guess is a jumble of too many different vowels spluttering between a disharmonious cacophany of consonants, a bit smoother perhaps than German but far less agile than the acrobatics of Russian, and dis-graced with the sort of erratic rhythyms that must surely have given rise to rock-and-roll

    Like

    2. There’s a vid floating around on YT about how English sounds to a non speaker. Don’t remember who posted, but it seemed a bit funny.

      Like

    3. There’s a Yoo-Toober ‘kyotako1372’ with a bunch of hilarious shorts describing certain…inconsistencies in the Japanese language. Among other things Japanese.

      Like

      1. When Biden had his brief moment of incoherence during that one 2020 campaign speech, the thought that struck me was that he sounded an awful lot like what English might sound like to someone who doesn’t speak the language.

        Liked by 1 person

  15. I think that we are about to discover the problems of unchecked / illegal invasion good and hard, and sooner than will be comfortable.

    The same directors who controlled the George Floyd riots seem to be running the same plan in France and Italy now, complete will pallets of projectiles dropped on the streets of France (bottles), and a mix of causes among those protesting, rioting, and just looting generally.

    I have read reports that say that riots in Britain and Germany are scheduled for November 20, but I have no confirmation of that.

    If the DemonRats fail to steal the midterms, I would not be surprised if our blue cities went off then also.

    If the DemonRats do steal it all, I may be very disappointed with the man that I may then have to become.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. The old Larry Correia comment —

      A friend of mine who is a political activist said something interesting the other day, and that was for most people on the left political violence is a knob, and they can turn the heat up and down, with things like protests, and riots, all the way up to destruction of property, and sometimes murder… But for the vast majority of folks on the right, it’s an off and on switch. And the settings are Vote or Shoot Fucking Everybody. And believe me, you really don’t want that switch to get flipped, because Civil War 2.0 would make Bosnia look like a trip to Disneyworld.

      Liked by 4 people

      1. Recently spent a tourist day in Dubrovnik, Croatia and a later day in Kotor, Montenegro. Everyone there is ‘playing nice’ these days.

        Can’t explain why I think this, but seems to me it’s a fragile truce – lots of old bad blood. Supposed to be diplomatic efforts to address the just-post-1992 issues.

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        1. If they’ve got a lot of immigrants there, then there might also be an acknowledgement that they’ve got bigger problems than each other.

          “Me against my brother;

          My brother and I against my cousin;

          My cousin and I against…”

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    2. They don’t have enough rioters on the payroll to do more than a few cities at a time. Just like the Floyd riots where the same rioters showed up in 6 cities hundreds of miles apart within two weeks.

      Liked by 3 people

  16. Someone on X posted excerpts from an article on Americans who moved abroad. One lady discovered “the standard of living was lower,” in Britain, where dishwashers and dryers are considered luxury items, and people mocked her American accent.

    One of the expats talked about it on his/her Reddit and got told what an awful person he was for not appreciating the wonders of diversity…

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    1. The wife caused a great deal of frostiness when she called the British NHS a “third world health system. “. We had private insurance and had won the “post code lottery”. But her comment was accurate if not artful.

      Liked by 3 people

      1. Hah! NHS just wishes it was up to 3rd-world standards. Most 3rd-world doctors don’t actively try to kill their patients, and then throw them in jail if they try to pay another doctor to treat them.

        Liked by 3 people

  17. Note how it is always the borders of Western Civilization and its subsets that must be removed, not the borders of barbarity and tyranny. Those are sacrosanct and expand always.

    No.

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  18. Heinlein, burroughs, asimov, norton, niven, appleton, plus a bunch more are the foundations of how i think. Especially heinlein. God bless public libraries back then to feed a 7 year old”s reading addiction of 5 to 10 books a week. I had to prove to the librarian that i was actually reading and understanding the books to let me check out more than 2 or 3 books at the time.

    as to aculturalization? I feel like a stranger in a strange land just living in my own future with the insane viral mental viruses running rampant in the fascest liberals now days.

    I have spent enough time outside the US to have serious dissonance both there and on returning. Today if you want to get a shallow feel for this, go on youtube and watche some of the FIFA reaction videows of visitors to the US. They are every where and will give the jaded american who thinks the world is ending with how bad it has become a bit of a wake up to the reality of what a great place we live on viewed through the lens of visiters to our country.

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  19. My sister-in-law is German, and she married my brother who was stationed in Germany with the Army. They all moved to the USA in the early 90s, and he completed college and got a job teaching at a high school in a small Utah town.She (and her two daughters which made up the blended family) are naturalized America citizens now.
    They have been been back there a few times, but she states that she doesn’t fit in anymore, that Germany is strange to her. She has become American, in more ways than one.

    Liked by 1 person

  20. My wife never even lived in Turkey (well, a few months after birth and a few here and there growing up; as a programmer of industrial machinery her father was forever changing jobs and country). She was basically brought up here in the UK and in western compounds in the Middle East. Yet when we moved to Turkey she did not even manage a year.

    I would have stayed and learnt the language (my Turkish is very poor), found a job rather than just working online and settled. I liked it and was welcomed. She had exactly the experience you describe, and I always said it was that she should fit, she speaks fluently, she knows the cultural norms.

    But no-one EXPECTED me to be Turkish. They loved that I wanted to be there, a man from a country most of them knew only as stories and films that most wanted to at least visit, preferably live in. And I loved Turkey, the food, the tea, the coffee, even the beer and wine. I loved the evenings out, even when no-one spoke English. I ate sheep-brain soup with her uncle when we were hung over. I ate kokereç (sheep’s intestines cooked on a spit in a little van or store) and söğüş (delicious lamb and sheep’s brain with spices and parsley rolled in a wrap). She would eat none of these, but they meant Turkish people knew I was willing to fit in and respect the things they saw as Turkish. That I wanted to be there.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I’m told it’s much like that in Japan.

      Foreigners who look foreign get less grief than foreigners who look Japanese, because no one expects the foreign-looking foreigners to know how to behave like Japanese people.

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    2. to be fair, I do the food because I have fond memories. BUT Dan would even be willing to live there for the rest of my dad’s life, which would solve a lot of family logistics AND allow us to save a ton (because we’d have housing for free, etc.) even if only four, but probably at least 10 years.
      BUT I WOULD GO INSANE AND HAVE TO BE LOCKED UP.

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    1. Also on that page: Sony [spit!] is selling an ‘updated’ Walkman with 256GB of storage for $5,900 and an ‘economy’ model with 64GB for only $1,900.

      Last month I bought a Lenovo tablet for $210 and put in a 256GB MicroSD chip. Total cost about $260 at today’s prices. I already had the MicroSD, bought back before prices went insane.

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      1. I do think Sony is dreaming in technicolour with those prices. $2K US for 64 gigs? for a basic -music player-? Please, dude.

        But to be fair, have you priced RAM or SSDs lately? They are ‘Holy F-!’ expensive. Looking at my local retailer today, Canada Computers, I’m seeing 64G (that’s two 32G sticks) of DDR5 6000mhz RAM for desktop hovering around $2,000 CDN.

        Which is insane, frankly. Two grand for memory? Are you kidding me?

        Then there’s mass storage, Samsung T7 Shield 1 Terabyte which I toss in my go-bag like it’s nothing is now ~$400.00. The 4 terabyte version is $1,300.00. Hard drives are double the price too. CDN, of course.

        The computer sitting on my desk got built in early 2020, for ~$1200-$1500 give or take. To build the same one now would be more than double. Probably well more than double, given it was near- cutting edge at the time. Cutting edge PC now is ~$10k.

        Joke being, unless I’m running an AI model, this six year old box is still massive overkill for the loads it sees.

        This is where Apple is winning big time. The Mac Mini with M5 and 64G is ~$3000 CDN. You can’t build a PC to match the performance for $3K. Because just the fricking RAM is $2K.

        But how does Apple charge $3K for great AI performance, meanwhile Sony wants similar money for a music player.

        But being fair again, historically speaking the original Walkman was $200 US in 1979. That’s going to be roughly $1K in 2026 US dollars, according to Duck-AI. Nearly $1400 CDN.

        Plus tax, peasants.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. The big advantage for Apple is their “unified” memory. The GPU uses the same ram as the CPU, which can slightly lower the graphics performance vs a dedicated RAM bank, but with Apple’s design just means that you can run AI models that use ALL available RAM with GPU processing. Some Intel and AMD processors are allowing larger GPU RAM windows, but it hasn’t become the norm yet like Apple’s A series CPUs.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Unified memory is nothing new on the PC side. Sandybridge (C. 2011) and later (and a few earlier) Intel chips had integrated GPUs that used main memory for their display storage. This has some advantages; for example, textures as well as 3d data and other large data objects can be reached directly by the GPU without having to use memory mapping or similar to get the information. Disadvantages include that with the display buffer (usually 32 bit per pixel RGB plus Alpha+16 or 32 bit/pixel for Z buffer) needs devoted main memory, at 4K (3840 × 2160) with 3 bytes for RGB 1 Byte for Alpha and 32 bytes for z buffer (16 Byte works but in many cases yields odd results due to aliasing) that’s 8 bytes/pixel for 8 X3840x2160 or 66,355,200 bytes or not quite 64 Mbytes, That is less distressing than when SandyBridge came out in 2011 as 8-16 GB is not uncommon on hardware where 1GB was a big main memory in 2011 and with 32 bit addressing 3GB was the max main memory (with 1 GB reserved for PCI). On top of that SandyBridge topped out at 1024 p so ONLY ~16 MB needed.

            But it gets worse. Most GPUs need physically contiguous memory for their buffers (they use direct addressing not virtual paged addressing) so the memory needs to be allocated at boot time and walled off by the Operating System. And it gets yet worse; you need to access all that RGB portion constantly for the video refresh. If you want say 60 Hz refresh (and most of us want higher, gamers may want 100 or 120Hz) you’ll need 1920 MB/Sec of your main memory bandwidth. Also, unless you sprang for dual-ported DDR (sometimes called GDR), the GPU and CPU can’t access it at the same time. If you thought DDR was expensive, you haven’t looked at GDR.

            Unified Memory and embedded GPU’s are a fine idea for certain classes of systems. If you’re trying to run high-end graphics (real-time ray trace, AAA games, high-end CAD/CAM) they can be a disappointment. Their main advantage is cost and bus simplicity. For much modern work in 3d graphics they are well and away enough. They may work better if you’re just using them as a parallel processor and don’t have the bandwidth draw to feed an actual display. After all modern GPU are essentially highly specialized parallel processors so a tightly coupled one to the CPU might be an improvement.

            Sorry for the rant; I spent 1/2 of my 40 year computer career in computer graphics, particularly low-level drivers. One of my last efforts was porting the Intel SandyBridge Linux GL and X drivers to a proprietary embedded OS, so I’m deeply familiar with the tradeoffs and issues involved in unified memory systems.

            To my taste Apple has a tendency to be very slick at marketing what are deficiencies long ago resolved in other systems as advantages. They’re caught between a rock and a hard place with respect to Accelerators.

            Nvidia is notoriously prickly to work with and will NOT provide detailed specs to develop Drivers. They’ll do it for you at a cost, but you don’t get to see the code. AMD’s Radeon have been also rans at the high end for a while, although their embedded stuff owns the Console Market. The last 2 generations of PlayStation and Xbox use AMD hardware with tightly coupled CPU/GPU; Xbox uses a GDDR model, and PlayStation has separate main/Graphics memory, Both a are squealing at the costs for next generation Playstation 6 / Xbox Helix (latter has been rumored to be $1200-1800 without subsidies). AMD will give you MOST of their specs, but keep some stuff (e.g. upscaling) proprietary unless you let them work in the drivers. Intel tried with the ARC accelerators but until recently it wasn’t even close. Pretty much, there are NO other vendors; the cost of entry to this market is so high that it would take someone with Elon class money to enter the space.

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            1. Sorry that should be 32 bits for z buffer 16 bits can alias. Each pixel uses 8 bytes (3 RGB, 1 alpha, 4 Z buffer), so my other calculations are correct. Brain fart while typing. 32 BYTE/pixel Z buffer would be impressive indeed and massive overkill.

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            2. Yes, I’m aware of all of this. But as near as I can tell, the Intel / AMD BIOS chips limit the GPU window of memory to around 8 to 16 GB. Apple can dynamically map ALL of the RAM over to the GPU. Which in the narrow case of AI gives them an advantage, since the GPU isn’t needing to refresh the view window, just do a TON of math. So GPU’s with enough dedicated memory are the most awesome, but since it costs thousands to buy an Nvidia card with just 16 GB of RAM, let alone 64 GB or 128 GB, Apple has an advantage right now.

              The Mac won’t get speeds like an Nvidia card can, but I can run a 32 GB model easily on my work 64 GB Mac Book Pro that cost $3K. An Nvidia card to run that model is $4.5K without factoring the PC to power it. Would the Nvidia do it better? Oh yes, but I can do it, and I couldn’t the dedicated GPU route without spending as much. Hence the Apple advantage.

              Like

      2. I just buy Straight Talk phones … you don’t have to activate service, although I do buy a card and keep it with the phone in case I need a back-up.

        Like

        1. Kinda like cameras – there’s still a market for high end specialized equipment, but the everyday use is well covered by all the phones..

          Not sure what Sony is “thinking” here as their target market other than people who are really really nostalgic with a lot of spare cash.

          Liked by 1 person

  22. movies which are often misleading

    I was pleasantly surprised by the number of World Cup videos that contained “that’s real!”. The one that comes to mind is yellow school buses. It’s good to know that there are people who do NOT believe everything they see on a screen.

    And the WordPress login button is gone. This comment will likely be rejected when it asks me to login three separate times. Hah! Clicking “add your name” on the Gravitar below the comment box worked (that’s super obvious).

    Liked by 1 person

    1. TL/DR to the above Data Republican infodump, basically the same people who used to destabilize foreign nations like Syria and Jordan are now working to destabilize France and the USA. And probably Canada, it isn’t like this place got this f-ed up on it’s own.

      It -is- the “CIA” doing it. That’s the creepy feeling we’re all getting.

      Data Republican has been working to find out why they’re doing it. She says further updates pending.

      Go Data Republican!

      Liked by 1 person

        1. “…because they’ve been taken over by commies.”

          That would be a nice and simple answer, so paradoxically I hope it’s true. (Because you can go to war with the Commies and win. Because they suck. Look at Russia, another Short Victorious War! turned into a catastrophe by a sh1tty kleptocracy run by idiots and bag men. I’m sorry, that guy Zelensky is an idiot. And the Russians are STILL losing.)

          But I think they’re making money out of it somehow, like being short a stock in the stock market, and driving the price down by propaganda, thereby making money on the short. Which is even more eeevile than Communism, because there’s nobody to go to war against. It’s like a poison but for killing civilizations. Maybe like vampirism but against entire nations.

          I have faith in Data Republican to follow the money all the way back to the vampires. Long may her keyboard thunder!

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        2. Clinton appointees, built upon by things like the GAO leaks.

          It is a little surprising that there is anyone left inside the federal government who hates the ChiComs, and wants to hurt them. Also, unsurprising, because how better to be radicalized than to work for crazed sinophiles who are objectively worse than American standard.

          Aside one: It is possible to listen to four youtube videos in non-english english at once. All looping. It is sorta like two TVs and a radio.

          Aside two, I got modded on the new post. I can probably recover the text if I need to.

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            1. I think I understand why I might have gotten modded twice on separately drafted essays in ‘the means of war’.

              There are like two words that are a key to how I currently understand my latest version of explaining the idea. I might need a third word, which I am not going to find right away.

              but, it is basically two stupid wasteful attempts at mostly ranting about the educated speech register set.

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      2. 2 comments

        1. How hard is it to destabilize Canada? That’s like destabilizing California.
        2. I’m reaching the point where I think we need to seriously consider shredding the CIA and NSA and reconstituting them and things like NRO. They have gone FAR past their original briefs and neither was EVER supposed to operate within the US boundaries EXCEPT with respect to foreign nationals. I interviewed at the NSA in 1984 (that was one WEIRD trip). The folks I saw there then seemed VERY straight shooters. My assorted minor youthful indiscretions were enough to get me seriously looked at in the lie detector test. Can’t imagine CIA were any less straight laced. These days the two of them seem to be populated with the rejects from the (foo) studies departments at liberal universities.

        Liked by 2 people

      1. “None of them mention…”

        Of course not. Propaganda only works as long as the lie goes unchallenged. Once the truth is out, the liars get a kicking every time they open their mouths.

        I fondly remember the Good Old Days when blaming the Jews for stuff would earn a punch in the face from the nearest adult.

        Liked by 2 people

    4. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2384

      18 U.S. Code § 2384 – Seditious conspiracy

      If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

      Liked by 1 person

  24. I’m going to be going through that next year when I retire. I’m moving to the Philippines for various reasons (lower cost of living, my wife is there…). I’m going ot be living on a smaller island provence which is akin to living in the hollers of southern Ohio down through Kentucky to Tennessee. Quite happy with that kind of life-style. Learning a new language at 62 will be interesting. The cultural things are easy with the wife to guide me on. I’m pretty laid back so the slower pace doesn’t bother me. But we’ll see, could be different being there long term.

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    1. Step-nephew is living and working remotely from Philippines. Met and married his wife there. Do not know how the long term visa works.

      I know my last boss held a green card for the US (from Denmark). His wife, children, and grandchildren, are all US citizens. He had to renew every 3 years? He traveled enough for the business that he just rolled that embassy stop into one his trips. One hick-up was he had to make sure he got on the correct ferry coming back from San Juan Island county, WA. The incorrect ferry was the one that started in Canada, then he needed passport and green card, which he did not always carry. When border patrol called the office it was “Yes, he works here. He is our boss. Please send him back. Payroll is this week.” He started carrying his green card and passport.

      When I retired, he was working on getting his US citizenship. Why now? It was pointed out the estate cost of not being a citizen to his family. Both the US and Denmark would take a chunk. As a citizen, just the US portion subject to federal (and state) inheritance tax. Do not know if entire estate went high enough to trigger federal tax; definitely state tax. Regardless being a citizen cut out the Denmark grabby hands, and they would want a good sized chunk.

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  25. Re: “What English sounds like if you are from” …. now compare Maine to Ozarks to the UP (Michigan north of Lake Michigan) to Appalachian various regions. Of course then there’s the Bayous.

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    1. Heck. Texas alone has at least four regional accents, two of which you will hear at RedQuarters. (Panhandle – Midwestern flat but vowels tend to be sharper and “bright,” with aa Scots-Irish Southern vocabulary. East Texas – modified Deep South with slightly brighter vowels.)

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Tennessee isn’t quite as big but has at least that many dialects. In the mountains you can tell one holler from another by the accent and grammar. Half of paternal family on TN side and half in NC. Family reunions always interesting in that regard.

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      2. Heck fricking Connecticut had at least 3 minor variations of accent when I was a kid. There was upper class (somewhere between Boston Brahmin and the fake Midatlantic accent), the accent from Down near NYC which had bits and bobs of Bronx and Brooklyn overlaid on base Yankee(e.g. youse guys shows up a lot, th often goes to just t tink not think) and the lower class accent which has some of the nature of classic Down Easter mixed with the classic Boston Accent but without most of the non rhotic features (we say Car not Cah and Saturn not Satin, though there are a few R’s that go missing). My grandad (born 1900) had a distinctive accent my Mom ( born 1933) moved toward a blended accent, and I even more so. Although living Massachusetts I’ve picked up some bad habits, though not as bad as a maternal uncle that moved to Georgia c 1962 who had a Southern drawl overlaid on the faster speech patterns of a New Englander with some of the New England patterns intact (route not root, Aunt not Ant) it was both fascinating and a little like meeting Frankenstein’s monster.

        My own theory was mass media. Grandpa really didn’t hear many outside accents until radio showed up in the 20’s. Mom had Radio until TV really took off in the early ’50’s. Radio had MOSTLY local broadcasters but heading to a mix of Middle America and the Mid Atlantic accent (Sort of American RP).. I had TV and so some corners get nocked off my accent as I get exposed to a standardized TV/Radio announcer accent.

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    2. Dan does “sounds right to me” fake Portuguese.
      He and one of my dad’s friends would argue with each other in fake Arabic. it was HILARIOUS. And they were great friends, without speaking a word the other understood/

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      1. I had to translate Lowland Scots (at least six local flavors) into Texan on one trip. My business cards used to say “Translator: English, German, Texan.”

        German to English and back was almost easier. Almost. (I’m a translator, not an interpreter. My brain doesn’t do simultaneous languages well.)

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