Jump to content

flatdawgs

Certifiably Surly
  • Posts

    833
  • Joined

Everything posted by flatdawgs

  1. flatdawgs

    Brazil

    Adoro disso. Adoro muito! Tchau tchau, Jairzinho!
  2. The French Foreign Legion is after me at the order of the French president. Our president confirms this. Non, ils ne regrettent rien. /Edith Piaf
  3. Yeah, Rwandan forces were a good choice by Mozambique and I'm sure ExxonMobil and Total were happy to see them in Mocimboa da Praia. The SADC forces seemed to have deployed into more civilian/local communities; that mandate ended last year unfortunately.
  4. Seems like, oh, Nigeria has some of that as well. Surprised they've not started up on Mozambique now that Ansar al-Sunna and ISIS is back in Cabo Delgado province (large nat gas reserves) and raising hell with civilians again. Maybe it's because the moçambicanos don't speak English as well. (I know you know the region well, Inka)
  5. You know, if they mess that one up and it says "UO Sucks", I'll pay for that one.
  6. This is a huge problem for me as well. I have junior staff doing code research (building, fire, ADA, zoning etc.) and they invariably rely on AI to do this. Nearly daily it returns incorrect answers similar to what you got - wrong code, section was revised, etc. Although I require staff to return the actual code cite language and section reference to me, a lot of them just want to take the AI result as gospel. The last search I did, for a building code reference in a WA state suburb, current (2021) code, returned a reference to the 2009 Santa Clara CA building code. When I showed it to staff, they started to get it - I hope....
  7. "You know the best way to raise your income 26%? Move from a red state to a blue state." Yeah, makes about as much sense. These people are shameless.
  8. Aside from what may have happened to his family in Mandatory Iraq, looking at the guy's photo I'm pretty sure his parents weren't killed by anyone in 1941 and likely not even his grandparents. (as an aside, there was a pro-German coup in Iraq in April/May 1941; it was put down by British and Commonwealth forces following which - i.e. back under British control - riots in Baghdad's Jewish Quarter killed about 200. Bad shit, no doubt; but where was the asylum from a British protectorate supposed to come from?)
  9. My dumbass brother became an attorney, so I get it 😂
  10. Huh... 30 years in the profession and now I find out it's not a profession. Well, at least the great pay and short hours make up for... WAIT. FUCK. (yeah, this will go over super well in the A&E community - as an architect I needed to go through several years of mandatory internship then 9 exams. It's thankfully simplified now, although still rigorous. My engineering friends and colleagues have similar rigors to endure before becoming licensed. Sure would've been a lot easier to walk off campus with my degree and yell "I'm an architect now!" and been done with it.)
  11. He had the same reputation last go-around - a young McKennie even talked about it then. He plays a different role for club now and more than held his own this past summer against some top-level competition (UEFA, CONMEBOL, and CONCACAF club champions) and shut down some guy named Messi in a cup final, frustrating the hell out of him in the process. He's not likely to see many minutes, but having a guy like that on the sideline/in the clubhouse isn't necessarily a bad thing.
  12. If you look a bit further south, about halfway between Seattle and Portland, you'll find that the city of Longview (and another one, can't recall at the moment which) flipped their city government from R to D. Now, this part of the state is about as hard MAGA as they get around here - Lewis County is Alabama with scenery - so this was an even bigger surprise to me than Wilson's election. I didn't dislike Harrell, but along with the things you pointed out he continually slow-walked the residential rezoning process mandated by state law, to the point where even Spokane currently has more liberal upzoning.
  13. Yeah, Stroessner (Paraguayan dictator from the mid-50s until 1989) was a bit of a fan of the Nazis, quite a few of whom - like Mengele - figured this out. He was, of course, supported by the US during nearly the entirety of his regime, and although he had to self-exile in Brazil for the remaining 15 or so years of his life his party has ruled almost uninterruptedly since then. Unlike Uruguay or Chile, Paraguay is, to say the least, more than a bit ambivalent about that era.
  14. God, the Brazilians hate that book, and for good reason - they fought with the Allies against the Germans in Italy and in the Atlantic. Their expeditionary forces even had a cool name: As Cobras Fumantes - the Smoking Cobras (or Snakes). Argentina, on the other hand....
  15. Yeah, this whole thing is weird. If now there are allegedly 100 GOP reps who are willing to vote to release the files, why do they need Rep. Grijalva's signature on the discharge petition? Why can't one of those 100 who haven't signed do it now?
  16. Brother was Army ATC, then civilian after he got out. Saint Ronnie fired him and the world eventually ended up with yet another attorney then judge. Thanks a lot for that, Ronnie - yet another reason you sucked.
  17. The various PR statehood / commonwealth / independence plebiscites have generally been boycotted or deemed unrepresentative by one faction or another. It's far from a sure thing, should a binding referendum be held, that statehood would even be desired. (see also Ghost's comment above)
  18. This country, despite an often violent and at times thuggish history, has been fortunate enough at times of major societal change to have avoided the reign of terror that has often followed upheavals in other places. When I see the utter hatred for fellow citizens (let alone fellow humans) that so many have crawled out from under their rocks to espouse, I'm not so certain we will continue to avoid it forever. Empathy fades quickly and the leopards thread becomes more and more popular when actual US congress members representing nearly a million people talk like Ogles. Ceauşescu and a Milan Esso station* out front should have told you. This is a ledge I hope can be stepped back from. It will require repudiation from a lot of people that right now revel in it. *(Mussolini et al were executed at Lake Como, but the point/symbolism remains)
  19. First guy I ever had to fire literally had a folder on his work laptop titled "(Employee's) Porn." And it was. Called IT, HR, and the managing partner in before it was opened.
  20. Flying SEA-ORD Friday, ORD-SAN Monday; no news on any abnormal delays yet. Still planning on going but definitely paying close attention.
  21. Hey, come on now, that's only Count 2 of the indictments at the first Nuremberg trial of major war criminals. Probably Count 1 as well, but certainly not Counts 3 and 4! Yet.
  22. Europeans in any given area do their local food - whatever it is - very, very, very well. They've been making it for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, and enjoying whatever the local specialties happen to be is a huge part of getting to know the local culture. However, outside of the bigger cities there is typically very little diversity in what you can find outside of the local fare. If you spend any time at all in a place you'll eventually want something else, and most of us live in places here in the US where we enjoy many different types of food so we miss it at times. I can't get Vietnamese or Mexican for love or money in southern Portugal and was very pleased to find a Thai restaurant in Tavira that was at least a vague shadow of what I can eat in Seattle (for some reason Tavira has several good Indian restaurants and a new Indian grocery). Amazing as they are, you can't just live on sardinhas, bacalhau, or lulas for every meal.
  23. There's a creditable bbq joint across the street from the train station in Faro, Portugal - young Portuguese guy owns it, not an expat. It's where you change trains in the Algarve so I stop by there every once in a while. It's not even close to what you'd find in Texas/the South, but it's still pretty tasty.
  24. lol Finland was one place where I could consistently buy things in the grocery store that upon eating turned out to be something completely different than I had thought (and I actually know a few words in Finnish). It was fun. I love my Pingo Doce grocery store in Portugal - food quality is so much better than here, although it took a while to get used to shelf-stable milk and eggs.
×
×
  • Create New...