"The Kit Kat Klub"
(Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome......)
bebopalula
- Member since Aug 5th 2021
- Last Activity:
Posts by bebopalula
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I think I managed to get through it without fluffing my lines!
I certainly thought so: I hope it stimulates some more book sales!
I could understand you easily: what surprised me was that I could understand your interviewer too - I guess that she's not a native Porteña!
I hope that the interview background music was only on the broadcast and wasn't running through the studio or, if it was, that you were wearing some noise-isolating cans!
Did you pick Ewan McGregor because he's a biker?
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My guiilty secret[1] is that I find it much easier to understand British people speaking Spanish than native Spanish speakers. I expect I will understand the answers but struggle with the questions!
You know those bottles of obscure liqueur that people give you and you just know somebody else gave it to them and they gave it to you just to get rid of it? Well, last time we listened to a friend being interviewed it was on the graveyard shift of a community radio station in CABA and whilst passing the time as the start got pushed further and further back, we discovered one of those bottles in the back of a cupboard and decided to give it a try. The programme got better and better as it went on and the interview when it came was fabulous but by the end we discovered that the bottle of that disgusting stuff was now empty. Not sure if the two were connected: correlation is not causation and all that!
I have an appointment at 09.00 Buenos Aires time so I hope your interview doesn't get pushed back too far. (That and it's a little early for the sun to come over the yard arm!
) Will you be uploading a recording to this site?[1]One of them
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As a foreigner - albeit from the country that provoked the 2nd Ammendment in the first place - I have never really understood how the "Well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State," part seems to have been severed from the " the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" bit.
During WW2, the United Kingdom established the equivalent of an armed milita. Civillian volunteers brought their own guns or were issued with arms - when available - from the state and trained, drilled and patrolled their neighbourhoods in anticipation of enemy attack. It was called The Home Guard and was disbanded in 1945 when the danger had passed.
I don't believe any Redcoats with tall, black hats have been spotted trying to infiltrate and destabilise the USA for several hundred years so I guess the danger could be considered to have passed and the militia ought to have been disbanded. But if the danger hasn't passed why isn't this well regulated Militia out training, drilling and patrolling with the most severe of penalties for those who shirk their duty?
Incidentally, I understand that in the USA self defence is a Common Law right - something the US took from us Brits and liked so much they decided to keep it - and that it is nothing to do with the 2nd Ammendment. Yet the two appear often to be conflated. Have I got this wrong?
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I know that Gervais is a craftsman who carefully and intelligently hones his material but I have still never found him funny.
Like him or not, I found this radio programme about his UK TV series "The Office" fascinating.
BBC Radio 4 Extra - What's Funny About ..., Series 2, 1. Ricky Gervais on The OfficePeter Fincham and Jon Plowman hear the inside story of Britain’s biggest TV comedies.www.bbc.co.ukIt's still available to listen to on-line.
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This video?
(Sorry: not entirely helpful)
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Seen frozen lamb here but never seen sprouts or mint sauce.
Sprouts are in season right now and in the greengrocers in Capital. Maybe there's just no demand for them from other customers where you live? Mint sauce is very easy to make from the mint plants you grow in your back yard. If you don't already grow mint in your back yard, a word of warning: turn your back on it for more than five minutes and it will take over your whole plot!
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Did you gift a book to the Library in Buenos Aires? That would be a good way to make it circulate more.
Do you mean the Biblioteca Nacional?
I believe that in the UK a copy of every publication is automatically forwarded by the publisher to the British Library. Does the same thing happen here?
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Got to agree with you about Melanie, Rice
Did you ever come across the British cover version?
No tremulous innocence here....
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Aren't those just random articles picked by Google based on that search term? Many of those articles appear to be from conservative leaning websites, which is the only thing I noticed.
My apologies. I ought to have anticipated that.
I am searching from the UK using a completely fresh browser instance (no history, no cookies, no nothing) and on the first page of results I get:
The Russian troll factory at the heart of the meddling allegationsFormer workers tell how hundreds of bloggers are paid to flood forums and social networks at home and abroad with anti-western and pro-Kremlin commentswww.theguardian.comNPR Cookie Consent and Choices
Inside the Russian Troll Factory: Zombies and a Breakneck Pace (Published 2018)Ex-employees of the Internet Research Agency, which was indicted last week over meddling in the 2016 election, described their often bizarre work lives.www.nytimes.comInternet Research Agency - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org -
Splinter as a website owner or just as a generally (DCT) geeky person, do you have the tools to trace these posts back to their source? There's been a lot of discussion for years about Russian Troll Farms interfering in elections, posting fake news and generally disrupting news, groups, discussions etc because the more general chaos and distrust there is outside Russia, the weaker their opponents become. It's all supposed to have become much worse since their "special military operation"began in March.
Google NewsComprehensive, up-to-date news coverage, aggregated from sources all over the world by Google News.news.google.com -
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Today is turning out to be very taxing, to say the least, so here goes.
Yesterday two men in a crappy truck turned up and replaced one of the wooden poles outside our house and when they had finished, we were left without Internet.
I went out and told them this and the moment the thuggish-looking worker opened his mouth, I knew he was lying. I had asked him when the Internet was going to be repaired and he said, "Oh don't worry, Claro will be here in ten minutes."
Phoned Claro minutes later and although they knew of a connection problem, they knew nothing about a new pole, but said the problem should be fixed in 24 hours. Total bullshit.
Phoned again this morning and two Claro workers turned up, worked on the problem for a couple of hours and when talking to them, they said that whoever changed the pole, fucked up all the fiber optics and it may take three days to fix. Meanwhile, we are tethering to my mobile and using it as a WiFi hotspot as a temp measure. I will of course demand a refund for data used.
Then later, Adri discovered that yesterday someone fraudulently spent $42,000 on one of our cards which we have now cancelled, but it will take a while to sort out.
She then discovered that someone has been using both of our Telepase motorway toll tags - I have one on my bike and she has one on the car - for thousands of pesos and on journeys we never took. I can prove this because I have Timeline activated on Google Maps and know exactly where I was on each day for the last five years.
According to our credit card statement, we were both at the same toll booth at exactly the same time on exactly the same day, on dozens of occasions, which is patently incorrect.
Telepase is notoriously difficult to get hold of, so I'll jump on the bike and ride to the nearest Telepase kiosk and seek advice.
I wonder what else today has in store for us? Maybe we should just stay in?
Abstrads the lot of 'em. Do you suppose they cloned your tags while they were together on your property or do you think they hacked Telepase and that it's part of a much bigger thing? Abstrads. Total abstrads.
Display MoreGood grief! What a terrible day.
How in the world can someone use the telepase toll tags that are affixed to your bike and car?
We can’t compete with the string of rotten surprises that hit you today. But we did have notification that our house insurance company will no longer insure properties in Louisiana, due to climate change and the probability of hurricanes. Effective May 31, one day before hurricane season begins.
There must be something in the atmosphere. But at least this isn’t a Monday, eh?
Can they do that? Might there be a class legal action to reverse their decision if they can. I imagine that nobody in Louisiana would be able to buy or sell property in the state unless it can be insured. In the UK no insurance company is obliged to provide new cover for property which has experienced subsidence or is in a flood risk area but whichever company is insuring it at the time is required to continue to insure it (premiums might skyrocket) for as long as the property owners require.
And as for Mondays.....
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I'm ambivalent about Julian Assange and I'll try to explain why.
First, what do these people have in common? Edward Snowden, Clive Ponting, Chelsea Manning, Sarah Tisdall, Mark Felt and Reg Dawson.
They were all whistleblowers who leaked information about wrongdoing within organisations where they held trusted positions and they did so because they couldn't live with the injustices they knew about. (Mark Felt, by the way, may well be the whistleblower you didn't realise you knew. And Reg Dawson? If you are Welsh or interested in railways Reg Dawson's story will fascinate you and in its own way is just as important as the others)
None of them set out to become the centre of attention: Mark Felt and Reg Dawson were never caught, Snowden is in exile, Manning and Tisdall were tried and jailed and Ponting was cleared by a jury that disobeyed the judge's directions but all of them were willing to make personal sacrifices to do what they believed was right.
What does Julian Assange have in common with these people? I would say very little. I would describe his cause as anarchy rather than injustice because he is not a whistleblower like the others but he created a clearing-house for whistleblowers without necessarily believing in any of their causes. I would say that Assange has put his own safety and security above the causes he espouses: Assange is the story because he has chosen to make himself the story because he doesn't believe in very much else.
Rather than pair Assange with any of the people mentioned above, I would compare him with somebody like Elon Musk. Musk is a creative genius not only in electric cars but in space flight too. But Musk's story is not really about space flight or electric cars: his story is about Elon Musk. I see Assange as a Musk whose business plan went wrong and I think he should be considered on that basis rather than compared with the idealists who came before.
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What are the 35,000 deaths referred to in the poster?
Can anybody scan the QR code? 35,000 is a commonly claimed number for desparacitos in la guerra sucia but... Cristina?
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That would be ideal. However, for such a small amount and considering that smaller bills are hardly exchangeable here (such as 5s and 10s, or any note that has no blue stripe like the newer 100s bills), I hardly doubt they can get exactly 65 USD. At most, they can get a 50 USD bill.
(snipped)
Everybody's experience is different and I can only talk about the people that I know. There are ex-pats and Argentines wanting to convert dollars to pesos for whom only up-to-the-minute latest-issue Benjamins will do: for everybody else I know, a dollar is a dollar is a dollar. They have been giving and receiving dollars since they were children and an uncle sometime rustled up a ten-spot and told them to put it away with their savings. All the Argentines I know have a miscellany of notes in their collections: small bills, big bills, old bills, torn bills - a whole history of United States currency in one shoe-box under the bed. Not much good for the money-changers but absolutely fine when you want to spend a dollar. Provided you serafina are comfortable about receiving the sort of dollars that can be spent in any store in the USA or any airport lounge on the way there and you are not holding out for pristine hundreds, I really can't see your friend being unable to pay you $65.
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serafina The etiquette in my circle of friends is that if someone asks me to buy something for them and it costs - say - USD65, then they would pay me USD65. How they obtain the dollars and at what exchange rate is entirely a matter for themselves. Splinter It's not so much that there are no friends in financial transactions but that friends don't take advantage of friends in either direction.
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There's a new documentary about the Falklands being broadcast on the BBC World Service over this weekend:
Details of the broadcast times are available here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct3yzq (from where you can also listen on-line at any time.)
It's also available as a podcast to download from here...
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You probably know this already but....
Navigation:
If I enter argentinaexpats.org into the address bar it redirects to https://www.argentinaexpats.org/forum/
Changing styles:
Bluefire and Nexus Blue AE together with all the Radiant styles display the website branding as Argentina Expats which I presume is correct however all the other Nexus styles brand the site as Nexus and the two WoltLab styles each brand it WoltLab
This message is coming from Firefox 84 on Linux Mint 19.1 but I also see the same results on Win 8.1 with the latest Firefox.
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As SpaceNut says the Home Secretary was accused of the same sort of thing but the Prime Minister dismissed the matter out of hand. Not so with Bercow.
There's no reason why our friends from the colonies should know how our antiquated British parliamentary system works but it might be useful to bear in mind that even though he was originally a Conservative, Bercow as Speaker of the House of Commons was deeply resented by the present government because he refused to let the Prime Minister improperly ride roughshod over parliamentary procedure in order to get his Brexit 'done' faster. Bercow is the only speaker in something like 200 years not to be offered a seat in the House of Lords after his time in charge of Parliament and the ministerial anger at Bercow's insistence on doing things properly is thought to be the reason. Some say that's what is behind these charges too.
The process of finding him at fault doesn't rely on evidence beyond reasonable doubt or even against the balance of probabilities but only on the opinion of the adjudicator. That's not considered improper because that's just the way these things have always been handled within parliamentary circles. John Bercow's own thoughts on the matter can be found in the Daily Telegraph here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/03/08/made-friends-incurred-enemies-wasnt-bully/
