I remember my first awareness of this situation, circa 1991 or so — leaving Paris I took the wrong RER train to the airport and found myself in an area that reminded me very strongly of the Bronx.

If hoping for better is lame, I don’t wanna be cool.

That’s my absolute favorite typo (as a long-time proofreader who is consequently easily amused)

And Kashif.

It kind of fits in with the whole “war is peace, slavery is freedom” mentality they seem to be about — “purchase is boycott.” Hm.

Selection for her book club has become a kiss of death in my estimation.

Mighty Sparrow wrote a song about that.

I scold my students with things like “you can do better than this!” “I expect better from you!” Or remind them of the goal: “that is not the way to get to the next level.” Also I developed a whole range of vocalizations that usually got their attention better than screaming, which they are far too used to and no…

That is also true, a lot of “Soviet-bloc” countries forced students to take Russian. Never heard such terrible, indifferent Russian in all my life. I found it easier to focus on the cognates and other similarities with Russian to pick up the other languages, as much as I needed to communicate.

Slovenian is a Slavic language, but IME the Slavic languages have varying degrees of intelligibility — I say this as a Russian speaker who has traveled in Eastern Europe trying to communicate. Serbian for example is really close to Russian, as are Ukrainian and Bulgarian, but Slovenian not so much.

I remember someone getting publicly flogged there for either chewing gum or dropping gum on the sidewalk. That is a bit strict.

Trump CHOOSES to be orange.

Recall the original meaning of the very word “yahoo.” (was it from Gulliver’s Travels?)

The sketchy guys I meet who invite me over, or try to invite themselves to my house, are not even about some sort of transaction. It is apparent to me that just the fact that you consent to put yourself in a space with them behind a closed door means to them that you have consented to whatever might happen next. I…

Sometimes it turns out that you dislike a food because it’s actually bad for you. For years I had a hostile relationship with eggplant, then learned to tolerate eating it ‘to be polite.’ Which is how I found out it gives me really bad headaches.

Depends on what you mean by “it worked,” and for whom, exactly, in Turkey.

The petition’s on Change.org

Maybe I should start keeping a running list of “Things Trump Wants to Do That Are Already SOP in Turkey.” On second thought, too depressing.

Why? What’s he going to do, throw him in jail for “insulting” him?

Two wrongs don’t make a right, and the only way I can even begin to start justifying her retaliating like that would be in self-defense, which doesn’t sound like the case here.