ArtieShaw

Thanks!

That’s kinda brutal, but I’m going to back you up on the thing with hamburgers in Canada. Maybe it’s just limited to Ontario, but when we moved there we were consistently shocked by the weirdness of the burgers. For the first year or so we shopped around trying to find a good burger and eventually just gave up. Our local pub served some that were OK.

And before anyone chimes in with the thing about all Ontario burgers being prepared well-done by law, it’s not that. I’m pretty sure our time there pre-dated that law. I think they may have been “spicing” them with onion powder, but who knows.

The burgers at Burgermeister in Berlin were quite decent. Those were the only ones we tried, though.

I noticed that they had a presence in London. We didn’t stop to compare them to the US version, though. I had weirder things to try.

I’d say that both White Castle and McDonalds are a separate food entity. In form, they’re both burgers. That much is true, but the overall thing that you eat is consistently something else.

This is may be more obvious for WC because in spite of being the oldest fast food hamburger, they also depart more radically from the norms of cooking and presentation. Whatever McD’s is doing is a little more arcane. It presents itself as a burger, but doesn’t really taste like a burger.

And if you’re adding regional chains, Culver’s deserves a mention.

I missed out on those! We were there for less than a week and never saw them on a menu.

They were on my list, though.

Environmental, Social, and Governance programs are a trendy topic with investors. For example, if Walmart’s shareholders force it to adopt an ES&G program, that that same pressure gets applied by Walmart to their vendors.

That’s how it’s supposed to work. Devil is in the details, of course. And plenty of “yes buts” to go along with them.

There’s an entire industry devoted to auditing and rating companies on their overall score. Ecovadis is one that I can think of off the top of my head. They’ll audit you, give you a score, and give you areas where you need to improve.

I haven’t decided exactly how cynical I am about the whole thing, but I’m way past letting the perfect strangle the good.

I’d like to see it in real life. It’s what my art history lecturer called an entire ancient genre of art: “boobs on a stick.”

Not entirely accurately in this case, but I can see the connection.

Internment was a bit complicated, but my understanding is that the US army wouldn’t turn away young Japanese-American men who were willing to fight in Europe.

There was also a secret program where second generation men served as translators for US naval intelligence in the Pacific. They translated intercepted messages and assisted with prisoner interrogations. They were also in very real danger of being mistaken by the enemy by US or allied troops. The existence of this program was only revealed in the 1980s. If anyone is interested, google “Nisei linguists” or check out these references

https://www.nps.gov/goga/blogs/nisei-linguists-in-world-war-ii.htm

https://history.army.mil/html/books/nisei_linguists/CMH_70-99-1.pdf

I thought there was a tangential reference to that recent question about whether there’s a critical mass of water to corpses that people find objectionable.

The example: There are plenty of corpses in the ocean, but people will swim in it. If there were one corpse in a pool, most people would decline the invite that particular pool party.

Mixed with that very recognizable graphic of Saddam in his hiding hole. And balls, for reasons that escape me.

edit: my friend is also a little confused.

I was just thinking about “quirky” because my sister-in-law recently used it to describe her daughter. Her contrasting word (for her son) was “straightforward.”

Personally, I fit the former even though I’ve learned to “pass for normal.” NOT my words. That was a direct quote and it was meant as a compliment. Weird is definitely meant as an insult in the US Midwest.