There is an expression in Mandarin, Buyaolian (pronounced boo-yiauw-lee-en, with emphasis on the ‘yauw’). Literally, it means ‘does-not-want-face’. The closest English translation is ‘shameless’, but that does not quite do it justice. It usually means ‘shameless-in-the-way-a-management-consultant-steals-your-watch-and-charges-you-to-tell-you-the-time’, but it can also mean ‘hogging credit when credit is not due’, ‘lazy’, ‘benefiting from other peoples’ work without …
Our oldest son’s first word was deng. That means “light”, in Mandarin. When he said it, he was looking at – you guessed it – a light bulb. He’s a smart kid. He takes after his mother. For some time, I liked to tell people that his first word was “arbitrage”. That was a good …
Arbitrage, the STAR Exemption, and is there a “K” in “Knucklehead”? Read More »
Yes, hello I was reading a craigslist ad in the ad it said that uh, park applicants have to be vaccinated? That goes against Geneva Convention Article 6 Section 3. So you might want to read up on your history. All you people. You people are weird. You people are sick. You people have mental …
Vladimir Putin wants Ukraine. He annexed Crimea in 2014, and he has been backing Russian-speaking separatists in the Donbass region since the same time. Now, he is massing troops on the eastern land border between Ukraine and Russia. Ukraine also faces a threat of a naval invasion from the Euxine Sea to the south, as …
When I worked on Wall Street, guys who I sat next to would bet on anything. Once, the whole trading floor filed out to West Street, to see whether a guy who had run track in college could run a mile in under 4:50 (he was my direct report; he made me $200). Another time, …
The attached will piss off my MAGA-leaning readers, but I remind them that democracy is imperfect. The solution to speech with which you disagree is not to cancel the speaker or to retreat into your echo chamber, but to engage with the speaker’s ideas. With luck, we will learn something from each other and build …
Here’s how Gibbon describes the fall of the city now known as Istanbul: In the first heat of the pursuit, about two thousand Christians were put to the sword; but avarice soon prevailed over cruelty; and the victors acknowledged, that they should immediately have given quarter if the valour of the emperor and his chosen …
C Choose Your Rump State The empire of Trebizond (Trabzon, in Turkey today) was a monarchy situate on the south shore of the Euxine Sea initially formed as a semi-autonomous client state of the Byzantine Empire. It survived the sack of Constantinople in 1453 by eight years; its offshoot, the Principality of Theodoro, located on …
(The following was written while I was on hold, waiting to speak with an ERAP operator.) “Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else—if you run very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.” “A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you …
-I think lobotomies should be allowed in some cases. -Dad! -Really. -Like, who? -The guy who sucker-punched Mike. -He needs treatment. -Far away from Mike and the rest of his neighbors. -He is bipolar! -He is dangerous. That’s me and my son. He and his little sibling had just made a snarky reference to lobotomies. …