Dark for three months a year, Svalbard is a far fetched haven. By rights, man should have left this inhospitable tract [sp?] to the island. But it has exerted a magnetic pull on outsiders since its 17th century whaling heyday. *Thai name* has not read the Svalbard treaty, 100 years old this February, but without it he wouldn't be here. First mapped in 1596, Spitsbergen as it was known, was a no man's land until the early 20th century and the onset of coal mining. The treaty gave Norway sovereignty over the archipelago, but declared it a visa free zone, where companies and nationals from signatory countries had equal rights to natives. In practice, this has been extended to non signatories like Thailand too. The Thai migration wave began after Longyearbyen airport opened in 1975, with Norwegian miners returning from their holidays with suntans and wives. Since then, men and women of all ages have moved here. High salaries and low taxes are the draw. But Social Security is minimal and outside of job contracts, housing rare and ruinously expensive, most Thais begin as cleaners… years of limbo have won him no rights to permanent residence. It's possible to secure citizenship after eight years on Svalbard and one on the mainland, but few ever apply... For most Thais, the dream is to save enough money to go into business back home"
Since Turkey is not a safe country even for foreigners, the whole 83 million population of Turkey should be able to claim asylum in Western/Northern Europe
Trump: 'If I lose, I don’t think you will ever see me again' - "I'm not sure you're ever going to see me there. I don't think I'm going to lose, but if I do, I don't think you're ever going to see me again, folks. I think I'll go to Turnberry and play golf or something" (2016)
Trump: I will leave the White House peacefully if I lose to Joe Biden - "Trump brushed aside fears he might not leave office willingly, telling anchor Harris Faulkner: "Certainly, if I don't win, I don't win." The president added he would "go on, do other things."His comments come after Joe Biden told Trevor Noah on "The Daily Show" on Thursday that he had considered the possibility of Trump refusing to leave his post if he lost the election, CNN reported." (2020)
Of course, the people with Trump Derangement Syndrome interpret this as his saying that he won't leave if he loses. If Biden says something bad about Trump, it must be true
M&M’s Were Originally Created To Allow Easy Transport Of Chocolate To The Military
Free cocaine and opiates being handed out in Vancouver - "The Drug User Liberation Front announces that it will hand out a safer supply of opiates and cocaine in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside to people who use drugs."
Far-Right Extremist Suggests Treating People Of All Races Equally | The Babylon Bee - "The hateful bigot has been canceled for his controversial comments that people should be treated with respect no matter their skin color."I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character," said the dangerous, alt-right extremist, according to sources. "I have a dream that one day little black boys and girls will be holding hands with little white boys and girls.”"
'Love Trumps Hate!' Screams Protester While Beating Republican To Death With A Shovel | The Babylon Bee - "At publishing time, the progressive had begun screaming, “WHEN THEY GO LOW, WE GO HIGH!” while leaping out a second-story window to elbow-drop another hapless conservative bystander."
sofie halili on Twitter - "men sexualize pole dancing because they think everything is meant to please them pole dancing is DANCING and an art form. it is not inherently sexual. but what is inherently sexual is my nudes! visit http://onlyfans.com/literallysofie for some top tier (well, top 3%) trans girl content"
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum: EP11 Toronto Redux - "I can remember my mom saying to me once, never make fun of anyone who mispronounces a word, because that means they learned it from a book and didn't just hear it. And we should be encouraging more people to read"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Tuesday's business with Dominic O'Connell - "It's one of those interesting things that somehow people imagine that humans will be really good at reacting to a situation they've never seen before. But models won’t. The reality is the most important thing to being able to look after your client capital and make some money through all of this was the ability to stay calm and rational and to recognize what was going on in market prices and to adapt to it. As opposed to letting the emotion of both everything on the news every five minutes and what was going on in your own family get one to act irrationally and the models do it actually very well at adapting to all of this and recognizing what it was, you know, emotions are, are the enemy of good decision making under pressure. And actually that's a time when computers come into their own"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Wednesday's business with Dominic O'Connell - "Netflix now has a biggest stock market valuation than Exxon America's biggest oil company. 190 billion dollars, versus Exxon's 173 billion...
[On BA] Initially, we were able to request a refund online, but they've actually now removed that option and the only way to get a cash refund is to call up British Airways on their phone line. And when you call up you get played a automated message and instead of being put through into a holding queue, it just plays, plays a message and cuts you off. It's been really, really difficult to get through to a human being. And after about two weeks of trying, I did manage to speak to someone who said they'd refund all three of my bookings, but I've only had a refund for two of them so far."
Galactic War Report – Episode 202: TheUncannyMrH and the Struggle Supreme – Radio Free Tatooine - "‘The last round, my opponent did not attack. And his, his defenses were so odd.’
‘They weren't auto set though?’
‘No, they were not. They were clearly intentional and, you know, bless this guy's heart for doing what he did. Let's see. What. okay, here we go. So he had, Mandalorian paired with Jawa and Ugnaught’
‘What?’
‘It's like Quill, the Ugnaught. The jawas… he had a team of three Chewbaccas... A team of three reliced jawas, he had Stormtrooper Han, Stormtrooper, First Order Stormtrooper... this guy lives his life by a, by a different code.’
‘I love this person.’
‘He had one team that was Lobot - lead, with Jolee and Mace Windu’
‘Just all, bald people?’
‘Bald people. His Lobot is relic seven’
‘I want, I want this person to be my friend’...
'He had one that was Qui-Gon, General Kenobi and Jedi Knight Anakin... He also had, and this is, this is, this is not just like, meta. This is him visioning the game as it should be, not as it is. So there's one team that is 2 Ewoks being led by C-3PO, which makes sense. Now C-3PO is not a leader, but it doesn't matter… I tore him apart of course. This guy obviously does not care.’"
2804 – The ubiquity of the Cretan archer in ancient warfare | The History Network - "‘Another such commander is named by Polyxenidas. There he records a ruse against Seleucus his generals, Achillus [sp?] and Andromicus [sp?] where a Cretan officer Philatirus [sp?] was sent to negotiate for the body of Antiochus. Antiochus had spread a rumor that he had been killed. But when men came to take the surrender of Antiochus’s forces, his troops attacked them. This seems the kind of ruse ideal for a commander of light armed or missile troops. So Philatirus may well have been a commander of the archers’"
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, The Covenanters - "‘There's the business of kneeling, which seems to figure largely in the notes. Why is that so important?’
‘Because it’s viewed as a Catholic practice. There is a sense that if you kneel in front of the sacrament, that you're ascertaining a presence in the sacrament that Presbyterians don't think is there. Presbyterians think there's no presence of Christ in the bread. Instead they'll sit at a table. They'll break the bread, they'll share it. So it's a community like the Last Supper, an act of community. Something important does happen. Drawing on Calvin's theology, they think that Christ is present but they think that the people are lifted mystically into the presence of Christ, but Christ is not present in the elements so therefore do not kneel to the elements’"
Anne de Courcy On Chanel & The Riviera | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘Chanel was certainly anti semitic. But one must not forget, this is not a defense, but it's a bit of an explanation. One must not forget that there was a deep vein of anti semitism in France. And that Petain, after all, who ran the hole of unoccupied France, introduced anti semitic laws that were just as stringent as the Germans without even being made to, just voluntary, and a lot of French people turned in their neighbors who were Jewish and people were deported. And this was done by the Germans of course in occupied France, but in unoccupied France, it was done a lot by other Frenchmen... most of them were [anti-Semitic]’"
Mostly Colin - "your abs are supposed to be covered with a healthy, protective layer of fat. The shape Jason Momoa is in during his movies is achieved by a diet designed to lower his body fat to unhealthy numbers, dehydrating him and enhancing his abs with make up. This is what ripped, muscular, healthy person looks like on their off time. If you think this is a dad bod, for the love of everything that is holy, shut up and absolutely never comment on a man’s body ever again. I mean hell, you can still see his damn v-line, what fucking dad bod has that?!Don’t believe me? Google some bodybuilders who are off their contest diet. The men who literally make a living for having defined muscles. For 360 days a year, they do not look like the way you think they do. During a bodybuilding contest, these men’s body fat is under 7%, they’re dehydeated and covered in fake tan that helps the muscles show up. And it’s literally only for that day, because it’s extremely unhealthy. Same goes for actors who are known for being ripped - they’re at their worst when they’re filming. This exact same shit happened with Vin Diesel few years ago with people getting a paparazzi shot of his “beer belly” and I’m genuinely worried of the young men who grow up in this society thinking being muscular means having defined abs 24/7."
Sarah Tang - "It was brought to my attention that we appeared on The Straits Times today about the elections again, and the article is extremely puzzling to me. Some background info, we were approached by MP Cheryl Chan from Fengshan to design some print collaterals before she ran for the elections in 2015. It was a simple job. She engaged our services, we designed and delivered – end of story. I don’t see how this process is interesting in any way. In fact, when we were approached through email for this interview, my first response was ‘We're not sure what we can offer for your article – the job that we did was pretty straightforward.’ We were under the impression that this article was going to be centred on ‘interesting publicity materials’, NOT how money was being spent on the elections. We even made it clear in the second question that we were uncomfortable that a previous reporter revealed the pricing of our quote in a 2015 article... I’m not sure how ‘๐ช๐ฒ ๐ฏ๐ฒ๐น๐ถ๐ฒ๐๐ฒ ๐๐ต๐ถ๐ ๐๐ฎ๐ ๐ผ๐ป๐น๐ ๐ฎ ๐ผ๐ป๐ฒ ๐๐ถ๐บ๐ฒ ๐ฒ๐
๐ฝ๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ถ๐ฒ๐ป๐ฐ๐ฒ…’ could be translated to an image caption that reads ‘…๐ด๐ฟ๐ฎ๐ฝ๐ต๐ถ๐ฐ ๐ฑ๐ฒ๐๐ถ๐ด๐ป ๐๐๐๐ฑ๐ถ๐ผ ๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฎ๐ต ๐ฎ๐ป๐ฑ ๐ฆ๐ฐ๐ต๐ผ๐ผ๐น๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฒ ๐ฒ๐
๐ฝ๐ฒ๐ฐ๐๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐บ๐ผ๐ฟ๐ฒ ๐ท๐ผ๐ฏ๐’. This is not even a gross misquote, but the complete opposite of what was answered. On top of that, the only other time we are mentioned in the article is the sentence ‘And firms that design name cards and campaign material, like graphic design studio Sarah and Schooling, are also still needed.’... Please do not use the business that I struggle to keep afloat as part of your agenda to push propaganda. What you’re essentially doing is making my clients think that I am doing so very well, when the fact is I had to beg my clients to support me by giving me jobs and early deposit payments because we were not applicable to any grants available when covid hit.Oh, the irony of the headline 'As battle shifts online,...'We will no longer be responding to any Straits Times reporters asking us anything in relation to this job again.#noblankcheque"
The Straits Times just may be the biggest purveyor of fake news in Singapore
Google Is No Longer the Greatest Search Engine on the Internet - "The Simpsons may be both the most quotable television show of all time and the one with the m0st creative life on the World Wide Web... all of this love and energy and reappropriation has reached what appears to be its logical, glorious conclusion: a brilliantly designed and mind-blowingly comprehensive search engine that allows fans to pair any line from the show's first 15 seasons with its corresponding still (all 3 million of them). It's called Frinkiac—after the show's bumbling mad scientist, Professor Frink—and it may be the greatest feat of Internet engineering we've ever seen"
About | International Read Naked Day - "Reading is a sensual, ritual experience – or at least it should be. We should set aside time, set the stage, treat books like lovers… That’s why we, the international literary salon Naked Girls Reading, have decide to make July 5th READ NAKED DAY Join us in removing the obstacles that hinder your freedom to read as a ritual. Doff your clothing on July 5th and get in touch with one of the most powerful forces in history – the reading of the written word. We invite you to take part by simply reading naked. That’s it. If you’d like to be even more involved in bringing focus back to the ritual of reading BECOME A READ WARRIOR and help us get the word out. Start a naked book club. Get your local books stores involved. Because if there’s one thing we at Naked Girls Reading know for sure:
You can’t spell “literature” without T&A!"