So I'm guessing this guy got back home from the conference and met with his friends and was like, "Hey, you remember that super gullible woman from a while back? Well..."
In the Outer Hebrides, or so the tourist information I remember reading said back in 1999, on some of the bus routes in and out of Stornaway, the bus drivers drove their buses home at the end of the day and stored them there overnight.
I can't remember the punch line, but I've heard that joke before.
2: that's not uncommon in rural Ireland, either. The driver might start and end the day with a school bus and do some other routes during the day.
This new story has an air of familiarity to it, like I saw it in a movie once.
Yeah, I've definitely heard it before too, dunno whether as a joke or just urban myth.
There's a house near my parents (Pembrokeshire - rural but not the middle of nowhere) that often has a bus in its driveway. I've always assumed it's a real bus as it has a number on the front, but I suppose it might not be.
The ethereal buses of Pembrokeshire.
||
I suppose you all are getting bored with examples of Yglesias's careless writing on matters economic but for some reason I find his latest particularly bothersome.
As an illustrative example, consider the following from the complex where I live. In the rental portion of the facility, you can grab a 754-square-foot apartment for a minimum of $2,269 per month. In the condo portion, one door down, in a building also completed in 2008, an 868-square-foot apartment is selling for $419,900. That suggests that if you happened to have about $420,000 on hand, you could buy the condo and earn over $27,000 a year renting it out. That's a yield of more than 6 percent on your investment purely out of rental income. ...
Apparently a guy who just wrote a book on high rents doesn't understand that landlords have expenses. In this case property taxes and condo association fees for example.
|>
8: That one isn't nearly as bad as his recent McArdle-esque order of magnitude error.
True story: Another parent at kiddie soccer looks just like Sue from Glee but speaks with an Italian accent.
9
8: That one isn't nearly as bad as his recent McArdle-esque order of magnitude error.
That was bad (particularly that he didn't sanity check in his mind back from his computed monthly rent to the annual total) but somewhat akin to the numerous typos he is notorious for. In a way this seems worse to me in that it appears to show a fundamental lack of understanding which is especially bad as he just wrote a book which he wants people to pay money for on the subject. And it isn't like the expenses are going to be trivial, they could easily cut the return in half.
The errors are similar in that they demonstrate a lack of common sense and that they are in the direction he is arguing.
Sorry, JP, there's no second place in Bingo. I completed my card first.
11.1 that's fair, I'm just more boggled by the factor of 10 error as compared to a likely factor of 2 error.
The problem here is that we have an inefficient blogging services sector. He should outsource his posts to the production line at Chipotle.
14: Sure, fine. You and Shearer go ahead and cheat that nice Jewish boy out of his prize. It's not like there aren't larger injustices happening every day.
5: This new story has an air of familiarity to it, like I saw it in a movie once.
Perhaps a faint remembrance of this version of The Tim Conway Show from 1970?
... paired Tim with Joe Flynn of McHale's Navy in a sitcom as owners-pilots of a one-plane (a Beechcraft 18) airline operated by the pair. Sample.
Either comment 1, or this guy has a memory much more permeable than most people. A one-man airline is one thing, changing uniforms (or even just jackets) is comedy territory.
What if heebie didn't meet this guy in the first place and just told the earlier story to see if she could then trick us with this story?
8, 11: I have to say I agree with Shearer (!) completely, except I can't for the life of me understand why you're still reading him.
Seriously, the fact that making such boneheaded statements in no way diminishes your employers' willingness to pay you to opine is one of the minor injustices of the world.
More than that, I can't imagine how he isn't getting direct feedback from friends or family. I can only imagine the comments I'd get if I were.
||
Taxes filed! A day early! In general, if you're later than me, you know you're late.
Actually they've been pretty much done for a week while I cogitated on whether I or TurboTax was right on one point. I decided I was.
|>
Yglesias could easily be a much better writer than he is, but he's writing to market, and the market is Slate advertisers (and only secondarily Slate readers). A high proportion of the media names that are any good at all could be a lot better than they are. (Not Jonah Goldberg, but even David Brooks).
The effect is the same as a controlled media, even though the organization of the media looks free.
The media is a classic old boy network and loyalty to the team is the first requirement.
23: Because for many years he was great.
23
I have to say I agree with Shearer (!) completely, except I can't for the life of me understand why you're still reading him.
Well as Walt Someguy says he used to be better. And besides I was bored (waiting around for workmen to show up from 12-2, they just showed up at about 5 to 3). Anyway there is a certain fascination in wondering how bad he can get.
25
Yglesias could easily be a much better writer than he is, but he's writing to market, and the market is Slate advertisers (and only secondarily Slate readers). ...
Actually I think Yglesias has some sort of disability that he can't easily overcome. He appears to desperately need some sort of editorial supervision and I don't know why the publications he works for haven't been providing it. It seems like it would easy enough to have some intern catch the grosser blunders.
It does seem like he has been getting worse however. Hard to know why. It's too bad as he appeared to have talent.
In other words, Yglesias is a professional writer, not a dilettante with subjective standards.
29
In other words, Yglesias is a professional writer, not a dilettante with subjective standards.
Making stupid, sloppy, obvious errors is not the mark of a professional writer.
The profession has moved on, James. A professional writer is one who gets paid because he meets the market standard. There has never been any other definition.
A day early!
You actually have until Tuesday. Monday's a holiday in DC.
Apparently a guy who just wrote a book on high rents doesn't understand that landlords have expenses. In this case property taxes and condo association fees for example.
NTM maintenance of the property, repairs, etc., which, unlike the fees, aren't regular enough to be calculated in advance, but are potentially very expensive. And if there's only the one property you're renting out you can't even amortize the costs over the year.
Actually I think Yglesias has some sort of disability that he can't easily overcome. He appears to desperately need some sort of editorial supervision and I don't know why the publications he works for haven't been providing it. It seems like it would easy enough to have some intern catch the grosser blunders.
The spelling mistakes and the half-sentences that he forgot to delete seem to be gone now. Now it's limited to factual and math blunders.
32: Now I'm pissed.
(Actually, I did know that once*, what with "4/17" showing up various places.)
*... but only briefly, apparently.
34: The spelling mistakes and the half-sentences that he forgot to delete seem to be gone now.
Presumably through the agency of another.
Okay, this thread is a perfect example of the problems with early threadjacks.
Well teo, if you have something further to say on the subject of heebie's story, heebie's having believed the story, stories of that kidney in general, or the like, you should—you are hereby encouraged wholeheartedly to—share with us that further something on the subject of heebie's story, heebie's having believed the story, stories of that kidney in general, or the like.
stories of that kidney in general
This is an idiom with which I am unfamiliar.
I'm generalizing; I think properly it's applied to persons or their tempers (via the theory of the humors, perhaps?). I picked it up from the highly recommended Olivier/Caine Sleuth.
Hm maybe not an illicit generalization at all: "2a.", says the OED, "Temperament, nature, constitution, disposition; hence, kind, sort, class, stamp."
38: Rest assured that if I had more to say on any of those topics I would have.
I have a general though. Wink wink nudge nudge.
Actually, I quite like 6% gross rental yields.
You need to scale it back to 11/12 to allow for one month voids, and take taxes and maintenance (c10% of rent) into account, but once that's gone, you're still looking at 3% and you need to compare that to the TIPS yield rather than the nominal Treasury, because it's a real return (you can put the rent up over time). The general thrust of the thing - that US real estate is getting back to buyable levels - is IMO close to right.
Making stupid, sloppy, obvious errors is not the mark of a professional writer.
It's the mark of a professional writer who needs a professional editor.
Well, since I contributed to the threadjack, I'll help bring it back on topic.
I am perpetually fascinated by the degree to which people are likely to find certain situations or stories plausible or implausible.
In general, my guiding assumption is that people who not of the dominant class/ethnicity/gender/etc. are going to be slightly more adept at imagining situations outside their own realm of experience, since part of being in the minority is learning to observe and/or code-switch into the majority's practices.
But many of the most bitter, knock-down drag-out arguments I've seen have centered on one party insisting that it's just IMPOSSIBLE for X to have happened, where X is not literally "impossible" but more like "has never happened to me or anyone I know."
I view it as part of my responsibility to facilitate young people's development of good critical thinking skills, but one thing that I think a certain kind of academic and legal lens really fosters is a laser-like focus on ACCURACY!! at the expense of understanding context.
Shorter me: The original tory sounds totally believable, if you allow that "never heard of" means "It was never explicitly lifted up and named as A Thing."
Recently I watched a very learned Ivy League professor speak to a crowd of 20- and 30-something middle- and working-class adults. As she hopscotched from "New Deal" to "WPA" references, I watched their faces. No flickers of comprehension at all. And I've seen the same thing run the other direction. I really think people who grow up with certain kinds of cultural shorthand references have NO IDEA of the extent to which those are not, in fact, universal.
32: You actually have until Tuesday.
An odd moment at my local wine shop earlier this evening: one of the staff enquired as to whether I was doing well, looking forward to the rest of the weekend, etc. I observed that I'd be doing taxes, really. He replied, "Oh yes, next week or so, is it?"
They're due Tuesday! I replied. He politely nodded: yes, of course, I see.
Does this guy not pay taxes?
48 The original tory sounds totally believable, if you allow that "never heard of" means "It was never explicitly lifted up and named as A Thing."
What does "named as A Thing" mean in this context? What is it to name the Vietnam War as A Thing? Are you saying he knew there was a war happening but didn't... I'm not really sure what's meant to complete that sentence.
More on topic: A journalism piece back around the time of the Florida primary in the U.S. -- it may have been in the Guardian -- provided reporting from someone in Florida, interviewing people. At a popular gathering spot the reporter encountered a woman, 30s-something, who was just stopping in to meet and leave again with with her friend, who did not know that there was an election coming up: "Is Obama running?" she asked.
Sure. People are not aware of the same sorts of things.
49: Maybe he did them months ago and thus didn't really care exactly when the deadline is coming.
49: Eh, could be his wife does them; could be he has an accountant; could be a lot of things.
I'm doubtful on the accountant front (he appears to be in his mid-20s), but who knows. Maybe a family member does them, maybe any number of things.
What does "named as A Thing" mean in this context? What is it to name the Vietnam War as A Thing? Are you saying he knew there was a war happening but didn't... I'm not really sure what's meant to complete that sentence.
Yeah, I should have been more clear but the comment was verbose enough already.
I'm basically thinking of how people can register individual pieces of knowledge or bits of events but -- if they don't have a larger context to slot it in -- then it never quite permeates.
Thus, you might overhear a snatch of TV news "....seven Americans were killed today..." or be told some family update ("Roger's being shipped overseas next week") and yet never have any teacher or parent say to you: "Our country is currently fighting in a war. Thousands of soldiers have died in a faraway country called Vietnam. The war has being going on for seven years."
I do a lot of community events. It never ceases to amaze me a) how basically humane, decent, and fair most people area, and b) how astonishingly limited many people's engagement with the wider world is.
It happens at every level of society -- but the ones in the upper classes are sometimes a bit better able to mask it because the consequences of ignorance are not as high for them. I'm thinking of the elite newspaper reporters who can be massively wrong on rural geography, or events, for example.
55: I realize this is churlish of me, but a rather amazing number of mid-20s people I know are still having their taxes done by their parents.
57: I know, right?! It is churlish, I expect.
I do a lot of community events. It never ceases to amaze me a) how basically humane, decent, and fair most people area, and b) how astonishingly limited many people's engagement with the wider world is.
I find this very painful. We need to explain ourselves more clearly: I, at least, not infrequently feel that painstakingly mapping out the context of any remarks I might make is potentially insulting to the listener, and I tend to want to skip that part.
I do now plainly ask: "Are you familiar with that?" This is terrific exercise, actually.
There is nothing wrong with accepting help from one's parents.
The original tory sounds totally believable, if you aren't a whig
This is terrific exercise, actually.
It's metaphorical CrossFit.
Otherwise:
I am a fan of gullibility stories, as I have problems on the gullibility front myself. I had a friend in college who excelled at telling tales in such a way that one had to exercise all one's faculties in order to determine whether one was being had.
Example: His mother (who was/is Spanish, a strong Catholic woman born and raised and living in Spain) did, he said, save and preserve the placenta from his birth, in a lovely vase on the mantle. Lest you doubt that this is the case, realize that it was/is an entirely natural reflection of her strong matriarchal and maternal feeling: the mother is esteemed in Spain, and there is nothing unnatural or bizarre in saving, celebrating, and revering the childbirthing experience. So yeah, placenta on the mantle there, so my friend Oscar said.
True or false?
Well, his mother is kind of weird. Nobody really felt comfortable about the whole thing, but it was just a thing, that she had and did, and you don't question a strong, passionate Spanish woman like that. It's not much different from having somebody's dead ashes in a vase.
I really think people who grow up with certain kinds of cultural shorthand references have NO IDEA of the extent to which those are not, in fact, universal.
This is so true, and yet it's funny: when I got to summer college (yes, I know, I'm sorry) and then real college, it was so great to suddenly know all these people who did get all these cultural shorthand references. It was a blend of architecture-specific* and dork-specific, but it was a huge bonding experience. Point being, while I absolutely recognize the truth of what Witt says, it's also true that there was a time when finding others who shared my cultural references was incredibly exciting.
Presumably there were broader cultural references that I assumed were universal but weren't. AB, having been raised by a German and an American with very little connection to the broader culture (as a teen in the 50s, she used her allowance to buy opera records), is a useful corrective to what I presume to be universal American (UMC/white, but not even; her knowledge of e.g. sports and cars is less than that of the average girl in my HS) touchstones. I don't know if she could identify any facts about Joe Namath; in my world, everyone knows about Broadway Joe.
Anyhoo.
* while the internet has made Lego stuff seem incredibly universal, discussing legos in HS was deprecated, but all of us architects of course loved the stuff, and would go on about it
Yes, I'm much more inclined to doubt the second story than the first. Though a wonky memory could account for both together.
Related: on FB there's been going around a quiz on "100 foods to taste before you die", which quiz comes with a tagline to the effect that 20 would be a typical cutoff, and lots of my acquaintances have noted that it's hard to imagine not exceeding 20*, what with commonplace items like BBQ ribs and Hostess fruit pies being on the list. And, indeed, I'd had 14 items on the list by age 10, without being any sort of globetrotter or proto foodie**.
And then this morning my cousin, who lives in rural Wisconsin (but lived in Chicago until she was 10 or so) posted that her total, at roughly 40 years of age, is... 14.
* almost everyone I've seen has posted between 60 and 80; I'm at 77
** that is, my under-10 list includes sauerkraut and cottage cheese with pineapple, not Tom Yum and umeboshi
65: A vase implies the contents were displayed in a clearly visible manner, like a flower or a taxidermied squirrel wearing a utility lineman uniform while climbing a mock electric pole. An urn is different and far more discrete, not that I think the urn version is true either.
What are you talking about? I can think of all kinds of foods I don't feel the need to taste before I die. This is a thing? Tasting Hostess fruit pies is a commonplace on the list?
I take it the list is to include things you already have tasted, though, in which case, it's not hard to come up with at least 20.
I don't think I've ever had cottage cheese with pineapple.
People serve it that way all the time. You're supposed to eat the pineapple and leave the cottage cheese.
69: Right, it's possible it was presented as an urn, but I believe that wasn't true either.
66: To be clear, I don't think there's anything wrong with culturally-specific references. I think they're universal (ha) expressions of human sociability and bondedness. My word, look at us here with our "Mineshaft" and our nine million other in-jokes.
The problems arise when: a) people are speaking to other audiences and fail to understand or acknowledge the potential unfamiliarity of their references; b) people's ignorance becomes damaging to others (as when a juror believes that police brutality is "implausible"); and c) people don't attempt to make a leap of imagination or understand what others are saying.
Witt obviously speaks truth.
This thread has fallen apart, so I'm not even going to tell you the story about the woman on the subway with the asparagus.
30: Making stupid, sloppy, obvious errors is not the mark of a professional writer.
What Cato did, and Addison approved, cannot be wrong.
Also, I have only had 46 of the foods on that list, but a good 75% of the remainder sound pretty gross or pointless, and I am not likely to eat them voluntarily ever.
75: to tell you the story about the woman on the subway with the asparagus
Of course, in Alabama, the Tuscaloosa.
63: It is a commonplace, on my FB feed, for the various radical and/or bohemian mothers in my network, to joke about eating the placentas of their children. I am NEVER EVER EVER going to attempt to ascertain whether there is any truth to any of those stories.
Pinterest was started for women to share recipes for cooking afterbirth and takes its name from a shortening of "Placenta Interest."
The foods-to-eat list is clearly not well thought out in terms of food (I am sure it is excellently thought out in terms of being an attractive thing to trust with whatever parts of your Facebook account it can now see). There's a very similar "100 Beers" list going around. In both cases the entries on the lists seem to have been chosen for their alphabetical distribution and not out of any sensible judgement that the foods or beers were interesting or particularly worthwhile experiences.
Looked up the list and found seventy-seven. And about fifteen for stuff I'd tried by age ten. The latter did not include Hostess fruit pie, but did include head cheese, carp, borscht, and frog legs.
I dislike outsourcing this blog to Facebook.
34
The spelling mistakes and the half-sentences that he forgot to delete seem to be gone now. Now it's limited to factual and math blunders
Not entirely, his top page currently contains nonwords "propserous" and "becaus". And I am too lazy to look for examples but I think he is still doing things like using "right" instead of "write" or saying the opposite of what he means.
Soon he will be saying "that" for who, and confessing that he lets Turbo Tax do his taxes.
I've had 87, but I think not more than a dozen by age 18. Which is why I don't worry about my son's pickiness about food.
37: Okay, this thread is a perfect example of the problems with early threadjacks.
I believe your unbeatably apt comment in 1 had far more to do with the early thread drift than the "threadjacks" themselves.
I believe your unbeatably apt comment in 1 had far more to do with the early thread drift than the "threadjacks" themselves.
I would certainly like to think so, but I'm not entirely convinced.
And now that the sun has finally set and the holiday has ended, I'm off to get some delicious leavened dinner.
89.last: Right, what with the northerliness and westerliness (i.e. your position with regard to the date line), you were among the last few Jews to leave flatland.
a rather amazing number of mid-20s people I know are still having their taxes done by their parents
I'm envious of anyone who has taxes complicated enough by their mid-20s to need help.
Update: I had some delicious pizza and beer.
Sometimes people go against shared cultural references and decide to do something different with the placenta.
I recently revised my count for that food list upward by two after looking up what som tam and umeboshi are.
I totally told Blume what som tam was.
Then she told me what umeboshi was.
And here we are!
I'm going to say I've had 32 of the foods on the list because I haven't read the list and that sounds defensible.
To the OP, more or less: I would guess that if I told Heebie that Mrs y's aunt had regularly used an airport where the landing strip was the beach at low tide, she wouldn't believe me unless I provided a link.
I don't necessarily buy the one man airline, but I reckon it's perfectly possible.
It's the costume changes that clearly mark it as a joke.
I've eaten 69 of the foods on the 100 foods list and I haven't eaten meat in 16 years. But certainly it helps to grow up in the Midwest, to Southern parents, and then move to the Northeast. I would imagine that living your whole life in a monoculture would not be good for food experimentation.
I am trying to find "the 100 foods list", since I apparently don't have any Facebook friends who like to brag about their culinary adventurousness, but different blogs seem to have different versions of it.
I've eaten 80 of them. There are lots of peculiar American things on the list, some of which I have to say do not sound especially interesting, let along something you have to eat before you die. I will avoid them, and die without having eaten them, out of spite.
If I ran a one-person airline, I'd definitely include costume changes.
Would you write your own inflight magazine?
peculiar American things
Root beer floats are damn good, and one of the few things on there that are merited. They may be the apex of American cuisine.
That sounds like the thesis for an article in an inflight magazine.
It would feature the 'gourmet' root beer floats served by establishments near the airline's main hubs. As the buzz grew, there would be a reality show based on designing the best root beer float.
I've had 87, but I think not more than a dozen by age 18. Which is why I don't worry about my son's pickiness about food.
90, 13, and "daughter's", mutatis mutandis.
I also feel like I'm well down the diminishing returns curve with respect to the remaining 10 (though that super hot curry did sound intriguing).
Also, the list I was looking at had "Kaolin" at #63. WTF? That's not food! (Nevertheless, I have eaten it -- as have most of you, I presume, because it is a common inert ingredient in pharmaceuticals.)
110: Of course. That's one of the 13.
109: Kaolin? That's some other list. This one is the one I've seen. I get a 67 on it.
112: coincidentally, I got 90 on that list, too.
I was looking at this one. There's a high degree of overlap.
112: I've eaten at least 67 of those. Hakarl counts as having eaten shark, right?
Maybe 15 of those were by the time I was 10.
I might have eaten a few without knowing their name.
I am kind of annoyed that steak tartare and crickets make the list, but kitfo and grasshopper don't. And that Bellini and Mimosa get separate entries.
Huh. Thanks for the link, Apo. I've eaten 49, give or take (some I honestly can't remember, probably have had, e.g. honeycomb? I think so?). It's a bit of a liability to be vegetarian.
I'm at 71 on the list in 112. Thought surely I'd have had more, and I would almost count pavlova as I've had every pair of ingredients in the dessert, just not all of everything together.
72 on apo's list;75 on knecht's. A more interesting question might be how many I'd willingly try again.
So ... are these lists really intended to be 100 foods you should eat before you die (because otherwise you have missed out on something especially distinctive and delectable), or is it more of a challenge list?
That is, is goat, or biscuits 'n' gravy, or, say, kangaroo really that awesome?
What I mean to say is: pesto does not appear on the list. Therefore it is flawed.
I've eaten only somewhere around 45 on the first list. Based on the first 30 of the list in 112, I've probably eaten a higher number of items on that list. Based on the fact that I got bored and lost count and didn't start over, I guess I'm just not that interested in counting up the foods I've eaten.
Got my links confused. ~45 on the list in 112, probably over 45 on the list knecht linked.
66: think I had 69 on a variant list. I have had scorpion and zebra.
Where oh where is dandelion and burdock?
66 on apo's, that is, less I think on knecht's.
I do much better on the list in 112, what with the rice and beans and the flowers and the PB&J and the carob chips and the lapsang souchong and the mole poblano and the wild berries. I didn't really count.
We're putting nasturtiums into the garden this summer again -- a great hit, they were, last year.
As "foods you must try," the list is weird. I mean, bellinis and mimosas are nice, but if one is writing some kind of food bucket list, I think "champagne," or maybe even "vintage champagne" makes more sense. And while I think carob is fine, it merits inclusion on such a list neither by the rubric of taste nor cultural importance. For American culture, PB&J is correctly included, I think, but bourbon probably should be too.
A kidney is much like an ilk, but unlike kidneys, ilks can't be transplanted.
Ilk can be baked in a pie, if you want a steak and ilk pie.
Just as being a vegetarian limits what you can eat on the lists, so does not drinking alcohol. I'm not sure why drinks are on there at all.
95/100. 95 proudly includes squirrel.
For American culture, PB&J is correctly included, I think, but bourbon probably should be too.
Again: is it supposed to be a canonical list of cosmopolitan foods, or a list of things you must have sampled in order to be food literate, or a list of things that are fantastic in their own highly distinctive ways, and are therefore not to be missed before you die?
If the latter, there should be things like: perfectly ripe peaches (or nectarines), and mangoes. Pesto. Heirloom tomatoes are on the list, good. You know what's really good? Cashews.
The lists as they stand veer back and forth between these types of things, and Hostess fruit pies and a Big Mac. That is just silly.
127. Mrs y had a student in the olden days who submitted an essay referring to "N and writers of that elk". The elk, no doubt, had kidneys.
Parsi, nasturtiums are the biz. Why aren't they more widespread?
132 -- Yes, it's silly.
Elk should be on the list. And huckleberry pie. Knoepsche.
These sorts of lists are compiled at 3 a.m. by desperate drunken hack writers with an 8 a.m. deadlines and no ideas for a story.
112: I get 57, and I expected to score lower. A couple notes:
1) I haven't had nettle tea, but I have had nettle sorbet (but only a taste)
2) I haven't had Rabbit stew, but I have rabbit (even local rabbit, as it turns out)
3) I have had goat milk cheeses but not straight goat milk.
4) I've had applesauce and cottage cheese, but not pineapple and cottage cheese.
I decided to not score points for any of those. Like Fake Accent I haven't had most of the drinks (I have had cognac).
Also, like parsimon, I'd rather not see random facebook things become a regular feature on unfogged, but that one was interesting.
(And yes, knoepshe are sufficiently different from spaetzle to warrant a separate entry. Replacement, even.)
I haven't looked at this list, but if having eaten squirrel is something to brag about, then I want to brag that I've eaten squirrel too. It was nasty, but it might have been a poorly prepared instance of squirrel. It had some of its fur still.
you're supposed to cook them, Tia.
Parsi, nasturtiums are the biz. Why aren't they more widespread?
I'd guess it's because they must be harvested and partaken of fresh as can be: they can't be preserved or transported. Like watercress which they are reminiscent of, but apparently not particularly related to, it has to be a locally harvested thing.
They are terrific, though.
Google gives zero results for the word "Knoepshe". Changing it to "Knoepsche", the only things that aren't written in German are a bunch of posts on programming boards by someone who uses that as his username, and an Unfogged comment by CharleyCarp.
If indeed it is a food item, it clearly has never had its moment in the sun among American foodies of either the bearable or unbearably type. I recommend that CC devote the rest of his life to evangelizing on behalf of whatever it is.
139: I think the entire experience would have been less satisfying if I hadn't chased down the squirrel and killed it with my teeth.
A. sucking pigs,
B. fabulous,
C. stray hot dogs,
D. hundred and innumerable thousands,
E. having just crumbled the water chestnut,
F. that from a long way off biscuit like squashed flies
Foodie experimentalist that I am, I've eaten things bought at Trader Joe's. (But I'd rather scratch a hemorrhoid with a hangnail than bother with a list. Lists are for packing before trips, flying a plane, and like that.)
143: I sure hope you mean suckling pigs.
145: They're the ideal cross-breed experiment between Ogged's dogs and Emerson's hogs.
143 is great. It broke the jello vase.
You know what's really good? Cashews.
Eh.
I got 35 on apo's list and about 32 on Knecht's (I wasn't counting as carefully). I am not an adventurous eater.
Weirdly, I got 74 on both lists.
I got the same thing on both lists, too!
Having once gone to a outdoorsmen's convention with my outdoorsy uncle covered several entries. There were booths there with all kinds of wild game samples.
Also, "tasting menu at a 3-star restaurant" isn't a food. But it's sort of stupid to nitpick at stupid lists like this.
149 -- In Saarlaendisch you wouldn't pronounce either the F or the N. WRT the F, the term one would use to describe people living just to the east and north is 'Peltzer.'
I think I may have never eaten at a restaurant with even one Michelin star.
They don't even have ratings for very many american cities. Not that such a thing matters for a globetrotter like essear!
I've eaten in places in Chicago and London that seemed nice enough that they might plausibly have a star, but apparently not.
It just seems weird that the arbiter of taste is a dude made out of tires. Stop judging my restaurants, Bibendum!
161: He's more a boozer, anyway.
Seriously, even the Michelin tire people whom I have met have been enthusiastic gourmands. Also French, for what that's worth.
I'm also fairly certain I've not eaten at a restaurant with a Michelin star, but I did once eat in a restaurant that Michael Keaton had just left.
Or maybe he walked in as I walked out. Anyway, later that restaurant turned into a Pottery Barn it was so good.
I had pumpkin porridge at a Koreatown porridge house recently. Because Jonathan Gold told me to, and I try to do as much of what he says as possible that doesn't involve flesh or fowl.
The pizza described at that link sounds bewilderingly awful:
Imagine a pie whose geography is neatly bisected, one half resembling a deconstructed shrimp cocktail, the other a plate of nachos. Rising at the edge is a tawny ridge of browned, sweetened, raisin-speckled dough. After you eat the nacho pizza and the shrimp-cocktail pizza, you are supposed to break off pieces of this scone crust and dip them in strawberry jam for dessert.
I mean, I like all the components, but.
Some of those Korean dishes sound intriguing, but it's hard to tell from descriptions whether I'll like the stuff that's sufficiently exotic from my point of view. I tried ganjang gaejang (raw crab marinated in soy sauce) in Seoul, after hearing rave reviews. It was expensive and really difficult to eat and... just kind of meh, tastewise. Sannakji was surprisingly tasty, though.
I have never eaten at a three michelin star restaurant, but my sister cooked at one.
151, 152: I'm sure cashews aren't for everyone. Some people hate strawberries! Can you imagine?
Nuts in general don't do much for me.
I respect that, essear, even though I find it incomprehensible.
167: a deconstructed shrimp cocktail
I'm just not going to speak about this use of "deconstructed".
I want to eat everything from the link in 166.
Essear there is a pretty credible Korean place near Blume and me; we should go.
173: Well, if you don't think the hidden binomial polarity of the shrimp cocktail has its subordinate pole reprivileged in pizza form, then I'm going to be less excited about eating it.
I would echo 174.1, but insert "almost" after "eat".
175: Binomial? Eh, the raisins in the margin may or may not be of interest.
I've had that goofy-ass dessert with the red beans. It's great.
That goat fried rice thing sounds awesome.
Does the goat have to wear a whole body hair net?
The more I think about it, the more comfortable I am with that lay usage of "deconstructed." It's not just signifying "taken apart", "destroyed," or "closely read," all irritating uses of the term that I've seen. Rather, it suggests that a thing's component parts have been reassembled so as to call attention to the construction of the thing, perhaps even the "constructed" nature of it. I think it suggests a certain amount of architectural postmodernity, and I approve, even if it's not echt Derrida.
Maybe I should go to LA and eat some food.
If there were a banchan restaurant or preferably a takeout place where you could buy by the pound, I would eat nowhere else. The end.
Okay, I would skip the live octopus tentacle, probably.
I would go so far as to say that "deconstructed" has a particular meaning by now when used to describe food, and that it's kind of silly to be upset that it isn't the same thing as "deconstruction" in the lit crit sense.
181 is correct. (Mostly I cringe when it's used to mean "analyze.")
I ate a dead but raw octopus once. It was horrible and rubbery.
I like dead raw octopus fine but it doesn't attack you.
Maybe I should go to LA and eat some food.
Meetup!
Now we know what it will take to get essear to unfoggedecadecon.
I welcome 182. Mrs. K-sky and I have been meaning to work our way through that list, so if you want to pick a few and we'll make a roving meet-up out of it, come on down.
Essear there is a pretty credible Korean place near Blume and me; we should go.
I think I might have been to that one before. Yeah, sounds good sometime.
188: Is it supposed to be rubbery?
181: Why not "reconstructed", then? Or reinterpreted?
I'm not going to get all huffy about it, of course, but it is fucking annoying. There is nothing postmodern about putting the ingredients of a standard dish together in equally complementary fashion. Certainly *declaring* (or remaining modest, and leaving it to others to declare) that that's what you're doing partakes of 'postmodern' ironic blah blah, but that's performance, and has nothing to do with the dish. You could just as readily describe the dish as pairing classically complementary flavors/ingredients, etc.
If I make pasta with chopped nuts and throw in some raisins, I have not deconstructed granola.
193: eh, yeah, it is generally sorta rubbery. Really fresh cooked octopus isn't, exactly.
194 without having refreshed the screen. No doubt it's silly to be annoyed by little things.
I'm not going to get all huffy about it, of course, but it is fucking annoying
Post-modern is the sentence that contains its own negation.
Sorry, thread. Hey, look, balloons!
That is, is [...] biscuits 'n' gravy [...] really that awesome?
My god, I wouldn't want to live without it.
I am only scarcely exaggerating. I would probably sooner go without ever eating rice, in any of its myriad forms, again, than go without ever eating biscuits and gravy again. At least, I would have to think long and hard.
That said, I completely agree that "foods to taste before you die" is a terrible characterization of that list. It's really more "here's a wide range of foods, many of them distinctive and/or rare; how many have you eaten?"
rubbery. Really fresh cooked octopus isn't, exactly.
IME people exaggerate the importance of freshness in the rubberiness of octopus and squid. If you cook them the right way, they don't need to be straight out of the sea. They will need to have been frozen, but they're not some ultra-delicate flesh that can only be delectable under the most carefully controlled of circumstances.
Which isn't to say that bad tentacle isn't horribly rubbery; just that the cook is likely as much to blame as the purveyor.
Squid and octopus have very different textures. And I didn't mean "rubbery" pejoratively.
I'm fine with squid. I just don't like octopus raw. I'm not sure if I've had squid raw, but I don't think so.
200: True! The Turkish version involves something about soaking squid in baking soda and water or something and yummmmm. Still not something I want to do at home. (And seriously, I have hangups about Korean food. I'm wishing I could fly up for the Korean food meetup. I need my weekly or better kimchi to function.)
I completely agree with 185. But then, I've probably used the term precisely that way in print, so I'm not exactly objective on the subject.
199.2: Rice eating. Deal-breaker for someone like Halford?
I had occasion to think of this when I smelled, again, the whatever-it-is cabbage thing that the upstairs tenant at my workplace makes every day, every day, around noon, and then begins to make again around 5 p.m. There's the chop-chop-chopping sound (she's chopping cabbage and perhaps garlic), then the smell. The same damn dish, from the smell of it, every day, often twice a day. It's quite pungent, and smells interesting the first few times.
It occurred to me the other day that I'm not sure I could be in a relationship with her. She's free to eat what she likes, obviously, but man. That would get on my nerves, and I might consider it a deal-breaker.
Squid and octopus have very different textures. And I didn't mean "rubbery" pejoratively.
I understand on your second point; I've had pleasantly chewy cephalopods. On your second point, that's true, but both of them can turn rubbery when cooked wrong. Meat and skin are very different, but they can both be prepared in ways that make them leathery.
TBH, I've generally been disappointed by Korean food. Like, I read the menu and get all excited, then the food arrives and it seems kind of meh. I don't think it's a matter of bad kitchens; I've been to some Korean places with superb reputations. I just think there's a slight disconnect between my palate and the generic Korean palate.
There are certainly Korean dishes I like; but it's sort of weird how I don't love it, even when it's done well and comprised of ingredients I love.
My understanding is that some people don't love German food, so there you go.
Whoa, of all the topics to be the first thing Parsimon ever gets angry enough about to start swearing uncontrollably.
K-town food list update: I will skip the thing with spam and American cheese.
OMG, Lee has secretly been posting here as Parsimon and my kimchi problem finally made her out herself? Maybe that's not what happened, but I have to wondet.
208: Let's deconstruct the discussion which led to the outburst.
208: I did a quick search of this thread and haven't seen anyone called "unserious" so I'm guess things haven't really gotten out of hand.
Hangawi* in NYC is really amazing, but now I want that porridge stuff in LA with nosflow and k-sky.
*La P@ltrow came in once when I was there. It was a couple days after her father died and the paps were desperate to see her. She hugged the owners and they put her way in the back. The inside of the restaurant is up on a sort raised boardwalk and each of the tables is set in its own cubicle type thing. You leave your shoes up front. In any event, just after GP left and got in a cab, some dude burst into this silent, serene joint and sprinted, shod, down the "boardwalk" camera in hand. He basically had to be dragged out by his hair.
208: I didn't notice myself swearing uncontrollably. I've sworn more vehemently before, surely, and do I seem notably calm and measured most of the time? I am not sure what you're talking about, ned.
210: my kimchi problem
You know, my cow-orker supposed that she (the upstairs tenant) was making kimchi, but that's fermented -- I'd think you don't make it fresh every day, indeed twice a day. So I don't know what she's making.
117: So you've heard the bell, got the dinner, and salivated, but not all at once?
You can buy a special refrigerator to make kimchi.
You could make kimchi fresh every day or two, if you made it in small enough quantities and liked it fresh.
I love Korean food, but sadly very little of it is vegetarian.
Counter-intuitively, our move from this bit of southern California to that bit of south-east Ohio is going to vastly increase our local options for kimchi. Kimchi hooray! (I sort of try to get vegetarian kimchi but am not at my very most rigorous when looking into the question.)
What is vegetarian kimchi? And yes, yay kimchi and its variants. The one problem with even good store bought kimchi is that you have to let it sit for quite a while to get the desired flavor.
No, I just apparently can't type too many different directions in the same comment.
Too late to properly poke the bear, but I still like Yglesias even though I don't give a shit about rents and don't like cities. I still think he says relatively smart things, though sometimes lately he feels like an undergrad who just started reading economics.
223: Southeast would not preclude kimchi, though it might make her commute awkward.
||
Would it be inaccurate to say that neoclassical economics values efficiency more than anything else?
I just got an e-mail from my aunt (who has been retired for more than 15 years with no kids (she's only 62), is in good health and relatively speaking rich) after a plea to my whole family for help with my parents, outlining the fact that my Mom could easily wind up on the street.
She said that she would call my parents and be a "supportive presence," but felt that it would be more efficient for family and friends on the East Coast and in Boston to arrange things. (i.e. me and my sister). She cc-ed my sister and a long-time friend of my Mom's who is not supposed to be responsible for this but none of the other people included on the e-mail.
I will probably say nothing very harsh, but I am tempted to say that efficiency is not the only value outside of neoclassical/ rightwing econ. She's a liberal who supports single-payer healthcare, but I don't have a good read of how she feels about vaccines, kind of anti western medicine.
I am also tempted to say that hiring a geriatric care manager/consultant would probably be the most efficient thing, and that if she would like to underwrite that expense, I would be happy to have her be supportive in that way, but, of course, I did not want to ask for money.
I mean, just say you don't want to be bothered to help. The efficiency thing is such bullshit.
|>
219: Hangawi is a whole vegetarian restaurant! (Sigh, and the Union Sq kimchi lady has vegetarian kimchi and kimchi tofu. Mmmmm.)
230: Am I reading this right, that your aunt isn't on the East Coast? If she's not in the area and you're not asking her for money, what other kind of support could she provide?
230: Basically, yes. You can find explicit defenses of the idea that economists should only concern themselves with efficiency, since that is a technocratic question that can be answered by experts. Everything else is a question of the distribution of benefits, which is the job of politics.
232: She's in Oregon. Money would be huge. I asked for help researching what legal documents needed to be in place and how to get them for free or at very low-cost, since none of us have money. Helping to fill out a MassHealth application and to figure out how my parents can apply for that without an interruption in their MaineCaire, figuring out how to make sure that my parents assets don't go above the maximum for supplementary assistance even though their monthly income averaged out over the year wouldn't. Weighing the merits of different options etc. Generally being willing to discuss practical details.
I would take her money to pay professionals to do this, but she doesn't believe in giving money to family.
she doesn't believe in giving money to family.
!?
235: She thinks it should only go to socially-worthy charities. I find this ironic, since most of her own money comes from inheritances. (My Mom got a good chunk of money too, but nobody thought it was important to say that there should have been a conservatorship because of her disability. But now she has Alzheimer's too). I mean, she could have said "I don't believe in intra-family transfers of wealth, so I won't take any of this."
Helping to fill out a MassHealth application and to figure out how my parents can apply for that without an interruption in their MaineCaire
Is this the kind of thing that the MassHealth Enrollment Centers do? In the past I have found it pretty hard to get specific information online about the process of getting into MassHealth.
237: For long-term care applications, they routinely deny people and the questions are complicated. You get different answers depending on when you call. Which is why it's important to have lots of people make multiple phone calls and have everyone on the same page for the plan.
When you're over 65, they have asset tests (around $4,000K for a couple who want MassHealth Standard which is what appears to provide home health aides--but I don't trust my own research exclusively and want back up--and income of no more than $1235 per month (which is about what their social security is), and my parents would need to pay market rate for housing here for at least a year before they can get Senior housing. My Mom has some trust income on either a quarterly basis or every 6 months, but she doesn't have access to the trust. It's not a lot of money, but it could make their bank account go above the limits.
The over-65 Medicaid stuff is a complicated, generally middle class, entitlement for nursing home care. Lots of people hire lawyers to structure their assets appropriately. They also need people who can appeal denials. And Alzheimer's is harder to get home care for than an obvious physical problem. That's from about 20 minutes of googling.
"I don't believe in intra-family transfers of wealth, so I won't take any of this."
She doesn't believe in making transfers, but if somebody else happens to transfer to her....
So sorry to hear about your mom's Alzheimers. If you've mentioned it before, I'd missed it.
239: Thanks, Moby. And my Dad's in a rehab hospital. Congestive heart failure, plus liver disease and diabetes. His spine was compressed enough that one of his legs was temporarily paralyzed for a time. And his anemia was so bad last week that he needed a blood transfusion. Really quite sick.
Not really in much of a position to take care of himself, much less my mother who could easily get run over by a car and can't pay bills on her own.
Did I mention that my sister is trying to finish grad school, applying for jobs and that she had some pretty serious mental health problems this summer involving a psychotic break?
Further to what someone can do,
I also need help finding out about services that will take care of bill paying and generally thinking through all of the different details of planning, particularly for a psychiatric patient, since many facilities won't take them.
238.1: Yeah, I have read quite a bit about that, and also that it can move the process along if you actually go to an enrollment center in person. It's definitely a giant PITA no matter what, though.
How much, really, does a professional cost for a one time structuring engagement? Would the trustee consider paying for it?
Oh, that sounds clever -- it seems like the sort of expense a trustee should be willing to consider.
Oh, and my aunt is only too willing to say that my cousin who just started working in the human rights division of the ABA and his helping his parents deal with a crooked executor from his mom's cousin's estate.
242: There are two piddling trusts. One was set up by my great-grandfather in the 40's and is supposed to benefit me and my cousins as well. The other is just for her. They really don't want to be bothered with us anymore, since we do not qualify as high net-worth clients. My great-grandfather (who founded the firm) required that one of the trustees be a Senior partner of the firm, so they're sort of stuck with us for at least another 21 years. They would probably let them take out a loan and then give them no distributions on which, of course, they would owe tax, unless it was coming out of principal--for a couple of years. They've always said that everything should be split absolutely evenly.
I mean the trustees should have set up a conservatorship for my Mom too (for the money from her maternal grandfather which was in a trust for my grandmother) but they didn't want to now or be bothered. I really should have tried harder to get a handle on this stuff when I was 17.
I think it's only a few thousand dollars for a structuring engagement (which is a lot for them and me) but can go up to $5K. Someone recommended this firm to me. Long-term care applications cost between $6,000 and $15,000. She doesn't need the nursing home while my father's alive. Once he dies, she probably will.
242 and 243: Having her talk this over with him might also be helpful.
||
Bostonians: I'll be free Tuesday and Thursday evenings, in Cambridge / Boston, next week. So if anyone fancies a meetup?
>
I understand how awful your aunt's attitude is for you, but it doesn't sound as if you've got any leverage to change it. The trustee, on the other hand, is responsible for dispensing the money in the trust for your mother's benefit, and there's malpractice liability there if they screw up (I really don't know any details, but there's some professional obligation). And you've got the social capital to look like the sort of person who might be able to identify and bring down discipline for malpractice (middle class, some law school, you know the sort of thing).
If you can talk the trustee into making a loan from the trust for the help you need, I think that's got to be your best strategy.
Well, there are two issues:
(1.) My aunt being awful and my frustration
and
(2.) The trustee's obligations as a way of solving the issue. I've been planning to write him anyway and wanted help outlinging their needs as well. This is a BigLaw trust and estate's practice. They will be very careful not to do anything obviously wrong and to do the bare minimum that they can get away with.
They've got all the social capital. The previous trustee was managing partner and got rich with his own mutual fund company. He's given massive amounts of money to all kinds of charities as well as Harvard Law School (he's got an endowed chair), serves on visiting committees etc. He is an extremely distinguished member of the Bar. His successor is just a bog-standard Senior Partner, but nonetheless, he's got way more social capital than I do.
...not to do anything obviously wrong and to do the bare minimum that they can get away with.
Hiring a social worker or something to sort out these issues is probably a good way for them to do nothing wrong and do the bare minimum.
It's not a matter of who's got more social capital, exactly. But you've probably got enough to make the trustee do whatever the bare minimum is that they're professionally obliged to do, rather than just blowing you off. And while I don't know, it seems at least plausible that the bare professional minimum includes making the loan your mother needs.
Too bad your mother's sister won't help her. If she's a beneficiary of the same trust, you might try pitching it a little differently: big firm is going to charge more to do the restructure than little firm, so if she'll help with paying little firm, she'll have more money to help deserving charities.
246: Thursday would be better for me, but I could probably make Tuesday after 7PM in Cambridge. Thursday I'd be able to make it much earlier.
247: I mean, really, the firm screwed up badly enough that they ought to shell out a couple million, but that would never happen. (They've given lots of crap legal advice. Someone embezzled money from my Dad's business a long time ago, and they advised him not to go to the DA.)
The Junior trust is, I think, for her benefit. My uncle and cousins had to fight at one point to get the details on the assets held as well as the documents. The others are not just for her benefit but for her all of my great grandfather's blood descendants, i.e., me, my sister and my 3 fully blood-related cousins. He has a fiduciary duty to all of us.
251: I think that they charged more than $50,000 to settle my grandmother's estate. Her personal estate free and clear (not the trust her Dad set up for her) was about $600,000 in cash plus some paintings which brought it up to $1.2 million. They put that in a revocable trust for the benefit of her grandchildren so that they could go to college.
251: Whether it would affect my aunt would depend on whether they took it out of the Jr. trust which they may have liquidated for the others or the Sr. And I don't think it would matter for the Senior either. They would probably take it out of what they saw as my Mom's share leaving just as much money as before.
All of these things are conversations we should be having together.
I actually got the nicest e-mail from one of my cousins saying that she felt terrible that she could not be of more help. She had used all of her leave trying to figure this stuff out for her Dad in California (giant pain in the ass, jerk, kind of crazy) and was paying for aides out of her savings. He left an assisted living facility in a humph and has been in a motel. She's a teacher, divorced with sole custody of her two kids. He always lived as sort of a miser, so I'm told he has money, but they can't get the figures. Hopefully, she'll get reimbursed.
Isn't it amazing how people who are the busiest are often the ones who are most willing to help?
Excess wealth is poison, and it's hardly surprising that many people have been sickened by it. Active people have better resistance.
I passionately hate bucket lists and things of that kidney*, but on the one linked in 112 I scored 80. I wanted to claim squirrel because the Kentucky regional, er, delicacy called burgoo often has squirrel but I really doubt the version made in large batches at Keeneland does.
*viz. "Bohemia" by Mrs. Parker.
"Sculptors and singers and those of their kidney
Tell their affairs from Seattle to Sydney."
(Sorry, that's the racetrack in the town I went to high school in.)
255: Active people have better resistance.
I don't know what you mean by that exactly, but my aunt suffered from chronic fatigue for years. I don't want to knock CFS, because I think that it's real, but I also think that a lot of it was psychosomatic for her.
She feels, I think, that she can't handle a number of things, because her childhood was difficult. Our distant cousin who was sort of a second mother to her used to write letters to my sane uncle saying that he shouldn't talk to M about X, because it would be too much for her. She told him and his wife that they shouldn't tell me that my cousin graduated from law school, because I would not be able to handle it. Really?!
I wasn't suggesting, and it doesn't sound, like your aunt has avoided the sickening effects.
Sorry to hear that BG. Based on someone I know with a very similar experience (in different states) all I know is that this will be incredibly tough and confusing. I think people who haven't experienced it can't understand how difficult it is to navigate the worlds of benefits in these situations -- I'm a lawyer, and the few times I've looked into this it's seemed way more complicated and bureaucratically intensive to make sure that a elderly person with a small bit of cash doesn't get thrown out on the streets than it is to do, I dunno, set up an inheritance plan for a $50 million estate.
259: No, I know. I just think that, in a way, your point is strengthened by her chronic fatigue syndrome which seems to be much better after she and her husband moved from Portland to Ashland. She's also taken to doing Pilates and has resumed active gardening.
260: Yes, and I was hoping to get my own life back on track. I am wondering if I should take out long-term care insurance. I am told that policies sold in MA can't have the rate increased. I have also heard that New York life is reputable. On the other hand, lots of people say that the insurers weasel out of paying anything even when you need it.
To clarify 261.2, the long-term care insurance would be for myself.
261.2: I've heard that, but I don't know how much of that is people just not understanding their policies. So pay attention to, e.g., "waiting periods" before coverage kicks in.
Sympathies, BG, sounds tough.
261.2 My understanding is that upon requesting benefits (that is, admission), the facility or insurance company do a thorough review just to make sure the insured isn't too sick for the facility's admission criteria.
246: Bostonians: I'll be free Tuesday and Thursday evenings, in Cambridge / Boston, next week. So if anyone fancies a meetup?
Sweet! We should meetup. What time does "evening" mean? Tuesday it doesn't really matter, as nothing will be terribly crowded, but on Thursday things (in Cambridge) will probably get pretty full after about 7 or so. If "evening" is on the early side we should probably just go to Lord Hobo.
We should probably have a thread about this, as it seems likely to be orthogonal at best to this thread. FPPeepers, yo. Thread, yo.
246: I could do Tuesday or Thursday for the ttaM meetup, slight preference for Thursday.
I think I'm free from about 3pm both days, although one or other might drag on a bit later depending on meetings. I'd expect to be free by 7, definitely.
tag: Yggy being oblivious, noticed on the Wonkblog:
People prefer to keep money in bank accounts because it's convenient and because you get interest on it. If the rates were driven below zero--in effect a tax on holding cash in the bank--people would just withdraw money and store it in shoeboxes instead.
I keep my money in a negative interest banking account (zero interest plus fees), and so do many other people.
269: I'm pretty good about the no-fee part, but my interest on my online interest bearing checking account probably still loses money after inflation.
||This is just to say that federal regulatory compliance can be a fucking pain in the ass. Regulatory agency: your application does not address 424.1 and 435.7. Go look those up, and the text sends you to 438.7(b) (3) and 419.1 and... which send you to... And that's just one of their several dozen objections, most of which seem to be like this. I don't even want to think about how this would work before hyperlinked web versions of the regulations and tabbed browsers.>|