Spain won the Women’s soccer World Cup, but there was hardly any celebration. All the news have been concentrated on an infamous kiss given by Luis Rubiales, the president of Spain’s Football Association on one of the female players, Jennifer Hermoso. (Hermoso, by the way, means beautiful in Spanish, but opinions vary.) It didn’t seem…
Last year, I visited New York and Seattle and was surprised to see so many homeless and drug addicts roaming around the streets. Public transportation seemed more chaotic than usual and the cities still were reeling with disorder and a highest cost of living. I haven’t visited other cities there recently, but many visitors tell…
The writer C. J. Hopkins, who is an American but lives in Germany, is being sentenced to pay a fine or face prison for a couple of tweets comparing the Covid lockdown totalitarianism to Nazi Germany. His “crime” is to have posted two tweets showing a swastika, which, as you know, can be considered a crime…
There probably couldn’t be two more dissimilar places than Sicily and Finland and, yet, somehow, I love them both. If Finland is calm and order, then Sicily is noise and chaos. In Finland, people would wait for the pedestrian’s green light to appear before they crossed the street — any street, even if it was…
It’s a Barbie world, sang a song, and now we hear the same tune in a movie. But we do NOT live in a Barbie world. If anything, it’s quite the opposite. For all its defects and its shallow consumerism, Barbie’s world was kitsch but at least it was pink and cheerful. But our modern…
In a famous Sherlock Holmes story, the detective draws attention to a curious incident of a dog that didn’t bark at night. Sometimes, what we don’t hear is almost as important as what we hear. While we are bombarded with news about global warming, what is the media NOT barking about? There are a lot…
An American soldier stationed in South Korea appears to have escaped into North Korea, effectively becoming a defector. It appears that he was involved in some fights in Seoul, and he had been previously arrested for assault. He was about to be arrested again or deported to the US, and that seems to be the…
Also, Swedes vs Finns Living the dream is an expression that means living a luxurious, ideal lifestyle, but it can also be taken to mean being out of touch with reality. Stop dreaming, bitch. Life is hard. Wake up and smell the coffee. My time in Finland is almost up, and it was a dream…
And other immigration stories You might remember Scorsese’s mother from the hilarious dinner scene in “Goodfellas”, shown below, where she plays Joe Pesci’s mother. That’s Scorsese’s real mom, and she’s amazing. She also plays a small part in “Casino”. (I didn’t realize it before, but Scorsese’s father also has a brief cameo in “Goodfellas”, as…
A brief comment and nutrition advice When I was still a child, they started rolling a propaganda that “margarine is healthier than butter”. It was obviously bankrolled by margarine producers. To me, even back then, it never made any sense that an artificial concoction with bland taste and bad smell could somehow be healthier than…