Paul Berk

United Ireland? Love Ireland. Beautiful place. Wonderful music, whiskey, lit. But politics of the Irish has often been murderous, vicious, the furthest thing from enlightened. Not something to unconditionally celebrate with a simplistic oppression story. An American chapter:

I envy the guys doing YouTube podcasts that have good hair so they don't need to wear a dumb hat.

A box of painstakingly accumulated spare small parts I need at the job has gone missing and I'm feeling like Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight. Did I hide it during an alcoholic blackout? What? Doesn't make sense. It was marked and in plain sight.

@ghostofchristo1 I thought that, originally, PC was the idea that you don't acknowledge something as factual or truthful if acknowledgment could do damage to your political position or cause.

From a 1991 essay by Daniel Harris entitled "What Is the Politically Correct?" Just in case you were wondering whether "woke" and PC were the same phenomenon (and whether anti-PC and anti-woke might be the same thing too).

For sheer power with its resources the US military must be unmatched, but pound for pound, the best armies on the planet must be Ukraine and Israel.

It would make more sense to enact and implement the legislation and see how it works before eliminating the leverage of criminal summonses for e-bike drivers (not riders) who have no incentive to show up in court or even give the right name.

I don't enjoy saying it, but I loathe the post offices in Brooklyn.

@JamesLucasIT "Come to me, son of Jor-el! Kneel before Zod!" - Terence Stamp, Superman II.

What movie line was delivered so flawlessly that it deserved an Oscar? I'll start:

@AndyMasley In general I think satires of the past work better with those too young to have experienced that past. No so good with those of us who were there.

On the left is a complaint that One Battle After Another wasn't like the Weathermen. On the right is a description of the Weathermen.

@SquarePegDem @LevineJonathan But it's Israel's fault there's not peace in the Levant.

@LevineJonathan She used the N-word?

NEW from me Rama Duwaji — the wife of NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani— shared several posts glorifying Palestinian terrorism on old social media accounts that remain active. Duwaji also used the N-word. freebeacon.com/democrats/zohr…

@SquarePegDem I once got a submission accepted by NYT Metropolitan Diary. I sent a photocopy to my mom and she called and asked, "Are you the Paul Berk that wrote that?" Some people are unimpressible.

@Cat_Victim Letters@nypost.com

"Now Mamdani’s plan threatens to turn the city that never sleeps into the city that never moves, just like London — a famously bustling metropolis brought to a standstill by a wave of a mayor’s hand."

@SquarePegDem Remember John Candy in Splash? "Penthouse printed my letter! Penthouse printed my letter!"

@MartinKaste Tell her. Be truth's soldier. Unless she is 80 or over, in which case let it be.

@AdamPlantinga @MartinKaste This is my problem, too. I was skeptical about a mom holding up her 1 year old baby to be kissed by an adult male lion.

Ethics: Should one tell one's mother that that video of the duck kissing the cute kid is AI? Or is reticence the better part of valor?

@EjmEj Why the comparison of marginal vs effective rates?

Cool!

@MUGGER2023 @nickyotissmith How about two best pictures. One for low budget films, the other for sky's the limit budgets.

Via @nickyotissmith: If the Oscars want to continue for another 98 years, maybe they should let the “prestige picture” genre die and allow for a broader slate of films that people actually saw and liked. splicetoday.com/moving-picture…

Speaking of tools looking at some prices online and although I thought everything was supposed to go up up up one tool we buy many of, the price has declined a few bucks the last year.

@PeterMoskos I will triumph, eventually.

@Cat_Victim I got one, once!

Subwayed home via the G but couldn't get an open gangway train. Let three trains go by but apparently not my day subway wise.

@nicolegelinas I'm glad not to be in the market but I wonder is there a way to scope out the quality of a new building before buying into it? Probably very difficult. I once asked a drinking acquaintance contractor this and he was stumped for an answer.

Market-rate rental buildings are actually built well ... because the owner is going to keep the building for a long time and wants reasonable maintenance costs. The building I am in is really well built. Condos ... not so much. You are lucky if the new-build condo doesn't fall down. Rentals are like a bond and condos are like a stock (a highly speculative stock).