As much as I admire Jones, I must admit your satire wins the prize. I especially liked the Blinken truth serum speech. Although it’s hard to choose that over the Israeli UN ambassador threatening to gas himself. Humor is essential in these miserable times.

Very interesting, as always. Pointing out Jewish lies does nothing to reduce their clout. It’s a nice method of virtue signaling, and continues to win (powerless) friends and allies. They get their (our) dollars, they keep their seats of influence, they’ve done it for the tribe, so they can’t be shamed. Action to dislodge them is what is needed. A good story, the honest story, doesn’t bring about that result. But it’s great reading. Thank you.

Glad you’ve caught up. Maybe all of us suburban moms who saw vax injury firsthand were not so hysterical after all.

I’d like to know what % of Starbucks’ revenue comes from international stores. In SE Asia, Starbucks is quite popular with office workers, and prices for coffee are what they are in the US, for people in countries with a fraction of US monthly income. I think it’s sort of a status thing for them, or maybe a cheap trip to the West once a day. In any case, what I’ve always thought of these coffee stores is that they’re really dessert shops. Coffee-flavored sugar and fat.

Very interesting, but regarding fruit, some comments. As I child I assumed peaches should be crunchy. Found out later that they were picked in the US before ripe so they could be shipped.

I have lived overseas for over 20 years in various places. I have gotten nothing but tasteless (local) fruit in Thailand (I think the best stuff is exported), Cambodia (have eaten awful mangoes right off the tree), Burma (tasteless pomelos right off the tree), Egypt (tasteless local peaches and melons), Indonesia (tasteless local fruits). In these places, there was essentially no good local fruit on a consistent basis.

I could go on. Vegetables in all these places were pretty much the same. Chinese apples? Not worthy of the name. Even extremely pricey durian, grown in SE Asia, is usually a disappointment. Had the best peaches I’ve ever eaten in Morocco. I stayed there for 3 weeks and bought them fresh at the market each day. If I didn’t eat them that day, they were rotten the next day.

In the US, I have had excellent apples in season from farmers’ markets in VA, and picked off trees in CT. Excellent peaches at roadside stands in GA.

It may just be a matter of things not tasting right if they’re not ripe, not in season, stored too long, or not good in some locations. But people like having apples for sale 365 days a year, and most other “staple” fruits as well. So just buy a small quantity and see if the batch is good.

Americans, and all people, need affordable health care, not insurance. All insurance does is reinforce the existing pricing of health care services, which are outrageously expensive. Insurance is not health care, it’s administrative cost. We don’t need more of that. Keep your eyes on the prize.

Agreed. I live in BKK as well and in general people seem satisfied. On a recent trip to KL, Malaysia, which is filled with glitz and obviously wants to be a world-class city, I thought that Thailand seems to have no such aspirations for the cookie-cutter high rises filled with overpriced malls (though there are plenty here). Thai people mostly seem to want to be good Buddhists. As for safety, maybe they don’t attack foreigners, but I walk for miles at ALL HOURS, DAILY, completely unmolested. I actually think they take me for a local. My Thai friends say they know lots of people with credit card debt, but how would that change with more Chinese-funded development? On a recent trip to Laos we saw the Chinese construction of the railway in action. Lots of temporary housing for imported Chinese labor, they even bring in much of their own food, so where’s the benefit to the locals? My guides there said the Chinese probably paid off local politicians to get the right to build. Maybe in the future there will be a benefit to the Lao people, who will leave their villages after they discover the array of junk food and makeup available in the cities and have their local lifestyle and traditions die out. It’s their choice, of course, but who’s telling them the crappy products won’t make them happy in the long run?

I am amazed at the number of people who have the time to amuse themselves bs-ing about a topic that has not been defined. I for one would like to get a look at the IQ test that was administered in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

And I love how words like “innovation” are tossed around here as though they are assumed to be valuable to society. No doubt the folks whose combined efforts gave us GMO foods and bought the scientists and government officials required to insure their economic viability were high-IQ successes in their field.

From the quality of the commentary here I’d say a lot of IQ power is going to waste. How about making the world a better place, guys?