From "Who's Bill This Time", Wait Wait…Don't Tell Me! 12/21/2019:
Peter Sagal: Mayor- Mayor Pete has been getting some heat.
I don't know if you saw this.
He attended a big fundraiser in Napa
at a winery with a, quote, "wine cave."
And everybody was so mad that he did this.
But why would you be mad about a wine cave?
It celebrates the two things Democrats are known for, whining and caving.
In the last few days, we've been discussing the notion of "national language" and its relationship to other languages and topolects spoken in China. Here's a famous 6:47 comic skit filmed in 1980 featuring the late Mǎ Jì 马季 and his straight man, Zhào Yán 赵炎, called "Guǎngdōng huà 广东话" ("Cantonese") (I will describe its contents below):
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Thank you for your cervix https://t.co/jlBNX0CL76
— Jessica Roy (@jessica_roy) November 22, 2019
Freudian typo?
ICYMI: Garrett Haake says Democrats called Bill Taylor’s testimony today “disturbing” and the most “complete testimony they had heard.” #MTPDaily@GarrettHaake: “No one is questioning the voracity of anything he said in that room, at least not that I have heard.” pic.twitter.com/k1ERO39LWQ
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) October 23, 2019
JPMorgan has a new index — called the “Volfefe Index” — that measures Trump’s tweets and their impact on bond volatility. (1/x) pic.twitter.com/D37ocdebxk
— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) September 8, 2019
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From a recent email enticing me to read the current edition of The Atlantic magazine:
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ICYMI:
https://twitter.com/juliarburnham/status/1159901209378951168
A cartoonist and her collaborator have been arrested in China for being "spiritually Japanese" (jīng Rì 精日). They have also been accused of "insulting China" (rǔ Huá 辱华). The latter term is transparent, and I've been hearing it a lot for the last couple of decades, whereas the former term is morphologically more difficult to understand (lit., "spirit Ja[pan]") and is new to me.
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So, kurzgesagt, reads the text that runs along all four sides of this two-millennia-old iron writing instrument excavated from an archeological site in London six years ago:
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The poor fellow in the following short video is taking a Mandarin listening comprehension exam:
https://twitter.com/daja_vu_/status/1154750884649349120
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"Porsche and BMW are known as 'broken shoes' and 'don’t touch me' in China", by Echo Huang
Many of these names are off-color and some even quite vulgar, but they are all affectionate:
Audi’s RS series: xīzhuāng bàotú 西装暴徒 (“a gangster in a suit”), inspired by the car’s smooth look and impressive horsepower (some links in Chinese).
Bugatti’s Veyron: féi lóng 肥龙 (“fat dragon”). The French car manufacturer’s high-performance Veyron sports car earned the moniker for its round-front face design, and because “ron” in Veyron sounds like “lóng" ("dragon"), just as "Vey" sounds like féi ("fat").
BMW: bié mō wǒ 别摸我 (“don’t touch / rub me”). The German acronym for Bayerische Motoren Werke forms the basis to create a Mandarin phrase that expresses how precious people consider the car to be.
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Donald Trump's July 4 speech included this puzzling passage:
In June of seventeen seventy five
the Continental Congress created a unified army
out of the revolutionary forces encamped around Boston and New York
and named after the great
George Washington commander in chief
The Continental Army suffered a bitter winter
of Valley Forge
found glory across the waters of the Delaware
and seized victory from Cornwallis of Yorktown.
Our army manned the air((ports))
it ranned [sic]
the ramparts
it took over the airports it did everything it had to do
and at Fort
McHendry [sic]
under the rockets' red glare
it had nothing
but victory.
and when dawn came
their star spangled banner
waved defiant
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