Travel / Poland in photo riddles - part 3 [818]


Thank God. Some bigos has blobs of raisin paste in which lift it though.

Even though ogórki małosolne are nice and crunchy, the cz*sn*k just spoils them and they're better without.


Not a fan.. Don't worry about the 4% though. With tamarind, less is usually more.

Law / Gun control in Poland: should Polish people be allowed to own guns? [1070]


Exactly.

Their obsession with guns is hard to figure out. It leads to a stratospherically high gun crime rate. It's as if they permanently live in fear.

There are even stories of Jehovah's Witnesses knocking on doors and being shot, and people being shot when they stop their car in the countryside and call at someone's house to ask for directions .

And they can't figure out (or pretend not to figure out) that we don't want this in Europe.

Fortunately most people over there are not like the demented geriatric clowns and ex-jailbird felons that come here to troll.

Work / Warsaw job with US experience (tech company) [11]

@Alien
It's a good time to come, however there are a lot of cis and citizenship applications from people wanting to get out of there. A huge spike for applications in the U.K. and apparently the same in France.

Law / Gun control in Poland: should Polish people be allowed to own guns? [1070]


It seems pretty weird to me. Even wanting those things. I don't mean antique pistols or muskets, more assault rifles and semiautomatics.


Do you know that film. Maybe called Tremors, about ten giant worm u der the desert.

Travel / Poland in photo riddles - part 3 [818]


Thanks. The internet being full of Aussie private clinic websites about it with loads of photos doesn't help. Plus right now I'm in a place where everyone's black so they don't need many dermatologists due to having better skin generally and also more resistant to the sun. It could just be be due to falling asleep with glasses on and the thingy doesn't have ragged edges which is a plus.

What will be will be.


That's a good guess.

Law / Gun control in Poland: should Polish people be allowed to own guns? [1070]


It's a strange sort of individual who would collect guns. They must be very weak that they fetishise weapons.

Travel / Poland in photo riddles - part 3 [818]


Vimto (a fruit drink from Manchester but mostly sold now in Arab countries) in the gulf though it obviously isn't that. Pepsi across the Muslim world (not that either) a drink containing almonds and a crazy amount of sugar in North Africa (very nice and tastes a bit like liquid marzipan, mostly a breakfast thing), in some places baobab juice (really nice and you can buy it in powdered form though not within the EU due to bureaucracy), sometimes a hibiscus cordial (both of those are all year round in Sudan) and in a few places they mix Seven Up and milk which is nicer than it sounds.

Is it almonds?


Life is fine and for rejoicing in (though that depends on what the dermatologist says about a sinister sun spot that's growing suddenly - fingers crossed, I'll know more tomorrow) however g@rl1c is for very small quantities only. OK in southern Italian cooking. In minute quantities. It totally ruins lamb.

Poisonous to cats as well. Mine likes licking Tabasco (cats don't feel the heat from chilli) however I caught him slurping up some spilt sriracha and was a bit worried.

Travel / Poland in photo riddles - part 3 [818]


It looks like something very traditional that they eat in North Africa, usually in the evening in Ramadan. That has honey, dates, palm syrup and nuts in. I can't remember the name though.


Teriyaki? That sounds nice.

I was worried that it could be particular flavour that I hate so much I can't bear to mention the word in English. Po Polsku, it's called cz*sn*k. Th8 king about it, the Polish name is as bad or worse. A flavour that should never walk the earth.

News / European News and Poland Thread - part 4 [988]


That's what we have back home now.

Steady change is sustainable change and yes, it's a paradox that the only way to make that is to work through grindingly slow bureaucracy.

Off-Topic / Is Islam a threat to western society? [199]


All, pretty well.

It's a dangerous place for several reasons, ot really to do with religion.

Off-Topic / Is Islam a threat to western society? [199]


Very few citizens of Saudi Arabia (about 10%) are Shia almost all are Sunni. Egypt is nearly all Sunni too, Iraqis are split between Sunni in the North and Shia in the south.

If you want to find Shia, they're mostly in Iran, Azerbaijan, southern Iraq and in Turkey

Shia tend to be more mystical. Sunni just means Orthodox.

There is a third strand too, called Ibadi however they are small in number. Plus Alevis who make up half the urban population of Istanbul, and don't have mosques. They are very liberal.

News / European News and Poland Thread - part 4 [988]


So what. Is practically, productive and in line with 'human nature' whatever is?

Can you turn the clock back? And what about the majority of people who like progress?

Travel / Poland in photo riddles - part 3 [818]

Yokan or yubeshi. My guess is yokan or sliced yubeshi.

Probably contain8ng nuts, walnut or pistachio.

Travel / Poland in photo riddles - part 3 [818]


Is it sweet potato yokan?

The Japanese like sweet potato as confectionary and I think that plant originated in Africa. They also have sweets with sugarcane in. Dates too.

There's a date yokan. Is it that?

It does look like a type of yokan.

News / European News and Poland Thread - part 4 [988]


Yet churches are closing down every week. I suspect your stats are inflated by Chinese, Korean and African overseas students.

There's no religious revival. The orthodox (more often than not fake orthodox episcopi vagantes groups) that say they're getting beardy proud boys turning up are deeply reactionary sects, all guns and tradwives.

News / European News and Poland Thread - part 4 [988]


Do you believe them? Those stats are not credible.

Attendance is plummeting in Poland, ever since the death of JP2 and faster yet since Covid.


Why are so many churches around Europe closing?

News / European News and Poland Thread - part 4 [988]


Do you not see that happening before your eyes?


What do you have against progressive values? Do you want a return to a golden age in the past that never existed?

News / European News and Poland Thread - part 4 [988]


No, and it's weird that you think that.


The new government have kickstarted industrial development and are starting (or trying to start) the most ambitious housebuilding project in Europe. The economic indicators are good right now and the currency is strong. They've also managed to work out a trade deal with Trup which doesn't give in to any of the nasty things the trumpists wanted. The only concession is to buy some Boeings for BA which is now foreign-owned anyway.


Overrun? Weird.

And migration has fallen since it increased massively under the Tories who wanted to make money for buy-to-letters and nasty hotel chains as well as undermine society by creating a poor and desperate pool of cheap labour.

News / European News and Poland Thread - part 4 [988]


Less of the snark.


You don't. Church attendance is haemorrhaging across Europe, including in Poland. This will not change any time soon.


The Fabian Society? As in George Bernard Shaw, John May ard Keynes, Annie Besant, H.G. Wells and Bertrand Russell? It still exists today and I used to be a member back in the early 90s. They have an excellent quarterly journal. What is your specific experience of that discussion group?


Enjoy your two days off a week, your statutory paid holidays, your right to vote, your statutory paternity leave, your access to hospitals free at the point of use, your right to divorce, your right not to work 14 hours a day and your free compulsory schooling. All these and much more were obtained for you by socialism. Did you think that the rich gave you all these things out of the goodness of their hearts.

If you're waiting for the rich to share their wealth with you, you'll be waiting for a long time or if you're waiting for terrified and mean-spiriypted conservatives to be less terrified, mean-spirited and conservative, you'll die of old age before you see that.

Polonia / Polish bus crash in Croatia. Is there a fate? [229]


I don't really need YouTube for that however yes, there's probably plenty on there about it; normal enough for a society that loves to wash its dirty linen in public.

The mould problem is even worse in privately owned houses. It's one of the wettest cold countries on the planet and the battle against rising damp, condensation, wet rot and mould are constant.

A friend in London moved to PL, rented his ground floor flat (late nineteenth/early twentieth century private flat) to some Poles. They put expanding builder's foam in the airbricks (as we both know, Poles hate drafts, especially the dreaded przyciąg). The result? My friend was sued by his upstairs neighbours whose wallpaper fell off due to the damp caused by blocking the vents.


More people trying to carry out a complex and expensive task and achieving a partial outcome. Not every student gets a first, not every Local authority gets everything right and not every businessperson investor makes a fortune (unlike Jim, PAK, etc here who only ever achieve great success in life, despite in reality being failures) and not every doctor becomes a consultant.

All you can do is the best with what you've got (and there are some who will always snipe at that - most things are far easier to say than do) a task made harder by bureaucratic and corporate structures working against you. So often the story of social welfare has been about sticking plasters which are put on and never replaced since new challenges appear.


That's what happens when programmes are started by Labour and subsequently deliberately undermined by the Tories. Similar things are happening now in your country and happen often in mine.


That's Divvis Flats, one of the developments in Glasgow like Red Road mentioned earlier. Glasgow had some of the worst nineteenth century slums in Europe, was very heavily bombed in WW2 with a large loss of life and an even larger loss of buildings. For decades afterwards the city was under massive pressure to put a roof over people's heads, and for all their faults, places like Divvis did that for a while and were replaced decades ago with better social housing.

If you want to see a good example of social housing in Scotland in that period, google Leith Banana Flats (or just watch the scene in Trainspott8ng where they're shooting a skinhead's dog from the flat windows).

Polonia / Polish bus crash in Croatia. Is there a fate? [229]


As far as I know, only one collapsed (the one with the elderly lady, the gas cooker and the cigarette) called Ronan Point. It shocked the nation and the law regarding building safety was changed after that. Fortunately others a brand new building so very few people had moved in.

The ones demolished (actually not that many) were generally due to a concentration of people with difficult social problems being put in the same place and successive Tory governments (they absolutely hate the idea of social housing or anything else their bourgeois chums can't make a profit from) deliberately running down public infrastructure and in the case of housing, legally preventing councils from building or improving it

You can't just build flats, put families with huge problems in and run away to leave them to flounder,

Plus, some that were demolished were either temporary, experimental, or just too modern for people who wanted traditional things. Some of the ones that were knocked down in Glasgow (which has a huge amount of social housing) like the Red Road Flats were demolished because they were on windswept estates, miles from shops or services, and people just didńt like them. High rise work best in built up areas, as infill developments rather than on big estates and for either single people or the elderly. Most are successful; Google Park Hill Flats in Sheffield or the Byker Wall in Newcastle.

Polonia / Polish bus crash in Croatia. Is there a fate? [229]


That why claims are always investigated.


There isn't really and most social housing is well-built though after the war there were a lot of homeless still a lot of early nineteenth century slums to be cleared, a huge pressure to build and money was very tight; some of the buildings were only expected to be temporary but lasted much longer. That's the same situation in Warsaw with the 'wielki płyty` buildings, banned in the late 60s in the U.K. after an old bat in London left the gas on at night and lit a cig in the morning.

Ironically, some of the shoddier buildings like prefabs (I'm all for bringing those back right now) and Airey Houses were among the most popular and much loved.


Yes. The cities built them with high ideals but didn't always look after them and another problem was that people in the U.K. fetishise home ownership while at the same time concentrate the poorest who need the most help in the same areas. Plus, the councils who had ro build the most were generally in places that had the most problems.

I had 4 council flats, all were larger and a higher standard than you'd expect to find in PL (and one was borderline luxurious) however the problem families who the council had the most duty to support were obviously put in council accommodation and this didn't do much to make a cohesive or stable environment. A bit like that part of Warsaw near the women's prison sort of behind Grochów where the city houses families that they have a duty to house but who don't pay rent or cre much about what's around them.

There's going to be a new round of council house building in the U.K., and judging by the few estates that have been built in the last couple of decade or so, they will probably be good ones.

Polonia / Polish bus crash in Croatia. Is there a fate? [229]


Yep, Leicester rather than London. Anywhere south of about north Derbyshire (unless it's zone 1 in London) may as well be Antarctica to me!

It's weird that some people are being sceptical about him being on the plane. Good that he survived though. A real miracle although he'll probably have survivirs' guilt, especially since his brother who was travelling with him was lost.

It will probably be a long time before they know how many people on the ground died, however the footage of survivors on stretchers looked tragic.

Polonia / Polish bus crash in Croatia. Is there a fate? [229]


That's a bit of a strange thing to say, however yes, he was on the flight, as was his brother who sadly died.

I doubt the hospital who treated him needed any evidence other than his injuries. Anyway, he was a Londoner returning home who was on the flight manifest, and a couple of newspapers have shown pics of his bloodstained boarding pass.


The Westminster Tory city councillors who decided to save money by using sub-standard cladding or the French company who falsified the results of safety testing so they could make money from selling substandard and dangerous products?

Law / Gun control in Poland: should Polish people be allowed to own guns? [1070]


It's a paradox that the people who actually want guns are generally the last people who should have them.

Travel / Poland in photo riddles - part 3 [818]


Prawn crackers are something that when they're warm, I could eat a thousand in one go.. Very very nice things. Did you know that it's possible to make a sort of pie with them?

Are they flavoured with ginger or shoyu?

There's also chili flavour.

Polonia / Polish bus crash in Croatia. Is there a fate? [229]


And hope that if you're in a crash, every factor including angle of descent, geography and buildings on the ground are identical.

This really looks like a one in a million thing.

News / European News and Poland Thread - part 4 [988]


The one we've recently elected with a huge supermajority?

We didn't rise against the 14 years of appalling Tory misrule that did its best to wreck our infrastructure and industrial base as well as flagrant corruption from the likes of Hancock and Mone that are only now being investigated. Nor did we rise against the economic devastation of the Thatcher years with thousands losing their jobs, soup kitchens opening in formerly prosperous mining areas and whole towns in those regions still slowly depopulating even now.

No, all that will rise is our economy, our NHS and our wellbeing.

Off-Topic / What's your hobby? [191]


I'd heard diorama (from American TV) but not diorama lamp. Amazon has a few and it's got me thinking. The one in your link that Showa an Abrams tank is pretty good.

The one you painted looks great; there's something about metallic that can lift an item to be something special.

Law / Gun control in Poland: should Polish people be allowed to own guns? [1070]

Is that post some sort of performance art?