History / What should Russia and Poland do to become if not friends, then at least not enemies? [945]


That's what makes them so unhinged.... the cognitive dissonance of trying to reconcile their socialization (russia is the greatest ever! all other countries are crap! especially the Anglo-Saxons!") with the reality that life for average people is far higher in many, many, many other countries than it is in russia which is a big potemkin city and a second semi-potemkin.

I remember the video of a pretty nomal looking Polish village and russians couldn't believe it they thought it was an enclave for the very rich....

They know at some level that compared with many other countries russia is.... a failure and they externalize tha failure as unremitting hostility and ungratefulness toward their hosts....

The same is true in the Baltics.... russians know that the countries are far better off without them in charge and that modern comparative prosperity has nothing to do with them and so they cling to soviet imagery all the harder.... collecive narcissistic wound....

Food / What Polish foods and brands do you miss when you go to other countries? [216]


I knew I was forgetting something!

In my university town there was a deep dish pizza place that broccoli on pizza which was surprisingly good (and one of their biggest sellers).


I've had eel sushi in the US but I've never had eel in Poland.... once during a road trip to the north (destination was Kościerzyna) there were people standing by the road holding up smoked eels and I was curious but I wasn't driving and no one else wanted to stop....

Food / What Polish foods and brands do you miss when you go to other countries? [216]

... corn on pizza? what fresh hell is this? I love corn in some forms, but on pizza?

I'm a pepperoni, mushroom, green pepepr, onion and anchovy kind of guy (though among modern pizzas tuna and capers aren't bad)

News / How will Poland be affected by WW3 which has now started [559]


The context was that the cvnt word isnt' nearly as strong in the UK as it is in the US so even elderly ladies walking with their bibles to church might use it in some contexts.

This is completely unremarkable. Languages spoken in very different places tend to palce different values on different words and a strong insult in one (like wanker in the UK) might not have much force in another (like the US).

News / Polish Lithuanian Diplomatic War? At last. [534]


So you want them to be less prepared for public and civic life in Lithuania? They need Lithuanian at a native level to thrive, I'm all in favor of being able to use Polish in their private lives and for Polish to be part of their school system but all Polish school in Lithuania is a way of making ghettos or supplying immigrants to Poland...

A curriculum that's entirely in Polish does not prepare them for adult productive life in Lithuania.... why should the Lithuanian government be on the hook for Polish ghettos?

Life / Polish women fight for their rights - manifa and other events [306]


I think it's more evolution than anything else.... women are useful to those around them for longer and in more profound ways than men. It makes sense that over generations women would be selected for longevity in ways that men weren 't....


Elective? Not so much... do you think the taxpayers should be on the hook for Crystal the stripper's boob job?

Life / Polish film and serial riddles [137]

A beautiful night of passion?

News / How will Polish-American relations change if Trump is elected president again? [812]


It's not being protected at all at present so.... almost anything would be better than the current situation.


Most of those crossing now are not from those countries... haven't you been paying attention?

News / How will Poland be affected by WW3 which has now started [559]


I'm not sure now, but it used to be a nuclear level insult in US (if you call a man that.... get ready for a fight....) I think the P word might have similar strength now

News / How will Poland be affected by WW3 which has now started [559]


As an insult that doesn't work with Americans.... it's more a joke word than something that makes them mad.

Try again...

News / Polish Lithuanian Diplomatic War? At last. [534]


This is not an easy question...

There's a difference between high school students having Polish lessons vs having regular curriculum in Polish. The primary job of the education system (in terms of language) should be to make sure that all high school graduates are effortless fluent in the national language (which in the case of Lithuania is Lithuanian).

And I'm wondering if this is primarily aimed not at Poles as much as at russians (notorious for rejecting national languages that aren't russian).

Life / St Patrick's day in Poland [272]


My dude, you just did!

Study / Various education and school issues in Poland. Opinions, stories, controversies. [1006]


Honestly.... British people becoming the biggest publisher of foreign language textbooks is like russians publishing books on civil society....

And I still have no idea how anyone is expected to learn anythiong from most British 'textbooks' I can see a limited use of them merely as practice.... but drip dropping students through six books seems like cruel and unusual punishment....

As soon as students reach something like B1 they should be using authentic materials almost exclusively.

But by and large the industry producing textbooks and those running private schools are not really interested in students actually learning.... so....

Life / St Patrick's day in Poland [272]


De gustibus non est disputandum.

You be you and I'll be me and

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Life / St Patrick's day in Poland [272]


Dusty? All time fave....

I've been listening to Joni Mitchell a fair amount

Life / St Patrick's day in Poland [272]


I do like some stuff in the... "rock" sphere but I tend more toward (American) punk (Dead Kennedys, X, Husker Du, Social Distortion) or really gimmicky (T. Rex..) or kind of smart (The The, The Smiths, Jesus and Mary Chain? would they be considered.... "rock"?)

But I've always been allergic to arena acts like Deep Purple or Def Leopard or Lynyrd Skinner...

Ditto on GASB and of course the Gershwins and Cole Porter, I'm relatively obsessed with the song Anything Goes, as good and smart as any song of the 20th century and the more you look it the smarter it is....

Life / St Patrick's day in Poland [272]


I am appalled by your love of that raucous and unmelodic 'rock' mu... I can't even call it music, I'm so apalled!

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Life / St Patrick's day in Poland [272]


I can hear classical training with O'Hara (I think that's a good thing though it might not be an authentic folk style).

Off-Topic / Random Sports News [872]


It is impossible to change sex and men should not be allowed to compete with women.

Off-Topic / Random Sports News [872]


even worse than the dark clothes are the primitive compulsions to cover hair and/or face.... it's a hideous look and the philosophy behind it is hideous as well....

Off-Topic / Random Sports News [872]


I think of Saudi/Gulf state Arab men as wearing nightgowns....

Life / St Patrick's day in Poland [272]


Very interesting to hear about your connection with traditional Irish music!

The first song in Irish that I heard was Seothin Seo (on an album by some kind of folk group but I forget the name and it's not on youtube....) none of the versions on youtube seem to be quite the same melody either....

Now I'm wondering if Mary O'Hara and Jean Ritchie ever met.... in the early 1950s Ritchie spent time in Ireland collecting songs... O'Hara would have been 17 at the time but later I might expect that they would meet on the folk music circuit... or maybe not....

"Ritchie and her husband, George Pickow, spent 18 months tape recording, interviewing and photographing singers, including Elizabeth Cronin, Tommy and Sarah Makem, Leo Rowsome, and Seamus Ennis in Ireland"

Ritchie's is my favorite version of Barbara Allen (Barbry Ellen in her tellen) I also like it because it fleshes out the story more, why Barbry was cruel to the dying William (a perceived slight at a dance), touches on her growing remorse 'she heard those death bells a' knelling, and every stroke the dead bell give: "hard hearted Barbry Ellen" before her death and the image of the rose and greenbriar growing out of their graves..



Here she is playing the dulcimer (with a feather) singing a traditional Apalachian song (Shady Grove) that doesn't seem to have any old world antecedent.

Language / Game - guess Polish idioms/sayings in direct English translation [1756]


Yes, ladies' choice (when women ask men to dance) aka Sadie Hawkins (though just for a dance not to get married).

There was a PRL series by that name as well, an anthology with a common theme (each episode was about a different woman but they all worked in the same place).

pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bia%C5%82e_tango

I thought it might be on youtube but no such luck....

News / How will Polish-American relations change if Trump is elected president again? [812]


You do realize that almost none of those currently crossing the border are Mexicans, don't you?

It would be very.... revealing if you didn't.....

Life / St Patrick's day in Poland [272]

Enough of this raucous and discordant "rock" music.... Time for some culture.

Mary O'Hara is a key figure in the revival/preservation of Irish folk music (Jean Ritchie played a similar role with American folk at roughly the same time) and influenced countless who came after her. Her pure crystaline soprano and restrained harp playing helped reinforce the idea that Irish has a place in the modern world.

Here is a nice song in Irish "Is Ar Eirinn Ni N-Eosphainn Ce Hi" (for Ireland I won't tell her name).



Here's a song in English about the pain of emigration. Romanticized in the New World as immigration for the one leaving it was a painful wrenching from everything they knew and loved.... the poem is by Thomas Moore, my favorite verse is about imagining himself visiting his friends...

My soul, happy friends, shall be with you that night -
Shall join in your revels, your sports and your wiles,
And return to me beaming all o'er with your smiles;
Too blest if it tells me, that 'mid the gay cheer,
Some kind voice had murmur'd "I wish he were here"!



No need to thank me, I'm just trying to raise the tone a bit.

Language / Game - guess Polish idioms/sayings in direct English translation [1756]


That reminds me. Have we had white tango yet?

News / How will Polish-American relations change if Trump is elected president again? [812]


Well Biden did apologize to the criminal for calling him 'illegal'.... so.....

The media and democrats encouraged people to riot and burn down cities (and praised them for doing so) after the pos criminal George Floyd died of an overdose while resisting arrest and that serial abuser of women was elevated to the status of folk saint.

Yet nothing about Laken Riley or other citizens killed by Biden's new open border policy.

News / How will Polish-American relations change if Trump is elected president again? [812]


Then why isn't the border being controlled?

Blah blah blah we don't need a wall.... while they keep pouring in and killing Americans

Laken Riley was just one of many killed by illegal aliens under Biden's watch.

Life / St Patrick's day in Poland [272]


they killed a bunch of people, that's enough to make a narcissist love (and envy) them

News / How will Polish-American relations change if Trump is elected president again? [812]


While repubs want borders not closed by a wall, an expansion of corporate welfare, lots of dead Ukrainians and they want this funded by those who are rich enough to pay taxes but poor enough to not figure out how to not pay taxes....