My best advice to parents is: Love what your kids love, and your kids will love you.

Absolutely, it made us super close. He’s now 27, and and we are still best friends.

When my son was little, I read to him every night, until he was about 10. At some point I started reading the Harry Potter books to him, butnhe outgrew the nightly readings before the series ended. So as each subsequent book would come out, we would resume our nightly readings. The final book came out when he was about 13, but he still wanted me to read it to him.

I had voices for each character, and once on a long road trip, I got one of the HP audio books from the library to listen to. After about 2 chapters, he asked me to take it off because he liked my voices better.

Nostrovya!

I get it. Frankly, i was surprised that ALL my Muslim clients, who also came from India, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, South Africa, and other countries, didn’t have problems of their own. I also had people from many other countries luke Vietnam, Phillipines, Russia, Serbia, England, etc. None got hassled at all. This one guy just won the Border Patrol Lottery. Yay!

The closest I saw was when one got pulled over by a local cop, who kept asking him over and over “Who else is in the car?”, when it was easy to see that the guy was all alone in the vehicle. The only thing i could think of was that in order to get from my shop to his hotel, he had to travel through a small zone that is known for prostitution, and a lone brown guy in a car tickled that cop’s lizard brain. That area is also a MAJOR tourist/ convention zone, so its not the only reason to be there. 99.99% of the people going through are there for perfectly legitimate reasons, including just getting from here to there. My client didn’t even know about the prostitution angle, and was horrified when i told him.

I used to teach a unique culinary technique, and had clients visit me from all around the world for training, including several Muslim countries. Only one client had a serious problem at the border, a young Muslim guy from India. His dad was a major Bollywood director, and was fairly wealthy.

He had gone to college in America, so he was using this trip to both visit me for a few days for his training, then going on to Miami to meet up with his American college friends.

His visa said he was here on a pleasure trip, but for some reason he was pulled aside for grilling. They demanded his phone, and looked through his texts, where they found messages between him and I, making arrangements for his training.

That lit them up, and they started claiming he was coming here for work, not pleasure. He explained that he wasnt being paid, he was paying me, and it wasn’t work. It was educational, if anything. It was really just an expensive experiential vacation adventure for a rich kid, which was something I’d experienced before. Some clients really wanted to learn this technique to expand their culinary portfolio, while others just wanted to try it out for fun, and had the time and money to do it. If you came to America to learn to scuba dive, or surf, would it be considered work, or even educational?

The fact that he was here for education or work wasn’t the point, the point was that the visa was for pleasure, so they were claiming it was a violation, even though most of the trip was with his friends (3 days with me, 2 weeks with his buddies).

Then they focused on his money. He was carrying about $2600, and they acted like that was an outrageous amount of cash for a rich young man to carry on an international trip. They demanded he tell them exactly how much cash was in his wallet, which they were holding, and had searched. He told them the exact amount, because he had counted his money on the plane, after they had landed. They told him he was lucky he knew the exact amount, or they would have kept his money and sent him home.

Eventually, they grudgingly allowed him to leave, and he got his training, and visited his friends, but he went home with a very negative view of the US government.

This all happened during the first MAGA administration.

Where did you get that information? Because all it said in the article was:

Officials became suspicious of potential illegal work intentions after learning the teens had not booked accommodation for their entire five-week stay in Hawaii,

How not booking hotels for their entire trip equates to “potential work intentions” escapes me. If you were planning on working for five weeks, wouldn’t you book a hotel near where you were planning to work? Was there a job lined up? Are we supposed to believe that in the middle of a round-the-world graduation trip, these girls wanted to spend 5 weeks working?

Alternate explanations:

• the “work” they were doing was shooting video of their adventures and posting it on YouTube in the hopes of establishing a career as travel influencers, so they can travel the world for a living. Basically, this trip was an investment in their future.

• border agents got pissed off and jealous of two rich girls traveling the world, and decided to fuck with them

• the girls became indignant at being treated like common illegal immigrants, and mouthed off, and agents decided to teach them a lesson.

Frankly, the real story is probably a combination of all three.

Much of America is rural, and pick-up trucks are extremely useful on a daily basis in that world. Then country music made it a metaphor for masculinity, and dopey suburbanites embraced it to enhance their personal brand image as tough guys.

No killing required, but all religions should be heavily taxed, until they can be abolished. Weak religious freaks need to find a different way to cope with the hardships of life. That’s not asking too much, most people get by fine without religion.

During HitlerPig 1.0, Erdogan came to America for a meeting with HitlerPig. As he was coming out, there were protesters to meet him. Erdogan ordered his security team to assault the protesters, and they viciously beat numerous peaceful protesters. HitlerPig said and did nothing about it. He allowed a foreign security force to come to America and severely assault people for exercising their 1st Amendment rights.

My first presidential election was in 1980. I have voted in every election since, and I have NEVER voted for a candidate I liked. The best I could ever hope for was the lesser of two evils, and sometimes the difference wasn’t so wide.

But that wasn’t the case in 2024, where the difference between the two sides was far wider than I have ever experienced. I am very distressed at the situation in Haza, and I did not support Biden’s weak, cowardly approach at all, but I also knew that Trump’s approach was going to be far, far worse. And Harris’ approach was an an unknown, since she refused to say anything that signalled any difference in policy from Biden.

But all of it is just blathering because that didnt make any difference in this election. It was totally rigged, and we ALL know it.

I caught that the instant he said it. So they are planning another round of Market Manipulation in a month or two, got it.

We’ve already had 3 rounds, in less than 90 days. It seemed like his 90 day pause on this last round was a bit longer because he wanted to let it cool down, but I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist the lure of dirty money at the expense of the poors.

I’m happy for the heads up. Unfortunately, I dont have the kind of money required to take full advantage of this, but at least Ill know to hang on.

Bullying a bully is not bullying.

Why are they rebooting “Minority Report?” The Tom Cruise version was excellent, we don’t need a new one.

They were probably going to quit over personal morality anyway, so good for them for using their exit for positive. At least they can leave with their self-respect and dignity intact, and the respect of their co-workers and the world. Somewhere there is a moral employer who will appreciate them.

There’s already a brain drain going in the US Government, as they replace experienced leaders and workers with blind loyalists.

The silver lining is that they have given their opposition the gift of competence. By firing all their competent, knowledgable people, they have driven them straight into the enemy camp.

Britain wouldn’t be drained, but their intellectual demographic will be diluted, creating more competition for high level research, tech, teaching, etc. positions.

Not as cold.

I wish I had a brain to drain. I don’t have any valuable skills, nor a lot of money. Nobody wants to take me. I’m going to be at the mercy of the Nazis.

Cool! Thanks!