Thursday: Hili dialogue

August 1, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to August: it’s August 1, 2024, and National IPA Day, celebrating the worst thing that ever happened to beer. Now all you taste is hops.  Below is a mercifully short story of IPA (hops are of course essential to beer, but they’ve become the dominant flavor, much beloved by the kind of dudes who wear man buns:

It’s also Cycle to Work Day, World Wide Web Day, Homemade Pie Day, National Raspberry Cream Pie Day, International Albariño Day (a good wine), Minden Day in the UK, Statehood Day in Colorado Swiss National Day in Switzerland, of course, World Scout Scarf Day, and, in Yorkshire, Yorkshire Day. Ergo, I have to show this:

There’s another Google Doodle today honoring an Olympic sport. Guess which one, then click on the picture to find out:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the August 1 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*As you know, in a brazen, daring, and skillful act, Israel (though it won’t admit it) assassinated the political head of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, while he was visiting Tehran for the inauguration of the new President.  Haniyeh usually lives in Qatar, but made the mistake of leaving the country. (Israel also killed the senior Hezbollah commander  Fuad Shukr the other day in a targeted assassination in Beirut, but Israel will admit having done that). Now, according to the Times of Israel, the U.S. has agreed to support Israel if it’s attacked, though what “attacked” means is a bit ambiguous:

United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin reiterated his “unwavering commitment” to Israel’s security on Wednesday and said Washington would come to its defense if needed, hours after Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Iran early Wednesday, in a targeted assassination attributed to Israel.

Haniyeh was assassinated in the early hours of the morning after having traveled from his home in Qatar to Tehran to attend the swearing-in ceremony for the country’s new president Masoud Pezeshkian.

Israel has not commented on his killing. The US has said it had no part in the assassination and did not know of it ahead of time.

United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin reiterated his “unwavering commitment” to Israel’s security on Wednesday and said Washington would come to its defense if needed, hours after Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Iran early Wednesday, in a targeted assassination attributed to Israel.

Asked what assistance the US would provide if a wider conflict should break out in the Middle East as a result of Haniyeh’s death and the previous night’s killing of a top Hezbollah commander in Beirut, Austin said Washington would continue to defend Israel if it were attacked, but that the priority was de-escalating tensions.

“We certainly will help defend Israel. You saw us do that April [when the US led a coalition of forces that, together with Israel, almost completely thwarted an Iranian attack on Israel with hundreds of drones and missiles]. You can expect to see us do that again,” he said, referring to the attack Iran launched against Israel in response to the bombing of Revolutionary Guards commanders in a building in its Syrian consulate.

I’m just wondering why Austin didn’t say that when Hezbollah killed 12 kids in a missile attack the other day. Perhaps it’s because Hamas is already in a war with Israel. Regardless, I think Hezbollah should take this as a warning that the U.S. will help Israel if forces invade the Jewish state from Lebanon.  After all, that’s what Biden promised soon after October 7 of last year.

*In contrast to the addlebrained Nicholas Kristof at the NYT, who says that Israel’s assassination of Haniyeh was probably inconsequential (for a rebuttal, see here), and is still bawling for a cease-fire that would leave Hamas in power, Bret Stephens has a more measured take on the situation. His column, called “Israel’s five wars“, calls for a pause in retaliation against Iran and Hezbollah, but not in the fighting against Gaza. The wars:

Five wars? Yes. And they are more about ideas than they are about geography.

The first war — the war Israel is now waging against Hamas and its allies in Gaza and the West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and Iran itself — is about security. Israelis want to be able to live safely in their homes without fearing they could be rocketed, pillaged, killed or kidnapped with barely a moment’s warning. The threat of a major escalation on Israel’s northern border has turned entire cities into ghost towns and displaced more than 60,000 Israelis from their homes.

. . . The second war fuels and explains the first. It’s about existence. Israel’s most strident critics insist that the current conflict is about Palestinian existence, about Israel’s alleged refusal to grant a Palestinian homeland. But that’s a historically ignorant claim — and a dishonest one. Israel agreed to a Palestinian Authority in 1993, offered a Palestinian state in 2000 and vacated the Gaza Strip in 2005. When campus protesters at Princeton chanted, “We don’t want no two states, we want ’48,” they weren’t asking for Israel to accept a Palestinian state. They’re demanding Israel’s abolition.

. . .The third war is metaphorical. It’s also dangerous and corrosive. It’s Israel’s war for the legitimacy of its actions, a war against the “yes but” thinking that now describes the middle ground of Western opinion on the conflict. That’s not a demand that people turn off their brains when it comes to judging Israel’s behavior. On the contrary, it’s a request that they turn their brains on.

To wit: How exactly do the people who say Israel has “the right to defend itself” propose that it do so against an enemy that entrenches itself beneath civilians in hundreds of miles of tunnels?

. . . The fourth war is global, ideological — and fundamental. It’s the war against antisemitism. Among the many toxic and defamatory charges leveled against Israel since Oct. 7 is that the war in Gaza has caused a surge in antisemitism, a sly way of charging the Jewish state with being the agent of anti-Jewish hate.

The truth is precisely the opposite: Antisemitism is the cause of Oct. 7, not the consequence of it.

. . . Finally, there’s the war within the state of Israel and among the Jewish people worldwide. It’s a war that has been one of the most enduring, and often fatal, features of Jewish history. Its contours were visible during the fight over Israeli judicial reform before Oct. 7, and now in the lawlessness of right-wing Israeli mobs charging into Israeli army bases. It’s also a war between diaspora Jews who recognize that the assault on Israel is ultimately an assault on them, and the “As a Jew” Jews who provide moral cover and comfort to Israel’s enemies. Addressing these divisions is as central to Israel’s long-term security as confronting any other threat.

Israel struck Beirut on Tuesday, targeting the official it blamed for Saturday’s attack. Whatever Israel does next, it should be calculated to advance the national interests on all these fronts. If that means postponing a fuller response to explain its rationale, necessity and goal, so much the better.

While Kristof has a kneejerk reaction to Israel that always ends with “GET A CEASEFIRE,” at least Stephens, though sympathetic to Israel, is aware of the real dangers that confront the Jewish state.

*Finally, only a paper like the Washington Post could publish a column (this one by , Hajar Harb, and beefing about how Haniyeh’s killing could make the war more prolonged. In a column called “where does Hamas go from here?”, they even call the vicious terrorist “Hamas’s diplomat”!

The killing of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, on Wednesday upends cease-fire talks at a critical moment and, in the longer term, risks empowering more hard-line figures within the movement, according to experts and officials monitoring the group.

Haniyeh was Hamas’s diplomat. He led its operations from exile in Qatar. Through 10 months of war, he was the group’s negotiator on the global stage, tasked with brokering a deal acceptable to the group in exchange for pausing fighting and releasing scores of Israeli hostages.

“In the short term, it is pretty clear that it will, at best, postpone the cease-fire negotiations indefinitely,” said Erik Skare, a researcher at the University of Oslo and author of a forthcoming book on Palestinian militancy. “Hamas would have little interest negotiating with Israel after the latter assassinated one of its most senior members.”

. . . Political analysts described Haniyeh’s death in Tehran as a significant blow but cautioned that earlier assassinations of figures with greater political or symbolic influence had not substantially weakened the group. Israel killed a series of Hamas political and military figures in 2003. By the end of the following year, it had assassinated the group’s founder and Haniyeh’s mentor, Ahmed Yassin, and then-leader, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi.

“While his death will undoubtedly leave an impact, this wound will soon be healed,” Suheil al-Hindi, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said of Haniyeh’s killing.

Haniyeh, who had already survived multiple attempts on his life, is likely to be swiftly replaced, said Azmi Keshawi, Crisis Group’s Gaza researcher. “Hamas is a well-constructed movement. They have lost their biggest leaders before, and a replacement is always ready,” he said.

One would think, reading such stuff, that Israel should just give up trying to decapitate Hamas by killing its leaders.  It’s not surprising, then, to learn that The Post hired at least six journalists from Al-Jazeera.

*The Wall Street Journal implies that Democratic Senator Mark Kelly from Arizona may be Kamala Harris’s choice for a VP running mate, as he was once tough on the border and the border issue is one of her weaknesses:

In the summer of 2022, the White House made an unusual announcement: The Biden administration planned to complete a section of former President Donald Trump’s border wall—which President Biden had campaigned against—to fill several gaps along the banks of the Colorado River in southwestern Arizona.

Behind the surprise move was Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat from Arizona, who is now on the shortlist of potential running mates for the expected Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris. Kelly went on to win re-election to the Senate that year despite an unprecedented surge of illegal migration that Republicans blamed on Biden’s policies.

Kelly possesses something of a dream political résumé. He is a former Navy combat pilot and NASA astronaut, a juggernaut fundraiser and a twice-victorious Democratic senator from a key battleground state. He is also the husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D., Ariz.), who became a leading advocate for gun control after she was severely injured in a mass shooting in 2011.

But it is Kelly’s experience running successfully to the center in a border state, and in particular his willingness to buck his party on immigration issues, that allies of Vice President Harris said has helped him stand out among possible picks.

“A lot of times, Democrats not from border states don’t know how to talk about border security and immigration without getting liberals mad,” said Rep. Ruben Gallego (D., Ariz.), who is running for Arizona’s other U.S. Senate seat. “We don’t have to do this weird balancing act that other people do because we actually understand where the true core values of your everyday voter is.”

Harris is expected to be close to making her selection, and planning is under way for joint events with the vice president and her running mate in battleground states next week, according to a person familiar with the discussions. The tour, which is expected to start Tuesday and end the following Friday, will include events in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada. Aside from Kelly, other possible picks include Democratic Govs. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Tim Walz of Minnesota.

I’d bet that Kelly, with an impeccable background, will be Harris’s pick. But she’s still vulnerable on the border, since Biden is still President and she has waffled on the issue before, most notably in that infamous interview with Lester Holt. I have no faith that she’ll do anything to ameliorate the crisis if she’s elected, as the “progressive” Democrats, who pull Harris’s strings, effectively want open borders.

*Simone Biles led the U.S. women’s gymnastics team to a gold medal, and now she’ll compete in the individual events. Have a look at her performances in four events that helped U.S. winm that team gold. Click on “Watch on YouTube”.  I love the floor routine at the end, a routine that clinched the gold for the team.  Her skills are beyond belief.

Biles has qualified for all the individual events save for the uneven parallel bars.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is twisting the Bible:

Hili: Birds of the air; they do not sow nor do they reap…
A: And what about it?
Hili: It’s difficult to catch them.
In Polish:
Hili: Ptaki niebieskie nie sieją, nie orzą…
Ja: I co w związku z tym?
Hili: Trudno je złapać.

And Szaron is snoozing:

*******************

From Cat Memes (think about all the humans and animals left in distress while someone gets their iPhone, dreaming of getting “followers”.

A tattoo gone wrong from Linkiest (but perhaps it’s a deliberate error):

From Science Humor:

 

From Masih, an Iranian singer and Grammy winner who’s about to start a 3 year and 8 months prison sentence for writing a song touting freedom (sound up to hear his voice and the song playing in the background):

From Luana, data come from a new Knight Foundation Survey:

From Malcolm, my kind of toothpaste:

From my feed. Where is this place? To me it looks like the Beagle Channel, but one commenter seems to have nailed it.

From Luana, the Crimson has been captured!

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I retweeted:

Two tweets from Matthew. In the first one, look how fast the jumping spider catches the fly!

Matthew says this flock of dragonflies appears to be in Rhode Island:

35 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue”

  1. the worst thing that ever happened to beer.

    Clearly you’ve never tasted alleged foreign lager “brewed in the UK”.

    Anyway, I like a good IPA and hoppy beers in general. I guess taste is subjective.

    1. My oldest son and his wife would agree with you. Perhaps as young people try out beer they learn to favor IPAs since those are what they wind up trying. IPAs are easier to make, I think, and so there are tons of different microbrewery IPAs with all sorts of hipster-attracting names. I do admit I like an interesting beer name.

    2. It seems in the U.S. that brewers are battling each other in a race to create the most bitter beer—the one with the highest IBU. This means that it has become much more difficult to find less bitter craft beers than before. Hefeweizens are quite rare in our local grocery stores, for example. Same with the many local brew pubs. It’s all IPA all the time. Too bitter for my tastes but, yes, taste is subjective.

  2. Kelly-doesn’t bring much other than the border, isn’t a great debater or campaigner, comes from an important but not very large state (less important than MI or PA) and make that senate seat vulnerable. Shapiro has issues with the far left flank on school vouchers and Israel, but is a stronger politician, and is more popular in his more important state. I’d bet it will be him given that (IIRC) she will hold her first rally in Philadelphia, but could be Kelly.

    1. About Mark Kelly, WaPo writes, “Mark Kelly: Astronaut, senator, VP short-lister … ex-vitamin huckster”

      From 2011 to 2016, Kelly was a shill for the pyramid scheme called Shaklee Inc.

      Here’s a bit of irony:

      When he was campaigning for the Senate, Kelly pledged to lower prescription drug costs in office, fight against “politicians who take money from drug companies” that “protect their [own] profits” and those politicians’ jobs.

      At least 99% of participants in multi-level marketing companies lose rather than gain money, a 2011 Consumer Awareness Institute study found.

  3. There are two aspects to hops in beer: bitterness and hop flavor. Well crafted traditional IPAs always had a firm bitterness and stronger hop flavors to balance the higher alcohol level of an IPA. The ‘New England’ or ‘Hazy’ IPA style was created to reduce the bitterness and accentuate the hop flavor – and while there are some interesting ones out there, many are a muddled mess, IMHO.

    And in a related tangent, Jerry’s favorite beer, Timothy Taylor’s Landlord, is brewed in Yorkshire!

    Also, everyone is wailing and gnashing their teeth about Kamala Harris and the border, no one seems to remember that Trump and his minions derailed a bipartisan effort to craft legislation to address border issues. So spare me your tears. Trump’s supporters really don’t give a shit about the border except as a propaganda tool.

    1. That bill passed the Senate, and the House refused to even bring it for a vote after Trump told them not to.

      They don’t give a shit about fetuses, either, except as a means to control women. If you even softly whisper the phrase “prenatal care”, they will scream about SOCIALISM.

      L

    2. Trump and his minions derailed a bipartisan effort to craft legislation to address border issues.

      Is it this bill?

      https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/4361/text?s=3&r=1&q=%7B%22search%22%3A%22S.+4361%22%7D

      Did they say why they opposed the proposal? To what aspects of the plan did they object?

      I’m asking because I’ve read on WEIT many times that the republicans rejected proposed legislation for political reasons. I’ve also seen it denied. But I have not seen the discussion go very far beyond that point (perhaps I missed it).

      If the bill linked above is not the one that is relevant to this discussion please correct me.

      Thanks!

      1. Chetiya, While I didn’t read the entire 370-page bill, I did read enough at the time to give me pause. I repost some comments below.

        Chiefly, the bill grants emergency authorities to the Secretary of Homeland Security to summarily remove an alien from the United States. Note, however, the discretionary nature of the authority:

        The bill leads as follows: “SEC. 244B. BORDER EMERGENCY AUTHORITY. (a) USE OF AUTHORITY . (1) IN GENERAL .— In order to respond to extraordinary migration circumstances, there shall be available to the Secretary, notwithstanding any other provision of law, a border emergency authority” (p 205). “BORDER EMERGENCY AUTHORITY DESCRIBED. — (1) IN GENERAL .— Whenever the border emergency authority is activated, the Secretary shall have the authority, in the Secretary’s sole and unreviewable discretion, to summarily remove from and prohibit, in whole or in part, entry into the United States of any alien . . .” (p 208).

        Making an authority “available” to summarily remove aliens in the “sole and unreviewable discretion” of the Secretary is a far cry from mandating the removal of aliens. Moreover, there is no “mandatory activation” of the “authority” until there are 8500 illegal crossings in a 24-hour period or until an average of 5000 crossings per day for a week, which could allow up to 1.8 million in a year. The Secretary has the power for “discretionary activation” at a threshold of 4000 average per day for a week (pp 211-212) but could do nothing below that number.

        Beyond my concerns about the authority being exercised solely at the Secretary’s discretion, and beyond my concerns that these thresholds are still insanely high, there are limitations to the powers that give me further pause. The authority to remove aliens, exercised as it may or may not be, is constrained with each passing year before being set to expire in three years. And if daily crossings remain high but have been reduced by 25%, then the authority does not exist—discretionary or otherwise (pp 213-214). The earlier thresholds and these calendar mandates appear designed to constrain action from future (Republican) administrations. There is a final loophole granting the President power to suspend all border authority if there is an emergency (pp 218-219), not that presidents of either party ever abuse this authority to declare “emergencies.”

        I would want to have some nonpartisan lawyers either confirm or alleviate my above concerns before I characterized this bill as either “Republicans hurt the country to deny Biden a win on immigration” or “Democrats push a sham immigration bill that they are largely free to ignore.”

        As an aside, the phrase “bipartisan immigration bill” is a Democratic Party talking point. I tend to check out of the conversation when I hear it. When the Senate blocked the procedure in May, every Republican voted against it except Lisa Murkowski. When the bill was crafted, it was done so with the participation of one Republican. People need to listen to themselves. In what world other than that of political operatives does 98% opposition from a party constitute “bipartisan”? Let’s try it this way: if two percent of Ukrainians supported Putin’s actions, would we be crowing about a joint Russian-Ukrainian invasion, or at least one with host population support?

        What is bipartisan is the D.C. tomfoolery: the Republicans claimed a “bipartisan” rejection of Biden’s Build Back Better agenda when they got Democrat Joe Manchin on board to torpedo that initiative.

        https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/emergency_national_security_supplemental_bill_text.pdf

  5. According to sources about dragonflies, the species in the swarm looks to be the Blue Dasher, which is a very common species that is widespread. Why they were swarming like that was not certain since this species does not migrate, but one reason could be that their ponds or lakes became unsustainable.

    2. Must have been quite a sudden downturn in conditions at local lakes/ponds for them to take off in a swarm, and seemingly all of one species (there must have been other dragonflies the habitat). I am like the woman in the video: I have never witnessed anything like that in all my life. What an experience for those present! The human reactions are interesting, too: Some laugh and marvel, some screech in fear or revulsion.

  6. “National IPA Day, celebrating the worst thing that ever happened to beer. Now all you taste is hops.”

    Hear! Hear! Not only are they inferior to traditional beers, but they have swamped the offerings at stores. It’s almost impossible to get German pilsner or English beer or lager unless you go to a liquor superstore like Total Wine.

    Also, if I recall correctly, Minden was the last battle at which a British monarch was personally present.

  7. I read Brett Stephens piece about Israel in the NYT and was surprised to see almost every comment in the comment section was anti Israel and anti Brett. There were (at least at first) no pro Israel comments. This was unusual and reminded me of the flood of anti Ukraine comments after an article on the Ukraine war. Putin has a lot of money for trolls and now the far left anti Israel groups do too thanks to The Inflation Reduction Act. According to Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito (see Forbes YouTube channel “Follow The Money” featuring Capito) hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to groups that have an anti Israel and anti American agenda. A lot of this funding according to Capito has little to do with environmental work. We were wondering if someone was funding the pro Palestinian encampments and maybe it was the US taxpayers? And if groups like Climate Justice received millions from the Biden admin it would be in their interest to see him or Harris reelected. From what I read Capito is a moderate Republican, willing to work across the aisle. She has a BA in Zoology and a Master’s in Ed. If nothing else it is another example of the far left taking something positive like environmental protection and making it LESS popular to most Americans.

  8. The dragonflies may have originated from a mass hatch on a nearby fresh water lake. I have only seen this once in the Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge, where a huge number hatched at the same time from a lake. Bushes and trees around the lake were covered and the air was full of the same species of dragonfly. These events are hard to predict and therefore to observe, since they depend on weather and lake conditions. Also they disperse soon after hatching.

    1. They disperse soon after their final larval moult, which can be many years after hatching for some species but is typically 1-2 years.

  9. I read the news, of course, but I also always pause at the Holocaust remembrances. I can only hope that the family of Ilona Lassner—if any survived—knows that we recognize their loved one and remember.

    2. I wish these people had known, in the moment of their realization what awaited them, that strangers would pause in remembrance of them and their individual suffering well into the next century.

  10. The IPA youtube was interesting. I have NO idea how any drinks are made. My wife pretty much only drinks IPA, loves it and I get the idea it is more popular with women. Like those “wine coolers” we used to jokingly call “Legs openers” in my youth – when plied to women. Young men, whatchagonna do with them? 😉

    I rarely drink but when I do … despite being Australian originally.. never beer. Sometimes vodka or sake/shoyu if alcohol is the only drug available.

    D.A.
    NYC

  11. Pursuant to your “words are violence” graph, over the past 5 years or so I’ve been paying attention – every number, graph and survey I’ve read all point to all aspects of the 5 moral panics and social contagions on the hard left we call woke being driven by white, middle-upper class women.
    It is deeply feminine coded.
    I’ve totally noticed this in my (fairly elite) upper middle class Manhattan milieu.

    More interestingly I’ve seen nothing evincing anything out of alignment of the graph you published above.
    ———————–
    There’s also an IQ component, particularly within the left. IQ seems to be strongly negatively corelated with woke. Woke isn’t the smartest cohort in other words, but certainly the loudest and being young women, that with the most social power. (IQ with the exception of trans where actual trans “kids” score higher than average, see Genspec data). Not necessarily trans “allies” though, just the disordered children falling into the pronoun/mutilation machine.

    D.A.
    NYC

    1. The most positive thing I can say about this is: the fact that so many people claim to believe that words are as bad as violence (or ARE violence) demonstrates clearly that these people largely have NO experience with ACTUAL violence. It’s terribly annoying and counterproductive, to say nothing of intellectually and morally foolish, for them to equate words and violence, but they’re at least proving Pinker’s point that violence is a relative rarity for so many people in “the West”.

      1. Yes, Robert. What irks me most is the conflation in social science data, where x percent “experiencing violence” frequently includes verbal/emotional “violence”, making the data worthless.

        It is in fact true that words can hurt the soul as much or more than physical pain. But in my experience that’s true mainly for hurtful words that upend your world, spoken by loved ones/close family members, it’s not the microaggression or even downright verbal abuse from people you have no close emotional connection with.

        2. Some German courts have lists indicating how much money which particular swear word should cost you. This can get relevant if you insult a police officer, or (worse!) one of the politicians who sues everyone who calls them an idiot on social media. I find the idea ridiculous (apart from morally repugnant), and to prove my point, a court ruled that a man being called a girl was no insult. This is of course the worst insult in existence for a man, and would demand violent retribution in many cultures.

  13. I drink a lot of craft beers so I’ll weigh in on some things people have noted above.
    First, of course tastes vary, are very personal, and there’s no accounting for them. So my bias up front: I do like hoppy ales best. First exposure was English bitters. My go-to for more than 30 years has been Sierra Nevada Pale Ale; to me it just tastes like what beer should taste like (as I am wont to declaim upon the first taste of the evening (while waving two fingers in the air in homage to Steinbeck’s Doc)). I also enjoy many IPAs and try many more than I enjoy. I resent the ‘man bun’ crack.

    IPAs vary tremendously in flavor due to the types of malts as well as the amounts, types, and method of brewing with the hops. Yes, many are crappy and/or over the top, but to me it’s rash to reject the whole category.
    Some of my favorites are readily available, like the Lagunitas shown in the video. It’s dry, bitter, hoppy but in a balanced and drinkable way. I also like Dogfish Head 60, Stone, and SN Torpedo.
    I do not care for the current fads of hazy, tropical, juicy, ‘New England’ style IPAs. As noted above, these are brewed to emphasize fruity hop varietal flavors and decrease bitterness. These are marketed to certain market niches. It’s the only kind of beer my sister-in-law likes (N=1).
    None of this has anything to do with wine coolers, though. That market has shifted to hard seltzers and soda pops. In my experience it’s the explosion of these products that limits the selection of decent beers at most stores.
    There is an IPA backlash brewing (ha) in the craft-beer scene, though, and recently I have noticed and enjoyed an increasing availability of craft pilsners.

  14. I’m a hazy pale ale enthusiast these days. High alcohol round 5.5% and up per 335ml can but I find the refreshing citrusy flavour favours my palate…

  16. “Words are violence” and other so-called woke positions are highly feminized. I wonder if this is a result of the ever higher number of females in academia and administration.

    I worked in a repair shop for a few summers many years ago with all male staffing. The guys there had no problem throwing insults around, and you knew the difference between banter between buddies “hey you XXX, help me with this”, and true insults “hey you XXX, help me with this” but said differently. Ethnic jibes were constant, and I learned to give as good as I got. There was one physical confrontation that I remember, and believe me, there’s a big difference between words and a wrench banged on someone’s skull. Note: the physical altercation was not a result of an escalation of verbal insults – it involved some extracurricular activities involving one of the technicians and a different technician’s significant other. If anything I found that the verbal banter seemed to make guys back down from actual physical violence.

    Otherwise, I love IPAs and the Python skit is one of my favs!

  17. I’ve loved IPA ever since experiencing it at Bath University student union bar as Eldridge Pope Dorset IPA (sadly, like many old breweries, closed down) having moved from Yorkshire, born and bred, (home of Timmy Taylors, Sam Smiths etc) for my educational enlightenment. Skip forward…a few years…..and I now enjoy sharp, citrus-y and hoppy IPA’s, especially West Coast style. Every year I look forward to March and the plethora of fresh-hopped IPA’s as NZ hops harvest is used in the best way…….

    And, being at school when Monty Python was aired, I do not need a prompter for Monty Python sketches – some sublime humour.

    You can keep your hazies though……a bizarre fashion.

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