Random Thoughts (3)

1. Always funny: places that don’t serve Coca Cola or other “capitalist”/”imperialist”/”Western” drinks, but all the staff have Apple phones and computers.
2. The Guardian confirms my numbers on Britons applying for foreign citizenship.
3. Somehow I found the list of US Presidents and their linguistic abilities. It looks like people used to speak more languages in centuries past. Sad.
4. If I ever get cancer, I want to have the optimism of John Kerry.
5. Sometimes, when people ask me “How can you afford to travel all the time?”, I just want to answer “The Illuminati are real.”
6. “To be properly enjoyed, a walking tour should be gone upon alone.” (Robert Louis Stevenson)
7. Whenever I hear people say “I cannot live without music”, I want to unplug people’s radios and watch them combust in agony.
8. “Paradoxically, now that we can move so quickly around the world, most of us don’t actually travel any more – we just arrive.” (Dan Kieran: The Idle Traveller)
9. When conspiracy theorists are in the White House, will real conspiracy theorists begin to argue that there are no conspiracies?
10. Matthew Yglesias raises a few points on why the Trump presidency will be even more dangerous than we think.
11. Finally an Attorney General from Selma, Alabama. Huge victory for civil rights. – Oh wait, it’s Jeff Sessions.
12. There will always be more terrorists than we can catch. This is hopeless. But they all seem to work for this Mr God. Why don’t we take him out?
13. In a poll conducted in the US in 1938, two thirds were against accepting refugee children from Germany and Austria. More of this information on the “Historical Opinion” Twitter account.
14. “I don’t watch TV” proudly says a person who spends 16 hours a day on the internet.
15. Jimmy Carter was no better than Donald Trump: “I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.”
16. As soon as I began reading Leonardo Sciascia’s The Day of the Owl, I began to miss Sicily.
17. When people are hungry, they kill an animal and nobody cares. When I want to sleep and kill the neighbor’s noisy dog, people think I am a monster.
18. I’ve literally managed to express myself for 41 years without using the word “literally” once.
19. Some readers have written to tell me that the story about the homeless man in Romania brought tears to their eyes. That’s the best compliment I ever received on any of my articles.
20. What is the best book on the Weimar Republic? I am asking for an American friend.
21. Talking about books, here is my wishlist, just in time for Christmas. Every donor will receive a postcard from South America. 
22. Any invention praised with “This could totally change …” will be forgotten in a year.
23. If all your dreams become reality, you didn’t have big enough dreams.
24. Omarosa, the director of African-American outreach in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign tells us what to expect: