That's via James Lileks, whose curiosity was piqued by Iceland's "Hákarl". And he looked up the recipe:
A fascinating country, Iceland. Isolation and extremities and vulcanism have spawned a strange, hardy, peculiar breed of humanity. Exhibit one: HÁKARL. Think lutefisk, but worse. Says the Google AI summary:
Hákarl is Iceland's national dish of fermented shark.
It takes a special breed of man to look at a shark and think “I wonder how it tastes when fermented.” Here’s how it’s made:
The shark is buried in dirt or gravel for months
Bacteria break down poisonous urea and trimethylamine oxide into ammonia
The shark is washed and hung in a drying shack until it's firm and dry
Apparently it tastes like cheese, with a top note of 19th century latrine disinfectant. It is accompanied by a national liquor, brennivín, served ice-cold. It’s basically aquavit. I think you take six shots before you work up the nerve to eat disinterred shark.
… and he proceeds to fantasize.
Also of note:
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To be fair, Bolton's Secret Service protection was probably even worse than Trump's was in Butler. Jeff Blehar observes, correctly, that Nobody Has a Right to Security Clearances. But…
As part of his initial flurry of action at the beginning of his second term — truly a shocking contrast to the moribundity of the Biden administration over the last four years — Donald Trump not only canceled security details for John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and Pompeo’s aide Brian Hook, but also issued an executive order revoking Bolton’s security clearances, as well as those of all 49 signatories of the infamous “Hunter Biden Letter,” all of them former intelligence officials. (There were 51 original signatories; two have since passed away.) And of course, because Trump is Trump, there is both good and bad in this move.
Removing the three men’s protection is not only an act of petty spite, but actively endangers them, given that they are targets for assassination by Iran. Indeed, they are targets because of their work for Trump during his first administration, which culminated in the droning of Iranian terrorist mastermind Qasem Soleimani in January 2020. I agree completely with the editors of National Review that their protections should be restored, and shudder to think of what will happen to the Trump administration should any harm come to them from a foreign power. (People will neither forget nor forgive Trump’s role in allowing it to happen, should it come to pass.)
But I cheer the Trump administration stripping all of these men and women of their government security clearances, as is his absolute legal right to do, and am in fact upset it was not done sooner. (We all understand why it was not done sooner.) Bolton’s case is an overdetermined one, in fact. Being Trump’s highest-ranking adviser-turned-critic is in fact perfectly sufficient as explanation for his revocation of access — that is the petty part, perhaps — but Bolton did far worse: He allegedly rushed a book into print about his tenure as Trump’s national security adviser without sufficient government pre-review.
I've not seen any Trump cheerleaders try to defend unprotecting Bolton, Pompeo, and Hook. It's petty and dangerous.
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Other than that, though, they're fine. Jacob Sullum says Trump's Orders Feature Nonexistent Emergencies, Illegal Power Grabs, and Blatant Inconsistencies.
As expected, President Donald Trump's attempt to cancel birthright citizenship by executive fiat ran into immediate legal trouble this week. On Thursday, a federal judge in Seattle granted a temporary restraining order against Trump's decree, which encompasses not only the children of unauthorized immigrants but also anyone born to people lawfully present in the United States unless at least one parent has permanent legal status.
U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour, who was appointed to the bench by Ronald Reagan in 1981, was dismayed that any president would try such a thing. "I've been on the bench for over four decades," and "I can't remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one is," he told the lawyer tasked with arguing that Trump could disregard the clear language of the 14th Amendment and 127 years of judicial precedent. "I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar could state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind."
Trump claimed to be addressing a nonexistent "emergency" through legally dubious means. The upshot in this case, it seems likely, is that Trump's order will amount to nothing but a symbolic stand against the "invasion" he perceives when people enter the United States in pursuit of better lives, as his own ancestors did at a time when European immigrants faced no restrictions like the ones the president is keen to enforce. And Trump's reflexive hostility to immigration, which underlies some initiatives that will have much more practical effect, seems inconsistent with his other priorities, such as promoting economic growth and preserving old-age entitlement programs.
Click over and read on for further problems.
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"The Freeloader Refutation" would have been a good episode title for The Big Bang Theory. Drew Cline examines an anti-Right-to-Work argument, and finds hole: The right-to-work freeloader fallacy.
Labor unions negotiate benefits on behalf of all employees of a collective bargaining unit, not just their own members, unions say. Since non-members receive the benefits, they should be compelled to pay the union for negotiating them.
Because right-to-work laws forbid non-union employees from being compelled as a condition of employment to pay any portion of their wages to a labor union or a union’s third party affiliate, they turn non-members into freeloaders, unions say.
Drew does a philosopher-level breakdown of the union's arguments, and finds them wanting. One of his good points:
Far from creating freeloaders, right-to-work laws restore a measure of financial autonomy to workers. Unions in right-to-work states can no longer behave as monopoly providers, but must convince non-members to join. That changes their behavior and makes them more responsive to the needs and preferences of all members of a bargaining unit.
Personal note: there was an effort to unionize staff at the University Near Here when I worked there. This failed from (my interpretation) lack of interest. Other subsets of employees have unionized.
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I don't want to fight. But Jonah Goldberg seems to want to: Let’s Fight.
Actually, he's only speculating that his G-File is going to annoy a lot of readers. I don't find anything to disagree with here:
They told me that if America elected Donald Trump, the president would pardon fascists—and they were right.
I’m referring to Joe Biden and his pardon of Marcus Garvey.
[… some history elided; read Liberal Fascism and/or subscribe to the Dispatch]
Fascism remained popular in some quarters well into the 1930s. Indeed, in 1937, Garvey, the founding father of black nationalism, insisted to the famous black historian J.A. Rogers that, “We were the first fascists.” He continued: “We had disciplined men, women, and children in training for the liberation of Africa. Mussolini copied fascism from me, but the Negro reactionaries sabotaged it.” (This quote is often truncated or slightly modified as it appears—and disappears—in different editions of Rogers’ work.)
The influential historian C.L.R. James—a Trinidadian Trotskyist (say that 10 times fast!)—wrote in 1938, that “All the things that Hitler was to do so well later, Marcus Garvey was doing in 1920 and 1921. He organized storm troopers, who marched, uniformed, in his parades and kept order and gave color to his meetings.”
Garvey was a pretty interesting guy; with your usual skeptical filters in place see Wikipedia.