And it’s sooo typical of their hyper-inflated personal and national egos:
They didn’t wonder for one minute why on earth foreign companies would pay up. For the honor or doing business with the greatest country on earth tm? Because they’d have no choice of other buyers, since no other countries has car / computer / whatever manufacturers who’d buy their products instead?

They. Are. So. Fucking. Insular.

French woman here. I used to live in Damascus and I know Lebanon a bit. It was a wonderful place with great people (and dumbasses, obviously, but the great people were really great). Just wanted to say: I get it. I see you.

You made me laugh in the middle of a pretty shitty day. Thank you.

It took me a while to understand what you meant because we don’t write anything on our ballots. There are piles of small cards with one candidate (or list) on each, we (are supposed to) pick one of each and put one in the envelope.
But yeah, I agree with your take.

“Vegetables” are not A Thing. The word just means a part of a plant we eat as a savoury dish. Some are seeds (like peas), or pods with the seeds still inside (green beans), or leaves (spinach, chard), roots or kinda-roots (carrots, garlic, beets), or (baby) flowers (cauliFLOWER, broccoli, Brussels sprouts - all from the same recent cabbage ancestor), lots are fruit (pumpkin, zucchini, cucumber, peppers, tomatoes). I found it fascinating when I planted my first garden 5 years ago, knowing squat about nature. Veggies are just plants where your pick the good part.

Not a staple where I’m from, but aren’t there japalenos in there? Bell peppers ?

I had that exact same model 15 years ago. It got stolen and I’m still not over it. I got basic Kobo readers instead; they work fine with Calibre and any ebook you can get. I don’t touch Amazon with a ten-foot pole, and I never use the Kobo account you have to create when buying the device.

But I’d give somebody’s left arm to have the Sony back. It was perfect.