"they don't seem to have understood"

Shit just got real for some French cheese-making monks:

"The Cîteaux Abbey, just south of Dijon, birthplace of the Cistercian Catholic order, usually sells its raw-milk, semi-soft discs only to restaurants or visitors to its on-site shop. But a drop in demand since the coronavirus crisis erupted last year has left the abbey’s 19 Trappist monks with 4,000 cheeses too many, a 2.8-tonne problem.

'We tried explaining to our 75 cows that they needed to produce less milk but they don’t seem to have understood,' said brother Jean-Claude, in charge of marketing at the monastery, which was founded in 1098.

'Our sales are down nearly 50%,” he said, with French restaurants still closed since 30 October as authorities try to stifle a third wave of cases. 'We need to clear out our stock.'”

Good cheese is one of my top three foods that I'm happy to have access to now that I'm back in America (real bagels, Maryland style crabs would be the others).

Honestly, just send me to this monastery with a fork and I'll take care of it.  Maybe some bread and fresh tomatoes too, natch.

Please Pass The (Royal) Jelly

I watched some of the Oprah interview with Meghan Markle and that guy she married.

As an American, it's hard for me to really do anything but root for injuries here.  But I have no doubt Markle was treated like shit by the rest of the royal family, in no small part because she's black.

(Diderot, or supposedly Diderot, was right all along re: kings, priests, strangulation, and entrails.)

And anything that embarrasses Piers Morgan is worthwhile.

The best argument I ever heard for not nuking the Royals from orbit is that their combined presence brings a lot of tourist money into the UK every year.

Weak tea as they say, but if I squint a little I guess I can see a point there.

"David Bowie, not Paul Daniels"

The best piece I’ve read on the Brexit comes, not surprisingly, from Laurie Penny:

“This Britain is not my Britain. I want my country back. I want my scrappy, tolerant, forward-thinking, creative country, the country of David Bowie, not Paul Daniels; the country of Sadiq Khan, not Boris Johnson; the country of  J K Rowling, not Enid Blyton; the country not of Nigel Farage, but Jo Cox. That country never existed, not on its own, no more than the country the Leave campaign promised to take us to in their tin-foil time machine. Britain, like everywhere else, has always had its cringing, fearful side, its cruel delusions, its racist fringe movements, its demagogues preying on the dispossessed. Those things are part of us as much as beef wellington and bad dentistry. But in happier times, those things do not overwhelm us. We do not let bad actors reading bad lines in bad faith walk us across the stage to the scaffold. We are better than this.

I believe we can still be better than this. I want my country back, and it’s a country I’ve never known, and getting there will take more strength, more kindness, more resilience than this divided nation has mustered in living memory. Meanwhile, I’m putting the kettle on again. Today is a day for mourning, for retweeting sick memes and holding our loved ones close. Tomorrow – well. Tomorrow, we get to work.”

Amen, sister.