Current leaders of Western countries have never dealt with thugs,” warned Mikhail Khodorkovsky earlier this year in a guest essay for The Economist. “War is evil to them, and the use of force is a last resort. This is not the case with Vladimir Putin.” Read his full essay here: https://econ.st/3G3jIGp
Illustration: Dan Williams
― James Joyce, Ulysses
"This is so deplorable," says an official from the hospital where the masks were stolen.TOKYO: Thieves in Japan have made off with some 6,000 surgical masks from a hospital, with the country facing a mass shortage and a huge price ...
CHANNELNEWSASIA.COM
COVID-19: Thieves steal 6,000 masks from hospital in Japan Whispers at Vatican as Cardinals Start to Gather for Conclave
By RACHEL DONADIO
VATICAN CITY — The Vatican called recent reports alleging scandal in the
Church “deplorable” as cardinals from around the world arrived for a
conclave to elect a new pope.
After a Childhood Pouring Refills,
| (verb) Return to life; get or give new life or energy. |
| Synonyms: | restore, regenerate |
| Usage: | He was advised that the Italian climate would rejuvenate him. |
美國女作家艾根的《打手臨門》（A Visit From The Goon Squad）獲小說獎，書中以創新形式探討「在數位時代長大及變老」的歷程，評審讚「展現對文化迅速轉變的龐大好奇心。」
Concerns that Roche's hostile $42 billion bid to take control of Genentech would stifle the U.S. biotech company's renowned culture of scientific innovation, may be overdone, The San Jose Mercury News says.
Go to Article from The San Jose Mercury News»
Soccer-For-Peace Game Ends in Blows
Intended to show that soccer is just good clean fun, a match organized by
the project Sports Not Violence ended in a fracas, fueling everyone's
worst fears that footballers are all thugs acting out aggression issues.
The DW-WORLD Article
http://newsletter.dw-world.de
The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal world-wide news box lead with, while the Los Angeles Times fronts, Zimbabwe's one-man presidential election. Gangs of thugs loyal to President Robert Mugabe, the only candidate, drove frightened voters to the polls, collecting their personal information and threatening violence if they resisted. The New York Times poetically describes it as a "woeful event in a woebegone nation".
比爾．布福特（Bill Buford）
《紐約客》雜誌的編制內作者，曾任該刊小說編輯八年。他曾是《格蘭 塔》（Granta）雜誌的創社編輯，也曾是格蘭塔出版公司的發行人。著有暢銷書《在惡棍之間》（Among the Thugs），這是本有關群眾暴力和英國足球流氓的紀實書籍。他和他的妻子潔西卡和他們的兩個兒子住在紐約。
在傳出2012倫敦奧組委主席薩巴斯蒂安﹒科爵士形容中方派出的火炬護衛是"Thug（流氓、打手）"之後，許多英國媒體質疑倫敦組織者過於軟弱。
a bunch of goons and thugs
Mr Liu, one of those who schemed in the guard shack, has long dreamed that Legend Computer (as Lenovo was known until 2004) would become a global star.Guardhouse - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A guardhouse (also known as a watch house, guard building, guard booth, guard shack, security booth, security building, or sentry building) is a building used to ...
woebegone
(wō'bĭ-gôn', -gŏn')
adj.
- Affected with or marked by deep sorrow, grief, or wretchedness. See synonyms at sad.
- Of an inferior or deplorable condition: a rundown, woebegone old shack.
[Middle English wo begon, beset with woe : wo, woe; see woe + begon, past participle of begon, to beset (from Old English begān : be-, be- + gān, to go; see go1).]
shack
noun [C]
a very simple and small building made from bits of wood, metal or other materials
--> a very simple and small building made from bits of wood, metal or other materials
━━ n. ほったて小屋; 〔話〕 個人（用）の部屋.
━━ vi. ((次の句で))
shack up [together] 〔米俗〕 同棲(せい)する ((with)); 泊る.
cabin
━━ vi. ((次の句で))
shack up [together] 〔米俗〕 同棲(せい)する ((with)); 泊る.cabin
n.
- A small, roughly built house; a cottage.
- Nautical.
- A room in a ship used as living quarters by an officer or passenger.
- An enclosed compartment in a boat that serves as a shelter or as living quarters.
- The enclosed space in an aircraft or spacecraft for the crew, passengers, or cargo.
To confine or live in or as if in a small space or area.
[Middle English caban, from Old French cabane, from Old Provençal cabana, from Late Latin capanna.]
A Cabin Is Not a Shack
Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times
AUSTERE The cabin of Mac Dunstan and Linda Grob, in a hillside near Seattle. More Photos >
DWIGHT JELLE and K Hamilton’s retreat in rural Pepin County, Wis., has cedar board-and-batten siding, a wood-burning stove and a stack of firewood piled at the ready. And like cabins of long ago, it is cozy (less than 2,000 square feet), casual (a lot of wood) and secluded (no neighbors). But the similarity ends there. Designed to resemble a farm outbuilding, the low-slung structure is nestled into the rolling farmland southeast of Minneapolis as if it had been planted there.
Multimedia
A color scheme of maize, sage and red clay inside complements the grasses, trees and earth outside. The roof soars to 16 feet, supported by thick pine beams and trusses studded with 300 steel bolts. A wall of windows and glass doors runs the cabin’s entire 72-foot length, allowing light to flood the whole space.
No one is roughing it. Ms. Hamilton, 51, is a trained cook, and her kitchen has the six-burner Wolf stove to prove it. Mr. Jelle, 48, a civil engineer and talented woodworker, made the couple’s cherry bedstead himself, as well as the intricately carved Arts and Crafts-style lighting fixtures. The couple worked closely with SALA Architects of Minneapolis to make sure their cabin had amenities like a slate shower wall in the bathroom and solar-heated floors.
Ditch the deer heads and moose antlers. Put away the caps with flaps. There is nothing musty, creaky, saggy or squeaky about the new cabin culture. Across the country, cabins are being reimagined in sustainable yet stylish ways. Some combine industrial materials like mesh, oxidized steel and concrete with traditional wood. Others employ reclaimed or recycled material to stay eco-friendly and keep costs down. “Turnkey” models arrive fully constructed, ready to be dropped onto a site. Still other cabins are off the grid, but with the comforts of home. And despite the advances in design, cabin owners want the same thing they always did: a place that provides an escape into the natural world.
“Given our busy, techno-heavy lives, people are seeking places where they can rejuvenate and connect to nature,” said Michelle Kodis, whose book “Modern Cabin” was published last year by Gibbs Smith. “They want simple, beautiful, indoor-outdoor cabins that require little upkeep and are free of fuss and heavy, overdone details.”
To look at Mac Dunstan’s and Linda Grob’s glass-and-wood cabin outside Seattle, you’d never guess they had originally envisioned a low-key Adirondack structure. “I thought I wanted something woodsy, with lots of logs and little gabled things,” said Mr. Dunstan, 64, an investment adviser. The couple had spent time in the cabin of their friend Tom Lenchak, of Balance Associates, Architects, in Seattle, and over time came to embrace his spare aesthetic. Mr. Dunstan and Ms. Grob, 55, who works for King County in Washington, realized that a far more contemporary design suited their site best.
They built an airy, ultra-modern 1,600-square-foot retreat for $500,000 four years ago. Anchored into a steep hillside, it rests on a concrete base. Windows extend from floor to ceiling on three sides, and sliding glass pocket doors invite in even more light. Decks cantilever off the base, offering views of the stream below and the North Cascades in the distance. “All we see is trees and mountains,” said Mr. Dunstan. They use their time at the cabin to “run around in the woods, hike, bike and ski,” he said. Maintenance? Very little. The concrete floors are indestructible and stand up to whatever their German shepherd, Inga, can inflict. “We wanted something real easy to live in,” Mr. Dunstan said.
JEFF SHELDEN, 55, an architect with Prairie Wind Architecture in Lewistown, Mont., and his wife, Lois, 53, a professional photographer, also wanted easy upkeep — minus a hefty price tag. As the son of a Forest Service ranger, Mr. Shelden was determined to erect an updated version of the square, stone 1930s-era Forest Service lookouts he loved as a boy. He and a team of contractors built the cabin, in the Judith Mountains of central Montana, using only local or reclaimed materials. In doing so, they were ahead of the curve.
“One of the biggest environmentally friendly trends we’re seeing is the use of local materials,” said Dale Mulfinger, an adjunct professor of architecture at the University of Minnesota and the author of “Cabinology: A Handbook to Your Private Hideaway.” “Once you start shipping things long distance, that’s not so friendly — there’s the cost of shipping as well as the fuel costs.”
Wood for the interior and the redwood decks that surround the Sheldens’ tiny 512-square-foot cabin was recycled from a nearby train trestle that had been torn down. Rock for the outside came from a quarry two miles away. “I put an ad in the local paper for corrugated steel for the roof, and a gentleman called and said he was tearing up his barn and to come take what he had off his hands,” Mr. Shelden recalled. He estimated that the cabin, completed in 1998, cost him about $55,000. For $1,700, he bought a photovoltaic system to supply electricity and to pump water for a hot tub. His utility bill is zero.
An antique wood stove, a vintage Hoosier kitchen cabinet, a table and chairs occupy the ground floor. A ship’s ladder leads to the second level, a large window-rimmed space with a futon, a wood-burning stove, bookcases, a couple of ottomans, and a TV and VCR. A six-foot-square acrylic skylight in the roof’s dome adds more light.
Although the space is small, the Sheldens have hosted Thanksgiving dinner for 12 on a warm November day. Their daughter, Claire, 21, has invited friends for cookouts and campfires. The cabin is close to home — only 17 miles away — so the Sheldens can visit frequently. In the winter, though, they can drive only so far. “We ski up the last half-mile,” Mr. Shelden said.
For those who want a cabin fast and with minimal effort and expense, pre-fab modular models are increasingly popular. They are built off-site in truck-width “boxes,” driven to a property, and dropped onto the owner’s foundation, complete down to the microwave oven. Once derided as flimsy, modular cabins are sturdier now; companies are offering better design and more durable materials at an affordable price.
“A big trend for cabins is turnkey,” Don Butler, editor of Cincinnati-based Cozy Cabins magazine, said. “People don’t want to do the whole thing — find the land, find an architect, put the whole thing together.”
Greg and Linda Corless were two of those people. Seeking relief from sweltering summers at their home in Altamonte Springs, Fla., the Corlesses bought land in the hills of western North Carolina in 2006. After casting about for an easy way to oversee the project from nine hours away, they bought a modular cabin from Blue Ridge Log Cabins in Campobello, S.C. Mr. Corless, 40, the chief financial officer for a car dealership group in Orlando, served as long-distance general contractor, knowing there wasn’t much for him to do beyond preparing the site and hiring sub-contractors to connect the electricity and plumbing.
The Corlesses purchased an 1,800-square-foot, two-bedroom cabin for $120,000, including all appliances. It resembles a traditional log cabin but with bigger windows (and more of them) and amenities including a wraparound porch and a cathedral ceiling. The Corlesses chose to add a gas fireplace with a stacked stone front as a separate project.
“It was spooky,” said Mrs. Corless, 39, as she recalled entering the cabin two weeks after it was put into position by a crane. “You walk in and the stove is in there, and the ceiling fans are there with the light bulbs in them.” She spent over a month in North Carolina last summer with the couple’s two daughters, Layton, 5, and Noelle, 4. The family makes about five visits in other seasons. “Mountain music, bonfires, s’mores, sledding in the wintertime — that’s what we do,” Mrs. Corless said. “The minute we walk in there and smell the wood, we’re on vacation.”
While the Corlesses use traditional power, the most eco-conscious of the new cabinistas want to supply all of their own energy. Sam Snyder, an orthopedic surgeon in Bergen County, N.J., was a man with a mission while he and his wife, Junko, were building their cabin near Hudson, N.Y., in 2003. “My No. 1 goal was to have a zero carbon footprint, and we accomplished that,” he said. Their 1,000-square-foot, cedar-shingled aerie gets all the power it needs, including the supply for baseboard heat, from solar panels and a wind turbine on an 80-foot-high tower. There’s also a solar hot water system.
The cabin has a full bathroom, a closed bedroom and two open sleeping lofts. A little library is filled with books on various styles of cabins, collected during the research phase of the project. The Snyders found what they were looking for on a Web site for a company called Lucia’s Little Houses and bought the plans for $400 from Robert Knight, an architect in Blue Hill, Me. They built the cabin for $200,000 and spent $40,000 more on the energy system — worth every cent to Dr. Snyder. “Every time I step outside and the wind is blowing and the sun is shining,” he said, “I smile because I’m making all my own energy.”
Despite all the transformations cabins have undergone in the past decade, they remain, at heart, deeply personal places shaped by their owners as sacred retreats. “This is my grandmother’s threshing table,” said K Hamilton in Wisconsin, sitting at a sturdy dining room table where workers ate during harvest season at her family’s farm. In the center rests a split plank of cherry the length of a baguette, polished to a high sheen. It’s cut from one of the first logs the couple found on the site, an everyday symbol that reminds them daily of the magic of their cabin.
With luck, some things will never change.
overdo
verb [T] overdid, overdone
to do something in a way that is too extreme:
After a heart attack you have to be careful not to overdo it/things (= you have to work and live calmly).
adjective
(especially of meat) cooked too long:
The roast lamb was dry and overdone.
goon
[名]((略式))
1 ((主に英))あほう, まぬけ, とんま.
2 ((主に米))（労働争議で雇われる）暴力団員；暴漢；殺し屋；下手人.
［米国の風刺漫画Thimble Theaterに登場するAlice the Goon］A goon squad is a group of thugs or mercenaries, commonly associated with anti-union or pro-union violence.[1] In the case of pro-union violence, a goon squad may be formed by union leaders to intimidate or assault non-union workers, strikebreakers, or parties who do not cooperate with the directives of union leadership.[2] In the case of anti-union violence, goon squads are traditionally hired by employers as an attempt at union busting, and resort to many of the same tactics, including intimidation, espionage, and assault.[3]
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