h/t “Horace Finkelstein” for the meme
What I think is a major missed market opportunity: Bring poutine to Russia.
- Cheap, satiating calories
- Latitudinal compatibility (Canada) – as with technologies and many other things, it’s often been observed that culinary foodways tend to spread most successfully across latitudes
- Fast food
- Can make Putin-related puns
There are currently no poutineries even in Moscow that I am aware of.
Potatoes are a Russian culinary staple. But the potato fast food niche is cornered by Kroshka Kartoshka, which is a highly inferior chain relative not just to American giants such as McDonald’s or KFCs, but some Russian-themed ones like Teremok. Shouldn’t be too difficult to win market share from it.
I don’t have the interest or business smarts to make it worthwhile for me to try to realize this myself. But for anyone so interested and inclined, I do think a talented restaurateur can cobble together a multi-million dollar chain out of this.
This is the current Open Thread, where anything goes – within reason.
If you are new to my work, start here.
Kroshka Kartoshka is not that bad. Maybe your local one is iffy.
Trump has just announced the US schools need to do more “patriotic education”. It could have been a Putin speech.
The poutine looks tasty, I would try it if it ever came across my path. Do Russians enjoy potato pancakes as much as Ukrainians do? Places that specialize in them, “deruny” are found all over Western Ukraine, anyway…
https://natashaskitchen.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Ukrainian-Potato-Pancakes.jpg
You should write something about the supposed Chinese-Iranian 25-year deal.
You’re gonna need a way to make cheese curds (or import them) if you want a successful poutinerie.
There’s a restaurant in Budapest called Lumberjack Burger and Poutine that was a couple of blocks away from my old apartment. I went there once and the “poutine” didn’t have proper cheese curds, but some horrifying mozzarella cubes. Didn’t go back.
Europeans just can’t do cheese curds: along with Mexican food, it’s one of those culinary delights that only Americans (and Canadians) have figured out.
A poutinerie in Moscow would have to be opened by a Russian who lived and worked in Canada (or Wisconsin) long enough to master the recipe and cultivate the business connections to get the ingredients across the pond. The best Mexican restaurant in Europe is in Tirana; I made fast friends with the owner and found out that he used to live in New Jersey, hence he knew what Mexican food is like (hint to other “Mexican” restaurants in Europe: nachos are supposed to come with CHEESE and burritos are served with TORTILLAS, not BREAD). There’s also a good Mexican restaurant in Yerevan, which can be explained by Armenian repats from California bringing gifts to the mother country.
It’s for the long-anticipated Great Bifurcation mega-article. (The Chad Sikh will be here to harangue me any minute now…).
Could this be The One?… https://twitter.com/randalEastman/status/1306638490126475267
A Canadian fast becoming a Eurasian – after living 20+ years in China and now domiciled in Russia.
Both Moscow and SPB have a couple of good Mexican restaurants. I wouldn’t know, as I’m not a big fan of Mexican myself, but my American expat/repat friends who love it know of a few.
It’s been done: https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2018/08/26/vladimir-poutine-moscow-food-truck-puts-own-spin-on-quebec-dish.html
They mention the fact that they just can’t get the proper cheese curds and it’s not like they can import them, due to the agricultural counter sanctions. Poutine is surprisingly hard to make well, despite it’s seeming simplicity. Every time I’ve tried Poutine in the US, I’ve regretted it and even in Western Canada, good Poutine is rare(decent Poutine is common though and it’s a staple at ski resorts). There’s literally one place in Vancouver(La Belle Patate) that makes top notch Poutine and it’s run by some Quebecois transplants.
The HopCat bar in Grand Rapids MI – one of the best bars on the planet – had Vladimir Poutaine on the menu a while back, it was pretty good.
Though it looks like they went politically correct recently and its not on the menu anymore. “Crack” fries are not there either, even though they were awesome, especially the loaded ones. They are boring “cosmik” ones now. Political correctness is killing this country.
As commenters Forney and Phatmaus point out, the cheese curd issue makes this a non-starter.
Even in the absence of counter-sanctions, cheese curds need to be fresh. In the state of Wisconsin for instance cheese curds may only be sold one day after production without refrigeration. Refrigeration extends shelf life, but such curds are not desirable for poutine (or frying). So importing cheese curds from North America is not feasible.
So in order to create a poutinerie in Russia, one would first need to convince a Russian cheese-maker to create a supply of fresh cheese curds. Not insurmountable, it’s an inherent part of cheese-making, but a hurdle. And do Russian food safety regulations even allow the sale of fresh cheese curds?
Another problem with poutine is that surprisingly few people know how to make really excellent french fries. Even famous fast food chains like In ‘n Out boast of their fresh french fries, which is actually undesirable. See below:
http://cookingissues.com/2010/04/27/the-quest-for-french-fry-supremacy-part-1/
To be honest, even most Canadian places do not go through the processes for ideal fries( a few “chip trucks” famously do). The limiting factor are cheese curds, which are a regional speciality.
Yes, to the credit of Trump and Putin. Good point.
Yeah, if you have access to decent curds, you’ll get decent Poutine. As I mentioned, ski resorts always have Poutine in their dining establishments and even though it’s made by Australians with no real training, it’s pretty much always acceptable(my recollection may be subjective though, since I was always ravenous when I had it, for obvious reasons), which I can’t say about even fairly high end places in the US that try to recreate it. I haven’t been anywhere near Wisconsin, though, so maybe the US isn’t a total write-off in the Poutine department.
P.S. another great dish, that seems to be confined mostly to ski resorts for whatever bizarre reason, is Yam Poutine.
I’m nearly at the end of my Wyoming and Utah trip.
I am once again in awe of how vast and empty the American West is, and how wild and beautiful. I feel blessed to have this vast and accessible wilderness at my fingertips. I don’t think anywhere else in the world is quite like it. Maybe the steppes of Central Asia or Mongolia, but with less variety. Likewise Australia.
Life in these small towns in the middle of nowhere is pleasant and the people nice. Political views are mostly balanced and sane. The Unz commentariat may be drawn (mostly) from the uneducated working class, but is not representative of it. Food is often surprisingly good. The foodie revolution has reached far and deep. The locals can be refined with a deep appreciation of nature – one old lady told me how she was up at 5 am to view the full moon. Very Japanese.
In the national parks and in the mountains, the visitors are almost entirely white. I think I saw one Chinese couple. I had thought American Asians loved nature, but it seems mostly Asian Asians do. No blacks or Hispanics. Some Germans.
On this trip I have come to realize the importance of space. Overpopulation is increasing our alienation from nature and driving up anxiety and neuroticism. I discovered that an easy cure for digital addiction is to stare at nature – I found myself evenings simply staring into the mountains or at the camp fire for hours, perfectly content, even though I had reception on my smartphone. The moment I entered a busy urban setting, the digital itch returned – very curious – and my cortisol levels went up noticeably.
There is a large and growing movement of “vagabonds” across the US. People living in vans or out of cars, and of course RVs, in beautiful natural settings are far more numerous than even 10 years ago. Most of these people are not poor and have decent paying jobs – some of the vans are expensive and decked out.
I hope to be able to do this again in the winter and make this a regular part of my life. I’m still youngish, but I have been focusing on the wrong things in life – like politics, or intellectual discussion. The actual world is so much more than our intellects.
I like the idea of a protein-shake that helps one Putin massive gains
Some of the strange landscapes in Southern Utah are straight out of a surrealistic fairy tale. I’m not so well acquainted with Wyoming, how would you generally compare the two?
Anatoly, is this true?
https://twitter.com/Glossophiliac75/status/1306051550322855936
Mr. Karlin casually breaking hearts and picking up lifelong orbiters as a true alpha.
Yeah, I have not been to those places but it’s on the bucket list. US has really awesome places to go to. Camping in upper Michigan reminded me of Karelia, and getting out of big cities really helps.
The two are completely different.
I was in the Wind River Range in Wyoming, which is around 80 miles east from the famous Teton National Park, but much less visited and equally beautiful.
Much of Wyoming is rather deserty high plains, but the mountain ranges are sublime and somewhat alpine – but somehow wilder, drier, and without the intense green garden-like feel of the Alps. But generally high granite peaks with snow towering over meadow filled valleys with rivers meandering through and clumps of pines – very sublime landscape. I saw gigantic moose with antlers and a large bear.
Also very high country. The trailhead for most of my hikes started at 8,000 feet, and trails climbed up to 13,000. My first night camping at the trailhead my tent was covered in frost by morning – in early September. It was in the upper 20s at night.
Roads are dirt and gravel to reach trailheads and can be as long as 30 or 40 miles of unpaved travel.
I would say Wyoming is sublimely rugged and remote country, with fantastic mountain scenery and opportunity for real adventure – but also colder and drier than I expected.
Southern Utah of course is amazing. I think Canyonlands NP is my favourite. The landscape is unbelievably vast and many of the hikes involve scrambles and climbs across gigantic boulder fields and rock faces through weird Martian like landscapes.
The area around the town of Escalante was a revelation to me – a tiny town with a very remote feel, the whole area seemed lost in time. And yet it is only about 100 miles from Zion, which gets insanely crowded. I kept on dreaming of moving here. 33 beautiful mountain front acres were going for only $75,000 in the local realtors office!
The hikes in these region are mostly in “slot canyons”. You walk for hours on the riverbed of a canyon that gets narrower at some points and wider at others. Some places you have to squeeze through, and others the canyon is 50 feet wide. But there are pools and hanging gardens and giant boulders to climb over, making it varied. And there is an incredible sense of isolation and mystery in these canyons. I drove 2 hours out of town, half on a dirt road, to reach the trailhead. I did not see a single other car, and hiked for 2 days not seeing a single other person. I rested my hand on the canyon wall at one point, and noticed ancient Indian rock art by accident.
Now for the next 3 days I am wrapping things up in Zion. Zion is of course sublime, but it is insanely crowded. Fortunately, the landscape is so vast all I had to do to avoid the crowds was to go to the less glitzy and glamorous but still utterly stupendous bits – the crowds only want to see the really glitzy bits, like the narrow canyons or the valley, and I’d already experienced amazing narrow canyons. Plus the crowds mostly don’t like to exert themselves, so all you have to do is hike a few miles in.
Both Wyoming and Utah are some of the best places on earth – the Wyoming winters are probably too harsh and snowy for me, seeing how cold it was in late summer, so I’d pick Utah for living.
I plan on returning here this winter for more exploring, especially in the Navajo regions.
Yeah get out there when you get a chance – you won’t regret it.
And hiking Canyonlands will prepare you for when we inevitably colonize Mars 🙂
Michigan I here has quite beautiful forests and lakes.
Poutine? I thought Anatoly cared about increasing the average lifespan of Russians. I guess not. Even those diets which say fat is good for you, will agree that tons of carbs and fat together is a deadly combination. Just like in the West, the almighty rouble takes precedence over the health of fellow citizens.
Mr. Glossy still obssessed with Mr. Karlin? 😉
Last time I visited his twitter, he was confidently predicting that the virus is just a flu, nothing to worry about, while AK panicked that millions are going to die.
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/corona-will-kill-millions-crater-the-world-economy/
One of them was vindicated by the events, and it was not Mr. Glossy ;-(
Reminds me of the time when a protestant asked me if the Orthodox believe in the Trinity.
@Anatoly Karlin
When I first observed you signing praise to Indian cuisine, I thought that, well, to each his own, but now that you deride Kroshka Kartoshka as inferior I see, without any lingering doubt, that, with all due respect, you absolutely lack any culinary taste. Which obviously does not detract any value from the idea you put out here.
Looks like neither of them got vindicated given that we now now that this virus is less dangerous than the flu.
On the futurism front, recent memes and themes tout ‘castizo futurism’, grounded in the numbers showing a high rate of Hispanic – European white inter-marriage in the USA
These cultures often comfortably meld given commonalities of European-Christian heritge, often including as well Roman Catholicism
The idea is that USA euro-whites should accept their nation’s transformation into another Latino landscape, embrace it, and develop forward on that foundation
And be ready to merge themselves, genetically and otherwise, into a Latino cultural wing of great unique promise
This is one of those ideas partly promoted as a joke but has momentum from its irl foundation
In search results ‘castizo futurism’ is already a thing, a Twitter hashtag etc
LOL, I don’t even like weed (which can be confirmed), Glossy should at least have claimed I went crazy from LSD for more plausibility.
I addressed the Glossy issue here: https://akarlin.com/2018/07/neocon-cockroach/
He has something like 100 Tweets about me, I will let readers be the judge of who is the more unhinged.
https://twitter.com/Glossophiliac75/status/1303883754780360706
At least 300k excess deaths relative to average in the US, more than 10% y/y increase in mortality in the worst afflicted European countries.
But less than dangerous than the flu. OK, LOL.
I am consistently amazed how sometimes otherwise very rational and intelligent people go crazy on this topic and just dismiss the numbers.
https://twitter.com/akarlin88/status/1305627929662099463
Eh. It’s bad, but not apocalyptically bad. Though, it never hurts to be a pessimist in these cases. Better preparedness and all.
As for Ukristan… Well, that could happen if suddenly a lot of population moved away…
Russia has a rich dairy tradition and developed industry. Considering the amount of tvorog and other dairy products consumed in the country, I have a hard time believing that sourcing quality cheese curds, especially in metropolitan Moscow, would be difficult. Properly frying the fries is another story, but that should at least be possible with a proper recipe in hand. I can’t explain why, but for some reason I doubt that the dish would have mass appeal, despite Russians’ predilection for both potatoes and dairy products.
Correct. So it’s a good thing I never said it would be “apocalyptically bad” or anything remotely to that effect. 🙂
The fertility rate guy’s twitter is gone for some reason:
https://twitter.com/Cicerone973/
Edit: Seems like there’s a similar one at https://twitter.com/BirthGauge
Yes he renamed it.
“White Hispanics” have done such a great job running Argentina, no wonder people are enthusiastic about becoming like them.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcR4pQ5eo_tsBluONosvDO9RLT9r3M-o8DOPaA&usqp.jpg
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https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcSJtvpMD1KhTq91MJS4eoQQCxb3x37pwpLbdw&usqp.jpg
I like Glossy – he reminds me of my younger self.
He seems a real muzhik, a great guy. He ‘s the type of person you want your daughter to marry or help you out if your house is on fire and a true patriot
You exploit the western section of russian internet commentary by cynically and intelligently positioning yourself in the “centre” of Russian political spectrum .
The main problem with this approach is that the “centre” is that as defined by the fraudulent view on Russia of the western scum/liberasts – making it inevitable that patriots as Glossy and those with opposing, more Tsarist affiliation are going to attack your views, while Israeli-Vietnamese troll nutjobs like Ano4 will worship it. Well, that AND your regular journeys into supporting on here total Khokholism made by subhuman scum ( again , for the purpose of cynically exploiting the market to maximise viewership)
True centrism would actually be more like Putin on nearly every single issue.
This fake centre that you exploit puts Russia in a bad position at the start – effectively taking it up the a**.
The thing in your favour? You are not that random , worthless bum off the street 27Khv – it’s shameful that this tramp is fairly predominant in anglophone section of Russian commentary
As for shooting scientists in Soviet time – in the west plenty of scientists were moved away, demoted, discredited . OK , they were not shot – but as you can see now, many of them deserved to be shot – I would have started in west by shooting that overrated, PR-driven , dumb**s Einstein.
It’s inevitable anyway that these things occur- when business competition or geopolitical aims or braindead culture wars are the main force in any particular scientific pursuit ahead of the science itself then big disagreements will occur. Also – the PR-driven, narcissism and unprofessional political activism as an impediment to their work of many scientists -does not help
A scientist should be like a typical western politician – boring. He should be very careful ,weighing up facts from all directions, showing intense critical thinking – not the absurd hyper activists that are very common now
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcQjFBu8qg_GZ2gDACRdfN-UJ4OJjyMm755IUw&usqp.jpg
I would never consider defending Argentina’s economic performance, but it’s also not really fair to take the beginning of the 20th century as a starting point. This was the country’s heyday, BA was one of the richest cities in the world at the time. Argie took a huge hit from the construction of the Panama Canal.
https://twitter.com/econchart/status/1306447737492246529
Dmitry argued that fixating upon architecture as a sign of wealth isn’t always relevant. Buenos Aires is certainly a beautiful city, yet its beauty reflects wealth that was present over a century ago. Bucharest may look like a dump, but its inhabitants are far richer.
This is simultaneously the allure and the curse of architecture. You can ‘lock in’ the gains for decades, even centuries. You can also be haunted by what you once were but cannot now return to.
Argentina got rich at a time when there wasn’t much competition. East Asia was just getting started.
Being a commodities exporter was sufficient. The reason why Argentina failed is eventually why all countries fail, if they do fail: lack of a high human capital base.
Mr Hack – your constant cretinism is so likeable and endearing . You are a Russian, an extremely crazy Russian – I am proud to be of the same ethnicity as you.
Surely even you must have known the answer to the ridiculous question you put in your comment. It’s amusing you mention the Potato.Such a regular part of diet, is of course , as with everything in Ukraine, entirely a Russian world inception/creation. Russia brought that to our own land to our own people ( modern day Ukrainian state) – that’s why the cuisine involving it , styles of cooking, even any joke or phrase about it are absolutely identical in Russia as in Ukraine
It’s the same thing with Chai/Tea. Every country in the world appears to have their own unique culture in drinking Chai/tea ( in America it is the complete lack of one as everything is coffee) . Russia, France, UK, Holland, Turkey all have differences on this I have noticed. Russia and Ukraine are of course 1 million% identical in chai drinking culture.
Even the naming – chai was the name given to it if imported via land, tea if imported via sea.
Inept Poland, aren’t in any category. To be called Chai there they would have to invade Russia successfully or have good relations with it to import it via land. “Tea” would imply some type of Navy for Poland( lol) – of course Poland is none of these so, as with the Potato, a simple thing as Chai for Ukraine is another thing completely part of their Russian-world identity.
LOL.
Glossy is an erratic man with mental issues.
You have a worrisome lack of regard for your presumed daughter.
Most of the excess deaths in the US are from circulatory diseases and Alzheimer/dementia. Very little from respiratory diseases. Which suggest that panic over Corona killed more people than Corona itself.
Er cough they are suffering from Epigenetic Trauma because of the experiences of their ancestors in certain Polish ‘camps’ a couple of generations ago, I wonder whether they hate the showers as well because of those ‘camps’. People working with them should be able to confirm whether their epigenetic Trauma extends to the showers as well.
I’m surprised that you’ve only found one good poutine shop in Vancouver. The one you mentioned is in the top 5 (see link), and I’ve been to two others on the list, so there are at least three good poutine shops.
https://youtu.be/QgiNH_u1Rnk
Only a vexillology fiend uses flags instead of letters. I thought the first one was texas but that didn’t make sense, turns out it’s Chile.
Forcing me to quote Anthony Bourdain, in Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook, (once again?):
Some excellent trolling by the Russian foreign ministry. In this tweet they tagged, amongst others, the foreign ministries of Poland and Lithuania.
https://twitter.com/mfa_russia/status/1306516128643121152?s=19
I thought Chile, too, at first; but couldn’t it be an overly simplified version of the USA flag?
True. Run-ins with Mother Nature have a way of making the digital world seem puny.
I had ‘poutine’ in Dresden (Saxony, not Ontario) last year. They just sprinkled grated cheese on it which eventually melted, but it was still decent as in Europe, unlike North America, they know how to make fries. (Weird how so few few North Americas have figured out how to do something so basic). Anyway, it looked like it was doing really good business. If you opened a poutinerie in London, Paris, or somewhere else with a significant Canadian expat population you could probably make a killing.
Thank you my brother, for enlightening me with your superior “Big Brother” warmth and intelligence.
Unfortunately, you didn’t really answer my question and explain whether one can find little restaurants dedicated to presenting “deruny” to the hungry hoardes within mainland Russia (Big, of course)?
https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/02/5f/86/03/hutsulshchyna-restuarant.jpg
I’ve had fries in Europe. They didn’t taste any different.
Actually, they did one time – because some greasy Turk pumped curry ketchup onto them. Thankfully, this is a problem we mainly don’t have in America, where the noxious cuisine of the subcontinent has not made inroads so deep, so as to regularly expose one to the risk of eating Indian foods without proper warning beforehand.
For every plate of poutine consumed in Canada there must be 100 plates of this meal eaten:
https://canadify.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2-Can-Dine-For-14.99-At-Swiss-Chalet-Trough-June-25-2017.jpg
The two most successful restaurant franchises (not including coffee shops) in Canada, Swiss Chalet and St Hubert, sell tens of millions of this specific meal every year, and smaller chains like St Louis and countless independents sell millions more.
I haven’t looked all that hard, but I’ve never found a US restaurant that sells this exact meal: only 4 ingredients and none of them green. Sometimes what is wildly popular in one country is disdained everywhere else, but surely this meal must be sold somewhere. How about Russia?
A story in pictures.
History, politics, economics, genetics and demographics.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcQdUA9M_S_GmoAXsKtoWctZtOJYAEORTnYLsQ&usqp.jpg
https://images.ctfassets.net/cnu0m8re1exe/1QlYzG9v402s3rVYUAKiYl/d07ea8d55293b8356c918eb25b8cf04b/argen2.png
https://images.ctfassets.net/cnu0m8re1exe/2V7Izv4ZUbjBIHlcSQCJ0i/1e76885e24db1da69ef44bdd98216a8a/argen1.png
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https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-a747f1d950b5d05bc5dde7d58c4d6c96-c
Not this specific meal, but Boston Market and Cowboy Chicken offers that. The market for roast chicken isn’t that huge here; it usually supermarket.
Gravy isn’t usually seen as a sauce for fries in the US either.
https://youtu.be/jPcmZ-ZCZTw
https://www.redrooster.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/valye-family-meal.png
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcQ3YSd7pIAFWx-eGnVIlc7qMrhB6iFNmrJKLA&usqp.jpg
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I’m guessing that Boston Market and Cowboy Chicken are relatively new chains, which is why they only serve healthier sides with their roast chicken, rather than fries, a roll and sauce.
Of course Swiss Chalet and St Hubert serve healthier sides now and lots of other things besides chicken, but when they started out in the 1950s the chicken-fries-roll-sauce meal was pretty much the only thing on the menu right up until the late 1970s or early 80s, and it’s still by far the biggest seller.
Which is quite the coincidence considering that St Hubert started out in Montreal and Swiss Chalet in Toronto, and the two had no connection with each other aside from serving the exact same meal. Though to split hairs Swiss Chalet serves a roll while St Hubert serves a toasted half hamburger bun, and St Hubert’s fries are thinner and crispier than Swiss Chalet’s, and their sauce is thinner and redder.
In the typical Canadian style the restaurants are divided along language lines. They once tried competing in each other’s territory, but now St Hubert has Quebec to itself along with parts of French-speaking New Brunswick, while Swiss Chalet rules the rest of the country.
Also typically Canadian was Swiss Chalet’s big floppo of an attempted expansion into the US. They briefly had restaurants in Buffalo (logically) and Puerto Rico (bizarrely) before they went bust. As you said, it’s not to the US market’s taste.
Maybe they eat this chicken-fries-roll-sauce meal somewhere else (Switzerland?), or maybe it’s one of those things that Canadians love but everybody else hates, like the Tragically Hip.
I once lunched with a bunch of Canucks in Windsor, ONT, and they all started going on about their favourite Poutineries, when one realised I was a Yank, and asked, “Are you familiar with poutine?”
Me: “My fave is Poutineville in Montreal … greasy goodness served fast, eh.”
https://restosmtl.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/img_8395.jpg
I’ve been to #3 and #1 on the list. Edible Canada is for trying weird ingredients from around the country, I had seal Poutine there, interesting experience and well worth it, but not one I’d pay to repeat. Mean Poutine is a competent Anglo hipster’s take on the dish, but definitely a step below the Quebequois standard . As I said, Poutine is super hard to get just right in all aspects, from the squeakiness of the cheese curds to the crispness and consistency of the fries to the texture of the gravy. After I had the real deal in Quebec, eating what I previously considered
Chicken & Chips (fries) is a popular meal in Blighty.
Edible Canada sounds like a more extreme version of #2, which I went to and enjoyed immensely. On the other hand, I’m no expert.
Haha, laptop battery died, thought I could continue, but it turns out I forgot what fake email I had used the other account, to complete my train of thought:
I’ve been to #3 and #1 on the list. Edible Canada is for trying weird ingredients from around the country, I had seal Poutine there, interesting experience and well worth it, but not one I’d pay to repeat. Mean Poutine is a competent Anglo hipster’s take on the dish, but definitely a step below the Quebequois standard . As I said, Poutine is super hard to get just right in all aspects, from the squeakiness of the cheese curds to the crispness and consistency of the fries to the texture of the gravy. After I had the real deal in Quebec, eating what I previously considered to be great Anglo Poutine was a disappointment.
There’s a skill-set to it that can apparently only be passed down from spending a lot of time picking up other’s practices and not written up in a process manual.
Why would Russians eat potato draniki in a restaurant if any babushka can make them at home?
https://1000.menu/cooking/3943-kartofelnje-draniki
When I will invite you to visit Moscow Mr. Hack we’ll go to Teremok, I really enjoy eating there. My Russian relatives think I am a little deranged because that’s the first place I go to eat upon arrival.
https://teremok.ru/menu/vareniki_s_kartofelem_i_gribami/
And I always take a big glass of Kvass!
Did Malorossians drink Kvass?
That was an early intrusion of Arctic air on September 8th. Denver recorded its earliest ever frost and snow. All of the Rocky Mountains area from Canada down to New Mexico saw some snow. I also got to see a few flurries where I live (while the news was all about the Pacific Coast heat waves 🙂
It was a bit of a freak event but I’m sure that early September frosts and snow are not unheard of anywhere in Wyoming. Also, the jet stream brings much more cloudiness in the winter season to those latitudes than to Southern Utah, so if you like to see sunny skies most of the time and don’t mind missing out on the grandiose alpine summits, you’d be better off in some place like Escalante.
I guess that you’re right that in Central Asia you could find places similar to Western Wyoming but possibly the best match is the lee side of the Southern Andes in Argentina/Chile. Equally pristine and breathtaking but cold and windy year-round. Bariloche is perhaps the most beautifully located city in the world.
Just out of curiosity, does anybody know what Navalny supporters think about cancelling the Nord-Stream 2 project as a reprisal for their leader’s poisoning?
That would be a very indiscriminate measure targeting the Russian economy and thus harming ordinary Russians (including liberals) more than the perpetrators.
Are they not trying to convince their Western friends against such an action?
Yes. I think that it has been clear for several months now that your prediction of millions dead of Covid is a done deal, vaccine or no vaccine. The numbers from around the world show that eventually we will get there.
Fortunately, the IFR has gone down dramatically so your estimate of 1% is now too high but it did look accurate to me when you formulated it. That’s what the best evidence showed at the time.
It’s the same thing with Chai/Tea – More specifically the division here is between Cha and Te. Cha is from Cnatonese and Te is from Fujan. Then Chai is modification of Cha by Persians and it spread from Persia to Turkey, India and Central Asia and Russia. So you are correct that mostly by land. But in Portuguese tea is Chá. Portuguese were the first to bring tea to Europe in 1550’s from Macau obviously by sea route. Then the Duch brought it to Europe and introduced to England.
Russia got tea and its name from Central Asia. England got it from Dutch. And Poland probably also from the Dutch as its Herbata and Lithuanian Arbata came most likely from the Dutch Herba Thee which also could be Latin Herba Tea.
Herba Tea has similar construct as Yerba Mate where mate is from Guarani. I do not remember if the movie The Mission (1986) shows the plantations of yerba mate. Jesuits were the ones who domesticated and learned how to grow it on a large scale and yerba mate at that point could have been a potential competition to tea on the world markets. But the Spanish/Portuguese conflict that destroyed the Jesuit missions which later was followed with expulsion of Jesuits put the end to yerba mate and the method of domestication was forgotten. Yerba mate was domesticated again in late 19th century.
One may wonder whether British and Dutch traders of tea had their fingers in the Spanish-Portuguese conflict in the mid 18th century. One should not be surprised as the same people later started Opium Wars for tea in China.
Glossy is typical bitter and disappointed emigrant who found that streets in the West are not paved with gold like in Hollywood movies, and in response now sees the late Soviet Union as paradise on earth.
Many such cases.
https://i2.wp.com/weirdrussia.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Petr_nostalgie.jpg
No, it is not excellent.
First you abolish Soviet Union and renounce the ideals of communism, throw away the red flag and hammer and sickle and build oligarchic capitalist state, and then you claim Soviet legacy and defend the most indefensible things USSR ever done?
What is the point? Really, what is the point except self-own? Who is supposed to be influenced and persuaded?
I’ve tried several times to reduce my digital addiction, without much success.
The missing ingredient was being in nature. An artificial environment seems to drive artificial forms of stimulation.
The interesting thing is that the first few hours in nature away from technology can be fretful and boring. But soon a strange satisfaction sets in, and after that, magic.
Ha, you’re probably right. But it goes to show that you have to be prepared for extreme temps in the mountain West.
I had a 30 degree down quilt that weighed 19 oz, and it just wasn’t enough. I had to buy a thermal bag liner, and with my thermals and fleece, it did the trick. The days were in the 70s and perfect.
The thing is I love those wild alpine environments, just next summer, I will get a proper 0 degree or 15 degree bag. And be psychologically prepared, which I wasn’t this time. Psychology is everything. I did have one perfect week though in Wyoming.
But in the end, the backpacking season up in Wyoming is roughly 3.5 months. In south Utah its closer to 8 months, and there are high mountain ranges you can retreat to in summer. I like southern areas that are at high elevation and get snow and seasons – exotic, but with a true winter, yet not too cold.
I intend to check out South America more, especially the Patagonia region, when travel becomes possible again. I’ve been to Ecuador and Peru, which were beautiful but not so wild. But further south its supposed to be very wild.
It’s the law in the US that French fries can only come with fried chicken, whereas rotisserie chicken must be served with mashed potatoes.
The kind of Americans who would eat poutine don’t like to try new foods. And the kind of Americans who like to try new foods would not touch poutine with a 10-foot pole.
So, why are we on Karlin’s blog, instead of that other blog? “We vote with our feet” (or our clicks in this case).
Because I and you are consumer netizens who write what we feel like, and are also unrepresentative of most people who read this blog, so our opinion is not relevant from the point of view of the producers of the content, and they would be more successful if they don’t read our comments.
Karlin is a producer netizen and is dependent on his audience feeling emotionally happy when they read his blog.
Bloggers’ income is dependent on producing the content that sells to their particular audience (i.e. results in clicks and reclicks).
To be a popular blogger is surely a kind of art of knowing your audience. Fashion blogger, makes women to dream about becoming more glamorous and attractive. Boris Rozhin makes people esoterically dream that Russia’s government is achieving some important “victories” in Syria or Ukraine. Varlamov, makes hipsters dream about living in Swedish houses. Steven Sailor is making elderly American, obsessed about how their past decades were better than the Latinoized future.
Karlin generally promoting to Westerners who dislike Western politics, criticisms of the West, and praises about China or Russia. For example, he promotes the high state capacity of China, but at the same time he condemns America for reducing free speech.
For a ruler, increasing state capacity and increasing free speech are generally incompatible, and offset from each other (reducing one, is difficult to avoid effect of increasing the other). But this is irrelevant for a blog audience, as the readers are mostly disillusioned Americans, not rulers.
If you are American, you might emotionally like to maintain current levels of free speech, or even increase it, but will also dream about increasing American state capacity (as America is such a chaotic country).
Probably if I was working as a professional blogger for American audience, I would start to admire China for its high state capacity, while condemn the reduction of free speech in America, as that is what is exciting for this audience.
Of course, if you are an actual ruling elite of a country, then you have to choose between things like free speech and higher state capacity (these are values which always have some level of offsetting against each other).
Putin is a ruler, not a blogger, so motivations for his views are wildly different, than would be if he dependent on blogging.
If Putin loses his job, and re-invented his career, to become a successful blogger, he would probably be promoting something like Varlamov, or Rozhin, or Karlin, or Sailer, or he could be blogging about makeup if his audience were women.
Especially, in the Western audience, most people are strongly conditioned to hate against the Soviet Union. My advice would be that you would be a more popular blogger from promoting the reptile conspiracy theory, than from promoting the Soviet Union.
I guess Buenos Aires was also fortunate to become so wealthy, at the same time that Beaux-Arts and Art Nouveau were the fashionable or prestigious international architecture style.
Surely Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Singapore would be extremely glamorous architecturally, if their economic apotheosis occurred in the late 19th century, instead of the late 20th century.
Navalny supporters hate Russia and ordinary Russians, they view anything bad that happens to them as a good thing. They very much support Nordstream 2 cancellation, and any other sanctions that the West imposes, because they wish to see Russia suffer. Their credo is, the worse the better. This might strike an outside observer as irrational, and it is, although perhaps a case can be made for “accelerationism”.
Since we don’t know who the perpetrators are, and will likely never know, what harms or benefits them is also impossible to determine. For all we know, they did this with the specific aim of getting NS2 cancelled.
Modern day Russia is an evolving social construct. It is not yet a stabilized and normalized society. It is kind of torn between its past and its present. And that situation prevents it from clearly tracing a picture for what its future should be and then just stick to the plan. The much talked about stability of the Putin years, the whole “vertical of power”, are about preventing the social construct from falling into pieces while the oligarchic elites stabilize themselves at the helm of the Russian ship. But even these people, who should know better, are caught up in a kind of historical, political and economic schizophrenia. All the funniest when Putin is projected as an uber- villain in the Western liberal narrative, or as the True Christian Katechon in the Western conservative thinking.
There are at least this that we know:
https://www.bbc.com/russian/features-54204627
Maria Pevchikh is a very intriguing character…
Watched yet another Chinese movie: Monster Hunt from 2015. Budget $56 million. Up until 2016, the highest grossing movie in Chinese history with an impressive $382 million take in China. Though, there were some questions about accounting and free tickets, and it has since fallen to #14 or so.
Very strange movie. Imagine Shrek, but like Roger Rabbit, combining CGI with lots of real actors and the real world. Then, add-in that film where Schwarzenegger is pregnant, and (I believe) some Chinese ghost lore without any ghosts, and perhaps some elements from JRPGs. Some peasant humor, and perhaps a critique against the Chinese practice of eating strange things. And I don’t think I’ve covered all the bases…
There’s a researcher named Joe Francis(not that he’s alone in making the argument) who questions the official narrative about Argentina’s decline mostly from a data quality angle. He suggests that Argentina’s past economic prosperity has been overestimated(which logically means the decline has been exaggerated). He has a handful of blog posts and a few papers on his website. Here are a few examples:
https://www.joefrancis.info/argentina_decline/
https://www.joefrancis.info/penn_world_table/
https://www.joefrancis.info/argentina-in-1800/
I guess that deruni are common enough, as you point out, but people must like them quite a bit and the convenience of buying them in a local outlet makes them a “hot item”. There are a few items within the menu of a local Ukrainian restaurant that I like to frequent regularly that I can make at home too, however, its entertaining to get out and taste other more exotic or difficult to make items that I don’t usually make at home. You might find it interesting to see how a Ukrainian does Slavic food in Arizona. The Russian and Ukrainian girls that he employs are quite charming too (its too bad that you can’t see their photos on the menu). They serve liquor including beer and kvas from Eastern Europe. I too enjoy drinking kvas and the latest version served at this restaurant is imported from Lithuania and is quite good. We’ll drink some together when you come to Arizona. As you can see after comparing menus, you can find a lot of the same dishes in both restaurants:
https://www.myeurokitchen.com/menus
They taste better when fried in beef or horse fat. They should also be thicker than the kind you get in the US. Shoestring fries are an abomination.
Horse fat? Is that really a thing? I don’t think I’ve ever really even heard of beef fat either, unless it means cooking simultaneously with beef. Roasted potatoes cooked in a pan with beef is quite good. But, usually, it is vegetable oil here. (I wonder if it started as a health craze, though it’s not so healthy)
There’s lots of different terms for fries in America. “French fries”, one of the more common ones, means thin or stick fries. “German fries”, or more commonly “steak fries” means thicker ones.
I once ordered “chicken and chips” at a restaurant here, thinking it was British terminology, and it was actually potato chips, or I think the English call them crisps, on a plate. (taken from a bag)
Beef tallow fries are uncommon but aren’t unheard of, I think. You should try them if you haven’t, quite superlative.
You probably already know this.
A blend of 7% vegetable oil and 93% beef tallow.
It was the restaurant’s fries, in particular, that caught the attention of Ray Kroc, who would go on to bring the McDonald’s franchise to the world. “The McDonald’s french fry was in an entirely different league,” Kroc explains in his memoir, “Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald’s.” “They lavished attention on it. I didn’t know it then, but one day I would, too. The french fry would become almost sacrosanct for me, its preparation a ritual to be followed religiously.”
Taking Time To Make Fries
Two major factors made those original French fries irresistible: texture and tallow. Kroc realized quickly that what helped keep McDonald’s fries from getting mushy after the frying process was maintaining the right amount of moisture and starch in the fries. Even the reliable Russet Burbank potato — the large, oblong variety that McDonald’s uses to this day among others — can vary in moisture content depending on where and how it’s grown. To maintain consistency, Kroc had suppliers use hydrometers to ensure optimal moisture content.
Kroc also found that curing the potatoes — storing them in warm temperatures for a few weeks — helped convert the sugars in a fresh potato into starch, which made for a crisper fry that didn’t caramelize and brown. He also hired an electrical engineer named Louis Martino to develop a “potato computer” to determine the optimal cooking time for the fries. But it was the beef tallow used to cook the fries that ultimately made them a worldwide hit.
The Flavor Secrets of Formula 47
TallowPhoto credit: canyonos/istockphotoIt was beef tallow — the rendered form of beef fat that’s solid at room temperature — that gave McDonald’s fries their signature rich and buttery flavor. But the tallow was used initially because it was the cheap, convenient option. Interstate, the fry oil supplier for the McDonald brothers’ burger stand, was too small of an operation to afford the expensive hydrogenation equipment to produce partially hydrogenated vegetable oil — the most popular frying oil at the time. Instead, Interstate provided McDonald’s with a blend of 7% vegetable oil and 93% beef tallow, sourced from the stockyards of Chicago, which could extend the life of the oil without expensive equipment. It also happened to make the fries incredibly delicious.
The special beef tallow and oil blend for McDonald’s fries became known as Formula 47, named after the combined cost of the restaurant’s “All-American meal” at the time, which included a 15-cent burger, 12-cent fries, and a 20-cent shake. Kroc insisted that all of the McDonald’s franchises use Formula 47, ensuring that the rest of the country — and eventually the world — would come to love the taste of McDonald’s french fries.
In his memoir, Kroc explains how important those fries were to the success of McDonald’s, “One of my suppliers told me ‘Ray, you know you aren’t in the hamburger business at all. You’re in the french-fry business. I don’t know how the livin’ hell you do it, but you’ve got the best french fries in town, and that’s what’s selling folks on your place.'” He goes on to say, “The quality of our french fries was a large part of McDonald’s success.”
A Change Of Heart
The buttery, beef tallow flavor would continue to be a hallmark of McDonald’s fries for decades, adored by the millions — and later billions — served. But eventually, concerns were raised that the saturated fat in beef tallow raises cholesterol levels to potentially dangerous heights, which eventually prompted a change in the recipe. In 1966, self-made millionaire Phil Sokolof had a nearly life-ending heart attack at age 43, prompting him to create the National Heart Savers Association to campaign against fat and cholesterol in the American diet. A self-admitted “student in the greasy hamburger school of nutrition” before his heart attack, Sokolof went on to launch a multimillion-dollar campaign, including full-page newspaper ads, contending that McDonald’s and other fast-food chains were threatening lives with high-cholesterol menus.
In 1990, faced with Sokolof’s campaign and growing public concerns about health, McDonald’s gave in. Beef tallow was eliminated from the famous french fry formula and replaced with 100% vegetable oil. The results were french fries with zero cholesterol and 45% less fat per serving than before, but also a plummet in stock prices and countless consumers saddened by a drop in flavor.
Trying To Bring Back The Flavor
In an effort to bring back some of the flavor lost by removing beef tallow, McDonald’s began adding “beef flavoring” to its fries. But the company was forced to settle lawsuits from vegetarians and Hindus who abstain from eating beef for not disclosing the added ingredient. The company now lists “natural beef flavor,” of which the starting ingredients are hydrolyzed wheat and milk proteins thought to be a source of “meaty-tasting” amino acids. Many customers thought the changes lost much of the fries’ balance between a crisp, crunchy exterior and a soft interior.
So while the McDonald’s french fry may be healthier than it was decades ago, we may have sacrificed a lot of taste along the way.
Of course, many of us still enjoy McDonald’s french fries, perhaps just not as much as we used to. The fries still have that golden, crispy exterior and tender interior. They still offer that delicious sweet-salty combo, thanks to a spray of dextrose after they’ve been blanched during processing, and the salt sprinkled on after frying.
And for those wondering if we remember the original version of McDonald’s fries as better tasting only because of nostalgia, author Malcolm Gladwell dispels that idea in his “Revisionist History” podcast episode, “McDonald’s Broke My Heart.” In the podcast, Gladwell laments the end of beef tallow use in 1990. He even goes so far as to have the country’s leading food scientists recreate the original recipe for a taste test against the modern ones. It’s no contest, the original recipe wins, and Gladwell concludes, “My heart is full of sadness again to think about how many millions and millions and millions of people around the world have never tasted that.”
Making fries correctly is NOT basic.
The fries need to be soaked, parboiled, frozen, and fried twice at different temperatures.
Almost nothing about this is intuitive, and most fries are disappointing on both sides of the Atlantic.
Aside from the things related to increasing of state capacity (which is where for example, promotion church and religion is useful for politicians), much national “brand differentiation” from the Russian government. is just determined as a reaction against whatever was most fashionable and absurd in the last decade in Western European national branding.
However, 21st century national “brand differentiation” is always on something that has little practical significance, and therefore doesn’t cost anything unlike in the 20th century (unlike the communist vs capitalist brand differentiation in the past, which has been very expensive and had a marked a real difference).
Theme of the national “brand differentiation” in the 21st century, are nowadays mainly reactive, and focus on “low hanging fruit” of Western aburdities.
The funniest example is with LGBT self-branding of Western Europe. Number of homosexual people between London and Moscow, is likely the same, and neither is their lifestyle or personal safety different in Russia.
But in London, the city now advertises itself on cultish LGBT branding. (And there are other cities in UK which are even more LGBT branding than London).
So such the stupidest and most manufactured brand differentiation.
Of course, it’s not a real significant culture difference, than one of branding (and the irony that politicians’ – even Prime Minister – nowadays send their children to schools in Western Europe).
I find your theory of Mr. Karlin as the equivalent of kitty video producer for the edgelord audience very interesting and can’t wait to see you assist Karlin in producing more.
Thanks, that was interesting especially about the potatoes.
I vaguely recall hearing some business news story, probably around 5 years ago, where McDonald’s was having trouble with their potato supply chain, somewhere in East Asia (Vietnam? China?) It was hard for me to understand at the time because I felt pretty sure that there were lots of potatoes around there (China is the top producer, though not sure about latitude-wise) and because potatoes are clonal. But I didn’t understand about how the moisture content varies depending on the climate in which they are grown.
Don’t you see that you are his exact mirror, except in relation to RE?
This is the latest from Boomer Ben Garrison:
https://grrrgraphics.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/MAGA_vs_The-Swamp.jpg
I love this cartoon because it showcases how far MIGA/MAGA gas fallen. There’s no hint of the original promise to drain the swamp: the goal now is merely to take refuge on the high ground above it. And “USA” is not looking like it’s gonna escape from the swamp, the tentacles have him pretty good, with only Trump pulling him away and he doesn’t seem to be putting his back into it. But Trump’s in an okay position, and the subconscious message is that we, the USA, are supposed to sacrifice ourselves so that he can make it out. That’s the struggle now, it went from “Trump is gonna save us” to “we gotta save him.” Make sure he is safe from what we are not.
Just. Say. No.
No, I don’t.
Somewhat true. Glossy’s opinions are at least based on personal experience, even if it’s just happy childhood memories.
And type of potatoes is import for their moisture content. Also soaking them in water with sugar suppose to help to make them crispier. And finally what is the smallest dimension that controls the surface to volume ratio.
Never heard of horse fat except for in some weird cosmetic products. But beef fat indeed. McDonald’s till 1990 used beef tallow. I think pork lard also would be good.
“Frying imparts desirable taste and textural properties to these products, the latter described usually by the sensorial term crispness. Frying is reviewed as a structuring process, and methodologies to determine texture in fried potato products are discussed. It is demonstrated that the histological and microstructural heterogeneity of potato tubers have hampered clear interpretation of experimental data and a rigorous modeling of frying. Moisture uptake during post-frying is critical in the loss of crispness (limpness) of fries and in softening of potato chips. Methods to evaluate these changes and alternatives to prolong the shelf life are discussed.”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/87559120600574584?mobileUi=0&journalCode=lfri20
My opinions are based on history and data, not “childhood memories.”
There is nothing particularly incredible about positing that the Russian Empire (or whichever non-Communist polity would have replaced it) would have at very least kept pace with the Mediterranean region in per capita output, and would have had almost double the population within just the territory of the current RF absent the catastrophic disasters visited upon it by Bolsheviks and NSDAPists during 1917-1947.
It is incredible to the point of parody to believe that the USSR, which had no more than 40% of the per capita wealth of the US (going by the most favorable assessments), would have been 15 years ahead in life expectancy of the very longest-lived microstates in the world today and would have a Mars base when it never even got to the Moon, like the Americans did.
Just for this open thread I decided to make myself poutine for breakfast. Sure it’s like 11:35am after frying everything and beating old ladies for the last bag of cheese curds at the local Italian market but truly nothing is greater than eating poutine, reading about Putin, while putting in some time on unz.com
Life is great.
On a less serious note I’m gonna miss masking. Telling women to put their burkahs back on feels awesome. And if they don’t I’m within my rights to beat them to within an inch of their lives like all those youtube/twitter videos. Sure call the police, my arm is getting tired, they can take over kicking your face in for a bit. If this is what Bangladesh feels like it’s pretty cool. I can live with this.
This “absent the catastrophic disasters” is doing an awful lot of work there. The truth is, RE by the end was so rotten for so long that disasters were unavoidable. If it wasn’t Bolsheviks, it would’ve been something else at another time. The same be said about the USSR as well, but RE managed to generate millions of people whose biggest ambition in life was to burn everything down. It’s not a coincidence that disasters following the end of RE were worse than what followed the end of USSR.
Anyway, the point is that, when you talk about RE, USSR, or certain other polities like Qing China or Ottoman Empire, everything that comes after “absent catastrophic disasters” is equally silly.
Seems like something modern day US also managed to achieve.
I just listened to the Top 10 on Spotify…WTF?
Though not as common as it used to be horse fat or a mix of it and ox fat was the norm in Belgium, the Netherlands and parts of northern France.
(I know of a specialty restaurant in Toronto that initially used horse fat for its fries – supplied from Quebec where horse meat is not uncommon – but they had supply difficulties and switched to duck fat).
Karlin’s claim above that theoretical Russian Empire would have developed economically faster than (actually existing) USSR does across the 20th century, is not impossible. It’s the kind of view that revisionist Western historians might argue for, and can be supported by also the economic theories on the difficulty of the centrally planned economy model that the USSR tried to follow (for example, Austrian School of Economics criticizes this model).
His second claim that the population would then be double, of course, is incompatible and contradicting with the first claim that the economic development would have been faster in the Russian Empire.
Around the world, the faster country has developed economically in the 20th century, the faster it begins what academics call “demographic transition”, implying fall in fertility rates to replacement level. It’s known that Russian Empire was rapidly beginning to enter demographic transition from the late 19th century (which supports Karlin’s first claim, but contradicts his second one) – the USSR has completed demographic transition by the 1970s. Political instability and wars of the 20th century, have likely delayed the completion of demographic transition, ceteris paribus, not just in Russia, but also in countries like Italy and Spain.
–
The example here is China in the 20th century. As China’s was still in chaos and failure, it delayed its demographic transition until 1970s-1980s (China was something like 80 years behind Russian Empire in beginning demographic transition).
But now China is developing successful, passes through demographic transition since the 1980s, its population will rapidly stabilized. The failed and internally violent decades of postwar China had of course delayed its demographic transition by decades relative to countries like Japan, resulting in larger Chinese population ceteris paribus. On the other hand, still economically slow developing India, continues to delay its demographic transition into the 21st century. (And, in the 21st century, likely Africa will be the last one to pass through demographic transition).
These effects would have all been canceled out (and probably then some) by not missing 40% of the male cohort after 1945. It is likely the collapse to well below replacement would have occurred a decade earlier than the early 90s (as in the Med), but by the same token, it would not have been as deep as what happened then.
https://www.natureindex.com/supplements/nature-index-2020-science-cities/index
So you are claiming this, because there would not be a war with Nazi Germany?
But Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, was not necessarily ideological motivated – or having a directly opposed ideology to National Socialism, was not a necessary condition for Hitler to invade you. Afterall he had even attacked and planned to invade England before, which was one of the countries he most admired. I don’t think you can assume he wouldn’t have invaded a theoretical Russian Empire.
If you look at completed fertility rates, there isn’t that much “collapse” in fertility in the 1990s (there was a change in timing and delay of births though). Actual fertility seemed to be fall to around, 1,6 (where it has been likely around the same since then).
So we seeing something around fall from around 1,8-1,9 at the end of Soviet epoch to probably around 1,6 in the post-Soviet era.
https://i.imgur.com/KlHarzp.jpg
Does the idea of two guys f***ing each other in the ass whet your appetite?
Burger King Gets ROASTED Online for WOKE Ad Campaign Featuring Ronald McDonald and BK Making Out
https://www.bitchute.com/video/reYwoCIrDzY/
If I imagine Colonel Sanders getting boofed in the ass, will I suddenly want to eat KFC?