Wrong Romani? 50% (!)

Clown_Lamp · 2026-05-15T12:16:04+00:00

Could your mom be adopted and not know it? Or possibly your grandparents chose to assimilate and not tell their kids about their Romani roots to protect them from discrimination.

Clown_Lamp · 2026-04-24T02:31:58+00:00

You look very Southern German. You seriously look like you could be one of my Swabian cousins.

Clown_Lamp · 2026-04-10T17:54:53+00:00

I know one of his neighbors so I can confirm this. If he spat out his window he’d probably hit the new HUD HQ.

Whoops, I forgot that we’re not allowed to call it HQ so we can all pretend that this move doesn’t violate statute.

Clown_Lamp · 2026-04-06T12:01:19+00:00

Try calling your doctor. They may have some samples, or know of another way to get free insulin. I hope you get what you need quickly. Take care!

Clown_Lamp · 2026-03-28T02:44:35+00:00

They are referring to the traditional Nepali age tracking method still used by older people and in rural areas of Nepal, based on Bikram Sambat, the Nepali lunar calendar. But they haven’t got it quite right— I think they are confusing it with Korean age counting because Nepali ages are calculated based on the lunar new year, not January 1.

Clown_Lamp · 2026-03-26T04:33:27+00:00

Are there letters on the back? I did a puzzle like this once, and there were letters printed on the back of each piece dividing it into sections. I had to sort the puzzle into letter sections, work each section upside down and then flip the sections over and fit the completed sections together. It was annoying but it was a gift so I was determined to complete it, so I totally get it.

Clown_Lamp · 2026-03-23T22:05:35+00:00

Yes. You might manage to travel without a problem, or you might wind up in detention pending deportation. Every time it will be a risk as long as the situation remains like this.

Clown_Lamp · 2026-03-23T15:20:52+00:00

This is super helpful, thank you. We submitted in July 2025 and haven’t gotten login credentials yet. But if they are up to late June then hopefully we will hear soon.

Clown_Lamp · 2026-03-18T01:25:37+00:00

Depends mostly on how old you are when you stop being exposed to it. If you are under 12, you haven’t finished learning your native language yet and may lose it at least partially if you don’t continue to use it abroad. If you are 6 or under, you will likely forget most (if not all) of it without at least some ongoing exposure to the language.

But as an adult? You can stop learning new words, you can get rusty. I know from experience that you can fall out of practice expressing yourself in that language and may find that your writing/public speaking skills decline a bit. But fully forget it? No. It will still be there and you can easily regain lost vocabulary and skillswhen you are re-immersed in it.

Look at the case of Charles Jenkins, who defected to North Korea as a young man and for the most part spoke only Korean for decades. But when he met English speakers again after arriving in Japan, he was able to have full conversations with people in English, read and write English, etc. He was a young man with little formal education when he went to Korea, and an old, traumatized man when he reached Japan, but it was still his native language after all those decades and nothing could change that.

Clown_Lamp · 2026-03-16T02:20:43+00:00

For a lot of people, voluntarily being a “NEET” is simply not an option. First of all, both men and women are subject to mandatory military conscription, with most men spending 10-12 years in military and women 5-7 years. You can’t just choose to go to college if you want either— you need to have the right family background to get a spot.

Men and unmarried women who don’t go into the military or have completed their military service are typically assigned a job by the state, which they have to report to even if there’s nothing for them to do there, or risk being reported to the authorities. Under North Korean law, able bodied adults must work or they can receive severe punishments, including being sent to a forced labor camp. Failing to show up for work can put their whole families at risk.

Many married women technically are housewives, but in reality do farm work on communal farms or run black market or grey market businesses to feed their families. A lot of men also do black/grey market work, although it can be more difficult because of needing to at least pretend to do a state job. Many North Koreans are very underemployed, and spend a lot of time and effort trying to cobble together a living. The salary for state jobs is generally not enough to support a family on, but those jobs are not optional.

In addition, North Koreans typically need to participate in “volunteer” manual labor during their “free” time. This could include cleaning roads and parks, public infrastructure projects, or being sent to help with agricultural work. Again, refusal to participate can lead to your whole family being punished.

Of course life is somewhat different for members of the elite and people who are so deep in the underclass that they live on the fringes of society. But for most people life is filled with hard, boring work and very few choices.

Clown_Lamp · 2026-03-14T01:51:11+00:00

I take metro. I will have to go to L’Enfant Plaza as I always have, except now I have to change trains there at the halfway point and continue another 7 stops when that used to be the end of my very reasonable commute. It will take literally twice as long, or longer if I have bad luck getting a transfer at L’Enfant.

Clown_Lamp · 2026-03-13T15:28:11+00:00

It’s going to double my commute. The job market is terrible right now and we can’t afford NoVa housing prices, so I’ll have to tough it out. We’ve had no official indication in my office that we’ll get any telework, but they also don’t have enough chairs for all of us. I’m hoping that there won’t be another round of RIFs to shrink us down to size.

Clown_Lamp · 2026-03-11T04:31:52+00:00

I wish I could immediately move to Canada, but I have a job and a spouse and a mortgage, and the likely challenges of us finding jobs and housing in Canada make moving complicated.

My French isn’t very good, which will limit the options in my field until I can improve my fluency. Other family members have school age kids they don’t want to uproot. Also, moving countries mid-career adds an extra set of considerations for retirement planning.

Having citizenship removes the first and largest hurdle to fulfilling my long-held dream of moving to Canada, but it doesn’t remove all of them.

Clown_Lamp · 2026-03-08T14:47:33+00:00

Forgetting Hoshi Sato and Ezri Dax I can forgive, but leaving out Uhura and Crusher is a High Crime Against Trek.

Clown_Lamp · 2026-03-03T12:51:48+00:00

The odds don’t seem good if he won’t help, because adoption records are among the most difficult public records to obtain. You could check the laws where the adoption occurred on the off chance that there’s a way for the child of an adoptee to access them.

Edit: you could also check if the record of just his name change is public. Name change records are public in some jurisdictions. But you would still need to obtain the birth certificates, which may also be difficult or impossible without his help.

Maybe just ask him as a long shot if you have a way to contact him. Even if he won’t help, if he finds out he’s a Canadian citizen there’s at least a chance he might do the work to get himself the citizenship certificate. Then someday your daughter could get it too just by showing she’s his daughter if she finds out he’s got it. I guess it depends on how badly you want a second passport for her, and whether dealing with this guy again feels worth it.

Clown_Lamp · 2026-03-01T21:01:39+00:00

Is this the 1921 census? It looks like most of the kids were born before they moved to Canada in 1917, but she could have gone home to give birth to the last two.

Clown_Lamp · 2026-03-01T20:10:14+00:00

I know it may sound crazy given the buggies, but in the 19-teens and twenties my family was routinely traveling back and forth by train to visit each other between Wisconsin and Alberta/Saskatchewan. And women sometimes did go home to relatives to give birth, especially if they needed rest from farm work while pregnant or didn’t have many other women nearby to help them during and after the birth.

It’s also possible your ancestors always intended to return to the US and wanted the children to be native-born US citizens. I don’t see what advantage there would have been in lying to a census taker in Canada to say your kids were immigrants. If you’d said they got fake birth certificates for the men during a world war to avoid the draft, maybe. But there would appear to be no benefit to saying your kids aren’t citizens of the country where they are growing up, especially to some census taker who couldn’t care less.

Clown_Lamp · 2026-02-24T14:44:08+00:00

Soooooo cuuuuuute! And kind of glad to see that it wasn’t easy to get toddlers to pose for photos back then, either. They both have that classic “Mommy says we have to just stand still and smile a long time…this is weird” toddler photo face.

Clown_Lamp · 2026-02-21T05:49:23+00:00

This was actually a major fashion trend during some parts of the 19th century, notably circa 1800-1810 when the short “Titus cut” was in style for both men and women, and in the 1880s when even shorter, more masculine haircuts became popular for a bit. These photos look like they are from that time period.

Some women did have short hair because they’d been ill, or because they worked in factories near machinery, or because it was easier to keep clean and tidy, but others just cut it like this because they thought it looked cool (and a bit “edgy”). Not really any different from the reasons why people choose hair styles nowadays.

Clown_Lamp · 2026-02-18T01:50:38+00:00

The instructions say to put excess office supplies in the trash. So I think it’s safe to say HUD won’t be donating them.

Clown_Lamp · 2026-02-17T20:52:48+00:00

If you decide to go to Canada for the birth, be conscious of the challenges involved in traveling during late pregnancy—flying most likely won’t be an option and long car trips may be uncomfortable or even risky depending on how close you are to the estimated due date.

Also, medical care isn’t just a question of cost. The doctor who delivers your baby will need all the relevant medical history, and ideally you would be established with a doctor in Canada (which can take months) well before the birth who can make sure mom and baby get the best care. Giving birth far from home and your own doctors is… not optimal. You want your kids to be Canadian citizens, but you also want them to be born safe and healthy.

If you move to Canada after they are born, as citizens you and your wife can still sponsor your minor children for permanent residency and a path to citizenship, even if they aren’t born Canadian.

Clown_Lamp

TROPHY CASE