@Renata S wrote:
1) I'm intrigued by it too, since seeing the series. I'm in Montreal and there's a Hasidic community here that lives in an area of town that's now gone trendoid. So a bit of a weird cultural collision is happening there. Although I have met a Hasic grandmother who's an absolute hoot, I don't know that much about the community. When you encounter anyone from that community, they don't really interact. I once rescued some little kid's ball when it rolled into the middle of the street because I had a feeling he'd run after it. He was about 3, maybe. and I just told him to stay where he was while I ran to get it in the middle of the street. His mom, who saw the whole thing, didn't say one word to me.
2) Melissa, I can't tell you how I know that, but when I started to think about how random the stuff I'm getting is, the hybrid unintelligence theory completely took hold of my brain. Those referrals are way too insane to be the result of any sort of normal unassisted human unintelligence.
I spent last weekend in Montreal! I hadn't been there before. Spent a lot of time in Plateau Mont Royal (and climbed all the stairs to the Chalet at the top of the hill), but definitely went through Mile End and felt the Jewish influences there... and the hipster ones. Ate at Beautys, which was great. I have similar experiences to your young boy/ball/silent mom scenario all the time in Brooklyn. A lot of it is the insular nature of a community which is taught that everyone else is "other", that they themselves are "other", and it's a bit of an oil and water situation where the 2 entities can be in the same space, but never mix. Back to Montreal for a moment: I absolutely adored the Citeé Mémoire I got to see projected at the Palais de Justice. I really love how the city embraces public art. To that end, the El Mac piece painted on a bldg on rue de Bellechase called La Mère Créatrice is stunning. I made a special excursion to see it because I adore his work. I was lucky enough to eat at Robin Square (they introduced me to pouding choômeur which I'd never tried before and put a sparkler in it for my birthday, which was adorable), Au Pied de Cochon, and Au Festin de Babette which were all wonderful and made me truly appreciate Montreal as a food city.
My husband is working on some AI stuff and it's fascinating. Every time I think I'm comfortable with technology he tells me some new thing he's doing and I get completely freaked out all over again!
