will you be the boot camp sergeant whipping the raw recruits into shape? :D

Yes.

No.

It depends.

No.

lol

It's really up to Reg. He's senior.

ah

But he's also very not a micromanaging get-in-your-face kind of person.

Which is good, in that he respects your space, and bad if you're not good at asking when you need something.

true

@MattЭллен Ah! I should've realized you'd be good at calling cadence, what with all your limerick experience.

I wish I had a better idea of who was going to win.

thank you :D

writer's chat today?

@KitFox we'll know when we know. I'm not worried

see you

Writer's Chat!

@fahdijbeli Hi.

Hello.

@fahdijbeli You have a curious name.

Hi.

Hello.

Hi.

Hi.

When are you going to be our boss?

I chose not to run, because they wouldn't accept me as three candidates.

(As I said in the other room.)

I can tell you what to do from now on, if you like

Yay!

I am your loyal servant.

lol

I have an idea who will win.

What?

What what?

I don't know what you're talking about.

Wot wot!

Nor do I

OK good.

What value of X should we use for “I for one welcome our new X overlords”?

anyone here who speaks Portuguese yet? Cerb maybe?

@tchrist Evil? Meta? Foxy?

@tchrist moderator?

or perhaps, moderating.

@KitFox Your first selection was the right one, for the weeſils are gaining on us.

You can pray them away though.

Shouldn't it be the weevil overlords then?

@KitFox Through the miracles of modern orthography, it would indeed. Unless the damned weasels win; then we’ll be up the crick without a skunk to piss on.

Sooo.

Did I really just say skunk not stump? I guess in politics, they’re equivalent.

@tchrist I was wondering what kind of urinary traditions you had that were foreign to me.

@tchrist Shall I ftfy?

@KitFox No, it was intenſional.

I see.

De-liberating, even.

I have a request.

Can someone fast-forward time a bit?

@Cerberus You can: you just have to move very quickly to do so.

That, or take a nap.

A nap sounds like a great idea.

@tchrist That strikes me as curiously illiberal.

@Cerberus I think by "boss" you mean "servant"?

@Robusto Shh one must let them think they are our bosses.

@Cerberus I think that's the wrong approach. Give 'em an inch and they take over.

No chance.

We own them.

Just put the tip in. Just an inch.

I'm working at home with my office door open so I can get a breeze. There is a half-screen blocking the bottom 20% of the door. The cats consider it a challenge. They are testing my perimeter.

What's the screen for?

To block the cats?

@Cerberus Skeeters.

@Cerberus Yes. It usually works. But today they are restless.

If I turn around and clap my hands they run and jump back out. But they keep coming back. It's like a scene from Aliens.

Probing, testing, learning . . . predators, the lot of 'em.

@tchrist Cats are mosquitos?

You need a perimeter alarm

@Robusto But they cannot breach the barrier or overcome it?

@MattGutting With lasers!

@Cerberus Done. You shouldn't feel anything at all. But you may notice that you don't remember the last 5 minutes.

@Cerberus They can easily jump over it. It is really only a psychological barrier. So far it's worked pretty well. Until today.

@MattGutting Is that the elven tongue, by the way?

@Cerberus s/can/have /

@Mitch Wow!! It's even ten minutes later now, it worked!

@Cerberus No, it’s an English transcription.

@tchrist Not your weird Linux notation again!

@Cerberus Oops. Sorry. I on;y meant 5 but I overshot it.

Oh.

@Cerberus You and your ancient religion.

@Mitch That's what she said.

@Cerberus I am a Linux predator. That’s Ken’s notation.

@Mitch What religion?

@tchrist Predator?

Antedater.

@Cerberus Jedi *nix

@tchrist I was wondering what one could do by dropping a d right into the middle of anteater.

@Cerberus Moreover, it’s transcribed as though it were Quenya instead of Sindarin, with the tehta placed atop the tengwa to mean the vowel follows the consonant rather than preceding it, because Q prefers open syllables, and if you do it the other way you need more vowel carriers.

@tchrist I hate it when people do that.

Yes It's just my name... I like Quenya over Sindarin

How many vowels does your standard vowel carrier handle?

I suppose I'd like Finnish over Welsh too; never tried it

A vowel carrier usually takes one, sometimes two vowels - depends on how it's adapted (e.g. for English which has a lot of double vowel combinations)

@Robusto Well, remember there are both short carriers and long carriers.

And no; cats go crazy enough with laser pointers.

@tchrist Are the long ones metric?

@Robusto depends on how long they are :-P

@Robusto No: they’re tailed, so ȷ instead of ı, the way medievals would write Henry VIIJ.

Or would have, were they to do so in Latin.

we've gone from the mediaeval to the javascript eval

@MattЭллен "Eval is evil": Douglas Crockford.

indeed :D

the mediaeval period wasn't much good either!

That’s what happens when you use Sindarin style on English.

why do so few people read the tengwar it is so simple

The double-bowed thorn means the.

And yes, romen and ore are used distinctively there. I’m not sure I agree, but so it goes.

@tchrist Well, that doesn't look much worse than actual Sindarin (I'm thinking of the door inscription in The Fellowship of the Ring, which I can't find in a five-second search).

Too bad he didn't draw that on parchment...

@Cerberus Actually, he did that and more with the fascimile leaves of the Book of Mazarbul!

He not only wrote it on parchment, he burnt it. That leaf is in the Kirth, of course.

@Robusto you speak a bunch of different languages, don't you?

how about Portugese?

@Cerb If you get a decent version of the book these days, those are included as plates.

@Jez Only a few, and none of the Romance languages.

I don't understand the Asking-Day badges. At all.

@tchrist I have an older version. No plates; nothing but the door inscription.

They didn’t put the plates in due to cost; he was not pleased.

Now that cost matters less, they tend to do so.

I have one of the Dead Sea scrolls. it's a little faded.

@Mitch I hear furniture polish really helps

Not a problem now, eh?

@RegDwigнt No, nobody complains about downvotes.

Oh. I shall be the first!

@RegDwigнt If that's his only remaining worry, I envy him his carefree life.

@MattGutting I thought there was one of those hidden messages written in lemon juice. So I held it over a light bulb. Nothing came out except for some brown markings that look like the top of a light bulb.

I shall also demand the Complainor badge for that.

I complain about downvotes and upvotes. I'm just a complainer.

@Mitch :-P

The Book of Mazarbul

@Robusto I envy how well you can express yourself in complain English.

@RegDwigнt It's my native tongue.

Querulist!

@Robusto not even French?

I only have a native liver.

In some situations it's better, not in others.

> Every morning when I get up I brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue. — Oscar Levant

Until that one morning he gets up drunk and does it the other way round.

TIL that when you donate part of your liver, what's left grows to fill up the remaining space.

@Jez I can read French, roughly, and communicate well enough to pass the "I'm really trying so can we please speak English" test.

@Mitch duh

TIL that if you eat a lot, the liver has a lot more space to fill.

@Robusto ah right, probably about my level

@tchrist Well, then, where are the people farming out their liver?

@Robusto hahaha good luck with that test in France.