@tchrist yeah in a way that actually sums up what I started typing.

Though I started typing something else entirely.

I live in Vichy America now.

But yeah back in the day, everyone had lessons at school. If you had good grades, you got into English class. If you were shit, you got assigned German. But everyone had to learn a language.

So you ask me 30 years ago, I say of course everyone speaks at least something.

But you ask me now, and it's really the same everywhere. You come to France, everyone only speaks French. You come to Russia, everything is in Cyrillic and nobody even understands your "hello". You go to Germany, nobody even speaks German.

There are those here who consider intimate knowledge of Spanish a disqualifying factor for having a voice about...things. Things like baby-snatching.

Baby snatching is so war-crimes material.

I have to go beat my eggs.

I don't know much about the baby-snatching business, but I know for a fact you can get filthy rich off war crimes. And never get prosecuted.

Nobody even knows where Cheney is now. And has anyone even heard the name "Wolfowitz"?

Good luck with your omelett.

Go to Holland, or Sweden.

They don't just speak Hollandaise there, egg excepted.

@RegDwigнt She's the only congresscritter in the unary state above me, is where she is.

I've been. But it was decades ago. I might go check again.

Holland is ok, but has too many people and is too flat.

Yeah that much I remember too well.

No great forests.

Sweden doesn't sound enticing at all. Norway, maybe.

Iceland, I'd go.

I've heard fine things about Norway. Grew up with families who'd go back and forth. And some of mine would go back and forth from Denmark. But that's just Germans pretending to be English.

Denmark, I remember all the purdy blondes. And nothing else.

Yeah, that part. So many blond(e)s.

@tchrist Norway is basically what Russia would be if it didn't have a whole fucking hemisphere worth of nothing where all the oil money gets mysteriously lost.

Oh noes, you has summonned the Dutchesse.

If you lived in Iceland you could grow bananas.

Or maybe it was me, as there's some boring stream open in the background where people have been talking about cheese for the last 40 minutes.

If you lived in Sevilla you could grow oranges.

If you lived in Germany you could grow hops.

If you lived in Russia you could grow trolls.

If I wanted to move for good, I'd probably go Madeira or Lithuania or New Zealand. Norway or Switzerland are also good but way too expensive for no reason at all.

I don't know about Lithuania, but I bet you'd like New Zealand and probably Madeira too.

I'm on the fence about New Zealand because of the earthquake stuff.

Lithuania is just beautiful and time doesn't fly.

Brigadoon

Eversummer.

Madeira is one of those places that are the best ever for spending a vacation, but also actually livable in.

I weary of winter.

That's a good point.

Then again I'm from fucken Russia. You can't scare me with a winter.

It is about being scared.

I'm from Wisconsin. What passes for winter in Boulder is mild. But I still tire of seeing ought but death during winter's half of the year.

It's the skies. Don't look up. Look down.

Now they close school just because the temperature is -20 in old money. Crazy.

I was just searching for that quote of mine where I said that the only time we got school off in Russia was when it dropped to minus 27 centigrade.

Everything above minus 25, you'd just go.

@RegDwigнt Then you must have had a big problem between -26 and -25.

Can't find it. Finding a lot of German weather.

It's actually 30 degrees outside this summer. Still not hot tho. I'm wearing long jeans.

@Cerberus we never found out. I went to school for ten years. There was just one day at minus 27. Everything else above minus 25.

And then you go to St Petersburg and it's minus 2 but it feels like minus 200 because of the wind and the fucking moisture.

You escaped by the skin of your teeth.

It was +5 when I was in Petersburg.

It was nice.

Not at all cold.

@Cerberus Whatever that even means. I thought only German teeth had skin. Actually no, German teeth have flesh.

I don't know what it means.

@Cerberus +5 at 90% humidity is still much colder than -5 at 0%.

Perhaps.

I remember I still had to go to school when it was -21 here.

Or I think the temperature had already risen to -17 when I left the house. It was still dark, though.

I hope you learned something useful on that day.

But you've forgotten it anyway.

It was not exceptionally cold.

I remember that.

I wore extra layers.

Of cheese.

And I presume humidity was high, as it always is here.

Cheese insulates quite well!

And three layers of wooden shoes stuffed with tulips.

I briefly considered typing that.

I know.

Not briefly enough.

The brainwaves were noticeable.

At least you've got cheese and tulips. You should be lucky. Others got snow and vodka. Or sausages and nazism.

Or Bush and Trump.

@RegDwigнt You've misspelled Quisling.

I often do.

A name that will live forever in infamy. Someday soon, so shall the other.

Sounds like someone asking about a Chinese guy in Latin.

Quis est Ling.

@RegDwigнt Those are barely edible.

Yeah if I had to eat that Bush I'd choose to be gay.

It speaks Latin!

It really doesn't. Tchrist does.

Quia lingua est?

Ching ching!

Pig French.

Volante

Volaaante, o-oh. Cantaaan-te, o-o-o-oh.

@RegDwigнt Probably you'd just choose to do gay things until the Bush was consumed by its fire.

Or is that were? Who knows.

Wait a couple more years and it will all be was.

@tchrist You're probably replying to the wrong person?

Yes, because I'll be dead, so everything becomes was.

There will be one tense and one case and one number. But still seven articles for some fucking reason.

@Cerberus heh

@tchrist you'd need to show way more dedication to smoking to be done that quickly.

Or maybe just vote GOP more harder.

@RegDwigнt No, you have like fifteen of them, it’s just that most of them are dupes.

El zorro loco, la paloma blanca, el águila blanca: How "many" articles was that?

Thither go your seven.

@RegDwigнt I don't smoke; I just sizzle.

Answer: ille, illa, and illa, differently evolved.

C'est quoi, ce qu'elle a?

I think I'll be calling it a night guys. Trying to write a script for tomorrow's day of shooting but I'm kinda not fresh anymore.

Tomorrow beckons.

As the Russian proverb goes, morning is wiser than evening.

Joy cometh in the morning.

You guys!

Cheer up!

Mitch cometh in the night.

I have some really good news!

Otters are CUTE!!!

That is not news. That's an otter.

My yard is full of orioles!!!!!

sigh

We have otters in the river nearby.

They are kinda funny, they are.

They're not funny

They're seriously CUTE!!!!

You're not funny.

Last year Boulder sighted its first otter in a century. Meaning the city not the county.

The orioles are so orange. You cannot know their brilliance.

@RegDwigнt Sleep well!

Who are you shooting?

When civilizationn falls, sometime next week, who will take over?

Like explosions of tropical paradise upon the dry steppe.

It'll be the rats. They're the smart ones

I listened to some Boulder symphony concert recently and wanted to post it once I bump into you again, but that was three days ago and now I don't even remember what the piece was.

And the squirrels will be the engineers with their clever little manic hands.

And who will be the fun ones?

The OTTERS!!!

@RegDwigнt You mean symphony-symphony, not the Takács Quartet?

@Cerberus b roll for the next YouTube video. Basically random shit. Making coffee, tuning the piano, closing the violin case, fiddling around with a Rubik's cube. Shit like that. But even random shit like that needs to be remembered and written down.

@tchrist full orchestra. Good piece, too.

Sounds like fun.

Yeah fun. I don't have a camera so every shot will take forever to set up with the smartphone.

@RegDwigнt Rubik's cube is old news

You need to upgrade to

Ottercubes

@Mitch it's not a cube. I forgot the name so I just used that as a placeholder.

@RegDwigнt ffs

Tetrahedron?

That's insane.

Dodecahedron?

Snub-icosidodecahedron?

Antecameradonephon.

They're our local quartet.

there's the 4d regular 120-cell

but that's pretty hard

How do you get 4d120?

Too many faces!

let me look it up....

I mean it's obvious when you see it

One of those things.

I'll probably go with the dodecahedron, yes.

the far left mid one

Not the front one, obviously. That's actually a 2x2x2 Rubik's cube.

actually the far right mid one too

The one on the right I can't solve. I've never even messed it up.

I like the 1x1x1. so simple in its beauty

The one on the left I can solve blind.

I can't.

@Mitch yeah I wasted some of my life time on watching How To videos on YouTube for the 1x1x1.

These exist.

it's mostly the same as the 3x3x3, but I always forget the exact moves on the corners

and that messes everything up and I have to start over

Pretty much so.

The last layer you need a couple moves that are different.

The rest you can actually all solve with exactly one move.

right

said with undue confidence

Anyway. This pic is from one of my previous videos actually. You'd know if you watched them. But you didn't. Shame on you.

Like, follow, share, and subscribe.

Oh damn now this Merkel lover comes in.

You really don't want me gone tonight.

I thought everybody had left facebook after the shocking revelations about security breaches back in the spring

@RegDwigнt Aber ich bin älter als alle dieser Kategorien.

What breaches? It's a direct line to Kremlin.

@Robusto but you're just a dream.

Maybe I lied about my age for YouTube?

Sometimes I do that. I hate to be identifiable for the data Hoovers.

Busted.

You're supposed to give the right one?

I don't have a right age.

Well, January 1st 1900 works on ever fewer sites.

I used to give Unix epoch, then I got bored.