« first day (4517 days earlier)      last day (391 days later) » 

12:02 AM
I used to think that B2 deficiency was as rare as hen's teeth.
And maybe it is. Maybe the range is arbitrarily set. Who knows.
> Subjects in the riboflavin group had a statistically significant lower number of average days to recovery of 9.92 days (CI ± 2.8) compared to placebo of 22.2 days (CI ± 11.5) (P < 0.05).
Come on. Taking vitamin B2 halves the time to recovery after concussion? O_o journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20597002231153707
Of course, the dosage is elephantine, 400 mg, enough to be toxic upon activation by sun's rays, for instance.
The Clacton Spear, or Clacton Spear Point, is the tip of a wooden spear discovered in Clacton-on-Sea in 1911. It is 400,000 years old and the oldest known worked wooden implement. == Description == It is made of yew wood, shaped into a point, and when found was 387 mm long, 39 mm diameter and straight, but drying out during the first decades of storage shrank it to 367 mm by 37 mm, and warped it slightly into a curve. Treatment by wax impregnation in 1952 apparently stabilized it. At some time before this, the last 32 mm of the tip had broken off and had been re-attached by conservators. This...
The Schöningen spears are a set of ten wooden weapons from the Palaeolithic Age that were excavated between 1994 and 1999 from the 'Spear Horizon' in the open-cast lignite mine in Schöningen, Helmstedt district, Germany. The spears are the oldest hunting weapons discovered and were found together with animal bones and stone and bone tools, being used by the oldest known group of hunters, providing never before uncovered proof, that early human ancestors were much closer to modern humans in both complex social structure and technical ability then thought before. The excavations took place under...
 
12:22 AM
I just got this comment French SE: Bizarre... la langue change en permanence to which I replied: C'est un signe de bonne santé, elle est encore vivante ! :-)
 
:)
I should look for some Chrome addon that will automatically translate bits of webpages that are not either Russian or English.
That would be handy.
Not just translate. Maybe just highlight, and provide a translation upon mouse cursor hover.
Until bookprinting arrived, every town and city used to differ wildly in their language.
Even in the 19th century, in Russia there were numerous localisms.
Nowadays, they are rare.
For instance, in the Urals people say окараться for ошибиться (to make a mistake)
But only rarely.
A woman asked me for directions using the word блукать (to wander around), and I instantly knew she was either from the Krasnodar region, or from Ukraine.
This verb is never used here.
> Overlaid: Percentage of 12th-graders who speak truth during polls (curve goes sharply up)
"Your soul is rich, they say, so don't repeat
Time-polished words and rhymes in noted weed;
And yet the gleaming quote may prove to be
That core that makes all poems shine indeed."
(Anna Akhmatova)
> "Не повторяй — душа твоя богата —
Того, что было сказано когда-то,
Но, может быть, поэзия сама —
Одна великолепная цитата."
 
1:27 AM
> Computer scientist Stephen Wolfram says "the world's going to be run by AIs before very long" and that might not be a bad thing. An exlusive Meteor interview. thisismeteor.com/stephen-wolfram-ai
 
1:40 AM
> Poor lay Zanglay
Ung joor vare meedee ger preelotobüs poor la port Changparay. Eel aytay congplay, praysk. Jer mongtay kang maym ay lar jer vee ung ohm ahvayk ung long coo ay ung chahrpo hangtooray dünn saughrt der feessel trayssay. Sir mirssyer sir mee ang caughlayr contrer ung ingdeeveedüh kee lühee marshay sühr lay peehay, pühee eei arlah sarsswar.
Ung per plüh tarh jer ler rervee dervang lahr Garsinglahzahr ang congparhrgnee d’ung dangdee kee lühee congsayhiay der fare rermongtay d’ung crang ler bootong der song pahrdessüh.
 
 
2 hours later…
4:04 AM
@jlliagre Google Translate failed on this
 
4:15 AM
@CowperKettle Haha.
You just say its literal spellings aloud and suddenly you hear what it's saying.
Like Eel aytay = Il était, Ung jour = Un jour, etc. meedee = midi, plüh tarh = later. :)
 
4:33 AM
@tchrist Haha, I took a glance and thought it was Dutch or something like that. But I see what you mean now.
 
> Sol erat in regione zenithi et calor atmospheri magnissima. Senatus populusque parisiensis sudebant. Autobi passebant completi.
Which is something of a metamorphosed Metamorphosis of:
> Region ingreditur ferventes aestibus undas,
in quibus ut solida ponit vestigia terra
summaque decurrit pedibus super aequora siccis.
parvus erat gurges, curvos sinuatus in arcus,
grata quies Scyllae: quo se referebat ab aestu
et maris et caeli, medio cum plurimus orbe
sol erat et minimas a vertice fecerat umbras.
And called it Macaroni
>
Sol erat in regione zenithi et calor atmospheri magnissima. Senatus populusque parisiensis sudebant.
Autobi passebant completi. In uno ex supradictis autobibus qui S denominationem portebat, hominem quasi junum, cum collo multi elongato et cum chapito a galono tressato vidi. Iste junior insultavit alterum hominem qui proximus erat: pietinat, inquit, pedes meos post deliberationem animae suae. Tunc sedem libram vidente, cucurrit là.
Sol duas horas in coelo habebat descendues. Sancti Lazari stationem ferrocaminorum passente devant, junum supradictum cum altero ejusdem farinae qui arbiter el
> Sol erat in regionem senithi et calor atmospheri magnissima. Senatus populusque parisiensis sudabant. Autobi passabant completi. In uno ex supradictis autobus qui S denominationem portabat, hominem quasi muscardinum cum collo enlongato et cum capillo a cordincula tressata cerclato vidi. Iste junior insultavit alterum hominem qui proximus erat: pietinat, inquit, pedes meos post deliberationem animae tuae. Tunc sedm liberam videns, cucurrit là.
Sol duas horas in coelo habebat descendutus. Sancti Lazari stationem ferroviariam passante davante, jovanottum suparadictum cum altero ejusdem farin
The last one is Umberto Eco macronizing it for Italian.
Macron?
Different guy. :)
Ecoing it in Italian, rather.
This is all more Queneau.
Well, Ovid is Ovid, but that's whom and what he was making macaronic text of.
@Cerberus will claw his eyes out.
 
I think cerb is embroiled in a battle with gpt right now.
 
Farinae are macaroni. :)
 
4:51 AM
Even the main chatroom is frozen over in Mathed due to inactivity compared to 4 new rooms related to gpt :-/
 
Just bots talking to themselves.
Pay them no heed.
 
I'm guessing it'll make its way over to CS education next...
 
5:12 AM
@tchrist I cannot read this, for I no longer have eyes.
 
5:55 AM
@tchrist Ah!
 
 
1 hour later…
7:19 AM
Wordle 644 5/6

⬜⬜🟨⬜🟨
⬜🟨⬜⬜🟨
🟨🟨⬜🟩🟩
⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
 
 
4 hours later…
10:52 AM
@CowperKettle Even with providing clues to it, ChatGPT struggles with that text.
Raymond Queneau's "Exercices de style" was mentioned in the chat. I thought that would be fun to excerpt here.
Exercises in Style (French: Exercices de style), written by Raymond Queneau, is a collection of 99 retellings of the same story, each in a different style. In each, the narrator gets on the "S" bus (now no. 84), witnesses an altercation between a man (a zazou) with a long neck and funny hat and another passenger, and then sees the same person two hours later at the Gare St-Lazare getting advice on adding a button to his overcoat. The literary variations recall the famous 33rd chapter of the 1512 rhetorical guide by Desiderius Erasmus, Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style. == Translations... ==
Poor lay Zanglay = "Pour les Anglais"
Ung joor vare meedee ger preelotobüs poor la port Changparay. = "Un jour, vers midi, j'ai pris l'autobus pour la Porte de Champerret."
Eel aytay congplay, praysk. = "Il était complet, presque".
Jer mongtay kang maym ay lar jer vee ung ohm ahvayk ung long coo ay ung chahrpo hangtooray dünn saughrt der feessel trayssay. = "Je montais quand même et là j'ai vu un homme qui avait un long coup et un chapeau entouré d'une sorte de ruban de ficelle tressée"
Sir mirssyer sir mee ang caughlayr contrer ung ingdeeveedüh kee lühee marshay sühr lay peehay, pühee eei arlah sarsswar. = "Ce monsieur se mit en colère contre un individu qui lui marchait sur les pieds, puis il alla s'asseoir."
 
11:12 AM
@Cerberus Three heads with no eyes is a tragedy indeed.
 
11:53 AM
@jlliagre Wow, but still it's impressive that it understands the task and tries to do it.
 
@jlliagre I never knew about the Erasmus inventory.
As I keep saying, the versions one can attempt with ChatGPY are -awful-, which really implies that it is -amazing- given that it can get anywhere close.
Are you aware if anybody has attempted to do the entire Exercices book via ChatGPT?
@CowperKettle Yeah exactly.
 
A fearless learner.
 
12:35 PM
> It was freezing, fresh. I got on in the wrong direction and ended up stuck in the ice with a long neck and an anguishing cart in a crack.
Funny. ChatGPT tries out surrealism.
 
MAKE WATER BLACK AGAIN!
 
> According to a survey by the Razumkov Center, 37% of Ukrainians said they had a relative or an acquaintance (either military or civilian) injured or killed since Feb. 24, 2022.
 
2:16 PM
#Worldle #428 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
⭐⭐⭐🏙️🪙
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
@CowperKettle Good luck with this one. I'm sure you'll have a LOT of trouble.
 
@jlliagre The part of that which is simply impossible for us in North America is that when we see an R in the spelling, we of course actually say it — unlike the hoity-toity posh types whose pronunciation it was mimicking. But when we do that then it isn't even French anymore. No one here would think ever imagine sir to be a homophone for ce.
We play by different rules.
 
🌎 Mar 25, 2023 🌍
🔥 71 | Avg. Guesses: 4.77
⬜⬜🟧🟩 = 4

globle-game.com
#globle
 
We would write H to transcribe what a porsher pyuke would use R to transcribe. You have to go through that swap the terminal arras for terminal haitches for us to understand it.
 
Wordle 644 4/6

⬛⬛⬛🟩⬛
⬛🟨🟨🟨⬛
🟨🟩⬛🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Daily Quordle 425
6️⃣9️⃣
7️⃣8️⃣
m-w.com/games/quordle
 
3:10 PM
Daily Octordle #425
🕐7️⃣
8️⃣4️⃣
🕛6️⃣
🕚🔟
Score: 71
 
@Robusto I would have a lot of trouble if I post this map on a Russian social network.
 
@tchrist This R, whether pronounced or not, wouldn't make a difference to French ears. The whole would still sound like French spoken with a strong English accent. As I already wrote some time ago, the American R is often not perceived as an R by us.
 
@CowperKettle How so?
 
@Robusto Because it does not include one particular peninsula
 
Oh, right.
 
3:14 PM
So it may lead to a criminal conviction.
 
I forgot that the rest of the world still considers that beleaguered country as whole, pre-2014.
Why does Russia inevitably fall under the rule of tyrants?
Daily Sequence Octordle #425
4️⃣6️⃣
9️⃣🕚
🕛🕐
⓮⓯
Score: 84
Ugly.
 
3:35 PM
@Robusto I wanna say something callous like "the weather"
@jlliagre long necks are surreal
@CowperKettle one of those surveys where your sample is guaranteed to be far from random
 
3:59 PM
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Blacklisted username, mostly punctuation marks in answer, repeating characters in answer (203): Is there a term that describes reducing a person's identity to certain characteristics?‭ by Ap'' Ap'' Ap'' Ap'' Ap'' Ap''‭ on english.SE
 
@jlliagre So like we see Jer and think about an apocopated nickname for the second member of the popular Tom and Jerry cartoon: /d͡ʒeɹ/. The so-called "spelling pronunciations" used to indicate homophonic sounds by using familiar albeit idiosyncratic spellings of those sounds are completely different in the US from what they are in the UK. So it would have to be juh or something for us to think of the French.
So like ay lar jer vee makes one think of eyes and jars and Jer(rie)s and V's for Victory, not the French. We'd need Eh lah juh view or something.
Contrer would never sound like contre for us; it would sound like contrary without the -y.
 
That der fare would be like an awesome Dare Faire for thrillseekers and adrenaline junkies.
And yes, those rhyme.
 
@tchrist I think "Ap Ap Ap ..." needs to be removed from the site.
 
So these common but supersilly spelling pronunciations are necessarily accent specific, and don't make sense to anybody else.
 
4:06 PM
Ap'' Ap'' Ap'' Ap'' Ap'' Ap'', Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap"
1
 
poof
 
You are a gentleman and a scholar.
 
And we don't make homophones of FR pour and EN poor because for us it's not poo-er but more pore.
 
@tchrist Ha
Ap'' Ap'' Ap'' Ap'' Ap'' Ap'', Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap" Ap"
1
 
Oh just kill them for a year and a day.
 
4:09 PM
The account was automatically suspended
 
Yay.
 
I was going to join chat before to say that I thought they'd be back but I didn't think that they would be back before I was able to finish typing
Wow that's confusing lol but I hope you can make sense of it
 
Seems that they've fixed the problem of a destroyed spammers only getting two-week suspensions upon their return.
 
Yeah, I think it's been that way for months
Yep
21
A: Could we have longer automatic suspensions for destroyed profiles, and better communication with these users?

Adam LearThanks for the request! Starting with the next build, users destroyed for posting spam and users deleted as "no longer welcome to participate" will be automatically suspended from 365 days.

 
@jlliagre Uhng Jewer vayer meatie Jay preeloh duhbis pewer la pored Shahm Paray.
Think "sham parade" :)
@Laurel Great!
@jlliagre Eeh lay tay cohm play preysk. Juh moantay kahn memmehlah Jay view uh gnome key uhvet ton loan goopay uhn Shah Poe awntooray deen sorta rebong duh feecel tress say.
Suh moansyewer suh mee awn caw layer koant ruh uhng eendeevee geewel kee lyewey marshay syewer lay pee yeh pweel ahlah sahsse waher.
Uhnpuh pleayou tahr juh layer ehview duhvahn lahgaher Scent Luhzahrre awn koan pan yee dung donkey Lewey cawn say yay! duh fair ruh Monday dung crayon luh boont ohng duh sew awng pahrda Sue.
Yes, it's inconsistent, but only with inconsistencies can Americans figger out what they're sposta say.
 
4:54 PM
@tchrist Funny. Duhbis is dubious, maybe too biss instead. I just realized I misread lar jer vee ung ohm ahvayk ung long coo, it's not là j'ai vu un homme qui avait un long cou but là je vis un homme avec un long cou. Scent is not ideal as the final T shouldn't be silent. dung donkey Lewey is missing the dy of dandy (d'un dandy qui lui [...])
 
@jlliagre I say the final t in scent. :)
 
Yes, that's the mistake.
 
Oo dawndee not donkey.
 
Dawndee key Lewey
 
I almost put sand for Saint but I knew you wouldn't like that either. :)
 
4:58 PM
Sane would be closer.
 
Yeah.
Lodge vee.
là je vis
Lodge veeze ah gnome.
But I don't think you liaise there. I don't know because you "never" hear preterite spoken aloud.
 
Usually no liaison
 
That's what my gut told me but it's a gut two-score years in the making so I have no idea where anything in my mind comes from now.
And that's just the French part. :)
 
Funny that the G is silent in English, French pronounce it in gnome.
 
You can say weird things we can't, like pneu.
 
5:03 PM
Marseille is famous for saying Peuneu :-)
 
They're desperate for any vowel there, epenthetically inserted or otherwise. Can't say I blame them.
 
Mbappé is tricky too.
 
Yet I laugh when the Brazilians resort to epenthesis on perfectly normal Portuguese words that have no need of it.
I work with a francophonic gentleman from Africa with an impossible onset cluster like that. We don't even try.
He's a native French speaker. Then again, so is our CTO.
 
That's hilarious.
 
5:31 PM
R.I.P. Gordon Moore. He outlived his "law" by at least a decade.
 
Moore's law is the observation that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years. Moore's law is an observation and projection of a historical trend. Rather than a law of physics, it is an empirical relationship linked to gains from experience in production. The observation is named after Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel (and former CEO of the latter), who in 1965 posited a doubling every year in the number of components per integrated circuit, and projected this rate of growth would continue for at least another decade....
 
5:50 PM
> However, a January 2023 Congressional Budget Office report estimated the capability of radar could detect such an object out to 850 kilometers (528 miles).
Any errors in this sentence?
Bing/GPT couldn't find any.
 
6:20 PM
@Cerberus I would understand better that one: However, a January 2023 Congressional Budget Office report suggests that radars could detect such an object up to 850 kilometers (528 miles) away.
 
Yeah that would be better.
Would you say there is an error in the original?
 
6:36 PM
@Cerberus I'm not qualified to assert it. I nevertheless found it hard to understand the grammar.
 
Right.
I will await additional comments from others on the quoted sentence.
 
6:52 PM
@Cerberus I don't understand "out to" meaning.
 
Yeah that one is also slightly odd, probably military parlance.
An object that is 850 km out = 850 km away from the main point of interest.
To in the sense of up to.
 
@Cerberus I think I've heard it in movies.
Or maybe a similar phrase. When they're in a helicopter and about to reach designated area.
They say something like "We're..... 5 miles...."
I don't remember the phrase but it is good.
It could be same phrase which you mentioned. I'm not sure.
 
7:15 PM
Yes, "we're still 850 km out".
 
I think so.
 
@Cerberus the capability of radar has gained sentience and is doing things on its own?
 
Better.
 
Rundown?
A run-through sentence.
Persian linguists are sensitive about these things from what I remember.
Lots of imports from French and English, sometimes even German or Russian, so if someone wanted to sound smart they ran the risk of writing sentences like this.
 
7:43 PM
@M.A.R. You meant a run-on sentence?
 
7:54 PM
@Cerberus Oh, I think the problem lies with "capability" ...
@Vikas It is another way of saying "as far as" ...
 
> a report estimated that the capability could detect such an object out to 850 km
@Robusto Yeah.
At least in my opinion it does.
 
It's amazing how one's brain fills in the cracks in so much that we aread.
If you had replaced could with to (as my brain did) I think it would be all right.
 
Even then, it would still have a problem.
Oh, no, you're right.
In the original, that would work.
Well, it would still be terrible.
But less obviously a mistake.
 
It would be awkward, but not entirely terrible.
Unless awkward is terrible for you. ;-)
 
I would say, estimate the capability [to be] at some range?
 
8:00 PM
@Cerberus I'm kidding of course. Isn't it?
 
I mean, you can use it without at, but, with out to, it looks terrible.
I estimate the capability to be 850 km: fine, though hardly elegant.
I estimate the capability 850 km: ugly, perhaps passable.
I estimate the capability out to 850 km: ??
But anyway, this sentence is different, because it isn't estimate the capability to be 850 km, but estimate the capability to detect 850 km.
It's just a mess.
I think this would be an improvement.
Or this.
Capability...could is pleonastic. Probably a result of editing the sentence, which also messed up other aspects.
 
8:22 PM
@Cerberus "... the capability of radar to detect out to 850 km ..."
 
Yeah, detect makes it different.
 
I think detect is missing an object, but I think it's fine in the intransitive form.
I would like it to detect something (aircraft, missiles, ice cream stands) ...
 
Detect would be fine without object.
The object would be implied, wouldn't it?
 
Yeah, but ... if the subject was aircraft, say, it would be better to use a determiner: "... to detect those ..."
New idea for an Irish pub name: "A Mick's Blessing"?
 
How would that sentence go?
 
8:32 PM
Oh, I just noticed the "such an object" part—again. Perhaps it's not necessary to have a determiner after all.
 
In today's news: someone decided to get into an extended argument "correcting" OP about types of chairs, so my answer now has an appendix about proper chair taxonomy: english.stackexchange.com/a/605147/470858
I should probably not have gotten into that argument. C'est la vie.
(See the comments on the question for why, exactly, this somehow became an issue.)
 
Summary: the Taiwanese decidedly want to keep the status quo, lean towards slowly moving towards (declaring?) independence.
 
Wordle 644 6/6

⬜🟩⬜⬜🟨
🟨🟩⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜
⬜🟩🟨🟨🟨
🟨🟩🟩🟩⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Daily Quordle 425
4️⃣6️⃣
7️⃣8️⃣
m-w.com/games/quordle
 
@Cerberus "the capability of radar could detect " - I read this syntactically as 'the capability could detect' which makes no sense to me... how can capabilities detect things?
 
@Mitch Exactly.
So all three of us immediately saw this problem in the text, while Chat GPT (Bing) did not.
 
8:49 PM
Daily Octordle #425
8️⃣4️⃣
7️⃣6️⃣
🕛9️⃣
🔟🕚
Score: 67
 
> The Defense Department’s actions to support Ukraine today are stimulating the capability development and organizational change needed to deter a China-Taiwan war tomorrow. In particular, the experience of supplying weapons and intelligence to a partner nation in midst of a conflict improves the U.S. military’s ability to do so for Taiwan.
 
@Cerberus It wasn't clear what the problem was at first (it's syntactically correct after all). But to me that word choice is as much of an error (a pleonastic error) as saying 'I is'.
but don't be so hard on ChatGPT. It has feelings too.
It's listening to everyting we say
As we say it
and adding up + and -
 
Maybe.
 
I love you, ChatGPT.
More than these other people.
er.. Sydney
I mean Sidney
Cripes I've ruined it now
@alphabet What else is the internet for?
If you can't do that here, where else can you?
 
9:12 PM
@Mitch We really need a good Internet Word for "hey lets stop this argument since it's pointless and counterproductive and way more heated than it needs to be."
"Girl, bye" is probably closest.
 
LVM3, an Indian rocket.
I hope they make a reusable rocket, too.
 
9:42 PM
It knows when you've been sleeping
It knows when you're awake
It knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness' sake

Oh ... ya better not shout
Ya better not cry
Better not pout
I'm tellin' you why
GPT is comin' to tooooooooowwwwn!
 
> I'll go and warm up my finger
 
10:00 PM
> At night, the surrealist poet Saint-Pol-Roux used to hang a sign on his bedroom’s door that read: “Do not disturb: poet at work.”
> Globally, subjects with narcolepsy obtained higher creative scores than the healthy subjects, for both the subjective and the objective measures, and in all forms of creative profiles. blog.oup.com/2019/06/narcolepsy-makes-you-more-creative
🧫
 
Interesting fact: Geoffrey Pullum was (at one point) a member of this soul band: m.youtube.com/watch?v=E-5QW6UEFSw
Not sure if he's in that video, but he co-founded it
 
Interesting fact: The Yongle Encyclopedia, completed in 1408, was surpassed by Wikipedia in the late 2007 by the number of topics covered. It comprised 22,937 manuscript rolls or chapters, in 11,095 volumes.
 
10:25 PM
> .. individuals with schizophrenia might have a fundamental impairment in processing when a stimulus occurs relative to another event, rather than in estimating how long it lasts. These neural and clinical dissociations demonstrate that the phenomenological sensation of a unitary and cohesive flow of time (‘time’s arrow’) can be separated into two distinct, though intertwined, components.
The brain has two systems, one for estimating the timing, the other, duration.
This should be included in the Yongle Encyclopedia.
 
10:40 PM
@CowperKettle And how about Diderot's encyclopaedia?
Or other, modern ones?
Was anyone puzzled like I was, when seeing this map?
Of course it makes sense when you think about it.
 
> Citizen of Moscow faces up to 3 years in jail for a short interview, a couple of phrases, he gave when he emerged from a subway in July 2022.
@Cerberus The names of the presidents of these countries?
 
@CowperKettle It is a map of the Philippines.
 
@Cerberus The green wins.
 
@CowperKettle It's really bad that they found his identity.
 
11:10 PM
@Cerberus The legend needed to specify what white means (Sarcasm)
 
@Cerberus Electoral map from the Philippines?
 
Not very sarcastic!
If you know the Philippines, perhaps something else might puzzle you about the map.
@jlliagre So he did.
 
@Cerberus Why are the Philippines electing the offspring of a corrupt dictator?
 
Well, yes, but that we already knew about.
 
@alphabet White as in white rhinos, which means wide, which means fat. It's a slur.
 
11:26 PM
I suppose Marcos looks a trifle benign next to Duterte.
 
Right, that is a thought.
But I meant the actual map.
Or maybe it's so obvious to you all that it never puzzled you.
 
I know the Philippines to look at the main part(s), but as far as all the tiny islands go, your guess is as good as mine.
 
Are you sure?
The thing that puzzled me is not tiny.
But, again, maybe it's so obvious to you that you don't even mention it.
 
So what is it?
 
@Robusto Can you name the very largest islands on the map?
59 mins ago, by Cerberus
user image
Or even the largest one?
 
11:41 PM
lol
I'll be damned.
I didn't even think of that.
There ain't no sech animal.
I just checked on Google Maps and there isn't really anything there.
That island doesn't exist.
Maybe it's a blow-up that got messed up somehow? But if so, of what?
 
So I see a mess of islands and a legend with names including Marcos, and right away I know it's the Philippines. But I don't stop to check for non-existent islands. It's just ... a bunch of islands in a rough general shape, with trailing limbs.
 
(Clarion-Ledger, Jackson, Mississippi, April 6, 1939)
 
The noexisting island a zoomed Manila
 
I know almost nothing about Philippines
Probably named after some king Phillip
 
11:48 PM
Look at these islands around France.
Only a few of them are real
 
@jlliagre That makes sense.
OK, if the islands are called the Philippines, why are the natives called Filipinos?
 
Because they aren't called Felipenos.
 
Oh Phhhhhooooey.
 
> The Saint Paul Globe, Minnesota, June 2, 1904
 
Felipeños even.
 
11:56 PM
> Middletown Transcript, Delaware, April 1, 1881
This is cool. Phones were only invented in 1875.
 
@CowperKettle I read an article about profanity in the 19th century. Most of it used religious profanity, like God-damned and the like, and most oaths were minced into constructions like "doggoned" and other things we would not even consider profane.. Very little involved sexual characteristics or actions.
 
> El vocablo «Filipinas» deriva del nombre del rey Felipe II de España.
Durante una expedición en 1542, el explorador español Ruy López de Villalobos bautizó las islas de Leyte y Sámar como «Felipinas» en honor al entonces Príncipe de Asturias. Finalmente, el nombre fue alterado y la denominación de «Las Islas Filipinas» pasó a referirse a todas las islas del archipiélago. El nombre oficial de Filipinas ha cambiado varias veces en el transcurso de su historia. Durante la Revolución filipina, el Congreso de Malolos proclamó el establecimiento de la «República Filipina». Con la colonización
 
In my childhood, people did not use profane words if women or children were present. Now I can hear passing-by schoolgirls swearing like drunks in the street. Not really swearing, they are talking their usual talk, and just insert these words every now and then.
 

« first day (4517 days earlier)      last day (391 days later) »