English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2020-08-15

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Robusto

00:31

More pop musicians ripping off the classics:

Ding Dong! the Witch Is Dead

No, not the Wizard of Oz—ok, that too—but the recorder part in the middle is a Praetorius dance, verbatim.

RegDwigнt

01:04

The Viola. Why Does Everyone Hate It?

@Robusto another lovely video by Mary, start to finish. Check it out.

@Xanne Russia is located on the Baltic Sea, mate. Friggin St Petersburg is on the Baltics. And it's like five hours by train from the Kremlin.

Meanwhile, Belarus doesn't even border Kaliningrad.

Poland and Lithuania do. And those are both in the EU.

Where do you guys even get your geography lessons. rolls eyes very very hard

Xanne

01:34

@RegDwigнt Well, maps. Belarus looks like the best route to Kaliningrad, the only ice-free port (except for Murmansk, which is on the Berents Sea, I think. St. Petersburg needs ice breakers. And then there’s that passage past Tallin. Of course there’s always Vladivostok, but gosh, that’s a long way, and on the other side of those mountains, what do you call them, the Urals? Something like that. But then, if you’ve got Estonia, and Latvia, and Lithuania, you can always get to Kaliningrad.

I think the USSR subs operated from both Murmansk and Kaliningrad during the cold war. And maybe also Vladivostok.

Robusto

01:59

JONI MITCHELL - AMELIA

Yes.

1 hour later…

CowperKettle

03:20

@Robusto Did you read it and thus recommend it to me for reading?

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twitter.com/WalterW59383432/status/1293958134088835079

A video record of how a man was killed by Belarusian police.

He just stood in the street about 10 m from them, and they shot him. And when a car approached to pick him up, they swarmed around him, shooting at the car to get it away. Later the police announced that he was hurling stones at them.

I have a couple of acquaintances in Yekaterinburg who still support Lukashenko, but they cannot advance any arguments. They are just intelligent enough to make scowling comments to me. I've been spending too much time indoors to forget that a vast percentage of people don't have understanding and do not react to any arguments.

Newspaper report from hospitals on people who have been just released from Lukashenko's prisons, half-beaten to death

I admire the heroes of Ukrainian Maidan who after a similar display of atrocity just camped in the square and did not leave, and protected themselves by forming "battle hundreds" and repealing police attacks.

When Putin destroyed the presidential election system in Russia in 2018, on the day of the anniversary of the Heavenly Hundred I woke up very early and wrote a poem about Heroes of Ukraine.

4 hours later…

M.A.R.

07:50

@CowperKettle she's familiar, who's she?

Captain Bohemian

08:35

so hungry

Captain Bohemian

08:51

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2 hours later…

SmokeDetector

10:31

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive title detected (52): (potentially offensive title -- see MS for details) by Joseph on english.SE

CowperKettle

11:18

@M.A.R. She's Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, president-elect of Belarus

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle The opposing candidate in the recent election?

CowperKettle

@M.A.R. Yes. She had to flee to a Baltic state a couple days ago

Her husband was originally a candidate but was too popular, so the regime jailed him and is holding him as hostage.

She enrolled in the election instead of her husband despite being only a housewife

I'm amazed that Lukashenko allowed her to register as a candidate.

Putin would never allow that. A rash move.

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle Lol OK, not the King-of-Angmar-trashtalking type

CowperKettle

11:38

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Totalitarian criminals are the same everywhere.

Robusto

12:05

@CowperKettle My wife read it and found it interesting.

I put it on my list.

CowperKettle

12:42

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CowperKettle

13:25

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12 km run, +13°C

Cerberus

@CowperKettle Yeah, that's what I was afraid of...

CowperKettle

@Cerberus Funny how he was accusing Putin just a week ago and made an about-turn in a moment, haha

Cerberus

@CowperKettle To be fair, he is under pressure from two sides.

He would prefer to remain completely independent of either side.

But, if he has to choose between losing all power to one side, and losing some power to the other, he will choose the latter (by accepting Russian military assistance).

CowperKettle

He is now like Kurt Schuschnigg in 1938

Cerberus

Austria?

CowperKettle

13:27

Yes

Cerberus

I don't remember.

CowperKettle

Kurt Schuschnigg

Kurt Alois Josef Johann Schuschnigg (German: [ˈʃʊʃnɪk]; 14 December 1897 – 18 November 1977) was an Austrian Fatherland Front politician who was the Chancellor of the Federal State of Austria from the 1934 assassination of his predecessor Engelbert Dollfuss until the 1938 Anschluss with Nazi Germany. Although Schuschnigg accepted that Austria was a "German state" and that Austrians were Germans, he was strongly opposed to Adolf Hitler's goal to absorb Austria into the Third Reich and wished for it to remain independent.When Schuschnigg's efforts to keep Austria independent had failed, he resigned...

Cerberus

But I thought there was popular support for the Anschluß?

CowperKettle

The guy who was saying "Red White Red, until we're dead" and a month later sold his country. Ah, I mixed it up a little.

Cerberus

Sold, even?

CowperKettle

13:29

Yes, there was popular support, unlike in Belarus

@Cerberus Betrayed

He allowed Nazi persons to take major positions in his government, which led to the anschluss

Cerberus

@CowperKettle Hmm but it seems he was forced into this?

The Wikipaedia article didn't portray him has a betrayer.

CowperKettle

Yes, he was forced.

But he had led his country to this by setting up an authoritarian regime years before that.

At a meeting with Hitler he was intimidated into making some concessions.

RegDwigнt

@Cerberus why?

How is this not a sensible move that is to be expected and indeed demanded.

@Cerberus yes and that's the biggest gift he made to the Belorussian people.

Remember how just a couple months ago they had everything prepared for Belorus and Russia to merge. Even scheduled the date for the TV announcement.

Then at the very last moment Lukashenko was like, yeah actually no.

And Putin looked like a complete idiot and had to use the TV announcement to talk about some nonsense instead.

@CowperKettle idiot Facebook collages are the same everywhere.

I can do that, too.

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Quick, what totalitarian criminal regime is this.

CowperKettle

13:45

I'm not interested in your opinion. You are entitled to it. I've heard it. I know it.

RegDwigнt

That's not an opinion. That's a question.

What happened to democracy and pluralism.

Why should anyone be interested in your opinion if you flat out say that you're not interested in theirs. That's not how you invoke change.

You bemoan suppression of opposition as fascist, while yourself suppressing opposition. That's not even the other side of the same coin. It's the same side of the same coin.

3 hours later…

M.A.R.

16:56

@Reg @Cowp I would have really enjoyed the intense conversations if it wasn't painfully obvious that you're not enjoying them.

M.A.R.

17:20

@RegDwigнt Are those three pianos or sleighs or

@tchrist Me me me

Book 1, now.

Not that I wasn't coaxed into it, but no regrets

in Tavern on the Meta on Meta Stack Exchange Chat, 6 hours ago, by M.A.R.

@ter @Mag @Rubik loving The Fifth Season so far. There are impeccable analogies to RL so you think, but you don't think you're being fed an opinion. I think the strongest point so far has been that, in a nutshell, the characters aren't the author's puppets to serve some higher purpose in a plot, they're people, they don't have any forced feelings and they don't do anything forced for the sake of the plot. They're complex in their tragedy and their compassion.

in Tavern on the Meta on Meta Stack Exchange Chat, 6 hours ago, by M.A.R.

And although the story's probably revolving around a single person, there's no single hero or single villain much. The boundaries of the labels seem arbitrary and fade away, and you're just left with the unjustness, the madness, the cruelty that was and is, perpetuated by people probably long dead or simply hiding, and they're irrelevant

If you make me think about it more I may come up with more psychobabble

tchrist

Somebody hogtied you with a coax cable and dragged you into a gaping chasm? Does the coax work for internet?

M.A.R.

Oh, "hogtied". Intuitive way of calling it

Although Googling it gave me PornHub. Thanks Google

tchrist

That's because Google knows your history.

M.A.R.

Hah, good luck with that. I have no such history.

Really I don't

tchrist

I must have some sort of kindergarten mode enabled. I never get those scary things.

M.A.R.

17:29

I change it to "hogtie" and they all disappear

There are two discernible patterns to my searches: Random movie names, and random journal articles that are often way above my paygrade.

tchrist

> hog-age ← hog
hog-ape ← hog
hog-apple ← hog
† hog-babe ← hog
ˈhog-backed [adj.]
† hog-badger ← hog
hog-bed ← hog
hog-beetle ← hog
× hog-boat → hag-boat
× hog-brace → hog-frame
hog-bull ← hog
› hog-butcher, -farm, -fat, -grunt, -hunt, -market, -merchant, -spear, -yard, hog rump, shoulder ← hog
› hog-buttocked, -faced, -necked ← hog
hog-caterpillar ← hog
ˈhog-chain [n.]
hog-choke ← hog
hog-cholera ← hog
† hog-cistern ← hog
hog-colt ← hog
hog-constable ← hog
† ˈhog-cote [n.]
ˈhog-deer [n.]
› hog-driver, -feeder, -hunter, hog-farming, -feeding, -hunting, -raising, -serving, -shearing ← hog

You'd be amazed at how many hog-whatevers there are.

But that's the only verb among them, apart from hog itself.

98 hog- terms, 74 pig- terms, 89 cat- terms, 151 dog- terms, 57 bird- terms, 33 goat- terms.

M.A.R.

It doesn't feel that pleasant to pronounce, especially in a compound

I dunno, something about the hard gee with an aitch?

tchrist

You aren't actually trying to say each bit are you?

The "hard g" doesn't have an audible release before the aspirated "t".

That's too tough to say.

M.A.R.

Yeah, but I guess it's no "cellar door"

tchrist

Thing about how you say ghost town or prairie dog town.

Glen Campbell.

Cupboards full of cups. Or maybe full of cubs.

"big time"

"dog-toothed violet"

"lag time"

stalactites and stalagmites and tickbane.

Bells on bobtails ring,

art books

M.A.R.

17:45

I know the name for this in Arabic, but not in English or Persian

Except a general "phonological process"? shrug

tchrist

not?

If a consonant cluster is too hard to say, people just don't bother.

M.A.R.

I've had four hours of sleep last night and I'm devouring words at the

tchrist

Gesamtkunstwerk

Four hours of sleep leaves you half cocked and half baked and half dazed all the live long day.

Half witted if you're lucky.

Half winded if you aren't.

Hopefully not half mooned.

M.A.R.

Thank you, that was flattering

Mitch

@M.A.R. 'cellar door' is no cellar door.

tchrist

18:04

@Mitch Thus spake Celeborn, né Teleporno.

RegDwigнt

@M.A.R. funny you should pick that picture out of all the pictures. You know what those people are protesting? You know what horrible fascist oppression state that is?

That's just a couple miles away from me right now.

M.A.R.

@RegDwigнt All the other pictures are 403 in Iran

RegDwigнt

And those people are not protesting Trump or Putin or the global warming or whatever.

They protest the restoration of their local train station.

That's in Stuttgart. The most peaceful place on Earth in the middle of nowhere, out of all the most peacefulest places in the middle of nowhere.

tchrist

For or against?

RegDwigнt

Against. After all that's what "protest" means.

M.A.R.

18:11

They want to go Amish or?

RegDwigнt

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This person lost their eyesight. To a waterthrower.

In Stuttgart of all places. Because of a train station of all things.

They were protesting peacefully, just sitting there in a meadow doing nothing.

Then after a couple days the police asked them to move because the excavators couldn't get through.

tchrist

@RegDwigнt Stuttgart's in the middle of the action, pianofortewise.

RegDwigнt

Then after a couple more days the special forces arrived and asked them more sternly.

Point being. Point being!

tchrist

Special?

RegDwigнt

When a fucking truck pulls up, you can see that truck. It's not a tiny thing.

tchrist

18:14

It took seals in berets to quell them?

Why are they wearing coats?

Or pants for that matter.

RegDwigнt

If you're still three feet away from it when it starts spewing water at a million Pascal, that's your own fault. You could have been a hundred feet away by then. A thousand. You could be at home.

tchrist

Home I am.

RegDwigнt

When the military police show up to kick your teeth in, they will kick your teeth in. What the fuck are you even expecting.

tchrist

Feels awfully Portlandia to me.

Never sic the army on the civilians. It's never civil.

RegDwigнt

It's not even common sense. It's basic logic. You don't even need your brain to process that kind of information. It's processed in your spine.

tchrist

18:18

Deadly forces against butterflies and grasshoppers.

RegDwigнt

Same with Belarus. Flowers are nice and all. But when an ambulance pulls up, you better make room for the ambulance. And when the doors open and instead of a doctor ten soldiers jump out armed to the teeth, why the fuck are you even still there.

tchrist

Is Belarus even still a place? I haven't checked the news in days.

RegDwigнt

You know they will beat you to death. And you know nobody will ever even find out their names let alone prosecute them. So what the fuck are you still doing there and not at home.

tchrist

Remember who the police are in European Hell.

Your protesters don't look like flower children to me.

Must water tomatoes.

RegDwigнt

It's all fun and games until it's not. And you know that. Everyone does.

Do not put yourself between a tank and wherever it is heading. You will die. And nobody will remember your name.

Those five pictures above, they are not from the same country. They are from five different countries. All Western democracies. All what Belarus can only ever aspire to be. That's the point.

I choose my words wisely. And I do not pick my pictures from Twitter.

M.A.R.

18:26

I think that the common argument against these regimes is they're not democracies, but nowhere is technically a democracy the way it was originally defined (which I THINK was just the majority rule with very little checks in place) There are rules hard set into stone and if the legitimacy of the Belarus government's actions are to be questioned, it requires a much deeper and technical discussion

RegDwigнt

The legitimacy of every government is to be questioned. Which is why we question the legitimacy of all governments all the time.

M.A.R.

The buzzword "democracy" has been popularized and sensationalized, along with the brutality of riot police, to substantially dumb down the real important things to be discussed.

RegDwigнt

Aye.

It's all black and white at this point. And the Internet is certainly not helping.

You're trying to end all the wars in the world, and you can't even make peace with your immediate neighbors.

That is doomed to fail.

M.A.R.

@RegDwigнt So what I'm saying, is there must be something Luke-Shak guy does wrong if his opponents have been missing and declared dead for years, or at least so I've heard

RegDwigнt

It's Newton's ~~Second~~ Third Law.

Nothing comes from nothing. And everything you do will be pushed back with the same force you are applying.

M.A.R.

18:30

"Apples are preferable to coconuts"?

RegDwigнt

Diplomacy is a lost art.

Alas.

M.A.R.

Well, there's been protests here for two decades now, against a revolution that's taken place four decades ago. I just want to finish my studies, then they can burn whatever they want.

I'm getting cranky and delusional. I should sleep.

TTYL

RegDwigнt

Well that's one way to look at it. Nach uns die Sintflut.

@M.A.R. the other pictures are from France, Spain, Poland and uh I forget. UK or whatever.

Those are not fascist states by any stretch of any definition.

The moment you invoke Godwin's Law, people stop listening to you.

Stop shouting "X is Hitler". It is demonstrably untrue and it does not make people listen to you.

You want to make a point, make your point. You can't make a point, read some books. You don't have a point, go walk in a park. Or paint a picture or write a symphony. Or eat some cake or whatever. Just don't shout "Hitler" on the Internet. That is literally the least viable of all your options.

Cerberus

What's your point?

RegDwigнt

I do not have one. I never do.

That's why you can never pigeonhole me.

Cerberus

18:41

You're not supposed to fit into a pigeonhole.

You'd eat the pigeons.

RegDwigнt

I only eat mice. And there's no mice in the Arctic.

Cerberus

@RegDwigнt I'm glad you admit at last.

RegDwigнt

I just live off fresh air and love.

@Cerberus what you mean at last? I started this chat twelve years ago by stating as much.

Cerberus

I'll make sure to repeat that to you.

RegDwigнt

Haha good one. You'll forget before the sunset.

Cerberus

18:44

The sun is about to set.

RegDwigнt

Thank you for understanding my point.

Cerberus

If only we still had the empire.

RegDwigнt

You still have the Queen.

Oh fuck no, you've lost even that.

You still have the King.

Long live the King.

The unelected King that you have. Unlike Lukashenko or Putin or Trump.

Cerberus

Lukashenko is very, very much elected, yes.

But it is true, the Queen was better.

tchrist

@Cerberus Fróði’s Friður or Pax Augusta?

RegDwigнt

18:49

@Cerberus I will actually star that. For I always star truth in this chat.

@Cerberus It doesn't matter if they've elected him now. Or whether they'd elect him again.

What matters is that they elected him some time ago.

Don't be like them poor women get beat by their husbands and complaining.

Like WTF. You married him.

Everything else follows. What did you expect.

Had Belarus elected you as their leader 16 years ago, you'd be the monster by now.

Every single one of us would be.

tchrist

Why? Because people need monsters?

RegDwigнt

Apparently they do. Alas.

I would not be beating Belarussian women to death right now. And so they never voted for me.

tchrist

Don't blame the victim.

RegDwigнt

I don't have to. They suffer enough repercussions as is.

Jul 29 '14 at 0:12, by RegDwigнt

Every country has the government it deserves.

You could be France. So why are you not France. That's not my fault and not France's. And I don't have to blame you for that. You can see what's come of it all by yourself.

tchrist

@RegDwigнt Why even the Catholics have an elected king.

RegDwigнt

18:57

Inorite.

Oh well.

Now give me a moment with @CowperKettle just to set things straight.

There is that famous line in American History X. Written by David McKenna and delivered by Avery Brooks.

"Has anything you've done made your life better?"

And then Ed Norton just breaks down in tears.

Now. I don't want anyone to break down and cry. Certainly not Ed Norton.

But I do wish that everyone took but a minute for themselves to think about that beautifully simple line.

What is your purpose in this world. What will be your legacy.

Will you be remembered for having changed someone's life for the better. If only even just your own.

Or will you be forgotten for copypasting shitposts anyone else could copypaste. And indeed a million nameless others have.

You could have spent the last couple years making the world a better place. Making happen tangible improvements to others' limited time on this planet.

Instead you've spent the last couple years getting off to torture porn on Twitter and paying taxes to Putin.

That's a shame, man. That's a waste.

I'll close with something I've said before, something that you waved off like an annoying mosquito. Which is fine by me. I have more pressing things to attend to than defending myself. I am making actual people's lives actually better. I am making this world a better place.

But just this one time, just out of courtesy, just for you, I shall repeat myself. Even be it in vain:

Stop talking about all the things that you can't change and start changing all the things that you actually can.

tchrist

> After claiming for weeks that Russia was plotting to overthrow him, President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus appealed to the Kremlin on Saturday for help against a wave of protests and strikes triggered by police violence after a disputed presidential election.

RegDwigнt

Quit obsessing about things and people that you hate, and start focussing on things and people that you love.

Hate is baggage. Life is too short to be pissed off all the time.

Godspeed.

tchrist

Or even most of the time

RegDwigнt

@tchrist Or even any of the time.

Point is, you can bitch about Trump on Twitter all you want. But Trump is also bitching about you on Twitter at the same time. So it's quid pro quo and no changes to the bottom line. The bottom line being, he is the fucking president and you are not.

Meanwhile your neighbor's kid could use piano lessons, or a cup of sugar or whatever. But you won't give it to them because you're too busy tweeting garbage.

tchrist

Computerized "social" media are a poisoned chalice.

That just keeps on giving. The more there is, the worse.

Don't look at those places.

RegDwigнt

19:12

Yeah well. You know what they say about money. It doesn't make your character worse, only more visible.

It's the same about the Internet really.

It shows us for what we are.

And that's not really much at all.

tchrist

By their postings shall ye know them.

Rousing the rabble in the agora.

RegDwigнt

Open up the Twitter front page right now, or the top comments under any YouTube video at all.

These are the people you are hoping for a better world for.

More to the point, these are the people deciding on your future.

The police force in Belarussia are all Belorussians. I'm not kicking Belorussian teeth in. Belorussians are.

Pole_Star

Is crony an unparliamentary language?

RegDwigнt

What is an unparliamentary language?

Pole_Star

Even I don't know

RegDwigнt

19:21

Well there you go then. Ask whoever it was to come up with the term to define the term for you.

Like, in my parliament they don't even speak English to begin with.

Pole_Star

basically if someone says he and his crones are stating

is it unparliamentary?

is it unoffical atleast?

RegDwigнt

I am not quite sure that makes any sense in any language that I'm aware of, but that said, I'm sure if you use it in parliament that makes it parliamentary by definition.

Pole_Star

just a minute i am putting an excerpt

RegDwigнt

If the Queen says you're my cronie, then that's pretty official I should think.

Pole_Star

Residents are requested to offer their comments against the above points. Besides, the
residents can also share their feelings that whether they think the resolution of this matter
that culminated in the said resident getting a parking space happened because of the 1 year
long "lone battle" of the said resident (as he and his cronies were stating), or was it because
of the WC's efforts in the last one month or so. WC doesn't need acknowledgement or
appreciation (although it always feels good to get one), but it definitely needs your trust and

@RegDwigнt :)

Here cronies is deregetaory or "unparliamentary".

What can we say here

RegDwigнt

19:25

You wouldn't say "he" in parliament to begin with.

Pole_Star

hehe

RegDwigнt

You would say "fair lord" or "fair sir" or some such nonsense, I forget.

Pole_Star

well other than that\

RegDwigнt

Well yeah point being, if you can get away with saying "he" you can get away with saying whatever.

Pole_Star

Is it very wrong to say this from an"official "platform

RegDwigнt

19:27

But maybe even more to the point: do they discuss parking tickets in the parliament?

Pole_Star

Noooo

Lets replace the word unparliamentary by dignified

is it a dignifies and nuetral response

RegDwigнt

Yes, I understand the point now. Cronie is certainly off, yes. But so are many other things about the text.

So I'm not quite sure which of those you should be worried about the most.

Pole_Star

like?

RegDwigнt

Well, quite frankly even "besides" strikes me as a no-no.

Pole_Star

ok

RegDwigнt

19:30

Why are you ghostwriting for the parliament at all. Surely those guys get enough money to be writing their own speeches.

Like, what else do they even have to do.

Pole_Star

they do nothing i guess

RegDwigнt

Yeah. Amen to that.

Pole_Star

But really is this very off the pointis

Can this be interpreted as a personal attack

?

Vindictive post and everything

RegDwigнt

Well yes. It can and should and will be interpreted as a personal attack because that's what it is.

Which is why it's hard to sugarcoat it.

Sugarcoating an offensive idea doesn't make it less offensive because it's the idea that's offensive and not the coating.

That said, yeah, do away with the cronies. And maybe with the he while you're at it.

You can then keep the besides I should think.

It's actually a brilliant fix to all the world's politics, come to think of it: Make it a rule that every speech at all be delivered by the person that wrote it.

Fixes so many things in an instant.

Pole_Star

19:49

ok

So its interpreted correctly....

This has already been sent

Mitch

20:46

@RegDwigнt That's not really the case. In an autocracy, the one ruler (and his (it's always a dude) minsters and enforcers) is not supported by the great majority of the people. In a democracy (voting for the ruler) it can be close to half the people howdo not support the ruler.

2

So saying a country deserves its government just doesn't work.

Of course I'm just pissed. It's a clever comment to say about some other country eg those idiot Italians -voting- for an obvious nitwit like Berlusconi. nI'm trying to think of another example.

Cerberus

21:03

@Mitch Hmm no other example springs to mind.

RegDwigнt

21:20

@Mitch it is a quote and it is not mine. And it has been around for three hundred years and for three hundred years people have been saying it's not true with the one hand while voting for Berlusconi with the other.

That said, you're making the same mistake everyone else is making. The quote is not about support. It is not about support at all.

You don't need to support the death penalty to deserve death penalty.

Or I dunno. Wasabi ice-cream.

@Mitch yeah that. There you go.

Except the guy actually wasn't saying that about some other idiot country. The guy was saying it about his own idiot country.

You and I have said much worse things about his country, I should add.

And he never said anything about your idiot country. And my idiot country they just fucking invaded. So there's that I guess.

Also, citation needed for "in an autocracy, the majority does not support the leader". Just look at the Netherlands or the UK, for starters.

The one person they actually broadly support is the autocrat they never voted for. It's all the people that they have voted for that they subsequently hate.

And on the subject of Italy, they've had like what, 76 goverments in the last 70 years? You my dude had like two in the same period. And both of them kinda sucked tbh.

Cerberus

21:44

Not all of this makes sense.

A king is not an autocrat.

RegDwigнt

Mitch still doesn't even have the communist welfare state after all this time, like. And even his mafia is just a poor copy of the original.

Cerberus

And they do not hate the people they have voted for.

RegDwigнt

Would you rather have Beatrix back or Balkenende.

Autocracy is a system of government in which supreme political power to direct all the activities of the state is concentrated in the hands of one person, whose decisions are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regularized mechanisms of popular control (except perhaps for the implicit threat of coup d'etat or mass insurrection).In earlier times, the term autocrat was coined as a favorable feature of the ruler, having some connection to the concept of "lack of conflicts of interests" as well as an indication of grandeur and power. The Russian Emperor was styled "Autocrat of all the...

Please tell me how that definition does not apply to a king, word for word.

And if it doesn't apply to a king then who the fuck does it even apply to at all.

Certainly not Lukashenko. He was actually elected.

Cerberus

@RegDwigнt I would not insult you by stating the obvious.

RegDwigнt

As to hating the people you vote for, that's kind of the whole game. They promise you all kinds of things, so you vote for them, and then they keep none of their promises, so you hate them. And vote for someone else instead who promises you all kinds of things. Rinse, repeat.

Why else would you ever, ever vote for anyone else than the guy you voted for the last time around.

@Cerberus oh but please by all means do.

112

Q: Thank you, Geoff

It seems that after 11 years, Geoff Dalgas - "Valued Associate #00003" - has decided to hang up his hat as a developer at Stack Exchange. That deserves... Some recognition and gratitude! Let's talk about Geoff, baby Eleven years. Eleven (11) years! Twelve, if you count all the work he was doing w...

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Wait. Shog9 actually still exists?

I thought they kicked the poor guy in the balls or something.

I read it on Twitter so it must be true.

Cerberus

21:56

They did.

But he refused to be mad, apparently.

RegDwigнt

I don't understand anything about anything anymore.

Also, why is your name not says "reinstate Monica" anymore.

Cerberus

It is.

Just not in this chat.

RegDwigнt

That's unfortunate.

It should be reversed.

It should say so in the chat and nowhere else.

Cerberus

It is everywhere on the site.

RegDwigнt

Yeah that sucks.

Cerberus

21:58

And in the moderator room.

Why?

RegDwigнt

@Cerberus It's a very bad first impression for everyone who doesn't even know who the hell Monica is. Which is approximately 100% of the world's population.

When you come to a site you don't even know just to ask a simple question, the last thing you want is to get immediately entangled in its internal politics.

I've been noticing that a lot lately.

Someone will ask a question, and the very first answer or comment that they get will say "vote Merkel" or whatever. No good.

And like, the comments and answers themselves are actually helpful. But that's the worst bit.

You get a perfectly fine reply, but then they'll garner it with propaganda.

Leaves a bad taste in your mouth if nothing else.

It's not very welcoming. It should be "here's our excellent answer, you be on your way". And not "here's our excellent answer and by the way our fucking site is disintegrating right now plz halp".

Cerberus

22:34

That means it is working.

3

It is different from Merkel, because we're not on her site.

Cerberus

22:50

0

Q: Por que "centro-oeste" e não "centro-leste"?

No Brasil "centro-oeste" se refere à região central do país, que coincide um pouco com "Mid-West" nos EUA, embora nos EUA não seja exatamente a região central, mas mais centro-norte. Mas por que "oeste" e não "leste"? Qual a referência para se usar "oeste"? O Atlântico? Europa? É um tipo de orie...

significado origem

@tchrist Am I right to be confused by this question?

Is it asking why east is the direction whence the sun rises?

1 hour later…

tchrist

23:55

@Cerberus No, he's asking why it's called west central not east central, a bit like asking why the American Midwest isn't the American Mideast.

So why is the center of the country called the west-central area, what's west about it.

CowperKettle

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tchrist

@CowperKettle ❃

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