I got your puddles right here.

And so, once again, the US was proven to be more Russian than it was ever ready to admit.

That was shot about two miles from my house.

hahahaha

That's it. I'm going to learn Russian.

It's time.

A lot of time.

Someone should inform Mr McWhorter how frequently Russians actually do black out...

That just makes the prospect sweeter.

> I thought I wouldn’t miss the ubiquity of emoticons – especially, the ones with no eyes – but I was wrong.))))

We could invite her to this room.

No shortage of eyeless emoticons here.

XBlast time!)))

@Robusto Thanks for the suggestion.

@RegDwighт Somehow that little girl ran into the picture and stopped just at the moment I snapped the shot, making it way more expressive than the flooded playground by itself: an air of eagerness trumped by reality. It could not have been planned. I just wish I hadn't had my finger over the top left corner of the lens.

Oh. I thought you maybe you’d shot it from your car.

OK, time to start the deployment to the production site!

tries not to panic

Step 1. Delete everything on the production server.

Oh no, wait. That's not it. Damn it.

I hate those days.

Morning.

Haha.

I should really set up mercurial on the production server while I'm at it...

Except that I've had so much caffeine, I'm feeling a little, uh. Like blowing things up. What's the word for that?

Manic.

Not careless. Not irresponsible. Kind of devil-may-care, only one word.

Not really manic, although that applies.

Capricious.

Cavalier.

Cavalier is close.

Haphazard-ish.

Uh oh. Something is not right.

WTF? Apparently FF is the only thing responding to my mouse right now.

@KitFox Normal.

@KitFox yeah, which wouldn't be so bad if English were equally spreading into central/south america. but the trouble is, that area is basically 100% spanish. spanish is just dominating.

apart from Brazil, bien sur

Meh. Why worry about it?

I've got to try to remember the keyboard combinations to get my remote connection to respond.

I care about that more than I care who is speaking what languages.

Try C♯ minor, first inversion.

Gah! Damn it!

I just lost the production server.

Uhoh.

laughs

This is just so typically abnormal.

Is it just you alone?

Yeah.

BRB.

@tchrist No. It was a stupid place to have a lens on a smart phone.

@Jez Not threatened. It might seem lame to point this out but English is too entrenched as the primary legal, governmental, business, and dominant cultural language. Even if the homef-first-Spanish speakers become a large majority (25%). English will still be the language of 'getting ahead' for a long while.

On the other hand I would welcome the orthographic regularity.

@Mitch still, shouldn't English speakers be a bit more proud+defensive of their language? How would Argentina react if a ton of English speakers immigrated and spoke English?

@Jez How many English speakers in a ton?

@Mitch This.

@Jez you saying Americans are not proud+defensive of their language? Really? Really?

So you want to hear something funny?

The Mexicans are not exactly the Normans.

This fear of Spanish is just as unrealistic as the fear of Muslims in certain European circles.

I forgot I had my roller ball mouse plugged in and it was pressing on my coffee cup, hence my earlier difficulties. rofl.

@Jez my usual response is about the power relationship. English speakers don't (or shouldn't) have any fears because of feelings of superiority (yes that is somewhat slef supporting). English is perceived worldwide as the lingua franca/primal langage. Argentinians would feel a conquest coming because by their Spanish already feel inferior language -wise to English

@KitFox Haha you are something.

@RegDwighт oh and that too.

Now I have to see how much I broke.

God I hate that phase.

not proud, just arrogantly self-satisfied (though they woudn't realize it if you shoved it in their faces) It just -is- better (because of narrow minded provincialism of the most popular.

@Mitch Yes, but, even then, I would say their fear was mostly unrealistic.

Multilingualism is good for people's brains.

@Cerberus which one?

@Cerberus which 'phase'?

This phase.

the phase of checking for things?

Trying to find the last version before I broke my code when I was trying to fix it.

@KitFox eeep!

@Cerberus Argentinians or Americans? I'd think there'd be more concern in Argentina (but not much in reality). Like Islamophobia...come on! only a small minority will ever care about Islam in Europe.

@Cerberus Oh, that's easy. just rebuild everything. when I say rebuild, I mean from scratch.

@Mitch I meant Argentinians.

@Mitch It is a minority, but not a small minority.

@Mitch I usually find that going back to an earlier version is better.

Everything's under control.

giggles at her W&G reference

@KitFox No doubt, but that's no the bizarre hypothetical being discussed. (actually not so hypothetical...English may well yet (sadly) become the world 'educated' home language (it already is the educated lingua franca).

Right-wing populist parties sometimes get as much as 25 % of votes in many European countries.

thinks about eating some cheese

@Mitch It is not exactly educated.

English is also strongly associated with pop culture from America.

@KitFox never a bad idea..except maybe after brushing teeth...the mint flavor doesn't combine well.

@Mitch I thought we were discussing how I, as an American, felt about people speaking Spanish in my home country.

@Cerberus Oh. forgot about that.

While my code is baking.

@Mitch So using too much English in your Dutch makes you sound less erudite.

I think American English will get a lot more Spanish borrowings, but that's about it.

@KitFox too much thinking.

@Cerberus Hunh...I forgot about that effect.

I like Spanish. It is a lovely, vibrant language.

@KitFox Yes, ostensibly, but we moved on. Let's move back.

Variety is the spice of life?

Because everyone speaks English anyway, it's not "educated". Of course being able to write good academic English (or let's say a serious newspaper article in impeccable English) is seen as educated.

@KitFox if only they would stop shouting.

@KitFox So how do you think about Spanish taking over?

@Mitch Well, first I imagine what is was like living in the southern part of the US. Then I try to imagine how I would feel if I were a native speaker of Spanish and everyone spoke English in my home town.

It's kind of hard to describe how I think, come to think of it.

How do you think?

@Mitch Still, I believe the socio-economically dominant language usually won't pick up that much from minority languages...

@KitFox I don't like Spanish enough to see it eroding into my language. What happened to the days where US immigrants had to integrate? You guys have really forgotten how to do that

Oh @Jez, you can be so silly sometimes.

I don't know why you don't just come over here, so you can argue for realz.

sure, be multilingual, but still get people in the US to primarily speak English, for those who want to learn a second language other than Spanish.

Grrr. I hate it when such stuff gets flagged as "not an answer".

It is an answer.

It's just crappy.

I agree.

I'm sorry I'm behind on flags this month.

I must be slacking.

So basically people use me as the downvoting machine.

That -1 is mine.

Not the flagger's.

Yeah, the voting system can deal with those.

I should decline more flags, maybe.

I would say flags are for things that votes can't deal with? Or that are too egregious?

Or too urgent?

@RegDwighт Your life is so hard.

@Jez Yeah? I don't see your point. Do you think that business is going to be conducted primarily in Spanish in the US any time in the next several decades?

Or centuries.

why can't python's json converter deal with crazy UTF8 characters?

Do we want this?

No.

No. Send it to one of the sites that deals with progress bars. We have nothing to do with progress here.

Pythons are a bit unmanageable.

@KitFox decades, perhaps (in TX, NM, california, other southern states). and in 100 years, it would seem, definitely

@Cerberus are those two in the background crazy UTF8 characters?

@Robusto we do have to do with bars, though. A lot.

@Cerberus Don't get FumbleFingers started. He might misconstrue your meaning.