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@tchrist Oh, FFS. Would that I could.
Don't worry, they're only covering half of them the first year, around 70 or 80. They'll get to the other evil bad names the second year. Go ahead, let make everybody relearn everything from scratch again.
Not sure what I think of that use of eponymous.
Changes to bird names. Obviously a harbinger of impending societal collapse. How will we survive.
"Everything you know is shit. You have to redo everything."
@alphabet tins of catfood?
00:11
Last year we changed the names of all the oceans, remember? This year we change the names of all the cities and streets. Next year we change the names of all the states and nations.
People using different names for bird species? Catastrophic. I'm gonna stop refilling my bird feeder in protest.
@tchrist that's what really bothers me about revolutions and wars and ethnic cleansing...you have to relearn a whole bunch of capitals
@alphabet don't punish the victims!
But they won't come when you call them now.
The new bird call will be 'not me. not me.'
@tchrist What about renaming America? Isn't it offensive to indians, sorry, native americans?
00:14
We need a law saying nobody can ever change the name of anything.
Enforceable by taking away their dictionary?
@alphabet And a law saying nobody can ever change any law.
@Mitch I can tell you're still mad about Czechoslovakia. And Ceylon and Siam. And Borat and Bharat. And Mesopotamia.
Yugoslavia.
@jlliagre You can't name something after someone. No Italians need apply. Nor Zaragozans.
00:16
"First, they came for our bird names..."
@jlliagre and then a law saying no more laws about laws...after this one
@jlliagre Only Africa has natives.
@tchrist there's a lot to be mad about
@jlliagre Frankly speaking, you Gaulics will likely need to fix your own country name. Just ask Virginia and the Carolines.
Maryland is wrong.
I'm looking forward to the "WOKE bird names are DESTROYING AMERICA" articles
00:21
@tchrist We already use l'hexagone.
And yet the nightingale still sings by night.
The dating ales are still pissed off about that
@jlliagre Oh we can do that too, since Colorado is so insulting to colored people. We'll just go by its Homeric epithet, the hexahectaenneacontakaiheptagon.
Here in California we used to have a variety of streets and highways named after Junipero Serra. But he got cancelled. It turns out he used the indigenous population as slave labor.
Of course, this is the colorado that's about the red color, so it's insulting to the Redskins, especially the Washington ones.
00:25
@tchrist Ouch, our land is simpler. Maths savvy people are unhappy when we say aux quatre coins de l'hexagone though ;-)
@jlliagre I would give you four words for that, but you've already heard them by now.
Junípero Serra Ferrer O.F.M. (Petra, Mallorca; 24 de noviembre de 1713-Monterrey, Alta California; 28 de agosto de 1784), bautizado como Miguel José Serra Ferrer y más conocido tradicionalmente como fray Junípero Serra, fue un fraile franciscano español. Profesor, doctor en filosofía y teología, abandonó la cátedra y se trasladó a América, donde fundó nueve misiones españolas en la Alta California, y presidió otras quince.[2]​ Fue beatificado por el papa san Juan Pablo II el 28 de septiembre de 1988, y el 23 de septiembre de 2015 fue canonizado por el papa Francisco, en la ciudad de Washington…
Oops, are they unsainting him? Let it not be today!
> The New York Times noted that some "Indian historians and authors blame Father Serra for the suppression of their culture and the premature deaths at the missions of thousands of their ancestors."[115] George Tinker, an Osage/Cherokee and professor at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado,[116] cites evidence that Serra required the converted Indians to labor to support the missions.
At least once they rename India to Borat Bharat, they'll finally stop pestering our own Indians for being named by some guy named for somebody's intestines.
You can't draw a rectangle, let alone a square, on a sphere. The sides can't be equal.
00:43
Checking the sides of my garden shed slab.
Nutall's woodpecker is Dryobates nuttallii. Nuttall's violet is Viola nuttallii. But only one of those words is changing. The Latin is inviolate. Why are they forcing us to speak Latin?
Mostly though it's because you don't get to change their actual official taxa, which are theirs forever, just because politics and pitchforks got pointedly riled up.
The pitchforks haven't gotten to the violets yet, though. Just the birds.
01:28
> Abert's Towhee
Adelaide's Warbler
Ainley's Storm-Petrel
Allen's Hummingbird
Anna's Hummingbird
Audubon's Oriole
Audubon's Shearwater
Bachman's Sparrow
Baird's Junco
Baird's Sandpiper
Baird's Sparrow
Baird's Trogon
Barrow's Goldeneye
Belcher's Gull
Belding's Yellowthroat
Bell's Sparrow
Bell's Vireo
Bendire's Thrasher
Bewick's Wren
Bicknell's Thrush
Blackburnian Warbler
Blyth's Reed Warbler
Bonaparte's Gull
Botteri's Sparrow
Boucard's Wren
Brandt's Cormorant
Brewer's Blackbird
Brewer's Sparrow
Buller's Shearwater
    5 Cassin's           1 Bullock's          1 MacGillivray's
    5 Wilson's           1 Bulwer's           1 Markham's
    4 Baird's            1 Canivet's          1 McCown's
    4 Townsend's         1 Carmiol's          1 McKay's
    3 Steller's          1 Chapman's          1 Middendorff's
    3 Swainson's         1 Cherrie's          1 Murphy's
    2 Audubon's          1 Cook's             1 Naumann's
    2 Bell's             1 Cooper's           1 Nava's
    2 Brewer's           1 Cory's             1 Nelson's
   12 Sparrow                 1 Albatross               1 Phalarope
   10 Warbler                 1 Antbird                 1 Phoebe
    8 Petrel                  1 Auklet                  1 Pipit
    6 Gull                    1 Blackbird               1 Plover
    6 Storm-Petrel            1 Cormorant               1 Quail
    5 Hawk                    1 Eider                   1 Rail
    5 Hummingbird             1 Emerald                 1 Reed-Warbler
    5 Shearwater              1 Finch                   1 Rosefinch
01:52
Here's another eggcorn: dawn some armor.
02:23
@alphabet I feel pity for the inventive males who got stuck with such toys before modern surgery was developed. Probably many died.
Who says it is only males?
While it is true that women lack a prostate, they may still do it, or they may insert it otherwise.
02:47
@Cerberus Women are more cautious by nature.
Because they need to tend to their children.
03:16
But of course women are inventive. But still, I mostly read about males in such situations :)
Juniper, also known as Brother Juniper (Italian: Fra Ginepro) (died 1258), called "the renowned jester of the Lord", was one of the original followers of Francis of Assisi. Not much is known about Juniper before he joined the friars. In 1210, he was received into the Order of Friars Minor by Francis himself. "Would to God, my brothers, that I had a whole forest of such Junipers," Francis would delightfully pun.Francis sent him to establish "places" for the friars in Gualdo Tadino and Viterbo. When Clare of Assisi was dying, Juniper consoled her. Juniper is buried at Ara Coeli Church at Rome...
> "Would to God, my brothers, that I had a whole forest of such Junipers," Francis would delightfully pun.[1]
@CowperKettle Perhaps! But there should still be plenty of incautious ones despite the average.
03:33
Yes
03:44
@CowperKettle I don't feel much pity for anyone that dumb.
@TRiG This is your brain on the cot/caught merger.
@CowperKettle Lesbians, presumably, are either less embarrassed about buying sex toys, or too smart to try it with a lightbulb
Buying sex toys is gay. Real manly men use random household objects.
@alphabet Unkind.
@alphabet Lots of straights use sex toys too.
@Cerberus I do suspect, though, that this is a factor driving these ER visits.
@Cerberus A Gwenyth Paltrow jade egg, but encrusted with Swarovski crystals to balance your harmonic energies.
@alphabet What is a factor?
@alphabet I don't know what those brands are but it sounds pretty vad.
@Cerberus I think some people associate (say) owning a butt plug with wanting to have sex with a man. Not an entirely unreasonable association. I suspect using a random household object somehow reduces any cognitive dissonance.
The latter part may be so.
But I know that tons of straight men have their girlfriends peg them.
All men have the same organ.
And I think it works the same way for most.
Yeah, the more progressive types. But I think that those who feel more averse to somehow seeming "gay" are more likely to use lightbulbs or what have you instead.
And, frankly, the ones who end up in the ER for it are getting what they deserve for that attitude.
I think plenty of people are more themselves in the intimacy of the bed.
It may be true that straight men more often use weird objects.
@alphabet I really don't understand this attitude.
If someone makes a silly sexual mistake, he deserves to go to hospital?
Which in your country not only means psychological and physical suffering, but he could also go bankrupt.
> 2024 might be the last human election due to AI's potential to manipulate public opinion and voters
04:18
@Cerberus I don't think "silly mistake" is the right description. A better term would be "obviously incredibly foolish decision with easily foreseeable negative consequences."
Why does a mistake mean someone is immoral and deserves to suffer a lot?
Maybe you should think about it a bit more.
When did I say that they were "immoral" or "deserved to suffer"?
> getting what they deserve
Needing to go to hospital is not suffering?
If something deserves to suffer, does that not imply you think he is immoral and somehow deserves a cruel punishment? Or why else would someone deserve to suffer?
Let me put it this way. I don't think they should be deliberately made to suffer more. I also don't think they deserve any sympathy, since their plight is entirely the fault of their own poor decisions.
Nobody should feel sorry for them, since they could very easily have avoided the situation.
If you make a mistake, and you suffer badly for it, you don't deserve pity?
I'm sorry but this sounds incredibly vulgar to me.
Perhaps it is best to change the subject.
04:28
Perhaps.
 
2 hours later…
06:10
> Port of Rotterdam starts building national hydrogen network. The network, which is accessible to all hydrogen producers and purchasers, would eventually span 1,200 kilometres & provide green H2 to five Dutch industrial hubs. The Delta Rhine Corridor will also link with Germany
 
1 hour later…
07:15
I believe that mistakes are unavoidable and are made inevitable by a human's configuration of the brain. You can't wish to wish something, you can't always maintain cognitive control, hence mistakes. You start wishing something and at this moment your cognitive reserve for some or other reason happens to be shallow, and voila. You're in the ICU with a LED lamp up yours.
> All substance lives and struggles evermore
Through countless shapes continually at war,
By countless interactions interknit:
If one is born a certain day on earth,
All times and forces tended to that birth,
Not all the world could change or hinder it.
07:28
Wordle 866 4/6

⬜🟨⬜🟨⬜
⬜⬜🟨🟩🟨
🟩🟩🟨🟩🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
08:16
ALIA-250, an electric plane. 400 km on a single charge.
 
3 hours later…
11:12
Finns exiled to Siberia in the early 19th century created a new dialect (or language?) of Finnish:
Siberian Ingrian Finnish (Russian: Сибирский ингерманландский идиом) is a Lower Luga Ingrian Finnish – Lower Luga Ingrian (Izhorian) mixed language. The ancestors of the speakers of this language migrated from the Rosona River area to Siberia in 1803–1804. Most native speakers of this language live in Ryzhkovo or nearby, as well as in Omsk and Tallinn (Estonia). == History == In the autumn of 1802, due to disobedience to their landowners, several dozen people with their families from the villages of Vanakülä, Malaya Arsiya, Bolshaya Arsiya, Volkovo, Mertvitsa, Fedorovka and Variva were exiled...
11:36
> [...]they founded a settlement named Bugene. In the future, this settlement was called Finy.
Is it grammatical?
12:19
@jlliagre I fixed it, a little
The author of the article is a Finnish man, I guess
Scots of the day: to lunt (to emit smoke)
> The lunting pipe, and sneeshing mill,
Are handed round wi' right gude-will
(Burns)
13:13
@alphabet It's only maybe correlated with homophobia at best. "More progressive types" are usually pro-sex-ed, which would pretty clearly state what not to do with a lightbulb. You only need to look at what dysfunctional attempts at contraception some people use (or what girls are forced to do about their periods in the absence of guidance) to know this type of behavior exists without even needing to bring gay people into the equation
Also, I've heard stories of people putting lightbulbs in their mouths, which is just as bad (but not sexual)
@jlliagre It's grammatical but very poor style, needing convoluted temporal justification. I suspect it is grammatical in all languages and also equally poor. @CowperKettle's edit is very natural English.
Wordle 866 4/6

⬛⬛🟩🟨⬛
⬛⬛🟨⬛⬛
🟨🟨🟩⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Normally 'in the future' is in the context of 'right now' for the reader. The writer of that poor sentence is assuming some weird 'at that time, the future'... but happens to be the past still for the reader.
13:52
French of the day: des bonbons ou un sort
14:04
@Mitch Yes, I understood the sentence but was wondering how it would be perceived by English speakers. Dans le futur, ce lieu était appelé Finy sounds like time-travelling Sci-Fi in French. We would have used futur anterieur: Plus tard, ce lieu sera appelé/renommé Finy.
@Laurel Surely one hardly needs any sex ed--or even just common sense--to know that this is a bad idea. Only idiocy can explain why someone would do this (or would put a lightbulb in their mouth, for that matter). But I suspect that, if such a person knows about sex toys and uses a lightbulb instead, they must have some degree of shame associated with the former.
14:20
@jlliagre Yes, I was considering bringing up sci-fi scenarios. And also yes, future perfect 'The town will have been renamed Finy'. But the 'later' that @CowperKettle added is what makes all the difference (and I suppose 'plus tard' also).
@jlliagre Tiphany? Is that you?
@alphabet There's also some people who just aren't very bright, even if the lightbulb was lit :p
@Laurel snort
14:41
@Mitch Not me :-) Halloween is not (yet?) very popular here. Nobody rang on my house this year. In the last decade, at most three groups of kids did it in the best years.
Phobia of a couple of days ago: Samhainophobia.
@Mitch Oh but I sleeped on the wet floor because I am French.
@jlliagre Well, they're French. They prefer haute cuisine, no?
15:12
@Robusto They don't. Kids are kids. They love junk food. By the way, we'd rather say grande cuisine instead of haute cuisine but haute couture instead of grande couture, go figure :-)
Boy, if were to criticize the English I see here ... If only these kind people knew...
15:28
@Laurel Lightbulb enemas: the new autism cure?
@Lambie They don't have beds in France? /s
@Lambie Well, good thing you don't.
@jlliagre I think most would say: "In the future, this settlement would be called Finy."
@alphabet It's about slipping, not beds. Actually, I think I should be licensed to do so...
Though "This settlement would later be called Finy" is much less awkward.
@Lambie Ah, the i/ɪ problem? youtube.com/watch?v=GNpbv7hJf6c
@Lambie I would, but I hear the test you need to get the license is pretty hard to pass.
I'd rather say that the test is easy for those in the know. Ha ha.
15:50
@Lambie Alas, we have a lot of unlicensed critics around here. We need a verification system.
Unicode of the day: 💡
Man sues lightbulb company, saying their design is "unsafe"
@jlliagre Nobody knocked on my door either, though I live in the US :(
On the other hand, this means I get to eat all the candy myself
@jlliagre Yeah, I was just joking with you. Kids are kids, the world over.
@Laurel Protip: live in a breeder neighborhood if you want a lot of trick-or-treaters.
16:07
@Laurel Don't give candy to anyone who says "chrick or chreat" instead of "trick or treat."
@Robusto "Breeder neighborhood" is an...interesting turn of phrase
Actually, this would be a good sociolinguistic experiment to find the ratio of "chrick-or-chreaters" to "trick-or-treaters'
I didn't see anyone else with their lights on so I guess we just don't do trick or treat here. Also most of the buildings are multistory condos which would suck if you're on the other side of things (especially with some costumes the kids wear)
@Robusto Yeah, I don't think I can afford to move lol
Who needs Halloween (in the States) when reality is so much scarier? Really....
@alphabet This is purely hypothetical advice :p I also did trunk or treat and there were literally 3 kids who showed up
@Lambie We must spread the fear to the children.
@alphabet Some topics just are not funny.
16:29
@alphabet My gay friends make that distinction.
@Robusto For every gayborhood, there's a straightborhood.
@alphabet Several decades ago we lived in the "Newtown" neighborhood in Chicago, which was heavily gay and somewhat upscale. It was interesting to get cruised walking down Broadway in shorts in the summertime.
I'm not really sure how I'd classify my neighborhood. There are definitely some people with kids here, but the biggest population may actually be divorced women (whose kids are adults and live somewhere else).
16:46
@Laurel Start a "wine or treat" tradition
I should probably make sure I'm in their group chat next year lol
I don't do wine anymore tho but these ladies often have something better anyway
I'm not divorced, much less with kids, but I've fit in well enough
17:02
@alphabet Maybe "whine or treat" for the divorcee crowd?
@jlliagre Is 'Tiphany' a weird modern name in French? In English 'Tiffany' sounds like a stripper's name (a name a stripper would choose to sound 'fancy' like the jewelry store 'Tiffany's'), even though I've heard the name has been used forever (like since the 13th c)
@Lambie Oh there's another one (but almost identical) 'swept' ('sweeped' doesn't sound the best even though 'weeped' is just as fine as wept.
@Mitch Tiffany was the female lead in Ian Fleming's Diamonds Are Forever. Wait, it might have been Solitaire. I'd have to look it up.
@jlliagre that's hilarious... in English you always say 'haute cuisine' (ie -in- English as though you're trying to be fancy and use French.)
@Mitch False friends, indeed.
@Robusto And Bambi. sounds perfectly natural in Italian (I think). BUt sort of lascivious in English (as a name for an adult woman).
17:14
> This growth arises through Bond's burgeoning relationship with the book's main female character, Tiffany Case.
There we go. I still got it.
@Robusto All the Bond villainess's/heroine's names sound a bit... like what a 13-year old boy imagines they would be named.
@Mitch Bambi and Thumper featured in a movie version of one of the Bond movies. Both female, both murderous.
@Robusto they were the body guards in Diamonds are Forever?
@Mitch Well, duh. Bond novels/movies are precisely for 13-year-old boys.
@Mitch I don't remember.
I saw that when I was, like, 13 or something.
Isn't it just coming out that Ian Fleming had numerous affairs while writing these books, almost using the affairs as writing inspiration?
I'm sure the NYTs has a whole series on it.
And then in 6 months, the New Yorker will have an article on the declining virility of James Bond and its effect on NASA
I mean there's a lot going on in New York City, but come on.
Do they still do Talk of the Town and movie reviews and that long list of events in NYC in the New Yorker? I only look at the comics via twitter.
17:27
@Mitch Would you be surprised if that were true?
I wouldn't be surprised if had a couple affairs, but it seems like he had a lot. -and- put incidents in those affairs in his books (and came out in the movies) so that some of the women recognized particular details.
It's not that it happened at all but that it happened so frequently
@Mitch Well, you do realize that his novels were eventually syndicated in Playboy magazine. That's how his male readership fancied themselves.
By the way, it seems that no less a personage than Umberto Eco wrote admiringly of the Bond novels. Go figure.
@Robusto TIL
> Diamonds Are Forever opens with a passage in which a scorpion hunts and eats its prey, and is subsequently killed by one of the diamond couriers. Eco sees this "cleverly presented" beginning as similar to the opening of a film, remarking that "Fleming abounds in such passages of high technical skill".
@Mitch I said syndicated but I meant serialized. Brain cramp.
17:41
@Mitch Yes, that's it.
Those were simpler times. When I could read a Bond novel and think it was the most thrilling thing ever.
@Robusto maybe syndicated too? It sounded good.
The movies always fell short, IMO, though they were fun.
@Mitch Would have had to be in lots of publications, not just one. But you never know.
@Robusto I've never read any of them. Do they have pictures?
Only in your mind. But that was sufficient for me.
@Robusto Or if you want to be fancy, it was syndicated in only one publication.
Very modern
Eco would have approved.
17:44
I don't care to be fancy. Just accurate.
@Robusto People don't write like that anymore
But the fact is, serialized is really what I meant. Meaning it came out in installments, maybe four or five. To keep you reading month by month.
Playboy did that with the George McDonald Fraser Flashman series as well.
Is there anything like that nowadays, where someone writes lots and lots of fiction, it's not belles lettres but it's not total junk, more like really good junk?
Stephen King is prolific but not... pulpy
@Mitch Sure. Do you consider Elmore Leonard to fall under the heading "these days"?
Stephen King is a fine storyteller.
@Robusto I guess not 'these days' unless he's still writing.
17:47
Well, his books are still in wide circulation. And if you haven't read them, they're certainly "these days" for you.
@Robusto I've only ever seen movies from his books.
I find an author I like and then I read everything they've done.
That can get tough at times, as with Umberto Eco.
When Wodehouse was writing, his subject matter wasn't even "these days" during those days (ie the upstairs-downstairs culture had already passed mostly by the time he wrote about it).
I'm thinking of comparables to Wodehouse,
or that other guy
Color of Time?
cripes
Terry Pratchett!
I think I've only ever read a couple of his.
@Robusto I remember reading Foucault's Pendulum and thinking it would be great story if only I knew what he was talking about.
Yeah.
Also, what about foreign authors? I mean after Marquez... that took a hundred years of solitude to read in English.
That joke has been made a hundred times.
All I remember was some guy sleeping on top of a train.
You know the one book you'd want to take on a desert island?
Not that one, everybody says that.
I'd want a 'boat building on a desert island' book
Speaking of Spanish people with three names, that guy who did Hamilton, I always want to say 'Lin Manuel Noriega'
I'm sure both are insulted by that mixup
Speaking of Foucault's Pendulum...I always wondered how it is 'proof' of the Earth's rotation as a sphere. You really need to have -two- pendula to confirm. Sure you could compare how long the pendulum takes to rotate and see if it compares functionally with your latitude (24hrs at the poles and some sin(theta) factor for (90-latitude).
But maybe there's another configuration of celestial bodies that would give the same result. On a plane.
Maybe
It'd gotta be a more complicated function.
But still
maybe possible.
Kinda like the phases of Venus. Maybe it's consistent with geocentrism.
maybe
I'm not gonna worry about it too much
I think I'll sleep fine tonight not knowing
unless
avoids thinking about that thing
Whew...I've forgotten exactly what it was I was worried about.
Hm... but now it's just a nameless dread.
checks life insurance policy
What?
You have to die to get that money?
WTF
What kind of scam is that?
 
1 hour later…
19:07
@Mitch Tyffany was somewhat popular in the nineties, along with cognates, maybe more in Québec from where the video I posted come. Did you notice her accent?
At least that's over.
 
1 hour later…
20:55
@alphabet Huh... divine manifestation.
The Old Turkic language had 12 cases.
@jlliagre It's funny, I do not hear an accent at all because I just can't tell. On relistening, I 1) noticed the flannel shirt (which says US to me) 2) I heard her say 'tin' for 'temps' which from book learning I read is Quebecois 3) and then she said something strange I didn't follow and relistened again and was 'tabernac', classic Quebecois swear
I just can't -feel- the accent.
Qu'est-ce que c'est 'un sort'?
I mean yeah it's a trick but what is it more literally?
@CowperKettle I'm surprised all their books fit into so few.
22:06
@Mitch Jeter un sort means 'to cast (lit. throw) a spell' so it matches the trick (the threat?) while bonbons means candies so are the treats here.
A rat receives a drop of water by imagining an object moving to a specified location in a virtual space. The rat's hippocampal activity is tracked, so we can "see" what it imagines.
Thus, the study proves that rats have imagination.
> "The stunning thing is how rats learn to think about that place, and no other place, for a very long period of time, based on our, perhaps naïve, notion of the attention span of a rat," Harris says.
23:57
Word of the morn: satellite virus - a virus that depends on another virus (helper virus) to replicate. And can sometimes even attach to its helper virus.
On the photo, the satellite virus does not even have the gene for embedding into a cell DNA. It's completely dependent on the helper.

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