« first day (5142 days earlier)      last day (74 days later) » 
00:00 - 16:0016:00 - 23:00

16:00
Also, this makes me wonder if at some point in history, the speakers of a language with a unisex pronoun (no 'he' or 'she'), had some sort of gender revolution, where the 'no he and she are different were stood up against a wall and shot (or rather, as language is old, pushed off a cliff).
If 7-Up is the "uncola" then what is the "union"?
duh...antimatter positrons,
It's my koan for this morning.
I knew a guy who could clap with one hand.
Pfft, I can do that too.
16:02
he just flapped it back and forth and it made a clapping sound.
pretty dumb those koans
@Mitch Exactly. You do that to prepare to play the piano.
A white horse is not a horse.
At least I do.
Duh, it's white. not all horses are white.
Gets your fingers loose.
16:03
When is a door not a door?
When it's a ajar.
@Robusto Exactly. That's a koan I can use.
Apr 14, 2023 at 15:56, by Robusto
@Mitch When is a door not a door? When it is ajar.
Feb 13, 2015 at 12:47, by Robusto
@MattE.Эллен That depends on whether the door is ajar or not. Or maybe on whether it is a jar or not.
@Mitch What I'm saying is that some nonbinary people don't want to be referred to with third person singular pronouns at all (including singular they), and the P.U.F. is the earliest example (I think)
Teach my grandma how to suck eggs.
@Laurel Would that be P.U.F. the Magic Dragon?
16:07
@Laurel OK I get it but then how does one refer to these people in the third person? Just use their name?
Oops, just use name?
@Robusto Public Universal Friend (from my previous comment) but we can't rule out Magic or dragons
Oh come on, they were taking about smoking dope, trying to get little kids high.
@Laurel Noted. But wouldn't "Public Universal Friend" mean they're everybody's friend? What if they don't want to be friends with, say, Trump or Putin?
@Mitch Yeah name or some other noun, like "the preacher" as is the case through much of PUF's wiki article
@Robusto My grandmother had -no- idea how to do that. What would the point be anyway?
@Laurel What if you don't know the name?
16:10
@Mitch The point is, it's a more confrontational way to say "fuck off."
@Robusto Dying in the 1800s solves this problem, doesn't it? Course there are other tyrants to be had then…
@Robusto The shorter sentence I think is much more confrontational but at least it gets the conversation over with quickly, to the benefit of all parties involved.
@Laurel Given a choice, I'd still rather die later then the 1800's. Life was painful back then.
@Mitch Noun phrases? How do you know about the person at that point (and their distain for singular they) anyway?
@Mitch Not if you were rich and healthy. Wait, that's still true today, I guess.
@Laurel I started a whole list of abbreviations to add to the article you just modded. Mostly abbreviations of language varieties: EModE for Early Modern English, SAE for South African English, OLowF for Old Low Franconian... you get the idea.
Perfect sort of meaningless scholarship for ELU.
16:14
@Robusto Ugh, probably not. I remember watching such competition about 15-20 years ago, made me nauseated just looking at him. I think this is the guy.
@Robusto Yeah insurance companies are awesome if you don't get sick.
@Mitch Why not just spell everything out in the article proper?
@Cerberus Sure, in every article you should probably spell it out first with the abbreviation, and then the following times the abbreviation is just fine.
But I see people using FAQ -all- the time. What the hell does that mean?
@Mitch Why not spell it out or use other means of reference, everywhere?
@Laurel The 'middle school' reference was that if you're going to be annoyed at someone using the wrong pronoun for you, then whether the speaker is aware of all facts won't be sufficient to assuage the annoyance.
@Cerberus Because repetition encourages brevity. The reader can learn the abbreviation or already knows it based on common context.
Everyone who uses the internet (= everyone under the age of 90) knows what FAQ means.
16:19
Readers may forget what it stood for halfway through the article.
Everyone with some experience with ELU knows what ELU means.
And readers may skim the article.
And, even if they can figure it out, it still slows them down.
And, lastly, those abbreviations aren't very beautiful, not the best style.
@Cerberus Most people with elementary reading skills will know to scan back in the article to find the first mention of the abbreviation (probably in parentheses) where the full spell-out is given.
@Mitch Since it's bothering you so much it sounds like you got yourself an Often Pondered Ask
@Cerberus All abbreviations?
16:21
@Mitch But...isn't scanning back annoying, extra effort?
Why not just spell it out or use different means of reference?
@Cerberus I start halfway through so I guarantee I haven't forgotten anything
@Mitch All lack beauty, so the fewer, the better.
If you allow at least one abbreviation, that doesn't mean you need to allow all abbreviations always with no explanation, but you should have a cutoff for common context.
@Laurel Hah! Exactly.
@Mitch I would rather say it's gradations.
Zero abbreviations is the optimum, the King would not use any in a law.
Anyway, I have to agree with "Shame on anyone for using any of these abbreviations without defining them or least linking them." which has just been sitting there in the deleted section of the FAQ
16:23
Using only one or two extremely common abbreviations comes right below the optimum.
@Cerberus having to read a multiword phrase that you've seen many times before is also annoying. repeating the multiword phrase that stands for one concept is annoying because if it is spelled out, you don't realize it is an old repeated concept until you get to the end. Abbreviations -aid- in understanding.
@Laurel I'll check the Frequently Asked Questions list.
@Mitch But a skilled writer wouldn't do that.
@Cerberus Of course it is a continuum and the writer needs to gauge the reader.
@Laurel I think 'shame' is a bit strong here.
@Mitch Writers also need to engauge the reader.
> The European Union has ordered all member-states to begin producing more grenades. Although Germany objected, the Union / the institution put its foot down. Etc.
16:26
You're convincing me I should disengage from this argument.
Repeating a full name again and again is not good writing.
@Cerberus BTW, I saw you using "btw" earlier. For shame.
Your scarlet letters.
@Robusto Tut tut
(not an abbreviation)
12 hours ago, by Cerberus
How are things in Korea btw?
@Robusto The best part? probably written in the taxi ride over to the studio.
16:31
@Mitch It's all good.
Back when he was good. Not like in "Only Murders in the Building."
@Cerberus If it makes you feel any better, and to bring this back to where we are, I can't think of a good abbreviation for the (varieties of) English spoken in the south of the United States. It can't be SouthAmE, because that sounds like South American English, which frankly I didn't know the spoke English in South America, though surely there's nothing stopping them, I just thought, huh that would be weird given... well... a bunch of history and stuff.
@Robusto In some sense, he hasn't changed -at all-. Same mannerisms, same humar, just subdued I guess.
I couldn't care less about the banjo stuff.
Though I'm sure he's proud of it. As should his parents have been.
I mean... I guess he could have chosen bagpipes?
@Mitch Voilà, don't use abbreviations!
not that there's anything wrong with that... it's just they're kinda loud.
@Mitch Or uillean pipes.
@Cerberus Too many words.
SAE it is then
16:36
6
Q: I am unable to upload images with size around 1MB or larger in chat rooms

VikasI guess the official limit is 3MB. But I can't upload them unless they are less than around 1MB. I tested multiple images in different browsers. Same result. There is no error message in the UI (it just keeps saying "Uploading" forever), but in console I see this: I have a 40 Mbps Internet conne...

@Mitch Just say, "the variant spoken in the south of the United States", "this variant", "it", etc.
Image upload issue is fixed.
"The southern variant".
Or don't use a noun, "x is used in the south".
@Robusto that sounds fancy but you can't fool me, still sounds like a thousand wasps being stepped on.
@Cerberus Especially now, given that pro-Russia civilians were much less likely to flee before the Russian military entered.
16:37
@alphabet There is that, too.
The Russians have called upon Ukrainians to "flee" to Russia, though.
Wasps are just living their lives, don't want no trouble. You give em trouble, they're just giving it back.
@Cerberus Presumably 1) for ethnic Russians to feel safer, 2) for ethnic Ukrainians to fooled into depopulating the area and then be gulaged (or worse) once in Russia.
Gulagged?
I should come up with an abbreviation for that.
NKVD'd
Or just to capture as much population as possible in Russian in case you lose the land again.
What's funny, if funny is the right word, about this is that it's not like Russia will get anything appreciably worthwhile out of the land it's captured. It already has Crimea. And most of the fertile crop land is toward the west (I think).
@Cerberus Nope. I already decided on SAE.
Is that a motor oil?
It's a motor oil
Or maybe a standard of quality or some kind of viscosity measurement for motor oil.
Sout Asia East.
@Mitch Right, not that much.
Society for Automotive Engineers
16:44
And corn crops aren't worth that much anyway.
Standard American English
that's what dictionary.com says
which I don't particularly care for
@Cerberus It's the bread basket of Europe.
Or it used to be.
100 years ago
almost literally a hundred years ago
But it is not worth a lot of money now.
What was it called, the Holodor? The starvation of Ukraine even while it was producing grain for the rest of Russia?
The Holodomor, also known as the Ukrainian Famine, was a human-made famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. The Holodomor was part of the wider Soviet famine of 1930–1933 which affected the major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union. While scholars are in consensus that the cause of the famine was man-made, it remains in dispute whether the Holodomor was directed at Ukrainians and whether it constitutes a genocide, the point of contention being the absence of attested documents explicitly ordering the starvation of any area in the Soviet Union. So...
missed it by two letters.
The Holodor is the entrance into the Holodeck
The Holodeck is a fictional device from the television franchise Star Trek which uses "holograms" (projected light and electromagnetic energy which create the illusion of solid objects) to create a realistic 3D simulation of a real or imaginary setting, in which participants can freely interact with the environment as well as objects and characters, and sometimes a predefined narrative. In several series, holodecks are an amenity available to the crew of starships. In the series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, a similar device is referred to as a holosuite, operated by the owner of the space station...
> By 2021, agriculture's share in exports had jumped to 41 % and a value of US$27 billion
The most expensive exports will not be wheat and such, but rather greenhouse and similar produce.
And Russia only occupies a small part of Ukraine's arable land.
So I don't think this will be of great economic value to Russia.
Especially not considering the economic cost.
So you're saying, if only they would listen to us, Russia would probably not consider invading Ukraine, because of the economic cost-benefit outcome.
16:57
@Mitch FAQ has become a word; it is rarely a list of frequently asked questions. It is usually a list of answers to frequently asked questions. It is no longer a model for using a shortened form, therefore.
Well...that is what one would think, were it not the case that Putin cares more about historical glory than actual usefulness.
@Xanne Cerberus conceded that in rare instances an abbreviation might be appropriate in good writing. And FAQ might be one for him.
@Cerberus You can't read history books in the grave.
It's too dark to read.
Does he have kids?
Alas.
What if you add ornate lamps?
Maybe if we encourage the Russian's use of abbreviations, that will mitigate the costs to the Ukrainians
@Cerberus I'm pretty sure the Egyptians tried that.
I wonder if it worked.
Why wouldn't it?
@Mitch Maybe it will destroy them.
17:03
@Cerberus To be serious it hasn't yet. NKVD, KGB, FSB, Komsomol, GazProm, H&M, Konsum, BVD
Ughh...
Are those abbreviations OK? one where they are somewhat transparent?
And the original of something like FSB is opaque already so the abbreviation isn't making things worse (or rather the explanation needs to be explained). YOu don't just keep saying over and over 'The Russian security agency'.
@Mitch Half of those I do not recognise.
FSB I do recognise, but what if someone else doesn't?
I would put in the 'lesser evil' category.
@Mitch You left out GRU.
@Cerberus gauge your readship. just like you do with your vocabulary choice.
@Robusto That guy from the Despicable Me movies?
@Cerberus Half of them are not Russian.
Or really 37.5 %
17:14
@Mitch Yes. But still.
I only know BVD as Dutch.
H&M, Swedish.
Also in your abbreviations, don't put period after every letter. That's just ridiculous.
I think it is the most traditional to write N. A. T. O.
@Cerberus Not in the traditions that I know of.
NYT?
Or is it the New Yorker?
I don't know about specific publications.
Either New York instution, it's still ridiculous.
The Spanish and Italians go one step futher and just make them words, punto final.
17:20
After the recent flooding in Valencia, I kept seeing the word 'Dana' a lot, Dana this Dana that, and it was the spanish abbreviatino for the long technical name for the meteorological event, Depresión Aislada en Niveles Altos. I will never say -that- again.
If you want it spelled out, you can google it.
@Cerberus ahhh thanks for reminding me to do today's trav.le quiz
I suppose maybe there is no space in M.P. here.
How modern!
@Vikas Thanks for reporting it.
17:47
Connections
Puzzle #547
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟪🟨🟨🟨
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟪🟪🟪🟪
18:19
Wordle 1,269 3/6

⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
🟨🟨⬛⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Connections
Puzzle #547
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟪🟪🟪🟪
19:07
The NYPD has found a “person of interest” who may have murdered the CEO of a health insurance company on the streets of NY, and in just six days!
 
1 hour later…
20:18
#WhenTaken #286 (09.12.2024)

I scored 942/1000👑

1️⃣📍4.5 km - 🗓️2 yrs - 🥇198/200
2️⃣📍727 km - 🗓️3 yrs - 🥇175/200
3️⃣📍183 m - 🗓️2 yrs - 🥇198/200
4️⃣📍262 km - 🗓️2 yrs - 🥇189/200
5️⃣📍255 km - 🗓️7 yrs - 🥇182/200

https://whentaken.com
20:48
@Mitch SMERCH? There: by changing just one letter, I've avoided being put on the watch list of important agencies. You, on the other hand, are probably on several new ones just for today's activity.
@Conrado I mean that sounds serious, but no problem, they're on some of -my- lists. That should make them a little nervous, don't you think?
21:13
@CowperKettle The "monkeysphere" of 80-150 people in your community
22:06
@Xanne Ok, but when they interrogate him, they gotta ask him two questions: (1) Are your Instagram photos FaceTuned and (2) If not, what is your skincare routine? Or is your skin just naturally perfect?
@alphabet, glad to see you. I have decided to return here for a while. I miss this chat so much. I promise I'll respect all the rules and I will be neutral. But it seems we could have a private room...
@Alexander I believe @Cerberus kicked you out earlier for defending Russia's killing civilians, right?
Let's not talk about that please anymore. I beg you. There are a zillion other topics to discuss...)
I am so weak, but my health has recently improved a lot.
I'm not sure why you'd want a private room. I may be easy but I'm not that easy.
Ok, I am that easy but only in certain contexts.
Ok, in most contexts, just not this one.
@alphabet It's mainly because I prefer intimacy. I am a man who rarely goes outside my room or my home. Basically, I'm autistic. My father is my patron, so he directs everything. But he will die sooner or later, and that's will be a totally different story, a different life.
Correction: autistic and not *outist. Sorry.
22:21
@Alexander What kind of intimacy are we talking about?
Oh, I am not gay.)) By any means, I am absolutely straight, I know you are a male. I meant trust or confidence. I sometimes fell myself confused in a chat, where so many people talk to each other at the same time.
@Alexander I was joking; I assume you weren't aware of the implication.
Oh, I think "implication" is a new word for me. Thanks.
I think I've got your idea, I can feel English language pretty well.
00:00 - 16:0016:00 - 23:00

« first day (5142 days earlier)      last day (74 days later) »