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00:20
@alphabet I've never been to that stop. I assume you're saying that's a good one.
@Mitch Well, nobody actually goes to school there. It's where preppies from the '80s (and '50s) hang out to be cool. Drive through there sometime, you'll notice that there are only athletic fields and pavilions that serve punch.
Oh, and wear your sweater around your neck, huh? Wouldn't want to commit a faux pas.
 
2 hours later…
02:29
@CowperKettle Really troubling playbook there. Autocratic impulses are always so brutal anywhere they get a toehold.
City is a 1952 science fiction fix-up novel by American writer Clifford D. Simak. The original version consists of eight linked short stories, all originally published in Astounding Science Fiction under the editorship of John W. Campbell between 1944 and 1951, along with brief "notes" on each of the stories. These notes were specially written for the book, and serve as a bridging story of their own. The book was reprinted as ACE #D-283 in 1958, cover illustration by Ed Valigursky. A ninth City tale was published in 1973, called "Epilog". Many later editions include the ninth tale. == Plot... ==
@tchrist I shortlisted 5 books to read this year. I will need to add one more book to the list: How to start reading books.
02:53
@tchrist I wonder if the US society will buckle under this strain the same as Russia's society did under Putin's encroachment on freedoms.
I hope it will resist stronger.
There's a more entrenched history of resistance in the USA, and there's more resources. The climate is milder etc.
But it's life as usual. There are better times, there are worse times. Things change.
Word of the day: indian cane
Canna indica, commonly known as Indian shot, African arrowroot, edible canna, purple arrowroot, Sierra Leone arrowroot, is a plant species in the family Cannaceae. It is native to much of South America, Central America, the West Indies, and Mexico. It is also naturalized in the southeastern United States (Florida, Texas, Louisiana, and South Carolina), and much of Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Oceania.: 311  It (achira in Hispanic America, cana-da-índia in Brazil) has been a minor food crop cultivated by indigenous peoples of the Americas for thousands of years.: 312  ==...
> "Sideways leaning, we sideways darted; every ropeyarn tingling like a wire; the two tall masts buckling like Indian canes in land tornadoes." (Melville)
> It (achira in Hispanic America,[3] cana-da-índia in Brazil) has been a minor food crop cultivated by indigenous peoples of the Americas for thousands of years.
03:44
@GratefulDisciple I was misusing the term "trinity" as it is used in Christian theology. I did so because I could not come up with a suitably divine substitute for triumvirate, which is when three men rule together, more or less, the -vir- bit indicating they were men not gods. My brain leapt to something with Greek theo instead of Latin deus etc and then I said ick I can't do this thing.
@GratefulDisciple It is indeed. I've seen—been part of—much, much, much too much of this, all those things you said save dementia alone, which my family have somehow never been prone to.
@Robusto Their father alone of the family seems to have lived a full life, dying at 84. "Patrick outlived his wife, the former Maria Branwell, by forty years, by which time all of their six children had died as well." What a miserable, miserable story it is to read of all 7 of those foreshortened spans! This will haunt my dreams tonight.
@CowperKettle I think so, yes, that it will. It will kick a bit here and there like a dying patient rallying for a bit once or twice ere the end, but it will never fully recover and shall soon enough pass into despotism, probably within your own days and mine, should we be so unlucky as to live so long. This may not be obvious at first.
But I do not think that this will be some long, slow decline, either. Or rather, any such path was begun at least 30 and quite arguably 50 or 60 years ago now. We're now coming up quickly to an inflection point, after which everything will abruptly change, like a sudden dog-leg in a graph falling off a precipice. That IS how these things always proceed, when they do so. It's never gradual. This may not come to pass, but we'd be fools to think ourselves immune to what has befallen many others.
@CowperKettle The little tiny dystopian scifi short story I wrote to @Mitch regarding an urgent need for "Covert Darmoxen Salads atta Niagra allusions" contains an underlying message to apply to one's own electronic communications of all sorts whatsoever, for these are of course forever data-mine-able by current or at best future regimes all of unpredictable malignancy.
 
3 hours later…
06:56
@tchrist TBH, I just jumped on the opportunity (partly to respond to this) to share a conception of the Christian Trinity as subsistent relations that (especially) Protestants are not aware of, which (in my opinion) would have made it a lot easier to relate & swallow rather than dismissing it as a "mystery" before even any attempt to understand it (even many Christians are guilty of this).
 
6 hours later…
13:58
@Vikas Cute kid!
@tchrist Nice story!
14:48
> For decades, the junk food industry has deliberately engineered foods to be addictive. Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs have helped people break free from this cycle. In response, the industry is now searching for ways to counteract the effects of these medications, aiming to design foods that remain addictive even for those on GLP-1.
15:01
@tchrist I'm sure the latter was informed by the former!
 
2 hours later…
> Hodie Abraham Lindum Coloniae olim natus est!
16:57
@tchrist Funny, I thought he was born in Kentucky.
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Potentially bad keyword in answer (1): How to Practice Grammar Without Login?‭ by Sarwar jaman‭ on english.SE
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Blacklisted user (76): How to Practice Grammar Without Login?‭ by Sarwar jaman‭ on english.SE
17:13
@Robusto His surname was Lincoln, is all.
@tchrist Funny, I read your sentence as including "Lincoln", not "Lindum." Amazing how we see mostly what we expect to see.
We whittled Lindum Colonia down to Lincoln over time immemorial.
And somehow left the now-vestigial L in the -coln fossil of Colonia.
17:40
@Robusto I wonder how long it will be until programs like that will have to be recorded in underground air-gapped computers before being disseminated or broadcast. The guy is really super-duper.
@Lambie I fear the worst in that regard.
18:16
@CowperKettle Thanks be unto thee.
18:58
> After Caracalla's death, Julia Maesa's grandson became emperor, Elagabalus, whom she prevailed to adopt another grandson, the son of Julia Avita Mamaea, who took the name Alexander Severus and eventually became emperor himself.
Anything out of the ordinary in the language?
#travle #791 +0 (Perfect)
✅✅✅
https://travle.earth

#WhenTaken #351 (12.02.2025)

I scored 881/1000🏆

1️⃣📍1.9K km - 🗓️5 yrs - 🥈147/200
2️⃣📍616 m - 🗓️7 yrs - 🥇191/200
3️⃣📍1.6 km - 🗓️3 yrs - 🥇197/200
4️⃣📍1.3K km - 🗓️6 yrs - 🥈156/200
5️⃣📍255 km - 🗓️1 yrs - 🥇190/200

https://whentaken.com

Wordle 1,334 4/6

⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
🟨⬛🟨🟩🟩
⬛🟨🟨🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
19:19
Connections
Puzzle #612
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟪🟪🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟪🟦
🟪🟪🟪🟦
🟪🟪🟦🟦
Stupid pop-culture refs

Strands #346
“Don't stop believin'”
🟡🔵🔵🔵
🔵🔵🔵🔵
🔵
---------------------
Daily Octordle #1115
🕛9️⃣
🔟5️⃣
6️⃣🕚
7️⃣4️⃣
Score: 64

Daily Sequence Octordle #1115
4️⃣5️⃣
6️⃣7️⃣
8️⃣🔟
🕚🕛
Score: 63

Daily Extreme Octordle #1115
9️⃣6️⃣
4️⃣8️⃣
🕛7️⃣
🕚🔟
Score: 67
@Robusto Oh, dear.
Like you, I have green and yellow first.
So I gather blue and purple are hopeless...
Connections
Puzzle #612
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟪🟪🟪🟦
🟪🟪🟪🟦
🟪🟪🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟦🟦🟦🟦
Luck.
I don't understand purple at all, no idea what it means.
Blue, of course I wouldn't know any of it.
@Cerberus It's stupid is what it is.
So I agree with you.
@Robusto Yes.
20:01
@Cerberus Spoiler
@Cerberus I can't tell who is doing the adopting, or if I can, whose grandson is being adopted.
@Robusto Oh, OK. And SPOILER.
@Mitch Yeah, should be "upon whom she prevailed" or "whom she prevailed upon" ...
@Cerberus Yes. A travesty indeed.
And not a pretty one.
@Mitch Because of the lack of upon?
@Cerberus yeah makes no sense
20:07
@Robusto Thank you, that was also my first thought.
They were really running out of names huh. Surprising given that for a time everyone and their dog were Julius Caesar
Silly, isn't it.
@Robusto I'd given up on Connections long ago. I'm not even familiar with my own culture's pop
20:37
Google Maps.
I kinda suspect he changed the name so that seeing who used the new name would serve as some sort of institutional loyalty test.
I assume that Hudson Bay will become the Bay of America post-annexation.
20:58
@alphabet Quite possibly.
21:15
#WhenTaken #351 (12.02.2025)

I scored 899/1000🏆

1️⃣📍1.8K km - 🗓️13 yrs - 🥈130/200
2️⃣📍476 m - 🗓️6 yrs - 🥇193/200
3️⃣📍292 m - 🗓️2 yrs - 🥇198/200
4️⃣📍384 km - 🗓️0 yrs - 🥇188/200
5️⃣📍267 km - 🗓️1 yrs - 🥇190/200

https://whentaken.com
SIGALDRY
> He sat and sang a melody
his errantry a-tarrying;
he begged a pretty butterfly
that fluttered by to marry him.

She laughed at him, deluded him,
eluded him unpitying;
so long he studied wizardry
and sigaldry and smithying.
21:36
@Cerberus well that fixes 'prevail' even though 'upon' could easily be understood. It still doesn't account for who is getting a new step grandson or if it is perfectly logical, it doesn't make real world sense.
It says to me that Julia Maesa has grandson, Elagabalus, who became emperor. She (that is Julia Maesa) prevailed upon Elagabalus to adopt another grandson, which is to say that Elagabalus already had adopted a grandson and she wants hin to adopt another. But, if I remember correctly, Elagabalus was only emperor for a short time in his late teens, so it would be strange to adopt anybody at that age. But it would be extra strange to adopt a grandchild because...
1) one only adopts children, how does adopting someone to be a grandchild even work?
2) presumably for the adoption of someone to be a grandchild to even make sense, there would need to be children first (adopted or not, let's not quibble when bigger things are wrong). And as mentioned alread, Elagabalus was too young to have children older than infants.
I guess if you're emperor you can call things however you like, logic or not.
22:02
Wordle 1,334 3/6

🟨🟨⬛⬛⬛
🟨🟩🟨🟨⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
22:22
@jlliagre Statistical tie?
@Robusto Too close to call :-)
Strands #346
“Don't stop believin'”
🔵🔵🔵🔵
🔵🟡🔵🔵
🔵
Wordle 1 334 3/6

🟨⬛🟨⬛⬛
⬛🟨⬛🟨🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Daily Octordle #1115
7️⃣🕛
8️⃣4️⃣
5️⃣🕚
🔟6️⃣
Score: 63
Daily Sequence Octordle #1115
4️⃣5️⃣
6️⃣7️⃣
8️⃣9️⃣
🔟🕚
Score: 60
22:47
Connections
Puzzle #612
🟪🟪🟪🟦
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟪🟪🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟦🟦
Daily Extreme Octordle #1115
6️⃣8️⃣
4️⃣🕛
🔟7️⃣
🕚🟥
Score: 71
Connections
Puzzle #612
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟪🟪🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟦🟦
At least nicely symmetrical.
Hah quite a feat!
@MetaEd I hope you don't mind that I find this comforting.
The blue and purple in yours and Jlliagre's towers are uncannily similar.

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