@Gigili If you can speak English, French and Spanish you stand a really good chance of being able to communicate in most of the world.

Even just English and Spanish.

As for Arabic, as an American I would not go to a country in the Arab world. Too easy to wind up at the wrong end of an AK-47.

Then again, there's the question of what Arabic dialect do you learn?

@Færd you do realize the footage is sped up, right? :-D

@Robusto that's the thing. I always find such graphs not just hugely unhelpful, but hugely misleading.

Good luck being from Texas and trying to understand someone from Newcastle. Or being from Canberra and trying to understand someone from Baltimore.

Yet the graph lumps all these people together.

You might as well lump together English and Swedish with Swiss German, then.

What is even the point.

Half of the Chinese pie can't even understand the other half.

And for some of the pies like Italian or Arabic, every single person in there speaks a totally different language from every single other person in there.

Only for the French, Japanese, and Russian pies can you claim any kind of mutual intelligibility within.

And only the Russian pie can actually be extended. To all of Slavic. Because all of those are mutually intelligible to a frankly obscene degree.

Someone from Sofia will have less trouble understanding someone from Warsaw than a Socal will have trying to understand a Geordie.

And now that tchrist is here, he can weigh in on the mutual intelligibility between Catalan and Cuban.

That's beautiful. Except that it spells Nazis with an apostrophe. That is hideous.

@RegDwigнt Yeah. Actually that was my passive-aggressive way of expressing jealousy. It's awesome that their public transport relies so heavily on bikes.

I'm even more triggered now to pay a visit to frustrate them by my less-than-excellent biking skills.

@Gigili Duolingo courses are all introductory ones. A typical Iranian can either use the site in English to take an introductory course in other languages (of which French happens to be the most popular) or not use the site at all (unless they can use it in Arabic etc, but those folks are a relative minority).

@Robusto Though there are areas that you would be wise to steer clear of, I think you would be safe travelling in much of the Arab world, even as an American. The degree to which you'd feel welcome wiould indeed vary.

On the other hand, I've heard a number of Americans say they found Iran one of the most "pro-American" countries they visited. I'm happy that it's not the other way around, but it's hard to explain. It's kept me thinking.

They meant the people, obviously.

Should've said "private transport" here.

@Robusto Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, UAE are accessible. For the rest, most anybody in the world would have similar qualms to yours.

@Gigili I guess they find it classy? That, and whenever you learn a language close to English, they just match up so well together.

Language learning is unfortunately nothing more than a tool to show off for most people.

@Gigili That's what I figured. But French does seem like a strange 2nd. Could be, as @Færd alludes, that English is really popular in school and not French, so Duolingo is a good easy cheap way to learn French outside of school.

@M.A.R. Also a requirement for many international jobs.

@Mitch Oh I'm sorry, I thought for a moment you were implying the foreign language courses in the school spark interest in said language

@Mitch That covers . . . 0.01% of the cases or something similar.

@M.A.R. I suppose not. Languages in school are more imposed (but I suspect that English is on the top for desire to learn most everywhere nowadays in order to understand Taylor Swift lyrics).

Eminem, most likely. But that's my crowd.

Yeah, there sure is interest in learning English.

Few see it through, and even fewer do it for the language's sake

So what I was getting at is that French, as on a lesser tier than English nowadays, might be the most desired 2nd place if English weren't considered (because it is already taught in school so why bother with Duolingo. Kids aren't bothering with Duolingo, it's mostly only used by post school adults.

@M.A.R. He's so old school. Lil Uzi Vert is more up to date.

I'm very very slowly learning German, since a lot of the academic work in my field is going to be from ze Germans.

@M.A.R. Most people around the world are multilingual, but only out of necessity.

@M.A.R. How did you learn English so well?

School study? Or immersion?

So well? I dunno about that. But I guess I started at an early age.

Or Michael Bay movies?

@Mitch Do I sound like some oneliner spewing moron?

@M.A.R. I just watched...er.. tried to watch 6 Underground.

Wait.

and oneliner spewing was exactly all it was.

@Mitch headdesk

also shooting people dead constantly.

Lots of flying pieces.

It was awful.

We can be friends.

I mean the oneliners were so predictable.

"I'll be back"

Yes.

they used that too

There was some recognition (meta humor) that the characters were over using quotes from other movies.

but that was just dumb.

Ha, love the reviews. Critics are oddly verbose when it comes to him.

> It's like someone is repeatedly poking you in the parts of your brain that register mere sensation, and keeps hammering away until a line of drool drops from your downturned lip.

@M.A.R. haha yeah. first review on google. I saw that too.

but very high ratings by...

normal people?

non critics?

what ever those people are called

I find Rolling stone is pretty fair in their reviews of movies, BTW.

I'll assume that you love Michael Bay movies.

Sometimes too lenient, but if there are mixed reviews, I check out what, say, Peter Travers has to say about the movie.

@Mitch Whaaaaaa

I thought the first Transformers had some funny dialog.

I'd be damned.

I don't even remember

but I have a hard time watching them. They hurt my eyes. Literally. I have to rub my eyes a lot because of all the flying pieces. It's like a Sudoku game but the screen is moving all the pieces everywhere.

All I remember is transformer public nudity when Bumblebee took a piss on, Turturro's face or something.

Kids have no shame.

@M.A.R. When Shia The Beef's mom comes into his room.

@Mitch I didn't have any problem with them until I got older.

Right now, up until the first scene of the final Los Angeles? Chicago? Whatever fights I'm okay with the third movie, for example

For such an explosive director though, I find myself bored halfway through the final fight scenes.

I'm like, "whatever Megatron, just kill the bastard and then yourself with that very thing you want".

Oh, this puts a different spin on it. David Fincher style

Now that's a movie directooor!

@Gigili twitter.com/iRan_Rcommunity/status/1211667811031867392

I don't know if you have access to twitter, but it's asking about R and stats things there.

@M.A.R. Exactly. It's strangely boring. You just get habituated to all the stuff flying around the screen.

@Mitch Well, the flying stuff, that's a different matter.

Also, I find the huge machines using head punching somehow the silliest anthropomorphism.

I think I remember a critic call it "movement porn". And it's not remotely restricted to Bay movies. Half kid movies these days do it.

Moving around energetically but nonsensically.

Not to drive the plot, not to make you laugh or cry, it's just there. Biggest examples: Hotel Transylvania, The Grinch (the animated one)

Hmm, Garfield, even.

@M.A.R. Like K-pop dancers

It just kinda hypnotizes you. You're looking at something but you won't be able to say what.

My eyes are getting tired just thinking of it.

But, anyway, what I wanted to say about the final fight is you find it extremely boring because you don't care about anyone.

Everyone else is a picture on the screen, and Sam's character is as deep as a stream.

Whereas in the John Wick series, where the body count is best expressed in splattering head shots per second, you totally care about JW. And his dog. And his allies. and his fighting dog allies.

When I think about him the only thing I remember is awkward teenage talk

@Mitch Not too much, but yeah, definitely

Mostly the dogs.

Anyway, did you know Denis Villeneuve won the director of the decade award or something.

I hope I didn't imagine that and there is such an award.

That was last year maybe?

For L'Artiste?

I dunno

@Mitch What

Have you watched Prisoners? I find it his best picture yet, alongside Blade Runner 2049.

IMDB mentions Arrival which I think won best picture

His movies kinda entrance you. It's kinda hypnotic, but in another way, and you enjoy every moment of it. But it requires that you pay attention to the movie

@M.A.R. I have not. I don't think I recognize it (reading the plot summary on IMDB)

Pretty powerful drama, with a slow-ish buildup.

Arrival was good (even if it totally ruins Sapir-Whorf (but let's blame that on the original story))

And for a shooty movie, I liked Sicario a lot. @RegDwigнt would like that too because Emily Blunt.

And this, Swede, I think, guy composes the score for the movie, that makes it kinda . . . ambient. Enchanting

@Mitch Oof, 10/10.

Also gonna check out Parasite as soon as I can.

Koreans make some good movies when they want to

Huh. He did Incendies. I have mixed feelings about that.

@M.A.R. It's pretty good.

There's a scene involving a toilet.

@Mitch SPOILERS

How can you sleep at night!

@M.A.R. Saying it's good is not much of a spoiler.

Hey I'm using your humor against you

Saying there's a good scene with a toilet is not much of a spoiler.

I mean, don't all good movies have a good toilet scene in them?

It's what you do with a toilet that makes a movie great.

Well, now that sentence exists in the universe

Let that be my epitaph.

@Færd It only takes one who doesn't respond well.

@M.A.R. I sleep like a baby.

So you mean not at all

I wake up and scream every five minutes.

Jinx

In between kicking adults in the stomach.

I don't have a Coke for you.

So you'll have to settle for the idea of a cold refreshing coca-cola in an ice-cold can.

@Mitch Doctor Pepsi.

Diabetes in a can

It seems strange that something as wonderful as glucose can cause problems.

Fat and cholesterol and salt, that makes sense.

@Mitch inorite. 11/10.

And yes Arrival. Very good.

Also, leave glucose alone. Glucose is perfectly fine, and so is fructose. The whole point is that we don't ever consume any of those anymore. We all shovel saccharose into us instead. And that shit is just evil.

You can't eat twenty BigMacs, get a heart attack, and then blame it on the olive oil.

@RegDwigнt: I was just listening to music and woolgathering about it, and something I've thought about for some time popped into my head. I think there are certain "character traits" (I'll call them) for instrumentalists that are similar to national traits that citizens of nations buy into.

Flutists buy into the idea of trills and fluff and sixteenth-note runs with a rest on the downbeat, trombonists flaunt their pedal tones, bassists are inured to their !-V-!, strings consume spiccato like spaghetti, percussionists strut and fret their 15 seconds of climax and then are heard no more.

And these are as characteristic as Linzer torte mit schlag to the Austrian, wine and argument to the French, vodka and winter to the Russian, running and laughter to a Kenyan, gun culture and country music to a redneck ... and so on. These things define cultures. So do the limitations of instruments define cultural characteristics for musicians.

Anyway, just some idle, wine-flown thoughts for the end of 2019.

Bassoons are OK with farting. So are tubas. They are the Limburger cheese of the orchestra.

Oboists have too much air, flutists never enough.

And conductors drink it all in.

And because I can't understand why a K-pop group would want to cover the Ronettes:

I guess those would be the "Samuel" Barberettes. Or something.

Their version simply doesn't have the rawness and funk of the original.

Also, no Phil Spector "wall of sound" ...

Also, what about the hand-clapping? Ain't ya all excited enough to clap?

Get off my fuckin' lawn, ya K-pop kewties.

@Robusto I was just listening to fireworks and pondering what a misguided alien might ponder that happened across this rock today of all days, observing this madness from low orbit.

Like, why even fire fire into the skies. Why not paint all our rivers green, say. Or morris dance around a baobab.

But yeah. About your thing. I wonder how much about those character traits is inate and how much is acquired through years of study. How many of them violinists would be much happier playing a French horn, it's just that the thought of trying never crossed their mind.

"Du bist, was Du ißt", they say in German.

Maybe you also become what you play.

I wouldn't know, myself. My attention span is that of my two-year old younger godson. The moment I play three notes on any instrument, I am fully satisfied with myself and go play three notes on something else instead.

Happy New Year.