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00:05
@jlliagre Haha not at all!
Oh, actually, yes.
D'oh.
Mine was at a viewing distance :-)
Swimming even
At a viewing distance from the border?
Surely, at least some parts of it. I've never been there though.
00:23
Please, no spoilers!
I will get that one tomorrow morning.
You won't hehe.
And that's far from a spoiler, knowing where it is not doesn't help that much...
A little bit.
But by no means enough.
OK, so what you were saying was just comedy? I'm OK with that.
The French-Dutch border is known as Belgium.
00:27
@RobustosupportsUkraine No, but the place is comedy.
@jlliagre So the Sun King felt, yes.
And the Vienna Congress.
@jlliagre Which has been the Road to Ruin for France twice in the 20th century.
Not to mention for Belgium.
The more important question is: How did France get to be Françe and not Frank or Franke? Frankly, I would like a frank answer on that.
Francia, (Latin: ''France'') also called the Kingdom of the Franks (Latin: Regnum Francorum), Frankish Kingdom, Frankland or Frankish Empire, was the largest post-Roman barbarian kingdom in Western Europe. It was ruled by the Franks during Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. After the Treaty of Verdun in 843, West Francia became the predecessor of France, and East Francia became that of Germany. Francia was among the last surviving Germanic kingdoms from the Migration Period era before its partition in 843. The core Frankish territories inside the former Western Roman Empire were close to...
Wouldn't Francia have been pronounced Frankia?
00:33
In classical Latin, yes.
But I believe that, pace Jlliagre, Mediaeval Franks did not speak that.
We still pronounce a /k/ in a few words like say Franco-belge, Francophonie...
Or your former currency.
Because those are before an o.
@RobustosupportsUkraine That c is not pronounced at all, though.
It is before a vowel.
You mean the franc, right?
Yes, classical latin C /k/ was already pronounced /s/ before E and I in vulgar Latin I guess.
We never pronounce that C in Franc indeed.
I think late Vulgar, probably.
This letter is only there to confuse non-native speakers.
So the hard c is not pronounced in "J'ai un franc avec deux centimes"?
@jlliagre Plenty of that going around.
It's just /frã/.
00:46
Never. The liaison rules are designed to confuse even further those who dare insisting.
OK. So I pronounced it wrong when I was there. No surprise.
By the way, everyone always talks about how rude the French are, but I never found them anything but pleasant, even when I was butchering their language.
I think they appreciated that I didn't automatically assume everyone spoke English.
Same here.
Yes. well, sometimes French people are rude, but they aren't specifically rude with foreigners, just rude with everyone... Sometimes, especially in stores, vendors are rude because they wrongly believe the foreign visitors are rude as they do not behave the way they expect. But the vast majority are just normal people.
Yeah, when I went into a shop the personnel couldn't have been more solicitous of my good will.
Only in Russia did I find people unpleasant.
But I haven't been to any other country in Eastern Europe.
00:54
I've never been to Russia.
Never had any desire to go, either.
Petersburg was nice to look at.
The Hermitage.
That would be the only thing I'd like to see.
The city has nice, golden spires.
In France, the "secret" is often simply to say bonjour when entering and au revoir when leaving.
I always said bonjour.
00:55
Yes, of course.
Sure, I mean those who complain probably asked for something without greetings and didn't get the best experience.
I had French clients in the '90s, and had to go to Paris for business. I observed the politesse, but they all spoke English to me anyway, which was good. Still, I made it a point to say bonjour, comment ça va, etc.
There is a lot to like about the architecture of Petersburg.
Why does that say "Image not found" when I can click on it and see it?
00:59
For which one?
Websites can have weird ways to block embedding.
I guess.
I refreshed the page, and now it says "user image" with a broken icon.
Fixed.
NOW I see it.
What did you do to fix it?
01:00
I've taken a screenshot and uploaded it to Imgur.
And posted the Imgur link instead.
Ah.
We are nothing here if not resourceful.
It's what I always do when images won't load here.
I take screen shots and save them to my drive, then upload that.
I use Share X.
Automates all that.
I press control-printscreen, drag a rectangle, and, voilà, the Imgur link is on my clipboard.
01:06
I press control-win-printscreen in case I want to edit the screenshot before uploading, e.g. by adding marks or pixellation.
I use the snipping tool or Snip-n-Sketch.
I don't know those.
Can they do the same thing?
They're built in to Windows
By the way, I am totally waiting before installing Windows 11 until they fix it up to my expectations.
Rephrase: Up to my aspirations for it. It's already lived up to my expectations.
01:19
Yes, better wait.
I think they actually force you to group taskbar windows now?
Such a nightmare.
There is probably software to work around that. But still.
You shouldn't have to roll your own fixes for their lack of foresight.
This has always been Microsoft's problem, though.
Bring things out of the oven before they're fully cooked.
The release version is usually an alpha, the "now we've fixed everything" version is a beta, and a year or so later they release the actual "release" version.
But they can easily backslide from one version to the next.
Windows 7 was damn near perfect, in my view. Then they threw that under the bus and brought out Windows 8.
And XP was damn good—I don't have to tell you about that—but they shit-canned it for Windows Vista, a horrible abomination that should never have seen the light of day.
I waited several years before adopting Windows 10, and did so only after they threatened Windows 7 users with dropped support. Now I've grown to like it (or it has grown to like me), and I face the future with well-deserved apprehension.
I still hate the new menus.
They are even worse than the old ones.
01:53
This one was doable.
 
2 hours later…
04:16
Ukraine is saying that Russia has stolen away 121,000 Ukrainian children to Russia. I have no words.
2
 
3 hours later…
06:58
@Cerberus I had given up at 318/1000
07:50
#Worldle #78 X/6 (88%)
🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜↖️
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🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜➡️
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https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
Wordle 294 5/6

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Not that difficult.
 
2 hours later…
09:41
 
2 hours later…
12:02
@CowperKettle well if people are arrested for hosting gender reveal parties and holding blank sheets, I'm starting to suspect the content doesn't matter
 
1 hour later…
13:30
#Worldle #78 2/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨↙️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
Wordle 294 3/6

⬜⬜🟩🟨⬜
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Wordle (ES) #93 3/6

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https://wordle.danielfrg.com/
I seem to be getting very lucky today.
Hint on the Worldle: the overall shape is common-ish in a certain ocean region. My first guess was wrong, but if you compare that shape with the correct one, you'll see a resemblance. I got lucky because those were the first among other possibilities.
13:54
Actually, configuration is a better word than shape. The way island chains form there, at least in some cases.
Wördl 294 X/6 🔥0

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wordle.at
Fail on German. I've never heard of this word. It seems pretty rare. The words I would use to describe this term are certainly more common.
14:27
> We wind up with the idea of a generic Africanness that is about as peculiar as the idea of people donning berets, sitting in kilts, quaffing steins of lager, and eating Swedish meatballs while reading “Anna Karenina” and saying they’re celebrating their European heritage.
14:56
Well, is that so peculiar?
I think there is much more variety, and less internal contact, between various African cultures than between European ones.
15:11
> If you’re going to exercise or play sports, drink water before the activity. At regular intervals during the workout, replace your fluids. Make sure to drink water or electrolytes after exercise, too.
I know I should ask this from doctors but most doctors here in small towns no nothing about science.

Basically I need to know "or electrolytes after exercise" what does it mean? What is the source of this electrolytes? Food? Does it mean eat food when you are doing exercise?
@Vikas I think they mean salt.
But I wouldn't pay much attention to whatever any site about fitness or food says.
99.9% are pseudo-scientific.
15:26
@Cerberus Hmm. I'm following this particular blog (and NHS too) since 1 year for basic knowledge about health.
The British National Health Service?
@Cerberus Yeah sometimes it looks like they are just guessing it and don't have facts.
@Cerberus No. This nhs.uk
It just looks similar to Healthline.com
If I were you, I'd only use sources that are authorities unto themselves, like good hospitals or good government health services, or sources that truly refer to scientific sources for all their claims.
@Cerberus Well I follow them because they belong to USA/UK which is far better than Indian blogs :D
@Vikas That is the British National Health Service.
@Vikas What blog?
15:29
@Cerberus Of course. So if I need to cross check something, I read on CDC too
I don't know CDC.
@Cerberus There's no particular. I mean random health blogs/websites and youtube channels.
@Cerberus Really?
@Vikas OK I'd skip those...
Yeah
@Cerberus Oh. Is it government website?
The About page says: The NHS website for England (www.nhs.uk) is the UK's biggest health website, with more than 50 million visits every month.
@Vikas Yeah, it is national health service of Britain.
The National Health Service (NHS) is the umbrella term for the publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom (UK). Since 1948, they have been funded out of general taxation. There are three systems which are referred to using the "NHS" name (the NHS in England, NHS Scotland and NHS Wales). Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland was created separately and is often locally referred to as "the NHS". The four systems were established in 1948 as part of major social reforms following the Second World War. The founding principles were that services should be comprehensive, universal and...
15:42
@Cerberus Great. I would now prefer it over healthline.com
You should.
Although the NHS site is probably so big that there is a chance that they allow some non-scientific person to post a weblog somewhere on the site.
@Vikas Ahh OK, that is fine too.
@Cerberus Yeah. I think it is too advanced though.
I have seen some stuff on the site of the Voedingscentrum, the Dutch government website on nutritional advice, that was nonsense. So be warned.
15:45
Yeah. But I don't take them too seriously.
I use these to basically verify what my neighbors or parents or even doctors say.
Heh.
@Cerberus Is it pronounced like this? youtube.com/watch?v=GW9LxMJbIe8
Are you comparing size?
Yeah it's so big.
@Vikas Yes.
Lovely video.
@CowperKettle America is actually quite homogeneous, though.
The original population mostly died, and it was quickly and recently repopulated by Europeans.
And as a single state, in modern times, so with lots of communication and exchanges between the different parts. That makes a society homogeneous.
Mar 30 at 17:55, by Vikas
But usually they are not long lasting. 30 minutes or 1 hour max. And sometimes 5-6 hours maybe once every 2-3 months.
Today is the day. 3rd long power cut in single day. Frustrating
@Vikas Poor you!
Do you have a generator?
15:58
@CowperKettle Is it deliberately done?
@CowperKettle Do you think something like that is also reflected in polls regarding the war?
@Cerberus Invertor and 2 batteries. Those help with room lights and 2-3 ceiling fans for one night at least.
Many Russians seem to tell pollsters that they support the war, but could that be just because they don't to give their true opinion to the polling agency?
Levada's polls?
I think they are phone polls?
So people will just say, I refuse to take part?
Exactly, I would be too afraid to answer truthfully.
I don't want to be on some list.
Even if it is really Levada, who knows how it is registered. Or who listens in.
Makes sense.
Can they track our SE chat?
So you, too, expect the polls not to reflect the true opinion of the population that well any more?
Lovely.
16:08
@Vikas What you see is what you get: /ˈɑnɑðeˈɑrmɑs/
@Vikas Sure! This is the proximal deictic determiner and pronoun.
@CowperKettle Must be funny. What does it mean?
She is so cubanita, eating up all her terminal -s's. :)
@Vikas Try the closed captioning. :)
Yes, Donald Trump has proven himself to be "dirt no deterred now", just as it said in 2012.
@tchrist Yeah I turned on CC
But don't know what it means
16:17
It doesn't.
It means some program is really awful.
Ok
Also: awfully ironic.
@CowperKettle Good one.
That's the point of having it repeated. It's hilarious.
@CowperKettle Is Special Humanitarian Operation!
Must operate on special humans.
@Vikas It's an algorithm-mangled machine-based pronunciation whose result is so messed up it can be heard as a bunch of amusing words instead of what it should have been. The closed captioning certainly thought so, at least.
@CowperKettle How many arrests?
@tchrist Ah. I had really assumed someone took time and recorded for each word.
16:27
Delusionists.
Oh dear, Alexander Boris Stanlevich has come down with a sudden irrepressible urge to nosh on Chicken Kiev!
@CowperKettle This reminds me of what is now the rather many centuries of longing for the long lost lusiophonic golden age of exploration and glory and empire by the Portuguese. The whole saudade thing. Except that some Russians think they can actually regain it.
I don't know: with the rapid growth of green energy, the demand for fossil fuels should decrease substantially in the intermediate future.
16:54
Well, I think Russia will lose lots of income over the next couple of years, because Europe will stop buying Russian energy as fast as possible.
It has already begun.
China doesn't want to become dependent on Russian gas either, in the meantime.
China has learned the same lesson that Europe has from this war.
 
1 hour later…
18:03
Hmm how so?
It can be confusing, the difference between null and undefined and NaN and an empty string and 0...
@tchrist point well taken...
but...
Anna Karenina is part of 'European' culture
Indeed.
likewise beer (other countries making it are making the European version)
Perhaps the Swahili cultural region could be compared to Europe?
and Swedish meatballs...
Ikea -is- Europe!
@Cerberus Kenya and Tanzania ... are more like... Germay?
18:07
I don't know enough about those places.
North and south differences but that's about it?
Swahili is a big lingua franca for east Africa, but as a native language it's mostly just Tanzania and Kenya
From the little I am aware of I'd compare Europe to West Africa (as far as diversity goes)
cultural and language diversity
maybe West Africa is a little more diverse linguistically
Europe seems kind of culturally... not so diverse any more
I guess the British leaving helped with that
The whole russian thing is kind of sad (for so many reasons) but They used to be a big part of European culture and now because of one guy (and a lot of supporters) Russia is going to be...
There's a word for it...
marginalized?
ignored?
not really
but anathematized?
pariahized?
demonized.
Walking down the street, "Oh where are you from?!", "Russia", "Oh. Uh. contorted face I have to go. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have diarrhea."
I mean if you vomited, that would be like an insult.
Russia has been in this position for most of its modern history.
Oh.
well
Even moreso now?
That is, in 1800 the Russian threat was also feared, though it was probably less justified than later.
And also during the Soviet Union.
Is that why Napoleon invaded?
18:17
And now again.
Not specifically, I think Napoleon wanted to just invade everybody.
Well, say what you will about Napoleon, but he was very ambitious.
He wanted to be... who was he trying to emulate? Caesar?
I'm sure I could read a book to find that out, or go back i life to when I was 13 yrs old and ask myself. I'm pretty sure I knew things like that then.
Yeah I think he liked to imitate empires of the past.
As many people did.
I mean, those empires were pretty cool sounding
Moscow, third Rome (Russian: Москва — Третий Рим, romanized: Moskva — Tretiy Rim) is a theological and political concept asserting that Moscow is the successor of the Roman Empire, representing a "third Rome" in succession to the first Rome (Rome itself, capital of Ancient Rome) and the second Rome (Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire). == Concept == "Moscow, Third Rome" is a theological and a political concept which was formulated in the 15th–16th centuries in the Tsardom of Rus.In this concept, three interrelated and interpenetrating fields of ideas can be found:...
You never hear about the non-empires
historical bias of simplicity
18:21
> Third Reich, official Nazi designation for the regime in Germany from January 1933 to May 1945, as the presumed successor of the medieval and early modern Holy Roman Empire of 800 to 1806 (the First Reich) and the German Empire of 1871 to 1918 (the Second Reich).
it's so much easier to draw one boundary, than it is to draw a whole bunch
But one exception (that proves the rule) I keep seeing in the history of Germany one map of a thousand prinicpalities and towns, and I hardly ever see the map of the HRE.
@Cerberus No slam on Napoleon but that's not France. Oh wait, after 1806 for a few years parts of that -were- France.
I learn so much here
The Consulate (French: Le Consulat) was the top-level Government of France from the fall of the Directory in the coup of 18 Brumaire on 10 November 1799 until the start of the Napoleonic Empire on 18 May 1804. By extension, the term The Consulate also refers to this period of French history. During this period, Napoleon Bonaparte, as First Consul (Premier consul), established himself as the head of a more authoritarian, autocratic, and centralized republican government in France while not declaring himself sole ruler. Due to the long-lasting institutions established during these years, Robert B...
So, in more than one way, Nappie imitated Caesar...
@Cerberus that sounds a little nutty, especially given that the Roman Empire came only as close as modern Romania to Russia
It was not so much about geography as about being the spiritual successor.
Also in that Moscow saw itself as the new centre of orthodox Christianity after Constantinople.
@Cerberus yeah. but the French revolutionary triumvirate was set up ... before Napoleon?
18:28
Was it a triumvirate?
@Cerberus Well, if you can use spiritual successorship as any kind of legitimacy, then I am King of the World.
@Cerberus Wasn't there something like that?
> Nevertheless, by the spring of 1791, Duport and his two close associates, Antoine Barnave and Alexandre, comte de Lameth—the “triumvirate”—felt that further democratic reforms would endanger the monarchy and private property.
Apparently so!
@Mitch So you are!
yes and I think Napoleon being part of that confirmed their fears
And I think Robespierre and Saint-Just were also in some sort of triumvirate?
@Cerberus Thanks! That's the kind of support I welcome
18:30
As you would.
All my supporters will reap the benefits
And my detractors...
well
I mean them no harm
not directly at least
@Cerberus "Nappie"? That sounds like a schoolyard insult.
shrugs
"Boney" also.
Kids can be so cruel
I mean you could trace a lot of Napoleon's ambition back to such taunts.
 
1 hour later…
19:56
@Cerberus So was your first Worldle try yesterday close to the French-Dutch border?
@jlliagre It was!
Anguilla?
No, farther away.
By the way, it is still today's puzzle!
Oh yes
Although I don't think it will make any difference for anyone.
Because it is basically unguessable.
20:01
Well, Robusto got it at the second try, I'm amazed. I didn't even know the name of this country.
I vaguely knew the name, but that was all.
Well, and the ocean it was in.
Actually, I know a place with that name and I've been there, but that's not a country.
I see.
I used to live not that far from here, went for vacation there when a kid.
I see there are many places by that name on Wikipaedia.
20:13
I used to live in the town where someone you mentioned recently was born.
Hmm could be many people!
Praesumably not near the Dutch-French border.
Not that second place.
Close to the French - Italian border.
20:36
I do not like the sight of this.
Second round.
A poll reported that 28 % of electors who told they were going to vote tomorrow do not know yet who they will vote for. Maybe because there are 12 candidates.
I think we also have lots of people who only decide on the very day of the election.
20:56
There are lots of people who are idiots just not thinking
Many people hesitate because they have a preference for a candidate, but as they see in polls that candidate has no chance to pass to the second round, they consider to vote directly for someone who has a chance to be there. We call it the vote utile.
strategic voting
or rather impact voting, they want to vote for somebody who will win
Then there are people who vote in favor of someone, but other who vote for anyone provided he/she is not the one they do not want to see as a president.
not according to their ... wishes/ideas/platform
@jlliagre spiteful voting
21:49
SUTOM #92 4/6

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🟥🟥🟡🟦🟡🟡🟦
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🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥

https://sutom.nocle.fr
 
2 hours later…
23:20
@Vikas I'm going to mention something you said because it's a very common error in English learners because of an oddity about English that you wouldn't expect. When you said "I'm following this particular blog since 1 year", that was not grammatical. It should have been "I've been following this particular blog for a year." You can't say "I'm VERBing since TIME" in English.
It must be "I've been VERBing". And then "since one year" is also not grammatical. It should be "for a year" or "for the past year" or "ever since my friend told me about it a year ago" etc.
I can't point to any sort of "logic" by which one could infer these things. It's just how we say them.
The progressive really needs perfect as well for this sort of thing. You can never say you "are" working somewhere since last week. You have to say that you HAVE BEEN working somewhere since last week. It's strange. I've never heard of any other language that does this rather strange thing.
And "since one year" just isn't English.
People can figure out what you mean. It just isn't something a native speaker would ever produce.
I'm following this particular blog and I started doing it one year ago.
Yes.
That's ok, too.
@tchrist I can: since is followed by a time post quod, for by a time per quod.
Probably better, even.
As to the perfect: whenever some state of affairs began in the past and is still relevant, you normally use the present perfect.
23:29
"This is the first time I've ever heard that!"
Another odd construct that wants a perfect.
Not a simple present or a simple past.
English has all these weird things it does with aspects that are unlike any other Germanic language. And the Romance languages never do those either. In both you can use simple present (not progressive or perfect) or simple past (not past perfect or present perfect) for everyday things that English tosses aspects at.
It's been hypothesized that at least some of that is from contact with the Celtic languages of Britain and Ireland long, long ago. I haven't studied the theory though.
Apparently Irish/Gaelic has some of those oddities. Not sure about British/Welsh.
@Cerberus You might want to translate the Latin for the Hindians.
But you're right.
A point in time is quite different from a duration.
23:45
@tchrist I think "this is the first time" triggers the thought of a period up to now.
I've heard various oddities of English explained as possibly Celtic, like the progressive/continuous.

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