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00:00 - 16:0016:00 - 00:00

16:00
@CowperKettle Wow, he's Kenyan. I'm shocked.
@Robusto You thought he was from the USA?
@CowperKettle Kenyans win all the medium-to-long-distance races these days.
> Bill Gates funnels $20 billion to foundation and plans to drop off list of wealthiest people
@Mitch Yes, of course Egypt counts. And I meant to restrict it to Africans who are alive. Though that's not an absolute bar. Just a way to prevent someone saying Cleopatra, for example.
@Vikas He'll still live in a mansion and have servants and whatever the fuck else he wants.
16:01
Actually, I'd forgotten about Egypt. In which case I know Anwar Sadat's name. Yay.
@Vikas If he "only" had a billion dollars (which he doesn't), that would still be a staggeringly enormous sum of money.
Oops, Sadat is dead. Never mind.
People forget how much money a billion dollars really is. Especially if one happens to be living in a not expensive country.
@Vikas I like Gates' fight with wide-spread diseases in Africa.
I heard about his campaign against malaria, if I recall correctly.
@CowperKettle There is lots of malaria in India. And in other places too, I'm sure.
@FaheemMitha "which he doesn't"?
@Vikas Perhaps poorly phased. I meant to say that he doesn't have only a billion dollars. Obviously, he has much more.
> A new vaccine against malaria showed promising preliminary results in a large trial in four African countries, boosting hopes that an additional tool may soon be available to help control the deadly disease. science.org/content/article/…
16:06
@CowperKettle Interesting.
A malaria vaccine would be nice.
It would be a breakthrough
@FaheemMitha Yeah.
@FaheemMitha I don't know if that is possible. Can parasites be vaccinated against?
@CowperKettle Yeah it's great that he's trying to fight.
@Robusto No idea. I don't know anything about malaria except that it still kills a lot of people. People around me regularly get it. But I don't know anyone who died from it.
In practice it doesn't seem to be that dangerous. People take some medication and recover soon enough. Of course, in India people might have some immunity to it.
16:12
@FaheemMitha Isn't dengue more dangerous? I fear dengue the most. Waiting for November to pass soon.
My understanding is that malaria is caused by a parasite that attacks red blood cells.
And it might kill someone who was already in ill health.
@Vikas I don't know. They are both pretty bad. I'm not a doctor.
I probably got Malaria once.
I know people locally who have had both.
Sorry, I meant to say that I know people who contracted Malaria, and people who contracted Dengue. I wasn't suggested that the same person got both.
My father has a myth that dengue mosquito won't bite him.
It's just a matter of time and chance.
You can get dengue four times but most I've seen is getting only once. That shows it's dangerous but rare.
16:16
I heard an audiobook with a nice description of the Guinea worm disease
And I read some recent data, and it turns, out that simple measures have radically decreased incidence in the recent years.
@CowperKettle That's a strange way to put that.
Charles Kerry, "The Plague Cycle"
> The plan involved putting two dozen Spanish orphans on a ship. Right before they left for the colonies, a doctor would give two of them cowpox.
@FaheemMitha Northern Africa tends to be included more in news about the middle east rather than sub-Saharan Africa, that's why it might make a difference (I can rattle off leaders from Egypt Nasser, Sadat, Mubarak, Morsi, Sisi, (only the last two alive) but can't do that for anywhere else in Africa... wiat... South Africa - Botha, Mandela, Zuma, uh... that other guy after Mandela but before Zuma... Mbeki! (only those last two alive)
Obama's dad?
Mr. Obama? Does that count?
@Mitch That's impressive. I forgot about Nasser.
Charles Taylor from Liberia, who stands out because he has an exceedingly boring American style name, like a minor character from Jane Austen.
16:25
There was also an African president who considered himself the Emperor of Scotland. I don't recall the name of that murderous psycho.
@FaheemMitha But most of those guys are dead which means they are memorable from repetition.
@CowperKettle Idi Amin
Zuma recently got kicked out, I believe. And I should have remembered Botha who was apartheid era. Wasn't there also some called du Clerk?
@Mitch Thanx!
but most of this is old news, not new news, or current events.
@CowperKettle That's the name of a film. "The Last King of Scotland"?
16:26
I have no idea who's doing what there.
The Last King of Scotland is a 2006 historical drama film directed by Kevin Macdonald from a screenplay by Peter Morgan and Jeremy Brock. Based on Giles Foden's 1998 novel, it depicts the dictatorship of Ugandan President Idi Amin through the perspective of a fictional Scottish doctor. The film stars Forest Whitaker and James McAvoy in these respective roles, with Kerry Washington, Simon McBurney, and Gillian Anderson in supporting roles. The title of the film refers to Amin's claim of being the King of Scotland. A British and German co-production, the film was released in the United States on...
@FaheemMitha Right.
Frederik Willem de Klerk (, Afrikaans: [ˈfriədərək ˈvələm də ˈklɛrk], 18 March 1936 – 11 November 2021) was a South African politician who served as state president of South Africa from 1989 to 1994 and as deputy president from 1994 to 1996 in the democratic government. As South Africa's last head of state from the era of white-minority rule, he and his government dismantled the apartheid system and introduced universal suffrage. Ideologically a conservative and an economic liberal, he led the National Party (NP) from 1989 to 1997. Born in Johannesburg to an influential Afrikaner family, de Klerk...
de Klerk, sorry.
@CowperKettle I watched that. The actor playing the role of Amin was convincingly terrifying.
I remember I was watching it with my mother, and at one point he says to the McAvoy character something like "you're like my own son", and we were both like "oh boy".
I barely know what's going on in Europe except whan something weird is going on. Orban, Orban, Orban is all I hear about... but who is the current king of France?
@Mitch Louis XXXII
16:29
Some food related name... pasta? or little cookies?
@Mitch They don't currently have one. Perhaps they should get one. Then the French tabloids will be happy.
but not the coconut ones?
@Mitch You're drifting.
@Mitch His father was Petit IV.
@FaheemMitha They're happy enough
16:29
Anyway, you did better than me on Africa. I bet you did well at school.
@Mitch How do you know?
@Robusto Now I'm trying to compute the change and its significance 🤪
@Mitch You've forgotten how to make change? Too much credit-card use, no doubt.
@FaheemMitha haha I have no idea. Tabloids make up shit to get sold. I'm sure the French ones aren't above all that.
Macron was the King of France the last time I checked.
@FaheemMitha I graduated, but then so did the other jerks.
16:32
@Mitch I hear the British one just love the Royal Family.
@CowperKettle He has an heir named Circumflex.
Macron kind of sounds like a comic book name. Like a character from Asterix.
@Robusto bites tongue
He should have renamed himself Vercingetorix just for the kicks, and to honor a historical figure.
@CowperKettle Frankly, that is terrible.
16:34
@FaheemMitha holy crap... that's all I hear about from the news... Meghan this, Lilibet that... almost like they actually have some relevance.
It's worse than the Olympics, where they only show when Americans might win a gold, even if it is for some obscure sport that no one ever heard of before.
Like Ice Puck ball
Vladimir Putin had no need to rename himself after Vladimir the Great. He is already Vladimir.
Vladimir I Sviatoslavich or Volodymyr I Sviatoslavych (Old East Slavic: Володимѣръ Свѧтославичь, Volodiměrъ Svętoslavičь; c. 958 – 15 July 1015), also known as Vladimir the Great or Volodymyr the Great, was Prince of Novgorod, Grand Prince of Kiev, and ruler of Kievan Rus' from 980 to 1015.Vladimir's father was Prince Sviatoslav I of Kiev of the Rurikid dynasty. After the death of his father in 972, Vladimir, who was then prince of Novgorod, was forced to flee to Scandinavia in 976 after his brother Yaropolk murdered his other brother Oleg of Drelinia, becoming the sole ruler of Rus'. In Sweden...
@Mitch Lilibet?
These big guys, who should be football players, skate around like sissies on ice and use wooden sticks to push around a ball to put in a tiny net.
@FaheemMitha She's somebody in the English Royal Family... maybe a new one? by birth?
She's no macaroon
@CowperKettle Wait...what -did- the dormouse say?
@Mitch "Feed your head"?
Lilibet Diana Mountbatten-Windsor (born 4 June 2021) is the daughter of Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. She is a granddaughter of King Charles III and is seventh in the line of succession to the British throne. == Birth, family and infancy == Lilibet Diana Mountbatten-Windsor was born at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, California, on 4 June 2021 at 11:40 PDT (18:40 UTC). Her birth along with her name were announced two days later. She is named after her paternal great-grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, who was called "Lilibet" by her family, and...
17 months old.
16:40
She will live to see the 22nd century.
How can she be 7th in line to the throne if Harry and Meghan canceled their subscription?
@CowperKettle We can only hope
because
we most likely won't be able to confirm
Maybe she will even live to see the last season of The Simpsons
You people are way too dilatory for a Monday.
haha.. that thing has gone on forever.
@Mitch 17th months old and with a Wikipedia page. It's a strange world.
16:41
@CowperKettle Nobody gets that old.
and also Futurama could be considered a continuation
@FaheemMitha Aspirations
We should have aspirations to get an earlier web page
Living African citizen: Elon Musk?
@jlliagre Does he really count as African? I guess he was born there.
@FaheemMitha Actually, 34 Wikipedia pages
But I wonder if he is still a SA citizen.
16:43
@FaheemMitha African-American then.
@CowperKettle 34?
@FaheemMitha In 34 languages
@CowperKettle Oh, yes.
@CowperKettle does that count?
4 mins ago, by Robusto
You people are way too dilatory for a Monday.
16:46
Even if they're each separately authored?
I dunno ))
/pkg oops, wrong window.
@Robusto How dare you discuss my leg hair in public
@Mitch Nononono, you're thinking of d[ep]ilatory.
Where -is-MetaEd?
16:50
He's working for Facebook's parent corporation now.
Perhaps he's been doing that all along.
Either that or he takes his job seriously on Mondays.
Like no one else in this room.
@Robusto Sometimes just the possibility of a meeting means you can't do anything serious until afterwards.
uh oh. 2 minutes
Meetings ... they certainly hastened my retirement.
Perhaps we should use the term "M-word" to sanitize them a bit.
the 'm' is anxiety producing enough
cripes.. -really- anxiety producing!
A meeting is like a baseball game that peters out in the 5th inning with nothing decided. Except: no hot dogs, no beer.
After Louis XVI's demise, France suffered a reign-delay.
George Tawlon Manneh Oppong Ousman Weah (; born 1 October 1966) is a Liberian politician and former professional footballer who is serving as the president of Liberia, in office since 2018. Prior to his election to the presidency, Weah served as Senator from Montserrado County. He played as a striker in his prolific 18-year professional football career, which ended in 2003. He is the first African former professional footballer to become a head of state.After beginning his career in his native Liberia, Weah spent 14 years playing for clubs in France, Italy and England. Arsène Wenger first brought...
17:18
@Robusto A short delay (12 years). Then a consul switched his position to emperor, followed by three kings, a president who turn himself into an emperor (a family tradition) and much later among then présidents de la République, a Général.
@ConGovDeIn what is brave about having your full name in display?
@jlliagre I was just punning on rain delay, a situation in the game of baseball when the game is suspended due to inclement weather. But thanks for the info! ;-)
Ah, I was suspecting a pun, but I missed it, thx!
12 years would have been a long rain-delay though!
The internet was slow back then
@jlliagre It wouldn't be noticed in the game of baseball. Which has become sooooo boring.
17:23
@Robusto was it ever more exciting?
When I was a child it was.
That's at least part of the problem maybe?
I'd say handball matches are fun to watch
It was exciting when I coached Little League. But it's hard to get into without the wonderment of children, I suppose, whether directly or vicariously.
Basketball is boring
Not to play. Only to watch.
17:26
Volleyball can be exciting, but rarely. You either need two very strong teams or some underdog situation where the underdogs are outdoing themselvss
WWE was fun to watch, if you can call it a sport
@M.A.R. LOL
Back in the 80s or so
Handball though, you have these short serious dudes jumping around and tossing the ball very intensely
My friends were crazy about it and I hated it.
Well, you're only a bit older than me, so I'd think you're refrring to 2010s WWE
Sure, they suck. I mean come on, who writes the lines for these guys?
@M.A.R. Yes around that time.
It became even more popular here when Indian wrestler debuted in it, in 2007 and 'defeated' The Undertaker.
17:39
@M.A.R. What reality do you live in where basketball is boring but baseball is somehow not?
Say what you will about long-term dictatorships, but at least it makes it much much easier to remember the leader's name. You learn it once, good for decades.
This Charles III though... he's kinda old... I don't see him making it too far
Baseball has never been popular in France (13k players compared to 1.8 million registered soccer players and 680k basket-ball players). The bat itself is to some extent popular among hooligans though.
@M.A.R. You guys are talking about the World Wildlife Enterprise, right?
Like David Attenborough narrating over some bird hopping around to court some other weird bird and mimicking chainsaws with its voice?
Yeah those are great.
@Mitch I like when they talk about the courting displays of birds. The male starts dancing around, holding his wings a certain way, then checks to see if the lady is digging it. "OK, how about this!" he seems to say, and poses again. And keeps posing. And posing. And posing. Until finally she is bored enough to mate with him.
Or a snow leopard pounces on a mountain goat on a steep rocky hillside, but its so steep that they keep falling down hill together, bouncing off rocks but still keeping their feet but barely and then ... wait, what happened?
Did the goat get away? Did the cat keep hold til they stopped?
-That- is drama!
@jlliagre I think @Robusto has it right. When kids are playing it can be fun (mostly just fun for the players) but for professional games it is mind numbing, like you've paid a lot of money to sit with a whole bunch of other people.
@Robusto The strategy works!
 
2 hours later…
19:23
Kadhafi, Bourguiba, Ben Ali, Ben Bella, Boumediene, Bouteflika, Hassan II, Mohammed VI, Leopold-Sédar Senghor, Omar Bongo, Haïlé Sélassié, Bokassa, Amin Dada, Robert Mugabe, Laurent Désiré Kabila, Mandela. Hmm, most of them are dead.
19:33
Elaiosomes (Ancient Greek: ἔλαιον élaion "oil" + σόμα sóma "body") are fleshy structures that are attached to the seeds of many plant species. The elaiosome is rich in lipids and proteins, and may be variously shaped. Many plants have elaiosomes that attract ants, which take the seed to their nest and feed the elaiosome to their larvae. After the larvae have consumed the elaiosome, the ants take the seed to their waste disposal area, which is rich in nutrients from the ant frass and dead bodies, where the seeds germinate. This type of seed dispersal is termed myrmecochory from the Greek "ant"...
Extatosoma tiaratum, commonly known as the spiny leaf insect, the giant prickly stick insect, Macleay's spectre, or the Australian walking stick, is a large species of Australian stick insect endemic to Australia. The species has the Phasmid Study Group number PSG9. == Range == E. tiaratum is native to Queensland and New South Wales but has extralimital distribution as far away as New Guinea. == Description == Female adult E. tiaratum are covered with thorn-like spikes for defense and camouflage. Their long, rounded bodies grow to about 20 cm long. The females are further described as ...
> The outside material of E. tiaratum eggs consists of lipids and other organic compounds that ants identify as food. They carry these eggs to their colony, consume the edible outer portion, and dump the intact eggs into their waste piles.
20:09
> Russia has already lost more people this year than it has in any other year since World War II.
 
2 hours later…
22:10
@jlliagre Nice long list. I recognize Kabila and Mugabe and Qhadafi, but the rest that I don't recognize I can only assume are from former French colonies... Bouteflika sounds familiar... but tne rest have this vague Moroccan or West African sound to them without me recognizing them. And I blame my lack of recognition on US media's inattention.
@jlliagre You left out Idi Amin. He's dead too.
@Mitch You didn't go to the end of the list, I can't believe you don't know Mandela. Most are indeed from former French colonies or similar.
@Robusto I didn't but used to call him Amin Dada.
Ah. Of course.
@jlliagre But why didn't you call him Idi Amin Dada Oumee?
Idi Amin Dada Oumee (, UK also ; c. 1925 – 16 August 2003) was a Ugandan military officer and politician who served as the third president of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. He ruled as a military dictator and is considered one of the most brutal despots in modern world history.Amin was born in Koboko in what is now northwest Uganda to a Kakwa father and Lugbara mother. In 1946, he joined the King's African Rifles (KAR) of the British Colonial Army as a cook. He rose to the rank of lieutenant, taking part in British actions against Somali rebels and then the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya. Uganda gain...
@Robusto Because I wasn't aware of the Oumee ending, he was always called Idi Amin Dada and I assumed, perhaps wrongly, that Idi was his first name. I didn't include several first names in my list.
Hehe, just yanking your chain. ;-)
22:27
Interestingly, outside the king of Morroco (Mohammed VI), I'm unable to name the current chiefs of state of these countries. Outside this list is Georges Weah that I know because he was famous in France as a football player.
22:42
Yeah, put our polluted waste in orbit, great idea!
23:22
@jlliagre oh, I had already listed him further above.
@Mitch Right, my mistake. I misread "the rest that I don't recognize" as "I don't recognize the rest".
Trying to optimize chat is a pain
@FaheemMitha Hmm why is that? Let me try.
> Isabelle dos Santos.
> Zuma.
> Sissi.
> Mohammed of Morocco.
Do I need to give their actual names, or are titles enough? I suspect you need actual names?
You also need to give their social security numbers
There are so many people I can think of whose exact names are at the back of one of my heads, like the president of Ethiopia who won a nobel prize, the foreign minister of Gabon who is of British descent, the young populist semi-ANC leader in South Africa, the female opposition politician in South Africa, etc.
23:35
If they don't have one...sucks to be you
> I think the president of Ruwanda is Kigane?
But I think the spelling is wrong.
Or maybe his name is different still.
See? It's hard
Is it harder than South America or Australia?
Or even Asia?
Relatively harder
How so?
23:38
By number of countries
Not by population
Why is the number of countries important?
Let's say Latin America including the Caribbean, then.
I'll try.
Just play the game man
> Bolsonaro.
> Lula.
> Kirchner.
> Is the president of Mexico Obrador? I think it's not quite that.
Yes
It's super long, Obrador is one part of it, but if you have to use one word then you say Obrador
Bolsonaro jr.
OK.
I think there is a politician Ruggeraath or something in the Dutch colonies, but I think that's not quite it.
> Raul Castro.
> Desi Bouterse.
> Santoki (I think).
23:44
Maduro
Yes!
I know of so many people. But their exact names?
> Duque in Colombia. I think.
It took me ten years to memorize the name "Xi Jinping"
Heh.
I'm kind of stuck.
I think Latin America is about as hard as Africa.
Now Oceania.
> Morrison.
> Key. Or was it Keys? Of New Zealand.
I know what the current NZ prime minister looks like, but I cannot think of her name.
Even though I know quite a bit about her.
> Oh, something like Jacintha Ahern?
Probably not quite correct.
Stuck already.
Even worse than South America.
Is Asia worth doing? That should be easier.
It took me ten days to memorize the name "Liz Truss"
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