Posts by Irony Deficient 1354 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Aug 2008
Modern operating systems tend to use UTF-8, which encodes characters in a single byte rather than UTF-16's two bytes, PTP said,
UTF-8 only encodes characters from U+0000 through U+007F as single bytes (viz preserving the seven-bit ASCII character range as is); other Unicode characters require between two and four bytes when UTF-8-encoded.
… known as dezinformatsiya and maskirovka. Neither term translates well into English […]
The first term, дезинформация, translates quite well into English “disinformation”. The second term, маскировка, is a noun formed from the verb маскировать ; since the -ировать suffix is used to form verbs from loanwords, my guess is that маскировать is a calque of German maskieren, which would make маскировка roughly translatable as English “masking”.
What restrictions does your company place on its potential Perl developer pool? (For example, are the developers required to work onsite once COVID-19 fades away, or to live in a particular geographic region, or a specific timezone? Do the positions require a fixed daily schedule of working hours, or travel, or domain-specific knowledge? How do the pay and benefits compare to similar positions in which other languages are used? &c.)
In your opening comment and in your comment directly above, you yourself have shown that “pass” as a euphemism for “die” is neither functionally meaningless nor ambiguous. (Given the OED examples, I’d describe it as “resprung” rather than “sprung”.) Regarding “pass” as a human unwillingness to face death, it depends — different people grieve in different ways and at different speeds, and if one accepts the Kübler-Ross model, some persist in denial longer than others. On “our” fragility and inability to cope with “the human condition” (was that a euphemism for “mortality”?), it depends upon how you define “we”; there is likely to be some sliver of humanity who does exhibit that fragility and inability to cope.
“Die” is certainly more straightforward and less figurative than “pass”, but in my view, the latter’s alleged prissiness is in the eye of the beholder. Just as some people refer to life as being a journey rather than a destination, other people might extend the analogy to death being a continuation of a soul’s journey towards a spiritual destination.
Regarding its phobicity, fear of dying and death has been around for a long, long time — more prevalent in some cultures and individuals, less prevalent in others. Whether a preference for “pass” over “die” is a sign of such fear reaching the level of an anxiety disorder is a question that might be better addressed by clinical psychologists.
It’s an abhorrent Americanism.
It’s a centuries-old meaning of “pass” that you seem to be unaware of — see definition 2. b. of pass, v. in the OED :
b. Of spiritual destination; esp. in to pass to God, heaven, etc.a 1225 Ancr. R. 330 þet we moten þuruh rudi scheome passen to þe heouene. […] 1859 Tennyson Guinevere 690 She . . past To where beyond these voices there is peace.
“Arse Stream”? There’s a French town with the word “Stream” in its name?
The tour d’Arse can be enjoyed in Chaumont, though.
Since Bitche is etymologically unrelated to “bitch”, Place de Bitche translates as “Bitche Square”, not “Bitch Square”. (Bitche is a francization of German Bitsch, which is also etymologically unrelated to “bitch”.)
Chip wrapper, indeed.
So, no politician for almost 150 years then?
If you believe that only US politicians could refuse money, and if you believe that the two examples above were the only instances of them refusing money (e.g. setting aside two reductions of Congressional salaries during the Great Depression), and if you ignore the second example above of consecutive annual refusals of salary increases by Congress since 2010, then sure — no politician for almost 150 years.
what politician is going to willingly write a law banning people giving them money?
Depending upon how one interprets “giving”, it happens occasionally. For example, in 1871, the pay for a member of the US Congress was $7,500 per annum; in 1874, they reduced their own pay to $5,000 per annum, likely as a reaction to the Panic of 1873. More recently (and less significantly), Congress has voted annually since 2010 to not accept cost of living increases to their pay. Their salaries have thus remained nominally unchanged since 2009, which in 2021 is effectively an 18.5% pay decrease in 2009 dollars through 12 years of inflation.
Politicians generally do not go into politics with tuppence and come out as multi millionaires due to their pay packets.
Generally, no, but it is theoretically possible. For example, with the current (i.e. 2009 level) Congressional pay of $174,000 per annum, a four-term senator or twelve-term representative can gross $4,176,000 over 24 years. If that politician can set aside $84,000 per year from 24 years of pay packets, a USD multimillionaire will emerge.
I’m not an accountant either, but my understanding is:
An unusual (to me) use of an imperial weight unit to describe a volume of liquid, allowing even for left pondian foibles it seems odd as they usually go for quarts, cups or ounces.
Here in Medioleftpondia, US customary units of mass are used for liquids in certain circumstances, e.g. the hundredweight (100 pounds avoirdupois = 45.359237 kg), in which minimum farm prices for raw milk are specified by the US Department of Agriculture.
If the Iranian experience [PDF] is any guide, the answer is yes, even without a roof or dome for cover. (Home satellite dishes are illegal to own in Iran, but nonetheless there are estimated to be several million of them there.)
Here’s a source — a PDF document that includes multiple reports — from the US Department of Agriculture: Foreign Holdings of U.S. Agricultural Land Through December 31, 2019. From the document’s abstract,
Foreign persons held an interest in nearly 35.2 million acres of U.S. agricultural land as of December 31, 2019. This is 2.7 percent of all privately held agricultural land and 1.5 percent of all land in the United States.
If timberland is excluded from consideration as arable land, and gIven that just under half of that agricultural land is timberland, that means that as of 2019-12-31, all non-US persons combined held an interest (where “interest” could even take the form of owing a share in a US corporation) in 1.35% of all privately held cropland and pasture in the US.
According to Report 4 within the document (page 211 of the document, labelled as page 207), Chinese interests (excluding US corporations with Chinese shareholders) own 191,652 acres [77,559 hectares; 37,326 microwaleses] of US agricultural land — either timberland, cropland, or pasture. In comparison, Canadian interests (excluding US corporations with Canadian shareholders) alone own 7,485,081 acres of US agricultural land, an area that is 39 times greater than that owned by Chinese interests. Since the amount of US agricultural land owned by foreign interests (excluding US corporations with foreign shareholders) is 24,891,634 acres, the percentage that is owned by Chinese interests is a mere 0.77% of foreign-owned US agricultural land, let alone 30% of all US arable land.
I was recently reading Alice (either, both?) and noticed that the abbreviation for “cannot”, in modern idiom rendered as “can’t”, is rendered “ca’n’t” throughout. […] As a slight aside, the old form makes the book actually quite hard to read
My current read is Bayard Taylor’s 1870 metre-preserving translation of Goethe’s Faust, and it often (but not always) preserves the spaces in its two-word contractions, e.g. «’T was», “You ’ll”, “I ’ve”, “there ’s” rather than «’Twas», “You’ll”, “I’ve”, “there’s”. I’m inclined to think that that was due more to the typesetting of different hands than to Taylor’s preference, one way or the other.
That’s [unlikely] as there has been no recent change to restrictions in applicable export controlled regions. Rosetta would *never* have been available, not no longer available.
The export-controlled regions might not have had recent changes, but the “information security” portion of the Commerce Control List * (which includes cryptography, both hardware and software) was last updated on 2020-12-04. It’s not the availability of Rosetta 2 that would be significant, but whether or not it uses export-controlled cryptography to sign translated binaries. If it doesn’t use export-controlled cryptography, then this theory would be moot.
* — The link is to a PDF document.
Given that it used the word “region”, my first thought was that rather than being based upon a possible patent dispute, it might be based upon Apple complying with US export controls if Rosetta 2 uses cryptography of some kind to sign the Rosetta-translated binaries.
That is my understanding as well, but on occasion the OED editorializes, e.g. on “-ise” vs. “-ize”:
… Hence, some have used the spelling -ise in Eng., as in French, for all these words, and some prefer -ise in words formed in French or Eng. from L. elements, retaining -ize for those of Gr. composition. But the suffix itself, whatever the element to which it is added, is in its origin the Gr. -ιζειν, L. -izāre ; and, as the pronunciation is also with z, there is no reason why in English the special French spelling should be followed, in opposition to that which is at once etymological and phonetic. In this Dictionary the termination is uniformly written -ize.
in the introductory paragraph of the -ize definition.
The earliest citation in the OED is from Philip Massinger’s play The Unnatural Combat (published 1639), act II., scene i. —
The blacke list of those That have nor fire nor spirit of their owne.
with “black” derived from its figurative definition 11.,
Indicating disgrace, censure, liability to punishment, etc.
which it shares with “black book” (which goes back to 1592). Neither of these “black list” and “black book” definitions gives a defining example of its use by English parishes, although an 18th century example is given for “black book” of its use by a university. The earliest generic meaning of “black book” (i.e. a book bound with a black cover) was in a Church of England context, though.
Das Mädchen hat sein Kleid angezogen.Literally translated: The Girl put on his dress.
A literal translation of “The girl put on its dress.” would be closer, since Mädchen is neuter. Sein was used to agree with the neuter accusative Kleid rather than with Mädchen; if the girl were putting on a pullover instead, seinen Pulli would have been used, to match the masculine accusative Pulli.
There are many words in English where the reference to “man” is from a Latin root, not a German[ic] one. In those words it means “hand”, as in “manual” → something done with the hands.
Perhaps words such as “chairman” are preserving the original Germanic meaning of “man”, viz “a human being (irrespective of sex or age)”, per definition I. 1. of man sb.¹ in the OED. However, many compound nouns are given as examples of the II. 4. definition of “adult male person” in subsection p., such as “barman”, “postman”, “salesman”. The latter definition of “man” was expressed in Old English with the word wer (which has survived to our day by hiding in “werewolf”).
US citizens who live outside of the US (“outside” includes Mars, since the US is a state party to the Outer Space Treaty) retain their right to vote in US elections as long as they hold US citizenship; their votes (via absentee ballots) would be tallied according to the jurisdiction of their last residence within the US.
It would be far more interesting to see residents of the District of Columbia throw their own Commodity Party, since they pay federal taxes but haven’t had voting representation in Congress since 1801. (As a result, US expatriates on Mars who last resided within the US in DC would remain without voting representation in Congress.)
Judging from the organization’s name, my guess is that he seeks a constitutional convention per Article V. of the US constitution. (That article provides two methods through which the constitution can be amended; to date, the constitutional convention method has not been used since the constitution’s creation in 1787.)
It seems to me, as a non-USAian, that 'free speech' has a corollary, that you can say whatever you like, but YOU, as the speaker or writer, are absolutely responsible for what you say or write. AFAIK this is its meaning under British Law as well as most Commonwealth members' legal systems. If it doesn't have this meaning under the US Constitution, kindly enlighten me about its legal meaning there.
Under the US constitution, “free speech” flows from the text of its first amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
US freedom of speech is not absolute — for example, false testimony under oath is not constitutionally protected — but it can be broader than in other jurisdictions: e.g. hate speech is constitutionally protected, except in the case of imminent violence.
It seems to me that all people don’t hold absolute responsibility for what they say or write, regardless of the legal system — for example, children below a certain age (which can vary by legal system) aren’t held in absolute responsibility for what they say or write.
A law along these lines would get social media off their current hook BUT, and it’s a big but, they MUST know who published an objectionable or defamatory post so that the lawyers can hit the correct target, namely the author. In other words, it should not be possible to be legally anonymous on these sites. […] Whistle blowing is quite another issue and nothing whatever to do with Free Speech.
In the US, anonymous (and pseudonymous) speech is recognized as being derived from the first amendment, but again, it is not absolute. Many whistleblowers depend upon anonymous reporting mechanisms, so in my view there can be a connection between whistleblowing and free speech.
Most of Europe seems to use a derivative of Napoleonic Law, which I don't understand at all,
The major difference between a civil law legal system (Napoleonic law is one type of such a system) and a common law legal system is that in a civil law legal system, case law is subordinate to statutory law, and judicial precedent is rare, since judges tend to decide cases using the legal code that underlies the statutes; but in a common law legal system, case law is on an equal footing with statutory law, and judicial precedent is relied upon due to the lack of a legal code that underlies the statutes.
Some jurisdictions use a mixture of these two legal systems, e.g. Scotland, South Africa, Québec, Louisiana.
Do South Korean 220V wall sockets have the same form factor as American 110V sockets?
According to the IEC’s world plug page, no — their wall sockets are for plugs of types C (“Europlug”) and F (“Schuko”). Note that South Korea is listed as running 220 V at 60 Hz.
North Korea, however, is given as “220V / 110V 50Hz / 60Hz A / C / F”, so apparently they have some proportion of ungrounded/unearthed sockets for type A plugs of North American (NEMA 1-15) or Japanese (JIS C 8303, Class II) form.
I bet they didn't ask him to take the fucking minutes.
If you were debating rebellion, would you want minutes taken? Plenty of them were taken in 1787 in debating what the post-Confederation constitution would include, though, and James Madison was kept quite occupied with taking those.
It was used in Medioleftpondia as well, but it seems like it still thrives there. My parents’ generation (raised in Great Depression, fought in WWII) used it; my generation understood it, but only used it for humorous effect. Younger folks might have heard it used in the 1960s Star Trek episode where some planet had a culture based on 1920s Chicago.
I wonder if he’s the first recent President to leave office poorer than he went in?
It depends upon how you define “recent”. After leaving office, Truman only had his WWI military pension of $112.56 per month (he didn’t think it seemly for an ex-president to enter the corporate world) until his memoirs were published in the mid-1950s. It was only in 1958 that Congress granted presidential pensions to ex-presidents, which was undoubtedly influenced by Truman’s financial condition.
The real answer is to shorten the period between election and swearing in.
It already has been shortened; presidents used to be sworn in on March 4. The current date was established in 1933 by means of the 20th Amendment, and another constitutional amendment would be needed to further shorten the period.
Carter pardoned Jefferson Davis.
No — Andrew Johnson pardoned Jefferson Davis on Christmas of 1868. It was Davis’ US citizenship that was retroactively restored by a joint resolution of Congress (which Carter signed) in 1978, three years after a similar restoration of Robert E. Lee’s US citizenship (which Ford signed).
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