bloak

33 ms·

451.
by bloak 4y ago
Interesting. If that turns out to be true then Western European media are going to look a bit silly and untrustworthy. But nothing new there: by the time reliable information is available the media has usually moved onto the next "brea
452.
by bloak 4y ago
Unless they are in Wales, in which case they would be able to use Welsh for communication with at least some of the authorities: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/companies-house/... https:/&#
453.
by bloak 4y ago
Presumably because the contracting parties want the contract to be interpreted and enforced by the courts of a country in which they both do business. It's not unusual, I think, for big international companies that already have assets
454.
by bloak 4y ago
In my experience, here in the UK, openstreetmap.org is more accurate and more up-to-date than Google Maps, though I still use Google Maps as a way to access Google Earth or Google Street View, which tend to at least be accurate. (I wonder i
455.
by bloak 4y ago
That's definitely an interesting question, why they don't use a longer identifier without central/hierarchical allocation. I don't have an answer, but some possibly relevant points: * Rather than compute a hash you could
456.
by bloak 4y ago
Google has claimed that about 130 million books have been published (that factoid is all over the web). The number of 10-digit ISBNs is 1000 million (there's a check digit) and people have only just started using 13-digit ISBNs that st
457.
by bloak 4y ago
That's harsh. I tend not to answer such questions, but I don't mind them being there, provided there's a "prefer not to say" option, which there nearly always is, or there's "Race: Other: human".
458.
by bloak 4y ago
Wikipedia describes two systems in the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_numbering#United_Kingdom According to both those systems, if you look down the street from the end where number 1 is (which is always the o
459.
by bloak 4y ago
I have also heard the suggestion that 666 is an obvious number to pick if you use Roman numerals, being every letter (less than M) once in descending order: DCLXVI. (But why exclude M?) (Trivia: what is the biggest number that is an English
460.
by bloak 4y ago
> I thought that widespread genetic testing has shown it to be much higher than that. Higher rates might be mythical. In any case, it's unclear what the definition should be. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No
461.
by bloak 4y ago
A bugle can't do equal temperament, so yes, but are there any standard orchestral instruments that can't be made to do equal temperament? Obviously a string quartet doesn't normally play equal temperament, but they could if t
462.
by bloak 4y ago
I suppose techniques like vibrato (which you can't do on an open string) and harmonics (which you can normally only do on an open string) make a clear distinction and give a composer an incentive to use a particular key (or give a play
463.
by bloak 4y ago
Yes, and some people need to use TAI instead of UTC.
464.
by bloak 4y ago
Do you think it would be a good idea to make it a legal requirement for (almost) every map produced in the USA to contain a disclaimer? Or perhaps 50 disclaimers because each state might have its own requirements for exactly what needs to b
465.
by bloak 4y ago
> 1. A single person cannot be diverse or not diverse. Compare and contrast with people saying "neurodiverse" when they mean "neurodivergent". I think there is general agreement that a single person should be describe
466.
by bloak 4y ago
I wish there were an easy way to look up which charity shops in my area have a copy of a particular book and how much it costs. A lot of them already keep track of who donated each book to them if the donor has made the appropriate declarat
467.
by bloak 4y ago
Surely "my wife came" is the bit they should have cut! More seriously, and boringly: I would have corrected "my wife came in the room" into "my wife came into the room". The former sounds like bad English to me
468.
by bloak 4y ago
Quotation marks arguably depend on the country more than on the language, so Switzerland quotes like «this» in French, German and Italian, while the Germans, at least, don't quote like that. It seems that Sweden and Finland use the sam
469.
by bloak 4y ago
As I understand it, in the original Irish there's no apostophe and the apostrophe was added by English speakers because of a mistaken idea that it's short for "of the", as in "five o'clock". Of course, a l
470.
by bloak 4y ago
It annoys me that apostrophe and English closing single quotation mark are the same character in Unicode. I'm tempted to use ' for apostophe so that the quotation marks (‘...’) match up properly.
471.
by bloak 4y ago
Perhaps it's not that old because there seems to be something very 20th-century and American about it: the idea of trying to get maximum return out of your time/money because time is money and money is time. I'm not a philoso
472.
by bloak 4y ago
> Also polish stylistics use new line for each character speaking so short conversations can take many lines. That's pretty much universal in modern English books, too, and I've seen it given as a rule in several places. I&#x27
473.
by bloak 4y ago
Perhaps, but deliberately using the expression incorrectly is even sillier. All you're going to do is annoy people or make them think you're ignorant. What's the point in that? What's wrong with saying "raise the qu
474.
by bloak 4y ago
> I'd be curious when the entry was updated Curiosity should be rewarded! "This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, March 2001; most recently modified version published online September 2022)." And there's a li
475.
by bloak 4y ago
OK, but I would favour linking to https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/26/putin-grants... because a journalist from The Guardian, Glenn Greenwald, was among those who first helped Edward Snowden
476.
by bloak 4y ago
There's a third option for when the sum is really huge, like more money than you'll ever see in your life: find a good lawyer who can arrange transferring the money into some kind of trust fund, perhaps in a different country, tha
477.
by bloak 4y ago
I hope they don't now send him to the front!
478.
by bloak 4y ago
> There's two meanings to attractive... One is you like them physically, another is 'a lot of people would like them', or more prosaically, 'a lot of people would like to have sex with them'. OK, that makes sense
479.
by bloak 4y ago
> Everyone else is using 'attractive' here to mean "attractive according to the beauty standards of the dominant culture in which I live" OK, that makes sense, and if that's what they mean, perhaps it explains my
480.
by bloak 4y ago
My understanding of the situation in the UK is that you are allowed to record video of a public place but in that case you have to register yourself as a data controller (which involves paying an annual fee), explain what personal data you

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