bloak

53 ms·

481.
by bloak 4y ago
It's probably just me (I'm probably neurodivergent in some way) but in discussions like this people keep using the word "attractive" and I honestly have no idea what they mean by that word. If you showed me two photograp
482.
by bloak 4y ago
Chinese numbers the days of the week, starting from 1 for Monday, but with a special name for Sunday, it seems. I don't speak, or read, Chinese, but translate.google.com confirms this. I am often curious about how Chinese expresses som
483.
by bloak 4y ago
Oxford English Dictionary says: classical Latin Māius (adjective and, short for Māius mēnsis , noun), probably < the name of a deity cognate with the name of the goddess Māia (see Maia n.) and with magnus great (see magni- comb. form). F
484.
by bloak 4y ago
In the UK, if you want to use a vehicle on the roads it's your responsibility to get it taxed and insured and so on. In the process of doing that you'll find out whether it's legally usable on the roads. There are various kin
485.
by bloak 4y ago
Or sought.
486.
by bloak 4y ago
> Prince Charlotte is now third in line instead of fourth Yes, but I don't think the gender-neutral titles are official quite yet!
487.
by bloak 4y ago
Yes. An extreme example: "Shoe size in the United Kingdom, Ireland, India, Pakistan and South Africa is based on the length of the last used to make the shoes, measured in barleycorns (1⁄3 inch) starting from the smallest size deemed p
488.
by bloak 4y ago
> Same for wheels, rifle ammunition, … "But being (as?) this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question ..." (Which totally illustra
489.
by bloak 4y ago
The Wikipedia article ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_King... ) mentions three legal exceptions: road traffic signs; pints for draught beer and cider, and milk in returnable containers; and troy
490.
by bloak 4y ago
If they are real numbers then you can take the arithmetic mean of the two middle elements, but you might prefer to define the median in such a way that the definition is applicable to any set with a total order. For example, names can be or
491.
by bloak 4y ago
I think you have correctly identified an implausible claim! Of course, most languages aren't written at all ... or at least don't have a traditional written form that is sufficiently well established for someone to say that the &q
492.
by bloak 4y ago
I thought the Mandela Effect ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory#Mandela_Effect ) was a myth ... but now I experience it myself. I can so clearly remember reading Gorbachev's obituary a few years ago ... Di
493.
by bloak 4y ago
An important detail: it shouldn't be (and as far as I know isn't) the loser who pays but the party who behaved unreasonably. For example, if you damage someone's property, offer to pay £100, but they refuse your offer and ins
494.
by bloak 4y ago
I agree with that, but let me add, for the benefit of younger viewers: The term "fake news" was originally used to refer to small advertisements that would get people to click on them by showing a text saying something like "
495.
by bloak 4y ago
I normally hyphenate such expressions when they function as adjectives: "white-collar workers". Obviously I'm a bit "old-fashioned" in that respect. (I may also be old.)
496.
by bloak 4y ago
I don't think disgust is "innate". A typical English person finds squid disgusting, but is happy to eat various kinds of cheese, including ones like Stilton with mould on them. Someone in Japan, on the other hand ... Also, ev
497.
by bloak 4y ago
If people don't like leap seconds, there is no need to redefine UTC; they can just use TAI today. That gives them the additional advantage of not having to handle leap seconds in the past, because software that handles historical UTC t
498.
by bloak 4y ago
Israel stopped stamping passports years ago, as I understand it. They give you a separate piece of paper/plastic instead. There may well be other combinations of countries that justify a person having multiple passports.
499.
by bloak 4y ago
I use "proved" for mathematics. For me (middle-aged British) "proven" sounds a bit pompous and rhetorical, not the sort of language an honest down-to-earth mathematician would use.
500.
by bloak 4y ago
This topic keeps coming up and I'm not sure I want to read all the comments just in case someone has written something that wasn't written last time it was discussed. Personally, I would like to keep leap seconds. The only change
501.
by bloak 4y ago
I would have expected Goodhart's law ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law ) to have been mentioned here. For me the classic example was when all the doctors in the UK stopped letting people make appointm
502.
by bloak 4y ago
I'm not sure that the EU would allow the UK to rejoin. If they did the terms would probably be a lot harder than what the UK used to enjoy, including switching currency to the Euro, for example. So I don't think that rejoining wil
503.
by bloak 4y ago
That saying, or ones like it, are also attributed to Carl Sagan, G. K. Chesterton, James Oberg, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, Virginia Gildersleeve, Bertrand Russell, Max Radin, ... This article mentions Walter M. Kotschnig as the author of the e
504.
by bloak 4y ago
It does seem to be EL for the country. See, for example: https://publications.europa.eu/code/pdf/370000en.htm EDIT: Perhaps it would have been nice if ISO 639 and ISO 3166 had been better coordinated so we didn&#x
505.
by bloak 4y ago
> A person under 18 cannot legally consent to that That's a bizarre way of putting it, isn't it? It's not as if the person under 18 would be committing an offence by giving consent, and the consent would still be valid for
506.
by bloak 4y ago
Coal: C + O2 -> CO2 Gas: CH4 + 2O2 -> CO2 + 2H2O I don't know off hand exactly how many joules of energy (heat) are produced per mole in each case but it's not surprising that gas gives more joules per mole of CO2: it's
507.
by bloak 4y ago
Yes, in some cases, but it depends on your workflow. Some projects require each commit on the main branch to be fully working and pass all the tests.
508.
by bloak 4y ago
Interesting. What kind of usage have you observed? I have come across similar use of "revert" in private correspondence from old-fashioned lawyers at small high-street law firms in England. As a rule of thumb, if a solicitor write
509.
by bloak 4y ago
Yes, definitely. This is Chinese junk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_(ship)
510.
by bloak 4y ago
> Easier to remember Non-rhetorical question: who has to remember it and why? Is this primarily a work-around for the problem of it not being possible for a mobile phone handset to display the location during a voice call? If so, maybe s

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