Be strong, Clarence. Be strong for Mother.

People who have only just learned the moves of chess play better chess than I do.

Well, once you’ve had your country invaded by rabid psychopaths, there’s bound to be some gene admixture (to put that far too mildly) and so you’ve a chance that their descendents, even if it’s recessive and rare, will have the desire go on to do the same.

Of course, rabid psychopathy and the urge to invade other places can also come about on its own, but when you look at the way the Vikings and their Germanic cousins invaded western Europe a thousand years or so ago, and then note what happened a few hundred years later, it has to make you wonder whether it might have only happened the once.

There’s the figure of speech “to tap-dance around (a topic)” meaning to make concerted effort avoid talking about a particular topic all the while talking about many things that are adjacent to that topic. It’s usually to avoid coming across as offensive or ignorant in some way.

The underlying cause and/or whether a bit more knowledge on the part of the speaker could render the dance unnecessary is highly contextual (and mostly irrelevant here), but nevertheless, people tap-dance around topics all the time. (The previous sentence might even qualify as an instance.)

So, the question is: How much contribution to this n-gram is people pointing out that someone is, or was, tap-dancing around a topic?

That this happened around April Fools’ makes me think that someone forgot to instruct it not to partake in any activities associated with that date. The fact it chose The Simpsons’ address in its (feigned?) confusion is a dead giveaway (to me) that it was trying to be funny.

Or rather, imitating people being funny without any understanding of how to do that properly.

Its explanation afterwards reads like a poor imitation of someone pretending to not know that there was a joke going on.

It could be owned by an entity called Sutton Snax. That probably isn’t what they’re going for, but it could be read that way.

Now, x-apostrophe might be (more?) correct in that instance but it’s far more forgivable than any interpretation as a plural.

You’d definitely find dry little black rice-grain-like droppings on all surfaces if you had mice, especially in rooms that have food, and more will appear if you clean them away. Also, little sticky splotches that are easy to mistake for drink spillages, because they pee everywhere too.

I managed to get rid of mine, but I occasionally still find evidence they were here in out of the way corners that I forgot about.

Brave mice - because I’m sure some will have that trait - and those infected with toxoplasmosis won’t care about cats.

Good luck.

I’m one of those people with a low tolerance for depressing reality. I’m on medication for depression and anxiety, for what good they do me. Wires and chips in the brain is a step too far.

The reason I’m in the state I’m in is that I suffered a work-stress related breakdown, but the cracks have always been there. As you might imagine I am not ready to be forced back into work which I will find unbearable. Combine that with body horror and you might be able to understand my reaction and stance to this.

I’m one of those people with a low tolerance for depressing reality. I’m on medication for depression and anxiety, for what good they do me. Wires and chips in the brain is a step too far.

The reason I’m in the state I’m in is that I suffered a work-stress related breakdown, but the cracks have always been there. As you might imagine I am not ready to be forced back into work which I will find unbearable. Combine that with body horror and you might be able to understand my reaction and stance to this.

How about cultivating a world that is less depressing before jamming wires into people’s skulls to “fix” a problem that might not originate there?

Oh no, that won’t do, the people who have low tolerance for depressing reality have to be turned into drones for the corporate machine just like everyone else. If we can turn off the emotions that derive from a sense of self-preservation, they’ll be more willing workers for the constant grind.

In before employers require that their applicants must have one of these implants. People without will not be hired.

By the 24th century we won’t be Star Trek’s Federation, we’ll be an unholy hybrid of the Ferengi and the Borg.

I reckon I’ve been pretty lucky. The handful I’ve attended haven’t been that bad.

The “worst” one, at least from my perspective, was probably a relative’s where I was an usher and messed up something with the church seating. The guests sorted that one out themselves when they thought I wasn’t looking. The wedding itself went without further problems, but that minor mess-up on my part will always stick with me.

The next “worst” was the one where the reception / after-party had a DJ who cranked the music volume another notch every 10 minutes. The venue had a literal decibel meter on the wall, and I think he had made it his goal to max that sucker out. I’ve been in clubs where the music is so loud you can’t hear your own voice when you’re talking (shouting) to someone else and this went well beyond that.

By contrast, the ceremony itself had been very demure and pleasant, in an English country manor house no less, and were it not for that DJ, it might have qualified as the best.

The best one was probably when I was a kid. I don’t have any memories of the church ceremony, which has to mean I was bored out of my mind, but must have behaved myself and there were no problems of any sort. I vaguely remember the reception in a function room at a hotel and there was nothing of note there that I remember either, except exploring the hotel. Weather was good. Must have been perfect.

“Mum” is a shortening of “mummy” (or similar) which almost certainly came before “mother” (or its ancestor words) as a word for one’s primary female caregiver if not also birth giver, on account of it being baby-talk that ancient parents naturally took to be a name bestowed by the child.

In languages descended from Proto-Indo-European, the -t(h)er suffix is a familial grammatical particle that has long since ceased being productive, and remains frozen in all daughter languages. Speaking of which, the -ter of “daughter” is the same particle.

That “mum”, at least phonetically, is also an abbreviation of “ma’am” is a coincidence caused by dropping so many sounds from the original “ma dame” that it reverts to, well, mumbling, which isn’t far off baby talk, all things considered.

FWIW, there are places in the world where “Mam” is a name given to mothers by their children, which is also rooted in baby-talk and also has no connection to the other pronunciation of “ma’am”.

Nowhere. If this was a video game I would have quit playing a long time ago.

To her face, “Mum”, but when referring to her indirectly it’s usually, “my mother”.

I remember asking if it was OK to stop calling her “Mummy” but I’m not sure how old I was at the time. Definitely under 10 though. Probably heard other kids of the same age calling their mothers “Mum” when they were being collected from school and figured I’d better act accordingly and do the same.

(The only people who use “Mom” here are folks in the West Midlands, I think. And American ex-pats, I guess, but that doesn’t really count.)

Yes. And we can read that because we’ve a passing familiarity with Latin cursive. I assume Cyrillic readers can make sense of the Russian example, even if we’re clueless.

Latin cursive can be just as bad: https://imgur.com/WKPaFYf

Racial / cultural supremacists wouldn’t want to kill anyone of their preferred (usually their own) group, and certainly not a significant number of them. They’d basically have to gerrymander the water supply to arrange things so that only those they want to be poisoned actually get poisoned.

That’s 1) expensive and 2) someone’s going to notice.

It would be far easier, and cheaper to go full genocide and start shooting.

In one case, active in the world right now, the “undesirables” live in one area, and rather than poison the water, the supremacists have simply cut it off. They’ve also implemented the “start shooting” strategy.

I wish them all a crippling attack of conscience, and if not that, the inability to distinguish who they want to shoot from who they don’t want to shoot.

Wow. You were lucky. That abort might have been what saved you there.

It sets permissions (ch ange modification rights) on all files (-R = recursive, stepping down through directories) in the file system (hence starting at /) so that they can be read, (re)written and executed as programs by all users (the 777 part). 000 would be no permissions for anyone (except for the root user), which would be just as bad.

So I was watching a video the other day about weird coincidences, and there was one entry where some guy was told he’d already checked in for a flight. After much confusion, it turned out there were two guys of the exact same name booked on the same flight going to the same place.

Two balding middle aged white guys. Travelling alone - until they each made a new friend anyway - to Thailand.