Ron's Christmas wish

Cos everyone knows Californians can’t cross salt!

Utah is best left to the morons anyway (ooh was that a typo?)

my Yorkshire has become too diluted – 39 years away.

“You can take the man out of Yorkshire…”

Lived down south (Coventry area) for 56 years, but there’s relatives to visit and friends of more recent years from the melting pot that is CAMRA.

I had the accent but not the dialect. South Midlands living dented the accent and University melded it into that standardised nothing much.

Written accents – I was bewildered by a text in an English lesson when I was asked to read the dialectal/accented bit out loud. Fail.
The following lesson I was presented with a re-write in normal spelling, which I duly read out in the correct accent. The problem was that the author was trying to write down what he thought people said.
The accent turns on within a few minutes of being with friends and in seconds with the relatives.

Sorry we are not going to allow ourselves to die because someone wants to put a lock on our guns.

You might want to go talk to an Australian. They aren’t insanely gun-ho and, quite famously, pretty much everything that is considered wildlife in Australia regards the human interlopers as, well, dinner.

BBC numbered radio channels out of england are, though they definitely sound American as well, well with a bit of an accent that I would describe as a thicker bostonian accent, though pronouncation wise they sound quite American.

You may never have heard a Boston ¹ accent, listening to the BBC radio it is possible I suppose.

Always have wondered how we ended up with two spellings for Colour/Color. Ours being the five leter version, while yours comes closer to matching the pronouncation.

French influence and derivation for the word.

how many US presidents got there life saved by a side arm (gun)? A lot more than ever hurt, sorry bad argument

That would be “saved” by a man with a gun, from a man with a gun?

Like I said earlier

Nah, when no one has a gun then nasty accidents, like someone dying because someone else had a short (or long) temper issue, don’t happen.

So, who would the armed people be saving them from? Clubs and swords are up-close-and-personal, guns are impersonal distance kills.

A lot more than ever hurt, sorry bad argument. I am not going to let the Bore or Javalina or Bear, or Mountain lion, or etc, etc kill me or mine,

Killed by a “Bore”? Yeah, I’ve met people² like that. (Sorry, spelling related joke)

As to the list, the general state is that if you stay out of their core territory they pass with a set of glances your way. Watching a pair of domestic cats is a safe instructional method.
The only thing that makes the domestic ones safer is size and habituation – you feed, they don’t hurt.

¹ Always remember that the real Birmingham isn’t in Alabama, the real Paris is almost due south of me and the residents speak French, and the real Boston is what most USA residents would call “cute”

That would be “saved” by a man with a gun, from a man with a gun?

It seems like too many of his fellow citizens, he’s simply not going to understand that the reason a lot of them feel the need to carry is basically fear because a lot more of them feel the need to carry.

Compare and contrast with the UK, where psycho nutjobs tend to use knives which, while deadly, is a whole different league than using an assault rifle.
That’s not to say mass shootings haven’t happened. Cumbria, 2010. Dunblane (school), 1996. Hungerford, 1987. Other massacres (and not that many) have been terrorist incidents using either bombs or vehicles as weapons.

Compare and contrast: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States

Guns do not make anybody safer. Easy access to weapons, as guaranteed by Constitutional Rights, might make you feel safer because you’re a decent law abiding citizen, but unless incarcerated for some reason, those exact same rights apply to the unhinged crazies that don’t seem to have any moral issue with “I’m having a bad day so I’m going to kill all of you”.

It’s not just guns, mind you. There’s a much greater issue of underlying mentality. For everybody has bad days. Some have very bad days. Most don’t see the need to take it out on complete strangers. Sure, they might be abrupt, SHOUTY, and maybe downright rude, but the idea of “I’m going to kill you” doesn’t enter into their heads.

It’s one of the reasons why I have no desire to visit the US. I’d like to, I’d like to see where mom grew up (Maryland) and some other places, but given the various groups of Republicans who demanded the right to take their guns with them when they went to vote, no, I cannot reconcile that. Not at all.
PS: #BLM

The only thing that makes the domestic ones safer is size and habituation – you feed, they don’t hurt.

They’re still plotting interesting ways to kill you, they just don’t while you’re a convenient source of food and affection.

Killed by a “Bore”?

We have Bores around here. I swear their problem is that they know how ugly they are. They are a popular source of hunting for organised hunts (packs of dogs, bugles, guys sitting on temporary wooden towers…).
For the rest of us, we don’t carry guns because of Bores. We just know to stay the hell out of places where they’re know to be, and to keep a good distance from them. There’s nothing in any Constitution in any country on earth that is going to tell you it’s a good idea to get yourself between a mother and her pups. That’s why most people end up getting killed. And no, guns are not the answer. Not being such a bloody fool is the answer.

I sometimes go for a walk along a stream between two fields. In the summer when it is dry, it’s about a mile there and back (km and a bit). A nice distance. One evening I was on my way back when I saw a large dark thing about 100 metres ahead. It saw me, I saw it, so I pretended to be interested in a nearby sapling. After a few moments some small dark things ambled by, having crossed the stream. They all shuffled into the corn field and out of sight. I counted to sixty, then carried on walking. They went their way, I went mine, and there was no incident.

The problem was that the author was trying to write down what he thought people said.

Da problim mayt, iz duh spellin ownlee wurkz if peepul av duh saym waie ov speekin az yew dew coz iv day say stuf dif’rent laiyk den itz guna sawnd awl rong, init?

I don’t sound like that, it’s done for effect. The point being that trying to spell things in a phonetic manner only works if people read the letters with the same sounds as you. The great number of regional accents means that that’s unlikely to be the case for many people.

A good example here is the number of hymns that rhyme “love” and “prove”. I’m not that familiar with northern accents, but as a home counties twat ¹, the two sound nothing alike.

¹ I know I’m Scottish (independence FTW! FREEEEDUMM!!!) but I spent most of my life kicking around ’ampshur, Surree, and bits of Sussex); with a brief hiccup in Merlin over the other side (Merlin, as in the magician, never ever “Mary land”).

We have Bores around here. I swear their problem is that they know how ugly they are. They are a popular source of hunting for organised hunts (packs of dogs, bugles, guys sitting on temporary wooden towers…).

Not all bores are ugly (even in spirit) but Boars, well it’s the piggy eyes that do it :)
Mind you hunting someone who is boring with a complete pack of dogs and guns is just too much, it’s practically American.

number of hymns that rhyme “love” and “prove”.

From my (long time ago) English poetry lessons, I think there was a convention that allowed ‘pseudo’ rhymes where the endings of words were spelt the same but pronounced differently. That was before so-called modern poetry where you could write what you wanted so long as each line started with a capital letter.

Speaking of boring, the town of Boring, Oregon is paired¹ with the village of Dull up here in Perthshire.

1. not twinned, as they are hugely different in size

I would really, really like a forum kill file.

Thunderbird.

It is read only, so to replies are via a browser.

Subscribe separately to the required sub-forums, thereby avoiding Aldershot. (NetNewsWire, my RSS client on the Mac, was already setup in this way.)

Killfile two names, the 10000+ post spammer and assistant.

That gets rid of most of the crap. The killfile can in any case the further improved.

It may be possible to do similar with MessengerPro and Hermes.

Works a treat, much much better.

HTH.

Thunderbird.

Thanks; I didn’t realise that it could do that. I’d been considering wandering off for a while, to see if things improved in the meantine, but you might have just made the forum usable again.

Killfile two names, the 10000+ post spammer and assistant.

Indeed.

the 10000+ post spammer

Nice to be appreciated. ;-)

Nice to be appreciated. ;-)

2nd league…

yr.
Assistant

@Steve Fryatt and David Pitt,

Neither Rick or his assistant are the ones I would like to killfile,
however thanks for the tip about Thunderbird.

hymns that rhyme “love” and “prove”.

In Shakespeare’s time love and prove rhymed. To return momentarily to arms (fire or otherwise). I believe that the right to bear arms originally referred to the right to join His Majesty’s army and was nothing to do with carrying them in public, and certainly not owning them.

There is in fact no “British” accent.

Indeed not. I used to live at the south end of Lake Windermere, where book was pronounced buuk, a Lancashire dialect. At the north end, all of 12 miles away, it was pronounced beyac, a Westmoreland dialect. Both reveal the Proto-Indo-European root bhag for beech tree, and the fact that people used beech-bark for writing.

ooh was that a typo?

I often wondered whether Bugs Bunny was saying What a maroon! or What a moroon! .

I think you will find a few Borings in Denmark. Where the neigh-bo-ers live in a ring.

I often wondered whether Bugs Bunny was saying

I’m sure it must be acknowledged: the words for Wagner’s best known, epic, music are the ones Elmer and Bugs used.
“Kiww the wabbit, kiww the wabbit, kiww the wabbit…!”

It’s getting closer to Xmas.

Personally I do not celebrate a religious service (mass) dedicated to an unknown quantity (X), normally spelled X-Mass.

Haha hahahahahahaha idiot.

The “X” doesn’t mean an unknown quantity, it’s a Greek letter that looks like X to us, from the word Χριστός. The X was originally used as a code for Christians to self identify at a time when such things would have led to persecution and/or death.

So it is quite common to use “X” in place of “Christ”.
Xmas → Christmas.
Xina → Christina.

And if you wanted to celebrate peace and such, you wouldn’t pick a religion whose primary visual symbol is a crucifixion cross.

I’m confused about the X-Men now!

That’s some superhero rubbish, isn’t it?

In that case, the X probably does mean unknown quantity, or maybe just “X” to hide their real identities?

Although, meta, maybe they see themselves as the annointed ones? Then it would be correct (because that’s what “Christ” actually means).

Then why do people write it X instead of writing it as the more logical (chi)

It’s simply an abbreviated form which is easier/quicker to write. A bonus is that it upsets people who think it’s disrespectful to their deity.

Nah, $deity covers that base nicely.

usually it is only written with the X-Mass form of the spelling by those claiming to be either anti-christian or atheist in my experience

Faith in, or belief in, a god is something people should do, or not, of their own volition and in private.

A bonus is that it upsets people who think it’s disrespectful to their deity.

God-botherers tend to be easy to offend.

Ok this inability to type anything outside of latin characters into netsurf directly is a bit annoying, it does not like greek nor hebrew, how do I get around this.

Have a look at the work listed in the Cloverleaf stuff and wait?

Then why do people write it X instead of writing it as the more logical (chi)

Because people are fundamentally lazy and writing X is simpler.
Besides, Chi is a rambunctious kitten.

God-botherers tend to be easy to offend.

Yeah, in my darker moments I have trolled some JWs by saying something like “Oh Jesus” which they get upset about, until I point out that if he existed, he would probably be more upset about the utter mispronunciation of his name. A hard ‘J’? What? That’s mostly just an anglicism.
To say it better, it’s written Yeshua (transliterated directly from Hebrew from Aramaic) and is said something like yeah-shu-ah (emphasis on the middle).
Which is nothing like “Jesus” (and likely why the original KJB spelt it “Iesus”).

Jesus is the result of something torturous like Aramaic to Hebrew to Greek to Latin to Middle English to Modern English. No wonder it’s gibberish.

the Roman Catholics […] now claim of it being a birthday for the son of mary does not add up.

Meh, that’s nothing compared to the mindscrewyness of trying to figure out the Trinity. Or, perhaps even worse, that they’re supposed to believe they are partaking in eating the body of Christ and drinking his blood. It’s not a representation like the CofE, they’re supposed to think it’s actually that (transubstantiation).

Great. Vampire cannibalism that worships a torture device. Say what?!?

As we can type the other alphabets together in other programs

Really? I think you’ll find NetSurf suffers the same input issue as much of the rest of RISC OS.

would think that there would be a means of typing in other alphabets

Ensure you have the Cyberbit font installed and NetSurf set up to use it.
*Alphabet UTF8
Load the updated version of Chars (built in if your OS build is reasonably recent)
Switch to the Cyberbit font
Switch to UTF-8 mapping
Scroll until you get to the character you want
Click on it

I celebrate the modern holiday that lands on December 25th, and has been celebrated on that day

Ah, Sol Invictus. The birth of the invincible sun.
Somebody once pointed out to me the parallels with Jesus and “the birth of the invincible son” but shut up pretty quickly when I pointed out that he died like a human (maybe, sort of, whatever), and anyway that gag (sun / son) only makes sense in English which didn’t even exist as a language back in the time of Jesus, so…

I celebrate the ancient holiday that lands on December 21st this year. At 11:02 my time, as a matter of fact. 🌟 ;-)

I celebrate the ancient holiday that lands on December 21st this year. At 11:02 my time, as a matter of fact. 🌟 ;-)I celebrate the ancient holiday that lands on December 21st this year. At 11:02 my time, as a matter of fact. 🌟 ;-)

Same here! Hoping to start a tradition this year of going camping on the occasion. This year, on the same day, also keep a lookout for Saturn and Jupiter – they are set to be at a record close (from our vantage point) on that day.

Hoping to start a tradition this year of going camping on the occasion.

Wow. Where do you live? Around these parts, one can expect to be soaked, frozen, or soaked and then frozen. ;-)