Random Thoughts X: Impromptu Interpretations

[aimeeandbeatles]

@hobbsyoyo Can you send me a PM? "Start a conversation" is missing from your little profile thingy

 

[Takhisis]

I tried to reverse-engineer a link for you, but it's not just his profile that is blocked, also his inbox is.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Interesting, my current writing project Scrivener says I have 5,617 words and FocusWriter says it's 5,562. But both Microsoft Word and LibreOffice Writer say it's 5,536 words.

 

[Kyriakos]

Interesting, my current writing project Scrivener says I have 5,617 words and FocusWriter says it's 5,562. But both Microsoft Word and LibreOffice Writer say it's 5,536 words.

You appear to have a... ghostwriter.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Interesting, my current writing project Scrivener says I have 5,617 words and FocusWriter says it's 5,562. But both Microsoft Word and LibreOffice Writer say it's 5,536 words.

Different programs count words different ways. I found out that Open Office counts quotation marks as separate words, which is why my tally and NaNoWriMo's tally never match and I end up doing an extra 5000 words just to make sure I've reached the target word count.

Of course I could make it match if my characters never talk to each other, or I adopt either Margaret Atwood's style of writing or Alan Paton's (Cry, the Beloved Country was a hard book to follow, not only for the subject matter but also because he didn't use quotation marks for the dialogue).

 

[Kyriakos]

Any monthly seminar pay which cannot be paid using a single euro banknote, is good.

 

[Takhisis]

Even if it's a €500 note?

 

[Kyriakos]

Even if it's a €500 note?

Well yes, that is the point. Anything over 500 euro/month from the one online seminar is livable

With a bit of luck it is realistic to expect at least 700 euro/month when the second seminar runs as well.

Compare to having to work as a slave to translate one book/month for a lot less. Only good it did is having a few more titles to my name in the national database.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Rent must be very cheap in Europe. 500 euro is 700-some CAD and it's hard to find even a bachelor apartment for that.

 

[Kyriakos]

Rent must be very cheap in Europe. 500 euro is 700-some CAD and it's hard to find even a bachelor apartment for that.

It's not that cheap, I just live in a rather not particularly good apartment.
Maybe if I get to 1000 euro/month I will consider moving (though I'd rather just emigrate, tbh, I am sick of the hot weather anyway, I'd apply for work in Canada if I knew how to do it).

Good thing with the online seminars is that I don't need to be here.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I'd apply for work in Canada if I knew how to do it).

https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/immigrate-canada.html

 

[Kyriakos]

https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/immigrate-canada.html

Thanks, I will have a look
At least in Canada I won't have to do anything to have my british uni degree be usable (I suppose they are automatically accepted as of the same value of an analogous degree in Canada? In some second world countries they are not, eg in Greece).

 

[MaryKB]

I could not imagine living off of €700 a week

I hope everything is okay for you I'm very sad now.

 

[Takhisis]

^I can top that by saying that my entire income for the six months of quarantine has been less than €700.

good thing this isn't random raves eh

 

[Kyriakos]

I could not imagine living off of €700 a week

I hope everything is okay for you I'm very sad now.

Well, I am sure I would have been paid more if I was in Canada. 700 euro/week sounds very nice ^_^

Bigger problem for me is that another property I had is now without anyone renting it. Although I don't own all of it, I own half, so it is a considerable amount of money lost each month, but hopefully it will soon be re-rented or even sold.

 

[Takhisis]

Would you take less than €700 for it?

 

[Kyriakos]

Would you take less than €700 for it?

For what?
Prices haven't collapsed that much, to sell property for 700 euro ^_^

(equally impossible would be to have my cut for the rent be 700 euro, or even the entire rent as things stand in the market...)

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I could not imagine living off of €700 a week

That's like 817 dollars a week USD (1093 CAD). That's a lot of money for one week.

 

[Ajidica]

Awww, Clive Ponting died over the summer.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/aug/06/clive-ponting-obituary

Clive Ponting, who has died aged 74, was a star civil servant who became a whistleblower over the Falklands war. In 1984 he leaked documents about the sinking of the Argentinian cruiser General Belgrano and the following year was sensationally acquitted by a British jury despite his breach of the UK’s then notorious Official Secrets Act.
...
When in 1982 Thatcher sent the navy to recapture the Falkland Islands from Argentina, the Belgrano sinking caused immense controversy. More than 300 sailors, mostly young conscripts, died. The British government maintained that the cruiser had been “closing on elements of our task force” when it was torpedoed.

They stuck to this story against repeated challenge, notably from Tam Dalyell, an aristocratic – and idiosyncratic – Labour MP. The truth was much more nuanced: the cruiser was not in fact sailing towards the British declared “exclusion zone”, and had not been suddenly encountered in the fog of war. It had been shadowed for many hours before the order came down to sink it.

Ponting wrote a secret report dubbed the Crown Jewels for his political masters, the defence secretary, Michael Heseltine, and his junior minister, John Stanley. They rejected his advice that they should be open about the matter when answering parliamentary questions and providing information to a select committee inquiry.

An affronted Ponting sent copies of his documents to Dalyell in the post. He did not bargain for what happened next. Dalyell gave the papers to the committee chairman and Tory MP Sir Anthony Kershaw. He in turn alerted Heseltine, who called in the police. A tell-tale punch-hole led them to Ponting’s office.

In an episode that left him highly embittered, ministry officials offered a deal, that he could confess and resign. He did so. But the politicians stepped in and demanded he be prosecuted regardless. It was then that Ponting showed his mettle. He engaged a fighting civil liberties lawyer, Brian Raymond of the solicitors Bindmans, and pleaded the only loophole that existed in the wording of the Official Secrets Act.

It was permitted to release government information if it was in the “interests of the state” to do so. The judge at the Old Bailey in February 1985, Anthony McCowan, was hostile to this novelty. He told the lawyers, while the jurors were absent, that he might order the jury to convict. The “interests of the state”, he said, were the same thing as the interests of the government of the day.

Journalists at the Observer earned Ponting’s gratitude. They published the courtroom exchanges that Sunday for the jury themselves to read. Like Ponting himself, the jurors did not care to be bullied. They took his side and he was acquitted.

He was also apparently involved in the founding of the SDP, which wasn't something I had come across before.

 

[choxorn]

That's like 817 dollars a week USD (1093 CAD). That's a lot of money for one week.

That's pretty close to what I make every two weeks, I'd be absolutely thrilled to make double what I'm currently making