The Very Many Questions-Not-Worth-Their-Own-Thread Thread XXXII

[Valka D'Ur]

I'm too well off to qualify for any kind of assistance. I'm also not in any financial distress, I just can't afford $2k every 6 months for her.

About the plates, yeah he told me that after the fact. He said the highway I was on (in Texas) was a drug smuggling route. He spent 10 minutes interrogating me trying to get me to admit I was smuggling cannabis or give him any plausible reason to search my car. It was traumatic and to be honest I know that if I wasn't white I would have been searched.

Yikes! And of course nobody ever uses that road for legitimate purposes?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

What happened to the forums? They look very different than I remember.

 

[Synobun]

What happened to the forums? They look very different than I remember.

Thunderfall made the switch from vBulletin to Xenforo about... well... a year ago at this point.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Wow. I didn't realize I was gone that long.

 

[Lohrenswald]

how do you englishmens pronounce "Algeria/Algerie"?

 

[Synobun]

how do you englishmens pronounce "Algeria/Algerie"?

Al Jeer E Ah (with no excessive enunciation between the jeer-e-ah)

Belgian-Canadian, though.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

What happened to the forums? They look very different than I remember.

Thunderfall broke it. I'm sorry to say that your social group is gone, along with all the others. They all got zapped in the migration.

how do you englishmens pronounce "Algeria/Algerie"?

Al-JEER-ee-ah (short "a")

For the French pronunciation, you should probably ask @Evie, who is bilingual.

 

[Arakhor]

I'd say Al-JEER-ree-uh, but hey. The final A is a schwa sound, so it's a very short sound, closer to uh than ah.

 

[Commodore]

Which civilization from Civ V is more appropriate to use as the precursor for the People's African Union in Beyond Earth: Ethiopia or Zulu? Zulu would seem the obvious choice, but the PAU's capital is a Somali word which would suggest strong Somali influence in the PAU and Ethiopia is closer both culturally and geographically to Somalia.

This is for a little project I'm doing where I play Civ V, Beyond Earth, and Starships as if it were one continuous story so I want it to seem like civilizations are carrying over from one game to the next.

EDIT: Also having trouble with the North Sea Alliance. Should I go with the Celts, Danes, English, or Swedes? All of them seem like equally viable choices.

 

[Arakhor]

I'd go with Ethiopia.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I'd say Al-JEER-ree-uh, but hey. The final A is a schwa sound, so it's a very short sound, closer to uh than ah.

Split the difference, then? It's somewhere inbetween those for me, if I'm just reading the word to myself and not being self-conscious as I was when trying to answer the question.

 

[Arakhor]

Certainly. We probably sound quite different in person anyway.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Certainly. We probably sound quite different in person anyway.

No doubt. For that matter, if you gathered all the Canadian CFC members in the same room and listened to us talk, you'd hear a variety of accents.

 

[Arakhor]

One would hope so. Of course, you're almost guaranteed not to hear the same accent from any two British members.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Yikes! And of course nobody ever uses that road for legitimate purposes?

I mean this is the consequence of the war on drugs, unfortunately. Our society has taken on some aspects of a police state and few acknowledge it or see it as a bigger problem than the drugs themselves. We've been trying complete prohibition for 80 years and are too afraid to admit to ourselves that it hasn't worked and that there are alternative strategies we can try. It's also really easy to underestimate the detrimental impact this kind of police behavior has on societies.

A couple of weeks ago I got a call from my landlord that my mail had been vandalized by thieves. She put a police officer on the phone and I was so nervous I almost choked up. I had done nothing wrong, I was the victim and yet because of my traumatic run-in with the police, I was scared of this cop just trying to file a report to help me. It was bizarre and just as my previous experience showed me how white privileged works, this showed me how quickly community trust in police can break down. Maybe I'm just a snowflake but it was instructive on a visceral level.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Maybe I'm just a snowflake but it was instructive on a visceral level.

No, you are not a snowflake.

You know what you get with enough snowflakes? You get a snowstorm big enough to put out a forest fire, which is what happened in my province not long ago. People usually complain about early snows, but that one stopped a whole mountain from burning up, not to mention a bunch of towns.

And over time, with enough snowflakes and enough time you get a glacier that can change the entire topography of a region, creating lakes and valleys that were never there before.

Snowflakes are pretty powerful, when they work together.


But I do get what you mean. I don't happily interact with cops, either. The one I talked to about the tenant who tried forcing his way into my suite back in July managed to botch things so nothing was done, the tenant is still here, and I'm nervous about locking my door and even going anywhere in this building in broad daylight. We have security patrolling the building at night, but not during the day and there are some days here when there might be a maintenance person or two doing stuff, but nobody else.

 

[warpus]

Just upgraded my iPhone OS to the new version, whatever that is.

What is this icon?

Spoiler :

 

[Gori the Grey]

Cellular data

 

[warpus]

Oooh handy. Thanks iPhone icon support man!

 

[Gori the Grey]

I just Googled it.