I’m sure for some (sad and backwards) people it is a racially motivated position - but for many others I think it has more to do with cultural and geographical proximity.
But then our elected representatives go and fuck up the Middle East… I don’t know.
As an aside, do you know my favourite rugby chant? I’ve heard it at Wales v England rugby games:
“I’d rather wear a turban than a rose, I’d rather wear a turban than a rose, I’d rather wear a turban, I’d rather wear a turban, I’d rather wear a turban than a rose.”
I have a Russian friend who lives in (south) Wales and when he first arrived (10-15 years ago) he couldn’t understand non-white people being Welsh. Years later he realised that a green person born in Newport is already more Welsh than he’ll ever be.
The UK is a very contradictory bastard union that has - so far - somehow managed to stay in one piece.
In answer to your last question it is an unfortunate, but incontrovertible, truth that the only single qualification for becoming an adult is staying alive long enough. That’s it.
I’ve been adulting for almost three decades. No fucker has ever made me sit an exam. It’s crazy. I wouldn’t trust me to adult, but here I am…
“… assumed to be… looks like… could be construed as… according to a source…”are all weasel words and phrases to avoid litigation, to give a little leeway if it got to court.
Reporting - with a nod and a wink; and a little protection.
My favourite euphemism for “drunk/drugged and aggressive” celebrities in newspaper stories is “tired and emotional”.
Sometimes it’s best to say something without actually saying it if you want to stay in business. Granted, it’s not ideal.
I’ve just been talking to my friend who is an editor of a US paper and she says (and I don’t doubt) that “lede” is the only correct spelling of the word in the US - but the rest of the English speaking world has the choice of spelling both ways with no hard and fast rule.
Guess we were both right - and both wrong - at the same time.
Angry? Not sure where you get that from but it ain’t no thing…
To finish quoting the op: “Someone at the Board on Geographic Names bent over faster than a dippy bird.”
I see that as a real concern that a previously well respected institution just blindly accepted a change that runs contrary to accepted local, national and international norms - thus surrendering any impartiality and no longer reporting the facts as they are on the ground.
Seriously? You think people are complaining about the means used as opposed to the action sanctioned… interesting. I’ve yet to hear anyone complain about the method - they all seem pissed about the change itself; not how it was achieved. Maybe you’re in different comms to the ones I’ve been browsing…
I like the way your school works where you can chant along if you want - I remember having to lip-sync the “Lord’s prayer” (daily bread speech) as a kid so as not to get a whooping from a zealot in the staff room. Crazy times.
Best of luck to you, your kids and your city - you’re literally educating the generation that might have to dig your whole country out from the nightmare it appears to be building. Look after yourselves…
Damn, that’s a rough and crazy story but, like you say, looking at it now I agree you probably did dodge a bullet. At least you get to see the empire fall from the outside.
That’s taking the name back to Koyukon. It’s not remotely equivalent to making a name up; like they’ve tried with the Gulf of Mexico. Poor equivalence to conflate the two.
Do USian school children still talk to that bit of fabric every morning - or is that a myth? From an outsider’s perspective I always put the US just below, uh, post-Weimar republic Germany in the excessive flag club chart placings. Always seemed excessively jingoistic.
Well, if it’s just as likely as any other meat I’ll begin eating blue pork and see how that works out - plus, if your beef has o157 I suggest you send your food safety agency to the butcher / (s)laughter house and see where they went wrong. Also, fast-food beef is likely to be minced - in which case you’d need to cook that fucker through and through to make it anywhere near safe. (Yeah, yeah. I hear you, steak tartare people)
I believe it’s Fr€nch - servers are European based. Beyond that I know nothing.