Zompist Bboard Again

zompist wrote: ↑Thu Aug 05, 2021 4:14 pm A random question about wine, specifically rosé.

My father could be pedantic about his hobbies, and one idea he got from somewhere was that "rosé is not wine." He would terrorize waiters with this declaration.

My question is, especially for our French members: is there anything to this? I just looked at the Wikipedia article on rosé, and I didn't see anything about wine snobs looking down on rosé.

I googled "rosé is not wine" and this is the first thing I got.

zompist wrote: ↑Thu Aug 05, 2021 4:14 pm My question is, especially for our French members: is there anything to this? I just looked at the Wikipedia article on rosé, and I didn't see anything about wine snobs looking down on rosé.

I haven't heard of this before, but rosés are heavily marketed, so it's not that surprising

zompist wrote: ↑Thu Aug 05, 2021 4:14 pm A random question about wine, specifically rosé.

My father could be pedantic about his hobbies, and one idea he got from somewhere was that "rosé is not wine." He would terrorize waiters with this declaration.

My question is, especially for our French members: is there anything to this? I just looked at the Wikipedia article on rosé, and I didn't see anything about wine snobs looking down on rosé.

There's definitely something to this. My favourite joke on this: do you know why rosé is served cold? Because that way you don't feel the taste.

Over here, rosé is often cheaper, less prestigious, and lower quality. And I definitely prefer red or white wine myself.

That said blanket generalities don't work well with wine as so much depends on how the winemaker is working. There are a lot of excellent rosés out there too.

In the waiting room/entrance area at my gp's practice (the two areas aren't clearly separated), there's a small object on which is written, in several lines:

UM
BRE
LLA
HOL
DER

And for some reason, at first I asked myself "Interesting - what language is that, and what does it mean", before I figured out that it is English and means "umbrella holder".

looks like one of those things i'd find on Reddit or Instagram .... "UBLHD RLOE MEALR"

Reminds me of the strange word "pulltoopen" /pʌl.'tu.pən/ which used to appear, vertically, at the exit doors of buses in Edinburgh.

I just found this in my "conlanging resources" folder. I do not think it belongs there.

I don't understand - am I stranded on the deserted island because that's where my hot air balloon finally failed, or am I using the hot air balloon to finally leave the deserted island after having been stranded there for a while?

Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Aug 10, 2021 12:38 pm I don't understand - am I stranded on the deserted island because that's where my hot air balloon finally failed, or am I using the hot air balloon to finally leave the deserted island after having been stranded there for a while?

In the former case it may have not been a good idea to bring your 1000 page tome with. In the latter case you might have to jettison your 1000 page tome.

aliensdrinktea wrote: ↑Mon Aug 09, 2021 1:08 pm I just found this in my "conlanging resources" folder. I do not think it belongs there.

This is way more fun than it has any right to be

How common or feasible is it to get another bachelor's degree in middle age? It has recently occurred to me that my current degree is pretty much worthless for granting me prestige, coming from an ultra-conservative Christian school. Yet it seems impossible for me to afford four more years of college and highly unusual for someone my age to attend college.

It’s not that unusual. My undergraduate institution actually had a student organisation called Older Students in the College for people who did enrol right after high school.

malloc wrote: ↑Fri Aug 13, 2021 10:51 pm How common or feasible is it to get another bachelor's degree in middle age? It has recently occurred to me that my current degree is pretty much worthless for granting me prestige, coming from an ultra-conservative Christian school. Yet it seems impossible for me to afford four more years of college and highly unusual for someone my age to attend college.

Not uncommon, though what tends to be a bit more common in my circles is actually some people going for graduate degrees if they already have a Bachelor's of some kind. But it's likely to be less than four years in your case, actually: you have some of the requirements already satisfied for the general education. (They didn't make me redo any of the courses I had credit for when I did my Bachelor's, and let's just say I had more than a few.) It's also dependent on if you're staying within the same "division" versus switching: you might need more time if you're going from social sciences to hard sciences than if, for example, you go from psychology to sociology, just largely because of the prerequisites.

That said, often the institution is irrelevant when it comes to the Bachelor's, as long as the university was accredited. My Bachelor's was from a small, somewhat conservative school in middle-of-nowhere Wisconsin and hasn't proven any sort of impediment in my albeit short research career.

I just caught this headline: Does Matignon (the French Prime Minister's services) want to encourage women in senior state positions with Toltec spirituality?

(In case you were wondering: no, it doesn't.)

Ares Land wrote: ↑Mon Aug 16, 2021 9:42 am I just caught this headline: Does Matignon (the French Prime Minister's services) want to encourage women in senior state positions with Toltec spirituality?

(In case you were wondering: no, it doesn't.)

To me this belongs in Confusing Headlines -- is it asking about using 'Toltec spirituality' (??) to encourage women, or about encouraging women who have 'Toltec spirituality'?

No, chalk that up to a bad translation on my part. The original French has no ambiguity. They (allegedly) want to use Toltec spirituality to promote women in senior position.

('Toltec spirituality' really means the Toltec Agreements, new-agey self-help really.)

Ares Land wrote: ↑Mon Aug 16, 2021 2:38 pm No, chalk that up to a bad translation on my part. The original French has no ambiguity. They (allegedly) want to use Toltec spirituality to promote women in senior position.

('Toltec spirituality' really means the Toltec Agreements, new-agey self-help really.)

Ah, OK! Thanks To me it sounds... peculiar, either way.

Any opinions or thoughts on the Rust programming language? Someone on my IRC channel insists that C is obsolete and Rust is a better choice for what C does. Yet the TIOBE index lists C as number one and far below even Fortran and such.

malloc wrote: ↑Mon Aug 16, 2021 8:31 pm Any opinions or thoughts on the Rust programming language? Someone on my IRC channel insists that C is obsolete and Rust is a better choice for what C does. Yet the TIOBE index lists C as number one and far below even Fortran and such.

I’ve used it once as an experiment to implement a Monte Carlo algorithm. Generally speaking it’s a good language: it has an OK syntax, good IDE support and is expression-oriented. Its biggest attraction is that the compiler has a borrow-checker, which makes invalid references and such into compile-time rather than run-time errors. Due to this it’s a lot safer than C, but at the same low level — the only reason I’m not already using it for everything is because I already like Haskell.

That being said, I’d compare it to C++ rather than C. The language is complex enough compared to C that it feels more like ‘C++ but sane’ rather than ‘C redesigned’. (I’ve heard the language to watch for the latter is Zig.) It has much the same philosophy as C++, which is ‘C + OOP’, in that Rust is basically ‘C + FP’. It’s a lot better-designed as a language, though.

Oh, and TIOBE is rubbish. Nearly anything else is more accurate than it. And the only reason Fortran is so high is that it’s still used a lot in scientific computing.

malloc wrote: ↑Mon Aug 16, 2021 8:31 pm Any opinions or thoughts on the Rust programming language? Someone on my IRC channel insists that C is obsolete and Rust is a better choice for what C does. Yet the TIOBE index lists C as number one and far below even Fortran and such.

Rust is essentially what you'd get if you implemented C++ the right way, with memory management being verified at compile time as bradrn stated. Its niche is essentially much the same as C++, and as a result there are many applications where either a higher level language (whether it's Java, on one end, or Haskell, on the other end) is desirable, and there are many applications (particularly embedded) where you want something smaller which can be compiled to your instruction set of choice (C, assembly, or my favorite language as of late, Forth). And as bradrn said, ignore TIOBE - just because something is popular in existing projects does not make it a good choice, and just the ranking of Fortran shows this.