I’m a native speaker of Mandarin (Chinese), where there’s no rat/mouse distinction either. I know that in English they’re different so I do say rat for big ones and mouse for small ones in English, but otherwise they’re basically the same to me.

Penguins are called 企鵝/企鹅 (qì’é, [tɕʰi˥˩ ɤ˧˥]) in Chinese. It would be better literally translated as standing goose. It just so happens to share the same character 企 with the word for business. Most people don’t know that 企 means standing anymore though.

Haha not actually. In Chinese maybe when doctors talk with each other they sometimes will use the English term (by this I mean the Latin/Greek-origin one), but mostly they translate the word bits (morphemes) one by one to Chinese (低血鈉, where 低=low, 血=blood, 鈉=sodium). They never ever use the English term to patients. You won’t be able to find anyone in China or Taiwan who knows what “hyponatremia” means unless they’re in the medical industry or they’re just very good at English.

It’s conforting that I wasn’t the only one who found this concerning. But anyways I don’t have Google (the app; I do have some other Google services installed) or Gemini installed.

I lost it at “root it and install Graphene.” GrapheneOS does not work with rooted devices, and rooting is considered a security risk by the Graphene dev team haha.

Can anyone explain why this post is funny to me? I don’t know much about Interstellar.

I just looked it up, and apparently “impregnate” isn’t in the list either. Yes, the word isn’t offensive by itself, but I think they remove quite a lot of words that might cause problems in the what3words address. There is way more than enough words anyway.

This is from their FAQ:

How do you handle offensive words?

A what3words address is made up of 3 random words, and they are not intended to convey any meaning to a location. However, we know that the nature of using words means that unexpected interpretations can crop up.

For each new what3words language, our team consults a broad range of native speakers. We then work together to remove rude and offensive words from our word lists, navigating cultural sensitivities wherever we can.

Some users feel that certain words in our lists are unsuitable or inappropriate, so we always take feedback onboard. However, one of our key features – that our addresses are permanently fixed – means that it is not possible to update the word list. Instead, we can look for opportunities to adapt our approach when developing future languages.

Tip: if you’d rather avoid a certain what3words address because of a particular word or combination of words, we’d suggest you use the next square along.

unfortunately the people at What3Words excluded words people might find offensive from the word list, so that place does not exist

thanks now i feel more relaxed on my toilet

That is nice, but I need the Google Play Services for push notifications on the messaging app that everyone in my country uses. It’s sad, I know. If it weren’t for that I wouldn’t log in to a Google account on my Android phone either.

IMO, Windows without a Microsoft account misses out on the least features, when compared to macOS without an Apple ID, iOS without an Apple ID, or Android without a Google accout. Sad that Microsoft keeps making it more and more difficult to bypass logging into a Microsoft accout during installation. But I use Linux anyways (btw)

Agree. On iOS, if you don’t login with an Apple ID, you can’t really install apps. On Android though you can just use F-Droid to install apps just fine.

Glad to know you’re doing well!

Cool you moved to Japan? How has it been?

Not really. I used to take a bus every day to get to the metro station for a distance of only 1.5 km (0.93 mi). But to be fair it’s because I was always on a tight schedule.

I don’t want to sound like I’m on Discord’s side (I dislike nitro too), but that’s honestly just how a lot of paid add-on features on free apps work. They take away some functionality from the free one to incentivize people to pay.

I can tell when there are electronics turned on around me even if they aren’t intended to make noise, because they all seem to give off this kind of almost imperceptible high pitch whine.

I can also hear the noise that some batteries make when they get charged.

I believe the English one is the original. The “original” one (the one in Chinese) was probably translated from English.

At first glance I thought the girl hooked the earring on the door and tore her ear to guilt you into paying the medical expenses on purpose, lol.

That all large salty bodies of water were called “the mediterranean sea.”