When the pope told Henry VIII that what Henry wanted to do was a no-no, Henry separated, created Church of England, and made himself its head. What do we think Trump will call the new Christian denomination in America and what will be the title of its head?

No, sounded southern, maybe Devon or thereabouts.

Are you also upset that “December” doesn’t refer to the tenth month anymore?

I’m not entirely against it, but I’m amused by how common it is to put “whole” inside of “another”, making it “a whole nother”. Can anyone give any other use of the word “nother”?

The thing is that, at least in the UK, many people also say “of”. You might say that in quick speech it’s not possible to tell between “would’ve” and “would of” which is probably where this misspelling came from, but I once was talking to my English friend and after he said something quickly, I asked if he just said that “she would see it?”, to which he replied “she would OF seen it” putting a lot of emphasis on that “of”, making it clear that he wasn’t aware that it should be “have”.

Yeah, must of.

I remember once being on a call with some customer support guy who didn’t seem to even be aware that words “you” and “me” exist. My favourite part of the conversation was when he said “let myself put yourself on hold while I ask a senior colleague to clarify this for myself”.

It’s not so much on strict grammar, but it’s a wonderful guide on clear writing and in general, clear expression of yourself. It does have a chapter on use and misuse of English, usually backed by data and only rarely being the expression of the author’s personal preferences: The sense of style by Steven Pinker.

Sardoodledom

Other than the age difference, what is wrong with her? Is she a mean person? Two_faced? Is she stupid? Lazy? Treat him like he’s a sugar daddy whose only goal is to spoil her? Does she behave like a 16 year old that’s going to grow up to be an awful adult? You didn’t really give any reason for being against this relationship and for thinking less of him other than the age difference, which I’m not sure is a valid reason to think less of either of them if they are happy together.

I think you need a new keyboard lol. Did you mean ataraxia?

Another word I haven’t heard until now, but yes, I do support this attitude to life. I think I’ve learnt it from my ex. Sometimes bad things happen that are beyond your control and lamenting them is a waste of time, which can be much better spent on trying to figure if there is anything that can be done about the loss or adversity. And if nothing can be done, move on to enjoying other things in life.

I was interested to read that in ancient times, ataraxia was the ideal state for soldiers heading for battle. You can be sure as hell that if I was about to face the prospect of killing others or being killed, ataraxia would be the last mental state I’d be in!

No. I came up with this myself as I was pondering the world, the universe, how there is no evidence of any god existing, and how the best science we have tells us that we are just matter and energy inhabiting spacetime. But matter arranged in such fantastically improbable way that we can feel happiness. Why waste the precious moments we’ve been given on doing anything other than striving to feel happiness? Which of course can come in different forms for every one of us.

I’ve just had a quick search, I guess your message has a typo and you meant Epicureanism? It is similar to how I feel about life, but it seems to say that lack of pain and fear is enough to consider oneself happy. I’d go a bit further and postulate active pursuit of things that positively make you or fellow sentient beings feel pleasure.

Spend your life enjoying it and helping others enjoy theirs. As the universe unfolds, we’ve only got this one brief moment of consciousness before we disappear, we have to make our life filled with as much happiness as we can. And help others fill theirs.

I’m only banned from online shopping so I’ll snack on whatever I can buy in a physical grocery store.

3 years? Probably 10kg of dark chocolate, 15L of hazelnut syrup, and 50kg of protein powder.

So I cheated a little, because I’m at a table right now, so I didn’t visualise the table just the ball on the table. It was about tennis size, but no texture, kind of light blue shading into lilac. The person pushing it was really just a hand.

So sounds like the only work I did was imagining the ball. I wouldn’t say I knew in advance, and I wouldn’t say I chose what it looked like. It just appeared and it was light blue.

Edit: the ball started rolling when pushed, but not long enough for me to know whether it fell off the table or not. But the rolling was just a concept. I can visualise things, but I can’t visualise motion. Which I only discovered recently.

I think it’s a modern word, as for example it doesn’t figure in Merriam-Webster. But it was created in a classical way, i.e. from Greek words meaning “stumble” and “talking”.

Haha luckily yes!

Something I learnt recently and which is rampant on gay social apps: sphallolalia - flirting that doesn’t lead to meeting irl.

UK. Cold and hot water coming from separate taps. WTF? I was once told that it is because hot water boilers used to have their tops open to the outside, which meant the hot water could contain some debris, so it was important to use it only for washing and not let it mix with cooking water. But in bathrooms in some modern builds that definitely don’t use that kind of boilers you still get separate taps. I told one of my British colleagues about how it’s been bothering me since I moved here and she said “oh yeah, I never realised that I’ve never seen that in any other country”. She also told me that kids are just taught to wash their hands quickly under the hot tap, so that they don’t run the water long enough for it to turn scolding hot. WTactualF?