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July 21

Improving Core Web Vitals for a restaurant menu website

I'm working on a restaurant menu website about the Cook Out menu and I'm trying to improve its Core Web Vitals, especially LCP and INP.

The site is built with WordPress and mostly contains images, menu tables, and nutritional information. I've already enabled caching, image compression, lazy loading, and CSS/JS optimization, but I'm looking for additional best practices.

Are there any recommended techniques or tools for improving performance on content-heavy WordPress sites without affecting usability? Thanks! ~ BlakeFosterUS (talk) 14:18, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

There is a free tool, Lighthouse, for auditing the quality of web pages. I am not familiar with it (or even with the notion of these Core Web Vitals), but, reportedly, it offers insights into how to optimize the Core Web Vitals metrics.  ​‑‑Lambiam 19:52, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

July 22

Email client recommendation (for Windows)

For years, I've been using Outlook, for which I wrote 3k LOC of macros. But now my old Outlook can't handle the updated protocol of my host anymore, so I need to ditch it. The obvious step of updating Outlook is ruled out by its hardware requirements. So I'm looking for a replacement. (I've been recommended The Bat!, but that has this unsolved setup problem.)

So, any recommendation for an email client that I can tinker with? Because few will have macro capabilities comparable to Outlook, I'm now looking at open source. And the results at SourceForge are overwhelming: 18 pages! Even if 90% of them can be excluded at first sight, it's still a long list. (For now I'm just looking for a Windows program, but since I'm considering to switch to Unix some time, it would be nice to have one that also runs on Unix.)

General question about the SourceForge list: What are good criteria to look for? The Open Source Excellence badge? The number of downloads or reviews? Is a recent Last Update a good thing or does it indicate that the program is not stable yet? ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 10:02, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

What I use is Betterbird, a fork of Mozilla Thunderbird, both of which use WebExtensions (though those written for browsers would need some adapting). Sourceforge pretty much died a decade ago and most things you see there are probably outdated. In solidarity, Aaron Liu (talk) 22:17, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

See also Comparison of email clients. Shantavira|^{feed me} 07:50, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Which version of Outlook, and which version of Windows? Can you be more specific about the "updated protocol of my host"? I had a similar problem two weeks ago, with Outlook 2007 on Windows 7, when my e-mail provider dropped support for TLS 1.1 and earlier. The solution in that case was enabling TLS 1.2 in Windows. Mitch Ames (talk) 08:17, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

July 23

Problem with Firefox browser

I have been using Firefox for years without any major problems. I am still using Windows 10 because my (rather old) computer cannot run Windows 11.

About 12 hours ago while online I got the usual Firefox 'New update' notification, and downloaded the update which duly installed the next time I returned to Firefox and clicked the 'yes' option. However, since then the browser has been freezing up between 1 and five minutes after opening it. It even froze when I was attempting to report the problem to Mozilla.

I am now using Opera (installed as a backup for such contingencies), which is working perfectly but of course is inconvenient because (a) I'm unfamiliar with it and (b) it lacks all my Bookmarks and Home page shortcuts.

Does anyone know if this is a general problem with Firefox, or likely peculiar to me and my old PC; and either way, does anybody have any non-technically worded suggestions?

Regards {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-41275-62 (talk) 17:19, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

I suggest you try a clean install of Firefox. If you have a login to Firefox (which requires you also to run FF on another device) it will have all your bookmarks and passwords backed up.-Gadfium (talk) 19:22, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice, Gadfium. Unfortunately I do not have any other device than my PC.

The problem is now compounded because Google will not let me access my Gmail account with just my password, although this was working the last time I tried (which was a few weeks ago – I rarely use email).

In baby steps, how do I reinstall Firefox? It is literally more than a decade since my PC was set up, so I have no memory of how this is done. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195.} ~2026-41275-62 (talk) 20:52, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

The best advice I can give you is to take the PC into a local computer shop - you'll get better service from a one-person outfit than from a chain megastore. They'll fix your problem for probably quite a small charge. Tell them you want your bookmarks, add-on configuration and so on saved if at all possible.

If you can't do that, try installing a fresh copy of Firefox without uninstalling the old one. Use Opera or any other browser to go to https://www.firefox.com and follow the instructions. If it all works, you may still have your bookmarks etc. If that doesn't work at all, uninstall Firefox by going to "Start button"->Settings->Apps->scroll down to Mozilla Firefox->click->Uninstall. After that, try installing it again using the copy you already downloaded. However, I expect you will have lost bookmarks in the uninstall.-Gadfium (talk) 22:59, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

If you need to find which version of Firefox you have (32 bit or 64-bit), follow the uninstall instructions but don't click the Uninstall button.-Gadfium (talk) 23:03, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the further advice: I'll ponder on it. Unfortunately, the one 'computer shop' in my town (which I used once or twice) closed several years ago, and finding another reputable one is not as easy as it ought to be. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-41275-62 (talk) 02:09, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

I have seen some weird behavior in Firefox (Mac) lately: a few websites won't let me log in, another would not let me complete a purchase; in each case Safari worked better. I'm sticking with Firefox for now because I like how it handles bookmarks. —Antonissimo (talk) 03:13, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Which version are you using? Click Help → About Firefox. I'm on 152.06 (32-bit), but 153.0 is available. If so, I think FF has been having a few problems recently, and may have been rushing out some updates. To save/export your bookmarks as an Html file, click the FF menu button (three horizontal lines, top right), select Bookmarks, and click Manage bookmarks at the bottom. In the top line of the Library window, click Import and Backup, choose Export Bookmarks to an HTML..., select a save location (eg your Desktop), and hit Save. Restore using the same procedure, select the exported .htm file.
Mozilla has this page about re-installing old versions, recommends 152.04, or ESR which is meant to be stable and not so cutting-edge. Click the required version, save, and press the downloads button (or Ctrl + J) to find it.
You could try Windows System Restore, which reverts to previous Windows settings, if it has been turned on. Only program files and settings are restored, your saved data and existing files are not affected. Press Win + R to open a Run window, and enter rstrui.exe. Press Next. Available saved restore points should be shown. Select a suitable one before the FF update, there may be only one line. It takes a few minutes and a single reboot, but it tends to work. If Automatic Updates is turned on, Windows may get very busy re-installing updates. Absolutely cannot guarantee results. It used to work very well with XP, but Win 10 doesn't seem to keep it up to date quite as well. Hope you get things sorted. MinorProphet (talk) 11:23, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

PS If you click 'Scan for affected programs' in the System Restore window, it should tell you what has changed since the selected restore point was created. MinorProphet (talk) 11:39, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Regarding computers that cannot be upgraded to Windows 11: last year a family member of mine (who's close to 80 years old) had the same problem. He asked me to help him install Linux. I did. He seems really pleased with it; it runs much faster than Windows. So if you have a neighbour/nephew/whatever who knows this stuff, consider it.

Your Firefox bookmarks, history, passwords etc. are stored in your Firefox profile, which must be somewhere in your personal data directory. Where that is on Windows, I don't know, but wouldn't expect reinstallation of Firefox to overwrite that, as the application is stored somewhere else.

On the other hand, sometimes the problem is with your profile. Try running Firefox with a fresh profile. If that's more stable, you know more. Or the problem may be with some extension. Try starting Firefox with all extensions disabled. There are options for both; ask your favourite search engine to find how to use them on Windows. PiusImpavidus (talk) 18:19, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Hey, {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} - any luck with any of our suggestions? We're all itching to know, since there is an unacknowledged competition between all techies to know who was right. Maybe it just "fixed itself"™. MinorProphet (talk) 13:36, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

July 27

Accessing "old" gen AI response before a Wikipedia article was published?

Odd question here - I'm a high school teacher, and created the Wikipedia page Capitol Crawl to use as a demonstration for my students (also because it well exceeds the notability guidelines and should've had its own page ages ago!). Many popular websites say or imply that the Capitol Crawl was a major catalyst for the passage of the ADA, but I found in my research that the reality is more nuanced, so the page reflects that.

When I ask Chat GPT about the impact of the Capitol Crawl, its response closely mirrors what I wrote, and cites the Wikipedia page as its source. I'm confident that these responses would have been different before I created the article, and I'd love to use this as an example for my students of the limits of AI and how AI models get their information. But sadly, I didn't think of it until now! Is there a way I can see what an AI model like Chat GPT would have said about this topic before the article was written? If it's relevant, the article was created on May 10th. MissRedwood (talk) 22:52, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

If you ask AI about the impact of the Capitol Crawl and its answer is very similar to what you wrote on Wikipedia, you can then ask a follow-up question like "Ignore Wikipedia and answer the same question." Stanleykswong (talk) 23:08, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

And then they can politely say, "Yes, OK, of course", and proceed to answer by using info they got from Wikipedia during the learning phase, distributed in an inextricable way across the possibly trillions of parameters (weights) of the neural network.  ​‑‑Lambiam 04:23, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

I've never tried this method on Wikipedia, but I always use "ignore sources from China and answer the same question" to get more accurate economic information about China. Stanleykswong (talk) 05:21, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

What Lambiam is saying is that when the LLM is trained it uses billions of pages of text to adjust trillions of parameters (numbers). Text that it's given changes these values to improve how the model writes text. It doesn't store the text but just adjusts the numbers, similar to how a book I read five years ago is going to adjust how I communicate -- I'm not remembering the book word for word, it's just somehow influenced me in some way, and it can be extremely difficult knowing how that book affected my brain. If I told myself to ignore that book, I would not do a good job adjusting what I write because I have no idea how that book influenced me. Panamitsu (talk) 06:27, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

An article you just created yesterday cannot be included in the learning phase without time travel. In solidarity, Aaron Liu (talk) 15:06, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Is it May 11 where you are? Matt Deres (talk) 13:30, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

The OpenAI training cut-off date is December 2025. In solidarity, Aaron Liu (talk) 14:21, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

This question has already been asked at the Help desk where it has multiple responses. Shantavira|^{feed me} 07:08, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

July 30

Where to Report Two Incidents

I would like advice on where to report two (unrelated) software incidents (so probably two different places).

About two weeks ago, I was trying to make an archival copy of my C: drive to a large external HDD, using ROBOCOPY. I forgot to specify the /XJ switch on the ROBOCOPY, which resulted in about 1 TB of data being copied (from a C: drive that had about 230 GB of data) to the archival drive before I killed the copy. I know what that problem was, which was a ROBOCOPY runaway in following symbolic links. Then I tried to delete the recursive archival data from the archival drive. After some effort, I tried one last effort, and can look up exactly what I did, but am not looking it up yet. My last attempt to delete the recursive data resulted in no response after an extended period of time, after which I made various attempts to interact with my computer, and I eventually had to unplug the computer from the UPS and restart it. Analysis of the Event Viewer log showed that memory had been exhausted. I also lost one of the directories on my C: drive. The attempt to delete recursive data had caused a loss of real data. My conclusion is that I shouldn't have tried to delete the recursive directory that had been created by an out-of-control process, and that formatting the external disk was the way to minimize the damage. So my question is what is a good forum in which to describe this incident and the lesson learned.

The second incident was that I was trying to use Microsoft Copilot to help me walk through the process of replacing the cartridge for an HP 139W laser printer. It told me to open the front door of the printer. I said that I had opened the top cover of the printer and could access the cartridge, and it told me not to do that, but that I should open the front door instead, and that changing the cartridge through the top could result in damage to the cartridge. There isn't a front door, only a top cover. Other printers presumably have a front door. How can I report to Microsoft that Copilot was hallucinating about the HP 139W? What is a good forum to advise users of Microsoft Copilot that it may hallucinate about the design of a printer?

These are two matters that are unrelated except that I would like to know a good forum to describe each incident for the benefit of other users. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:26, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

July 17

Five-year survival rate for cancer

In general, when five-year survival rates for diseases are calculated, do the statisticians pay attention to unrelated deaths? Let's say I get diagnosed with a rare type of cancer (so one person's death can mathematically affect the small sample size), and as I'm leaving the doctor's office, I get run over by a reckless driver. Do I drag down the five-year survival rate for my type of cancer? Nyttend (talk) 00:47, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

it depends. If observed survival rate is being calculated, the cause of death doesn't matter, only survival. So you would be included as you suspected. If relative survival rate is being measured, you arr included but in comparison to the general population, who are also being killed on random events. Your unexpected death is balanced out by someone else's unexpected death. If specific cause rate is being measured, you are excluded because you did not die of that specific cause. You mention this in relation to cancer, but it shows up more in vaccines where people confuse rates to push narratives for social media clicks. ~2026-39968-68 (talk) 02:20, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Overwhelmingly, cancer studies report a relative survival rate. So, while people in the cancer cohort will have car accidents, that is compared to the general population which also has car accidents. That is why the rates are percentages. They are a percent of the general population. Something like 70% means the survival rate for the cancer cohort is 70% of the general population. The benefit with doing it this way is that the analysts don't skew the results by trying apply rules about which deaths are included and which are not. Then, they have to work out when a person would die if they didn't die from some other cause. ~2026-35239-54 (talk) 11:07, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Comparing relative to the general population also accounts for deaths that are only indirectly caused by cancer. Suppose brain cancer causes problems with balance and vision. That reasonably leads to poorer identification of emergent situational threats and ability to move to safety. So we have a a pedestrian getting killed by a bad driver because they didn't realize the car was coming towards them and then stumbled back into the street trying to get back on the curb at the last minute being an increasingly likely scenario due to cancer. I would think this should be counted as a reduced overall survival due to cancer, but cannot be direclty traced to the cancer itself in any specific indiviual's death.

Take it a step further: common side effecs of chemotherapy include all sorts of neurological damage, including with to vision and balance, and do have a greater statistical likelihood of falls and similar accidents. Given old folks are both more likely to have cancer and more likely to have worse outcomes from falls themselves, if grandpa has cancer, he is less likely to survive even if the cancer is not the direct cause of death itself. DMacks (talk) 15:39, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

Then let's imagine that there's a convention for people with a rare kind of cancer, and the attendees represent something like 50% of those with this cancer in a country. A gas line ruptures and causes the whole building to explode, and everyone inside (patients, dining staff, support workers, maintenance staff, etc) is immediately incinerated. Aside from the topic of the event that they're all attending, these people's deaths have nothing to do with their illness. Nyttend (talk) 12:06, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

From Nyttend's morbid Thought experiment we draw the wisdom that Correlation does not imply causation. No participants were injured in this experiment. ~2026-39925-22 (talk) 15:39, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

Obvious xkcd, for those who haven't seen it. DMacks (talk) 21:46, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

Well, people without cancer also sometimes get run over … —Antonissimo (talk) 00:59, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

A single additional random accidental death could distort the survival rate numbers in a small enough sample size. At population levels or in samples of multiple thousands, it doesn't make a difference. -- Avocado (talk) 20:58, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

I think it is also important to recognize that people undergoing treatment for cancer have a higher rate of accidental falls, and of suicide. Also, these five year survival rate studies have an issue with patient retention. Best practice is to only make comparisons to groups of patients getting the other treatment(s). Abductive (reasoning) 17:45, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

Of the 987 patients in the group receiving the novel treatment, 212 were alive at the end of the five-year study, while of the control group of 1024 patients receiving the traditional treatment, 210 were alive. What formula should the study use to report the five-year survival rate with the novel treatment? Or should survival rates not be reported at all?  ​‑‑Lambiam 07:58, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

A recovery rate with documented change in symptoms is a meaningful verification of a novel treatment but a survival rate alone, possibly in spite of ineffective treatments, is not a reliable measure. ~2026-39925-22 (talk) 15:48, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

The question was about how statisticians determine survival rates, not about which measures are best practice when reporting on comparisons between treatments. Still, I fail to see why reporting on five-year survival rate in a controlled study should be deprec(i)ated.  ​‑‑Lambiam 09:38, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

July 19

Altimeters

Do aircraft commonly (also) have metric altimeters in countries which measure altitude in feet? And how common is to measure altitude in meters in such countries? --40bus (talk) 17:08, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

Didn't you ask this same question a year or two ago? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:48, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

I don’t remember asking such a question.

Well it was 2024, see here. Heights are in feet except above China.Shantavira|^{feed me} 07:53, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

Similar things were asked on more occasions. I remember commenting that in Europe, gliders often have metric altimeters (and also vertical speed in metres per second, airspeed in kilometres per hour). This also applies to historical aircraft, as before 1945, European aviation (except in the UK and Ireland) was metric. After all, Europe (except the UK and Ireland, except some ballooning) metricated before the start of aviation. And modern glass cockpits can be converted between metric and imperial with the push of a button. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:21, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

It’s a bit more nuanced. Altitudes and flight levels are reported in feet worldwide, including Europe. Russia and China have historically used meters for some altitudes and flight levels, but most commercial operations use feet. The altimeter itself doesn’t use feet or meters internally. It uses barometric pressure. ATC assigns altitudes in feet, but also gives a pressure setting. In the U.S. and Canada, the pressure is given in inches of mercury (inHg). In Europe and most of the world, it’s given in hectopascals (hPa). Pilots set the altimeter to the assigned pressure (e.g., 29.92 inHg or 1013 hPa). Once everyone is using the same pressure reference, their indicated altitudes will be consistent relative to each other, which is what matters for separation. ~2026-35239-54 (talk) 16:24, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

Still, ATC will tell a flight to maintain 3000 feet, not to maintain 90 kPa.  ​‑‑Lambiam 19:40, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

On initial approach, ATC will usually (I don't know of an exception) give out the air pressure such as "QNH 1017" or "Altimeter 29.92" and then the instruction "Descend and maintain 3000 feet." The first is to calibrate the altimeter. The second is the actual altitude. But, it still remains that with very rare exception, feet is used as the altitude unit. I've seen China and Russia used as examples where feet is not used, but that appears to be changing. Their major airports have switched to feet to standardize with the rest of the world. ~2026-35239-54 (talk) 19:56, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

Aviation is weird.

Over the past 231 years, almost all of the world metricated, but aviation, which started metric in most of the world, is one of the few (if not the only) things that demetricated. That gives us such rules as: take you altitude in thousands of feet, multiply by three, multiply by some correction if the lift-to-drag ratio of your aircraft isn't the standard, and you get the distance from your destination in nautical miles to start your decent. In metric (or FFF or any other consistent unit system), just take your altitude, multiply by your lift-to-drag ratio and you get the distance. Apparently the rule above assumes a standard lift-to-drag ratio of 18.2:1. In the same manner, in road, rail and water transport, slopes are always expressed as a ratio (1:150, 0.7%, 7‰), the tangent of the angle, which for shallow slopes is the same as the angle in radians, but aviation uses an angle in degrees. This makes it non-obvious which is steeper, a 3.5 degree glide slope or an 18:1 lift-to-drag ratio (the former is steeper, so you need your flaps to increase drag).

Meteorologists talk about the 300 hPa level when referring to the higher part of the troposphere. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:18, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

But pilots don't need to do any calculations when they've Bitching Betty or Grumbling Gary nagging them about the exact approach angle. ~2026-35239-54 (talk) 12:05, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

How common is to measure aircraft and ship speed in km/h instead of knots? --40bus (talk) 07:36, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

For inland shipping (rivers, lakes, canals), km/h seems pretty common. At sea, it's mostly knots. Amongst aircraft, gliders often use km/h. I don't know about ultralights and airships, but others seem to use mostly knots these days. km/h used to be more common. PiusImpavidus (talk) 19:52, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

July 20

Obscure catalog entry name that closely resembles the Wolf–Rayet catalog

While co-writing someone else's draft about a W Ursae Majoris variable (Draft:V523 Cassiopeiae), I discovered a reference to a designation of the star as "Wr16" (not to be confused with the Wolf–Rayet star catalog entry WR 16):

Jeong, Jang-Hae; Kim, Chun-Hwey; Lee, Yong-Sam (2010-06-15). "Photometric Observations of the Contact Binary System V523 Cassiopeiae". Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences. 27 (2): 81–88. doi:10.5140/JASS.2010.27.2.081. ISSN 2093-5587.

SIMBAD's entry on this star lists this name as well (under the catalog "SV*"), but has no information about the catalog. What is SV*? Would the "Wr16" designation require a hatnote from WR 16 to V523 Cas once the draft is published? –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 06:29, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

"Wr" probably refers to Weber (1958), [1]. Would have to precess the coordinates to J2000 to be sure. --Wrongfilter (talk) 06:41, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

July 22

Do people become passive aggressive from being bullied, or from being unloved or what?

Do people become passive aggressive from being bullied or being unloved, or what? Or is it behavior pattern opurtunistically picked up on by an unhappy person, or conceivably, by a happy, untroubled person?Rich (talk) 01:53, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

There are some clues in Passive-aggressive behavior. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:59, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

IMO, resentment and opposition to the demands of people in positions of authority^[2] can be natural and healthy, and is not in itself a sign of a clinically troublesome personality trait. Given the fact that people in positions of authority are generally in a position to deliver vindictive retaliation in response to perceived defiance of their authority ("insubordination!"), it is prudent not to express one's resentment and opposition openly but use instead, for example, a one-person slowdown.

Note that "Passive–aggressive personality disorder" has been removed from the DSM since the DSM-5 of 2013, IMO rightly so. That said, for people suffering from a personality disorder, which can have many causes, coping mechanisms can become sealed in, and these mechanisms can include those used for the "passive aggressive" label.  ​‑‑Lambiam 08:06, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

Maybe the OP (who can't spell, BTW) would prefer active aggressive, such as bringing a gun into work and shooting up the place. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:11, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

"Active" aggressive is not a thing. There are three categories discussed in psychology: passive-aggressive (hides hostile behavior), assertive (expresses needs openly without hostility), and aggressive (expresses hostility openly). ~2026-35239-54 (talk) 11:55, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

How does that make shooting up the workplace somehow better? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:31, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

You're the only one here who thinks that. Bugs, you need to stop lying about what has been asked. DuncanHill (talk) 14:00, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

Your comment makes no sense. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:37, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

It makes total sense. You're asking someone to defend a position they never stated. Classic straw man. You're the only one who's mentioned guns and shooting up workplaces. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:20, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

I merely asked whether the OP preferred "active" aggression rather than "passive" aggression. Still waiting for an answer on that. However, the OP's core premise is flawed. As if passive aggression is somehow driven by something that's wrong with them, rather than by a toxic environment they find themselves in. That's why I recommended the OP read the article on passive-aggressive. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:32, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

In fact, the tone of the OP's question reminded me of the gunnery sergeant's comment in Full Metal Jacket, where he berates the troubled private as to whether he didn't get enough motherly love when he was an infant - just before the private guns him down. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:44, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

The OP asked about possible causes of passive aggressive behavior. You responded that by asking that question, the OP likely wants people to get guns and shoot up workplaces. As pointed out, your response is out of place, likely based on context you are personally attaching to the question that others are not. ~2026-39968-68 (talk) 01:18, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

-> Hmm I guess the private did not get enough motherly love then, but I haven't seen the momovieBut I have some explainig to do, even though I didn't do anything wrong this time.

...Once again I failed to read the article on passive aggression before posting, because I was so upset thatt a person I know is a genius at underhanded cuts, and a friend called it passive aggressive. So I went ahead and posted, and then perused the science reference desk, noticing Greglocok's rather cranky response. Feeling rather cranky myself, I believe I was justified in replying to Greg, both at the ref desk and on his talk page. As I said, I was right to do so, but I don't think Greg is bad, just having a bad day like I have sometimes. And to be clear, Grelokok was being directly cranky, not underhanded, not passive aggressive...passive aggression is not something everyone has experienced, I'm sure. Anyway, Baseball Bugs, you might not have seen real passive agression from someone yet, it can be unbelievable, although I don't know for sur. But I haven't forgotten how much I owe you for forgiving me when I attacked you personally when I thought I was having another heart attack! It shows you have a big heart. Rich (talk) 01:30, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

I don't recall that incident, but obviously you certainly would! I hope you are well now. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:50, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Here's the clip from Full Metal Jacket I was talking about. This is where private Pyle's apparent compliance with a bullying sergeant turned from "passive" aggression (i.e. apparent compliance) to "active" aggression.[3] I'd have to argue that "passive" aggression, while unpleasant, can also be rather more civilized than "active" aggression. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:56, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

I would also say that Greglocock's comments to you, on the subject of extinction, were rather snippy. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:59, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

actually the comments were directed at the OP of that thread. While snippy, Gregs remark wasnt underhanded. Rich (talk) 02:32, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

yeah, I'm better, no heart attacks or heart symptoms Rich (talk) 02:35, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Excellent. Where there's life, there's hope. As to the extinction thing, you're right, it was directed at the original poster. But still over-the-top. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:38, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Right and let's bear in mind that what clinicians call passive aggressive might be much more extreme and unpleasant, like my recent experience, than the pattern of an unhappy employee unwilling to perform an unethical action requested by his employer.Rich (talk) 06:12, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

The reply just above was supposed to be a reply to Lambiam, don't know why it went down here. Rich (talk) 06:13, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

A reply to a contribution at indentation level N will have indentation level N + 1 and is placed after all earlier replies, or replies to replies, and so on, to the aforesaid contribution. All of these have an indentation level of at least N + 1. There is no earlier spot where your reply would have fit. Anywhere else would mean inserting it between one contribution and an existing reply to that contribution.  ​‑‑Lambiam 13:50, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

You've hinted at the backstory that triggered your initial question. Maybe you could tell us more, albeit without saying who or where this happened. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:24, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

i better not.Rich (talk) 18:31, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

July 24

Far-away astronomical object naming

Draft:1E 2259+58.6

Does this name comply with standard naming for such astronomical objects? The draft mentions three categories into which it will be placed if moved to mainspace, and I didn't see any contents with similar names. The current name makes me think of the awkward form of scientific notation used by simple calculators to represent large numbers. Nyttend (talk) 04:37, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

The name is compliant. "1E" indicates the catalogue, in which the object was found, in this case the first Einstein Observatory catalogue. The remaining numbers give the coordinates (equinox B1950, to be precise), first right ascension (22 hours 59 minutes), then declination (+58.6°). The declination is rather short and the decimal point seems to be omitted in most of the literatur, but otherwise the name is fine. --Wrongfilter (talk) 05:22, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Per WP:COMMON NAME, we use the name that is "most commonly used", which may be non-obvious for something that is not a household thing, and that has in fact many designations (including 1RXS J230109.7+585242, 2E 2259.0+5836, 2E 4673, 2XMM J230108.1+585244, INTREF 1098, MITG J2301+5852, PSR B2259+58.6, PSR J2301+5852, and SRGA J230109.9+585254).

We have an article by the abbreviated name 1E 1048−59 for what SIMBAD names as 1E 1048.1-5937. We also have 1E 0317+186, 1E 1207.4-5209 and 1E 161348−5055, and several more 1ES ...'s.  ​‑‑Lambiam 06:08, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

July 25

arxiv.org timestamp

[4] The metadata for this article says 2008, but the v1 pdf says June 2022 and v2 says November 2024. Any idea what's going on? Is this a normal thing with with arxiv preprints? The references section of v2 doesn't have anything later than 2007 iirc, so I don't think the paper has been updated. I got the link from the article transformation optics but haven't checked when it was added. It's definitely a good introductory article. ~2026-41486-45 (talk) 07:51, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

The LaTeX source file (which is what the authors upload to arXiv) presumably has the command \today, which is replaced by the current date when the source file is compiled to pdf. So June 22 and November 24 was the last time the pdfs were produced from the original source files (which date back to 2008). What this tells us is not to use \today in material that is to be published. --Wrongfilter (talk) 08:05, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

Indeed, the source file has:

\title{Transformation Optics and the Geometry of Light}
\author{Ulf Leonhardt$^1$ and Thomas G. Philbin$^2$\\
$^1$School of Physics and Astronomy, University of St Andrews,\\
North Haugh, St Andrews KY16 9SS, UK\\
$^2$Max Planck Research Group 
Optics, Information and Photonics,\\
G\"{u}nther-Scharowsky Str.\ 1, 91058 Erlangen, Germany
}
\date{\today}
\maketitle

 ​‑‑Lambiam 11:08, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

Wow thanks. That explains. ~2026-41428-07 (talk) 18:30, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

July 31

[Neuroscience?] Why can I read nonfiction but struggle badly with fiction and primary texts?

Why can I read nonfiction but struggle badly with fiction and primary texts?

I have very little difficulty reading nonfiction when it concerns something I genuinely want to understand. Fiction, narratives, and older primary texts are another matter. Even when I recognize that they may be worthwhile, I quickly start feeling as though I should be doing something more useful. If the material does not hold my attention immediately, I may also become tired while reading it.

This was not always a problem. I read stories more easily when I was younger, but sometime in early adulthood my reading habits shifted heavily toward informational material. I now tend to collect books about whatever subject currently interests me and can read extensively when I feel that I am learning something concrete.

This has recently become noticeable because I have developed an interest in philosophy. I enjoyed an introductory ethics class and did well in it, but I find many original philosophical works extremely difficult to tolerate. I can read explanations, summaries, and contemporary discussions of the same ideas without much trouble. With the primary texts, however, my attention quickly drops and the reading begins to feel unnecessarily slow.

I have ADHD and autism, although I do not want to assume that either condition completely explains this. My attention is strongly interest-based. When a topic captures me, I can explore it independently for years. I have gone deeply into areas such as music production, technical hobbies, electronics, security, and hands-on computer projects. At the same time, I often burn out when I try to turn an interest into a rigid, structured curriculum.

I also have difficulty studying simply because I have decided that it is time to study. I am working on that as I continue college, but there is a large difference between deliberate studying and the intense focus that happens naturally when something catches my attention.

Is this mainly a problem of attention, motivation, reading preference, or the feeling that fiction and primary texts are not immediately productive? Has anyone experienced a similar split between being able to read nonfiction deeply while struggling with stories or original works? Rottentortoise (talk) 01:35, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

No idea about the psychological causes but yeah, assigned readings can be tedious. What helped me in school was to take notes while reading, on a pad of paper alongside the book. I'd read a paragraph from the book and write a one-sentence summary of it in the notes, then repeat. That required mentally processing the content of the paragraph to be able to summarize it, so it kept me paying attention. It also usually let me recognize important points so I'd mark those with a "*" or whatever in the notes, write down verbatim quotes if I thought I'd use them in the class paper based on the book, that sort of thing. It thus just became a matter of plodding through the assignment until reaching its end. It was much slower than reading something just because it was interesting, but probably resulted in deeper understanding, so it worked out ok. ~2026-42295-00 (talk) 03:02, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

July 24

Geodesic n-dimension distance calculation

I was looking at distance calculations like all the p-value Minkowski distances, and I looked at geodesic distance. If radius is the same for every dimension (a circle in 2D, a sphere in 3D, a hypersphere in nD), the formula to calculate the shortest distance between two points (defined as vectors from origin) is easy. What if every dimension had it's own radius? I'm thinking about Earth. The first two dimensions have the same radius (creating the equator), but the third is shorter (the polar radius). If I wanted 4D, 5D, 6D? Is there a single formula where I can use the angle definitions of two vectors and a list of the radii and calculate the shortest distance along the surface of the curved shape? ~2026-35239-54 (talk) 17:36, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Take the case p = 2 (Euclidean distance) in two-dimensional Cartesian space. What does it mean if the two dimensions "have" their own radii – say one "has" radius a and the other radius b? Do you mean they are rolled up, topologically forming a torus? But then, why mention a circle for the case that a = b?  ​‑‑Lambiam 21:33, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Our article on ellipse describes a shape with a larger and smaller diameter. One is in one dimension (height) and the other is in another dimension (width). It mentions no confusion with a torus. ~2026-39968-68 (talk) 21:56, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

I do not think that there is any simple formula for the distance along a geodesic on an ellipsoid or spheroid. You will just have to integrate the metric numerically. JRSpriggs (talk) 22:48, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

There is not even a simple formula for the 2D case of the arc length along a segment of an ellipse.  ​‑‑Lambiam 10:08, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

I know you're referring to ellipsoids beyond just three dimensions, but geodesics on an ellipsoid might help for the 3D case. GalacticShoe (talk) 00:45, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

You could try using the calculus of variations and apply the constraint of staying on the ellipsoid with a Lagrange multiplier. This would give you a difficult set of differential equations to solve. JRSpriggs (talk) 11:42, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

The method from Geodesics on an ellipsoid § Geodesics on a triaxial ellipsoid should be generalizable but I'd expect it to get unpleasantly complicated. –jacobolus (t) 18:48, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

Just thinking: If the complication is recursive, it is a time/calculation complexity, not a method complexity. So, a relatively simple recursive computer function could do the estimation. ~2026-41824-87 (talk) 14:56, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

In computer science, "recursive function" has several unrelated meanings.

The calculation comes down to computing a definite integral of a function that is not only complicated in terms of how many symbols are needed to write down its definition, but more so (and I think this is what was meant) in how much work it will be to determine the correct form of this function. This is not a job for the faint of heart – but perhaps someone has already done the work.  ​‑‑Lambiam 17:51, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

I assumed it was obvious by context I was referring to self-referential, repeating logic where computational complexity scales with depth. ~2026-41824-87 (talk) 17:59, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

July 29

Kulczynski Similarity Coefficient I (K1)

Every similarity metric I've used is bounded, usually [0,1] or [-1,1]. K1 is unbounded [0,inf). Distances and scores are unbounded. Is K1 actually a score and not a similarity? ~2026-41824-87 (talk) 11:56, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

See Qualitative variation#Kulczyński's coefficient. Kulczyński's coefficient varies between 0 and 1. What is this K1, you are talking about? JRSpriggs (talk) 13:20, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

This is the definition I have:

Kulczynski I (K1): The ratio of shared elements to non-shared elements. Counts matches (elements in both sets) against mismatches (elements in exactly one set). Shared absences are ignored, so no universe size is needed.

Formula:

K1(A, B) = a / (b + c)

a = |A ∩ B| (in both: n11)

b = |A only| (in A, not B: n10)

c = |B only| (in B, not A: n01)

Range: [0, inf)

inf = identical sets (no mismatches)

0 = no shared elements ~2026-41824-87 (talk) 13:32, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

Here, the coefficient defined in the Wikipedia article is called "Kulczynski 2".

In the extreme case that A = B, we get indeed K1(A, B) = a / 0.  ​‑‑Lambiam 15:49, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

It considers division by zero to be infinity rather than undefined. Because it is unbounded, I was wondering if it is properly called a "score" instead of a "similarity coefficient". Maybe it is just my limited experience with similarity metrics, but all I've seen are bounded. Score and distance metrics are always unbounded. ~2026-41824-87 (talk) 16:39, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

There is no standard meaning of the term ''coefficient'' that would impose limits on its range. In physics, the coefficient of thermal expansion can even be negative, as it is for fairly pure silicon for temperatures between about 18 and 120 K (−255 and −153 °C; −427 and −244 °F), and the reflection coefficient of a wave vector can become infinite.^[5]  ​‑‑Lambiam 12:04, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

Not necessarily an answer to your question, but it's worth noting:

1. $b+c=|A-B|+|B-A|=|A\Delta B|$ (the symmetric difference), and $|A\cap B|+|A\Delta B|=|A\cup B|$.

2. ${\frac {x}{x+y}}={\frac {1}{1+{\frac {1}{x/y}}}}$, and ${\frac {1}{1+{\frac {1}{z}}}}$ is bijective and monotone increasing from $[0,\infty )$ to $[0,1)$. Its inverse, ${\frac {1}{{\frac {1}{y}}-1}}$, which takes ${\frac {x}{x+y}}$ to ${\frac {x}{y}}$, is consequently also bijective and monotone increasing from $[0,1)$ to $[0,\infty )$.

3. Since ${\frac {x}{y}}\in [0,\infty )$ for $x,y\in [0,\infty )^{2}$, and all possible values of $x=|A\cap B|$ and $y=|A\Delta B|$ are nonnegative integers, K1 is just a bijective remapping of values of the Jaccard index ${\frac {|A\cap B|}{|A\cup B|}}$ to $[0,\infty )$.

GalacticShoe (talk) 15:28, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

July 18

Curazie of San Marino

Hello,

Based on the sources listed on the curazie of San Marino here, do other editors think that these subdivisions are mostly electoral in nature, and carry no function beyond that? This site seems to be listed on all of the pages at which I've looked, and only seems to list the places as electoral precincts.

If that is the case, then I would vote for a merger of many of the articles, as they would seem to raise WP:DUE concerns, given that they are not actually second-level administrative divisions. Per that question, also see List of administrative divisions by country.

Checked WP:GEOLAND to little avail.

JuxtaposedJacob (talk) | :) | he/him | 05:34, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

July 19

David Brinkley

The 1966 antiwar essay "Suppose They Gave a War and No One Came" gave rise to variations of the popular slogan in the 1960s. A bumper sticker was later created based on the related question: "What if they gave a war and nobody came?" According to at least one published account, the slogan entered popular culture in America on a large scale when newscaster David Brinkley held the sticker up in front of millions of viewers. I am trying to independently confirm and verify that Brinkley did this, or anything in regards to Brinkley and the slogan. I cannot find anything aside from the sources that assert he did this. Surely, there must be some documentation about this incident somewhere? Given the research on media coverage about the Vietnam War, it seems unlikely that if Brinkley did in fact do this, it was done before 1969. My guess is that it happened after 1970, perhaps even later. I did come across some archival YouTube videos of Brinkley's critical war coverage that makes me think this incident happened after 1972. Just guessing, of course. Viriditas (talk) 00:13, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

Legal scholar Geoffrey R. Stone writes that LBJ had Brinkley secretly investigated by FBI for his antiwar views. (Stone 2007, p. 112). Viriditas (talk) 01:01, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

I haven't been able to find any connection between Brinkley and the sticker but, based on newspaper reports, it seems that the sticker was in most frequent use between 1967 and the end of the Vietnam War, with most newspaper coverage I've found about the bumper sticker specifically being between 1967 and 1971 (there's a gap between 1971 and 1974 where I found no mention of it.) That might narrow down dates for when such events may have occurred.

Some express it in wry humor, like the woman driving down Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood with a bumper sticker reading: "WHAT IF THEY GAVE A WAR AND NOBODY CAME?

— Janesville Daily Gazette, September 12, 1967 (earliest mention I could find of the sticker)

It's like that bumper sticker, "Suppose they gave a war and nobody came?"

— The Stanford Daily, May 1, 1968

Favorite bumper sticker; "What if someone gave a war, and no one came."

— Arcadia Tribune, July 14, 1968

What Janie wanted most when she started college was expressed in a bumper sticker she had picked up somewhere. It read, "What if they gave a war and nobody came?"

— Las Vegas Sun, August 18, 1968

A bumper-sticker that is seen on cars occasionally reads: "What If They Gave a War and Nobody Showed Up!"

— Saint Charles Journal, June 1, 1970

"Suppose they gave a war," a current bumper-sticker reads, "and nobody came."

— The Arizona Republic, October, 28, 1970

There are a few additional mentions in 1971 which lump this sticker in with many other popular bumper stickers.

Usage both of the slogan and other political bumper stickers apparently wound down as the Vietnam War did, making it unlikely that Brinkley's popularization of the slogan would be anytime after 1975.

During the waning years of the Vietnam police action there was a bumper sticker appeared which said, "What if they gave a war and nobody came?"

— The Utah Independent, August 14, 1975

I yearn for the days when the bumper-sticker wars were being waged on this country's streets and highways. People had something to say in that era and they said it: 'Love it or leave it,' 'What if they gave a war and nobody came?' 'Ban the handgun,' and 'I'll give up my handgun when they pry my pistol from my cold, dead fingers.' (That last one is so long you have to be a two-car family to display it.)

— The Daily Review, September 30, 1977 (syndicated article)

I could find no direct connection between Brinkley and any bumper stickers. The only phrase I found even mentioning Brinkley and bumper stickers in the same sentence was this response by columnist Ernie Kreiling obviously not referring to any physical stickers:

I think it's safe to say you won't find a Nixon sticker on Huntley's Brinkley's or Cronkite's car this fall.

— Van Nuys Valley News, October 6, 1968

Of note, in 1970, the film Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came came out. The producer, Fred Engel, mentions that the bumper sticker at least somewhat influenced the film's name.

Fred Engel, a cherubic-faced man, said that the title was taken from the bumper sticker of the same name. It is probably the most popular bumper sticker on the West Coast, but Engel says it isn't as well-known around the country.

— Altoona Mirror, May 26, 1969 (syndicated article)

Gerald Nachman backed this up in his scathing review of the film.

"Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came" – the inspired title is stolen from a bumper sticker, easily the single most creative act of the film – is one of those unredeemable horrors from the word stop that is physically painful to watch.

— Oakland Tribune, July 23, 1970

This was right in the middle of the popularity of this particular sticker; whether it had any effect on the peak of that popularity I cannot say. GalacticShoe (talk) 15:01, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

Yes, I think that if Brinkley did hold up the sticker, it would have occurred between 1970 and 1975. Thing is, there is nothing in the biographies about this, and the literature doesn't even mention the FBI investigation until 2007. For what it is worth, the film doesn't have anything to do with this. It was an attempt to steal the thunder from the peace movement and redirect it to a pro-military propaganda movie. Viriditas (talk) 23:00, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

As I have commented here before, I am surprised there are no transcripts of the broadcasts. I was sad to learn recently that something like 90% of all archival documentation of radio and television news has been deliberately destroyed. Viriditas (talk) 23:24, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

All manner of old TV stuff which existed only on videotape is long gone, and not just news. The destruction was driven by short-term cheapness, bean-counter obliviousness to how valuable stuff might be later. The only reason we have any old shows at all is because they were filmed or kinescoped. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:38, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

I know, we previously discussed this (which I mentioned up above). I'm still upset about it. Some people get upset about bad service at a restaurant, or traffic on their way to work. I get angry that archives of old radio shows were deliberately destroyed just under a century ago. I'm also deeply hurt that we can't listen to the voice of Marie Engle or hundreds, perhaps thousands of other singers, actors, radio hosts, and newscasters, because someone, somewhere decided "no one will ever want to read/hear/watch this". How much has been lost to human stupidity? Something like 99% of all "books", art works, music, radio shows, newscasts, what have you, are gone. Perhaps humanity is just going around in circles for eternity, like Shakespeare, Battlestar Galactica, and so many others suggest. We are never discovering anything new, just rediscovering what we already found, again and again. Viriditas (talk) 00:50, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

There's also the matter of lost movies, especially those from the silent era, where films on nitrate stock crumbled into dust or burned. It's a sad commentary on humanity that so much has been lost, not just by deliberate destruction, but seemingly more often by neglect. Also thinking of the failure to save live broadcasts of major sporting events. We have a kinescope of the 1960 World Series Game 7, only because Pirates part-owner Bing Crosby asked someone to record it for him because he couldn't watch it live. Live action is so much more immediate than film is. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:03, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

Agreed. I forgot to link to eternal return. Viriditas (talk) 01:45, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

I have found a tenuous thread, perhaps spun by Ariadne herself. It turns out that the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam resulted in a measurable amount of media coverage that has been documented by scholars. It seems reasonable to speculate that this might be the event in question when the bumper sticker first appeared on the news. October 15, 1969. I'm going to follow this up and see where it goes. Viriditas (talk) 23:52, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

July 20

Churchill and the Legion d'honneur

With reference to the recent award of the Legion d'honneur to Keir Starmer which was stated to be a unique honour for a serving British prime minister, some have said that Winston was similarly honoured, although not when he was serving in that office. Our List of awards and honours received by Winston Churchill has no mention, although the French Wikipedia fr:Liste des distinctions de Winston Churchill does, albeit without a date or reference. So which is right, and if so, when and of what rank? Alansplodge (talk) 20:53, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

Lloyd George got the grand cordon in 1920, while PM. DuncanHill (talk) 00:11, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

Uk press coverage of this has been a tad silly - the Legion d'honneur has a range of classes, some very freely distributed indeed, & I'm sure other PMs have been awarded. Johnbod (talk) 00:28, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

He's not listed in the Léonore database of recipients, at least. This Guardian piece says it was 1958, but I wonder if they've got it confused with a different honour: on 6th November 1958, Churchill was awarded the Cross of the Order of Liberation. (It was presented in person by de Gaulle, who Churchill hadn't met since 1945; see pictures in The Listener and The Illustrated London News.) Adam Sampson (talk) 00:49, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

I found the GOM in Leonore. DuncanHill (talk) 01:00, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

Curiously, the printed text "élevé à la dignité de Grand Officier" has been crossed out and been replaced by the handwritten text "nominé Chevalier" ("nominated Knight"). Next to mere knighthood being tantamount to an insult, mere nomination does not imply actual conferral.  ​‑‑Lambiam 03:21, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

From the Leonore document, Gladstone was nominated (and maybe appointed) Knight on 13 August 1859, nine years before he first became PM. The nomination was in his capacity as patron of the Société Française de Secours (French Aid Society) in London, rather than his political office (he became Chancellor of the Exchequer that year). Chuntuk (talk) 12:12, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

To return to Lloyd George. He is not findable in the Leonore database (which does admit, in French, that it is incomplete). He is however easily findable in The Times, Thursday, Jan. 15, 1920, Issue 42308, page 12, "News in Brief". "PRIME MINISTER'S HONOUR - Paris, Jan 14. The formal ceremony of conferring the Grand Cordon of the Legion of Honour on Mr. Lloyd George took place this afternoon, when M. William Martin, Chief of the Protocol, called at Claridge's Hotel and invested the Prime Minister with the decoration in the name of the President of the French Republic. - Reuter". DuncanHill (talk) 12:58, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

Thanks all; apparently English WP 1, French WP 0.  :-) Alansplodge (talk) 18:11, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

We still haven't got a definitive answer for Churchill. But how do we prove the negative? I emailed the BBC about their coverage, they have corrected their article with regard to "the first serving PM", but still have Churchill getting it. They say they got their copy from an agency. DuncanHill (talk) 18:52, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

July 22

RBI Master Directions

I am preparing a legal note on the 'Reserve Bank of India (Commercial Banks – Prudential Norms on Capital Adequacy) Directions, 2025 (updated as on 1st July 2026)'.

Could anyone please suggest any secondary sources or interpretations that explain these Directions?

Thank you. Grotesquetruth (talk) 14:52, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

July 25

Proof of life

[6] I think conventionally if someone hasn't been seen in a while and there are doubts, you can call their local police and request a wellness check. Does that somehow not apply if the person is a US Senator? There is apparently significant uncertainty regarding one of them.[7] A bunch of statements have been released under his name, whose authenticity has been disputed by some. Question: is it that big a deal for Congress or the state governor to send some EMT's to go to the person's rehabilitation center, check for a pulse, and report what they find? This is just bizarre. Thanks. ~2026-41486-45 (talk) 20:28, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

I don't think just any old Joe Schmo can request a wellness check on someone unless they're a close relative or otherwise have a close relationship. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:48, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

Note that this is specific to the USA, where the case in question is ongoing. In the UK a mere friend can request a wellness check by the police on someone unheard from for some time and unresponsive to phone calls, etc. I have recent personal experience of this. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-41275-62 (talk) 00:16, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Anyone can request a check on anyone. Whether the agency to which the request is made will respond to it is another matter. The police may respond to a request by a neighbour living across the street, or by a UPS delivery driver. I don't think they'll go and check whether some patient in an ICU is alive and well, even if the request is made by their concerned spouse.  ​‑‑Lambiam 05:25, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Maybe in theory. But in America, at least, you would have to demonstrate a need to know. In general, if you were to call a hospital and ask about so-and-so, they would tell you they can't give out information on possible patients. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:33, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

"But in America, at least, you would have to demonstrate a need to know."  ​‑‑Lambiam 14:23, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Without their consent, Protected health information can only be given to the patient's authorized representatives. In solidarity, Aaron Liu (talk) 16:41, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Is this restriction documented somewhere?  ​‑‑Lambiam 19:46, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

The first thing that comes to mind is HIPAA. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:24, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

The "United States" section of the article I linked has all the receipts starting from its first sentence. In solidarity, Aaron Liu (talk) 15:01, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

There have to be circumstances under which providing information about a medical condition is perfectly fine. What I do find in the articled linked to is that obtaining information about a medical condition may, in some cases, breach HIPAA regulations. But I do not see an exposition of the criteria that determine when and with whom medical information can be shared.

If someone enters a hospital with a shot wound and dies there, I am fairly convinced the hospital is allowed to inform the investigating police officers of this death, even though they are not the deceased patient's authorized representatives.  ​‑‑Lambiam 10:34, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

There's substantial public interest in knowing whether this dude is alive. If he's merely indisposed, we can all wish him a speedy recovery and hope to see him back on the job soon. But if he's dead, from what I gather, the Kentucky Secretary of State is required to schedule a special election to pick a replacement Senator, unless a certain deadline has passed which happens on August 3. A suspicious sort might imagine political operators deciding instead to put the body on ice until after August 3. So people have been asking for evidence one way or another. I wonder the House Speaker could ask the United States Capitol Police to do a wellness check. He might opt against doing so though, for similar political reasons to the above. ~2026-41533-46 (talk) 08:22, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Or those who need to know probably already know. They just aren't blabbing to the public about it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:24, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

I'd think that the people of Kentucky need to know, but it appears that even the Governor of Kentucky is kept in the dark.^[8]  ​‑‑Lambiam 14:34, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Or, being a politician, maybe the KY Guv is playing a game to try to force the issue. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:11, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

If the KY Gov knows, nothing stops him from speaking up. If the SoS knows that the person is dead, he has a duty to say so and schedule a special election, but since he's also a politician (of the same party as the Senator), he might keep quiet for the same reason the Senator's colleagues and family are not being forthcoming with answers. It's pretty clear that the Senator's party doesn't want a special election. IDK whether the opposing party wants one though. If they also don't, that could explain why they're keeping relatively quiet. ~2026-41758-01 (talk) 18:59, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Or maybe he's not buying into conspiracy theories. The only "official" information we have is that he's hospitalized. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:24, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Today's news says that Beshear has now communicated with the McConnell team asking for clarity on what's going on. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:23, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

The first I mentioned as needing to know were the people of Kentucky. Whatever games some big shots may be playing, it is obvious that the people of Kentucky are not in the know, so this reply is a distraction.  ​‑‑Lambiam 10:38, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

Theoretically, they've already been informed. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:30, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

They know what they've been told by McConnell's supporters (two photos and some written statements, but no audio, video, health checks from medical people, etc). But they want something more definite. This is from today and describes the situation I guess. Someone online called him a cruel name that was funny enough that I can't resist repeating it: Lich McConnell. ~2026-42187-04 (talk) 19:25, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

Unless you can prove he's deceased, that's a BLP violation. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:26, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

Readers not familiar with US politics should consult Mitch McConnell#June 2026–present hospitalization for context. Nyttend (talk) 12:01, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

July 26

Anecdota Americana

This is a real long shot, but can anyone find me reliable (or even vaguely reasonable) sources that discuss this series of books? If you search Google, the AI will tell you that it's a vintage humour anthology published in 1934 and followed by the New Anecdota Americana in 1944 (sourced to Reddit). If you check out the Internet Archive, you'll find a shocking number of books with that title, including the 1934 one Google knows about here. It has a publisher (Nesor) and a date (1934) and everything. No author given unfortunately, but that's not unusual for dirty joke books. There's also a version purportedly from 1927 (here) that also has a publisher (Humphrey Adams) and date (1927) and even an (presumably pseudonymous) author (J. Mortimer Hall). Unlike the 1934 version, this one is not expurgated. Many of the jokes are the "same", albeit often retold slightly. Another book from 1934 is called Anecdota Americana Second Series. It references the 1927 book and J. Mortimer Hall is now a PhD. Much later editions or offshoots from 1944 and 1968 and 1981 and more are also available with an account.
In short, what are these? Is the Nesor edition some kind of ripoff from the self-published 1927 edition? Who really collected it? Is there really a J. Mortimer Hall? As I said, it's not unusual for joke books to not have clear ownership, but this is ridiculous. Matt Deres (talk) 03:28, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Several copies on abebooks. Mentioned in a book on Scribd, here as "compiled by one William Passemon". DuncanHill (talk) 13:08, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

A interesting passage and it pointed out my inattentiveness (thank you!): the pages here clearly credit Passemon as compiler and J. Mortimer Hall as merely the preface writer (and drawings by Anton Erdman). But the 1934 "second series" omits Passemon entirely and certainly leaves the impression that it is the sole work of Hall. Matt Deres (talk) 13:37, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

This is, presumably, the Passemon 1934 version: "Anecdota Americana; Being, Explicitly, An Anthology Of Tales In The Vernacular; Collected By William Passemon, Preface By J. Mortimer Hall; Published by Humphrey Adams / The Association For The Asphyxiation Of Hypocrites, Boston, 1934", said to be a first edition.^[9] But some sellers give the publication date of apparently the same book (if you can judge a book by its cover) as 1927.^[10] There is also an Anecdota Americana with a salacious cover, showing imagery suggesting an ejaculating phallus.[11] No year info is given, but it is also said to be a first edition.^[12]

In 1934, collecting and publishing such jokes under one's own name would have sullied the reputation and might even have ended the career of many an esteemed, distinguished and reputable gentleman. This would at the same time have inhibited suing rip-offs for copyright infringement.  ​‑‑Lambiam 14:19, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

If that's a sample of quality of the jokes being told at that time, no wonder the period was known as "the great depression" Chuntuk (talk) 13:40, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

July 29

Clemenceau's hat

Clemenceau and hat

What kind of hat is Georges Clemenceau wearing here? Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 02:07, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

See https://lionheartautographs.com/autographs/original-portrait-of-clemenceau-publisher-of-zolas-jaccuse/ - it's actually a custom make. Nanonic (talk) 03:27, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

According to that article, the designer (one Mlle. Jeanne Taty), based it on the French Army calot or forage cap; an example is shown here. Alansplodge (talk) 16:29, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

Appointing an Australian premier

With the replacement of Jacinta Allan by Ben Carroll as Premier of Victoria, I'm left wondering — what's involved in the appointment of a new premier, whether here in Victoria or elsewhere? Let's imagine a situation like this one, where there's no question of which party/coalition has a majority, and no question who leads that party/coalition; I'm just wondering about the formalities. Does the governor just sign some paperwork, or is there a formal kissing hands-type ceremony, or is it somewhere in between? I didn't find anything online, but ChatGPT told me that the new premier must visit Government House, formally have an audience with the governor, take an oath of office, etc., but the whole situation is much less elaborate than a royal audience. But then, yesterday ChatGPT told me that bus services to Marysville didn't exist, so I know I can't trust it. Nyttend (talk) 04:50, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

ChatGPT got those formalities right. HiLo48 (talk) 06:11, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

@JackofOz: as a fellow Aussie, any insights on this? ~2026-42237-99 (talk) 02:00, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

Comment on "much less elaborate than a royal audience": My impression - that's the best I can do, given that I've never been summoned to one - is that royal audiences are not elaborate at all. You turn up at the palace or wherever, get ushered in to the royal presence, shake hands, sit down, accept tea if offered, answer questions, then leave at the appropriate time.

Visiting a state governor would be virtually identical to this. In the case of a new premier, there's an oath to be administered by the governor, and spoken and signed by the new premier. That's it. Well, the Governor may firstly ask the person whether they'd be willing to accept the role of premier - but that's nearly always a foregone conclusion in these circumstances. That piece of paper, and the official notice about the visit in the newspapers, constitute the complete official record of the occasion. There may be a photographer present for the oath swearing bit, but whether that video is the property of Government House or some private organisation like a TV station, I could not say.

We tend to expect some grand announcement of the new premier - but that's the media's job. As far as Government House is concerned, the baton has been handed on quietly without any fuss, and the governance of the state keeps calm and carries on. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:37, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

July 30

Was Bruno Bettelheim really Bruno Bettelheim? asking for reports on speculation, not asking for

Enough already. The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

speculation. Could the actual Bruno Bettelheim have been murdered in Buchenwald and then someone stole his identity and emigrated to the United States? It would fit the character traits of the man we know as Bettelheim. Richard Pollak, among others, obviously didn't trust Bettelheim, or at least the man he knew as Bettelheim, and since he thought that man was such a liar, maybe he had private speculations in his notes and conversations that Bettelheim wasn't really him. Rich (talk) 00:37, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

Who put this notion in your head? :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:58, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

Myself Rich (talk) 01:12, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

So you're allowed to speculate, but we aren't? :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:18, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

I don't know, but I know that I am not allowed to ask for speculation.Rich (talk) 01:33, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

Actually it might have been my ekxperience as a 5 year old in Princeton NJ, early 1960s when I was being dosed with Haldol(I didn't know until 45 years later. I alwayys wondered what was wrong with me, and the answer apparently was that doctors were recklessly and/or greedily making me very messed up). Anyway, having learned about it I've often puzzled over it since then because it didn't fit my comforting stereotype of kindly Jewish doctors from Europe. A few years ago it did ocur to me that they might have been Nazi doctors fleeing Germany under a cover of Jewish names and occupations, a cover few would suspect, since their actions do fit my stereotype of nazi doctors. But yesterday, I was reading about Bruno Bettelheim's alleged plagiarism and so I thought, why not so.e rascal fleeing Germany BEFORE the war with a Jewish name. Rich (talk) 01:31, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

Note, I recommend hatting this thread as it is going nowhere fast. Rich, Frank Abagnale was a real person. If you haven't seen it, check out Catch Me If You Can. It's a fun film. Viriditas (talk) 02:13, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

Let's let it go where it goes, if anywhere, before hatting it. Rich (talk) 02:40, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

If the 'Bettelheim' who arrived in New York in 1939, rejoining Bettelheim's previously emigrated wife Gina, was an imposter who replaced the 'real Bettelheim' in Buchenwald in 1938–9, why didn't Gina, married to Bettelheim from 1930, notice and/or say something? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-41275-62 (talk) 11:23, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

If he wasn't really Bettelheim, she didn't tell on him, but they didn't pretend any further relationship. Rich (talk) 13:23, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

It doesn't seem terribly likely on the face of it. What would the supposed impostor stand to gain from such a scheme? He wouldn't be able to use any of Bettelheim's connections without risking giving himself away, so why not just travel under his own name? One could, I suppose, imagine a Nazi trying to pass himself off as a concentration camp survivor in 1945, but not in 1939.

And if your only evidence is the man's negative personality traits, that doesn't mean he has to be a Nazi in disguise. He could just be a Jewish guy with the same traits. People are just people. Chuntuk (talk) 13:54, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

Does Chuntuk have any knowledge about Bettelheim? It's pretty absurd for him to estimate the likelihood of something about Bettelheim if he doesn't know a whole lot about Bettelheim. "people are just people"

wojld be one of the most silly things Ive ever heard anyone say, even by me, if I didn't think Chuntuk was really a young person without experience withmany different kinds of people. Definitey Chuntuk is a rude arrogant wikipedian. Rich (talk) 22:46, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

July 18

Rodeeo or rodayo

THere's an ad currently on Australian TV where a character, when complimented on doing something good, says "It's not my first rodeeo, or is that rodayo?" Which is it? And why? Our aticle lists both as pronunciations, without clarification. HiLo48 (talk) 09:57, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

Well, Spanish has /roˈdeo/ [roˈð̞e.o], but English tends to have problems with a simple /e/ [e] sound to begin with. The first pronunciation seems based on English orthography, while the second is an approximation of the Spanish. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:25, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

My guess is that HiLo is contrasting /ˈroʊdi.oʊ/ with /roʊˈdeɪ.oʊ/. I don't think anyone says /roʊˈdiː.oʊ/. --Trovatore (talk) 21:05, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

Just happened to be passing by and it occurred to me that someone somewhere in Australia might still drive to a RO-dee-o in their battered old Holden Ro-DAY-o (which is how it was pronounced in the ads on TV). --Shirt58 (talk) 🦘 04:25, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

With the DAY in Ro-DAY-o as /dæɪ/ of course--Shirt58 (talk) 🦘 04:36, 19 July 2026 (UTC)?

I would say in American English it's typically "ROH-dee-oh", although Rodeo Drive in L.A. is more like the Spanish - which is funny considering how Angelinos butcher other Spanish names, such as San Pedro as "san PEE-droh" and Figueroa as "figure-oh-uh". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:48, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

Peeve alert -- Angelenos with the e. Not little angels. Would be Angeleño in Spanish. --Trovatore (talk) 18:59, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

But has any Pope ever made the pun? DuncanHill (talk) 21:16, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

Rodeo Drive is in Beverly Hills, they'll have you know! as is Cañon Drive, whose tilde is silent. —Antonissimo (talk) 01:10, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

I have never heard anyone pronounce San Pedro "San PEE-dro", and can only imagine it being done as some kind of hillbilly parody. Agree regarding Americans' pronunciation of rodeo; interestingly, though, in the 1950s the "Spanish-like" pronunciation was not uncommon, but nowadays it's almost nonexistant except in specific cases like Rodeo Drive. ~2026-40817-33 (talk) 05:49, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Note the pronunciation listed in San Pedro, Los Angeles. And, as I recall, Jack Webb on Dragnet, pronounced it that way. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:29, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

You haven't seen Chinatown, I guess. —Antonissimo (talk) 02:52, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Neil Diamond raised the question in the song "You're So Sweet, Horseflies Keep Hangin' Round Your Face" (1969), iirc. —Antonissimo (talk) 01:10, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

July 19

Translate headstone inscription from Hebrew to English

Grass Valley Pioneer Jewish Cemetery monument in Hebrew

I just took this photo which I have added to Grass Valley Pioneer Jewish Cemetery. Can a Hebrew speaker provide a translation? I appreciate it. Cullen328 (talk) 05:58, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

Even on a grave stone, I suppose it might possibly be Yiddish. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 09:57, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

The plain Hebrew letter aleph, א‎, occurs rarely in Yiddish orthography. Instead, the Yiddish alphabet has two vowel letters, אַ‎ and אָ‎, of which the first is in fact the most common letter in Yiddish texts, followed in frequency by the vowels י‎, ע‎ and ו‎. The absence of the most frequent letter and just a single occurrence of the third argue against Yiddish.  ​‑‑Lambiam 22:48, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

I cannot claim to know Hebrew, but Google's OCR gives the following characters:

OCR

בן
שלמה בן רפאל
שהלך לעולמו
ביום ה טז כסליו
בשנת תרלט לפק
תנצבה

Looking over the image I'm for the most part inclined to agree, but that first ב looks somewhat like a פ and also apparently כסליו might instead have to be כסלו?

In any case, while I won't provide an attempted translation in case of inaccuracy, I believe the name of the person buried is Solomon, and that he died on the 16th of Kislev. Based on the list of people buried at the site per Find a Grave, as well as the dates for Kislev, I believe the monument is for Solomon Rosenthal, who was born 1816 and passed on December 12, 1878 (16 Kislev, 5639). Although again, this should be taken with a grain of salt. GalacticShoe (talk) 15:52, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

That would be this one.[13] Looks like the same style of stone, with an English transcription on this side of it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:43, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

I think it is indeed likely to be the same monument. Based on the ground I presume it would be on the opposite side of the Hebrew inscription (the monstone on the ground to the right of the monument in the picture above would likely show up in the Find a Grave photo if the English inscription were on the side to the left of the Hebrew inscription.) GalacticShoe (talk) 23:49, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

There is only one monument of that size, shape and coloration in that small cemetery. Most of the graves are horizontal without upright headstones. There is one darker upright monument. So, I think it is likely that it has an English side and a Hebrew side. The cemetery is fenced off and so I was taking my photos from a distance. Thanks for all the insights. Cullen328 (talk) 07:33, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

The top line, פ נ‎, is an abbreviation of פֹּה נִקְבַּר‎ (po nikbar), meaning "Here is buried", and the bottom line, ת נ צ ב ה‎, is an abbreviation of תְּהִי נִשְׁמָתוֹ צְרוּרָה בִּצְרוֹר הַחַיִּים‎ (tehei nishmato tserurah bitsror hachayim), meaning "May his soul be bundled in the bundle of life".  ​‑‑Lambiam 21:19, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the clarification, Lambiam. Would you (or anyone else) happen to know תרלט לפק is interpreted as 5,639? My understanding is that לפק is לפ״ק, indicating the omission of the thousands digit, but I'm not sure how one obtains 639 from תרלט. GalacticShoe (talk) 00:33, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

See Hebrew numerals. The tav is 400, resh is 200, lamed is 30, tet is 9. The hundreds place uses two letters because the Hebrew alphabet ends at 400. —Amble (talk) 04:15, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

Here is a Chabad explanation of the abbreviation at the bottom. Their translation is "May his/her soul be bound up in the bond of life." Cullen328 (talk) 07:39, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

The KJV has "bound in the bundle of life". The root of the Hebrew adjective צרור‎ is the same as that of the noun, the two differing only in the niqqud. The basic sense of the root is that of tightness, which IMO is conveyed better by bundle than by bond.  ​‑‑Lambiam 02:58, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

July 20

Singaporean video translation

Can anyone translate this Singaporean Hokkien(?) video for me? It's a 2012 video from SPH Media's RazorTV that discusses the production of Ah Boys to Men. Director Jack Neo here speaks what seems to be Hokkien. I'd like the entire video transcript in English.

I will be using this AV media to cite noncontroversial statements on production, as RazorTV is made for "low showbiz" news. These claims are Casting began in March 2012 (in English at 2:30) and Neo initially wanted to include regulars like Shawn Lee and Joshua Ang, but decided otherwise to give the audience a completely new feel. Also wanted to supplement a claim on whether he wanted to cast getai singers. RFNirmala (talk) 09:05, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

July 23

Dead - just as (?) good

When in Braveheart it is getting clear that Edward Longshanks is going to win the Battle of Falkirk, he tells his men, according to strong consensus of the sources: "Bring me Wallace. Alive, if possible. Dead, just as good." However, whenever I watch the scene, I get reinforced: He doesn't say this. He only says "Dead, just good." At least a handful of people agree. And I think this is the only wording that makes sense. He wants Wallace alive, exactly for what happens at the end of the film: Sham trial, torture, public execution. So having him dead is not just as good, it's quite a bit worse. Of course, it is still much better than having this dangerous foe still roam around and kill your allies. So, if Wallace were already dead or would resist too much to be captured alive... having him dead is just good. So, what does he really say? What makes sense here? And if I am right, why is an incorrect wording given almost always? --KnightMove (talk) 07:20, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Can you find a YouTube clip of that moment? If so, play it again, Sam. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:27, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Here you are. --KnightMove (talk) 08:51, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

The clip you linked is subtitled, which suggests the "as" is in the script, but the late great Patrick McGoohan has elided it, which was a habit of his when he snapped out phrases like that. His auditors (both fictional and non-fictional) no doubt thought they heard the word, but as you say, it's not there. Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:20, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

I'm hearing (and seeing) it as "Just 's good". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:52, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

I have to believe you - I can't hear and see that 's.

Addition: What do others think? --KnightMove (talk) 14:15, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

How many opinions do you need? I also think that there's a swallowed 'as' in there. --Wrongfilter (talk) 15:33, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

As a native British English speaker, the (admittedly reduced) "'s" is evident to me, sufficiently so that I would not notice anything unusual about McGoohan's delivery had attention not been drawn to it. However, I can readily imagine that a non-native speaker might have difficulty perceiving it. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-41275-62 (talk) 16:25, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

To me, it sounds more like a glottal stop than an s, I'm not a native speaker, though. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk)¨

I hear "jus's good", without a clear "t". --Amble (talk) 19:00, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Yes; this is typical of native British English when spoken casually: a great deal is elided – if anybody non-British overheard me speaking with my friends in a pub, they would likely not understand half of what was said. This is probably true of many other languages, but of course everyone is inclined to speak more distinctly in more formal settings or if non-local auditors are present. (And, of course, sloppy pronunciation disappears when we communicate in writing, as we are doing here ["asweer doineer"]).

In the film scene, McGoohan/Edward is effectively speaking that last remark to himself. The subsequent events of Wallace's execution are immaterial to the remark, because they are merely opportunistic. If Wallace had been killed in the battle, Edward would have been entirely satisfied with the situation. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-41275-62 (talk) 21:05, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

I hear "just 's good", and, much more importantly, I see that sentiment on his face and body language. Life means little to him, as evidenced by his very telling remark when his aide questioned his order for his archers to fire arrows into the battle, fearing it would kill their own soldiers. "Yes ... we have reserves". The "yes" came with a whole armoury of non-vocal meaning, including "I don't understand why my orders would be questioned", and "Obviously", and "Of what concern is that to you, or anybody?". McGoohan was a tremendously skilled actor, and mere words never tell the whole story when he's in the spotlight. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:33, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Thank you very much. As a side note, now that you mention it: I have always felt that this is even a plot hole, just for the purpose of painting Longshanks as evil beyond imagination. Literally five minutes before: "Not the archers... Arrows cost money. Use up the Irish. The dead cost nothing." But when you also hit your own troops, arrows are worth the price! --KnightMove (talk) 22:13, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Thanks everyone, you have convinced me. So as the final aspect of my question: Would "just good" also work as well? Or wouldn't an Englishman express it like this? --KnightMove (talk) 22:13, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

"Just good" doesn't sound right. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:21, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

It doesn't sound right in this context. In "sales for baseball were good—not excellent, just good",^[14] the use is perfectly cromulent.  ​‑‑Lambiam 06:45, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Footballer

Alas, the tired old subject of Association football v. the rest. But here in Australia, this non-sporting male who only knew Rules as a child, bristles at the word "footballer", which (to me) can only mean "soccer player". Should the term be reserved for soccer players as a disambiguation key? The thought came when examining the surname page Gleeson, and we have various people identified by their code (rugby league) or (rugby union), but Brian Gleeson (footballer), and Martin Gleeson (Australian footballer), both adherents of the Australian game. Doug butler (talk) 20:49, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Doesn’t this sound like a question for the village pump, tea house, or help desk? I thought the reference desk wasn’t for questions about editing this Wiki. Pablothepenguin (talk) 20:55, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

In this particular instance, it might be be better if "(Australian [Rules] footballer)" were used for both, but there is little point in trying to apply it Wikiversally, only if more than one type of footballer is appearing in the same disambiguation page or would come up in a search on the name: otherwise, the mere fact of being any kind of footballer (American, Association, Australian Rules, Gaelic, Rugby Union, Rugby League and probably etc.), is probably sufficient. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-41275-62 (talk) 21:13, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

I can't speak regarding Aussie Rules or Gaelic football, although the Aussie OP seems to have the same general viewpoint as me (American): a "footballer" is a soccer player. Players of American football aren't called footballers. I would probably recommend against the use of the label "American footballer", because it would be ambiguous, but if I did see it, by default I would assume it meant an American soccer player and not a[n] [American/gridiron] football player. (And I've seen BBC use "American footballer" to mean exactly that, FWIW 😂.) ~2026-40817-33 (talk) 01:03, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

In Australia the term "footballer" can mean a player of any form of football, most commonly, a player of Australian football, simply because there are more of them than soccer players or players of rugby league or rugby union.

Scottish Gaelic

The following is an urgent request:

I am NOT asking to become completely fluent in the language. Instead, I simply desire to understand what sports commentators are saying on BBC Alba.

What is the most sensible course of action I can take? I assume that a full lesson programme would be too much.

I can’t do full lessons anyway, as I need the time for more important things, such as creating music, flying lessons, travelling, water sports, and trying to get a foothold in the music industry as a sound engineer.

I apologise for sounding like a person who brags a lot, but I just have a very direct snd literal way of articulating my thoughts.

I must decode this language soon. Hy head hurts every time I try to watch BBC Alba. I need it for certain sports events that only they appear to have.

It’s also my civic duty to my country to learn its language. I hate my school for not teaching it.

Apologies for the rambling, just had a lot of thoughts it get of my chest. I feel this is a good way to vent frustration in moderation.

Pablothepenguin (talk) 20:54, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Immersion class? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:08, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

It's a while since I watched any football matches on YouTube with Gaelic-language commentary, but I watch other sports with commentary in languages I don't speak well or at all (French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese), and it never bothers me, because the accompanying graphics and a knowledge of the sports is sufficient – the spoken commentary is mostly just a background emotional accompaniment, and of course, participants' names usually, and specific terms sometimes, remain understandable. (One does not need to be fluent in Spanish to know what pneumatico blando/duro refer to, for example)

Having lived a while in Scotland, I appreciate how opaque Scots Gaelic is to non-speakers like us, but I am quite sure you cannot just pick up a smattering for sports-viewing purposes. Your two recourses are to (1) Take a full-on course in the language (good luck), or (2) just learn to adapt to and tolerate the situation. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-41275-62 (talk) 21:28, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

I already said I have no time for full time courses. I don’t see how they would help much anyway. I did french for a couple of years at secondary school and I remember next to nothing of the language. Pablothepenguin (talk) 21:44, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

I mean, it doesn't sound like bragging, but it sounds like a naive hope for a quick fix. It is somewhat dependent on personal aptitude and motivation, but generally it takes many months to reach a decent skill level in a new language (even if it's just one of the four skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing). 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:39, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

I would like to know what went wrong at my school. I did French for a couple of years but learned extremely little. Pablothepenguin (talk) 22:53, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Some teachers, and courses, are better than others; some people are innately good, indifferent, or bad at learning other languages. It took me 5 years of French at school (I passed the 'O' Level) to gain any kind of proficiency in the language, and at the time that would have made me barely able to follow a French sports commentary (and now I've forgotten nearly all of what I learned).

It looks like your only option is my suggested (2), unless and until you can obtain computer-based technology to make simultaneous translation available to you (which seems to be just about upon us, judging by ads I've seen). Or breed your own Babelfish. ~2026-41275-62 (talk) 01:58, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

You could turn the sound off while watching the action.  ​‑‑Lambiam 06:28, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

There must be a quick way to learn the language somewhere. Pablothepenguin (talk) 09:03, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

There are no quick ways to learn any language. You could try a youtube course, though, and see how far you get. --Wrongfilter (talk) 09:07, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

I’m sure I said I DIDN’T need to become fluent. All I ask is to be able to understand the BBC Alba commentators and no one has explained how I can do that specifically. Pablothepenguin (talk) 09:17, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

I gather that you just want to learn the parts of the language which sports commentators would use? Maybe you could find a YouTube with subtitles in the language and focusing on learning those terms? Though you also have to ask yourself how badly you want to know it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:22, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

I want access to sports events only BBC Alba has. I note that every educational facility I’ve ever been to has failed me in terms of teaching my countries language and culture. Pablothepenguin (talk) 09:31, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Understanding a language when being spoken between native speakers is quite a long way down the learning path. I can read French quite well, but comprehending what the blighters are saying to each other is quite beyond me, apart from catching a few words here and there. Alansplodge (talk) 09:36, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Perhaps you're looking in the wrong direction to apportion such blame. C'est la vie. Bazza 7 (talk) 12:28, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

The BBC Alba commentators are not speaking some kind of stripped-down, simplified version of Scots Gaelic that a non-speaker can magically 'decode' – they are speaking a full-on language, very different from English, that just happens to be focussing on a specific topic.

Speaking from personal experience, it would be easier for an English monoglot to learn a Chinese language than to learn Gaelic (as a small boy in Hong Kong, I acquired a smattering of Cantonese, now entirely forgotten). The ONLY way to understand what they are saying is to learn the language, or employ fairly advanced real-time translation technology. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-41275-62 (talk) 16:51, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

There's a quick way to learn a language if and only if you already know some closely related language. Because most of the differences are systematic sound changes, so you just learn the sound changes, the (small) differences in grammar and the exceptions. But for Scots Gaelic, that only works if you already know Irish or Manx.

Yes and no. In that case, you are prone to mix up "false friends" or otherwise make a lot of mistakes that make you sound a bit unnatural. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 20:37, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

BTW, I wished I had the money for just one of your hobbies. PiusImpavidus (talk) 19:02, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Try Speak Gaelic on, surprise, BBC Alba - just to see how you get on. MinorProphet (talk) 12:20, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

The way I’d go about it (speaking as someone who already knows Scottish Gaelic) is to take a couple of Duolingo lessons (or some other language learning app), just as many as you have the time for, in order to learn basic sentence structure. Then, turn on the captions for the program you’re watching and whenever you see a word you don’t know that you would like to know the meaning of (which at first will be practically every other word), look it up with a dictionary, like Wiktionary. It’ll be a slow process, but eventually you’ll be able to get the gist of what they’re saying. Learning the language this way will become a faster and faster process the more advanced your knowledge becomes, since you’ll be able to glean the meaning of a couple of words from context clues. (That’s how I started learning Russian with the Russian dub of one of my favorite TV shows.) Cheers, 𝔰𝔥𝔞𝔡𝔢𝔰𝔱𝔞𝔯 ^{(𝔱𝔞𝔩𝔨)} (any/all) In solidarity. 02:21, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

As much as you want to learn Scottish Gaelic pretty quickly, note that SG has less speakers than both Irish and Welsh. Therefore, there isn't many learning resources for learning SG, even more so outside Scotland. And anyone who can speaks those three also speaks English, not to mention not even half the population of the three countries can speak that language. Because of that (and because its easier to learn another Germanic or Romance language), its very difficult to learn SG very quickly. Just like learning any other language, don't spend all day learning, limiting to 2 hours day/8 hours week. It will always take a lot of time in order to have a basic conversation in another language, especially for non-Germanic/Romance ones. JuniperChill (talk) 09:36, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

I tried a bit of Duolingo, but I found it rather tedious and roundabout, and not too efficient, alas. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 09:51, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

July 24

Questions

1. Are there any words in Spanish where a diaeresis is used to break diphthongs?
2. Does the French word créée have ”three Es” or ”two És and one E”? In other words, when counting how many times each letter appears in a word in French, are accented letters counted separately from their unaccented counterparts, or not?
3. Are there any words in French with letter Á (not À)?
4. How are the letters in pinyin read out loud? Do pinyin letters have names like English ”a, bee, cee”? How is ”Zhongguo” read, ”Z-H-O-N-G-G-U-O”?
5. Are varieties of Arabic such as Egyptian, Iraqi, Algerian and Moroccan Arabic, their own languages since they, at least the most distant ones, are not mutually intelligible?
6. Is 23:59 on Thursday ”one to twelve on Thursday evening”, 0:00 on Friday ”twelve on Friday night” and 0:01 on Friday ”one past twelve on Friday night”?
7. Can the word ended be used an adjective like ”The team scored 50 goals in the ended season”, ”The ended year was quite normal”?
8. Is English Saint ever abbreviated as S:t, like Swedish Sankt is?
9. Can the word water be used as a countable noun when referring to a single container filled with water, like Bring three waters and two teas to this room?
10. Can the word kettle be used to refer to Finnish kattila, to which kettle is related with borrowing of the Finnish term from Germanic?

--40bus (talk) 07:42, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

6. No, 0:01 in Friday is still Thursday night.

7. No. You could say "the season just ended".

8. No, never.

9. Yes, this usage is possible in a restaurant context.

--~2026-41082-90 (talk) 08:08, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

1. See Diaeresis_(diacritic)#Spanish.

7. No, it would be like the above user said.

8. not that I've ever seen. It's typically just "St", with or without a trailing "." In older times, it was "S" plus a smaller superscript "t" that was underscored.

9. Sure. It's not really using water as a countable noun, though; it's a shorthand way of saying "glasses of water" (and "cups of tea").

←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:08, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

6. "a minute before midnight on Thursday"; "midnight on Thursday"; "a minute after midnight on Thursday" or "...Friday morning"

7. "end of season", "end of year"

8. No

9. Yes, although "glasses of water" would be more usual. Bazza 7 (talk) 09:03, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

7. "When you went onward on this ended action, I look'd upon her with a soldier's eye" (Much Ado About Nothing, Act 1, scene i), but I would say that that sense of ended is archaic now, at a pinch maybe possible in poetry. In a different sense you can talk about double-ended screws and the like. --Antiquary (talk) 10:56, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

3. A quick search on French Wikipedia and Wiktionary yields nothing but proper names. Given the existing prevalence of à as well as the prescriptive orthography assigned by the Académie Française, I find it unlikely that any words will use it anytime soon.

5. Varieties of Arabic is relevant here.

GalacticShoe (talk) 13:23, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

2. In French, e, é, è and ê are considered to be just one letter. So créée has three e's. When spelling the word out loud, one would say cé, erre, e accent aigu, e accent aigu, e. In dictionaries, words with accented letters are ordered as if the accents did not exist. Xuxl (talk) 13:30, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

10. According to Wiktionary, Finnish kattila has a large number of meanings. It seems that at least the geological sense, as in kettle hole is common to both languages. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 16:25, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

4. I wouldn't think that in Chinese, Latin letters used in Pinyin would be considered fundamentally different to Latin letters used in other contexts. Then, it seems as if every article on Latin letters in Chinese Wikipedia lists a Pinyin pronunciation by the heading 汉语拼音发音 . 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 16:34, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

4. Latin letters in Pinyin not infrequently represent different sounds in (Modern Standard) Mandarin than they do in English and similar 'Western' languages. This is because

(a) Some 'Western' sounds are not present in Mandarin;

(b) Some sounds present in Mandarin do not exist in English, etc., and consequently;

(c) Pinyin has deployed some 'unused' Latin letters to represent those non-Western sounds. See the tables under Pinyin#Syllables, which show how those letters are pronounced in MSM.

This is because, while previous 'romanization schemes' were mostly designed by Western scholars to represent the sounds of Chinese (or rather, the many Chinese languages – note the obsolete term 'dialects' used in this context is misleading) to Westerners, Pinyin was designed by Chinese linguists primarily for use by Chinese people where using Chinese characters was inconvenient, particularly for tasks involving keyboards.

As I understood the question, 40bus asked about the names of the general letters in Pinyin, and I don't really think they would have any specific. A question like "How do you spell 'Zhong Guo' in Pinyin?" would probably not get a response with different names than "How do you spell 'walkthrough' in English?" 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:37, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

The question about "what are the letters called" is simple to answer. They are normal letters. They don't have special names. So, "zh" is "zee aich" (or however you want to spell the letter names). I feel there is confusion about the use of pinyin. It isn't used for writing in China. It is used for non-native speakers to learn to pronounce Mandarin words. That is why the example shown in the question "zhongguo" is not actually pinyin. It should be zhong1guo2 or zhōngguó. Without the tone markers, you don't know how to pronounce the words. If you pronounce it with the wrong tones, you spout nonsense like zhong3guo1 (seed pot), zhong2guo4 (time-traveling clock), or zhong4guo3 (heavy fruit). ~2026-38520-51 (talk) 11:32, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

I don't know how common it is, but apparently Chinese speakers might use Pinyin(-ish) when they're unsure of how to write the character correctly. It might not really be proper use, though. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:41, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

The way character input works is you type the main radical and then branch out from there. They don't type what it sounds like in the same way as pinyin works. There are longstanding complaints that the ease of typing radical and picking strokes with autocomplete has made many young generations that can long longer write Chinese without a computer. ~2026-39968-68 (talk) 15:21, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

How are individual words written in Chinese characters spelled out in Chinese, in a context where the hearer does not know the spelling of the word beforehand? And in Pinyin? --40bus (talk) 19:54, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

There is the Bopomofo system, at least. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:17, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Chinese isn't an alphabetic language, so there is literally no concept of "spelling out" a word with letters. Pinyin is just a phonetic tool invented in the 1950s—mainly used for children learning pronunciation, foreign learners, and typing on digital keyboards.

If a Chinese speaker hears a word they don't know or wants to clarify which word they mean, they don't spell it letter-by-letter. They describe the character visually.

For example, they might say: "It’s the character with the 'wood' radical on the left and the 'sun' character on the right." If they're talking in person, they will often literally trace the strokes with a finger on their palm.

Relying on Pinyin to "spell out" a word to another Chinese speaker actually creates more confusion, because Chinese has dozens of completely different characters that share the exact same Pinyin spelling. The character is the word. ~2026-41824-87 (talk) 14:54, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

9. Usually not, in normal writing or conversation, it would be "three bottles of water" (or whatever); however, in very specific circumstances where the exact nature of the water vessels is known – such as two waiters talking to each other – just "waters" might be used. It could be used in other situations: "The waters of the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans [or, of the Holy wells in Cerne Abbas, Glastonbury, and Mottisfont] differ in character. These three waters . . . ." {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-41275-62 (talk) 17:08, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

7. As far as I’m aware as a native English speaker, there are literally no words you can use in this way to mark the passage of time. English is not Finnish. ‘The ended year was normal,’ ‘the finished year was normal,’ ‘the started project was going well,’ are all not grammatically correct in English. You could perhaps do this in other contexts, such as ‘the cat climbed the painted building,’ which sounds perfectly normal (if a bit oddly specific, but if there happened to be only one painted building, that wouldn’t sound weird) but that’s not an adjective that marks the passage of time like many of your questions to this end seem to be about. That’s just not how English works. Cheers, 𝔰𝔥𝔞𝔡𝔢𝔰𝔱𝔞𝔯 ^{(𝔱𝔞𝔩𝔨)} (any/all) In solidarity. 02:29, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

An amendment to my statement: I say ‘not grammatically correct.’ I don’t know if that’s true, since it may be technically grammatically correct in some very specific cases; however, even then, it would probably still sound very weird and unnatural. Cheers, 𝔰𝔥𝔞𝔡𝔢𝔰𝔱𝔞𝔯 ^{(𝔱𝔞𝔩𝔨)} (any/all) In solidarity. 02:33, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

They're not "grammatically" incorrect, but I would say they are "idiomatically" incorrect. For someone saying those things, it would be a dead giveaway that they are not a native English speaker. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:24, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

That’s sort of what I meant by my amendment; it can be grammatically correct, but it’s not a thing anyone ever says. Cheers, 𝔰𝔥𝔞𝔡𝔢𝔰𝔱𝔞𝔯 ^{(𝔱𝔞𝔩𝔨)} (any/all) In solidarity. 04:13, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

10. I suspect that the pan seen in this image, referred to as a "soup kettle", might be called a kattila.

If a stew recipe were to direct one to put ingredients in a kettle and cook them over moderate heat while stirring, I might use a pan that Fins would call a kattila if that is what happens to be available, but given a choice I'd use a hollantilainen uuni (Dutch oven).  ​‑‑Lambiam 11:43, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

July 26

//Ani (language) and ||Ani (dialect) - and clicks

See Glottolog.

It's clear that there are two entities on Glottolog, Spoken L1 Language //Ani (IS0 369) hnh anii1246 and anii1247 Dialect: ||Ani a dialect of Spoken L1 Language: Kxoe kxoe1243 (ISO 369) xuu. What is not clear is which click belongs to which, because Glottolog does not explain these.

|| may be standing in for ǁ, which is Unicode: LATIN LETTER LATERAL CLICK U+01C1 (in Latin Extended-B). However while there is (for //) ⫽ DOUBLE SOLIDUS OPERATOR (U+2AFD) I can't find that this as a click (nor do I think it is the diaphoneme marker in IPA, which may reuse U+2AFD). There is also COMBINING LONG DOUBLE SOLIDUS OVERLAY U+20EB. It's possible that // represents LATIN LETTER ALVEOLAR CLICK (U+01C2).

Note that the Glottlog pages can be even more confusing as they also use italics, making || look like || and // look like //.

1. Do these distinct entities exist?
2. If so what are the clicks?
3. What is the correct IPA/Unicode way to represent them?

All the best: Rich Farmbrough 18:47, 26 July 2026 (UTC).

AFAIK // is just an ASCII substitute for ǁ, which can be slanted in handwriting or italicized in print (common for transcriptions). See Click letter. Nardog (talk) 20:12, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Thanks! All the best: Rich Farmbrough 07:16, 27 July 2026 (UTC).

Pinging User:Kwamikagami who is knowledgeable abut these things. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 07:16, 27 July 2026 (UTC).

Yes, || and // are just keyboard hacks for ǁ.

The dialects in Glottolog were adopted wholesale from Multitree, which was an undergrad student project and not a RS. I've seen some progress in making the dialect lists more robust, but it's slow-going. I'd ignore dialect stuff on glotto unless it supplies a source to confirm it. — kwami (talk) 19:26, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

At all

My understanding is that "at all" is used with either plural countable things, or uncountable things: "Would you like any extra towels at all?" "I don't need any water at all".

It could be applied to a singular countable thing that has many aspects to it, or where there's a spectrum of possible attitudes: "I know a lot of people rave about it, but I didn't like The Odyssey at all".

But where it definitely doesn't apply is to a singular countable thing where it's a Yes or No, black or white, binary option. If I buy something at a shop counter, I may be asked whether I'd like a receipt. "Would you like a receipt?" would be the way to phrase that question. But what I hear more and more often is "Would you like a receipt at all?". It's not as if I might be favourably disposed to taking a receipt but not so far as a definite Yes.

Is this just an Australian thing or does it appear elsewhere? And what are the questioners on about? Is it supposed to be a politeness thing, and if so, how do these words add politeness?

Am I overthinking this, at all? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:48, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

@JackofOz: It seems to be for emphasis rather than politeness.

• Collins and Cambridge say it's used for emphasis at the end of negative statements, and questions.
• Longmans agrees.
• MW similarly equates it to "in any way or respect", "to the least extent or degree", "under any circumstances"; and helpfully dates it to the 15th century.
• Oxford, as usual, is elusive.

Bazza 7 (talk) 22:49, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

What is being emphasised in the "would you like a receipt" scenario? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 04:40, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

It is your liking that is being questioned. The speaker seeks confirmation of their growing suspicion that you are one of those who do not like to receive receipts.  ​‑‑Lambiam 07:34, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

On what possible basis could such a suspicion arise? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 08:58, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

The look you give while glaring at them from below your eyebrows. Or the observation that most customers don't care about receipts, and why should they – or you.  ​‑‑Lambiam 17:57, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

We seem to inhabit rather different worlds, Lambiam. That's OK. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:58, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

[15] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:32, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

This expression is common in the UK as well.

Regarding the receipt scenario: here vendors have a legal obligation to provide a receipt if wanted, but of course the purchaser is not obliged to take it. Tills used to print receipts automatically (so consequently unwanted ones were thrown away) but now the till or equivalent will only do so if prompted, so most vendors ask the question, and the answer is not predictable, hence " . . . at all?" is perhaps a signal of the vendor's uncertainty.

(Some vendors, especially volunteers in charity ('thrift') shops neither offer a receipt nor ask if one is wanted, and occasionally when I ask for one (as is my habit) they prove unable to provide one because they have operated the till incorrectly. [/rant]) {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-41275-62 (talk) 04:32, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

I remember when the Poundland self-service ones use to always print out a receipt. I guess they no longer do thankfully, seeing as I wouldn't take it for a fiver or less. Not to mention that food and drink is almost always unrefundable and receipts are usually unrecyclable (even though people throw it in the recycling anyway and still gets accepted). London Buses used to give out paper receipt tickets until they stopped accepting cash in 2014 and most people who use the train now use tickets on their phones instead of physical paper ones. Or contactless if a journey is within London and some just outside it (such as Reading and Maidenhead).

For me, I've been told to print receipts for electricals and purchases over £20 and not ask them if they need it, I just give it to them anyway. At my local charity shops, they always ask me for a receipt and I tend to only get one if I need to go into another shop, have paid at least £10, have electricals or if the item is for someone else. At least receipts will save me in case the price says £1,40 but get charged double that seeing as they forgot to update the system. JuniperChill (talk) 13:27, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

In the receipt scenario it's really just a filler, like asking "Would you like a receipt today?" If you have to ask a question many many times there is a tendency to elaborate it a little. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 07:20, 27 July 2026 (UTC).

It's like the German überhaupt. It's not really about quantity. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:39, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

"Any at all" does fit better with a mass or plural noun, but is not restricted to it. "Would you like X at all?" sounds like a suggestion that I expect you to decline but feel I should offer anyway. Or because I think something is wrong. You order black coffee -- "Don't you want cream at all?", because I can't imagine anyone taking their coffee black. [Also, it makes a difference whether 'at all' is stressed.] But for receipts, you have presumably just declined them, so it would be odd for me to ask if you really meant it. Maybe for multiple receipts, because I want to verify that you don't want any of them, but for a single receipt that you've intentionally left on the counter, I might say 'don't forget your receipt', but 'at all' would suggest you're doing something wrong and I think you should reconsider your poor decision. — kwami (talk) 19:40, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

To me, "at all" is asking about the wanting, not the tax invoice; the mass-or-plural-noun doesn't refer to the quantity of receipts. The way I hear this phrase, it's basically "Do you have any bit of desire for a receipt". Consider how many people actively want receipts (i.e. they'll be disappointed or upset if they don't get one) versus how many people accept them because they're offered. I don't know about you, but if I'm handed a receipt without being asked, I'm likely to take it, even though I won't normally ask for a receipt if I'm not offered. It's kind of an implied "do you mind if I don't print you a the receipt". When I think back to the times when I've worked cash registers, both in the US and Australia, it seems like I would say something like "do you want your receipt" if I had it in hand already, or if I were cheery with an ordinary customer; "do you want it at all" is when someone shows signs of impatience (doesn't want to wait for the receipt to print) or for repeat customers who don't normally want theirs, and saying "at all" would be odd if I were already holding it. Nyttend (talk) 06:35, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

July 28

Huld/hold

Having recently listened to bits of Die Entführung aus dem Serail, I'm curious about "Huld" in this line, at the finale:

Wer so viel Huld vergessen kann, Den seh' man mit Verachtung an

It's easy to find the meaning of what Belmonte and his party are singing. But is "Huld" related to the obsolete English "hold", used by Tolkien in the nicknaming of Meriadoc as "Holdwine of the Mark"? About the latter word OED says

hold adj.; Old English had hyldo in the same sense = Old Saxon, Old High German huldí, German huld, noun of quality < hold adj.

But I'm unclear if the item cited by the OED is related to the current-although-archaic word in Belmonte's song. For this word, Wiktionary says

From Middle High German hulde, hülde, from Old High German huldī (“friendliness”), from Proto-West Germanic *hulþī.

So...is there an etymological relationship here, or are they false friends? Nyttend (talk) 06:18, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Wiktionary says that hold in the OED archaic sense is “cognate with… German Huld (“grace, favour”).” Though, interestingly enough, Wiktionary gives two different conjugations of what appear to be the same word as the Proto-West Germanic roots for the two words: *hulþī for German Huld, *hulþaz for English archaic hold. To my admittedly untrained eye, it would seem these are noun/adjective conjugations? (Hulþaz, kindness, the noun; hulþi, kind, the adjective?) Whatever the case of the conjugations, it would seem these are the same word, the latest shared root word of the two. So, yes, they are related. Cheers, 𝔰𝔥𝔞𝔡𝔢𝔰𝔱𝔞𝔯 ^{(𝔱𝔞𝔩𝔨)} (any/all) In solidarity. 09:15, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

The other way round: hulþaz (> archaic English hold, modern German adj hold) is the adjective ; hulþi (> modern German Huld) is the derived noun, with an -i suffix typical of abstract noun formation. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:28, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Funny, if you'd not mentioned that those were proto-Germanic roots, I would have guessed that they were the Gothic forms, rather than those forms' ancestors. Thank you for the help. Nyttend (talk) 19:47, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Goths and Arabs

My comment above about Gothic reminds me of another question in my mind. In the 1001 Nights, #539, we encounter a king named Mihrjan (at least in the Lyons translation I'm reading through) who has horses, and immediately I wondered about a Germanic connection: modern English mare, Old English mearh, Proto-Germanic marhaz, Gothic (again thinking Tolkien) appearing in the name Marhwini. Do we see any sustained contact between Arabs and Goths, aside from when they conquered Gothic peoples in North Africa and Spain? Or is this likely to be a false friend? Nyttend (talk) 19:47, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Mihrjan is borrowed from Middle Persian Mihragan. Mihr is a form of the deity name Mithra. It is more Iranian than Germanic. ~2026-41824-87 (talk) 19:58, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Turns out it’s honestly more closely related to the name of the Roman Pomerium than to mare (through the PIE root *mey-, “to bind”). Mihr comes from a borrowing of a Sanskrit word, which did evolve from Proto-Indo-European, so it does have Germanic cognates (which you can find here), though no direct relatives. Germanic tribes don’t appear to have spent enough time around Arabs for loanwords to have occurred. Cheers, 𝔰𝔥𝔞𝔡𝔢𝔰𝔱𝔞𝔯 ^{(𝔱𝔞𝔩𝔨)} (any/all) In solidarity. 00:38, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

For a Tolkien connection, surely mearas is a better fit? Matt Deres (talk) 13:46, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

But "mearh" is the singular of "mearas", and anyway it doesn't as easily resemble the Farsi name as does the name of the man of Rhovanion. Nyttend (talk) 20:35, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

July 29

What does Trump say here?

What did Donald Trump presumably say on July 13, 2024 after the failed assassination attempt, in this moment before the agents took him down the stair? Of course, in this video there is no chance to hear it, but in this photographers video indeed we hear him a bit. (The time URL parameter for starting at the right point apparently does not work with short videos; the scene is at ~43 seconds). --KnightMove (talk) 07:42, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

Here is a regular link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwVzoae7zA8. I can't hear any sound emanating from POTUS's mouth after the shot.  ​‑‑Lambiam 09:34, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. Then at first, I set this video with time parameter. --KnightMove (talk) 10:17, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

I don't hear him because the speakers on my laptop don't work, but the journalist Salena Zito, an eyewitness, has Trump first calling for his shoes, then saying "USA", then "Fight! Fight! Fight!".^[16] Indeed she seems to have got a whole book out of that. --Antiquary (talk) 11:59, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

I perfectly agree with her [addition: You can see it in the main video a few seconds earlier - although I doubt that Trump really said "USA". He asked for his shoes, then "wait, wait, wait!" as he wanted to pose, then "Fight, fight, fight!"], but that specific moment was after he said all that [and when he was a few further, and away from the microphone].

Do we maybe have some lipreaders reading this? --KnightMove (talk) 12:39, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

Polly matete cry town is my daskalon.

In The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling we read "I remember my old schoolmaster, who was a prodigious great scholar, used often to say, Polly matete cry town is my daskalon. The English of which, he told us, was, That a child may sometimes teach his grandmother to suck eggs." Presumably "Polly matete cry town is my daskalon" is a mangling or mis-remembering of some Latin or Greek quotation. But what? Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 17:03, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

The note in my copy says: "Source unknown, quoted by Cicero". I'll try to type in the original Greek, but the translation is given as "Many scholars are wiser than their teachers". --Wrongfilter (talk) 17:23, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

It's explained here as "a humorous transcription of πολλοὶ μαθηταὶ κρείττονες διδασκάλων, i.e., Many pupils are cleverer than their teachers, which occurs in Menander, Monostichs 651 Jaekel; Cicero, Letters to Friends 9.7.2; and Greek Anthology 11.176.5 (by Lucilius)". -- Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:28, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

I'm a bit disappointed with my copy now (Penguin, 1966). --Wrongfilter (talk) 17:36, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

Many thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 21:22, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

The quotation by Cicero can be seen here.

It appears that Partridge is indeed misremembering. His old schoolmaster probably said, "... is the daskalon". Perhaps Partridge was not among these polly matete.  ​‑‑Lambiam 22:41, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

Questions again

1. If the word strange is pronounced /streɪ̯nd͡ʒ/, then how would a word that is pronounced /streɪ̯ŋ/ be spelled?
2. Can the word seen be used as an adjective like in Seen crimes can be reported to the police (meaning the crimes that have been seen by people)
3. Can the word made be used as an adjective like in Made changes (meaning the changes that have been made)?
4. Is this correct: I can’t wait when it will be 2027, or should is be used in place of will be?
5. Are there any words in English where Greco-Latin φ/ph appears in English as ⟨f⟩, rather than ⟨ph⟩?
6. Why the word kolkhoz is pronounced as /kolkɔːz/, rather than /kolhɔːz/? How would it be pronounced if it were spelled kolhoz?
7. Do English speakers ever pronounce original /x/, /ç/, /χ/ and /ħ/ sounds as /h/ if they can’t pronounce the original sound, in foreign names?

--40bus (talk) 20:43, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

1.) Predicting English spelling is always a dangerous game but I might go with "strang" based on "bang". This could also be pronounced /stræeŋ/ or /strɑːŋ/ but most English spellings are simply not unambiguous.

2.) Not usually. The sentence would ordinarily be rephrased with a full verb "crimes that have been seen".

3.) Same as 2 above.

4.) Either verb tense is correct but the conjunction(?) should be "till" or "until".

6.) Because most English speakers don't know how to pronounce 'kh' (in Russian or really any language) and use a spelling pronunciation based on English phonemes. Without the 'k' I would pronounce it /kolhɔːz/ and expect most other English speakers to do the same.

7.) I am sure the answer is more than never but it depends mostly on the spelling used. The standard English approximation for /x/ and /χ/ is /k^(h)/, for /ħ/ /h/ was traditional but other approximations are sometimes seen especially when it is spelled 'ch', for /ç/ it varies by language and speaker; I would expect /k^(h)/ and /tʃ/ are at least as common as /h/. Eluchil404 (talk) 21:39, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

I can think of one possible exception for #3, which would be made man. GalacticShoe (talk) 00:03, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

1. straing perhaps.

2, 3. That horse may not be dead yet, keep whipping!

4. Either will do, if you replace when with until.

5. fantasy

6. Because most English-speakers do not know what kh means in transcription.

7. For Semitic languages, at least. —Antonissimo (talk) 21:56, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

1: Predicting the spelling of non-existing English words, even when allowed by phonotactics, is like walking on thin ice, but based on words like strain, my guess would be "straing".

2, 3: In English's closest relatives, it seems generally possible to use participles as adjectives without any restriction. At least in Dutch, it's common to extend those participles into entire subclauses (you can do this recursively), which are then used as adjectives (this is made easier by the verb-final word order marking the end of a subclause). English seems a bit more restrictive. Even if not ungrammatical, it often is unidiomatic to use a participle as an adjective.

7: English isn't Finnish. In Finnish, /h/ and /x/ may be seen as allophones and in the Slavic languages they are variations of the same too, but English's closest relatives normally make a threefold distinction between /k/, /x/ and /h/ (or something similar). English lost /x/ (except in some loans from Celtic languages in dialects where this Celtic influence is strong), turning it into various other sounds often written <gh>. When encountering /x/ from another language, English speakers tend to interpret it as /k/. Why /k/ and not /h/? Can't say, but making a distinction between /h/ and /x/ is pretty common. PiusImpavidus (talk) 11:07, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

5 Filipino, sulfur (though not traditionally so spelled in the UK), griffin. --Antiquary (talk) 11:22, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

I have heard that in English, using present participles as adjectives such as in a coffee-drinking man (meaning a man who drinks coffee) is common but with past participles like in a coffee-drunk man (meaning a man who drank coffee) it is not similar. Where in English can such past participles be formed from compound verbs? --40bus (talk) 20:01, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

"A drunk man" sounds like an inebriated man, so "a coffee-drunk man" sounds like a man who's inebriated on coffee, and "a fish-eaten man" sounds like a man who has been eaten by fish. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 20:44, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

Milk is a commonly drunk beverage.^[17] Does this mean that milk has a drinking problem?  ​‑‑Lambiam 21:26, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

Some past participles are homonymous with adjectives derived from these past participles, while others are not. There is no rule governing this.

You can use past participles as participial adjectives when they are modified by an adverb:

• The job was finished → *the finished job (wrong)
• The job was recently finished → the recently finished job (fine)
• The sonata was performed → *a performed sonata (wrong)
• The sonata is rarely performed → a rarely performed sonata (fine)
• The cake is decorated → *a decorated cake (unusual)
• The cake was beautifully decorated → a beautifully decorated cake (fine)

(In the sense of having received awards, decorated is not only a past participle but also an adjective, so "a decorated cake" could mean, "an award-winning cake".)

Also, the agent of the verb of the (passive) past participle can sometimes turn into an adjective-forming modifier:

• The lad was struck by love → a love-struck lad
• The coat was eaten by moths → a moth-eaten coat

This is idiomatic, but is rather productive when the agent is oneself:

• The album was produced by herself → a self-produced album

 ​‑‑Lambiam 22:09, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

July 17

In Major League Baseball, does the General Manager usually attend playoff games?

I was recently rewatching Moneyball and the opening sequence in the movie shows the Oakland GM Billy Beane listening to the game on the radio. I was wondering why he did not attend in person. Is it usual for the GM not to attend games like this or is this something particular to Billy Beane? RudolfRed (talk) 19:32, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Beane's habit of avoiding games was considered unorthodox. It was not common. In interviews, he said it made him impartial as he could make decisions based on observation of complete outcomes, not a knee-jerk reaction to a specific play during a game. ~2026-35239-54 (talk) 19:40, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

From Paragraph five of the Plot section: ". . . Although Beane rarely attends games, his daughter Casey persuades him to attend the next game . . .".

From my limited knowledge of Baseball, a General Manager would have no active part to play at his team's games, though he might gain generalised knowledge from watching how his and the opposing team perform. No doubt Baseball Bugs will be along soon to give a more expert perspective. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-36805-68 (talk) 19:48, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

I can't offer any specific expertise on the question, but I would expect ball club officials in general to be present at post-season games. I recall reading about an instance from Game 7 of the 2016 World Series, in which Cubs GM Theo Epstein was nearby when the Cubs got a pep-talk from one of the players during a rain delay in extra innings. Epstein had the vibe that the Cubs were going to win the game, and they did. In general, TV cameras will occasionally scan the club-level boxes to find team officials. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:25, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, all, for the replies. RudolfRed (talk) 02:59, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

So Casey got him to the bat? Chuntuk (talk) 13:49, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Not to be confused with Katie Casey. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:21, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

July 21

Name of epic song

Hello. There is this song that has vocals but no lyrics. It sounds like something that you would hear in a history or fantasy movie. It has epic humming, and the chorus had it get really triumphant, like "We did it! We won! The evil is no more!" It was in a CD that was played often in my school's sensory room. ~2026-35599-34 (talk) 23:53, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

That's not much to go on. I suggest you try Musipedia where you can input the tune. I've always found it very useful. Shantavira|^{feed me} 06:55, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

My first two guesses are Conquest of Paradise by Vangelis and Misty Mountains from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey soundtrack, though the latter has singing as well. Matt Deres (talk) 13:54, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

Impressive. In solidarity, Aaron Liu (talk) 00:36, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Any chance it was the the "Humming Chorus" (Coro a bocca chiusa) from the opera ⁠Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini (easily found on YouTube)? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-36805-68 (talk) 15:59, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

It might help if you could tell when you heard it. That it was on a cd points towards the 1990s or 2000s, but I'm sure you know more accurately than that when you went to school. PiusImpavidus (talk) 17:33, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

Thanks! It was Conquest of Paradise. And actually i heard it this year, i graduated last month. ~2026-35599-34 (talk) 18:50, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

July 23

Tom Spath

Does anyone know whether The Bobs' song "Tom Spath" is based on a real person? --Trovatore (talk) 18:14, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

If we can believe what we read here, the answer is affirmative. Apparently the person named is this Tom J. Spath, who is probably the same person as the writer of the teleplay of Season 1, Episode 6, of Fantastic Max. See also on Bluesky.  ​‑‑Lambiam 07:18, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Nice! Thanks, Lambiam. That adds a dimension to the song, which is not the best one they've ever written but has some fun lyrics and nice chords. (If anyone is interested, the first two chords where all four voices sing "Tom Spath", right after the key change, are Gb and Db in the key of Db, so not exactly pushing any musical boundaries, but it sounds good.) --Trovatore (talk) 19:52, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

July 29

Music notation oddity

This is something I've never seen before, in over 60 years of piano playing. The key signature of this piece (the first piece in the set, P. 2 is in 6 flats but the 6th flat (C-flat) is enclosed in parentheses. This raises questions before I've even read the first measure: How am I to interpret this? But lo and behold, in that first measure there's a C in the bass stave, but with a natural sign (♮). This tells me the C-flat in the key signature is to be obeyed. A C-natural appears in every single measure of the piece, and not a single C-flat. In other words, the key signature tells the player to play Cs as C-flats everywhere except where otherwise indicated; yet in every single case he does otherwise indicate. It all seems to be rather pointless.

It seems to be in a sort of weird version of E-flat minor, and not B-flat minor, so the 6-flat key signature is appropriate. It seems to be a cousin of the E-flat melodic minor scale, except that that scale naturalises both the C and D when ascending, and flattens both when descending. Ryazanov's scale naturalises only the C-flat universally. Many of the D-flats are also naturalised, but not all. When they're to be played as D-flat, they're marked with an explicit flat sign (♭) in the score, even though the key signature requires them to be flattened anyway. More pointlessness.

What am I to make of this pre-war Soviet oddity? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 00:53, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

So two things are notationally odd: the parenthesis in the signature, and the explicit flattening of the D-flats (as well of some other notes that are flats per the key signature, as in bars 9 and 11). Explicitly indicating already implied alterations is actually not uncommon when in the context playing naturals may feel more natural to one's fingers; I can't tell if this may have played a role here. One scenario for the odd key signature I can think of is that the composer originally only wrote the five flats that were needed, but was berated by his composition teacher because the key theoretically required six, and then half-heartedly wrote the sixth flat in.  ​‑‑Lambiam 19:53, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

I get that, and thanks. What I don't get is: having gone through and laboriously added naturals to all instances of the note C, why confuse the player with parenthesising the C-flat in the key signature? Either it's part of the signature or it isn't, but the parentheses make it look like a bet each way. Naturals always countermand a previous instruction, whether in the same bar or in the general key signature. Hence the C-flat in the key signature does definitely apply, and the player is left in no doubt that they're playing the right notes. It's just a stupidly clunky way of doing things; adding tons of accidentals when there are already 6 flats in the key does not endear one to players. It must have snuck past his teacher on the way to the publisher.

FWIW, this is one of those pieces that look really interesting on the page, but sound dreck to the ears. Stalin's mid-30s Russia was a pretty dreck place ... -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:55, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

There were plenty of shows though. DuncanHill (talk) 22:09, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

Sometimes you see this with music that is written in the Dorian mode or other ancient modes which don't have their 'own' key signature in the modern sense of musical notation. The root in your example is E♭, and an E♭ minor key signature would normally include six flat symbols. An E♭ Dorian mode only 'needs' five flat symbols, but a musician of the 20th century might automatically associate five flat symbols in the key signature with either B♭ minor or D♭ major, so adding the sixth flat symbol in parentheses (and then canceling it with ♮ on every occasion within the music) is one way of signalizing that its root is E♭, not B♭. For example, Bach's "Dorian" Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 538 normally has no key signature, but you can find sheet music with a flat symbol in parentheses in the key signature. ---Sluzzelin talk 04:56, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

July 17

Testosterone screening

This is regarding Pete Hegseth's scheme to run testosterone tests on military males over 30. Is that already done as part of routine medical checkups? Wondering if his proposal is redundant. Also I'd expect levels normally vary with mood and so on. So I'm puzzled. Not seeking medical advice but if I was, Secretary Hegseth doesn't sound like a good source of it. Thanks. ~2026-40273-93 (talk) 21:58, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

You are 100% correct: Hegseth is a terrible source of useful thought. DOR (ex-HK) (talk) 01:24, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

Next thing will be a phallometric test.  ​‑‑Lambiam 04:36, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

On Hegseth? HiLo48 (talk) 05:00, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

Now I'm wondering if Hegseth is getting TRT and also whether TRT is something like anabolic steroids, i.e. with the potential of causing various mental health issues if done improperly. ~2026-40555-75 (talk) 21:29, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

Which raises the question: do men with smaller penises tend to join the military in larger numbers to compensate for their insecurity? Viriditas (talk) 01:00, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

No, they run for political office. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:28, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

He probably ran the idea past Robert Kennedy Jr first. You can certainly trust his medical and scientific credentials. </irony> -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:36, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

RFK Jr's brain isn't even in as good a shape as his uncle John's is. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 18:44, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

This is in reference to American military. I served 8 years and I had a medical screening before I began boot camp. That was it. The only medical I saw after that was getting shots to go to other countries. There was no such thing as a routine medical checkup. ~2026-35239-54 (talk) 11:37, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

July 18

On which Swiss road are the 30 km/h minimum speed limit traffic signs actually installed?

Hi everyone! In which area of Switzerland can you find the road signs for both the beginning () and the end () of the minimum speed limit of 30 km/h, because up until now I haven't been able to find even one? Thanks! DanielParoliere (talk) 13:32, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

@DanielParoliere First of all, what makes you think any minimum speed limits are applied in Switzerland? Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:14, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

Well, at any rate our article on Road signs in Switzerland and Liechtenstein agrees with him. --Antiquary (talk) 08:27, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

Fair enough, although of course a sign being described as mandatory doesn't mean that sign must be used somewhere. Minimum speeds are not mentioned in Speed limits in Switzerland or Motorways of Switzerland. From my holidays in Switzerland I recall it being a bit hilly and traffic speeds consequently quite leisurely. Shantavira|^{feed me} 09:06, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

Those minimum speed signs are almost non-existent in the UK. There isn't an official minimum speed limit on motorways per se, but I guess its something like 45mph (yes, UK roads are still (mostly) imperial, equal to 64km) before you could be charged with careless or even dangerous driving. Keep in mind that HGVs are hard limited to 55mph (90km) due to a requirement for speed limiters. This is why I normally do about 62 mph as a comfortable speed, not to mention its also at 100km. The only one I could find in the UK, is on the approach to the Blackwall Tunnel in London, which is 10mph (I had to use the full link due to the backlist) JuniperChill (talk) 12:03, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

This somewhat shorter link appears to work as well. —Antonissimo (talk) 06:45, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

The category commons:Category:2.31 (road sign, Switzerland) shows some images of signs for a 50 km/h minimum speed. That doesn't mean that a 30 km/h minimum speed sign actually exists, nor that Swiss traffic law specifically defines a sign for a minimum speed of 30 km/h. It's just that a round blue sign with a white number means that the number gives the minimum speed in km/h. Federal, cantonal and municipal authorities can use that sign with any number they like. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:20, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

So you will be removing the '30 minimum' and '30 minimum ends' signs from the article Antiquary links?

Swiss regulations regarding road signs must comply with the Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals, which Switzerland has ratified. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-36805-68 (talk) 13:44, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

?? Maybe we misunderstand each other. Anyway, it doesn't matter. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:37, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

A blue disk with a white number indicating a mandatory minimum speed (in km/h unless ststed otherwise) is also present in the articles Road signs in Austria, Road signs in Bulgaria, Road signs in Croatia, Road signs in Denmark, Road signs in Estonia, Road signs in Finland, Road signs in France, Road signs in Germany, Road signs in Greece, Road signs in Hungary, Road signs in Italy, Road signs in Latvia, Road signs in Lithuania, Road signs in Malta, Road signs in Moldova, Road signs in Montenegro, Road signs in North Macedonia, Road signs in Poland, Road signs in Portugal, Road signs in Romania, Road signs in Russia, Road signs in Serbia, Road signs in Slovakia, Road signs in Slovenia, Road signs in Spain, Road signs in the United Kingdom (in mph), Road signs in Turkey, and Road signs in Wales (in mph).

The mere fact that Road signs in Greece includes sign K-42α (just to pick one) does, of course, not imply that this sign is currently in actual use somewhere. In fact, I don't think I have ever seen it, but that could also be because it was too foggy. On the other hand, even if it is not used today, authorities might install it somewhere tomorrow.  ​‑‑Lambiam 20:36, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

July 19

Unbalanced 5-handed rock paper scissors

Has anyone ever put forth a rock paper scissors variation where an Item X beats all three traditional hands, and an Item Y beats Item X but is beaten by all three traditional hands? And if so, what's known about the game theory of it? ~2026-40293-60 (talk) 09:27, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

A player's selecting their next move can be viewed as a possibly two-step process:

1. The player chooses T (tradional), X, or Y.
2. If X or Y was chosen, this is the move to be played. Otherwise, T was chosen, and now the player chooses between rock, paper, and scissors.

Clearly, considering the symmetry in the pay-outs, the three T choices are equivalent. An opponent such as an AI can detect subtle non-randomness in the choices and use these to their advantage. But, however strong the opponent, no strategy of theirs can beat a player's using purely random choice in Step 2, with all three alternatives having a probability of being selected of 1⁄3.

Now let us rename T, X and Y to meta-rock, meta-paper and meta-scissors. Then meta-scissors beats meta-paper beats meta-rock beats meta-scissors. Sounds familiar? From a game-theoretic perspective, the meta-choice making in Step 1 is equivalent to the choice making in the traditional game.

Combining this, the following gives optimal play against an arbitrarily strong opponent: Choose at random between:

• rock with probability 1⁄9;
• paper with probability 1⁄9;
• scissors with probability 1⁄9;
• X with probability 1⁄3;
• Y with probability 1⁄3.

 ​‑‑Lambiam 19:06, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

A perverted version of rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock! Stone Rock the blasphemer! Clarityfiend (talk) 13:36, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

One wonders what the hand shapes are. The variant of the OP is actually isomorphic to Rock-paper-scissors-fire-water.  ​‑‑Lambiam 05:22, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

July 20

Transcontinental countries

I ask it again after having asked this already in March 2025.

The article Transcontinental country does not mention Armenia and Cyprus at all. Unlike Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan, which, acording to the most common definition, are mostly in Asia with some of them in Europe, Armenia and Cyprus are entirely in Asia. All the five countries mentioned can be considered to be entirely in Europe or entirely in Asia, but only Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan can be considered to be partially in Europe and partially in Asia. So, can a term "transcontinental country" be used for a country than can be considered to be entirely part of one continent or entirely part of the other, but not partially of one and partially of the other at the same time?

And why of the lines depicted in this picture, the line B is the most commonly used for the east-west separation, and the line F for the north-south separation, and not the line D for the east-west separation, and the line J for the north-south separation, which are the definitions that I use? And does there exist a definition that places all of Turkey and Cyprus in Europe (which do not appear in that map)? --40bus (talk) 20:26, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

What about Russia? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:54, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

Duly mentioned in the article in question. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-36805-68 (talk) 03:14, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

Armenia is mentioned: "Other conventions separating Asia and Europe put different portions of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and the Russian area of the Caucasus in either continent."

Given that there are ten different dividing lines shown in the picture, why are you surprised that the two you happen to like do not have universal support. Each of them will have (or once had) arguments in their favour: clearly there is no single obvious answer. A great many things in the world are not clear cut, and or depend on the nature or context of the question being asked. Have you read The City & the City by China Miéville? ~2026-36805-68 (talk) 03:27, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

If I say that Cyprus is European and everybody who claims it's Asian is wrong, then it isn't transcontinental, right? People being wrong doesn't change the nature of Cyprus. You could only say it's disputed-continental. Georgia, Azerbaijan etc. could be disputed-transcontinental.

What makes the whole thing terribly confusing is that the noun continent has several meanings, in particular 1, 2 and 3. My native language has separate words for all three, making the English usage even more confusing to me. Cyprus isn't on any continent (3), is a little continent (1) of its own and is part of a larger continent (2), which according to some is Asia (it's closer), according to others Europe (cultural reasons).

Defining a border between Europe and Asia is tricky. All suggestions seem to come down to segments of thalweg, segments of watershed and segments of political borders. Where using a thalweg or watershed, one may have to define a point that's on the border or a pair of points on opposite sides of the border to force it along a particular way. For example, the lowest path from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea gives border A, the additional condition that the border passes through the Surami Pass forces border H. Wherever the border changes from one type of segment to another, one has to define the arbitrary point where this happens. So, to put the border on the Caucasus watershed, one has to define two arbitrary points where the watershed reaches the Black and Caspian Seas, or a pair of rivers flowing into those seas. Which tells us why A is such a nice definition (it takes no arbitrary points), H is only a little worse (it's the lowest path when forcing it south of the Caucasus) and F, one of the more popular ones today, is more problematic as it relies on two arbitrary points. F seems to define the points as the westernmost point on the eastern shore of the Kerch Strait and the easternmost point of the Absheron Peninsula.

I'll leave to problems with the border along the Ural mountains as an exercise for OP. PiusImpavidus (talk) 20:23, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

I think that the border running along the crest of Urals would be the best, since then all the land where the water flows into Caspian Sea via Volga would be part of Europe, and all the land where the water flows into Arctic Ocean via Ob would be part of Asia. And why aren't Europe and Asia always considered a one continent, Eurasia and never two continents? --40bus (talk) 20:46, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Cyprus is a bit complicated. As noted in Geography of Cyprus, it's geographically closest to Asia, but politically it's part of Europe. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:34, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

That's an artefact of the fact that most islands are not part of any continent. The land mass of the world does not completely consist of continents. So, any attempt to categorise the entire world by continents will necessarily include some arbitrary decisions, which will never have universal agreement. The Europe/Asia split is the classic case. Another is Australia: when I was in primary school the received wisdom was that we were geographically part of South-East Asia, hence Asia. But with our post-1788 history of white dominance and chromatic exclusion and our lingering adherence to Mother Britain, that notion never went any further than the textbooks. We're "wiser" now: we're our own continent. I wonder what the next generation will be taught. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:50, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Humans tend to paint themselves into a corner when they try a nice and neat definition that doesn't quite conform to reality. Kind of like when certain eggheads decided Pluto was no longer a planet. Pluto didn't change, only the artificial definition changed. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:29, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

The 'decision' was actually a vote at a sizable international meeting, and the definition wasn't so much 'changed' as 'formulated'; previously there had been no formal definition of what a planet was, just a mutating 'tradition'.

Originally the Sun and Moon were considered (by the ancient Greeks, etc.) to be planets ("wanderers" – in the sky against the 'fixed' stars), and the Earth not.

In the early 19th century the 8 then-recognised planets were joined first by Ceres and then by a growing number of similar bodies, until it became obvious that there were likely hundreds if not thousands of similar bodies, so they were reclassified 'minor planets' or 'asteroids'

When "Planet X' was still being searched for on the basis of (erroneous) theories of its gravitational pull on Neptune, it was estimated as having 7 times Earth's mass. At Pluto's discovery this dropped, due to its appearance, to about the same mass: we now know it has 0.002 Earth masses; if its true dimensions had been known from the outset, it would never have been recognised as a 'planet' in the first place.

As increasingly more such bodies beyond Neptune were discovered, some a little bigger than Pluto, it became obvious that we had another 'asteroid' problem, so they were re-designated Trans Neptunian or Kuiper Belt Objects, and the class of similar small round(ish) bodies generally were classified as 'dwarf planets'.

The actual parameters of what currently constitutes a 'planet', hastily adopted, are less than wholly satisfactory, and include a criterion that is both dependent on the Solar System's particular state at this point of its long evolution, and is subject to subjective interpretation: they also, rather unfortunately, restrict the term to bodies in our Solar System – those round other stars are, strictly, currently 'exoplanets'. I expect these parameters to be modified in due course.

My personal interests in astronomy lean more towards planetology than orbital dynamics: I am happy to accept anything as a planet that is big enough to be roughly round under its own gravity, which includes several asteroids, KBOs, and moons, though if the latter are less than half as large in diameter as the planet they accompany, by me they can retain their lunar status as well: this incidentally makes Pluto–Charon a double planet. [/rant] {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-41275-62 (talk) 01:44, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Yup. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:52, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

July 25

Scary Story

Hi! I'm looking for a scary story i read somewhere. It was about a boy who was contacted (via e-mail?) by twins (both girls) who tell him that they lived in his house before him and were murdered. At the end, they tell him to look in the closet if he doesn't believe them... ~2026-41268-79 (talk) 02:52, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

It's The Smith Sisters, found here. Matt Deres (talk) 14:48, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

This version is different. There is another version: John's parents were murdered and skinned, but he survived. Which version is the original? Stanleykswong (talk) 17:19, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

Here is a version with skinned parents. Many versions of this urban legend have been circulated on the Internet, starting in 2005; see "Did the Ghosts of Two Teens Return to Kill and Skin Their Parents?" on Snopes. The origin may have gotten lost in the mists of history.  ​‑‑Lambiam 13:34, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Go here https://www.scaryforkids.com/smith-sisters-murdered-anonymously/ if you want to read the story the way it was meant to. ~2026-35599-34 (talk) 19:47, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

The story is set in Plainfield, Wisconsin, which was Ed Gein's bailiwick. That might be more than a coincidence. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:00, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Numbers vs. dates

Do any people, or at least commonly, associate some three-and four digit numbers with date numbers formed by the day and month in either order, such as the number 257 to today (25/7) or 725 to 7/25 where it is the month first? --40bus (talk) 20:51, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

Never. —scs (talk) 23:44, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

Hardly ever. —Antonissimo (talk) 01:32, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Insane idea. DOR (ex-HK) (talk) 15:44, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

The number 420 is associated with 4:20 pm as well as 4/20 (April 20). And some people have wondered if there is a connection between 911, the North-American emergency telephone number, and 9/11 (the date of the September 11 attacks).^[18][19][20]  ​‑‑Lambiam 04:37, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Why 4:20 pm instead of 4:20 am? Stanleykswong (talk) 22:39, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Probably because most reasonable people aren’t awake at that hour. (Unlike, I suspect, a lot of us here at the reference desk, myself included.) Cheers, 𝔰𝔥𝔞𝔡𝔢𝔰𝔱𝔞𝔯 ^{(𝔱𝔞𝔩𝔨)} (any/all) In solidarity. 03:17, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Also Star Wars Day, "May the Fourth Be With You". Didn't you already ask this just a couple of weeks ago? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:05, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

When I think the number 257, I think the date 25/7. When I think the number 267, I think the date 26/7. When I think the number 277, I think the date 27/7. Do any people think so? --40bus (talk) 06:24, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Just you. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:30, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

So when you think 269, you think 26 September, which is also the 269'th day of a normal (non-leap) year.  ​‑‑Lambiam 13:20, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

You obviously turn 257 into twenty-five seven. Someone else might say two fifty-seven. I'm a veteran. To avoid confusion, I was trained to never combine numbers. I say two five seven. There is far less chance of that becoming a date in my head. ~2026-35239-54 (talk) 11:35, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

There's an old nurd joke: "Why can't computer programmers tell the difference between Halloween and Christmas? Because OCT 31 = DEC 25." —scs (talk) 10:48, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

I myself celebrate June 10 as "Steve's height day", because I'm 6'10". —scs (talk) 10:49, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

So the bottom line is, no, it's not just you; people do this all the time! —scs (talk) 10:51, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

According to your notation, does 121 represent 1/21 or 12/2? Stanleykswong (talk) 22:37, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

The EU emergency number 112 comes into mind, as it represents 11 February, which represents the date format used there (and most of the world). JuniperChill (talk) 11:32, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

What, not the first of December? That day I'll always remember. —Antonissimo (talk) 04:38, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

July 26

Can daily word puzzles be more effective than reading Wikipedia for vocabulary?

I know reading Wikipedia articles is often recommended for improving vocabulary and general knowledge. However, I've been spending time on daily word games like Spelling Bee and Waffle and wonder whether they can be just as effective or perhaps even better for learning new words. Has anyone come across research or personal experience comparing these approaches? Johnsmithwaff (talk) 10:51, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Suppose Spelling Bee serves up A•B•I•O•L•N•R, with the O being central. Being an expert on anthraquinones, you enter BARBALOIN, an existing word, useful to know and a pangram to boot. It is rejected – bummer. Another pangram using these seven letters is BARONIAL. Now assume this is a word of whose existence you weren't aware. You'll find it the next day on yesterday's answers, but without a clue as to what it means and how it is used. Just knowing that some word exists, without knowing how it is used, is not very helpful (except for Scrabble players – but this one is a very low scoring word). On Wikipedia you'll find information on AZIMUTH, BRAHMIN, CELADON, ..., ZYMOGEN, embedded in a context showing how the word is used and relating it to more general knowledge. See also Wiki rabbit hole and some user's lists: User:Gobonobo/rabbit holes and User:EF5/Rabbit holes on Wikipedia. To get going, there is always Random page, linked to from the side bar when using a browser.  ​‑‑Lambiam 12:47, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Beware of Wiki rabbit holes. You can easily get stuck in one for hours. Shantavira|^{feed me} 07:54, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

Also, several online dictionaries have a "word of the day" page:

• Collins;
• Dictionary.com;
• Merriam–Webster.

 ​‑‑Lambiam 09:27, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

July 27

High schools in China focussing on natural sciences

Hello,

I would like to know, where it says whether a specific Chinese high school focusses on natural sciences. Asfar as I know, in higher secondary School most students focus on either social sciences or natural sciences. Kind regards Sarcelles (talk) 16:23, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

Education in China is a good source for learning about education in China. ~2026-41824-87 (talk) 16:40, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

Do you mean schools like Chengdu Wenjiang Science and Technology Innovation High School (成都文江区科技创新中学)? Stanleykswong (talk) 21:31, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

In China, some provincial key or demonstrative high schools include terms such as "scientific and technological innovation" or "experimental" in their official names. These labels are regulated and typically indicate that the school operates specialized programs, often with a strong emphasis on natural sciences, technology, and curriculum innovation. Stanleykswong (talk) 21:41, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for your messsages. Not only schools with such names focus on sciences in their final examination.

Kind regards Sarcelles (talk) 06:57, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Perhaps the intention of the question is the following:

Given some particular high school, such as for example 北京市延庆区第四中学, is there a systematic way (such as through some directory of high schools) of finding out about their focus (if any)?

 ​‑‑Lambiam 09:20, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

Thankyou for your message.

Education in China doesn't give such information. I can't read Chinese. Sarcelles (talk) 19:15, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E4%B8%AD%E5%8D%8E%E4%BA%BA%E6%B0%91%E5%85%B1%E5%92%8C%E5%9B%BD%E6%95%99%E8%82%B2?fromModule=lemma_search-box seems to say, that there is a choice between arts and sciences in senior high school. Does 高中科学课程 mean high school for sciences?

Kind regards Sarcelles (talk) 20:03, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

It states: "Students must decide whether to pursue a science or humanities track during their second or third year of high school." So, their system differs from the flexible approach in the US and the UK, as we do not have such a rigid streaming system. Stanleykswong (talk) 22:07, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

Their streaming system bears a closer resemblance to the German Gymnasium and French Lycée. Stanleykswong (talk) 22:08, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

Tthank you for your messages. Which sources can be used to fill up such schools in List of scientific gymnasiums?]]

Kind regards Sarcelles (talk) 10:11, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

You appear to have gone about creating this List Article WP:Backwards. Rather than creating the list and then looking for sources on which to base articles on the schools, you would have done better to have:

(1) found multiple sources (compliant with WP:Golden rule) for each of the schools;

(2) created an article for each of the schools based on those sources; and only then

(3) created the List Article listing those now-existing Wikipedia articles.

As it is, you have an Article listing 39 schools, 36 of which are red links. This is, shall we say, sub-optimal.

If you cannot find the sources as specified in (1) for a school, that school cannot qualify for an article (see Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies)#Schools).

I suggest you Draftify the List Article, and then create Drafts for each of the schools you wish to include according to the criteria in Golden Rule. I suspect finding the required Reliable sources will be a considerable task, and I have no particular suggestions to make as to how to achieve it; others may. Good luck. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-41275-62 (talk) 10:56, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

July 29

Celebrity photo search

Hello! Where can i find a photo of Avril Lavigne and Britney Spears together? Apparently it exists, but I can't find it. Photos of Avril with Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian are easy to find, but these aren't. ~2026-35599-34 (talk) 00:19, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

Like this?[21] I found it by googling "Avril Lavigne and Britney Spears together". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:55, 29 July 2026 (UTC)