The UK’s ITV News at Ten used to have a segment called “And Finally…” at the end of the broadcast that was intended to be light-hearted (but still somewhat newsworthy) in order to soften whatever horrors might have gone before it earlier.

I haven’t watched TV news in years, but apparently they don’t do that any more.

I never said it was empathy. I said it’s the closest thing you’ll ever get to it from him.

My bad. I used a double negative, which clearly confused you.

“That doesn’t mean that racism doesn’t exist there” means “racist behaviour almost certainly still goes on there”.

I can try to break this down to words of just one sound if you like, but to do that might be too mean, and it’s hard to write like this as well.

Nominally non-racist. Back during apartheid, South Africa was definitely racist. Now apartheid is over, everyone there, regardless of race, is supposed to be equal.

That doesn’t mean that racism doesn’t exist there, just that it’s no longer encoded into law, and indeed the opposite might be encoded, regarding hate crimes and the like.

South Africa isn’t a threat to America, no, but living in a post-apartheid, nominally non-racist country is super uncomfortable for rich, white racists. They perceive the situation as them being in danger, and this has triggered the closest thing to empathy that you’ll ever get out of DJT.

I feel like proponents of that calendar might be better off giving all the months completely different names. It would avoid some of the potential confusion during the changeover. Sol could keep its name, I guess, but the rest, no.

On the other hand, that still wouldn’t disambiguate numeric YYYY-MM-DD and the like.

I’d be sitting down and prototyping conduits with strong cardboard and sticky tape. And my desk fan in the middle.

The fan itself doesn’t have to make the angle if it has the right kind of redirection around it.

Due to the omission of the year number on the grid, it’s somewhat reusable too. 2037 is the next time all the dates and days of the week will match.

Not sure he’s been accused of killing any.

My diet is fine. You may have missed that I’m cutting out things that qualify as snacks. Things whose nutritional content is limited and are mostly fat and carbohydrates, including those commonly eaten right after what might otherwise be a sensible meal.

I’m talking biscuits (cookies), cakes and the like. I already don’t eat crisps (chips) nor do I drink anything with fizz or sugar (or both).

If I can’t get to a good weight doing just that, I might look into alternative sources of nutrition and superfoods, but those tend to cost the sort of money that I can ill afford to spend.

Also, I looked at the blurb for that book and it claims that it contains recipes that will “treat” cancer. That’s weasel wording to avoid being called snake oil, while at the same time convincing the gullible that it contains a cure, so you’ll forgive me if I give it a miss.

Same reason people like watching TV dramas. It’s escapism. They get to vicariously live someone else’s more colourful life - or are glad they’re not living the celebrity’s real or acted horrible life - for a short while to get away from their own.

And anyone on a screen is usually better-looking as well, which is a big draw.

I’m in the process of trying to lose a little weight to get my BMI a comfortable distance below the “Overweight” tier. That requires fighting natural urges to eat anything and everything available because of evolving in an environment where food was hard-won or otherwise scarce.

And yet, I wouldn’t say I’ve fully overcome the programming because my body and hindbrain literally scream at me and start bargaining every time I skip a snack, but it seems to be working.

I figure they’re more likely related, in spirit and vocalisation if not etymologically, to the French phrase «et patati, et patata», translatable as “blah blah blah” or “yada yada yada”.

The venerable Jargon File has the French metasyntactic variables (i.e. the equivalents to foo and bar) as toto, titi, tata and tutu.

Or to take this in another direction: foo sounds like French “fou” which means “mad” (as in “insane”), so “coucou” might be an interesting alternative.

I’ll be that guy.

“lose” / “loses” are the words you’re looking for.

This is one of those situations where English doesn’t make sense. “loose” doesn’t rhyme with “choose”, but “lose” does, yet all other “-ose” words rhyme with “nose”.

“Lose” is the opposite of “win”. “Loose” is the opposite of “tight”.

Even as a relative youngster I remember visiting previous schools for some reason or another and being astounded by just how tiny the chairs and desks were.

Firefox. Considering moving (back) to Waterfox, but unwilling to make the effort right now. I last used Waterfox back when they beat Firefox proper to being a true 64-bit browser.

But here’s the interesting one that I’ve mentioned before: MiniBrowser. It’s a bare bones browser that’s included with libwebkit* packages on Linux, which are, in turn installed by various other packages that might need some kind of web-like parsing.

I wouldn’t recommend it as a daily driver, but it’s useful as a troubleshooting tool when I think there might be a problem with Firefox or between Firefox, my config, and some site or another.

Call me cynical, but I think you’ve put quotes around the wrong part of your title.

Try around “accidentally”.

“120mm optical media” is better, because that’s the official measurement, but it has its own problems. There’s the “mini” form factor at 80mm and the credit card form factor as well, and those still qualify as CDs, DVDs, etc., even though they’re not 120mm.

“Optical media whose most common form factor is a 120mm disc” fits, as does “CD-like media”, but the former is wordy and the latter comes with the potential confusion that the others are CDs, when they’re not. Which I admit to deliberately avoiding for precisely that reason.

My computer, in full working order, with Internet access.

If any of that goes wrong, I’m in a very bad place.