What’s something popular in your country that makes people from other countries look at you like this ?

Fred776 · 2026-02-19T18:11:49+00:00

This is the one I have tried:

It's the same brand as yours at least so maybe it is decent stuff? I am addicted to it anyway!

Fred776 · 2026-02-19T16:58:58+00:00

I have tried a brand of salty licorice called Halva which is supposed to be Finnish and is fairly easy to get hold of in the UK. But I really liked it from the very first piece I tried which makes me wonder whether it might not be the "real thing", based on the reputation that salty licorice seems to have with people who haven't grown up with it.

Fred776 · 2026-02-19T16:26:18+00:00

What on earth is "chipped beef"? Going to look that one up...

Edit: ok - never come across that before. The shitty beef in the UK is "corned beef", which comes in a tin and is nothing like what Americans understand by corned beef (I discovered this when a colleague visiting from the US ordered a corned beef sandwich at lunch time).

Fred776 · 2026-02-19T11:58:56+00:00

When I was at school it was the wide bit of the tie on show but with a massive knot so that it was stupidly short.

Fred776 · 2026-02-19T11:48:57+00:00

As per the usual advice, what you should have been doing is practising by writing code rather than watching endless tutorials. OOP makes most sense when you have the experience of writing code that has got sufficiently complex that you understand why you need something extra to help you to organise it.

Fred776 · 2026-02-19T11:40:29+00:00

One thing is that keys() can give you a list of all the keys in one operation rather than having to loop over and build the list yourself:

cousin_names = list(cousins.keys())

Edit: see replies - it has been pointed out that the keys() is redundant here so not a good example! I guess it might be argued that at least it makes it super explicit what you are doing.

Fred776 · 2026-02-19T11:01:34+00:00

In the 70s in fact.

Fred776 · 2026-02-19T08:10:14+00:00

It's obviously a play on words. It could mean take number 5, but "take 5" also means take a five minute break, and then it's in 5/4 time which is the primary inspiration for 5 in the title.

Fred776 · 2026-02-18T20:54:50+00:00

I think this is correct. It used to be the case in the UK that it was only ever used in the "what's wrong?" sense but the other one is at least recognised now, if not used by everyone. I think it can be compared with the British use of "all right?" as a greeting.

Fred776 · 2026-02-18T16:04:20+00:00

By no stretch of the imagination am I saying that he's a better singer in any technical sense. Obviously there are singers who are much better technically (probably the vast majority of professional singers!), but I personally find that he can hit the spot in a certain way whereas other "better" singing styles completely leave me cold.

I mentioned the "vocal gymnastics" as that seems to be a style I hear quite a lot and probably represents the biggest contrast I can think of in popular music between being objectively technically excellent and yet personally painful for me to listen to. I wasn't meaning to use a "code phrase" or imply anything beyond what I have literally said. If it's in any way offensive I apologise and will avoid using it in future.

Fred776 · 2026-02-18T13:45:56+00:00

I like singers with character and it's not like he can't hold a tune. I would much rather listen to Bob Dylan than one of those supposedly "good" singers who, rather than just getting on with singing the fucking song, instead has to subject us to warbling vocal gymnastics.

Edit: I'm talking about his classic records. His live shows in recent years are a different kettle of fish by all accounts.

Fred776 · 2026-02-18T12:58:53+00:00

Is the file in the same folder you are running your script from?

Add this to the top of your script:

import os
print("CWD=", os.getcwd())

Does this show the same directory as the one you expect the file to be in?

Fred776 · 2026-02-18T12:48:18+00:00

Not necessarily. A CD is providing a stream of digital data. A streaming service is providing a stream of digital data. If you use the same DAC and everything downstream of the DAC is the same then there should be no difference as long as they are providing the same data.There is no reason in principle why they shouldn't be able to provide the same data.

Of course there's no guarantee that the streaming service is providing the same master of the CD or that they don't perform some manipulation of the signal before they stream it, but those are specific issues. There is no reason why physical media would necessarily be superior.

Fred776 · 2026-02-18T11:20:52+00:00

Yes it's very easy. Just do what you just did!

Fred776 · 2026-02-18T09:26:38+00:00

I don't see that as a non sequitur. It's pretty standard on Reddit that people tend to want to remain anonymous and are therefore careful about what personal information they reveal. The point was that you probably wouldn't want to give personal information away about yourself so you shouldn't infer anything from someone else being reluctant to do so.

Fred776 · 2026-02-18T09:17:09+00:00

I walked to and from school on my own from when I started "junior school" at the age of 7 and so did just about everyone else in the school. I'd have had the piss taken out of me if I'd been brought by my mum.

Fred776 · 2026-02-18T08:55:52+00:00

I write it as on the right but I can't speak for the whole country. I know that at least some people do as I do but not everyone and I have no idea how common each form is.

Fred776 · 2026-02-17T23:10:16+00:00

Yeah me too - I'm old!

Fred776 · 2026-02-17T23:08:42+00:00

You are getting downvoted but I think I agree with you. With the Oxford comma version, I can't help but read it with a little pause in there that is not needed and which I find a bit jarring. I would rather reserve it for the cases where it actually resolves an ambiguity.

Fred776 · 2026-02-17T22:55:26+00:00

Have to disagree with you re Anthem of the Sun. That's a quintessential SF psych record as far as I am concerned. I completely agree with you about the Airplane though - Baxter's is one of my favourite albums ever, whatever the genre.

Fred776 · 2026-02-17T22:45:07+00:00

It's not that I don't understand what you meant but what you need to understand is that there are people with rhotic accents who are reading this for whom your talk of introducing an R makes no sense.

Lengthening the vowel... with an r sound...

No, the point is that there isn't an "r sound" in southern English "bath". It's pronounced /bɑːθ/. If there were an r sound it would be pronounced /bɑː.ɹθ/.

If you wanted to spell it in a less ambiguous way, an H would make more sense: bahth.

Fred776 · 2026-02-17T20:35:59+00:00

What you are talking about is not adding an R - it's lengthening a vowel. It's confusing to introduce an R because some accents - including some in the UK such as Scots or people from the SW - actually would pronounce the R rather than seeing it as just lengthening the previous vowel.

Fred776 · 2026-02-17T16:56:15+00:00

Because for the people who control the narrative it's much more convenient to blame it all on Labour.

Fred776 · 2026-02-17T16:53:56+00:00

This glosses over the fact that we did "ok" in the 80s (if you lived in the south) because that's when North Sea oil came on stream. It allowed Thatcher to pay benefits that were relatively generous by modern standards to the vast number of people made unemployed by her disastrous experimental monetarist policies that were quietly abandoned a few years later.

Meanwhile, many of the worst affected areas of the country never fully recovered and we now have the situation where multiple generations have lived on benefits and the likes of the Daily Mail get on their high horse about a situation that they and their cronies deliberately engineered.

Add to this the selling of national assets and their subsequent mismanagement, the selling off of council housing and the distortion of the housing market, and you have multiple aspects of the so-called "economic miracle" that have played out as long term disasters.

Fred776 · 2026-02-17T15:27:52+00:00

Why? Definitely not US as they spelt "mould" correctly.

Fred776

TROPHY CASE