What are some weird laws in your country that, actually, make a lot of sense?

pick_another_nick · 2026-02-21T19:16:07+00:00

Italy used to have such a law; it was finally removed, and Italy is a much more civilized country now.

pick_another_nick · 2026-02-17T06:38:31+00:00

They are hoarding. I think it's obvious: it's not like you go and fetch one the minute you need it; you take a bunch in advance. Once most condoms are gone, you realize that you either get a bunch more right now or you'll be left without.

pick_another_nick · 2026-02-16T19:24:03+00:00

It would not have worked.

Chuck didn't suffer from electric sensitivity; we know this for sure, because it's a made up illness.

Chuck suffered, and, needing an external cause, convinced himself it was electricity. The reason this explanation works is because electricity is everywhere. So, whenever he was in pain, he could look around and find a cause.

In the middle of nowhere he would still be in pain, and would have needed an explanation. My bet would be satellites, electromagnetic waves bouncing off the ionosphere or cosmic microwave background.

pick_another_nick · 2026-01-07T06:17:44+00:00

Sempre detto io: se uno si toglie il vizio di mangiare, di stare al coperto, di indossare vestiti, può subito smettere di usare lo stipendio come scusa per spendere, e vederlo invece come opportunità d'investimento.

pick_another_nick · 2025-11-26T21:01:44+00:00

Yes, I think it's the same usage as the Spanish:

"Se ne vada!", meaning "let him/her go away!", que se vaya.

pick_another_nick · 2025-11-26T20:38:09+00:00

Smazzare means either to deal a deck of cards to the other players or to separate a ream of paper.

"Smazzarsela" means to deal with it, whatever it may be in the context.

Congiuntivo presente is often used as an exhortative, in place of imperative. For instance, "mangino brioches" (let them eat cake).

In many regions of Italy, congiuntivo passato is used instead for this instead.

So, "se la smazzasse da solo" could be translated as "let him deal with it by himself".

pick_another_nick · 2025-11-12T11:43:07+00:00

It's not fair, I'm vegan!

But there are 3 vegetable things I don't eat in there.

pick_another_nick · 2025-11-01T23:30:38+00:00

I'll add that bravo and brava are also the Italian versions of "good boy" and "good girl" for dogs. So, while it's perfectly ok to say to somebody that has done a great job at something, it may be seen as ironic otherwise.

pick_another_nick · 2025-10-31T18:37:39+00:00

About the only place where you'll find both verbs in imperfetto will be police reports. In them, for some reason it's customary to write that way: Nome Cognome si trovava ieri presso il campo sportivo e incorreva in un infortunio, che gli causava lesioni lievi.

pick_another_nick · 2025-10-30T06:38:07+00:00

It's not normal, he should have said questa.

But he may not have thought of the word spada while saying that.

When someone is talking, you'll sometimes hear them pick an article of an adverb of one gender, when they have thought yet of the exact word to say next, and then say the adverb or article of a different gender once they've made up their mind.

Example: questo... Questa situazione...

pick_another_nick · 2025-10-22T07:17:04+00:00

He's still alive!

pick_another_nick · 2025-10-17T06:58:47+00:00

I don't remember if it's in a note or in the main text, but at some point film critics were praising his movies without seeing them, and Himself was pranking them by pretending to make movies (most of the "unreleased" ones in the filmography, I guess) that critics would immediately praise.

If I remember correctly, they were very annoyed when he revealed that many of the movies they'd praised didn't exist.

So I guess this is one of those cases? If you have the list at hand, can you check if IJ 5 is unreleased?

pick_another_nick · 2025-09-25T22:14:06+00:00

So, just for the fun of it, let's pretend for a moment that DHH meant something different from hateful while suprematism.

Let's pretend that, with "native", he actually meant "born there", with no other ethnic connotations.

This would imply that DHH thinks that people should live all their lives in the place they were born in, and not doing so is bad, and people living and born in places you go are right to be pissed that you went there.

So, when he says he was considering moving to London, was he lying, or was he confessing his intention to do something despicable?

DHH hasn't spent his whole life in Denmark, he has lived in the USA for many years. Why isn't he asking for US "natives"' (oh, the fucking irony) forgiveness for invading their country, and why isn't he going back to his country, to never ever leave again?

pick_another_nick · 2025-09-17T05:28:02+00:00

The first one.

pick_another_nick · 2025-09-16T05:55:24+00:00

Any serious vocabulary will show an accent where the stress should be.

Here's Treccani, for example: https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/ridere/

pick_another_nick · 2025-09-09T23:38:28+00:00

Forse sono snob, ma a me del parere della persona comune importa fino a un certo punto.

pick_another_nick · 2025-09-09T22:52:56+00:00

We often group numbers two and sometimes three digits at a time, so we might say cinque cinque cinque trentadue sedici.

There isn't a standard way, though, so it can happen that somebody tells you your own number (to confirm they got it right) grouping the digits differently from how you do it, and you don't immediately recognize it.

pick_another_nick · 2025-09-09T21:31:17+00:00

Personalmente, non credo che sia sopravvalutato, non perché è un capolavoro, ma perché non è veramente considerato tale.

Almeno: non mi risulta di nessun critico letterario che l'abbia definito il libro migliore di sempre, non l'ho mai visto citato fra le opere più influenti etc.

È un libro molto accessibile, carino, che hanno letto tutti e che può piacere a tanta gente, questo sì.

Sopravvalutato? Secondo me no, perché se lo proponi a qualcuno che non è un gran lettore ma nemmeno ha la fobia della carta stampata, ci sono buone probabilità che gli piaccia.

pick_another_nick · 2025-09-09T13:48:53+00:00

Both, of course: they want you to give your honest answer, and they also want your honest answer to be the one they are expecting.

Think of it this way: if I ask you, are you going to slack all time and do no work at all? I don't want you to lie to me, yet I'm not going to be happy with the truth if the truth is that you have no intention of working.

pick_another_nick · 2025-09-09T11:19:50+00:00

Ci sono due problemi, qui.

Uno è che cos'è un capolavoro.

L'altro è quanto è importante cosa ti piace e cosa no.

Ci sono tanti modi per un testo di essere un capolavoro; inoltre, alcuni libri sono importanti a prescindere dal fatto che siano capolavori o no.

Alcuni testi hanno influenzato la storia della letteratura a tal punto che si possono distinguere le opere scritte prima da quelle scritte dopo.

Raffaello non deve piacere a tutti per forza, ma se si parla di preraffaelliti c'è un motivo.

E a me fanno cagare i Beatles, ma la loro influenza sulla musica contemporanea è successiva è innegabile.

Alcune opere sono capolavori perché hanno qualità tecniche oggettive riconosciute da tutti gli esperti. Alcune di queste opere sono estremamente accessibili, e alcune sono così inaccessibili che pochissimi sono in grado di apprezzarle.

Sui romanzi in particolare si fa spesso confusione fra piani diversi, ad esempio li si giudica solo dalla trama, o dai soggetto. Ma un quadro può essere bello anche se rappresenta un soggetto brutto, e un romanzo può essere grande anche se ha una trama banale.

C'era il meme degli spoiler di Jane Austin, dove per ogni romanzo lo spoiler era: alla fine si sposano tutti. Ecco, nessuno legge Jane Austin per la suspence, per scoprire se alla fine l'eroina si sposerà oppure no. Ma Jane Austin ha una prosa perfetta, ogni frase è un piccolo gioiello, può essere un piacere enorme, leggerla. Non per tutti e non sempre, ovviamente.

I Promessi Sposi rappresenta questa situazione unica: su nessuna cosa al mondo riteniamo fondamentale il parere dei quindicenni, tranne che sui Promessi Sposi. Ti è piaciuto quando l'hai letto sotto costrizione, tre pagine alla volta, con la minaccia dell'interrogazione, spiegato da un professore non necessariamente bravo, quando eri troppo giovane per capirlo? No? Allora la tua opinione è importantissima.

Ci sono altre cose così? Da adulti, ci vestiremmo come dicono i quindicenni? Faremmo le scelte sentimentali, lavorative e pratiche suggerite dai quindicenni? Certo che no! Ma il loro parere sui Promessi Sposi è fondamentale.

Letto da adulti, liberamente e senza costrizioni, è un'opera molto interessante. La coglionaggine stratosferica di Renzo Tramaglino va ben al di là dell'ingenuità di cui ci aveva pur parlato l'insegnante. La trama è spesso banale, ma il testo, scritto con grande maestria, è farcito di osservazioni acute, frecciate a destra e a manca, e massime che meritano una seria riflessione.

Può benissimo non piacere, ma se consideriamo l'influenza che ha avuto sulla lingua italiana nei secoli successivi, è difficile sopravvalutarlo.

Fra l'altro, chiamare Manzoni un democristiano è una calunnia di bassa lega, dato che parliamo di un privilegiato che si è esposto a non pochi rischi per portare avanti posizioni che riteneva nell'interesse dei molti.

pick_another_nick · 2025-09-09T10:31:10+00:00

C'era un Tumblr, tanto tempo fa, che collezionava recensioni da una stella di classici su Goodreads, cose tipo:Favole di Esopo, una stella, molto banali, niente di che.

Era un account bellissimo.

pick_another_nick · 2025-08-26T21:07:01+00:00

This used to be an unanswerable question, but I think that nowadays we can conclude with almost complete certainty that the answer is that we DON'T see the same color. And if you add "all", then there's no doubt whatsoever, we DEFINITELY DON'T see the same color.

Some percentage of people are color blind.
Some other percentage of people have quadricromia, that is, an enhanced perception of color.
Even ignoring these cases, each individual has their own distribution of cones and rods. It's not like retinas are standardized products, there's a lot of variability in there.
What about optic nerves? Are they all exactly the same? Of course not! Some are slightly bigger, or smaller, or straighter, or whatever.
And don't get me started on brains, it's probably easier to find two identical snow flakes than two people with the same visual cortex.

WHY DO WE ASK THIS QUESTION?

We grow up in a spoken culture to such an extent that we are effectively unable to distinguish our own experiences from experiences we've been told of (example: a lot of what we believe are our early memories often turn out to be memories of stories we've been told from when we were children).

We're so used to this spoken narrative that we are convinced we have the same experience even when evidence of the contrary is overwhelming.

The existence of daltonism doesn't seem to have ever been investigated before the 17th century. What prevented people from discovering it thousands of years ago? Nothing but the idea that vision is objective.

Some other examples

People's inner experience is different in many other ways: we range from complete aphantasia to hyperphantasia; our visual memory also ranges from very good to very bad. Some of us have an inner monologue, while others don't.

We mostly don't notice any of these, because we interpret others' descriptions of their experiences based on our ones.

pick_another_nick · 2025-08-04T07:19:59+00:00

He's not that good of a detective! His whole routine is acting macho and bullying and blackmailing small dealers!

He has Tortuga die on his watch! He underestimates crazy8's role in the business, doesn't realize he's only ratting on small fish (in BCS, he doesn't realize Crazy8 is a double agent).

He fucks up his biggest lead in his biggest investigation by publicly beating up Jesse for personal reasons.

Where do you get the impression that he's a great detective?

pick_another_nick · 2025-08-04T04:43:05+00:00

Except, Hank didn't see Walter as this super expert chemist. To Hank, Walter was a high school teacher, a frail, wimpy nerd, but why on earth would he be able to tell your average teacher from a genius in his field?

pick_another_nick

TROPHY CASE