aebletrae

As an exercise in thinking about a language, I like trying to translate something a bit silly, that I can't just look up. Even if the result is bad, it tends to lead in interesting directions as I try to move beyond rote memorisation and end up discovering some new aspect of the language.

Today's target was "beanis".

What I came up with for Japanese was お{荏々|じんじん}. As far as I can tell, this is not in dictionaries, but sounds like an existing word, おちんちん, with extra voicing on the leading consonant, and has "bean" in it, though jisho.org gives some other meanings to the kanji.

I have no idea whether this works or is (more likely) just gaijin nonsense, but I can't think of anywhere else I could possibly post this.

A squad of Normal Island terrorists infiltrate the city of Kokomo, Indiana, and take over a nuclear power plant. A counter-terf expert (Chuck Connors) must stop them before their preoccupation with transuranic elements becomes a meltdown.

...imply the existence of isobottomes?

Hello again, Auntie.

I wrote for advice some time ago [Confused in Claremont], and just getting the problem out there was so renewing, I felt the need to ask a follow-up question that has also been bothering me. You see, sometimes I disagree with the free-speech advocates, and that goes even worse!

For example, to the previously mentioned "sunlight is the best disinfectant" claim, I will just ask the question: "Isn't drowning in bleach actually the best disinfectant?" (The manufacturers always tout its efficacy and, as a believer in free markets, it's important to take every marketing claim at face value. And no one's selling sunlight, are they? So that must be useless.) But they don't like this either; I can't win! And when I also point out that drowning in bleach has the added benefit of wide applicability, the liberal objectors call me "murderously uncivil". But do you know what happens if you don't drown germs in bleach? You get a stinky toilet. And what's civil about that? Or cholera?

And as for the objectors who "lean right", well, they start to shriek in what sounds like German? This is America, buddy. Speak English. I think they call me a "radical extremist", but this is just plain wrong. Like them, I'm an apolitical centrist who just thinks it's important to hear out opposing voices and pave the way to a future in which all the people whose existence irks me have died gruesome, agonising deaths. Really, I'm exactly like them, which they keep saying is important, but when I try putting some contrarian viewpoints out there myself, it always goes badly. Clearly, I'm doing something wrong, but what?

I really do try to stick to the mantra of "facts don't care about your feelings" but these guys always seem really angry whenever I try to join in with any evidence of reality at all. I don't get it.

Yours as ever,
Perplexed in Peoria

Dear Aunt Chapo,

From time to time, I encounter self-described "free speech advocates", who make the claim that "sunlight is the best disinfectant". This is usually the most agreeable part of their claims, and so I will respond positively: "yes, the only truly effective treatment is exposure to lethal doses of radiation", but they always react as if that isn't what they meant.

This leaves me confused, because if what they actually meant was that the best way to deal with a dangerous pathogen is to internalise it and every poison it produces, surely at least one of them would have said "phagocytosis is the best disinfectant", but they never do. It's always "sunlight", and the mechanism of action there is definitely deadly radiation.

Now, they're obviously not saying that the appropriate response to an invasive organism set on hijacking the host's systems in order to reproduce itself unchecked with the ultimate result of killing the host is to suppress the immune system, sit back, and let it do whatever it wants, because that's insanely suicidal. Yet I often get the feeling that this is what the advocates do actually want. Like I say, I'm confused.

Are they actually saying that we should send nazis to tanning salons or off on a warm holiday for some UV exposure? They do tend to look pale, you know?

Anyway, I'm sure your advice will be as helpful as ever.

Yours,
Confused in Claremont

I don't know which one of you went to Belgium to start a transportation company, but it's a good bit.

Since the XSS incident a couple of weeks back, I hadn't been able to log in, or even sign up for a new account. All attempts at either ended with the spinning bear. Now, presumably because of the upgrade, I have been able to create a second account to post this, but I can't log in to my original account, AppelTrad, because it prompts for 2-factor authentication.

This is (partially) my own fault, I suppose, for clicking the checkbox and not mentioning that it didn't actually give me any of the promised results, while I was still logged in; since I was also able to untick the box without being prompted for anything, I just assumed it was a bit of not-yet-implemented UI and that I had reset the option for if it ever became effective, and carried on without any problems until the forced logout.

Since "2FA being broken is a known issue", I'm wondering: is it possible for an admin to reset that field in my database record (or whatever needs to be done to cancel 2FA) without any of the security shenanigans that should accompany working two-factor authentication, so I can successfully log in again? (I have my passwords saved, so it's not just a mistyped password issue.)