Minor things that bother you

[Scott5114]

Who in their right mind, if they actually stop to think about it, imagines that there predators out there whose m.o. is to dress up like women and hang out in the Dillard's restroom?

The transgender community has been asking this question for the past decade or two and has never gotten a satisfactory answer. (Because what predator would be perfectly okay with committing crimes against random women, but consider violating the bathroom dress code to be beyond the pale?)

[bugo]

What gets on my nerves is that the country of Turkey insists that everybody spells it a different way than it has been spelled in English for centuries. They don't have the right to tell us how to spell the name. The PC spelling contains a character that isn't even in the English language! This is like insisting that the French have to stop calling the US "États-Unis". It's petty and nitpicky. You don't see the Germans getting mad at us because we don't call it "Deutschland". It's silly. It will always be "Turkey" to me. The Turks can bugger off.

[Big John]

^^ Or Ivory Coast insisting their name be spoken only in French.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

What gets on my nerves is that the country of Turkey insists that everybody spells it a different way than it has been spelled in English for centuries. They don't have the right to tell us how to spell the name. The PC spelling contains a character that isn't even in the English language! This is like insisting that the French have to stop calling the US "États-Unis". It's petty and nitpicky. You don't see the Germans getting mad at us because we don't call it "Deutschland". It's silly. It will always be "Turkey" to me. The Turks can bugger off.

I mean, to be fair, they're not the only ones who do this - the Ukrainian government demanded for years for the West to stop transliterating their capital as "Kiev" as that was the Russian-based transliteration of the city's name rather than the Ukrainian one. The change only finally went mainstream in Western media and daily life after the 2020s Russian war started.

[Scott5114]

What gets on my nerves is that the country of Turkey insists that everybody spells it a different way than it has been spelled in English for centuries. They don't have the right to tell us how to spell the name. The PC spelling contains a character that isn't even in the English language! This is like insisting that the French have to stop calling the US "États-Unis". It's petty and nitpicky. You don't see the Germans getting mad at us because we don't call it "Deutschland". It's silly. It will always be "Turkey" to me. The Turks can bugger off.

Eh, I think it's pretty reasonable to not want to be called a turkey. It's easy for me to type a ü, but for the benefit of those less fortunate, I would say it would be fine to meet them in the middle and say Turkiye. Except...I think their president is a turkey, so I'm going to keep calling it Turkey until they get rid of him.

[bugo]

I find it interesting that the central European country known for beer, sauerkraut and Nazis has different names depending on the language and country. English speakers call it "Germany", French speakers call it "Allemagne", Russian speakers call it "Германия" and Polish speakers call it "Niemcy" while German speakers call it "Deutschland".

[bugo]

Attending meets based on whether or not someone else is going to be there is sorta weird.

There was a prominent member of this forum who wasn't allowed to attend a roadmeet in his hometown because the organizers didn't like him because they claimed he was "crazy". He has since been to several roadmeets, and I've met this guy several times, and he's a really nice guy who is cool as hell and a whole lot more normal than he gets credit for being. I'm not going to name any names, but I'm sure a lot of you know who I'm talking about.

[bugo]

Do I look like I want to go to the US in order to clinch Ontario? It wouldn't be safe for me, or many others in the hobby, to do so.

It would be safe for you to do so.

Crossing the US border is not always safe. The guards can make your life a living hell if they want to. and there is little accountability for their actions. Especially since the orange idiot has made the entire world hate us.

[bugo]

I've heard both continents referred to in the singular as "the Americas."

I have heard that as well, but never "America".

[I-57/Route 66 Fan]

When people call the Billboard Hot 100 the pop chart.

[kphoger]

The transgender community has been asking this question for the past decade or two and has never gotten a satisfactory answer. (Because what predator would be perfectly okay with committing crimes against random women, but consider violating the bathroom dress code to be beyond the pale?)

You can say and believe what you want about transgenderism in general (and, for those just tuning in, I personally object to it on moral/religious grounds), but public restrooms is just a really weird battleground for the war to be waged on.  Sports, I understand.  Bathrooms, not so much.  I really just don't care who else happens to be in the bathroom, it surprises me how strongly other people seem to care about it.


Re:  country names...

I'll still call them the Ivory Coast (definite article included) and Turkey.  They're the same names, just slightly different in the other language, so I'm just going to keep going with the good old English one.  They can call the USA whatever they want in return.

Same with some cities in Asia, such as Calcutta and Bangalore, but only if their old names stand out in my mind.

I still call it Swaziland, because I'm not an idiot and I can keep Switzerland and Swaziland straight in my head.  Stupid reason to change the name.

I go back and forth between Burma and Myanmar, because they're ki-i-i-i-ind of the same name.

I like Czechia better than the Czech Republic in theory, but for some reason I still haven't gotten used to actually saying it out loud.

I used to bristle at being expected to drop the definite article from before Ukraine, and yet somehow in the last year or two I've ended up dropping it anyway—not even on purpose.

I really wish there were a nice way to distinguish the country Georgia from the state Georgia.  But the country's official English name isn't even "Republic of Georgia" or anything:  it's just "Georgia".  If there's any country whose name needs to be tweaked, it's that one.

[kphoger]

I've heard both continents referred to in the singular as "the Americas."

I have heard that as well, but never "America".

Then, again, you obviously didn't grow up in any of the countries south of the border.  Because that's how those folks learned geography.

[Scott5114]

I really wish there were a nice way to distinguish the country Georgia from the state Georgia.  But the country's official English name isn't even "Republic of Georgia" or anything:  it's just "Georgia".  If there's any country whose name needs to be tweaked, it's that one.

They don't even call themselves Georgia in their native language; it's Sakartvelo. Georgia was apparently the name assigned to them by outsiders because they liked St. George a lot. (Maybe they should have been called Utah instead.) But that wasn't even the first name the outsiders gave them—the Greeks called the area Colchis.

That being said the name Georgia has applied to the region of the country for far longer than it has the US state (1320 for the country as opposed to 1733 for the state), so maybe ours is the one that should change. Especially since it was named after the dad of the guy we famously had a beef with in the 1770s. Maybe it could be named Tsatsiyi (what the Cherokee call it), Savannah (after its first city), Oglethorpe (after the guy who founded it), or Johnia (after the first ruler it had who wasn't named George).

[vdeane]

And, even in states with bathroom gender laws, are there any states in which the ban applies to private property rather than just government-owned facilities?

Kansas does; warning for first offense, $1000 fine on second, misdemeanor on the third.  Idaho as well; misdemeanor on first offense, felony (!) on second.

What bills are you looking at, that include private property?

Kansas SB 244:  "Public building means a building owned or leased by a governmental entity."

Idaho HB 264:  "Covered entity means a correctional facility, domestic violence shelter, juvenile correctional center, or state educational institution."

OK, so Kansas is still just public buildings; I must have missed that in whatever article I was looking at to verify things during my lunch break (or maybe the article missed it); it's been overshadowed by the driver's licence debacle there anyways.

Idaho HB 752 includes "places of public accommodation", which includes private businesses:

(9) "Place of public accommodation" means a business, accommodation, refreshment, entertainment, recreation, or transportation facility of any kind, whether licensed or not, whose goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages or accommodations are extended, offered, sold, or otherwise made available to the public;

FWIW...  If I were transgender and even remotely passed as female, I wouldn't think twice of using the ladies' room at a rest area, even in a state with such a bathroom ban.  The general culture in public bathrooms is to pretend nobody else in there even exists, let alone examining somebody closely enough for it to matter, and I've now gone 4½ decades without ever having seen an ID check at a rest area bathroom door.

I guess the quesiton is, "what is passing"?  15 years ago when few were aware of trans people, passing was generally much more possible than today as stuff that would be written off before now screams "trans".  And how is one to know whether they really pass or if everyone around them is just being polite?

Do I look like I want to go to the US in order to clinch Ontario? It wouldn't be safe for me, or many others in the hobby, to do so.

It would be safe for you to do so.

Crossing the US border is not always safe. The guards can make your life a living hell if they want to. and there is little accountability for their actions. Especially since the orange idiot has made the entire world hate us.

Indeed.  There are tons of horror stories on the internet... anyone crossing can only wonder if a given crossing with be easy, an annoying interrogation, or something that will delay/derail your trip.  And that's without any other factors, even during the Obama and Biden administrations (I've never crossed during either Trump administration; I get nervous enough crossing the border as it is that I'm not in a hurry to try).

Who says you have to use TM to make clinching a worthwhile activity?

I don't use TM, and won't until they develop a clickable interface instead of typing a list of roads you've been on (which means I'll never use the site), yet I still clinch. It's not a competition, and I don't need to have a site to compare what I've clinched to what others have clinched. I do it for my own enjoyment, not to keep score against opponents.

Let's put it this way: before multiplex detection was implemented on CHM, I didn't care about anything other than interstates.

They do have a clickable interface now, sort of - you can click segments in the highway browser and have it generate the lines for the .list file (although this can get wonky if routes have points really close together or, like truck US 19 in PA, multiplex with themselves), but you still need to copy and paste them into a file.

Especially since it was named after the dad of the guy we famously had a beef with in the 1770s.

All this time the joke maps with Australian state borders drawn on the US would put "Elizabeth" at the bottom right of the mainland, and we already had a state named after an English monarch around that position!

What gets on my nerves is that the country of Turkey insists that everybody spells it a different way than it has been spelled in English for centuries. They don't have the right to tell us how to spell the name. The PC spelling contains a character that isn't even in the English language! This is like insisting that the French have to stop calling the US "États-Unis". It's petty and nitpicky. You don't see the Germans getting mad at us because we don't call it "Deutschland". It's silly. It will always be "Turkey" to me. The Turks can bugger off.

I don't get this one.  As far as I can tell, it's pronounced the same, so what's the point in changing the spelling?  I didn't know anything had changed until somewhat recently, though apparently it had changed a while ago.  There was no warning when they changed Kiev to Kyiv either - they just expected us to know and to pretend it was always that way even though the pronunciation did change in that case.

[kphoger]

As far as I can tell, it's pronounced the same, so what's the point in changing the spelling?

You're supposed to pronounce it like a Canadian now:  Turkey, eh?

[kurumi]

Attending meets based on whether or not someone else is going to be there is sorta weird.

There was a prominent member of this forum who wasn't allowed to attend a roadmeet in his hometown because the organizers didn't like him because they claimed he was "crazy". He has since been to several roadmeets, and I've met this guy several times, and he's a really nice guy who is cool as hell and a whole lot more normal than he gets credit for being. I'm not going to name any names, but I'm sure a lot of you know who I'm talking about.

Even the founder of v---ology is pretty conventional in person (had lunch long ago; mutual friend). Some people have a Mr. Hyde persona online, and it doesn't seem to matter if it's anonymous or not.

[JayhawkCO]

Re:  country names...

I'll still call them the Ivory Coast (definite article included) and Turkey.  They're the same names, just slightly different in the other language, so I'm just going to keep going with the good old English one.  They can call the USA whatever they want in return.

Same with some cities in Asia, such as Calcutta and Bangalore, but only if their old names stand out in my mind.

I still call it Swaziland, because I'm not an idiot and I can keep Switzerland and Swaziland straight in my head.  Stupid reason to change the name.

I go back and forth between Burma and Myanmar, because they're ki-i-i-i-ind of the same name.

I like Czechia better than the Czech Republic in theory, but for some reason I still haven't gotten used to actually saying it out loud.

I used to bristle at being expected to drop the definite article from before Ukraine, and yet somehow in the last year or two I've ended up dropping it anyway—not even on purpose.

I really wish there were a nice way to distinguish the country Georgia from the state Georgia.  But the country's official English name isn't even "Republic of Georgia" or anything:  it's just "Georgia".  If there's any country whose name needs to be tweaked, it's that one.

Ivory Coast is fine since it's a direct English translation anyway.

I was doing Turkiye but then found out it's mostly just Erdogan that wants it called that, so eff that guy.

eSwatini is fun to say and no issues using that.

I now call it Burma, since, similar to the Turkey case, it's just the junta wanting it called Myanmar. Locally, they call it Burma.

Czechia is better because "Republic" is normally only used for differentiating the Congos (and C.A.R., but that country should just get a better name anyway), or one personal to me.

Re: "The" Ukraine, I have a tough time removing it from "Yukon" too.

Georgia is a weird one, because when I tell people I proposed to my wife there, I typically include "Republic of" to ease confusion. Kind of like "Washington state".

[kphoger]

"Republic" is normally only used for differentiating the Congos (and C.A.R., but that country should just get a better name anyway)

Sometimes I think about switching back to calling it Zaire instead of the DRC, because people who aren't geography nerds don't know what 'the DRC' means but have a halfway decent chance of remembering where Zaire is on the map.  It did throw me off one time, when I had a potential roommate visit the apartment in the early 2000s, and he said he was from 'Zaire', because it had been something like five or six years since the name change.

I never have any reason to refer to the C.A.R. in real life, so it doesn't come up, but I think I've only ever called it by its full name.

Re: "The" Ukraine, I have a tough time removing it from "Yukon" too.

I still call it 'the Yukon', and my impression from reading online is that most normal people do too—even people live who there.

Georgia is a weird one, because when I tell people I proposed to my wife there, I typically include "Republic of" to ease confusion. Kind of like "Washington state".

Well, I recently learned that the country used to be called the Republic of Georgia, between independence in '91 and their adoption of the Constitution in '95.  So I'm just going to go with that.

[JayhawkCO]

The other one I am the only one who does is using Hawai'i, as that's how it's spelled in the Hawaiian language. If I don't have to bust out the character map to get a particular special character, it seems easy enough to do.

[kphoger]

The other one I am the only one who does is using Hawai'i, as that's how it's spelled in the Hawaiian language. If I don't have to bust out the character map to get a particular special character, it seems easy enough to do.

Actually, it's spelled Hawaiʻi.  And if you're able to type that ʻokina without busting out the character map, then I'd like to know how.

[Max Rockatansky]

The other one I am the only one who does is using Hawai'i, as that's how it's spelled in the Hawaiian language. If I don't have to bust out the character map to get a particular special character, it seems easy enough to do.

Actually, it's spelled Hawaiʻi.  And if you're able to type that ʻokina without busting out the character map, then I'd like to know how.

On my our Hawaii page I started out spelling everything as it would be in proper Hawaiian. Trouble was not every source I was looked at followed proper Hawaii and I found myself misspelling a lot of place names.  I reverted back to the anglicized variations after I noticed errors on our Oahu stuff.

[JayhawkCO]

The other one I am the only one who does is using Hawai'i, as that's how it's spelled in the Hawaiian language. If I don't have to bust out the character map to get a particular special character, it seems easy enough to do.

Actually, it's spelled Hawaiʻi.  And if you're able to type that ʻokina without busting out the character map, then I'd like to know how.

Zoom out.

[Scott5114]

And if you're able to type that ʻokina without busting out the character map, then I'd like to know how.

You can add it as a compose key combination by editing /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose .

[1995hoo]

... Kind of like "Washington state".

Growing up in the DC area, I thought it was routine that people said "Washington state" to distinguish it from the city located on the Potomac. Nowadays people here tend to say "DC" or "the District" more so than "Washington" when referring to the city, but that definitely wasn't the case when I was a kid. I was quite surprised when I went off to law school and I once referred to "Washington state" and a friend assumed I was referring to the university located in Pullman.

[jakeroot]

... Kind of like "Washington state".

Growing up in the DC area, I thought it was routine that people said "Washington state" to distinguish it from the city located on the Potomac. Nowadays people here tend to say "DC" or "the District" more so than "Washington" when referring to the city, but that definitely wasn't the case when I was a kid. I was quite surprised when I went off to law school and I once referred to "Washington state" and a friend assumed I was referring to the university located in Pullman.

As someone who grew up in the other Washington, it has remained routine for me to say, "Washington State". Much to chagrin of other locals. When I was in Japan, I was always from "Washington State", which was especially important since I was surrounded by DoD employees who refer to DC on a daily basis.

That said, I've been noticing less usage of "Washington" in reference to the capitol as well, instead "DC" or "Washington DC" seems to be what I hear more often now. Even the people I worked with overseas were using "DC" or "DoD/DoW" instead of just "Washington" more often than not.