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Word/quotation of the moment:

yod-dropper

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ALL keys matter (response to the scale-wandering rendition of the national anthem at CPAC 2021) The Lunatic-in-Charge becomes the Lunatic-at-Large Lame duck à l'orange (AKA canard à l'orange) It is a mortifying circumstance, which greatly perplexes many a painstaking philosopher, that nature often refuses to second his most profound and elaborate efforts; so that often after having invented one of the most ingenious and natural theories imaginable, she will have the perverseness to act directly in the teeth of his system, and flatly contradict his most favorite positions. This is a manifest and unmerited grievance, since it throws the censure of the vulgar and unlearned entirely upon the philosopher; whereas the fault is not to be ascribed to his theory, which is unquestionably correct, but to the waywardness of Dame Nature, who, with the proverbial fickleness of her sex, is continually indulging in coquetries and caprices, and seems really to take pleasure in violating all philosophic rules, and jilting the most learned and indefatigable of her adorers. The philosophers took this in very ill part, and it is thought they would never have pardoned the slight and affront which they conceived put upon them by the world had not a good-natured professor kindly officiated as a mediator between the parties, and effected a reconciliation. Finding the world would not accommodate itself to the theory, he wisely determined to accommodate the theory to the world. — Washington Irving, Knickerbocker's History of New York Pela primeira vez na sua vida a morte soube o que era ter um cão no regaço. For the first time in her life, death knew what it felt like to have a dog in her lap. — José Saramago, Death with Interruptions / Death at Intervals It is now generally accepted that the megaliths that make up Stonehenge were moved by human effort. — as opposed to by what? Anybody who says you only have yourself to blame is just not very good at blaming other people. — It's Happy Bunny When poppies pull themselves up from their roots and start out, one after the other, toward the sunset – don't follow them. — Slavko Janevski, 'Silence' And the dough-headed took their acid fermentation for a soul, the stabbing of meat for history, the means of postponing their decay for civilization. — Stanislaw Lem, Return from the Stars The Church says that the Earth is Flat, but I know that it is Round, for I have seen its Shadow on the Moon, and I have more Faith in a Shadow than in the Church. — (commonly misattributed to Magellan) In the early years of the study there were more than 200 speakers of the dialect, including one parrot. — from the WP article Nancy Dorian Mikebrown is unusually eccentric and not very bright. Astronomers have not noticed any outbursts by Mikebrown. — from the WP article 11714 Mikebrown Ecce Mono Keep Redskins White! "homosapiens are people, too!!" a sprig of spaghetti "I've always had a horror of husbands-in-law." awkwardnessful anti–zombie-fungus fungus "Only an evil person would eat baby soup." (said in all sincerity)

Wikimedia ZA Annual General Meeting 2021

This is just to let you know that the Wikimedia ZA AGM will be taking place on 25 September 2021 See below for more details.

• Time: Saturday, 25 September 2021, starts at 10:00 to 16:00. With intermission at 13:00
• Location: held digitally online this link

Jonathan Hull renderings

They really do remind me of the Witch runes from Puella Magi Madoka Magica, LOL. Double sharp (talk) 00:09, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

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Rongorongo trolling

You are uploading rongorongos claiming them to be fair use and putting multiple rationales and copyright tags. This is considered licence trolling and your images are now being changed to public domain.--Alex Mitchell of The Goodies (talk) 02:52, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

You will also be discussed at the Teahouse.--Alex Mitchell of The Goodies (talk) 03:07, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

I don't understand what that means, and I don't see any discussion at the Teahouse. Also, your description of your actions doesn't match your actions.

You say that the images are not copyrighted because you can't copyright a photo of an object you don't own? You clearly don't understand what copyright is. I'll rv your edits. — kwami (talk) 05:14, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

I forgot to add the discussion, but since you are fighting me now, I will make sure I discuss you tomorrow.--Alex Mitchell of The Goodies (talk) 05:55, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Be careful what you claim. You've been removing Fair Use tags, which could be problematic. — kwami (talk) 05:57, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

IJustine

I reverted a problematic editor, but retained your pronunciation edit. Your edit was flagged as reverted. Cheers Adakiko (talk) 03:53, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Earth Mass

It's clear I'm not the only one with problems with your intended change to the "Earth" symbol. From Earth Mass history

curprev 14:42, 29 November 2021‎ Double sharp talk contribs‎  171 bytes +2‎  Undid revision 1057801525 by Tom.Reding (talk) it's still not the right symbol. the problem is not your browser but whether you have a font with the right symbol rollback: 1 editundothank Tag: Undo
curprev 14:25, 29 November 2021‎ Tom.Reding talk contribs‎  169 bytes −2‎  Undid revision 1048791519 by Kwamikagami (talk) Displays as a box in Chrome undothank Tags: Undo Reverted
curprev 20:46, 7 October 2021‎ Kwamikagami talk contribs‎  171 bytes +2‎  that's a mathematical operator, not the symbol for Earth, which is 🜨 undothank Tag: Reverted
curprev 01:31, 11 July 2021‎ ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ talk contribs‎  169 bytes −42‎  Rm interlanguage link to deleted target. They are hosted in wikidata now, so rm msg too undothank
curprev 16:12, 12 October 2020‎ Lithopsian talk contribs‎  211 bytes −2‎  Undid revision 982466559 by NuclearElevator (talk) needs discussion, does not display correctly in all browsers undothank Tag: Undo
curprev 05:44, 8 October 2020‎ NuclearElevator talk contribs‎  213 bytes +2‎  Re-introduced character change. It's been changed on template:val undothank Tags: Undo Reverted
curprev 05:05, 8 October 2020‎ NuclearElevator talk contribs‎  211 bytes −2‎  holding off on the character change until template:val is changed too undothank Tags: Undo Reverted
curprev 04:22, 8 October 2020‎ NuclearElevator talk contribs‎  213 bytes +2‎  Using ALCHEMICAL SYMBOL FOR VERDIGRIS (U+1F728, 🜨) instead of CIRCLED PLUS (U+2295, ⊕) undothank Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit Reverted

While using that symbol as a subscript may be "more correct", it's clear that support is not universal. Tarl N. (discuss) 19:57, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

We shouldn't purposely introduce errors into an encyclopedia. That's just irresponsible. There are several correct ways to do this: M_🜨, M_E, M_Earth. Debating which of those is best is one thing. Arguing that we should be wrong because it doesn't matter is another. — kwami (talk) 20:31, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Agreed that errors are a problem, but if some arbitrary version of "correct" leaves things unreadable for a significant number of users, that's even worse. At least in the fontface that appears on my equipment (MacOS, iOS, iPadOS), the "earth" symbol is already a subscript, and making a subscript of a subscript leaves it as an undifferentiated blob. Workarounds have been to use the earth symbol as is (not subscripted), use a similar symbol which the font doesn't already define as a subscript (but is still identifiably a circle with a cross), or spell it out. It appears that on at least some versions of Chrome, we can't use the symbol at all. I'd prefer to use a symbol, but it appears the support for the "Earth" symbol (a relatively recent addition to Unicode) is insufficiently universal so as to preclude its usage. How do we move forward from here? Tarl N. (discuss) 20:41, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

I also prefer the Earth symbol. That "arbitrary version of correct" is the standard convention in astronomical sources. DoubleSharp just changed the template to M_Earth, which works for me. M_E might also be acceptable, though I don't think I've ever seen it in RS's.

In other fonts, the Earth symbol is as large or larger than the capital M, so not subscripting it causes a different problem. When so many typographers have been incompetent, I suppose we just need to avoid the it. There are other cases I've come across where we need to avoid a character because anyone using a Microsoft font is going to see the wrong character.

There are lots of times when something displays badly because I have poor font support. In general, the solution is to install better fonts, or to change my default display font on WP. Not everyone's going to do that, of course, but we can't hold everyone hostage to everyone-else's bad fonts. — kwami (talk) 20:51, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

@Tom.Reding: @Double sharp: For the record, looking at the back-and-forth diffs, on Earth-mass, this is how that symbol renders under all my equipment (I am absolutely clean on fonts - nothing special). On the left side is what Tom had converted it back to, on the right is the "correct" Earth symbol, which renders as an indistinguishable blob.

Regards, Tarl N. (discuss) 23:22, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the illustration.

As with many things, if you want to be able to read anything other than non-technical English, you may have to install additional fonts. I'm on a new computer, and there are a lot of things on WP that I can't read yet. — kwami (talk) 23:26, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

I haven't installed fonts on a computer since 1998, back when I was working on a graphical presentation app. Other than that case (on a long-deceased computer), I have never had the need for specialized fonts. I regard your position of "let them install fonts" as unacceptable - Misplaced Pages should be readable by rank beginners and others without administrative control over their computers. Tarl N. (discuss) 23:33, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

There are tens of thousands of articles on WP-en that you can't read all of without extra fonts. I regard your position of "let WP be shitty because I can't be bothered" to be unacceptable. In this case, we have some options, such as M_Earth. But there are times when the only options are (a) install supporting fonts or (b) replace letters with images. The latter has problems, esp. for extended text. In that case we're down to (a) install a font to read the article or (b) don't read the article. — kwami (talk) 00:43, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

"There are tens of thousands of articles on WP-en that you can't read all of without extra fonts." I have yet to run into one of them. You're saying that a newcomer looking up something on Misplaced Pages shouldn't be able to understand articles unless he installs some unspecified special fonts from somewhere equally unspecified? How are they supposed to know? Tarl N. (discuss) 01:15, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

We have templates telling them that they may need to install extra fonts to read the article. I come across articles I can't read constantly, and I have dozens of extra fonts installed. — kwami (talk) 01:20, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

You can probably find many by searching what links to {{Contains special characters}}. Double sharp (talk) 16:38, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

BTW, I believe WP has started providing web fonts so that articles and symbols are displayed for those who don't have font support. But I don't know anything about that or where we'd go to get the Earth symbol added. — kwami (talk) 02:33, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Emoji styling

How do you get the zodiac symbols to not display as emoji? Because I added Ophiuchus to Astronomical symbol#Symbols for zodiac and other constellations. I'd like some sources for it: had been holding off on adding it, but eventually I felt it was too important.

Also, do you have a source for the galaxy symbol at the bottom of the page? Double sharp (talk) 16:10, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

I don't know. According to {{emoji}}, setting theme=none should work, but it doesn't. I'll ask there. It might just be the fonts we have installed.

Ah, you can evidently force it in Unicode with ︎ (plain text) and ️ (emoji), though I can't get that to work. Check it out on Wiktionary. But I only see a numbered box for the text version, ⛎︎ vs ⛎️, which is probably why my system is substituting the emoji. — kwami (talk) 19:14, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I copy-pasted in the text version. :) Double sharp (talk) 20:56, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Manlia gens and Romulus

Just letting you know the issues from March are ongoing. Libhye (talk) 04:34, 1 December 2021 (UTC)