Don't you mean 'idioums'?

Actually, it's hard to give up such geographic language differences even within a single country. My favorite example is 'pop' or 'soda' or 'coke'. I went to a university in Missouri which has a population of students from a mix of both the Kansas City and St. Louis areas, though more from the latter. Notice from the map that 'pop' and 'soda' divides somewhere down the middle of Missouri. You'd hear both there. In fact, some of the St. Louis folks even even had their own special name for pop/soda/coke: they called it 'sodah'. Go figure.

Are you sure that one was from Mao? - wasn't Hitler the one who was always shooting his mouth off?

BTW, I just heard someone talking on his phone as he was using the urinal in the Men's room. Borg or no Borg, I ain't ever gonna do that...

Darn, I'd put that the thing about "lumberjacks" in, hoping that everybody who hadn't gotten it yet would finally C my Objective. ;-)

Outside of their respective organizations, I'm not sure these things are really catching on. Adoption of Go seems to have come to a standstill. Uptake of Swift has been kindda slow. And Hack seems to been ignored even by dedicated underground computer hobbyists. As well as lumberjacks.

In my own case, now that I've given in and become one of the Borg, I've decided to embrace it wholeheartedly. I now do things I used to look down on others for doing - and I do them knowingly and with gusto. For example, while waiting for a table at a restaurant, why bother talking to the people you came with? And when watching a sport on TV, why not play a phone game during the commercials? Heck, I enjoy that so much that I sometimes continue when the game comes back on. And here's one that _really_ used to bug me: I used to hate it when

(Sorry, gotta go - my phone just buzzed.)

I've only recently gotten a smartphone, after being a holdout for a long time. Before that, one of my beefs with smartphone users was that they were always reaching for their phones whenever they might otherwise have been bored. It seemed to me that they had lost something valuable: time to contemplate.

However, now that I have a smartphone, I no longer think about that.

Reagan famously reminded Gorbachev of the old Russian proverb, "Trust but verify." Here's a corollary for the modern age: "Trust but encrypt."

I have one question about the so-called "fright" of the electric companies: were they - or were they not - specifically observed quaking in their boots? If they were not, please don't expect an indictment from the Grand Jury.

Personally, I thought my joke was better. ;-)

They must look pretty darn good - otherwise, the folks who would pay $1000 for a flashlight must not be too bright...

For one thing, they don't kill each other for no good reason. Waitasecond...OK, maybe they are human.

Sir, no disrespect or nothing, but can I defeat him using Ti Kwan Leap? I got the pajamas.

That's a primary reason I stuck with Yahoo email for way too long: I didn't like the labeling system that Gmail provides as an alternative to folders. ("When all you have is a search engine hammer, everything looks like a search nail.") Finally, I decided to give in and use Gmail as my primary email service, labels and all. Why? Partly because Yahoo forced a new user interface on me that I didn't like, by shutting down the old version after initially allowing the old and new versions to coexist.
(Which makes Google's "Inbox" sound like deja vu all over again...)

I've tried Inbox a bit but haven't really given it a fair chance yet. My initial impression, though, is a bit negative: basically, it seems to be trying to solve a problem that I don't need solved. And with all the "improvements" it offers, it still doesn't even have folders...

What skill? I've been writing Python for over 10 years. Sure, it took a little while to learn to think Pythonically, but the main selling point is that Python is truly easy. Oh, except for those folks who can't live without braces. And compared to regular dentists, don't orthodontists get paid extra to use braces?...