TimK65

I have a somewhat related theory about English in Europe: The smaller countries are better at English partly because they subtitle rather than dubbing. That means that when they see English-language movies or watch English-language television, they're hearing English rather than their native language. I think this helps people maintain some level of English proficiency years after they leave school.

(I'm American, living in Stockholm, by the way.)

In much of the Waffle House footprint, public transit is nonexistent or minimal and would not serve as a good indicator. There are certainly exceptions (Atlanta comes to mind), but in general, no.

DAMN! I had completely forgotten about CBB. Now I want to take a look at it again. Thank you!

All of this. Thank you.

We're about to get Vipps (the Norwegian version of Swish) in Sweden, so why not Wero?

The idea is for you to be able to pay merchants without using a card.

For example, I'm in Sweden, and when I get my hair cut, I can Swish my payment to the barber using the Swish app. They get the money within a few seconds. It's very simple. They have a QR code on the wall that I scan with the Swish app, enter the amount I want to pay (I usually add a tip), authenticate with BankID, and that's basically it.

But with Venmo, at least, the money doesn't land directly in your bank account. With the typical European solution (like Swish, which we have in Sweden), it does, and within seconds. Much smoother.

I have multiple copies, one a first edition that I bought at the sadly departed New York Bound Books shop, and have read it several times.

Don't be intimidated by the length. Caro's writing draws you in so effectively that the pages fly by. It's extraordinary.

Nordiska Kompaniet is no longer a proper department store, but a collection of boutiques. This has been the case for a couple of decades. The real department store that's left in Stockholm is Åhléns, but it's very mid-market, not fancy.

I recognize this content from Hersh and Davis's later book "The Mathematical Experience," which I really like.

Why on earth would you not consider Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries part of Europe? Sweden and Denmark are even in the EU.

GvR's first comment, mentioning (but not naming) the banned person, is now visible to me, at least.

> software people are subject to fads probably worse than the general public and second only to teenagers

A-FRICKING-MEN. It's exhausting.

100%. That was a whole series of articles in DN about how the Swedish railways have been run into the ground.

Separating maintenance from operations is a terrible idea and has never worked well on any railway that I'm aware of.

You can scroll up and look at Sweden as well. Not a pretty picture.

Coca-Cola is still made with coca leaf, but today, it's decocainized. (And since it's impossible to remove 100% of the cocaine molecules from the coca leaf, Coca-Cola still contains extremely tiny trace amounts of cocaine.)

Years ago, I was a developer on a software project where my friend Svein (of blessed memory) was a tester. I lent him this book and got it back with words taped over on the cover to change the title to:

Do Programmers Have Deadlines?

I still have the book with the words taped over.

I think the author (Hugh Landau) is making a point about the nature of machines. I accept this point, and the related one that humans can use machines to enforce ruthlessness, and that the machine interface means that there's no human who can readily be blamed for the ruthlessness.

However, the point is a little bit undermined by Landau's erroneous assumption about slam-door railway stock in the UK. It absolutely was not abandoned to improve schedule-keeping; on the contrary, it was abandoned because it was unsafe as hell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slam-door_train

For sheer complexity, I like this one:

https://mitt.sl.se/ficktid/karta/vinter/city_stn.pdf

I created an account here to say this: Exiftool doesn't only work with image files, either. I use it to extract metadata from audio files as part of a toolchain that creates playlists automatically from my music metadata.