802 karma · joined April 8, 2012
I blog, occasionally, at
http://koralatov.com/
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hello@koralatov.comMy own instance is still on 4.0.0 despite 4.1.2 being out because I don’t see a benefit in updating and I don’t want to risk spending three or four hours hunting through yarn dependencies to undo an update that breaks things.
Chandler/Monica 2 (v5.0.0-betas) never made it out of beta. It’s had five beta releases but no stable release. The stable 4.1.2 version is actually still the original Monica 1.
Chandler/Monica 2 (v5.x) was a bit of a disaster for Monica. The communication around it was confusing from the start: they stopped accepting pull requests for the original version to focus entirely on the new release – which then never materialised beyond betas. That killed development of the main version for a while, until they eventually started releasing minor v4.x updates alongside the v5.x betas.
On top of that, they said you might not be able to import data from Monica v1–v4 into Chandler/Monica 2 (v5) due to a database layout change. Reading that sort of killed my use of Monica as a product.
I’d been a heavy user up to that point, but the thought of burying my data in a version that might be abandoned soon really put me off.
I’d been a small but fairly consistent contributor before Chandler/Monica 2 was announced, but between the confusing roadmap and possible data migration barrier, I haven’t contributed since.
That’s fine if you buy exactly what you want and need and know your needs will never change, but if you later want to expand, you’re out of luck. At best, you might get lucky and find parts of Facebook Marketplace or Gumtree, but you’re usually just stuck. (I’d kill for some more 200cm wall rails but I doubt I’ll ever find any.)
The 606 Vitsoe system is heinously overpriced but has the advantage of having been around for 50+ years and is so established you’ll likely always be able to buy more parts if you want to expand it.
Both Scottish English and Scots descend from the same root Anglic, but there's been divergence since then -- in the same way Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic are descended from the same root, are somewhat mutually intelligible, but are treated as two different languages. It's useful to make that distinction simply because there is a degree of unintelligibility.
Everyone on this website is speaking an Indo-European language, and I'd bet a majority of them have an Indo-European language as their first language. They're all from the same root, so are they all speaking dialects of Indo-European? Or are they speaking distinct languages? Where, exactly, you decide "this was a dialect, but now it's a language!" I can't say, but that point surely exists. It's obviously muddied by politics and national identity and a hundred other factors, but at some point, surely, a language ceases to be a dialect and becomes a language of its own.
In modern usage, by speakers of Scottish English, it means "smelly". I'm not 100% sure, but I'm confident that "reek" in this context was borrowed from Scots and the meaning has just drifted over time.
Its etymology is interesting, and it consistently means "smoke" or "smoking": https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=Reek
Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig) and Irish Gaelic (Gaeilge, often just called "Irish") are both direct descendants of Middle Irish, which ultimately comes from a Celtic root. Gaidhlig gradually replaced Pictish, now extinct, about a thousand years ago.
I live in Aberdeen, and I'm pretty sure if I was to leave my flat and ask people I met in the street whether they spoke Scots or English, I'd get a disproportionate number of Scottish English speakers tell me they speak Scots; I'd also probably get some of the Doric-speaking locals tell me they speak English, even though Doric is actually a descendant of Scots.
Outside of school you were almost certainly speaking Scottish Standard English, rather than actual Scots. Scottish English is a branch of English that's been influenced by Scots and borrowed vocabulary from Scots, but isn't actually Scots. Almost no-one in the 20th century speaks actual Scots; those who do are immediately identifiable and generally hard for a non-Scots speaker to understand. The last vestiges of Scots language speakers are parts of Aberdeenshire and the Borders.
Sources: Highlander born and raised, living in Aberdeen for >10 years. One parent is a Gael whose second language is English, the other parent is from the Borders whose first language is that variety of Modern Scots. Native speaker of Scottish Standard English, with a little time spent studying linguistics and an interest in the subject.
I think you're confusing dialect with language here. Scots and Scottish English are distinct from one another. The latter does borrow some from the former which leads to confusion. Scots is a language, historically equivalent and closely related to English but still distinct.
It's a stretch to argue that "many modern English speakers derive from Scots root". At this point in history, most Scots speak Scottish English with some borrowing from a Scots root -- not the other way around. This is evident in the fact that the vast majority of a modern Scottish person's vocabulary is from mainline English and intelligible by someone from London. That doesn't happen by Scots borrowing vocabulary from English -- it happens from English absorbing vocabulary from Scots.
This is the situation for the vast majority of Scottish people. Coming across those who don't fit into the English-with-Scots-influence only reinforces this. Doric is arguably a descendant of mainline Scots which has converged on English, rather than the other way around, and means it's sometimes difficult to parse even for other Scots. Quite a lot of the Borders also speak a dialect which derives from Scots which has converged on English, and is difficult for other Scots to parse. They sound very similar to each other to someone who speaks neither, but are actually quite distinct -- mistaking someone from Selkirk for an Aberdonian will cause offence!
The Wikipedia has a pretty good article on Modern Scots, though I think it overstates the pervasiveness of modern Scots: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Scots It's also worth noting that most speakers of Modern Scots also speak Scottish English, and code-switching takes place frequently and fluidly.
Gaelic is spoken by ~57,500 people in Scotland. Some of them have English as a second language, having been raised with Gaelic as the language of the home. In some cases this does show their English usage. One common tell is slightly unusual phrasing -- one typical and quite common usage is "You will be having tea?" rather than the more common "Will you be having tea?" Even then, they're still speaking a variety Scottish English and not Scots.
tl;dr: Every Scottish person speaks at least one of the dialects of Scottish English. Some also speak a dialect of Modern Scots. An even smaller number speak Gaelic.
Sources: Highlander born and raised, living in Aberdeen for >10 years. One parent is a Gael whose second language is English, the other parent is from the Borders whose first language is that variety of Modern Scots. Native speaker of Scottish Standard English, with a little time spent studying linguistics and an interest in the subject.
GordonS is right: Gaidhlig is only ever referred to as "Scottish Gaelic" or, more commonly, just "Gaelic" by Scots on a day-to-day basis. The concept of "Scottish" as a language is pretty murky and is generally not used seriously. Even in these days of awakened Scottish national identity and independence referendums, we all still speak English of a Scottish variety and call it English.
Calling Gaeilge "Irish" and Irish English "English" makes a lot more sense, frankly.
It's a stretch to argue that "many modern English speakers derive from Scots root". At this point in history, most Scots speak Scottish English with some borrowing from a Scots root -- not the other way around. This is evident in the fact that the vast majority of a modern Scottish person's vocabulary is from mainline English and intelligible by someone from London. That doesn't happen by Scots borrowing vocabulary from English -- it happens from English absorbing vocabulary from Scots.
This is the situation for the vast majority of Scottish people. Coming across those who don't fit into the English-with-Scots-influence only reinforces this. Doric is arguably a descendant of mainline Scots which has converged on English, rather than the other way around, and means it's sometimes difficult to parse even for other Scots. Quite a lot of the Borders also speak a dialect which derives from Scots which has converged on English, and is difficult for other Scots to parse. They sound very similar to each other to someone who speaks neither, but are actually quite distinct -- mistaking someone from Selkirk for an Aberdonian will cause offence!
The Wikipedia has a pretty good article on Modern Scots, though I think it overstates the pervasiveness of modern Scots: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Scots It's also worth noting that most speakers of Modern Scots also speak Scottish English, and code-switching takes place frequently and fluidly.
Gaelic is spoken by ~57,500 people in Scotland. Some of them have English as a second language, having been raised with Gaelic as the language of the home. In some cases this does show their English usage. One common tell is slightly unusual phrasing -- one typical and quite common usage is "You will be having tea?" rather than the more common "Will you be having tea?" Even then, they're still speaking a variety Scottish English and not Scots.
tl;dr: Every Scottish person speaks at least one of the dialects of Scottish English. Some also speak a dialect of Modern Scots. An even smaller number speak Gaelic.
Sources: Highlander born and raised, living in Aberdeen for >10 years. One parent is a Gael whose second language is English, the other parent is from the Borders whose first language is that variety of Modern Scots. Native speaker of Scottish Standard English, with a little time spent studying linguistics and an interest in the subject.
For example, say they invent a new way of compressing jpegs which saves them bandwidth and storage costs. Facebook could report that as costing them money: "Oh, that cost us $120,000 in programmer time to devise and implement".
It's entirely possible that this is true, but it's only half the picture: that new compression algorithm might have saved them twice that or more in bandwidth costs.
In this instance, it's 'efficient' for Facebook to report one part and then conveniently ignore the other. But the question remains is it honest? Surely the value of that technology is somewhere between the cost to create and the costs it's saved?
This leads to the situation, not at all uncommon or illegal, where a lot of highly paid professionals are the directors of their own limited companies, take no salary, and get all of their remuneration in the form of dividends taxed a maximum rate of 28%.
For reference, anything over £31,786 per year is taxed at 40% -- before that it's 20% (national insurance is extra). It's usually the case that freelancers or contractors are able to invoice via their own limited companies, whereas employees are not normally able to do it this way and have to go the income tax route.
Doing this is entirely legal, and many people argue that it's perfectly 'fair', but it definitely doesn't look fair to those unable to take advantage of that setup who earn, say, £60,000.
Some figures, very rough and rounded to whole pounds:
Earning £60,000 and paying
income tax:
---------------------------
£10,800 - 0% = £10,800 Tax free allowance
£31,700 - 20% = £25,360 'Basic Rate' tax
£17,500 - 40% = £10,500 'Higher Rate' tax
===========================
£60,000 gross = £37,210 net
(before national insurance
contributions are taken)
Earning £60,000 and paying
capital gains tax:
---------------------------
£11,000 - 0% = £11,000 Tax free allowance
£49,000 - 28% = £35,280 Highest CGT rate
===========================
£60,000 gross = £46,280 net
(before national insurance
contributions are taken)
(Edited to remove duplicated calculations at top of comment.)
> license the U.S.-made IP to that subsidiary for $0.
> Boom the U.S. company now has no profits to show and
> all profits are in the low-tax jurisdiction
The difference as I see it is that companies usually operate as if they believe they shouldn't pay any tax. I realise that minimising tax burden is a form of efficiency, but the challenging part here is deciding where 'efficient' ends and 'dishonest' starts. I honestly don't know, but I'd say it's pretty clear that, at some point, underdeclaring the value of corporate holdings starts being dishonest.
I wonder if parent means the people who give the appearance of being fitness-obsessed, rather than those who genuinely are fitness-obsessed.
There is a large section of the population here in the UK who dress as if they exercise regularly, but actually do very little exercise -- these people buy Nikes and yoga pants and wear them around, but never actually engage in any real exercise. They're the ones who look at you like you're insane when you ask them which gym the use, or if they're training for a 10K run.
The local university campuses have a large number of people like this attending classes dressed as if for a workout. I see a lot of them in coffee shops, and even some in pubs.