FriendOfDeSoto

Shit like that can't be planned. It either catches on or it doesn't.

Why do you want to make it cooler? Why polish this turd?

You mean illegally?

I have a strong suspicion that language prescribed by an Iranian official will have no bearing on what people call that region in English.

"Middle East" is a reference point from the British Isles where there is a more significant chunk of geography directly east of it. When you move into Central Europe, the ME region is called "near East" when translated literally. Because we are already a bit further east and the reference points change. There isn't an English-language equivalent in the West because there's mostly water.

Having exported this language to beyond mostly water to the new world, the designation stuck although it makes no sense from a North American perspective. If we all spoke a truly international version of Esperanto, things might be different. But that's not how it worked out.

I don't think ME as a term has acquired the same problematic stench as "orient" and variants thereof in English. Cardinal directions are quite resistant to that. The Confederate States of America haven't ruined "South" as a term. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea hasn't made "North" go out of style.

Startpage is owned by an American advertising company.

Eff me, really? Can you back this up? I only see a company in The Netherlands.

Google in particular getting worse to get you to click through more results pages or to run more queries so they can sell more ads on each of those is well attested. I used Bing for a while and didn't think it was better or worse than newly bad Google. So now I use an equally shitty non-US search engine (start page) and just give up sooner.

In their defence, I think the exponentially increasing content of the internet, and the not insignificant portion that just sits there dead or unmaintained, plus the bits and bytes that just disappear as subscriptions or support run out are difficult problems. It's getting ever harder to write an algorithm to sort through that as well. That plus greed equals shit.

Pre-Google we had very shitty search results. Than Google became the Kleenex, the word everybody used. Then Google got worse. While my faith in "American Intelligence" is somewhat limited, I think we will get back to better results soon. What Google had to do (build big server farms to look at all of the internet to index it) may become trivially easy for a sufficiently good LLM eventually. Although we're not there yet. Given that it's not just Microsoft or Google fighting in that market for dominance, I live in hope that competition from OpenAI etc. lights a fire under their arses.

Und deshalb haben die Braunen nach dem Anschluss vom großdeutschen Reich gelabert.

Why aren't they automatically looking for business links between Slovenian domain vendors and the First Family? Melania is Slovenian after all and it would be such a misstep if not even her extended family got to profit from this one.

.... and I already forgot. My mistake. I did come across a YT short earlier of a task that hadn't been aired and I jumped to conclusions.

I have a feeling somebody in the social media team is having a bad weekend. From my experience, they don't release this stuff before the episode went out. And I came across another S22 video earlier of a task we haven't officially seen yet.

Not much. You nurse it for a while. And most of the time, our human instinct for adapting to a changing condition kicks in. There is truth to the adage that time heals all wounds. I would add it may not heal it entirely but sufficiently.

A broken heart is like that. After a while you get used to it. And you'll probably move on without realising it. And until you get there, distract yourself. Only hardcore introverts benefit from being alone.

So much for the platitudes. Every case is different. You may realise in time that extra steps are necessary. Like a physical move or a change in profession, etc.

That depends. Is the puzzle alive and capable of reasonable thought?