Lorindol

Living in the same latitudes I could only take it as a compliment.

"You fucking Alaskan!"

I laughed uncontrollably for several minutes after receiving this compliment. Wrong continent, buddy.

The sound of water flowing through rapids.

My grandma¹s house is built right next to a small river, this was the sound that put me to sleep every night.

Distilleries commonly produce a variety of alcohols, not just ethanol for human consumption. First ones that come in mind are methanol for antifreeze solutions and isopropyl alcohol for sanitizing and industrial solvents.

Cutting the vodka production is a nice bonus hit to the morale, but damaging the supply lines of military production is most likely the main goal here.

With their families held hostage back in Shitty Korea, it is very doubtful that defecting/surrendering will be their first choice.

You are correct. I majored in educational psychology and this language development in children has always been a special interest of mine.

Baby talk is like beacon to the baby, it tells them that "This is for YOU, pay attention!". The baby hears and learns the intonations, patterns and the rhythms of the language. It's importance cannot be downplayed.

A toddler can learn ~50 new words every day, so using normal speech is naturally important as well. But there is no need to try to overdo it. The mind of a small child is a massively powerful and superfocused "learning machine", although it isn't often apparent in their behaviour ;)

Reading to children is especially beneficial to language development. It enriches the vocabulary and introduces common patterns and rhythms of expression. And the pictures in books help to create connections between ideas and words.

The pace of language development is highly individual and forcing it is most likely useless. Children will learn what they can, at their own pace.

Every one of my own children were able to use polynomial sentences and past and future tenses before they were three. We never tried to accelerate their learning in any way, they just picked it up. On the other hand, my friend's kid did the normal baby talk phase and then remained completely mute until the age of four. One day he just opened up and said to her mom in a clear voice: "Mom, could you give me some milk, I'm thirsty." And he spoke normally ever since.

One advantage of quick language development is it's effect on memory. A child that learns complex language skills early is more likely to form lasting memories of their early childhood. It may be that the memories can be stored more effectively and recalled more easily when the child is able to bind the experiences to words that can be used to express them.

This is a very fascinating subject.

Over 1700 personnel down in one day. The meat grinder hungers.

The minister in charge of these issues is a religious homophobe and the "party" he represents is more like a loose protest coalition of confused conservatives and racists.

Our prime minister "would have liked Finland to join the initiative, but the ministers have the authority in their own cabinets". The racists have our prime minister's balls in a grip, since the government would dissolve if they got offended and decided to leave. And since the current right wing government is the only chance to crush the labour unions' power, prime minister Orpo seems to be more than willing to suffer one humiliation after another to win this prize for the corporate sector.

Yes. I'll happily pay extra if it goes to Ukraine.

This is the core doctrine of Russian warfare.

1. Armies fight armies. Unit casualty rates over 50-60% are completely acceptable.

2. If decisive victory cannot be achieved by fighting, begin systematic destruction of the opponent's infrastructure and society to crush to their morale.

3. If 1 and 2 should fail, use of nuclear weapons to achieve the preset goals is the next step.

This is what has been taught to their generals for a long time.

Parkside's value-for-money quality has been astonishing these past few years. I took the risk with them maybe 4-5 years ago and not one power tool from their lineup has had any problems yet. Today I just set up their quiet compressor at my garage, and the damn thing really is so silent that you can even have a discussion using your normal voice when it's running.

This is the way.

I solely used Netscape Navigator since it came out and after it fell I chose Firefox. My interface has always been modded to look permanently like Firefox 3.6.

Everything is where I want it to be and everything works perfectly.

Many moons ago my employer tried to force us to use only Internet Explorer / Edge for reasons they were unable to explain - since there were none, technically or otherwise. I rebelled and remotely installed Firefox with Adblock / uBlock Origin to every personal computer (I was the unofficial IT guy) and told my co-workers to try it out.

At the next meeting we were told that the use of Firefox is not only approved but recommended. The magic of an "ad free browser" had taken hold, people found it vastly superior and had been vocal about their newfound dislike of MS browsers.

To my surprise I wasn't even reprimanded in any way.