TBH in the past, I’ve argued both for the -um ending, and for the -ium ending. It really annoys some people. It’s even more annoying, when they realise that you’ve managed to annoy them with such a pedantic point.

Another one is skeptical/sceptical. “I think you’ll find it comes from the Greek, so it should be with a k.”

Or the plural octopus. “I think you’ll find it comes from the Greek, so it’s octopodes. Octopi is certainly wrong, because it doesn’t come from latin.”

I think I may be an energy vampire.

You’ll probably hate me for saying this, but when I worked in an office, I often pretended to be stupid when it came to IT stuff.

Sometimes it’s nice to have a little break on the company’s dime. I get that it’s annoying, but on the plus side, it helps prevent management from making unnecessary and existentially threatening cuts to the IT department.

Boomer boss gets the importance of the IT guy replacing the deskjet printer so they can print off a 100 page colour manual on how the company’s ‘going green’. They don’t understand the IT department fixing something like sievelike data security. That’s a problem for after the shareholder meeting, if anyone ever finds out.

It’s a bit like how I’m not great at scanning stuff at the self-scan tills and make mistakes. Don’t want it to be too profitable to replace a cashier with a machine. Everyone’s got bills to pay.

I used to do IT support, so now I sometimes pretend to be an idiot outside of work too. “Mom’s friend Sarah has an issue with windows and wants me to help fix it for free? Sorry, I only know how to use the apples.”

A kilometer is 1000 M16A4s.

Also: the latin for lead(Pb) is plumbum, not plumbium. Same thing for gold(Au). It’s Aurum, not Aurium. Same for Iron(Fe). Ferrum not Ferrium.

I’m honestly a fan of having the option to use standardised/latinised chemical element names.

Cu = Cuprum = Copper.

Hg = Hydrargyrum = Mercury. Hydrargyrum is still sometimes (very very rarely) used in English.

Pb = Plumbum = Lead. The French for lead is plomb, for example. Would clear up a lot of confusion with homographs. We already use plumb in English, as in plumb line. (The fact that it’s plumbum, not plumbium, does undermine the whole aluminium>aluminum argument obviously).

Argentum instead of silver. Plenty of languages use a variation of that already. English already uses argent in some contexts, like heraldry.

Same thing for natrium instead of sodium, also common to have a variation of that in plenty of languages.

IRC Silicium was the originally proposed name for silicon. Plenty of languages also use a variation of that.

Potassium (K) is called Kalium in New Latin and a variation thereof in plenty of languages. It makes far more sense. The symbol’s K in the periodic table an the eymological link with alkali is in the word. The Brits don’t have a leg to stand on.

Then again, Americans are stupid about the metric system. Think they can’t visualize what 1 meter is, but almost every American can visualize the length of an M16A4 just fine.

America would sooner arrest someone for bypassing the firewall on an article about a prolific child rapist, than arrest an actual child rapist.

Yep.

And it doesn’t even have to be something they find particularly interesting. People are social animals. The socialising is less important than the subject of discussion.

Hell, people will watch/do stuff they find boring, just so they can have something to chat about with colleagues or friends on a monday. A bit like that IT Crowd episode, where they pretend to care about football/soccer.

In this case, the guy picked something he guessed they probably both played as children and had some nostalgia for, resulting in a low stakes conversation while they figure out if they’re attracted to each other.

It’s actually a good flirting/bonding tip. Talk about something you both enjoyed as children, so the first interaction has positive associations and is relatively low stakes. Having differing opinions on some aspect of roblox isn’t ever going to be a deal breaker, is it?