The Off Topic Topic

[Eddie Teach]

Got an interesting result:

Your Result: Court - Non-Aligned  82%


You epitomise the Court - you are interested in carrying on the Queen's government, governing pragmatically, and avoiding the extremes of party. You're probably also quite keen on feathering your own nest and gaining power for the sake of it - and war is usually a good way of doing that. You may have at some point been a Whig or Tory, or both, but you're really a partisan of the Looking Out for Number 1 Party.Examples: Marlborough, 2nd Earl of Sunderland

76% Junto Whig

70% Country Whig

66% Moderate Hanoverian Tory

58% Whig Commonwealthman

14% High Church Tory Partisan

4% Backswoodman Country Tory

0% Jacobite Crypto-Papist

Apparently, if you are not strongly partisan, you are just selfish. 

Why else would you be a courtier?

[Savonarola]

Saw this at CNN and I thought it was interesting:

Which languages are easiest -- and most difficult -- for native English speakers to learn?

The Foreign Service Institute (part of the US Department of State) has made some of their courses part of the public domain (available here.)  They also released a ranking of how difficult learning a language is for an English speaker (available here.)

I'm surprised German is ranked more difficult than Dutch or the Scandinavian languages.  (I've never studied Germanic languages, other than English; I just didn't expect that.)  I'm also surprised that Swahili, Malay and Indonesian are considered easier than even other Indo-European languages; (though as the CNN article notes, Swahili and Malay began as trade languages, which might explain that somewhat.)  I also didn't realize Japanese was considered more difficult than Chinese or Arabic.

[The Brain]

For Swedish you just have to speak normally.

[The Larch]

Drive through strip club in Oregon adapted for coronavirus looks right out of the latest Blade Runner. NSFW pics at the link:

https://twitter.com/sdbcraig/status/1255662896039686145

[Syt]

We seem to follow similar people on Twitter.

[Camerus]

From my own experiences, I found Swedish the easiest to learn (though I didn't get far with it) followed by German and then French. Chinese is more difficult than all of them.

[The Larch]

We seem to follow similar people on Twitter.

I think I saw it two or three times today between twitter and linked at a group chat with friends. 

[grumbler]

Why else would you be a courtier?

My answers were all of the "if we must have royalty" variety.  None of them stridently opposed the crown, but none of them supported the crown, either, yet the result implied that I was a courtier type.  Courtiers WANT a court.

[Habbaku]

Jacobite Crypto-Papist here, unsurprisingly.

[Savonarola]

From my own experiences, I found Swedish the easiest to learn (though I didn't get far with it) followed by German and then French. Chinese is more difficult than all of them.

For me Spanish, then French, then Portuguese, then Italian, and then Latin (though I didn't get all that far with the last three.)

[The Brain]

Jacobite Crypto-Papist here, unsurprisingly.

[Habbaku]

#StuartRestorationNow

[Barrister]

Finally, a useful political compass quiz - the Queen Anne edition:
https://www.gotoquiz.com/political_compass_rage_of_party_queen_anne_ed

Okay first time I took it I got Court non-partisan - because I didn't understand a lot of the terms and voted pretty middle of the road.

I took it a second time with the help of google and got:

Your Result: High Church Tory Partisan

77%
result
You are a zealous Tory who will defend the Church and Monarchy against Dissenters, Whigs and Republicans at all costs. An inflexible High Churchman, you support measures such as the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts, and you have a sneaking regard for ideas like passive obedience and non-resistance, and you might flirt with Jacobitism, though you probably just about accept the Hanoverian successon, and you are no Papist. You cheered for Sacheverell during his trial in 1710. You are generally sceptical of war with France, though if it does have to be prosecuted you favour naval engagement. You oppose the Act of Union with Scotland, because you fear it means being inundated with Presbyterian MPs and opponents of the Church.Examples: Bolingbroke; Members of the October Club, such as Charles Eversfield, Sir John Pakington or Francis Scobell

[Sheilbh]

#StuartRestorationNow

#PapismNow

[Valmy]

#StuartRestorationNow

Which would be the House of Wittelsbach now. So really we would just be changing one German family for another.