If you had never seen a nonhuman mammal, would a dog’s face fall in your uncanny valley?

A change to the law of royal succession has been enacted by some of the 16 Commonwealth Realms, to become effective when all of them have done so. Its most conspicuous feature is removing the preference for male heirs, but only from those sons born after 28 October 2011 (the date of the conference where the terms were decided).

Rather than the date cutoff, it would be simpler in my humble opinion to make explicit exceptions for past cases where sex trumped seniority. There are only two since the last change (1702) in succession law; thus: The descendants of King George III shall precede those of his elder sister Augusta, Duchess of Brunswick; and the descendants of King Edward VII shall precede those of his elder sister Victoria, German Empress.

Augusta’s heir by sex-neutral primogeniture appears to be Prince Alexander of Wied, born 1960, unless her first great-granddaughter Marie of Württemberg (1807–1865), countess of Neipperg, had issue not mentioned in Wikipedia.
Victoria(jr)’s heir by the same rule is Dr Friederike von der Osten, born 1959.

In Watch on the Rhine (1943; screenplay by Dashiell Hammett from a play by Lillian Hellman) the penniless Count remarks,

Blecher, we do not like each other.

The Nazi to whom he hopes to sell information replies,

But that will not stand in the way of our doing business.

To link such a sentiment to fascism implies a remarkable kind of snobbery.

In a dream, while strolling among bookshops and the like, I chance to meet someone who hates me but is constrained to be polite. With a venomous smile that person asks, the better to avoid them, on what streets one is most likely to meet me. I name two streets in Oakland, one in Berkeley and one in San Francisco.

On waking, I remember that none of those streets exists.

Yesterday I relayed a message from the local humane society, which contained an email address and a phone number; and the first response I got was “Is she on Facebook?”

Phooey.

Apparently it’s no longer possible to delete my Facebook account. If I deactivate it,

Your 12 friends will no longer be able to keep in touch with you.

Bruce will miss you
Vanessa will miss you
Mae will miss you
Steve will miss you
Laurel will miss you

Laurel and Vanessa are dead, and Mae left Facebook long ago, which is why I didn’t bother defriending them when I did most everyone else. Bruce and Steve know how to reach me otherwise.

In MacBSD, the command cal 9 1752 shows the shortening of that month in the British Empire. If I reinstall MacOS and choose Italian as its default language, will the shift show up instead in October 1582?

When I answer the ’phone, I generally say either “Yes?” or “Good day/evening, Sherwoods” rather than “Hello.” With cold-callers I often don’t get a response to that; I pause and try a variation or two of “Is someone there?” before the caller speaks up with a bewildered “Hello?”.

Does their robo-dialer wait for a “Hello” before prompting the human that it has found a live line?