Good to hear from you, Fay.

I just showed my cultural American ignorance for several hours on another forum, by shortening a nickname (x from y) to x. X, apparently, is a slur (and while he might chose this nickname, it's within certain context).

Nice work, me. I knew I should have googled that.

...?

Can you be more specific, or is that going to totally give away privacy? Because I doubt I'd have known that either, whatever it may be.

I'm not that worried about privacy, as much as repeating it and maybe hurt others' feelings by doing so.

Colour me baffled, then.

...mind you, I can't say I've got that much sympathy for the guy, based on what you've said. If he chose something as his screen name, then it's not unreasonable to think that it might get abbreviated. Such is often the case in online discourse. I think it's a bit rich to get all arsey with someone about making such an abbreviation. If you're going to be offended by such an abbreviation, then why the hell would you choose it as your screen name? Seems silly to me.

t /unsympathetic baggage

Oh, no one got angry at me - I caught the mistake after few hours and corrected it.

It's just, I don't know - there really should be a unifying page of "offending words" on the web, so people would know such things on advance, and make proper use of words. I'd hate to rely solely on Urban Dictionary.

Yeah, but you know, Shir, it's a matter of context and culture-- in Spanish alone, there are words that in Argentine or Cuban Spanish might be perfectly fine, but say the same word in Bolivia or Ecuador, and it's a mortal insult that will last through generations.

Try to put together a comprehensive list of potentially insulting words and we might only be left with Esperanto.

Emeline's birthday... she's so precious. I love the goofiness with the hats. But I think what has slain me ded is her serious expression looking at that card.

You're right, Barb.

Still, I hope for such page, even if it won't cover all, and just in English (I'm not talking about other languages).

Otherwise, of course, there's a very prolific arguments about the differences between cuss words in Hebrew and Arabic. And I'm talking about really marginal differences in meaning, just arguing for the sake of nitpicking. But that matter is for the people who teaches me now how to cuss (I didn't cussed as a kid and hardly at adolescence, so now some friends are correcting me when I'm not getting them right. They're saying I'm very graceful when I'm misusing cusses).

Happy belated birthday, Emeline!

My heart goes out to BT and Burrell's respective families.

Glamour mavens: does this (video) look like the right way to put on eyeliner? Could someone challenged (me) be expected to be victorious this way?