FriendOfDeSoto

This is daft in at least 3 ways. They are not larping, the PRC's subdivisions typically don't have their own flags, and the design is terrible.

We are not very tech savy to set things up.

Find somebody near you who is. A family member who cannot ghost you would be best.

I migrated my Photos to a more expensive service called Ente. It's been a mixed bag for me. The backup function works well but both their desktop and mobile apps are causing me trouble. Ask me about the details if you care, I won't bore you with that chat. But in me this has brought me to plan a switch to something self-hosted when my plan expires. I still have lots of time but I'm definitely bookmarking your post.

If you subtract the satire from the movie Mars Attacks, pretty much that. Uh uh uh.

English contains a veritable shitload of loanwords as well.

But you're not wrong when you think they're trying to be cool. You'll hear this most often in hiphop, which started in English and not every language lends itself to rap. So they throw in an f-bomb here or there. Imitation is the highest form of flattery type stuff.

Also, English is the most commonly learned foreign language on this planet. A lot of contemporary music genres came out of North America. I would say internet culture is most pervasive in English as well. A lot of tech jargon becomes English loanwords in other languages. There are reasons beyond wanting to sound cool as well.

Is asking generalized closed questions like that too simple a rhetoric tool to discuss family ties, especially around death?

I take solace in the fact that there must be minute traces of my own piss in there as well.

Real life logic ≠ comic book logic

Grammar is only done by design in the realms of Tokkien, Martin, or Star Trek. For naturally occurring ones, the spoken language comes first, then the grammar in an effort to standardize it. So a design flaw in grammar is bit of an oxymoron for me.

Cultural norms have an influence on grammar. About 400 years ago people in England still distinguished between a familiar you (thou) and a polite you (you). And over time decided to be polite only and only retained the thous and the thees in archaic expressions. And caused the need to disambiguate the plural from the singular you with new pronouns. Japanese grammar tends to get longer the more polite and humble you want to speak. So I don't think your can divide culture from grammar neatly. Both of them make the hypothetical exchange I made up 5x as long.

You can't construct grammar on an established language like English. If the speakers are used to having pronouns everywhere, like most if not all Germanic languages, then no. You cannot just leave them out.

It's my experience that this OCD level of politeness the Japanese apply to all interactions is a hindrance to getting a point across. Yes, you have to use your brain and infer who does what and to whom. But that means that there is still an awful lot of uncertainty. And uncertainty in the language leaves the door open to misinterpretation. So while a group of Japanese folks are playing politeness ping-pong for fifteen minutes, the parallel English universe dealing with the same topic are done after three. "You do that now!" Done. The Japanese would be clutching their pearls at that directness.

In ye olden days, telegrams (not the contemporary chat app but the wire service they took the name from) would use streamlined language dropping any unnecessary pronoun as well. This was done a a cost saving measure when you were charged by the word. So you need a trigger, a restriction that kicks off a grammar change like that. But it didn't last.

You didn't learn anything today.

Putting somebody on the stand doesn't mean they're on trial. Witnesses tend to be as public as the rest of the trial. So this could be not public at all due to factors like children having to give testimony or state security being on the line. I'm sure there are more reasons and those may differ from one jurisdiction to the next. Or the trial is public.

There may be rules to safeguard the identity of witnesses, such as principal witnesses who just by speaking out endanger their lives (e.g. in organized crime). A vigilante is by definition doing illegal stuff so they may refuse to give evidence based on the fact they would have to incriminate themselves. But I don't think any court would entertain the idea of having a Batman figure in costume take the stand to give evidence. By protecting the identity the court would tacitly approve of illegal vigilantism. That probably only works in comic books.

Wouldn't another possibility be active fare dodging? And if they do that, can't they just fill the station and trains with so many people until they are forced to run the train to manage the crowd? I imagine all able people will go piggyback through turnstiles to half the fare at least.

In terms of potentially fineable behavior, this might be safer than creating an ad hoc ped xing on an interstate.

Maybe the NJ locals need to weigh in on how likely the constabulary will be to make use of their firearms in such a situation.