Can you tell us about the purpose of "čay"? It's glossed as "QUOT" but I don't know what you mean by that. I've been tentatively treating it like Japanese と, but this is mostly an only-tool-is-a-hammer approach because I don't really know what I'm doing.

This appears to be from a paywalled FT article but the author is given on the Vietnam category page:—

A new reality began to dawn’: the fall of Saigon, 50 years on
Chris Mullin describes the last days of the Vietnam war and the aftermath

I'm assuming there aren't too many Chris Mullins who are journalists writing about Vietnam and, therefore, he is the former MP with a Wikipedia page that gives this context:—

Having reported from Cambodia in 1973 and 1980, in 1990 he was outspoken on the British Government's record in Cambodia, being a leading voice in some of the first protracted debates on Britain's provision of clandestine military support to Khmer terrorists, allied to the Khmer Rouge.

and

his politics shifted leftward in response to the Vietnam War

and

He has been highly critical of the American strategy in Vietnam and has stated that he believes that the war, intended to stop the advance of Communism, instead only delayed the coming of market forces in the country

This doesn't read like ignorance to me. Like a lawyer prompting a witness, this seems like someone asking the questions that allow the interviewee to give the most effective replies.

I can't read the "reply was devastating" line as being personally devastating to an ignorant journalist, because someone in that position didn't need to write that and put it on show. Instead I read it as being devastating to the naive sentiment, perhaps held by the reader, that Vietnam's only legitimate response was to run to the UN.

The author has an extensive history with the topic and doesn't appear to be blindly anti-Vietnam, so I think you may have the wrong end of the stick here.

Stream of unconsciousness?

‘Scraping whatever you want, permission or no, is good and necessary.’

‘No, not like that.’

You want to create the date "31st February", but it's JavaScript that's cursed?

Write a less side-effecty function.

function getMonthName(monthNumber) {
    const date = new Date(2023, monthNumber - 1, 1);
    return date.toLocaleString([], { month: 'long' });
}

If people are talking about mountains, and someone points out that "this grain of sand is also a rock", how often is that going to be anything other than a distraction from the conversation?

Seriously, describing this as 'pushing back against talking differently' is almost as reductive as the Right's "you want to silence us because we disagree". Scale is important.

It's "all struggles matter" and it sucks.

I don't think this is actually a particularly good suggestion. It's too easy to dodge with "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". It doesn't matter if they lack evidence of presence, because they're not trying to be objective, they're trying to be superior.

It's particularly interesting that someone concerned enough with logical fallacies to complain of ad hominem attacks can have "[he may be a Nazi sympathizer but let's listen to what else he has to say]" happily coexist with "[Some Hexbears say mean things so no one should listen to anything else that any of them have to say]".

Potential struggle-session topic: If you're going to complain about misrepresentations of Sweden, please use the å: Blåhaj (and not say "blah hadge"; "blaw high" would be much better). :cat-trans: