[conspire] Web spam and yandex forms

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Syeed Ali (syeedali at syeedali.com):

> I recall the first time I got a new batch of captcha images and I
> leaned back in my chair and wondered aloud..
> 
> "What the fuck is a palm tree?"

It's sometimes surprising what turns out to be a culture-specific
referent.  Sometimes, when I see the "traffic light" CAPTCHAs to which
Akkana alludes, I remember visiting Fanning (aka Tabuaeran) Island, an
atoll in the Republic of Kiribati, middle Pacific Ocean, where there
aren't anything like traffic controls of any kind, and the Caribbean
islands of Montserrat and Saba, where the roads include about two or
three stop signs each, but no traffic lights anywhere.

When co-writing with Eric Raymond the essay "How to Ask Questions the
Smart Way", I tried to be mindful of this obstacle to 
internationalism, and keep my diction as generic as possible -- but, in
essence, that my diction remains mid-20th C. colonial British mixed with
American, and so I was slightly embarrassed when Eric and I got a
puzzled inquiry from someone trying to translate our essay into some
non-European language.  The translater asked our help understanding a
particular idiomatic expression, and it was one of mine -- one I hadn't
even realised was a metaphor.  (Sorry, I can't remember it, at the
moment.)


https://www.travel-news-photos-stories.com/2013/03/fanning-island-kiribati-paradise-found.html
https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Tabuaeran
https://www.visitmontserrat.com/
https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Montserrat
https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Saba