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They've got another five hundred and fifty to go, this could be quite boring.
Spam starting like this is like finding a couple of ants in the kitchen - you know there's going to be more along shortly.

[Raak] Please could you remind me of your email address (obfusc. as necessary). I've largely rewritten my, er, mathematical thing for the Summer of Math Exposition, and I think the new version is significantly more convincing. Even though you never said you'd seen anything wrong with the old one... My offline email database is currently extra-offline thanks to a hardware failure.

[SM]
My first is in Richard, and so're the next six
An at sign; the next begins kerning, and kicks
The next starts elopement, and is most of epee
Then the middle of and, and the start of "no way!"
That letter once more, and then half of an aa
And a "way" to complete it; if you're with me thus far
A dot and an org and a dot and an uk
And that is the whole of the handle — good luck!

Bonus clue: I'm probably distantly related to these people

I tried asking ChatGPT 4o to decode that, and it couldn't quite manage it.

I’d have got it wrong; I assumed way = rd!

Lovely. That should be the standard way to obscure email addresses.

A friend of mine is a Greenaway which is also quite a rare name. Slightly etymologically connected, if not genealogically.

So how's everyone doing?
I've got bloomin' loads to do at work. Haven't managed to look in here for a while.

Well I'm okay, apart from a week's pretty horrible toothache. My work is kinda chill - I feel a bit underemployed at times. But it's partly because I'm doing stuff that generates work for others, and then I have to wait for them to do it before I can do my next bit. I definitely get more done when I'm at the end of a chain like that than in the middle. Out of work, I want to enter Grant Sanderson's Summer of Math Exposition competition this year, and I've co-opted Raak as maths consultant. Deadline for that is mid-late August so I've still got weeks to go. I think/hope the work is in the last 10% (the part that takes 90% of the time) but... we'll see.

[SM] Did you get my answer suggesting that the Collatz jelly has fallen off the wall again? :) I just noticed I sent it to the zen[randomnumbers] address instead of your readable email.

[Raak] I did receive it - the darn webmail form constantly auto-refills the zenxxxxx address every time I tweak the email (such as by adding an attachment), and it's easy to fail to catch it. My short answer to the jelly question is that I don't think it matters because even when the numbers rise, their 'rail number' still ticks down inexorably. Showing that numbers can rise as high as they like and yet it still doesn't help them escape is a key thing I'm trying to make clear. But you exposed an area where I'm not saying what I really wanted to - so I'll be fixing that and sending you a reply, probably at the weekend. I was also sidetracked into wondering whether numbers in the sequence have a provable 'high water mark'. If you could show that no number n can ever rise above, say, 2^n, that could be another clincher. 2^n ought to give sufficient headroom, right?

[nominative etymology] There's a place called Kenovay on the island of Tiree, which looks like a phonetic rendering of its Gaelic name Ceann a’ Bhàigh, which means "head of the bay", or Bayhead ("the parst of a bay most distant from the larger body of water with which it is confluent"). There are a couple more Ceann a’ Bhàighs and Bayheads in the Hebrides. So that could be the origin of the name.

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[1] Welcome back!

I don't seem to be able to post in the AVMA game. Is this working?

How odd...

[CdM] I was just able to post there (then "whoopsed" it away, which sounds a bit toilety) - using Safari on latest MacOS in case that helps.

[blame] Turned out the issue was that ā, entered directly from the keyboard, apparently upsets mc5 to the point where it can’t even. It works over at Dan’s place.

Does anyone know if ISIHAC ever played Just A Minim with Aretha's "Respect"? - I found myself giggling a little too much imagining the "sock it to me" and "just a little bit" parts in that game. For that matter, and plummeting to the opposite end of the musical quality spectrum, Gina G's "Ooh ah, just a little bit" might have been rich territory too.

I dunno, but in the movie Rat Race Rowan Atkinson sings it to a different tune playing on the radio.

Been awhile since I've been here. Things are still not great for me. I'm having to save up to afford a consultation with a lawyer. My cousins in California have it arranged so I get paid a monthly amount so I can pay my bills. I'm looking for a work from home job, but it's also difficult because ALL my nerves are healing (long story) and they make me feel AWFUL and make it difficult to do things.

The lawyer consultation is needed because the contractor fraud hotline that is supposed to take things seriously didn't take things seriously at all. They let the contractor give a list of five things that were done and didn't pursue the case. So, here I am, sitting in a house with an air conditioner that doesn't work properly and burning up so much during this very hot August. And constantly hearing some critter in my walls. Knowing that what was done was probably only worth up to $100,000 and that there are tons of used items (should have never happened) in my house.

Sorry to hear of the continued troubles, but welcome back - hope some silly word games here can be a useful distraction.

I echo blamelewis' sentiments. Don't forget you have friends here even if we are a bit mad (in the British sense).

Not long ago I put a few hundred dollars aside to help someone whose roof needed repairs. They didn't need it in the end, so I've got no probs redirecting that cash