Strange pleasures in a strange world

[xela]

It's almost a pleasure these days to hear someone in the media says something utterly baffling — and that person isn't the President of the United States. In this case, a reporter for France 24 English, in a YouTube video entitled "Video: Dried-up Aral Sea springs back to life"

Up until the 1950s, it was a sixty-eight thousand kilometer square mile lake.

Yeah, it makes me feel a little guilty to make fun someone presumably not a native speaker for a bit of fractured English. But it's not just the on-air guy: This is the polished product of a news network. With English in their name. I think that makes it fair game for pointing-and-laughing. A cheap shot, yeah. But at fair game...