English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

RegDwight АΑA

9:00 PM

Which is to say, I posted a link on Reddit.

tchrist

@RegDwightАΑA Wash off your ϖϖ.

RegDwight АΑA

Looks like that alien girl from Total Recall.

Robusto

Go float in the bottom of a glass.

tchrist

ϖ̯̑ϖ̯̑

Dumb font.

Better.

say "ϖϖ" =~ s/(.)/$1\N{COMBINING INVERTED BREVE}\N{COMBINING INVERTED BREVE BELOW}/gr;

Maybe I shouldn’t invert the bottom one.

ΜετάEd

@tchrist That sounds dirty.

tchrist

9:05 PM

ϖ̮̑ϖ̮̑

There. More mammiferous.

RegDwight АΑA

ΜετάEd

Mammallamadingdong.

RegDwight АΑA

Needless to say, that's all the ferocious mummies I can see.

tchrist

RegDwight АΑA

Are those boobs or tits?

tchrist

9:08 PM

@RegDwightАΑA Your browser/platform combo really is horrible at this stuff, isn’t it?

Body piercings.

RegDwight АΑA

71

Q: Differences between slang words for breasts

What is the difference between “tits” and “boobs”? P.S. I'm not sure if this question is appropriate but as English is not my native language I really would love to know the difference.

tchrist

WHY DOES THAT HAVE 71 VOTES?

RegDwight АΑA

@tchrist It's the latest version of Chrome and the second-to-latest version of Windoofs.

tchrist

Goddamned titeating turftuckers.

RegDwight АΑA

I'm on the cutting edge.

tchrist

9:09 PM

Of 1995.

RegDwight АΑA

Some people still use IE6 and Win2000.

@tchrist that's not fair and you know it. My point is that it's not my fault.

If people are idiots, that's not my fault. My fault would be if I were an idiot.

tchrist

@RegDwightАΑA You forget my mood so quickly?

RegDwight АΑA

@tchrist nope. I'm writing this up as a courtesy to future readers.

Your mood is excused. Their piling on can still be prevented.

So, just to mention that the latest and greatest Firefox under the latest and greatest Ubuntu sucks ass, too.

And don't get me started on kerning/

This sentence right there reads "get me sta rted".

tchrist

Listen, all three of those code points have been in Unicode ab fucking initio. There is no excuse that after 20 years Microsft still can’t figure it fucking out.

RegDwight АΑA

Yes.

Just look at this.

tchrist

9:15 PM

Which this?

RegDwight АΑA

This kerning.

Or lack thereof.

tchrist

The e in the wrong place?

RegDwight АΑA

I'm afraid to type yes again.

tchrist

They cannot see it.

RegDwight АΑA

I can. Is all I care aboot.

tchrist

9:15 PM

I can’t type Typography.

RegDwight АΑA

Ugh.

Yes please never learn to.

tchrist

Even the apostrophe is in the wrong place.

RegDwight АΑA

Oh frigg, yes again.

And again!!!

Is there a better word for, um, not no?

tchrist

Not hardly.

RegDwight АΑA

T ypo gra ph y.

Wicked.

Robusto

9:16 PM

And it's not even a real apostrophe! nerd rage

tchrist

I can ’t write my o w n name: T om.

Robusto

But you can write T om's name.

Jez

what was that site posted earlier today with thise visual puns? i just remembered one they missed

RegDwight АΑA

@Robusto Oh careful. Tchrist will start bludgeoning you to death with codezpointz in 3... 2... 1...

Robusto

@RegDwightАΑA it's what he does.

RegDwight АΑA

9:18 PM

It's what he does not worst.

tchrist

Rob missed the titty show.

Robusto

No, I didn't.

Unfortunately.

RegDwight АΑA

11 hours ago, by Matt Эллен

all the puns!

Robusto

Look, there was a time in my life when I might have got wood out of Unicode depictions of breasts, but that time has passed.

RegDwight АΑA

That's a very pretentious way to say "frigg I'm old".

Robusto

9:19 PM

No it isn't either.

Frigg and I aren't even talking.

RegDwight АΑA

See.

That puts the E in QED.

Robusto

That puts the D in duh.

RegDwight АΑA

That one's always been there.

Check your browser history.

Robusto

So has the E. You just haven't noticed.

RegDwight АΑA

I do notice that that's a lie, though.

Robusto

9:20 PM

It's no accident that the E is always the top letter on the eye chart (in English, that is).

RegDwight АΑA

Not if you turn it upside down.

Robusto

@RegDwightАΑA Yeah, but since you can't tell the difference it doesn't matter.

You're still chafing about that "orgasmic self-reference" remark, aren't you? You can't let it go.

RegDwight АΑA

2 hours ago, by RegDwight АΑA

@JasperLoy Nessun Dorma is almost an anagram of Orgasmatron. Think about it. No really, do.

Indeed I am.

tchrist

% perl -le 'print "QED" ^ "\x1E\0\0"'
OED

Where U+001E is INFORMATION SEPARATOR TWO, of course.

And of course, this is fully symmetric crypto.

RegDwight АΑA

INFORMATION SEPARATOR TWO sounds like the rank of that Red Shirt.

Jez

9:25 PM

@RegDwightАΑA ah yes. they missed this:

geddit?

RegDwight АΑA

Looks like a zipper. Why is a zipper funny, again?

tchrist

Do read John Scalzi’s Redshirts.

Robusto

@RegDwightАΑA No. Nessun Dorma anagrams to Red Mass Noun.

Jez

you don't seem to have got the pun

RegDwight АΑA

@Robusto which, in turn, anagrams to Orgasmatron.

tchrist

9:27 PM

@Jez gotten

RegDwight АΑA

Oh noes not the que se joda again.

If Jez bites, you'll regret.

14

A: Difference between "I have got" and "I have gotten"

In general, "have got" is the present perfect form of "to get" in UK English, while "have gotten" is the US English version. However, even in US English, "have got" is used in certain instances, namely to mean present tense have (in the sense of possession, or to mean must): I have got a ...

tchrist

No, it’s a matter of fundamental axioms and a minimalist instruction set.

Robusto

@RegDwightАΑA You really don't know how this works, do you? Hmm, maybe they don't have anagrams in Doucheland.

RegDwight АΑA

@Robusto nice litotes there.

tchrist

If axiom set A can say things that axiom set B cannot, then A is the more expressive of the two.

RegDwight АΑA

9:30 PM

@tchrist and you know where it can shove its expressiveness IRL?

tchrist

@Robusto Only aguafiestas.

And wetbacks.

@RegDwightАΑA Plenty of room still left on the dancing-pin.

RegDwight АΑA

I see Announcer badges are now awarded more than once. That's quite useful in finding out what TPTB find promoworthy.

english.stackexchange.com/badges/54/announcer?userid=91

english.stackexchange.com/badges/54/announcer?userid=133

Robusto

haha ... as if there could ever be 25 "unique" IP addresses ...

RegDwight АΑA

Not if they are all mapped to NS, no.

Robusto

They all look the same to me.

RegDwight АΑA

9:34 PM

I'm torn. Shall I re-read all of Clay Shirky, or all of TV Tropes?

tchrist

@RegDwightАΑA ♬ 🎶 Many are the times I wish I had more money! ♬ Many are the times I wish I had more bread! ♬ Oh to be a millionaire ♬ Without a worry or a care ♬ But I’m bringing up the rear instead! 🎶 ♬

RegDwight АΑA

I have a couple hours. I could re-read both.

@tchrist Is that Gwen Stefani?

tchrist

@RegDwightАΑA Traditional Barbershop Quartet fare.

RegDwight АΑA

Also, why the why does "torn" look like "to m"?

tchrist

I don’t know if anybody’s covered it.

pom, porn, what’s the diff?

RegDwight АΑA

9:35 PM

@tchrist I wasn't being serious. Hold the presses.

@tchrist porn de terre is the best.

tchrist

Mud wrastlin.

RegDwight АΑA

Rich Girl (Gwen Stefani song)

"Rich Girl" is a song by American recording artist Gwen Stefani from her debut solo album, Love. Angel. Music. Baby. (2004). Produced by Dr. Dre, the track features rapper Eve, and is a remake of Louchie Lou & Michie One's 1993 song of the same name, which was in turn an adaptation of the Fiddler on the Roof song "If I Were a Rich Man". Stefani relates to the song stating it discusses her dreams of fame and riches from the perspective of "when she was just an Orange County girl". The last song to be included on the album, "Rich Girl" was released as the album's second single in late 2004...

This is what I was hinting at.

tchrist

Just a tetch nouvelle for me.

RegDwight АΑA

Wait another 49 years.

tchrist

Good luck with that.

RegDwight АΑA

9:38 PM

Why thank you kind sir, same of same right back at ya.

Robusto

@RegDwightАΑA So ... a pied-à-terre is for foot fetishists?

RegDwight АΑA

@Robusto you'd be surprised how many things are for foot fetishists.

tchrist

has no trek with footishists

RegDwight АΑA

@tchrist try Next Generation.

tchrist

THEY KILLED TASHA!

And doubled down on Weasel.

RegDwight АΑA

9:40 PM

Whoever that was, I plan on mourning one day.

Robusto

They killed Bob!

RegDwight АΑA

The dog?

Someone has turned up the incomprehensibility.

tchrist

Yar.

Tasha Yar

Lieutenant Natasha "Tasha" Yar, played by Denise Crosby, is a character in Star Trek: The Next Generation. In the fictional series, the character served as chief of security aboard the USS Enterprise-D for the first season. Crosby left the series near the end of first season, but reprised the role in "Yesterday's Enterprise" and "All Good Things...". Development and casting Inspired by the character of Vasquez in Aliens, The producers considered Jenette Goldstein, who had played Vasquez, for the role, but Dorothy Fontana pointed out that the actress "is not Latina. She is petite, blue-e...

RegDwight АΑA

Microsoft Bob

Microsoft Bob was a Microsoft software product, released in March 1995, although widely publicised prior to that date under the codename "Utopia", which provided a new, non-technical interface to desktop computing operations. It was one of Microsoft's more visible product failures. Microsoft's Steve Ballmer mentioned Bob as an example of a situation "where we decided that we have not succeeded and let's stop". Origins Microsoft Bob was designed for Windows 95 and Windows NT, and intended to be a user-friendly interface for Microsoft Windows, supplanting the Program Manager. The project le...

Utopia. For real.

tchrist

RegDwight АΑA

9:43 PM

Now that was refreshingly random.

bob Cat not Dog

Bob sled.

us into oblivion.

Gotta love die Haferflocken.

tchrist

@Mahnax I posted kitty pix while you were on the road yesterday.

Mahnax

9:45 PM

@tchrist I wasn't on the road yesterday, though.

Linky please?

tchrist

Hm.

RegDwight АΑA

22 hours ago, by tchrist

tchrist

search yesterday for super kitty

Mahnax

He's just as lovely as I thought he would be.

tchrist

He is really soft.

But he’s always cranking at the squirrels to get off of his lawn.

All cats are lovely.

That one was here.

Apparently they found a bobcat "hiding" from a lion atop a saguaro, and have the pic to prove it.

RegDwight АΑA

9:49 PM

Mar 20 at 14:58, by RegDwight Ѭſ道

tchrist

Don’t think that’s good enough to keep the lions away.

RegDwight АΑA

Add a stone.

Robusto

FYI, "They killed Bob" is a meme from the FPS Marathon, which was created by Bungie before they sold out for piles of cash and a harem and then created Halo for Microsoft.

RegDwight АΑA

That was way before my time.

And I kinda hated Halo, too.

Robusto

The deal was, if you had AI allies and you accidentally fragged a couple, they would start yelling, "Hey, he killed Bob!" and then they'd turn on you.

tchrist

9:59 PM

@RegDwightАΑA And after mine own.

Robusto

@RegDwightАΑA Falsch. You were alive in the late '90s, yes?

tchrist

Kenny, though, ok.

Robusto

@RegDwightАΑA Me too. Marathon was way more fun.

RegDwight АΑA

@Robusto You know what I mean.

It was way before I started touching an Xbox with anything resembling a pole.

And Halo wasn't exactly helping.

Robusto

tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Marathon

The games are all freeware now. You can download for any platform (I think) and play. Also, you can create maps and alter physics.

RegDwight АΑA

10:01 PM

There goes my plan to actually read Shirky.

I guess it's TV Tropes after all.

tchrist

This can’t be good:

% ps x | grep Opera
33704   ??  Z      0:00.00 (Opera)
36131   ??  Z      0:00.00 (Opera)
40762   ??  Z      0:00.00 (Opera)
41120   ??  Z      0:00.00 (Opera)
41453   ??  Z      0:00.00 (Opera)
41586   ??  Z      0:00.00 (Opera)
42177 s002  S+     0:00.00 grep Opera

Zombies are bad.

How do I make the zombies go away afore they pockalips me?

RegDwight АΑA

But the ZZZZZZ means they are sleeping.

tchrist

Naw.

They just want you to think that.

RegDwight АΑA

18

Q: How did the letter Z become to be associated with sleeping/snoring?

In cartoons and comics it's not uncommon to see a series of Zs to indicate that a person is in deep slumber, such as in the following political cartoon. How and when did the letter Z become to be associated with sleeping?

etymology onomatopoeia

They will even post questions on ELU!

tchrist

           I       Marks a process that is idle (sleeping for longer than about 20 seconds).
           R       Marks a runnable process.
           S       Marks a process that is sleeping for less than about 20 seconds.
           T       Marks a stopped process.
           U       Marks a process in uninterruptible wait.
           Z       Marks a dead process (a ``zombie'').

Zombies I tell ya, it’s zombies all the way down.

Which means that their parent hasn’t waitpidded them yet.

RegDwight АΑA

10:03 PM

Tchrist is so serious today. Like so serious he'll even type man.

tchrist

So the kernel has to keep the proc table slot so there is somewhere for the acct/rusage data to accum.

man holds no fears for me.

RegDwight АΑA

I never groked man and am too old now to think I ever will.

ΜετάEd

@tchrist Zombies are not necessarily bad. Enough zombies to use up all the slots in your process table are bad.

tchrist

@RegDwightАΑA I have the answer to all your problems, man.

@ΜετάEd I know. It just bothers me that on some days, it really seems like the zombies are gaining on me.

RegDwight АΑA

Ugh. You think I can read PostScript like that on this piece of machinery here? That's some high hopes right there.

tchrist

10:07 PM

Huh? It opens in my browser, even!

RegDwight АΑA

It only downloads in mine.

tchrist

Why wouldn’t it work for you?

Lamo.

RegDwight АΑA

I'm not saying it won't, I'm saying I'm afraid to check lest it opens in PowerPoint or what have they.

tchrist

ack

ΜετάEd

@tchrist Judging from world population, they are.

user19161

10:08 PM

Why is it called PowerPoint? The points are full of power?

tchrist

Oh now I have a problem.

The zombies’ parent is *init*(8).

RegDwight АΑA

@JasperLoy There's an explanation somewhere but it was so boring I actually forgot it.

tchrist

Stupid markdown.

Which means they are orphaned.

Robusto

The sound of a British person snoring is "Zedzedzedzedzedzedzedzed" ...

tchrist

But the kernel is supposed to disgard zombies inherited by init.

This is just so wrong.

RegDwight АΑA

10:09 PM

@tchrist how do you make that sidewards ∞?

tchrist

8

user19161

@RegDwightАΑA I think powerful points is the only explanation. By the way, LaTeX has a powerdot package for creating presentations.

RegDwight АΑA

@tchrist OMFG. Teach me.

Robusto

Mahlzeit.

tchrist

must be in a drugged stupor

RegDwight АΑA

10:10 PM

Gutsten.

tchrist

@RegDwightАΑA It’s a 270°-rotational variation selector, which counts as a combining character when considering extended grapheme clusters, to wit, user-visible glyphs.

RegDwight АΑA

Wow, Powerpoint for Mac manages to look worse than iTunes. That's quite an achievement in the field of excellence.

@tchrist how do I tell it the direction?

Is there a combining character for that?

tchrist

There are different VS for different compass points.

RegDwight АΑA

What if I'm thinking more astrolabium?

tchrist

Before you go too deep, this was from a Unicode standards doc example of something not to make official for backwards compat reasons.

RegDwight АΑA

10:14 PM

Or that thingamajig they have on the Portuguese flag.

@tchrist how do Unicode and backwards compat mix at all?

tchrist

Of course, with Private Use Area codepoints, all things are possible.

RegDwight АΑA

OIC

tchrist

@RegDwightАΑA I will give just one opportunity to retract your question.

RegDwight АΑA

I will not make use of it.

tchrist

So be it.

RegDwight АΑA

10:15 PM

You started it.

My Unicode only has KOI8-R and some Tetris stones.

Then people started adding Japanese. Sigh.

tchrist

VIDE INFRA

user19161

Sigh should be spelled as sai.

tchrist

unicode.org/policies/stability_policy.html

There are very hardcore stability guarantees.

RegDwight АΑA

So what's the issue, then.

3 mins ago, by tchrist

Before you go too deep, this was from a Unicode standards doc example of something not to make official for backwards compat reasons.

Massage it.

tchrist

I think it has to do with decomposition.

I forget where it is.

RegDwight АΑA

10:18 PM

Hm.

tchrist

But you can't make a rotational VS non-spacing mark without breaking the stability guarantees.

Howsoever attractive this might otherwise appear.

You have to make separately rotated codepoints instead.

Not a generic modifier.

RegDwight АΑA

That's overkill.

tchrist

Which thing?

Oh wait.

Hold on.

You can actually do the mirror thing with strong RTL. But that’s only reflected across the Y axis.

And it’s a display issue, only.

So I can do 180 but not 270 degrees. Kinda.

Somebody pull me back on up outta here.

Look at ’em die like flies!

RegDwight АΑA

But why can't 270 be locked in the realm of just-a-display-issues?

tchrist

Yah know, now you make me think about CJK.

Which is often vertical.

I know next to nothing about CJK issues.

Only about 1,000x the normal person.

RegDwight АΑA

10:23 PM

Hah.

tchrist

Which puts me next to nothing considering how much there is about it.

Even though vertical text display is generally not well supported, composing vertical text for print has been made possible. For example, on Asian editions of Windows, Asian fonts are also available in a vertical version, with font names prefixed by "@".[1] Users can compose and edit the document as normal horizontal text. When complete, changing the text font to a vertical font converts the document to vertical orientation for printing purposes.

RegDwight АΑA

@tchrist BTW, here's your thwack for not using ×.

tchrist

Since the late 1990s, W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) has been drafting Cascading Style Sheets properties to enable display on the Web of the various languages of the world according to their heritage text directions. Their latest efforts in 2011 show some revisions to the previous format for the Writing Mode property which provides for vertical layout and text display. The former format "writing-mode:tb-rl" has been revised as "writing-mode: vertical-rl".
Among Web browsers, Internet Explorer probably is the only one that has been supporting vertical text and layout coded in HTML. Starting…

Forgot the keystroke for it.

Horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian scripts

Many East Asian scripts can be written horizontally or vertically. The Chinese, Japanese and Korean scripts can be oriented in either direction, as they consist mainly of disconnected syllabic units, each occupying a square block of space. On the other hand the traditional Mongolian script and its offshoots (like Manchu) are written vertically. Horizontal writing is known in Chinese as hengpai (), in Japanese as yokogaki (, "horizontal writing", also yokogumi, ), and in Korean as garosseugi () or hoengseo (; ). Vertical writing is known respectively as zongpai (), tategaki (, "ver...

> These compatibility characters (excluding the twelve unified ideographs in the CJK Compatibility Ideographs block) are included for compatibility with legacy text handling systems and other legacy character sets. They include forms of characters for vertical text layout and rich text characters that Unicode recommends handling through other means.

I forget or never knew how Unicode wants you to do vertical. The compat stuff is for roundtripping with legacy encodings.

Those ones are from "discouraged use" areas.

Han unification

Han unification is an effort by the authors of Unicode and the Universal Character Set to map multiple character sets of the so-called CJK languages into a single set of unified characters. Han characters are a common feature of written Chinese (hanzi), Japanese (kanji), Korean (hanja), and—at least historically—other East and Southeast Asian languages. (See Vietnamese Hán Tự and Chữ Nôm.) Modern Chinese, Japanese and Korean typefaces typically use regional or historical variants of a given Han character. In the formulation of Unicode, an attempt was made to unify these variants by cons...

I bet Abigail might know.

He does a zillion languages at Booking.COM.

Surely some of those are Asian. But prolly they’re all horizontalling.

RegDwight АΑA

@tchrist I do wonder how far are they willing to take that. What about Traditional vs. Simplified Chinese?

tchrist

What about that?

RegDwight АΑA

10:30 PM

Well it's just a different grapheme, too.

tchrist

There are crazy ugly issues up there. There are multiple forms of the same glyph.

RegDwight АΑA

Glyph, I mean. Damn. I'm tired.

Exactly the wrong way round.

tchrist

You can in theory use a variation selection to get something a bit different.

But there are specific alternates up in the astral planes, which don't require a VS.

And they don't NFKD into common forms. Or maybe they do; hm.

Where did everybody go? :)

I told you, I know next to nothing about CJK.

RegDwight АΑA

> For example, the traditional Chinese glyph for "grass" uses four strokes for the "grass" radical 艹, whereas the simplified Chinese, Japanese, and Korean glyphs use three. But there is only one Unicode point for the grass character (U+8349) regardless of writing system. Another example is the ideograph for "one" (壹, 壱, or 一), which is different in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Many people think that the three versions should be encoded differently.

This is what I'm talking about.

tchrist

It is very controversial.

Unihan failed.

RegDwight АΑA

10:33 PM

With zero to none knowledge of the subject, you can count me to the "many people".

tchrist

Because the Asians won't abide it.

RegDwight АΑA

Well if they won't, that's telling you something.

tchrist

I’m being very pessimistic. It’s that kinda day.

Some feel it was forced on them by Californians.

And this pisses them off as cultural imperialism.

This is why fucking Ruby doesn’t decode to Unicode, but keeps strings in their original encodings, because Asian encodings to Unicode are lossy from their perspective.

Because you Unihan them into things they think don’t make sense for them.

Do this.

Next time you are on a plane, grab the security card in the pocket.

RegDwight АΑA

I always read those.

tchrist

It will have writing on it in many tongues, including both kinds of Chinese.

Notice how in places the glyphs are close but no cigar.

RegDwight АΑA

10:36 PM

Yeah I know what you mean.

tchrist