English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

@tchrist i had to read that several times to parse it. might have been easier if you had gone with mysogynazi

Even Martha came down on him for being a dolt, but I’m sure he’ll just blame that it on her sex.

@JSBձոգչ ok

2:10 AM

I like women so much I married one.

me too!

@Robusto what about that Father's Day gift?

@JSBձոգչ How does she have time for you both?

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 That am it.

@Robusto It are?

2:11 AM

@tchrist time travel

If you truly loved women, you would marry lots and lots and lots of them, just like David and Solomon and Joseph Smith.

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 In deed.

@tchrist Ah, but the one I married is the best one. She delights me every day.

@Robusto Must be your brilliance that needs dimming.

Like when you delight the Christmas tree on New Year’s Day.

OIC.

Or throw a bucket of water on the campfire.

2:14 AM

I got it.

Today she picked me up at the car dealer where I was having my car serviced, and when I saw her car pull into the lot I just smiled. It's moments like that.

@tchrist Begin the Begatting.

Gaaaa. Neither Gorilla nor Tacky glues will marry these cork pieces.

I always joke about retiring to Tahiti to fuck supermodels on a mountain of cash, but I wouldn't sacrifice my wife for that. She's not just the best woman I know, she's the best person.

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 I told you, there's a special kind for that.

@Robusto the interwebs say to use rubber cement or spray adhesive.

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 You need something like a stick shellac.

> Contact cement is contact glue. That's the type of glue. It works by smearing a thin layer of the glue on both surfaces, waiting a bit (from 30 seconds to 10 minutes, depending on the glue, weather, etc.) and then putting the two surfaces together. It glues on contact... that's where the name comes from.

> Super glue and epoxy are not contact glues because they don't work the same way at all.

I'll find some other weight for my motor.

2:26 AM

@Robusto awww. Robusto is actually a big softie. how lovely. (not ironic.)

Who'da thunk it?

But I am very lucky, and I know it.

Scotch done, and so to bed. Night all.

g'night

Nytol.

user116848

Hi guys

user116848

I agree we all should get married once in our life to a very special person

user116848

2:31 AM

All great men do

not all great men

Some great men get married several times in their lives to special people.

user116848

Well several times is better then :) At least they are in a commitment, right?

user116848

Jesus didn't get a chance otherwise he would have too.

2:51 AM

He was over 30 when he died.

3:06 AM

@Arrowfar Whoa. Why men? What about great women??

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 “Very few seem even to have noticed that although Christ was a ‘humble carpenter,’ the only object we are specifically told he made was not a table or a chair, but a whip.” ―Gene Wolfe

2

user116848

@tchrist Well, you tell me :D

@tchrist Huh, I never noticed either. Although the evidence that he was actually a builder of any sort is rather scant. It's mostly conjecture that he would have learned the trade from his adopted father.

user116848

Jesus

|birth_date = 7–2 BC |birth_place = Judea, Roman Empire |parents = |death_place = Judea, Roman Empire |death_date = 30–33 AD |death_cause = Crucifixion |home_town = Nazareth, Galilee }} Jesus (; (Iesous); 6–4 BC to 30–33 AD), also referred to as Jesus of Nazareth, is the central figure of Christianity, whom the teachings of most Christian denominations hold to be the Son of God. Christianity regards Jesus as the awaited Messiah of the Old Testament and refers to him as Jesus Christ, a name that is also used in non-Christian contexts.

> 6 Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples. 2 When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed.

“Where did this man get these things?” they asked. “What’s this wisdom that has been given him? What are these remarkable miracles he is performing? 3 Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph,[a] Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.

4 Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in…

Mark 6:3 is the only verse, it seems, that directly calls him a "carpenter", and the translation from Greek is imprecise; it could be any kind of craftsman.

Anyway I just assumed he built stuff until he got bored and then set off to do his other thing.

@Arrowfar Cleopatra married a couple of Ptolemies and Marc Antony, despite Julius Caesar. Eleanor of Aquitaine married Louis VII and Henry II. Marie Curie married Pierre. Eleanor Roosevelt married Franklin. Margaret Thatcher married Denis. Hillary Clinton married Oops. ER2 married Philip; ER1 married no one.

user116848

3:21 AM

I see, lol

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes, the evidence, even scriptural evidence, is weak. But it is a fine quote nonetheless.

@tchrist Yeah it is. Lots of people could use a bit of out-of-the-box thinking re: Jesus.

FF has made me doubt myself.

I am trying to decide whether a noun phrase starting with “Nothing / nobody / no one but” has that part acting as a premodifier the way A lot of does. In other words, it is not the true subject; it acts as a determiner or adjective, and does not affect the actual subject nor that subject’s agreement with the verb.

A lot of people have said. A lot of trouble has passed.

That sort of thing.

Nothing people have said matters.

?Nothing but people are worth fighting for.

3:33 AM

oh. hm.

No one but your husband is allowed to visit. ?No one but your friends are allowed to visit.

They go to the nightclub. Nobody goes to the nightclub. Nobody but they go to the nightclub.

I don’t think so. Nobody but and No one but seem singular.

I don’t know.

have you tried a coca search?

No, I was working my way up to it.

I always have trouble with it until I get my brain working right again.

3:36 AM

> Nobody but us knows what's going to happen.

Nothing but trouble is going to come of that. Nothing but bats are getting in here.

It feels funny, but I may have semantic satiation.

> nobody but he and a few wild children knew it was there

Alas, knew isn’t marked for number.

> Everybody drives by that area. Nobody but people like us realize what's going on in there

Nobody but the captain realizes what’s really happening there.

Is that but a conjunction or a preposition, or does that not matter?

3:39 AM

> Nobody but priests and ministers ever say

> Nobody but the vicar ever says

> set up on the premise that nobody but he knows what anybody or anything is really about

I can’t tell whether I’m being distracted by the proximity of an object of a preposition, or whether something else is going on here.

It seems like the verb agreement follows the noun(s) after the but

As with A lot of, so it acts like a premodifier/determiner/adjective.

It isn’t the actual subject at all.

3:41 AM

I haven't found any examples that contradict that, so far, in coca

Nothing but death and taxes is certain.

You can’t turn that into are certain, now can you?

Well, that's "nothing but", I haven't searched that

here is nobody but: corpus.byu.edu/coca/?c=coca&q=31809073

But maybe death and taxes is one thing, like My husband and my best friend has just come home.

Thanks.

Oh, that’s very simple. I was thinking of something that looked for singular or plural verbs coming after.

user116848

@Emrakul Hey there :D

user61230

@Arrowfar [wave] Hello!

user116848

3:44 AM

@Emrakul It's been long since I saw you here in chat :)

@tchrist Yeah I would like to do that but my coca-fu isn't good enough. But just looking through the context shows a few good examples.

I’m looking at nothing but for a subject placement.

user61230

Yeah, I've been on-and-off. Right now, I'm away from home, and I have been consuming my time through books.

@tchrist yeah the naive search gives nothing useful for that.

user116848

i see :)

user61230

3:48 AM

How've things been?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Now I’m getting somewhere.

> Nothing but debating points is to be gained by arguing such things.

That would disprove the hypothesis, but it’s just one example.

Look for any verb following. The singulars like is, was are way way in front was the plurals like are, were.

ah, colocates, thats what I should use

btw you can share links to coca if you click on "history"

I can’t find “history”. :(

are you logged in? it's in the top right under the login controls

No, am not logged in. Didn’t know that was a thing.

3:58 AM

ah

I am not finding much with "nothing but"

But I did find this:

> You do the work of the world yet nothing but crumbs come your way!

From which source?

"Southwest Review" corpus.byu.edu/coca/?c=coca&q=31809301

I'm not sure how to do a search for "nothing but (phrase-which-is-plural-noun-thing) (verb-with-plural-or-singular-agreement"

I can do "nothing but (plural-noun-word) (verb-with-singular-agreement)" or "nothing but (plural-noun-word) (verb-with-plural-agreement)"

> 1991 SPOK PBS_Newshour diplomacy in the past 50 years started in Pearl. Maybe Pearl was Hiroshima. Nothing but debating points is to be gained by arguing such things. But I think

However, the fiction sources tend to go the other way.

@tchrist hm, that's spoken though.

True.

> 2012 FIC Analog It was almost impossible for Darryl to distinguish the members of the surgical team; nothing but their eyes were visible. Griffin, who knew them all to one degree

> 2005 FIC AfricanAmerRev So intently was she focused that she screened out a conversation that ended abruptly when nothing but the crusts were left on her plate. Conversation had been replaced by astonishment

4:09 AM

Nothing is visible. Nothing but their eyes are visible. Nothing but their eyes is visible. Nothing was visible. Nothing but their eyes was visible.

I may be reaching semantic satiation too. I'm starting to feel that with "nothing but" either form is fine.

And my coca-fu isn't pulling up good examples.

> At best, nothing but their names is known

From ngrams

I forgot you could do * in ngrams.

> Tradition, as already mentioned, placed Seming, a son of Odin, on the throne of that country, and from him descended a race of pontiff-kings of whom nothing but their names is recorded.

@tchrist Yeah I'd definitely prefer "is" there.

Using were is a problem, because you get a lot of “If nothing but this were” instances.

Stuff like that. The hypothetical were. No number marker.

It feels like there is often agreement with the noun, but not always.

4:25 AM

yeah. I wonder what it depends on. For the "nothing ... is visible" case, I can see either form working. For some other cases, I can't really see it. "Nothing but the cats were there", not *"Nothing but the cats was there".

> By this irruption, however, nothing but the suburbs was yet gained: the entrance into the town was still more difficult

4:44 AM

> No one but the servers and musicians dare to step out from under the shaded tent

> No one but a handful of people were aware that Kid Morgan was really Conrad Browning

> You're in New York City. In a part of Central Park that no one but us knows exists.

It’s all very strange, don’t you think?

yes, now that I think about it.

"no one but us" is a funny one, because it's one of the rare ones where it's an object noun and cannot be a subject.

?"a part of Central Park that no one but we know exists"

No one but them dares to step out from under the shaded tent.

No one but they dare to step out

Nobody but our friends is/are coming. Nobody but them is coming. Nobody but me is ready.

Oh blech, this is a red herring, because it’s a modal use:

> Then no one but us need know it, and she can spend several days with us perfectly at ease.

> Absorption of more work leads to the demand for even more, because no one but us really knows what librarians do, why it is important, and how much of it we can accomplish.

in "no one/nobody but us" I think it has to be singular agreement and that suggests to me that "nobody" is the subject.

"but us/them" is just modifying "nobody"

> Luckily we only had to shorten our trip by a day, but we did miss the first two days of classes . . . which no one, but us, was concerned about.

So why can "nothing but X" be different from "nobody but X"?

5:00 AM

There was nothing but us in the room. Nothing but us was in the room.

* Nothing but us were in the room

Maybe we're dealing with two cases here? One where nothing/nobody/no one is the subject, modified by "but blah", and one where "blah" is the subject, modified by "nothing but"?

And just like the "staff is/are" question, the choice of words forces the grammatical interpretation?

I'm just speculating.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes, perhaps.

> Nothing but my own thoughts was real to me.

You can’t use were there, can you?

5:16 AM

hmmmmmmm. I'm not sure.

> ?Nothing but kittens cheers me.

Or is that cheer?

> . . . at Graysonia, and as there was nothing but kittens in sight it began to look as if the four cats were to have pretty poor picking.

No proof there.

Night.

'night

7:47 AM

morning

afternoon

hello

hi

Gah what's the deal with the flags.

there are lots

7:58 AM

people like to over-react and throw flags

which is dangerous, due to the spiked ends

is there a limit?

to the number of flags someone can raise?

yes

yes

your limit is displayed when you try to raise a flag

8:00 AM

icic, lower it

:D

:-)

do mods have special flags to alert other mods?

nah, we just ping each other in chat.

I see, that works too.

8:32 AM

I hate it when I hit the wrong button and end up doing something I didn't mean to. Like nominate for reopening.

Sorry.

:D No worries.

8:58 AM

!!wiki minute man

Jarvis the Bot

Minutemen

Minutemen were members of well-prepared militia companies of select men from the American colonial partisan militia during the American Revolutionary War. They provided a highly mobile, rapidly deployed force that allowed the colonies to respond immediately to war threats, hence the name. The minutemen were among the first people to fight in the American Revolution. Their teams constituted about a quarter of the entire militia. Generally younger and more mobile, they served as part of a network for early response. Minuteman and Sons of Liberty member Paul Revere was among those who spr...

@Robusto what symbol is this?

Any guesses any one?

What symbol?

Limerick Machine: There once was a man in his fifties Who walked about looking quite shifty He gave people sneers A…

if you know your alphabet it's easy as a, b, c

6

Q: What symbol is this?

I need the command to display this symbol in LaTeX or, at least, its name. I guess it’s from some kind of a mathematical or informatics discipline. I saw it in article called “A comparison of collapsed Bayesian methods for probabilistic finite automata”. Actually, I have no idea what it is all...

symbols

Stack Exchange

9:34 AM

posted on July 03, 2014 by sgdi

There once was a man in his fifties Who walked about looking quite shifty He gave people sneers And scared some old dears All the things that he did seemed quite grifty

10:19 AM

I was browsing through the transcript and my eye was caught by chocolates.

6 hours ago, by Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

ah, colocates, thats what I should use

I'm hungry.

:D

chocolates would be nice

did you guys guess what the symbol is?

It's an a. You showed that.

Or have I misunderstood?

before you saw the answer

Oh. No, I didn't. And fonts are my thing :-(

10:23 AM

Me neither.

it's clearly a sick fish

had its tail snipped or something

poor thing

Have you heard the quote: what does a fish know of the water it swims in?

yes

I like it.

No, but it sounds relevant to Robusto's egg-cartons.

Goes to look up quote...

10:26 AM

what does an egg-carton know of its egg-carton it contains itself in?

lol :D

@MattЭллен You should try and read Einstein's "Relativity: The special and the general theory", I found the first few chapters are quite accessible.

OK. I might if I get time. Or space-time

Relativity: The Special and the General Theory

Indeed, space-time is the "water" we swim in all our lives :-)

Relativity: The Special and the General Theory began as a short paper and was eventually published as a book written by Albert Einstein with the aim of giving: It was first published in German in 1916 and later translated into English in 1920. It is divided into 3 parts, the first dealing with special relativity, the second dealing with general relativity and the third dealing with considerations on the universe as a whole. There have been many versions published since the original in 1916, the latest in December, 2011. The w...

10:41 AM

Hello!

@skullpatrol Yay, we're blue! Dahbedee dahbedah.

@tchrist Very good! One can never refer to The Chaos too often.

Hello!

Morning!

Hi

Yes it is! Your cycle is concommitant with BST

How is your Thursday, o Overorc?

Haha yes!!

10:44 AM

Hello. Good morning. Just.

I actually woke up at 10.20...

@685-252 Hi! I like your icon. Babylon?

Thursday is looking good :D How is yours underdog?

@AndrewLeach Morning!

@Cerberus Yes :-)

@MattЭллен Good, so far! My eh lover has just left.

10:45 AM

@MattЭллен You added an extra 'm' to concomitant. I know you Brits prefer superfluous letters, but they are an optional, not a necessary, concomitant to orthography.

Haha.

@Cerberus oh! a long night?

It's orththographphy.

@MattЭллен Haha, more like short for me, because of my messed up cycle. But he slept well enough.

@Robusto blah blah blah correct spelling balh blah blah. It's a myth created to control your mind.

Your phph balance is off.

10:46 AM

I don't have a vagina.

OK...

(I think there is something about acidity and vaginae?)

ah

But you know more about this than I!

@Cerberus As I've said before, better to have the use of one than to have one.

10:47 AM

Cause you're dahbedee adhbdah.

@Robusto Haha, probably. Depends on the situation...

Vaginae cannot get stuck in unfortunate ways.

Well . . .

the family way?

What?

As in, x and the kids?

!!define in the family way

Jarvis the Bot

@MattЭллен My pocket dictionary just isn't good enough for you.

10:49 AM

Hah.

Jarvis the Bot

@MattЭллен in the family way Alternative form of

gah! you are determined to make me do this myself

Oww in that way.

I clicked through.

Yes, things can get stuck up there, it cannot get stuck itself.

It cannot be knocked around, only up.

I've had a blue ring as mouse cursor all day, no fun to work with huge CAD-models

Hmm.

10:52 AM

are they demanding ridiculous things and storming off in a huff?

Is that so that you can see the object you're hovering over?

Ah, yes, CAD models can be bitches.

@JohanLarsson By the way, would you normally write a hyphen there in Swedish? We would in Dutch.

It spikes one core and eats RAM, expect this operation to take ~15 minutes

Ouch.

No wonder they get so huge if they binge on tasty RAM.

@Cerberus CAD-model? Yeah that is the standard way for acronyms and strange combinations

By the way, I wonder why so many programmes still cannot use multiple cores.

10:54 AM

@JohanLarsson Whatever happened to load balancing?

Other than that the rule is one thing one word, words can get long

@JohanLarsson OK same here.

About everything you said.

@Robusto yeah it is a bit annoying, been a couple of years now when it has been obvious that the way of the future is more cores and not GHz

Exactly.

We went up to 3GHz very quickly, but that was 8 years ago, and now we're still under 4 GHz.

Would be sweet if they found a way to continue the frequency rally

10:57 AM

But, alas.

atom wide transistors that never heat up!

It would be sweet if more programmes could finally use multiple cores.

One day I will try to use alas in chat.

Quantom computing...

@JohanLarsson Congratulations!! You have just used alas.

yes. parallel programming is a way to go. difficult, though

10:58 AM

@MattЭллен Hmm is it really that difficult?

not like that, I meant use it like a ~~pro~~ Cerb

Haha.

You're pretty pro.

@Cerberus for things like games that require a lot of state information it is. modifying state across threads is tricky and generally avoided.