English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Cerberus

12:26 AM

Hello.

@Robusto Mm prejudice—it is more like a heap of conjectures.

Some based on factors that are true in certain situations.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

12:46 AM

@Robusto there. Apparently there was more snow that season.

Robusto

1:19 AM

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Do you mean in Boston? Then yes. It was pretty bad.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

1:33 AM

@Robusto I do.

tchrist

Oh, Latin a pattern — eventually: Primo pro nummata vini; ex hac bibunt libertini; semel bibunt pro captivis, post haec bibunt ter pro vivis, quater pro Christianis cunctis, quinquies pro fidelibus defunctis, sexies pro sororibus vanis, septies pro militibus silvanis. octies pro fratribus perversis, nonies pro monachis dispersis, decies pro navigantibus, undecies pro discordantibus, duodecies pro paenitentibus, tredecies pro iter agentibus. — tchrist 43 secs ago

I still don’t know the difference between 8 and 9. :)

SmokeDetector

1:58 AM

[ SmokeDetector ] Repeating characters in answer: How should "Home sweet home" be punctuated? by Tylin on english.stackexchange.com

Cerberus

2:47 AM

@tchrist Congratulations on Internet neutrality!

Oddly it's not a law, but at least you'll have it, for the time being.

Mitch

2:59 AM

I'm for the Internet taking sides. My side.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

The current xkcd is fantastic.

tchrist

3:19 AM

You can't fool me: I've been to Italy and I know how Romans count: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, X, XII. It's on all the clocks. Some of those are really hard to say, too, like "I-I-I"! :-) — tchrist 39 secs ago

tchrist

3:32 AM

Where have all the tuppence gone, long time passing?
Where have all the thruppence gone, long time ago?
Where have all the farthings gone, long time ago?
Gone to euros every one, never more to show.

tchrist

3:51 AM

Is this a rant or an answer? I sure won't be clickitecking away at that supposed Ewe Toob link to find out, either!

-1

A: I've said it once, I've said it twice, I've said it a thousand times: English doesn't make sense

(1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vysgv7qVYTo (Pop sing lyrics are a great pedagogical device in these cases.) The idea that twice is facing extinction seems whacky, look up the plays of that song. Note that the pop song industry targets the lowest conceivable intelligence and educational de...

So odd.

Perhaps this is a medication matter.

Cerberus

4:03 AM

Speaking of Romans...

Did you hear the new about how Rotterdam hooligans damaged a 17th-century fountain at the Piazza di Spagna (the Spanish Steps) in Rome?

Today was the revanche, in Rotterdam, whose centre was bombed to the ground by Germany, Italy's ally.

This is a Roman football supporter's commentary, which is quite funny:

video.corriere.it/…

It's very short.

Stack Exchange

11:26 AM

Limerick Machine: If I wrote some inuendo About the tempestuous snow Would people get That Snow was all wet Or woul…

posted on February 27, 2015 by sgdi

If I wrote some inuendo About the tempestuous snow Would people get That Snow was all wet Or would my inuendo blow?

Robusto

@Cerberus Die Rötterdämmerung?

Robusto

1:01 PM

@tchrist: I'm still getting the terminal phonemes for esta and esto (demonstrative pronouns) mixed up when I hear the woman's voice speaking them. When she says esta it often sounds rounded on the end, closer to the way I might pronounce esto.

infinitesimal

Are you practicing on YouTube?

I find it interesting that you can immerse yourself in any language you want there.

tchrist

@Robusto Well /a/ and /o/ are pretty far apart. I suppose context can help.

Robusto

@infinitesimal No. Using duolingo. And check your spelling of immerse. ^)^

tchrist

Remember that esto is only ever a pronoun, never a determiner.

Robusto

It's the same problem I have with ellas, hearing it as ellos sometimes.

infinitesimal

1:12 PM

Thanks :)

Robusto

She doesn't broaden the a enough for my ear.

tchrist

Esta mujer es difícil. Este hombre es difícil. Todo esto es difícil.

Robusto

Yeah, if it immediately precedes a noun, I have no problem.

The problem is when it is standalone.

tchrist

Yes, ésta and éste can be standalone pronouns with definite antecedents.

I listened to her ellos and ellas, including in phrases, and it never seemed to me that there was ambiguity. I may just be more used to it.

Robusto

You undoubtedly are.

Also, they reject my translation of "Los niños tienen que abandonar la escuela" when I offer "The children have to drop out of school." Which would be idiomatic in English.

terdon

1:18 PM

@tchrist What's her accent? Sudaka o peninsular?

tchrist

Peninsular, but seseo.

terdon

Ah, not the clearest.

tchrist

So a well-spoken andaluza, tal vez.

Hey?

terdon

Well, Andaluz is hardly among the easiest accents to parse.

tchrist

I said well-spoken andaluza. She isn’t eating her terminal eses and opening the resulting vowel nor fusing -ado into -ao, both of which being typical of that region.

The important thing is that she has the "flat" tone typical of Spain, especially of northern Spain. She does not have the sing-song of many American and Andaluz accents.

terdon

1:20 PM

Heh, I had a friend doing her PhD with me (so one can assume at the very least a certain level of education) who posted a picture of her missing cat with the legend: "Si lo véy, me llamáy"

tchrist

Adding tones makes it hard.

terdon

Or vei, don't remember how she spelled it.

tchrist

@terdon Was she Vietnamese or something :)

terdon

@tchrist Andaluza, pura y dura.

Robusto

@terdon This looks like I should know what it means, but I don't understand the inflections on those verbs. Perhaps I haven't learned them yet.

terdon

1:23 PM

@Robusto It's not "real" Spanish. It's Andaluzan spoken word spelled out.

tchrist

The first I can kinda imagine; the second confuses me because well, I suppose it was llamé that somehow got diphthong. But the interesting thing is that it shows a transition from /ei/ to /ai/, which began as a rustic thing in Portugal but is now part of regular Lisbon dialect. So leite sounds like English light there now (final -e is silent in Portugal).

terdon

I guess she wanted to say something like "Si lo ven, me llamen".

tchrist

Oh, wait, that's the nasalization thing that happened to Portuguese and French both.

It was the preterite stress on the second that threw me. I guess you're just trying to represent it in limited orthography.

terdon

Aye, I don't remember the spelling, only what it said. Or tried to.

Robusto

@terdon Oh, so it means "If you see him, call me"?

terdon

1:27 PM

@Robusto Yup.

tchrist

I understand. They do nasalize vowels when a nasal follows, and I can imagine it seeming to go away in rapid speech.

No, imperative needs enclitic.

Si Vds. lo ven, que me llamen. Si Vds. lo ven, por favor llámenme.

The first with que is one way of avoiding a direct imperative for politeness' sake.

At first I misunderstood what you wrote to be something a native speaker had written, which seemed outlandish to me. But that she had said it, well, these things happen. :)

Nasalization is not normally phonemic. If they actually lose the consonant, it becomes such.

terdon

@tchrist She'd written it! It was a missing cat poster. And she is 100% native. She just wrote what she'd say.

Matt E. Эллен

@Robusto yes! I find these rejections so annoying!

terdon

Found another example:

> AONDE CONCHETUMARE ESTA EL TENEDOR? SI LO VEI O LO ENCONTRA ME LLAMAI

fotolog.com/alanitaa/23181701

Robusto

@MattE.Эллен Are you doing Duolingo Spanish as well?

tchrist

1:33 PM

@terdon Wow.

terdon

@tchrist That about sums it up

infinitesimal

Why the caps?

Robusto

@terdon Would that be similar to English speakers dropping the -g in something?

terdon

@MattE.Эллен sorry to hear about your elbow. Broken bones are no fun. I broke my shin and knee in November and still need crutches.

tchrist

AONDE must be adonde or adónde.

Matt E. Эллен

1:33 PM

@Robusto yes, a bit. I've started from the basics, but i don't play everyday

I've just done possession

terdon

@Robusto I can't think of anything equivalent in English. Maybe Tom can. That's dropping things left right and center.

Robusto

@MattE.Эллен We should link up so we can spur each other on.

Matt E. Эллен

@terdon Thanks :) your shin sounds bad. what did you do?

@Robusto yeah! how do we do that?

terdon

@MattE.Эллен Motorbike.

tchrist

This is the problem in Andalucía. You have to train yourself to a different phoneme set. Spanish vowels are normally closed, but open a bit phonetically with nasals for example. But no phonemes were harmed in the making of these words. Except in Andalucía (and much of América) where they swallow the final s and replace it with /h/ or just an opening of the earlier vowel. Now vowel open–close becomes phonemic, and it is not "supposed" to be. Ehtoh sonidoh sõ demasiao.

Robusto

1:35 PM

@MattE.Эллен I don't know! It shows that you can somehow, though.

Matt E. Эллен

@terdon one hit youm, or you came off yours?

tchrist

@terdon Matt would be more likely, if he can summon up some Scottish. :)

Matt E. Эллен

@Robusto through facebook, I think

terdon

@MattE.Эллен Fell off mine.

Matt E. Эллен

@terdon ouch

terdon

1:36 PM

Very

tchrist

Mind you, I love Andalucía.

Robusto

@MattE.Эллен Aww. That would mean I'd have to feed the Facebook beast.

tchrist

@terdon “Where the fuck is the fork?” ?!

infinitesimal

Not the black beast

terdon

@tchrist Dunno, but I'll call ye if I sees it.

Matt E. Эллен

1:39 PM

@Robusto aye :(

Robusto

Dost feed it regularly thyself?

tchrist

I wonder which person the -i forms are intended to be. I wonder if we're getting into vos or vosotros territory here, or something that used to be that.

Matt E. Эллен

@Robusto I do.

infinitesimal

Facebook should be renamed to disgrace book.

Robusto

I call it Phasebook because it was a phase I went through.

tchrist

1:43 PM

Si lo veis = If y'all see it. She ate the -s.

JSBձոգչ

good morning

tchrist

Hi hi.

JSBձոգչ

i offer you this picture of Putin holding a puppy for a breakfast snack

infinitesimal

:-)

tchrist

What type of dog will that be?

JSBձոգչ

1:44 PM

i'm not sure

Matt E. Эллен

husky/saint bernard cross?

tchrist

@terdon VEI and LLAMAI are almost surely what happens to (vosotros) veis and llamáis once the final -s se coma.

terdon

@tchrist Sounds reasonable.

Matt E. Эллен

maybe just a regular Saint Bernard puppie

JSBձոգչ

@tchrist the aspiration of coda -s is common in several dialects of spanish. Puerto Rican, IIRC also does this

complete with tense/lax vowels arising from it

tchrist

1:46 PM

11 mins ago, by tchrist

This is the problem in Andalucía. You have to train yourself to a different phoneme set. Spanish vowels are normally closed, but open a bit phonetically with nasals for example. But no phonemes were harmed in the making of these words. Except in Andalucía (and much of América) where they swallow the final s and replace it with /h/ or just an opening of the earlier vowel. Now vowel open–close becomes phonemic, and it is not "supposed" to be. Ehtoh sonidoh sõ demasiao.

@JSBձոգչ I just said that. :)

JSBձոգչ

@tchrist right, i was just pointing out that it's not only andalucia

Matt E. Эллен

JSBձոգչ

oh, but you said that too

NVM @tchrist

tchrist

It is super-common in the Caribbean.

No matter.

JSBձոգչ

i think it's nice, though. new vowel distinctions make me feel warm and fuzzy.

almost as warm and fuzzy as putin with a puppy.

Mitch

1:55 PM

Mmm .... Puppies for breakfast

With toast

Buttered

The toast, not the puppy

That's a huge puppy

Matt E. Эллен

"Never butter a puppy". That's what my old man used to tell me.

Mitch

It could just sit on a cat and crush it.

tchrist

@MattE.Эллен Your da was asking you not to beat him up.

> Never batter a pappy!

Matt E. Эллен

lol

Mitch

He was saying never better than a puppy. Because kittens suck

tchrist

1:59 PM

waives flag

Mitch

raps self in flag

tchrist

There's nothing like a kilopound of kitty to keep the hounds at bay.

Matt E. Эллен

@Mitch both kittens and puppies suckle, but kittens are better.

JSBձոգչ

@tchrist that is a freaking large cat

is that a liger?

tchrist

Yes, it has to be.

JSBձոգչ

2:03 PM

that what it looks like to me. what an awkward animal.

tchrist

Only ligers grow to double-size.

JSBձոգչ

or maybe it's just fat.

tchrist

Tigons don’t.

No, it has skeletal modifications needed for that size.

Here with regular tiger:

JSBձոգչ

so the hybrids grow bigger than either of their parents? how peculiar

tchrist

Yes, they don’t know why.

JSBձոգչ

2:05 PM

too bad they aren't fertile

tchrist

It only happens when the father is a lion and the mother a tiger, not the other way around.

The American cave lion was the only feline to rival the liger is size.

Panthera leo atrox

terdon

Damn, that's gonna be one confused feline.

tchrist

Liger

The liger is a hybrid cross between a male lion (Panthera leo) and a female tiger (Panthera tigris). Thus, it has parents with the same genus but of different species. It is distinct from the similar hybrid tigon. While the Siberian tiger is the largest pure sub-species, ligers are believed to be the largest of all known extant felines. Ligers exist only in captivity or zoo because the habitats of the parental species do not overlap in the wild. Historically, when the Asiatic Lion was prolific, the territories of lions and tigers did overlap and there are legends of ligers existing in the wild...

Robusto

I thought that interspecies animals couldn't breed, that that was one of the definitions of species.

tchrist

Well...

That isn't quite right. Consider mules.

They have to produce viable offspring that are themselves fertile.

Haldane's Law means that when the chromosomes don’t match right, only the females of such crosses can only be fertile.

JSBձոգչ

2:10 PM

@tchrist woo! usa! usa!

tchrist

It takes I believe 4 filial generations crossing back to fix that.

JSBձոգչ

@tchrist i can't believe that science hasn't yet taken up the task of creating a stable liger breed

tchrist

It’s too expensive and difficult to keep them. It's not like what they do with domestic cats and wild breed hybrids.

> Savannah cats are created by crossing a house cat with an African Serval. The original hybrid is called an F1 and is considered too "wild" to be a house cat. When you breed an F1 Savannah with another Savannah or another cat breed, the resulting kittens are called F2.
Breeding F2 females produces a generation called F3, which still has a considerable amount of Serval genes, but three generations of domesticity. F1 females are retained as breeding stock, although the male hybrids are often infertile. Sometimes F2 or F1 Savannahs are bred with Servals to create Savannahs with a higher numbe…

Cross-breeds between species are not healthy even when they can occur. They are usually infertile; they often have terrible health problems.

Canid hybrid

Canid hybrids are the result of interbreeding between different species of the canine (dog) family (Canidae). They often occur in the wild, in particular between domestic or feral dogs and wild native canid. == Genetic considerations == Members of the dog genus Canis: gray wolves, domestic dogs, dingoes, Ethiopian wolves, coyotes, and golden jackals cannot interbreed with members of the wider dog family: the Canidae, such as South American canids, foxes, African wild dogs, bat-eared foxes or raccoon dogs; or, if they could, their offspring would be infertile. Members of the genus Canis can, however...

Mitch

Liger kittens kick ass, I'll admit that.

tchrist

> Members of the genus Canis can, however, all interbreed to produce fertile offspring...

Mitch

2:22 PM

Whoa.. The there's only one species in that genus right?

Despite what they may name them

tchrist

> Wolves, dogs, and dingoes are subspecies of Canis lupus.

Mitch

So wolves and foxes can breed? Are foxes canids?

tchrist

Oh come on, do I have to read everything to you?

> When the differences in number and arrangement of chromosomes is too great, hybridization becomes less and less likely. The wolf, dingo, dog, coyote, and golden jackal diverged relatively recently, around three to four million years ago, and all have 78 chromosomes arranged in 39 pairs.[6] This allows them to hybridize freely (barring size or behavioral constraints) and produce fertile offspring. The side-striped jackal and black-backed jackal both have 74 chromosomes.[7]
Other members of the Canidae family, which diverged seven to ten million years ago, are less closely related to and ca…

> the red fox has 34 metacentric chromosomes and from 0 to 8 small B chromosomes, ... the fennec fox has 64 chromosomes.

infinitesimal

Anyone want an update on the dress color question/virus?

in The h Bar, 11 hours ago, by David Z

Some people say that dress looks white and gold, others say it looks blue and black

in Mathematics, 13 mins ago, by infinitesimal

in The h Bar, 11 hours ago, by David Z

in Mathematics, 20 mins ago, by infinitesimal

Apparently it's a color filter trick.

tchrist

Good luck demonstrating color constancy in the human visual cortex using non-human means like camera captures.

infinitesimal

2:32 PM

in The h Bar, 24 mins ago, by infinitesimal

Perhaps the troll is feeding on the color blind

tchrist

@infinitesimal You do realize that the dress on the left is "light blue" in color and the one on the right is "dark blue" in color, and that these are not the same color? It doesn’t matter if their RGB values match perfectly. They are not the same color because color is a function of the human brain and mind.

It’s a mental construct.

infinitesimal

Either way @tchrist the virus has officially entered the second half of the chessboard ;-)

tchrist

Those ones are different colors, too.

I at this moment am regarding colors too glorious for mundane camera capture; my west wall is bespeckled with a prismastic spray caused by the cut class in the clerestory windows up high near the cathedral ceiling. This produces a full spread against the white wall, from dim dark red to dim dark violet, with everything in between. Your eye can pick out the violet, but exceedingly few and far between are the digital cameras that can record this; none that can are consumer models.

Stack Exchange

Limerick Machine: I just give it one final go So that I’m sure and I know I’ve tried all I can I’…

posted on February 27, 2015 by sgdi

I just give it one final go So that I’m sure and I know I’ve tried all I can I’m no worse off than Someone who quite simply said no

tchrist

And the color gamut of an sRGB computer monitor, even were it perfectly calibrated, is very small compared with that of actual human vision.

TRiG

2:42 PM

There are a lot of turnovers in the roll. I'm trying to work out whether this is an excruciating pun, or simply a misspelling of role. — TRiG 24 secs ago

Andrew Leach

Roll as in roll-call, list of employees?

TRiG

@AndrewLeach As in turning over, perhaps?

There were three in the bed and the little one said ....

infinitesimal

in Mathematics, 7 mins ago, by infinitesimal

With different backgrounds and color filters you can make it look any color you want.

Mitch

3:09 PM

The interpretation of the color depends on the colors around it (adjacent inhibition/ excitation) and the whole field context (is it all in shadow/full light) etc. so there's RBG the most objective, but then multiple layers of modification before final interpretation.

Like the guys who lived in the forest all their lives and then came out on the plain and saw an elephant far away and thought it was just a very small elephant up close.

infinitesimal

Nice example.

If you live amongst the trees all your life, you wouldn't possess the perspective of what a forest looks like.

tchrist

Color constancy

Color constancy is an example of subjective constancy and a feature of the human color perception system which ensures that the perceived color of objects remains relatively constant under varying illumination conditions. A green apple for instance looks green to us at midday, when the main illumination is white sunlight, and also at sunset, when the main illumination is red. This helps us identify objects. == Color vision == Color vision is a process by which organisms and machines are able to distinguish objects based on the different wavelengths of light reflected, transmitted, or emitted by...

infinitesimal

What does a fish know about the water in which he swims all his life?

tchrist

Much that you do not. :)

A Beautiful Mind

What does a human know about life in the heavens and the hells?

Robusto

3:23 PM

1 min ago, by tchrist

Much that you do not. :)

infinitesimal

Of what significance is one's existence, one is basically unaware.

Robusto

@infinitesimal “There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval." — George Santayana

A Beautiful Mind

There is a cure for birth and death which is Nibbana.

infinitesimal

Cure?

Robusto

Nibbana . . . didn't they do Smells Like Teen Spirit?

A Beautiful Mind

3:26 PM

Yes.

tchrist

> Why does English have separate words for things like sixth and twelfth? These are hard for non-native speakers to learn. It would be easier if we just said number six and number twelve, so perhaps that is what we should teach learners.

A Beautiful Mind

I think sixth and twelfth are not hard.

tchrist

Are you a native speaker?

If so, then you don’t count. :)

A Beautiful Mind

I think so. But still, every language has its quirks.

In Chinese, six is liu and sixth is di liu. You add a word in front of it.

tchrist

The Spanish and French alike would rather fall on their swords than enunciate sixth and twelfth.

@ABeautifulMind Yes, that was my point.

Robusto

3:30 PM

Why even have a "twelfth"? It is because of our non-decimal Indo-European forebears, who should have known better. And this is why kids in decimal languages learn faster. So to all you Euros, I say: "You haven't metricized the language, dummies! You're working on the wrong stuff, like temperature."

tchrist

The Roman system was duodecimal when it came to splitting stuff up into portions.

A Beautiful Mind

Seems some Europeans write 12,000.25 as 12.000,25.

I find the open interval notation ]0,1[ for (0,1) extremely ugly.

tchrist

We have twelfth in English as a shibboleth against the Philistines.

Robusto

Twelfth is useful mainly in music.

Mitch

So people who actually pronounce the 'f' are non-native?

tchrist

3:32 PM

Troy.

Robusto

I'm native and I pronounce the f.

Mitch

@ABeautifulMind what if you have no parens?

Robusto

@Mitch Then you are an orpha.

Mitch

@Robusto you're weird.

A Beautiful Mind

@Mitch But we do.

Mitch

3:33 PM

Not because of the f but in general

Robusto

@Mitch f u.

Mitch

@ABeautifulMind I agree, the backwards brackets is ugly

I heard the 'f' there.

A Beautiful Mind

Should we always pronounce words the way the dictionary says? I like to pronounce the l in salmon and calm.

I also like to pronounce the w in sword.

Robusto

@ABeautifulMind Calm yes, salmon no.

Mitch

@Robusto No, I'm a bastard. or a step-child. Losing one parent is a shame, losing two is carelessness.

Andrew Leach

3:34 PM

@ABeautifulMind That makes it sward.

Mitch

@ABeautifulMind how about 'solder'?

Robusto

@Mitch If you lose one paren it's a syntax error.

tchrist

Twelfths for everybody: Twelve months to a year, twelve eggs to a dozen, twelve inches to a foot, twelve pence to a shilling, twelve ounces of gold to a pound.

Mitch

@ABeautifulMind how about 'swain'? as in coxswain or boatswain?

I pronounce neither of those words at all.

A Beautiful Mind

In elementary school, the teacher taught us that we should us {[( for math, but actually we can just use (((.

Mitch

3:36 PM

@Robusto If you lose both it's like making four wrongs.

@tchrist hunh...maybe I pronounce it 'twelfs'. at least something is lost.

Andrew Leach

@tchrist Twenty shillings in a pound, I'm afraid. Twelve [old] pence in a shilling.

tchrist

@AndrewLeach Yes, darn it.

Mitch

@ABeautifulMind I find curly braces to be hard to write, but they're the tastiest. After McDonald's

TRiG

@Mitch Dougal?

tchrist

/ˈboʊsn/, /ˈkɒksn/

infinitesimal

3:37 PM

They should be used for sets.

Mitch

@tchrist twelve fingers on your hands.

I know that some people have only 10, but that's a genetic loss.

tchrist

@Mitch Really? I only have 4 fingers on my hand.

Mitch

@tchrist I'm all thumbs

tchrist

Monkey.

Mitch

@TRiG Not lately. You?

Matt E. Эллен

3:40 PM

Father Ted | On Holiday

@Mitch ^

Wow, the human foot is all... foot.

TRiG

@MattE.Эллен That's the one!

tchrist

Lois McMaster Bujold’s quaddies have four hands and no feet — by our standards.

Mitch

3:43 PM

@ABeautifulMind Yes, for the most part, but usually they are giving the most articulate pronunciation rather than what normal people say. Also, they are a little behind the times. Frankly, 'water' is now hardly pronounced without any articulation of the 't' at all (in AmE) (either dropped or glottal stop instead of the alveolar flap)

A Beautiful Mind

Hello @matt, kit is not here today.

Matt E. Эллен

Hi @ABeautifulMind. not so far!

Robusto

> Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of fact. —George Santayana

A Beautiful Mind

Theory can be superceded by a better one.

tchrist

@ABeautifulMind No, it cannot.

It may, however, be superseded.

It’s sit-atop not go-atop.

A Beautiful Mind

3:49 PM

See, my brain is fucked.

Mitch

@tchrist I cede my inferior theory to the super one

tchrist

You just aren’t sensitive to the distinction of having a cedere origin versus having a sedare origin. Just because you don’t know Romance does not mean your brain is fucked.

However, your love life probably suffers from this. :)

See Gomez Addams.

Mitch

4:03 PM

@ABeautifulMind We could intercede so you could succeed in superseding your use of ... seeds?

Jez

4:43 PM

hello

boring hour or so left at work

@ABeautifulMind how's it been going?

your brain notwithstanding

Mitch

ML .. song lyrics are an absolutely infallible guideline to which words are and are not commonplace, in the most up-to-the minute topical sense. "Guideline" is not even the right word to use - they literally define, are, popular usage. There's almost literally nothing else: they are the gold standard. — Joe Blow 8 hours ago

A Beautiful Mind

@Jez Nothing to say. Still struggling with mental problems. That's all.

tchrist

@Mitch Nutjob, eh? :)

Mitch

Constantly relevancy challenged. and borderline everything.

And doesn't actually know anything.

Jez

what kind of mental problems?

tchrist

4:48 PM

Open the pod bay doors, Hal.

Mitch

@jez could spend all day on geacron

Jez

you could or i could?

did you elide the perpendicular pronoun?

Mitch

Of course it's mostly fun figuring out how so many details are wrong.

@Jez Wait...which one is perpendicular? I did leave out an I.

Jez

think about it

tchrist

He’s referring to the supine form.

Mitch

4:51 PM

@tchrist We don't need to slide out any chip slots to degrade performance. "Daisy daisy give me your answer do..."

is there a parallel pronoun? 'us'?

Jez

geacron.com/en/…

this is basically where you start out in Europa Universalis 3

it's fun to compare this to the EU3 map

quite similar - even those two little remaining bits of Byzantium

right now i'm playing a fun game where i'm colonizing all of Africa as Navarra

it will all have the Basque culture, which starts out in the game as the smallest culture (only 3 provinces)

tchrist

Kingdom of Navarre

The Kingdom of Navarre (/nəˈvɑːr/; Basque: Nafarroako Erresuma, Spanish: Reino de Navarra, French: Royaume de Navarre, Latin: Regnum Navarrae), originally the Kingdom of Pamplona, was a Basque kingdom that occupied lands on either side of the Pyrenees, alongside the Atlantic Ocean between present-day Spain and France. The kingdom of Navarre was formed when local Basque leader Íñigo Arista was elected or declared King in Pamplona (traditionally in 824) and led a revolt against the regional Frankish authority. The southern part of the kingdom was conquered by the Crown of Castile in 1512 (permanently...

Jez

geacron.com/en/…

tchrist

"Elected or declared". Same diff.

Jez

there's the exact start year of the game, 1399

an exciting time in world history

many different interesting nations to play

tchrist

4:57 PM

Navarre bordered England then.

Jez

England had a chunk of SW france

tchrist

That’s one way to look at it.

Jez

some of the names are a bit different. it calls Morocco "Marinid"?

tchrist

The problem is that you use England in the first case to mean a nation-state, but you use France in the second part to mean a spot of land.

This is misleading.

Marinid dynasty

The Marinid dynasty (Berber: Imrinen, Arabic: Marīniyūn) or Banu Abd al-Haqq was a dynasty of Zenata Berber descent that ruled Morocco from the 13th to the 15th century. The Marinids overtook the Almohads controlling Morocco in 1244, and briefly controlled all the Maghreb in the mid-14th century. They supported the Kingdom of Granada in Al-Andalus in the 13th and 14th centuries; an attempt to gain a direct foothold on the European side of the Strait of Gibraltar was however defeated at the Battle of Río Salado in 1340 and finished after the Castilian conquest of Algeciras from the Marinids in 1344...

Today we refer to Arabia as Saudi Arabia.

Jez

@tchrist well in EU3, France at that time is represented as France proper and about 10 vassal states

tchrist

5:01 PM

Define France proper.

Jez

Ile de France area, and some of modern southern france

heh, geacron calls all of scandinavia "denmark"

it was a personal union between denmark, sweden, and norway

tchrist

Yes well. Personal unions.

Cerberus

@Robusto Well, yes. It wasn't pretty.

Rotterdam Blitz

The Rotterdam Blitz was the aerial bombardment of Rotterdam by the Luftwaffe (German air force) on 14 May 1940, during the German invasion of the Netherlands in World War II. The objective was to support the German troops fighting in the city, break Dutch resistance and force the Dutch to surrender. Even though preceding negotiations resulted in a ceasefire, the bombardment took place nonetheless, in conditions which remain controversial, and destroyed almost the entire historic city centre, killing nearly 1,000 people and making 85,000 others homeless. The psychological and physical success of...

Look how little was left of the 17th-century city.

And no doubt there had been Mediaeval buildings too, churches and whatnot.

Jez

5:23 PM

geacron.com/en/…

look at that - they have the Islamic State demarcated for 2015

Glen The Udderboat

What was the name of the state that consisted of a drilling platform somewhere off the coast of Scotland (I think)?

Jez

Sealand

off the coast of East Anglia actually

Glen The Udderboat

@Jez Thanks! That's it.

Jez

"Sealandic coins"

what for? to buy stuff off each other in the little canteen that constitutes the country? lol

tchrist

Reference.

Glen The Udderboat

5:33 PM

@Jez Quite a lot, it seems: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coins_and_postage_stamps_of_Sealand#Coins

tchrist

Smileys für alle

Robusto

@Cerberus Not to mention all the art.

Cerberus

Yes, I'm actually not sure to what extent musea were damaged.

But there must have been important paintings and sculptures in private houses and such too.

tchrist

R.I.P Leonard Nimoy

Jez

Leonard Nimoy has died :-(

tchrist

5:44 PM

nytimes.com/2015/02/27/arts/television/…

Robusto

6:51 PM

@Cerberus You didn't comment on my excellent pun.

JSBձոգչ

Nimoy = sadface

Jez

7:20 PM

i'm reading a book on domain-driven design.

one of the core principles is to keep hamemring out the language, so that everyone involved really understands the core domain terms. don't be afraid to rename stuff.

trouble is, i know from experience that (even if I and some other devs are totally on board with it) it will meet resistance from human... emotion

people will get irritated and see you as pernickety if you keep insisting on renaming and refactoring. "oh, we know what it is, just leave it"

i think there's a fundamental conflict between the desire to communicate clearly, and human pride, or something. just look at the hostility people get if they suggest we jettison 99% of the world's languages and settle on a few.

not a problem I see a solution for, as long as humans are humans.

my problem isn't hammering out a precise domain language. my problem is other people who won't want to. :-)

why are people often so protective of their terminology for things?

some kind of fundamental human nature

like, we developed language to be able to communicate with one another... but also to divide us from others. other tribes

so it serves a dual purpose, both purposes totally conflicting

Robusto

7:50 PM

@Jez Stroppy, even.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

8:25 PM

Here's a pretty bird to brighten your day.