English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2016-05-25 (page 1 of 2)

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1:09 AM

@anongoodnurse So speech pathologists, who are trained to help modify a persons speech habits, things like a lisp, stutter, or other impediments, are tasked with correcting vocal fry? That is crazy. Vocal fry is not a pathology. It may be a word that a particular speech pathologist came up with when noticing, outside of work, that certain people talk a certain way (because they had the confidence in knowing things about speech patterns enough to coin a new term).

But vocal fry is not something that speech pathologists attempt to fix.

1 hour later…

thepiercingarrow

2:20 AM

Hello

Is there a word for "largely because of" ?

As in, "The bravery Lysander showed was <largely because of> his primary objective of marrying Hermia" ?

Hi!

Probably not.

For most things, there isn't a single word.

thepiercingarrow

Oh :(

@Cerberus then is there a more eloquent way of saying it? <largely because of> doesn't sound right... I think its mostly the work "because" that's sticking out

Or maybe it's of....of.

> Lysander showed bravery largely because he wished to marry Hermia.

I think largely and primary are pleonastic.

And so are because of and his objective of.

2:44 AM

@Shafizadeh "Those two first cases" - both cases have to be 'first'. Here's a contrived example: The quality controller routinely samples the first case of each batch. For the last shipment, batches 1 and 2 were both bad. Those two first cases were all he needed to send the shipment back.

2:56 AM

@thepiercingarrow Consider a redraft - e.g. his bravery was primarily motivated by the prospect of marrying her.

@Mitch Lol! Clearly you don't read the Journal of Voice. ;)

3:07 AM

@Lawrence You may want to clarify that this is probably not what he's looking for.

He is fairly new to English, so he might not get that.

@anongoodnurse I'm clearly being an ass. But still, the fact that it is a 'thing' is amazing (not that people do it but that it is the subject of a lot of study).

3:35 AM

@Cerberus Ok.

@Shafizadeh My quality controller example was for the first phrase you asked about. Cerberus commented on the second phrase. To answer your original question - both phrases are meaningful but may mean different things depending on the context (which you haven't supplied). The examples of how each phrase is used should help, but if you need further clarification, please post the context you have in mind.

3:51 AM

@tchrist It may as well do. But putting their ancient history aside, perhaps Cerb meant that the 'should' construction sounds more traditional:

1

2

(Anyway, I'm not sure if it's very important which one sounds more traditional than the other.)

"Demanded that he be" has enjoyed a century of dominance in North America.

And half a century in BrE.

Heh. I wanted to say It may well do, not may as well do.

4:07 AM

Did you know that using do for do so is peculiarly British?

@tchrist D'oh. I remember you told me that.

2 hours later…

6:23 AM

Question I have this habit of upvoting every post I find interesting, and since I visit a lot of them, I always end up with "zero votes remaining" by the end of the day. If, by chance, a lot of those posts are by a particular user (because they post everywhere), will it be counted as "voting fraud"?

2 hours later…

8:30 AM

@Lawrence Ah ok :)

9:24 AM

dissatisfied or unsatisfied ?

Matt E. Эллен

you become dissatisfied by a situation

ah, thanks

Matt E. Эллен

unsatisfied is how you are when you need satisfaction

"my need for cheese remains unsatisfied"

"I am dissatisfied with your cheddar"

@crl Dissatisfied in change in mode from "loving the world" to "grumpy grandpa". Unsatisfied is just "grumpy grandpa".

yeah, thanks you both, I see

Matt E. Эллен

9:28 AM

no probs :)

@NVZ it might. I don't know the details of the "voting for the person not the post" detection works, but certainly amassing many votes from the same person feeds into it.

however it should also take into account that other people are voting for the same person's posts as you. I don't know that, I am just guessing

@NVZ No one knows what the threshold or the formula for voting fraud is, not even the exact factors that affect it, and we're even less certain when you can't give us a number.

But here are some dangerous voting situations to be in:

1. Having voted for one person much, much more than other users.

If you've upvoted X 500 times and the next person after that 50, this is alarming.

10:33 AM

"I wanted to charge ... <low amount>, for the sake of advancing the project" is it correct? I mean 'with the aim to not hamper the project with financial things'

hmm seems ok, I just almost never used 'sake'

Matt E. Эллен

yes, that's fine

11:03 AM

Is this correct? "My app going to be used both for web requests and mobile-requests. Still I don't need to be worry about that?"

"My app is going to be used both for web requests and mobile-requests, which is a transparent detail (web pages?)."

ok :)

11:41 AM

Is this correct? "How can I make a dynamic limit selecting?"

Hello folks

Stylistic question that has always bothered me: when you put a smilie at the end of a parenthetic addition (like so :)) how many ')'s should you use? (I could also write them like this :)

I guess this question is too subjective to ask on the main site

12:16 PM

@stack no, and I can't give you a correct version since I have no idea what it's supposed to mean.

34

A: If an insertion in parentheses ends with a smiley, how do I distinguish between the two?

I couldn't resist but post this! But seriously, I generally avoid ending a bracketed expression with an emoticon. One solution could however be to use square brackets: A lot of insertions in parentheses [well, if it's not Lisp :)] can be annoying. Though it's rather non-standard, it at l...

12:39 PM

@terdon Thanks

1:18 PM

@Mitch - No argument there, I guess.

1:35 PM

@stack "How can I make a dynamic limit selector?" maybe, if you're talking about a selection controller.

1:54 PM

@Mitch - I'm sorry, I just realized how bad that sounded. I meant I had no argument with the fact that it's considered a problem. D'oh!

@anongoodnurse haha... wait...what?

@stack It's grammatical if you consider selecting to be a gerund that's applied to dynamic limit. But your intent isn't clear. It would be useful for you to post what you were trying to say (clumsy expressions are fine for posting what you're trying to say, so long as the expressions are unambiguous).

In case I wasn't particularly clear, here's an opposite to your sentence, using the same format: How can I make a dynamic limit non-selecting?

@Lawrence By the way, I didn't mean to say that your example + explanation weren't good, on the contrary!

2:16 PM

@Cerberus No problem - I took your comment to have been made constructively. I appreciate the clarification, though :) .

Heh, OK, good.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerb heard the latest about Ara? theverge.com/2016/5/24/11748428/…

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I have. It's ridiculous.

Everyone on every single site on the Internet says "I'm no longer interested".

Maybe the Fairphone is the best modular phone we're going to get?

By the way, Google: I really don't care about hot swapping for things like the screen and RAM, as long as I can upgrade/replace them in half an hour without any technical skill.

I hear that applies to the battery, even though it's not a "module", so that's good.

But why can't it apply to the screen? They already had it working in the prototype.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus I'm sure it's the reasons I mentioned before: modularizing these things takes up too much room, costs too much, and results in too much software complexity

They had to invent a whole new data bus and protocol for this to even be feasible.

I remember the days when mobile phones were truly small ... and primarily used for making phone calls.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

2:31 PM

So Google's new fancy hardware, which does sound cool, is limited to making addons for one kind of phone.

It's hard enough to buy a friggin' CASE for a nexus phone

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Quite possibly. But I'd be willing to pay a bit more, in money and volume, for upgradable screen and RAM.

@Lawrence Good or bad old days?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Sure, there exist some people who would. But enough?

Who knows? But everyone who was enthusiastic about Ara was so because of that.

And are there enough people who are interested in what Ara has become now? Merely an LG G5-like, undistinguishable random phone (excusez le mot).

@Cerberus Good old days :) .

Hah.

Do you have a smartphone?

2:34 PM

For one thing, I didn't need to reboot my phone so much.

Hmm.

How often do you need to reboot it now?

@Cerberus Well, yes.

And what phone do you have?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I'm disappointed that they're keeping this whole thing proprietary. No unapproved third-party modules ?!? This is like IBM making Microchannel, or Sony making Memory Sticks and Minidiscs all over again

Oh, a "smart"phone.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Oh, seriously?? Not even that? I hadn't read that bit yet.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

2:35 PM

@Cerberus all modules will have to be approved by, and sold by Google

Let me put it this way: Ara has lost all supporters it had by this change, and it has gained no substitutes.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 That is...laughable, if it weren't so sad.

@Cerberus One of those iPhones. Sometimes it just hangs, particularly when reception is poor - maybe just coincidence.

Ah, which one?

One with a large screen. Probably version 5 or 6.

I reboot my Android maybe once a week, but only because I install some Xposed module that requires rebooting. Otherwise, it could run perfectly for months without rebooting.

@Lawrence Does it have sharp edges?

Or is everything rounded?

2:38 PM

It's better than version 4. I suppose I shouldn't complain - it only needs rebooting once in a while, at least a few weeks between reboots.

user image

Iphone 5.

Everything rounded.

user image

6.

Okay, a 6 or 6S, then.

I don't think I needed to ever reboot the old Nokias.

It's odd that bad reception should be related to hanging. I'm not sure how to troubleshoot that.

2:39 PM

Or Motorolas.

My LG is very stable as well.

@Cerberus It's not so bad. But when the web browser hangs / fails to connect, sometimes a reboot will help.

Very odd!

Turning aeroplane mode on and off doesn't help?

May be related to timeouts.

Yes, toggling aeroplane mode helps.

Reboots are the next level.

Most of the time, it's fine. :)

So how often do you reboot it?

2:43 PM

It occasionally doesn't allow me to swipe-activate, though. Not nearly as often as the old '4.

Rebooting? Actually, quite rarely - maybe less than once a month. :)

Unless I'm upgrading to new iOS versions.

But that doesn't count :) .

Okay, that's not so often.

Swipe activate, what's that?

Swipe to answer, swipe to turn on the camera.

Oh, I see.

What happens when you swipe to answer and it doesn't work?

Can you still answer the phone?

Keep swiping. It's a known problem. The '4 would often not register the swipe until the other person hangs up, then it let me in.

You can try pressing other buttons first. There are several theories, mainly regarding how the capacitive touch sensor works.

On a completely different topic (and I hope the discussion doesn't go down the gurgler as a result), you know those toilets with dual flushes to save water? Some have a large and a small button. I used to think the small button would - as an analogue - release a small amount of water, but was told it was the other way around. I suppose the larger button is more eye-catching, so gets pressed more as a result. In reality, it's hard to tell how much water is released each time.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus yeah. I'd be happy if what they ended up inventing was a sort of USB for smartphone components. But instead they invented something useless. So I for sure won't buy an Ara phone until I see modules worth getting, and we probably won't see modules unless people buy the phones, so.....

3:00 PM

@Lawrence Hmmm annoying! Looks like Apple really doesn't want you to use your phone as such!

@Lawrence Huh! In my experience, the small button has always released a small amount of water.

@Cerberus :) . The old phones never had that problem. There should be a dedicated real button for answering calls.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I hate to say I agree with you.

@Lawrence Of course I would never bash Apple, but neither does my Android!

I can always answer a call.

@Cerberus So much for the psychological answer, then. :)

@Cerberus Not being able to answer a call should be a considered a show-stopper bug for phone manufacturers.

@Lawrence I understand the opposite reasoning, but the big button is big water, at least here, so far as I remember.

@Lawrence nods

I'm trying to think of any serious bugs on my phone.

It often takes more than a second to open the app switcher, when I have lots of apps open; I consider that a serious bug.

Luckily I can avoid it by using an alternative app switcher, so I'm all good.

@Cerberus Yes, that's more sensible. Some have overcome the problem by drawing appropriately-sized water droplets on the buttons, or have a different number of droplets on each.

UX for flushing. Literally.

@Cerberus I've considered using 2 phones - a phone phone, and a ... tablet, I suppose.

3:06 PM

@Lawrence Many loos have just one button here: when you release the button, no more water comes out. So you can dose it that way.

@Lawrence Haha, why not. Although you'd always need to carry a bag or suitcase with you. I love how I can do everything on my pocket computer and never need to carry anything.

one nice grapefruit imgur.com/VbRO6Be

It's ugli.

@Cerberus Heh. Blocking vs non-blocking returns (cf parallel or event-based programming).

produce of jamaica, so they have no excuse

make everything asynchronous

I'm afraid I'm not a programmer, but I presume you're talking about processes that either continue along a fixed schedule, or that continue only as long as you keep giving them input?

3:11 PM

a single function can be sync or async

@Cerberus The iPad mini (or even just iPhone) isn't too bad as the tablet. Given the different varieties of Android phones out there, there should be a small one around to use as a dedicated phone that always answers on the first attempt. Not answering used to be a caller's problem. Technology now allows it to be the receiver's problem :) .

Well, a normal Android phone answers always.

I've never had that problem with my phone.

So just buy a good Android phone, to solve your problems. As a bonus, it will cost you half the money.

€300 should be enough.

@Cerberus crl's right. When calling a function, it might do everything it needs, keeping you 'on hold' until it's done, or it can release the connection, then continue to process in the background. The press-and-release single-button flush is like the first; the 'click once' flush is like the second type.

Okay, and what does "on hold" mean in practice?

@Cerberus Haha. The simplest answers are often the best. And overlooked :) .

3:14 PM

Yay!

But I like the iThingies.

Why?

@Cerberus In function calls?

I mean, oh, OK!

iPay

3:15 PM

@Lawrence In whichever way you used the term...

I presume it won't lock up the entire system, disabling all user input until it's done?

@Cerberus Apart from telephony, they usually work well.

You just gave another example of a bug...

But I don't think a good Apple device is any more or less buggy than a good Android.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus I've had issues now and then with various phones where I couldn't answer calls. Sometimes the Nexus 4 screen would be unresponsive when a call came in. I'd have to realize this, turn the screen off then on, then unlock the phone, then answer, before the caller hang up.

@Cerberus Yes, it locks up. This is often the desired behaviour, especially when the time on-hold is short.

@Cerberus Same bug.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Hmm how odd. Maybe Google phones are buggy...

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

3:17 PM

@Cerberus well, it's an LG phone

@Lawrence Oh, okay, I suppose it depends...

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Lawrence why not just say that synchronous means you have to wait until it's done, and asynchronous means it does its work on its own and you don't have to wait for it.

@Lawrence Where you had to reboot the phone in order to be able to browse the web?

te gustas la empresa can el siglo manzana?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 But Google presumably had a say in it, being a Nexus.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

3:18 PM

@Cerberus Surely google didn't say "Please make it so that sometimes it randomly doesn't register touches"

I use "timers" in Autohotkey for asynchronous operations.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

It's probably a hardware bug or a driver bug

Most other things are synchronous by default in Autohotkey.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I was just trying to snipe at Nexus.

@Cerberus For example, if you wanted the factorial of a number, you might call fact(5). This should return 120 with very little delay. To do it the other way, you'd need to set up something to trigger when the answer is available. It makes sense to put up with the complexity if the wait-time is long; otherwise, the simple return is much easier to work with.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus well, specifically it was the first LG nexus that had that issue.

The older ones didn't, and the newer ones didn't.

3:20 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Because I didn't use the words synchronous and asynchronous. We were talking about flushing toilets. :)

@Cerberus Where it wouldn't let me answer phone calls.

@Lawrence But what if the language allowed for automatic asynchronous operation, so that you didn't have to deal with the complexity as a coder? Wouldn't that be convenient?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Lawrence but "on hold" is a weird way of describing it, I think.

@Lawrence But you also mentioned that other bug, so that makes 2, right?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I understood it more or less.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Even if the language offers built-in asynch, there is still added complexity.

But not for the coder.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

3:21 PM

yes

for the coder

async is just a syntactic sugar, that make it easier to read, flatten the callback hell in JS for example

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

instead of writing down a set of instructions that follow one after the other, you have to plan for and deal with things happening out of order.

If you can just prefix a line with something in order to tell the computer that it may continue its operation while the current line is being executed, that would be nice. Now I have to do it by explicitly using a different thread.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Sure, it depends.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus yes, starting async things is easier with special syntax for it. But how do you handle the result? What about interdependencies?

@Cerberus Some programming languages come close, but it still needs to be handled - or at least recognised, especially since subsequent instructions may depend on whether the result has been produced / returned / abandoned / etc. If the function takes too long to return, there should also be some way of terminating it. That alone breaks the abstraction.

3:24 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes, you have to think about that.

is it java? o yes android shit

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 It's intended to be non-technical, since Cerberus said he's not a programmer.

@Cerberus Yes - that makes 2.

@Lawrence Yes, you have to think about it as a coder. You could have a prefix that assigns a maximum time for the operation. But that actually applies to synchronous and asynchronous operations equally, right?

he's more programmer than non-programmers tho

@Lawrence Gracias.

3:26 PM

yes timeouts can work for both

Right.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus dealing with timeouts breaks abstraction for both cases, I'd say. It's actually more straightforward to deal with them in an async case because you, by definition, need a separate process for that.

That = a timeout?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

yes

timeouts are asynchronous

I suppose they always are.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

3:27 PM

so if you're already setting up an async function, the timeout is just another bit of housekeeping

if you're not using an async function, you have to set one up just to handle the timeout

But would you still call a timeout synchronous if the code works as follows: line 1 says, wait for x to happen, though no longer than 5 seconds; then proceed to line 2.

@Cerberus Dealing with timeouts takes extra programming. Any extra programming is a potential source of bugs, hence the preference for simpler solutions. But yes, you could specify a timeout in either case.

@Cerberus :)

@Lawrence Sure, but a very simple timeout should have a low chance of bugs...

async can be fun (in JS jsbin.com/jelaku/edit?html,js,console)

@Mitch - I can't express myself properly these days! What I meant to say is I agree that it isn't a real problem!

3:31 PM

I actually think synchronous and asynchronous are not the most transparent terms.

How about serial and parallel?

Or even interrupting and background, for laymen?

@Cerberus There's also the hassle factor. Imagine having to type the letters uppercase in full each time you type an uppercase letter. It works, but won't you prefer to just type it directly, even if the long way helps to distinguish uppercase I from lowercase l?

Absolutely!

Autohotkey can help you with that, it can simplify and automate almost any repeated operation.

But, sure, if the timeout is an extra thing you have to write, then that is a disadvantage, proportional to the time and complexity of the writing.

I disagree in the impossibility of it not being a problem

That's three negatives.

parsing error

Typical programs have many lines of code, most of which are usually of the 'on-hold' type (sequential execution). Managing timeouts for each line would add a lot of extra code, and also tend to obfuscate the intended meaning in the source code.

3:36 PM

you prefer what? throwing errors?

@Cerberus They are called blocking and non-blocking calls. Blocking calls are the ones that keep the caller 'on-hold'.

@Lawrence Oh, I thought typical programmes were a single line of code.

and freeze the current thread though

@Lawrence In all seriousness, that's why I was thinking a simple, short prefix or suffix in order to make a line parallel would be nice, to be used when you need it.

@Lawrence Ah OK, now I understand your initial line. Those terms are fairly clear.

that's what some libaries do, but the syntax of the code is different

3:39 PM

> The top executives at Google, Facebook and Yahoo, which had been at the centre of the most damaging surveillance revelations, sent security officials to the event rather than attend in person, a decision that was seen as a snub for the president’s attempt to show a strong united front.

@Cerberus Heh. No, I think you were thinking of command-line instructions - equivalent to something like a GUI's single mouse click. Those are like "Print shop, go print my book. Give me 10 copies." The programs are more like the 10000-page novel.

It's funny how the old rules of diplomacy are still very much alive and functioning.

@Lawrence I was joking!

Oh. Ok. :)

Matt E. Эллен

@Cerberus but why send an executive? what do they know about security?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus serial and parallel are also used. But usually synchronous and asynchronous refers to whether the invoker of the function has to wait for the result or not. It overlaps with, but is different from parallel programming.

Matt E. Эллен

3:42 PM

the presidents should be happy that the executives know that they are idiots, so sent people who know about security

@Lawrence At any rate, I understand now why you would call the button that you have to hold down "blocking" with respect to the programme that is your body's behaviour.

@MattE.Эллен Well, neither does Obama.

Matt E. Эллен

@Cerberus then they all meet up and noöne learns anything?

user208178

hello folks.

you can have serial/sequential async calls (one after each other) or parallels calls, it's like you want

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 But synchronous means "at the same time", and asynchronous "not at the same time". So that requires an extra step in one's thinking.

3:43 PM

@crl Which 'you'? If you were referring to my comment about managing timeouts, that was in the context of explaining why normal (sequential / non-parallel) function calls shouldn't be forced to handle timeouts. There's a place for throwing exceptions; horses for courses.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus well, not exactly, in programming. Sorta.

@MattE.Эллен Happy, but snubbed?

@MattE.Эллен Isn't how conferences normally go?

Matt E. Эллен

@Cerberus how is it snubbing to send the right person?

@Cerberus then this is progress

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 That's what makes it slightly confusing.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus When you call a synchronous function, it happens right then while you wait.

When you call an async function it happens at some other time. You don't have to wait for it.

3:45 PM

@Cerberus Plus the word-play with the other use of 'blocking' in the context of cisterns. But this way leads down the gurgler, so I'll leave this train of thought here. :P

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

If there's a way to wait for it, waiting is synchronous.

@VitaminC Hi.

@MattE.Эллен Because importance trumps actual knowledge? The director of a company really doesn't want to hear that the technically knowledgeable person below him matter more than he.

sync means blocking until you get the answer, if you want

user208178

Hi @Lawrence!

3:46 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 But it doesn't happen at the same time as other lines.

So it is "at the same time as x", but "x" is not named, so that's why you can interpret synchronous in different ways.

@crl True, but sequential programs / processes is also used in Hoare's CSP sense.

@Lawrence Hah!

That is a nice penepreterition.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus it happens at the same time as you call it.

Well, I would presume that it happens only after the call has been made.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

No, it happens while the call is made.

3:48 PM

When you're still pronouncing the function's name, it can't know that it's being called yet.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

calling a function is a multi-step process.

Only once you have finished pronouncing its name does it know to run towards you.

And/or lick your face.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

it's like a telephone call. First you dial. Then the person answers. Then you chat. Then you hang up.

@Cerberus Wait, ODO / google doesn't recognise that word. Link to definition, please?

I suppose, if you interpret it as a phone call.

3:50 PM

@Cerberus :)

@Lawrence Paene = "almost"; praeteritio = "passing by something": when you say "I'm not going to say x" (you have actually said x).

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus No, I interpret it as a function call. I'm comparing it to a phone call.

@Cerberus Ah. :)

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I know.

It's just that in my mind I compare it with calling a dog.

No idea why.

Matt E. Эллен

@Cerberus then what is the point of the meeting at all?

3:52 PM

@MattE.Эллен There isn't any!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus yeah... calling a dog is an asynchronous process.

It's just an ego festival.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Or you could just call it 'on-hold' :P .

Matt E. Эллен

@Cerberus I see.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Not if you can't proceed to the next step until the dog has arrived!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

3:53 PM

@Lawrence dammit! no! That metaphor is bad for reasons! ;)

@Cerberus waiting for the dog is synchronous.

@MattE.Эллен I think many meetings are just rituals to confirm what has been negotiated and agreed on earlier through other media.

Matt E. Эллен

@Cerberus other people, man.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yeah.

@MattE.Эллен That too.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Ouch. Licks wounds.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Lawrence are you licking them synchronously or asynchronously?

3:55 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Synchronously, of course. It's too much coordination overhead otherwise.

async sequential vs parallel in js: jsbin.com/hokuruz/edit?html,js,console

@Cerberus Found it - apophasis, with a whole bunch of synonyms. Fitting, I suppose, for such a word to have many ways of saying it ... without actually saying it.

@Lawrence So you have more than one head too?

@Lawrence Right! So many synonyms.

4:12 PM

@Cerberus I had to think for a while about that. No, asynchronous licking of wounds could require producing saliva, packaging and storing it, then arranging for it to be delivered, then applying contact between tongue and wound, closing mouth while waiting for said tongue to complete its job; then debugging the cause of the new wound (found on tongue, caused by teeth), etc. Synchronous licking of wounds is much simpler. :)

I thought this was a simple question about the passive voice. "I am about to close the door." -> "The door is about to be closed." There appears to be some disagreement. Would anyone care to comment via the link?

@Lawrence If you're damaging you're tongue, you're not a proper dog!

@Cerberus I just realised your icon isn't a parrot / cockatoo (beak near bottom, eye near bottom-left, three locks of feathers on top). Now it looks nothing like a bird. The psychology of perception is weird.

@Cerberus Proper dogs lick synchronously. Wait, I'm not a proper dog.

I find 'readme' files a bit too imperative, should be named 'mayreadme', 'havefunreadingme'

@JohnLawler You say that only a sentence with a single verb can be passivised. Can you motivate that? I agree with you that there may be two verbs to passivise if the sentence contains two transitive verbs, but that's not an issue when there is only one transitive verb in the sentence. — Cerberus 19 secs ago

@crl They're now the declarative FAQ, or on StackExchange, the exclamatory help.

4:24 PM

@Lawrence !!!

@crl Haha true.

@Cerberus No offence intended. I need new glasses, it seems.

growls

licks

nice doggy

nice doggies

drolls

random fact: eating colorful vegetable or fruit is great for your eyes, I hope they won't be killed by screens

I was just talking with someone whose family is training a seeing-eye dog. It's amazing the things they can be trained to do - such as alerting their owner to oncoming vehicles; not marking territory while walking, etc.

@Cerberus Do you agree with the conversion to passive voice that I proposed, or have I missed something?

4:33 PM

I think I agree.

Ok, thanks.

Nice chatting with you; bye for now.

Adios!

2 hours later…

6:28 PM

@anongoodnurse I guess if people want to 'fix' it, like trying to 'cure' a bronx accent, then it's a 'problem' that needs a trained 'specialist', who knows who to 'correct' behaviors like 'overuse' of ''''.

@Cerberus Those are well planned meetings. A badly planned meeting is where people try to decide there. A good meeting is where everybody arrives already prepared to agree with the decision already made.

@Mitch Well, I'd say it depends. If you a controversial point to decide on and opposing parties, of if there are many parties, then it is as you say.

1 hour later…

Matt E. Эллен

7:47 PM

i wise to youre tricks bakery window.

Tweeted by ProBirdRights on May 25, 2016 at 7:02 PM

8:08 PM

Moderators, here? Nowadays I don't see "closed as general reference". Why?

Is that banner removed now?

Now there's only "closed as off-topic" for genref questions.

@NVZ It's "off-topic: Please include the research you've done, or consider if your question suits our English Language Learners site better. Questions that can be answered using commonly-available references are off-topic."

That's a subcategory of off topic.

Other off topic subcategories include "off-topic: proofreading" and "off-topic: primarily opinion-based".

8:37 PM

@MετάEd I know about the current close reasons, but I'm asking about that particular banner "closed as general reference" with those words exactly. Is it now gone?

@NVZ It was absorbed into "off-topic: research" which includes questions that could have been answered using commonly-available references.

I don't know exactly when that happened, there is probably an announcement or article on it in Meta but I can't find it.

Hello everyone. Is this sentence correct?

"All I can say is that everyone of them has had a tremendous impact on me."

Should "everyone" be "every one"?

Or is it correct as it stands?

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