English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2014-08-21 (page 4 of 4)

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3:05 PM

@RegDwigнt Pah, I had 81, almost there

Hellow

@Gigili Invest in an air-conditioner?

@tchrist I always get those for my BD.

@tchrist Exactly

Is it one of @RegDwigнt's I don't hear you days?

Invest in a Celcius thermometer. Immediate drop in numbers.

@RegDwigнt But then I’d have to reset all my clocks.

-35

Q: Are there friendlier alternatives to Stack Overflow?

I have been using Stack Oveflow for a year now, and here's what I've learned: Lots of people downvote and don't provide a reason. Lots of snarky, unprofessional comments are made, especially from users that have a higher reputation than the OP. Lots of people who say "You should do X" but then ...

discussion support

Not to be too negative or anything, but –35 is pushin’ it.

3:10 PM

Friendly.stackoverflow.com

snark-snarks

@tchrist see, and that's why people don't even look at SO anymore. Because whether or not that post is justified, it leaves a bad aftertaste either way.

Just picture someone asking you ten times a day why donuts taste like shit. Soon enough they'll force you to associate donuts with shit against your will and better knowledge.

2

Cf. Pavlov 1927.

3:30 PM

Commute.

Matt Эллен

me too

me tree

3:44 PM

Aww, everybody leaves just as I finish my morning's task.

@tchrist The first rule of Stack Overflow is: you do not diss Stack Overflow. The second rule of Stack Overflow is: you do not diss Stack Overflow. The third rule of Stack Overflow is: the SO community is notoriously thin-skinned, and does not handle any whiff of criticsm gently.

Fools.

@Robusto Do you know what it means?

@JohanLarsson Yeah. It means the guy is dying.

4:02 PM

But is it just words and the context gives the meaning?

@JohanLarsson What else?

The "long black cloud" is a metaphor for death.

Lunch!

Ah, my enemy has left the chat.

The enemy of your enemy could be anything

I have several enemies on SE.

@tchrist Only true summits have 720° . The rest are pretenders.

Which is your enemy here? I hope it's not Hugo ;)

4:11 PM

I could not sleep. I should go back to sleep in a while.

Sleep is great when it works.

@Mitch Are you really Hugo?

Ha ha...of course not. I barely know Hugo (though that doesn't eliminate the possibility that we're the same).

What gave you that idea?

tchrist spoke as if he knew your secret.

I don't know what secret it is, so I guessed you have another user account.

Nope. I don't know what the secret is either. Maybe it's that I can see my house for that vantage point.

4:15 PM

@RegDwigнt I could not bring myself to read through it all.

@Mitch You get 720° by taking the 360° circle which as a plane surrounds you as ’twere a hula-hoop lying upon the X-Y plane, then geminating it with another 360° circle rotated 90° through the normal (Z-axis) as ’twere a circular doorframe that you stand within, your arms and legs extended in a classic X formation. 360° + 360° = 720°. Finis.

but 90°? Did you just lie on your back? or did you stand on your toes and twist?

Now you have clouds eastwards, southwards, westwards, northwards, upwards, and downwards of you.

@Mitch Only the orientational hula-hoop rotates, not you. Preferably.

oh. hula hoop lies at feet

@tchrist Clouds below makes me feel weird. like mental vertigo.

@Mitch Goodness gracious! However could you think such a foul thing of such a sweet guy? Seriously!

Two nice guys can be enemies. At least that's what the counselors tell me. For every relationship.

4:30 PM

@Mitch If you think that’s bad, muse upon the fact that the sun sets at a point beneath you on your plane, so you look down upon the westering sun.

@Mitch So it is.

gets queasy

Hugo is a dear.

Is so is it possible in any variant of English?

So is it?

4:31 PM

I shall hear no unkind words against him.

@Mitch No, no, not in a question, and not with a comma.

@Cerberus Is that embedded in a larger sentence with words possibly fore, aft, or both, or do you mean as a single utterance, a single sentence?

@tchrist Hmm do we have someone who doesn't like Hugo?

@tchrist A complete sentence.

@Cerberus No, no, no, no, no. Mitch was jumping to sillinesses from his vertigo.

With the intended meaning.

O OK, good.

4:33 PM

@Cerberus So am I, so are you, so is he, and so is it.

Were it not so, I should have told you of this.

I said complete sentence.

With the intended meaning.

Which intended meaning might that be, eh?

That’s hardly a fair question without that bit.

That of so it is.

You can’t ask that.

You’ve just asked a nonsense question.

Or it is thus.

4:36 PM

That’s much different!

Ok.

> My hula-hoop and I are done with this silly place. I’m eager for a change of venue. So is it.

Do you now see why I asked you what you meant by “with its intended meaning”?

Of course. But I felt that my original statement was clear enough in context.

I obviously failed your clarity test.

8 mins ago, by Cerberus

@Mitch So it is.

Since I read it as a third-person equivalent to "As am I", not of "Thus am I".

@Cerberus There are no disagreements, just misunderstandings. You've obviously misunderstood me.

4:38 PM

@tchrist That wouldn't have made sense as a reply, would it?

@Cerberus I haven’t the foggiest. I’m a sentential peephole optimizer.

@Mitch Have I? How?

@tchrist "Christians in Iraq always have bad luck." — "So it is." A general confirmation of someone's description of a situation.

@Cerberus That one I’m less comfortable with. Something’s gone awry, but please do not ask me to say where.

You couldn’t say “Thus it is” there, either.

Well, it is slightly awkward in that context.

Because you would sooner echo the finite verb, "so they do".

Or "so they have".

But it is still intelligible.

@tchrist I believe thus does not attract inversion the way so can.

@tchrist actually, JL thinks I might be a sockpuppet of Hugo. Or him of me. or something not involving puppets. I don't know.

@Cerberus I'm having a hard time making it feel right and matching the meaning I think you want.

4:48 PM

@Mitch Are you?

If you're not, then neither am I.

@tchrist Oh. Huh. Sounds fine to me. Like 'So be it'. Hm... that really confuses things. But the fact is to me, 'so be it' and 'so it is' both sound right.

@Mitch Well, I would probably give myself the answer of "no".

@Cerberus So if you are then I am too.

That's a nasty Ourobouros.

@Cerberus You should talk to yourself more often. You could work things out, I'm sure of it.

4:50 PM

But I can be so unfriendly.

@Cerberus Why don't venomous snakes just die of themselves?

@Cerberus just act as though you care about ourself, that is the first step.

Why don't people talking about Android v. Apple die of boredom themselves?

> Thus began the first battle of the Valar with Melkor for the dominion of Arda; and of those tumults the Elves know but little.
Thus ended the Spring of Arda.
Thus began the Days of the Bliss of Valinor; and thus began also the Count of Time.
Thus did the great thief set his lure for the lesser.
Thus spoke Maedhros and Maglor and Celegorm, Curufin and Caranthir, Amrod and Amras, princes of the Noldor; and many quailed to hear the dread words.
Thus ended the mightiest of the Noldor, of whose deeds came both their greatest renown and their most grievous woe.

@Cerberus Thus am I the bearer of bad news.

Surely, any adverb can have inversion.

But it's not like so.

So is special.

@Cerberus So is so not special that I misread your point, so might you kindly reëlaborate it?

4:52 PM

@Cerberus I don't think that is possible (to die of boredom). It's like threatening to hold your breath. You can't do it.

Well, you can threaten all you like.

Don't you feel dead inside after listing to such a discussion?

@tchrist Thus the bearer I am of bad news... am I.

@Cerberus So?

@Mitch Would you could you with a spork?

@Cerberus Nope, that's worms. reminds self not to eat food that fell on the floor

I've got people on both sides of me on cell phones that are loud enough for me to hear the other side of the conversation.

4:55 PM

@tchrist If that word weren't already a word, you'd have to invent it.

I don't know how Android v. Apple is all that different from your constant squabbles with Mr. Shiny, and you seem to enjoy those.

2

Like the snake, we do not die ourselves from it, even though we kill others with it.

@KitFox Talk into your (non-working) cell-phone loudly saying that the NSA is recording everybody today. Just for testing purposes. For their safety.

Venom.

@KitFox which are literally about apple vs android right? or maybe Nexus?

@Cerberus I bet if people were venomous snakes, there'd be a wing in the hospital for people who accidentally bit themselves.

@KitFox people learn quickly to turn off their ringers and go out into the hall for conversations with their kids about potty habits.

5:03 PM

Right.

5:22 PM

Today's Listening | Electro (Mixsets day 21)

Limerick Machine: A wasp who was pissed off and old Was chasing down humans to scold It replied to the posts That...

posted on August 21, 2014 by sgdi

A wasp who was pissed off and old Was chasing down humans to scold It replied to the posts That annoyed it the most Its rampage goes on uncontrolled

Ok, I’m now greeked out for the day.

@Greduan You can think of the posted text in a variety of flexible fashions. I did not originally intend it to be four separate answers, but just a single quatrain. That why I rhymed good and terse with could be worse. However, the internal masculine rhyme in feet 2 and 4 of each line of iambic tetrameter makes them potentially usable individually, like your Spanish example had. Lines 1, 3, and 4 could each stand on their own, or lines 1+2 could stand alone as a couplet. Plus the inner quatrain nests in an outer one whose last foot is instead a dactyl in feminine rhyme. — tchrist 4 mins ago

5:44 PM

@Cerberus Sorry, that was Hugo speaking. He wasn't following the conversation very well.

2 hours later…

7:16 PM

I’m too fatigued to hunt the dupe:

0

Q: Compound subject whose parts are joined by "and" and verb agreement : when is the singular correct?

I am in doubt as to whether the subject-verb agreement of the second sentence of this paragraph is correct : Unfortunately, there is no such thing as the ideal home workshop because most people are limited by the space available and by their budget. However, the information and diagra...

Get some well deserved rest my friend.

7:38 PM

HI, folks. How do I initiate a chat room or separate chat with one of the other users? I think I need to go into a little more detail than comments are appropriate for.

Click on their avatar.

Okay. Did that. That takes me to their profile page. I'm literally working with only one eye here. What am I not seeing?

7:57 PM

Click on their picture, not their user name.

Avatar=picture

8:09 PM

A menu should pop up and look like this:
Jim
Stack Overflow
seen 49s ago, talked 22m ago
user profile
user profile on stackoverflow.com
Rooms
English Language & Usage
Actions
invite this user…
start a new room with this user
hide posts
ignore this user (everywhere)

@Jim click on the third from the bottom option.

Oh, I guess they have to be in cut already. I was looking at their profile page. Okay, I'll give it a try after I get him over here first.

in chat, I mean

Hello Jim, thank you for the chat invitation. I will be really happy to get some help with editing my question. I agree it may be unclear, but I think it is basically a rather good one and shouldn't be closed.

8:30 PM

@JamesC - I created a separate room for us to chat. Click you back button and find the Room for Jim and JamesC. Go there.

9:11 PM

Hi!

Hello!

@Cerberus how's the hangover?

Haha not too bad!

It seems we drank 8 beers, so about 2 litres.

icic

@KitFox Are you here?

@GnomeSlice why did you get a 6 month ban?

9:24 PM

It was a culmination of a bunch of stuff.

I don't remember exactly.

Cursing at people I think.

ya, that's a long time

some bullshit about how it was supposed to be a safe environment for everybody even though other people were being jackasses to me, just without cursing

Puritanism?

It's not the exact words that matter, but the message.

^listen to the expert :-)

i have learned a lot from him

I'm in chat with another user. We are discussing deletion of his question. He believes that there is a penalty for deleting questions (maybe for deleting too many questions). I wasn't aware of this. Can someone set me straight on this??

9:34 PM

I have never heard of such a thing.

Anonymous

209

Q: What can I do when getting "We are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account"?

Do not repost the question you were about to ask until you have READ EVERYTHING WE ARE ABOUT TO TELL YOU. While trying to ask a question, one could get: We are no longer accepting questions from this account. See the Help Center to learn more. Likewise, for answers: We are no longe...

support faq asking-questions post-ban

Anonymous

See the answer under the heading "Are deleted posts taken into account too?"

@snailboat Thank you :)

@Jim there is your answer

Yes. That's understandable now. Thanks. That's not a rule I would want to be familiar with :) I guess he's going to try to salvage his question. We'll see why happens.

9:50 PM

@skullpatrol Haha gracias.

You sir are both a gentleman and a scholar.

Not at all!

...and humble too :-)

10:08 PM

frowns

@ me?

Anonymous

Hmm. How do we aim frowns? Is it with our eyes?

Yes, we look at the frowned upon.

@Cerberus But you can't look at someone on the internet.

also true for the smiled at

:-D)))

vs

>8((

Anonymous

10:14 PM

So if you're blind, you can't aim your frowns.

Anonymous

Your frowns are out of control.

Anonymous

My housemate is legally blind. I should ask her about this.

good question!

@hichris123 Use your mind's eye.

@snailboat She can still look in your general direction.

And hope you see her frown.

your mind also has an ear, ie listening to your thoughts...

10:18 PM

Always.

user image

for those cases when your mind's eye^ fails you :D

Anonymous

10:31 PM

@Cerberus This is true.

And she knows you can see her, so her mind's eye can still target you.

Anonymous

0

Q: What is a theme in English

For English i need to "respond critically to a significant connection across four texts" using a theme. What exactly is a theme? My current understanding is that is the meaning behind the Film. The theme i made is "How the director changes the audience’s perspective on the insane" is this correct?

word-usage essay

Anonymous

When I saw the title, I thought they were going to ask about the theme-rheme concept used by some linguists and how theme might be expressed in English

Anonymous

But no!

much more basic

10:37 PM

Alas!

Although I use topic and focus for that; theme reminds me of the semantic role theme.

Anonymous

@skullpatrol Well, less linguistics-y.

Anonymous

I don't like the terms theme and rheme to be honest.

Anonymous

@Cerberus I've never been clear on why theme is used as a name for that semantic role

sounds like the OP wants more of a description/definition of a "motif"

imo

Anonymous

@skullpatrol Oh god, I just noticed what was going on in that picture :-)

10:40 PM

:-D))

> “In Greek, the suffix -ma added to a verb stem signifies the result or effect of the action expressed in the verb. Thus, phantasma signifies the object of fantasizing, politeuma means the act of politicizing (the political entity), rhema signifies the effect of speaking (the word), horama means the object of seeing (the view, as in ‘panorama’), and migma means the effect of mixing (the mixture).
The term noema then means the thing being thought or the thing we are aware of.”
From *Introduction to Phenomenology* - Robert Sokolowski.

> θέμα, ατος, τό, (τίθημι) that which is placed or laid down:
1. money deposited, deposit
...
III. case proposed for discussion, theme of an argument, Quint.4.2.28, D.L.7.78.

@snailboat So it is like a passive thing, something that is being acted upon.

Anonymous

10:57 PM

Ooh, once again my ignorance of Greek shows! :-)

Anonymous

Thank you

11:09 PM

Heh.

> The US Copyright Office, in a 1,222-page report discussing federal copyright law, said that a "photograph taken by a monkey" is unprotected intellectual property.

This office needs to be abolished.

Go write 1,222 pages about something useful.

11:22 PM

Copyright has failed.

@Cerberus Weird that they write about monkeys. Totally irrelevant.

Anonymous

Well, I'm sure both of you realize they probably wouldn't include it if it hadn't come up already

Oh dear!

Anonymous

I think the set of laws, regulations, case law, and other sorts of laws incorporated by reference should probably be reduced to something like 0.01% of its current bulk

Anonymous

But there has been at least one monkey-related copyright squabble in the public eye.

11:34 PM

@JasperLoy Yes, copyright has grown to become a monster, a Hydra.

@Cerberus Time for Cerberus to attack Hydra!

@snailboat Sure. But it shouldn't have, and the Office should have dealt with it summarily if at all.

@snailboat "Incorporated by reference", what does that mean exactly?

@JasperLoy I do what I can.

I will not pardon my sister.

Anonymous

11:53 PM

@Cerberus If you're writing legislation and you incorporate X by reference, then people must obtain a copy of X and follow it or refer to it (the precise relationship is obviously specified in context). For example, you could refer to an international standard and require people to conform with it, but this standard may be (and often is) copyrighted and not freely available, so in effect the whole of the law is no longer freely accessible

Anonymous

International standards tend to be good things, but you can incorporate all sorts of things by reference

Anonymous

You can delegate part of the actual regulation you, as lawmakers, are supposed to write to some unelected body who can update it when they please

Anonymous

Well, that's not to say all law would be freely accessible in the first place, but...

Anonymous

legalpad.legalresearch.com/who-owns-the-law

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