English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

2:45 PM

@tchrist What is an "antilope"? A device that prevents loping?

@RegDwighт Nastier than what, a Kiselyova?

RegDwighт

Certainly not robuster than Robusto.

Robustier — for robots with boobs.

@RegDwighт No one could be robuster than that.

@MattЭллен No robot boobs in ELU chat.

BTW, @Matt, I still can't log in to that site. SO's auth mechanism is a boatload of fail.

3:02 PM

that sucks. I guess @waiwai will have to contact the devs

It's not the first time it's happened. When I try to log in to chat from other devices it will put me through that runaround. I have to go to the main chat login link, which Jasper referred me to, in order to get around the obstacle.

But this ain't that.

3:35 PM

AÍ! A BALROG HAS COME! And quite a few Nortonn S questions lack just one deletevote. For The Shire!

@MετάEd my votes are cast

KitFox

@MattЭллен giggles like Candace on the verge of busting her brothers

4:12 PM

@KitFox wished he knew who Candace was

I googled "candace brothers" and found this

And I'm pretty sure that's who @kit meant

and now Google is creeping me out

lol

I see, from fineas and furb

or however that's spelt

4:27 PM

yeah.

KitFox

►

Phineas and Ferb.

I made the mistake of showering before writing.

Now I'm thinking of all the other things I could do, like get fast food for lunch.

Oh well. I guess I will do that. It will be fun and fattening and then Matt is sure to get ahead.

I'm also making cake today.

Later!

@MattЭллен Really, why are people so interested in complicated semantic derivatives of Schadenfreude, when Schadenfreude is pretty complicated enough. LIke Munchhausen's syndrome by proxy, too many levels of emotional references.

"I get sick everytime I think of 'Munchhauusen's syndrome by proxy'"

@KitFox my plan is working!

What's the name of -that- disease?

@Mitch That's hypchondria

4:40 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 no it's for the particular sickness when thinking of that other particular sickness.

OK, it also includes the sickness of leaving out vowels of Greek derived psychiatric terms.

argh.. beat me to it. argh. no you didn't.

@Mitch There is a word for people who get sick whenever they think of another disease. That's "hypochondria".

Apparently it's common in med school.

Every time you learn about a new disease, you start thinking you have it.

and psychology students

pharmacy students too

5:09 PM

for psychiatry students, they're right.

I'm ranting because all these people are asking for a term for ' a feeling you get when thinking of other people having a feeling about you'. That's crazy.

@cornbreadninja A situation? and people talking about it? OK, name the context, and then label the roles of two people speaking. We'll generate dialog for you.

For example: Situation - Plane about to go crash in flames; characters - mom-divorced, teen age daughter, strained relationship, visiting in-laws (but not husband, who is in an army hospital in Iraq) Thanksgiving. scene start - one engine just exploded and the plane is starting to plummet.

- on your mark...go!

Oh. Everyone is over at the writing room.

5:26 PM

@Mitch no no, I want to write the dialogue and need a topic.

@Mitch oh crap!

Hugo

6:27 PM

Do we also want hats?

hats?

I see no reason why not

7:42 PM

@KitFox that's a weird little laugh

8:01 PM

@cornbreadninja asked and answered. get crackin'. that plane is about to...um..land.

@Mitch: The point is, literary references aren't like pop-culture references. They're fair game among the literati, and probably we should include readers of the Times in that category. I'm just advising the OP that he shouldn't necessarily expect the average person to understand. I personally wouldn't reference Count Vronsky, or Daisy Buchanan, or Morris Townsend unless I was sure I was addressing someone who was likely to have read widely. — Robusto 2 hours ago

8:17 PM

@Robusto: I see what you mean. It's just that Ayn Rand isn't considered literature of the same caliber as Tolstoy, or...those others. It's pot-boiler romance with a lot of sophomoric philosophical rants.

Wait...no...tell me Tolstoy isn't like that.

George Edison

If someone hired me as a contractor, what would their relationship be to me?

ohhhh. I know this.... client!

if you are a contractor, you have clients

George Edison

8:41 PM

Thanks.

8:57 PM

@Mitch That don't mean nothin'. If someone was widely read, they'd have read it. Hell, I read Bright Lights, Big City just to see why everyone was reading it. Same with George R. R. Martin's stuff. Ya gotta read somethin', and Tolstoy ain't writin' no more.

Q: Believable (but easy) Old English

9:11 PM

0

Do you know any "shortcuts" to translating passages of my story into believably sounding Old English? I mean, without taking a full school course? A crash course? An automatic service? A phrase book? A group of enthusiasts who will do it for free? I don't insist on a zero-effort solution, but le...

resources language

Olde English for Dummyes

in a few hundred year, they'll have to name their language Future English

@MattЭллен U speak that on teh Internetz.

@Robusto With jet packs.

and dressed in silver spandex

@MattЭллен You wish. No flying cars, neither.

:(

but at least we have portable communications devices

9:26 PM

Yeah, we asked for flying cars and jet packs and they gave us Facebook and Twitter.

aye

I would trade them both for just a jet pack. Hell, I'd trade them both for a hamburger.

Quite. Food is more important than all the tweets in Christendom.

JSBձոգչ

there is no more christendom. they shut it down and opened a wal-mart in the old building.

Yay!

JSBձոգչ

9:29 PM

it has prettier windows than the average walmart

People go to Wal-Mart to worship money.

Idolaters!

Idollarters!

9:46 PM

Always idollaters. Always.

hey @MattЭллен

Can you tell me if my dialogue is formatted correctly?

It's on mah tumblr.

weal doe

splendid!

it's quite rough.

Looks fine. good indenting!

@MattЭллен thank you, sire

you're welcome m'lady

A: How offensive is to call a girl "Barbie doll"? Why?

9:55 PM

0

I'm The definition of barbie bitches

barbie bitches? Is this a new range?

just a missing comma

commutes

but then fun's in the pun!

time for bed. toodle pip

ta!

Cerberus

10:23 PM

@JSBձոգչ It's not from my game, but it looks exactly like Flemeth, whom I tried to defeat earlier (but I failed).

It must be Flemeth.

I didn't like that plot twist, by the way, if you remember.

A: What would you (negatively) call a person who insists on repaying even a small amount of money?

11:08 PM

2

I would call such a person overly or obsessively proud, or possibly haughty. But it would depend on the culture. Such a practice is considered normal in Japan, for example, where the concept of on (face) requires it.

I'm puzzled. Why would this get a down vote after two years?

Perhaps we have a serial downvoter who applies a ⬇ to anything that has the word negatively in its title?

It cancels that other guy who always gives anything with positively his ⬆.

I dunno. I think someone is trying to make a statement, choosing the least objectionable questions to do it.

Uh, what statement?

That it's personal.

Has this been happening a lot?

Wait, let me look at your answer.

11:13 PM

It's better than the accepted answer, which is crap.

Really? Fastidious seems more in the right direction than haughty to me.

Although that isn’t quite my favorite choice either.

Conscientious? Honorable? Meticulous?

I am not sure there is enough context in the OP.

Someone who does this and makes a show out of it has a different problem, and agenda.

It's about the principle, not the amount. That makes it a matter of pride.

@Robusto Maybe for no research citations :-) Not my downvote though.

What, all your answers have research citations? Let me look ...

But someone who quietly pays you back for something you paid for for him when he was unexpectedly short on cash is simply doing the honorable and respectable thing, albeit not necessarily the expected one.

It shows that he remember small favors, and does not presume upon your friendship.

That is not a freeloader.

A: What is a "crypto-portrait"?

11:17 PM

7

Crypto-portrait is an art history term for a portrait of a person which is not identified as such. For example, the painting below is Dance of Salome, 1452–1457, by Fra Filippo Lippi. Some art historians suspect this “Salome” is a crypto-portrait: a likeness of Lippi’s mother.

Pictures ain't citations. Busted!

2

A: The usage of slander, defame, vilify, and calumniate

In some contexts, these words are interchangeable, but each has a different shade of meaning. Calumniate means to falsely or maliciously accuse, especially of a crime. Defame and slander mean to spread tales about a person so as to damage their reputation, but defame refers more to the intended ...

No citation. Denied!

@Robusto Sorry, I’m afraid I cannot bring myself to downvote that one.

@tchrist I didn't ask anyone to downvote it. I'm just countering @MετάEd's silliness.

Meanwhile, wife home, dinnertime. Later.

Chow down. Or up.

I am more than willing to cop to being as lazy as Robusto.

I don’t understand why he thinks there’s some personal vendetta against him going on. Those things always get caught.

It must be happening to him a lot for him to think it is personal, in which case it will be apprehended and reversed.

Well, unless. . . .

►

11:37 PM

@KitFox Your blog posting has your apostrophes going the wrong way. You somehow seem to have used U+2018 LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK instead of U+2019 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK. Compare: Sarah’s vs Sarah‘s.

I’m also quite disappointed that you’re trying to propagate the silly notion that one pronounces an apostrophe. More children have had their English forever ruined by that nonsense than by being taught that shit is now a strong verb. Pronunciation is key. You should lead by example. I know I do.

@MετάEd Are you using my unifrac program to generate those? :)

@tchrist To generate Ûnıcöde in posts you mean?

Well, yes, but not that way. It’s for setting fractions.

macbook# unifrac 7/16
⁷⁄₁₆
macbook# unifrac 7/16 | uniquote -v
\N{SUPERSCRIPT SEVEN}\N{FRACTION SLASH}\N{SUBSCRIPT ONE}\N{SUBSCRIPT SIX}
macbook#

Ah. I do it by hand.

And how’s that icy hill on the way to school? :)

I have a keyboard with 16 keys and I simply chord the bits.

I guess I need another 8 eventually.

11:50 PM

I have a keyboard with 88 keys, but it doesn’t do Unicode.

Sometimes I cheat and use Morse codes.

Also I count in binary on my fingers.

What happened to your dip switches?

I've considered going to ternary but that gets complicated.

Some things are trans-tedious to key in a mano.

@tchrist I have these:

11:52 PM

macbook# echo and now we are in little letrae | unicaps
ᴀɴᴅ ɴᴏᴡ ᴡᴇ ᴀʀᴇ ɪɴ ʟɪᴛᴛʟᴇ ʟᴇᴛʀᴀᴇ

macbook# echo and now we are in little letrae | leo
əɐɹʇəן əןʇʇᴉן uᴉ əɹɐ əʍ ʍou puɐ

A ten? You have a ten? Gosh. Besides the LSI-11s, I only went back to the 45s.

Your ʇs have descenders.

On fait ce qu’on puisse.

I do, and it runs LUNAR.BIN loaded from paper tape using the teletype reader.

If you’ve a better inversion for t, lemme know.

I think inverting letters is not the job of Unicode.

11:55 PM

Well duh. This is for fun, not for codez.

        tr [abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzɐqɔpəɟ⅁ɥᴉ□ʞlɯuodbɹƨʇnʌʍxʎ□]
           [ɐqɔpəɟ⅁ɥᴉ□ʞlɯuodbɹsʇnʌʍxʎ□abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz];

        tr [ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZɐqƆpƎℲ⅁ɥI□ʞ⅂ƜИOdbᴚƨʇnɅMX⅄□]
           [ɐqƆpƎℲ⅁ɥI□ʞ⅂ƜИOdbᴚsʇnɅMX⅄□ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ];

Leonardo is so clever he even properly handles diacritics:

macbook# echo Ûnıcöde  | leo
əpo̤ɔıu∩̬

This font does something wicked with my intersexion!

As long as I am bragging, I bought gasoline today for $ 2.99/gallon.