English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

4:27 AM

@JohanLarsson "Comparing Windows OS to houses."

Or homes.

5:34 AM

When Bush says "Americans are asking, who attacked our country?", doesn't it remind you of Eric Cartman in South park?

Watch @0:54
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CSPbzitPL8

Noah

7:44 AM

Hi

@JasonMarsh LOL.

He must have watched that Eposidoe right before his speech.

By the way Bush seems to claim that he graduated from Yale, while I heard that he dropped Yale.

At least that's waht you I gathered from his book.

By the way Bush seems to claim that he graduated from Yale, while I heard that he dropped Yale.

@JohanLarsson

Hi

How's it going in Sweden?

Animesh Pandey

11:32 AM

This is a TOEFL related question. In the speaking section they ask about "You fav. book and why?". By books they mean only novels or any kind of books even comics, picture books etc.

12:19 PM

Jasper in the news.

12:46 PM

それはほんとに面白いです。

@AnimeshPandey interpret it how you like. they want to test your ability to use the language, so talk about something you know a lot about.

@MattЭллен Jasper knows a lot about Barbie dolls, apparently. I await his dissertation.

@Robusto I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

I don't know. I read about Barbie dolls with a sense of foreboding and fear.

Who doesn't enjoy foreboding and fear? Isn't that how everyone feels at all times?

12:56 PM

Things are always in a parlous state.

Mar 17 '11 at 23:51, by Robusto

Oh, by the way, this whole thing in Japan reminds me of a great quote from Will Durant:
"Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice."

which thing in Japan?

I think I was talking about the tsunami and the Fukushima reactor incident.

ah

1:23 PM

Hello.

Social/welfare expenditures as a percentage of GDP.

Hello.

all the grey places have been depopulated due to overspending on social welfare

Yeah. It's only a matter for time before red and yellow will explode.

ticking time bombs of social reponsibility

Yeah.

What's next, the Swedish Crown Princess marrying her gym instructor? The English Crown Prince marrying someone named Middleton?

Wait, those things have already happened.

Doom is upon us!

Doom!

1:34 PM

> I was feeling bad so people told me, "Cheer up, things could be worse." So I cheered up and, sure enough, things got worse.

The red army!

HaHa.. Watching news on North Korea is like comedy shows released every now and then. Just about 2 weeks ago North Korea made their own Smart phone to compete their rival South Korea and this time made an agreement to help Syria start a war with USA!! =D...

@Robusto I thought you had a new job...

@JasonMarsh Hello. What agreement is that?

@Cerberus I do. That was a joke, and in quotation form.

Agreement to help their allies to attack USA. Every other countries don't want another war but North Korea is opposite and wants some war

1:37 PM

@Robusto I was wondering about what mood could inspire you to post a joke like that...but no.

@JasonMarsh Well, that seems extremely unlikely. Neither country has the means to attack America, and North Korea doesn't have the will.

@Cerberus mood <=> doom. You people were talking about doom.

Ah.

So that was it.

> Historian Robert Paxton argues that the welfare state was created primarily by conservatives, and usually opposed by socialists and labor unions because they thought it would distract from their mission.

> ... Paxton goes on to argue: "All the modern twentieth-century European dictatorships of the right, both fascist and authoritarian, were welfare states…. They all provided medical care, pensions, affordable housing, and mass transport as a matter of course, in order to maintain productivity, national unity, and social peace."

It is true that totalitarian régimes usually try to do some good things for their citizens in order to keep them under control.

On the other hand, the largest growth in our welfare state occurred 1960–1980.

Do countries marked with red have more welfare expenditures than blue ones?

in the grand tradition of people who've taken the day off, I'm going to eat soup and drink iced tea

Bye!

@JasonMarsh Yes, that's welfare expenditures as a percentage of GDP.

Forms of government. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Forms_of_government.svg

1:51 PM

Korea has so little welfare expenditures =( But our health care is extremely cheap

@Cerberus I like purple government.

You'd like to be an absolute monarch, huh?

Of this room?

Where do you get that?

I wish Saudi Arabia sank into the sea.

@Robusto You probably need to go to an arms dealer.

Maybe we mean different colors. I think you think I mean maroon.

Let's say I like cornflower blue governments.

Or lavender. I don't know. It's your map.

1:58 PM

Are you colour blind?

►

Arabia is dark purple. Morocco is light purple.

@Cerberus No. I'm not even color blind.

Then which purple did you mean?

@Cerberus Arabia is more of a maroon on that map.

1:59 PM

Is your monitor colour blind, perhaps?

What are you carrying on about?

Arabia is very clearly and definitely dark purple on my screen.

This is maroon to me?

This is dark purple?

#3355DD

#5B2758 is what you call dark purple.

Yes.

3355DD is what I would call blue, possibly on the purple side of blue, but definitely a lot less purple than Arabia and Morocco.

So you like the 3355DD government?

Why?

Because it's pretty.

2:09 PM

Is it?

Maybe not to an Orangeman.

My favourite colour has always been green.

Yet when I told you I have green eyes you said yuk.

Oh, well.

I'm sorry to have insulted you.

2:22 PM

Wiki Articles — Statistics at 05:02, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
en 4,318,791
nl 1,694,854
de 1,626,368
sv 1,544,976
fr 1,422,608
it 1,060,701
es 1,042,429
ru 1,040,317

Woohoo we beat the Germans!

user87637

2:38 PM

@Cerberus My favourite colour is steelblue.

user87637

@Cerberus Woohoo, I speak English so I beat the Dutch!

@Jasper I know!

@Jasper GRRR...

Is that all it takes to beat the Dutch? Don't all the Dutch speak English?

In secret, we also own en.wiki.

Limerick Machine: There once was a man on the floor Who just couldn’t take any more He screamed out aloud To …

bbl

user87637

2:47 PM

Today a very fat woman stood in front of me on the train. Her boobs were HUGE.

user87637

The problem with the questions on ELU is that they can be interpreted in so many ways.

user87637

When I interpret it in one way, those who comment negatively have interpreted it another.

user87637

3:07 PM

The guys who answered the question on god/deity/divinity in Buddhism have no idea what Buddhism is. I provided an answer based on the question yet it got less votes, sad panda.

user87637

Perhaps the asker's knowledge on Buddhism is inadequate so he cannot appreciate my answer, lol.

user87637

The problem with answering such questions is that one ends up in a philosophical or religious discussion instead.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Good day!

user87637

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Ping ping!

Stack Exchange

3:42 PM

posted on September 02, 2013 by sgdi

There once was a man on the floor Who just couldn’t take any more He screamed out aloud To a small, growing crowd “I thought that this slab was a door!”

4:19 PM

@MattЭллен Yes, which means the English have already won.

@Cerberus lol

user87637

@MattЭллен Boo!

hi Jasper :)

user87637

I now have 800, 200 more to retire, LOL.

OK, well you'll have more time to answer questions when you retire

user87637

4:22 PM

Yes, that is right.

Has your retiring time come again?

user87637

Soon.

I see.

@Cerberus Way wee.

Better when embiggened.

user87637

Barrie is at it again. I hope he gets 100k soon.

4:26 PM

@tchrist Control+.

@Cerberus or control + mouse scroll wheel

►

@MattЭллен Yes, but it doesn’t improve the resolution.

@MattЭллен Yes.

@tchrist The revolution can improve itself.

user87637

My country feels like another country because half the population is foreigners, LOL. From China, India, Philippines.

4:27 PM

That’s a revolting thought.

And .svg doesn't have a resolution...

It's always sharp.

@Jasper Hey ho, Barbie Joe, what a doll you have you know.

@Cerberus How does that work? Vectors?

user87637

@tchrist I actually like them to come here. I think it makes this place better overall.

Yes. Does it not show up correctly for you?

4 hours ago, by tchrist

Jasper in the news.

4:29 PM

How else did you create the PNG?

@Cerberus I didn’t think to try.

@Cerberus Went to the source.

Being the .svg?

@Cerberus I’m not used to Command-Plussing stuff and it don’t getting icky.

The only thing is that an .svg loads slowly in my browser.

No: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/04/Forms_of_government.sv‌g/2000px-Forms_of_government.svg.png

user87637

4:30 PM

The thing about the questions here is there can be two questions in the title and another three in the body, making it five, LOL.

You never zoom in on web pages??

@Cerberus Mine too.

> Error generating thumbnail - The source file 'Forms_of_government.sv‌g' does not exist.

@Cerberus Not and have the graphics scale up without getting blotchy.

This is new to me.

Odd.

4:31 PM

@Cerberus What do you mean?

user87637

Actually, Math SE has the same problem, several questions in one.

A great many maps on Wiki are .svg's.

@tchrist What I get when I follow your link.

I know about scalable vector-based fonts. I hadn’t realized that we had actual "pictures"/graphics that worked like that in common use.

user87637

All I know about vector fonts is that they don't become blur when enlarged.

@Cerberus That’s peculiar.

I wondered what the whole svg was about. Never looked into it. Just knew that you can’t upload it to imgur.

Brain dropping packets en route to fingers.

This is a nice thing to learn, @Cerb.

Thanks.

4:35 PM

Good.

But, as I said, .svg's are slow to load for me.

Aren't they slow for you?

Especially when I zoom in on them.

They are slow, yes.

Like my fingers.

Did you notice at the top of that wikipage how differently the Brits use the word government compared with Americans?

No? Where?

Government has many sub-meanings...

Mitch

@Cerberus Whoa, really? starts working out

Good luck...

Agenda point 2: get monarchy.

@MattЭллен Turns out there is a huge difference between ⌘+ and Control-+ plus mouse spinner. The ⌘+ embiggens the svg losslessly, but the mouse spinner does not.

user87637

4:39 PM

@Mitch Aim to look like Taylor Lautner, LOL.

@tchrist oh. (I didn't mean the + key, by the way, just control and the mouse spinner)

Mitch

@MattЭллен yeah, wtf, the ones with color are the only ones that count?

> A government is the system by which a state or community is governed.[1] In British English (and that of the Commonwealth of Nations), a government more narrowly refers to the particular executive in control of a state at a given time[2]—known in American English as an administration. In American English, government refers to the larger system by which any state is organized.[3] Furthermore, government is occasionally used in English as a synonym for governance.

@MattЭллен Oh right, no + with the controlled mouse spinner.

@Cerberus Government in America means something different from what it means in the Isles of Britain.

> “There are three branches of government: the executive branch, the legislative branch, and the judicial branch.”

The executive branch is the current administration.

@tchrist That is a simplification, but I see your point.

The administration does not include non-executive branch officials.

It’s also illegal to serve on more than one of the three branches simultaneously.

4:44 PM

@tchrist how is your regex?

Government is used for the authority that has power in a state in Britain just as well.

@JohanLarsson There are many reading to that question.

pick one?

It is just that "administration" means something else in Britain and most of the world: book-keeping rather than government.

@Cerberus Government here includes law makers and judges, not just cabinet secretaries. Administration never means law makers or judges.

4:45 PM

I know all that.

@JohanLarsson Do you mean how are my regex skills?

And government can and is used the same way in Britain too.

user87637

I am the government of the world, LOL.

In addition to the more narrow meaning of "executive branch".

Which is less common in America.

Him again damn it.

4:46 PM

See?

@tchrist yes, I expect them to be godlike

@Cerberus Huh?

@JohanLarsson Very well.

What huh?

Government = all the powers (used in Britain and America).

user87637

I just watched Elysium, very good movie, you guys should catch it.

@tchrist I'm gonna wait till things slows down here and then harass you a bit with a q :)

4:47 PM

I believe "the government" means the cabinet in Britain, which is "the administration" in America.

1

Q: To Sit In On Something

According to dictionaries, "sit in on" should be used with meetings, discussions, and classes, but not any other general activity. So would the following be wrong? She sat in on him repairing his car. Repairing a car is definitely an activity, but not a meeting, discussion, or class. ...

Come on, that has all the hallmarks.

Government = executive power only (used in Britain, but less common in America).

Administration = executive power (unusual in Britain, common in America).

Administration ~= book-keeping (common in Britain, less common in America?).

Google ask me if I'm a bot everytime I search the last days, no idea why.

Do majoritarian parliamentary systems actually have “an executive branch”?

Their separation of powers is not as strict as ours, but sure.

user87637

@JohanLarsson You must have been searching the same terms repeatedly or searching very quickly.

4:50 PM

@Cerberus Administrative assistants are secretaries. Sysadmin are hackers.

@JohanLarsson Try.

I suppose you could say "cabinet" is a third definition of government, only to include ministers and secretaries of state.

@tchrist Yes, that sense of administrative. But could you ask, "who does the administration of/in your company?"?

@Jasper strange thing is that I have not even been in internet nor 3G-land the last month. And it does not stop asking if I'm a bot.

@Cerberus And attorneys general and such.

user87637

@JohanLarsson Oh oh, is there a virus?

Administration (government)

The term administration, as used in the context of government, differs according to jurisdiction. United States In American usage, the term refers to the executive branch under a specific president (or governor, mayor, or other local executive), for example: the "Barack Obama administration.” It can also mean an executive branch agency headed by an administrator: these agencies tend to have a regulatory function as well as an administrative function. On occasion, people in the United States will use the term to refer to the time a given person was president, e.g. "they have been ma...

4:52 PM

C’est quoi, ça?

@tchrist No, that was one of the first two definitions already.

Oh, it took a long time.

What took a long time?

The autoboxing.

@Jasper could be, dunno.

4:53 PM

I remove the ".m" from the URL.

@JohanLarsson Do it now.

BRB, putting out the rubbish.

@Cerberus Ah! What did it mean?

He’s rapid-firing spam now.

0

Q: Redesign As Product

A possible usage problem with "as": "The company redesigned product X into product Y." "The company redesigned product X as product Y." Sentence 1 shows that product Y came into being as a result of the redesigning process. Could the sentence 2 be ambiguous, because as gives the impressio...

grammar usage

user87637

@tchrist How do you know it is him? Google?

@Jasper No.

I can’t write about it openly.

user87637

4:55 PM

OK, no problem.

Let’s just say that my Bayes filter puts the probability at over 99%.

user87637

I know you have great computer skills.

I have an actual list of these things that I have mailed the moderators and a very few super-high-rep users.

No, it is not a matter of great computer skills.

You could do it manually with the checklist and the weighting.

user87637

Hmm, I think I know what you are thinking about, LOL.

I developed it because of getting a false positive once.

And being annoyed with myself.

Some are things we’ve talked about long ago here.

user87637

4:57 PM

I think he must be crazy, LOL.

Some are actually very subtle hidden things in the underlying markdown, things you cannot see without looking behind the curtains.

Of course he’s crazy.

user87637

Yeah, like me, LOL.

Multiple spammages every day for like 15 months.

That’s loony tunes.

However, it also means I have like 1,000 postings to train my machine-learning algorithm with.

These sorts of things just love all that data.

I tried negative lookbehind but failed to understand it I think.
`(?<!a)b` matches any `b` not prefixed by `a` as expected.
`(?<!a).` matches anything not prefixed by `a`
`(?<!a).*` breaks my flow, it removes the effect of the lookbehind thing

@tchrist The mobile site. The normal site loads slowly in my browser.

4:59 PM

@JohanLarsson Ah.

markdown broken

It is ok.

I understand, and I understand your problem.

I think the asterisk would apply to the entire thing?

I think we’ve all done that.

Writing (?<!a).* means are there 0 or more characters at some point in the pattern which do not have an a immediately behind them.

Which is true of all possible strings.

For example, in crap there are 4 possible matches.

The empty string at the start, c, cr, and the empty string at the end. Only p fails.

Wait, there are more, sorry. :)

Many more.

I get that it matches the whole string

5:04 PM

  DB<3> "crap" =~ /(?<!a)(.*)(?{print $1 || "EMPTY", "\n"})(*FAIL)/g
crap
cra
cr
c
EMPTY
rap
ra
r
EMPTY
ap
a
EMPTY
EMPTY

What is it that you want it to do?

That is the first question to ask.

I mean, what are the desired results?

Normally you need to change your dot into a negation.

I was asked for a regex that matches anything not pfefixed by function in the C# room, think the guy was writing some syntax highlighting for Lua

"not prefixed by function" meaning what? Example, please.

could not get it to work and was frustrated and sad :)

5:07 PM

(?x) (?: (?! forbidden) . )*

Something like that.

You have to show me an example.

testing

Lookarounds, especially lookbehinds, are kinda tricksy.

Because somehow they do not work they way we initially think they might.

I’ve been doing them for so long I forget what it is about them that people get backwards in their initial conception, but I think it is this very case.

I did have the same problem at first, too, but long ago subsumed it into my model.

@tchrist looks like you nailed it

So you want a bunch of things that aren’t forbidden, eh?

Ok.

Might add an /s if you want to cross newlines.

(?xs) etc.

Except in super-short regexes, I always use /x a.k.a. (?x) because I want to use whitespace inside the pattern to separate logical grouping to make it easier to read.

yes that is nice

5:11 PM

whenitallrunstogethermyheadspins

Comments are nice, too, if it gets lengthy.

But the logical separation of grouping into cognitively digestible parts is imprescindible.

I find unit tests a decent way to document regexes

What do you mean?

wrap the regex in a method and have tests for the method

That doesn’t document it. It just provides some testing.

And you don’t need to wrap it in a method if the regex is itself an object.

I see it as a sort of documentation

5:16 PM

I don't understand.

Mahnax

Good morning.

morning

Using named groups is often a good way to improve your regex’s readability.

Because that way you give names to your abstractions.

yes, can also make things less brittle ime

Right! Very good!

They are much less brittle with names instead of positional numbers.

5:19 PM

/x?

Quid facit?

The /x allows you to use white space and comments inside the pattern.

Ah...so then how do you write spaces?

In some systems, it has to be written not as /foo/x but rather as "(?x)foo". There are other ways, too, like Pattern.COMMENTS as an optional flag to the compiler.

/s?

I show you.

You mean a literal space?

5:21 PM

Yes.

You either escape it like "\ " or you use its hex \x20 or you use a property like \s or \p{whitespace}.

my $pat = qr{
    # this whole thing captures into the $+{string} group
    # and the $+{char} group.
    (?<string>
        (?: \S+ \h* | \S* )
        (?<char> \P{ASCII} )
        (?: \h* \S+ | \S* )
    )  # end string group
}x;

Oh, that \h is horizontal white space, so either spaces or tabs. I would have used \s if I had wants to include vertical white space, too.

You can run it in a while loop with /g to pull out repeated matches.

Or just assign to a list to get them all.

next if / \A \s* \# /x;

That’s an example of using spaces inside via \s.

I had to escape the pound sign so it was a literal not a comment, because of the /x.

I was just skipping comment lines.

So optional leading whitespace and then a pound sign.

Like /^\s*#/.

Here’s an example that pulls out two positional groups:

            my($short_prop, $long_prop) = $line =~ m{
                \b
                 ( \p{Lu}  \p{Ll}   ? )
                \s +
                 ( \p{Lu} [\p{L&}_] + )
                \b
            }x;

See, I use /x all the time, even without comments. It helps me see the pattern in the pattern, so to speak.

But you see where I used \s+ rather than "\ +".

I could have used "\ +" too, but I wanted any whitespace, not just literal blanks.

Those \p{propname} thingamajiggers are abbreviated Unicode properties.

Like \p{Lu} for \p{Uppercase Letter}.

Which is actually \p{General Category = Uppercase Letter}.

I find \p{Lu} easier to type, albeit somewhat cryptic.

@tchrist sir, thank you for this lesson! I promised gf to drive her to the shop, so afk for a while now.

Sure, thanks for asking.

@tchrist Right.

@Cerberus Hah. We aren’t in person so I didn’t get any conversation cues, so I just kept going like a bunny with a battery. :)

5:31 PM

You always do. It's OK.

It isn’t like that in person. There just aren’t any nonverbal cues here.

Well, maybe it is. :)

@Cerberus it is > ok imo!

Duplicate of this question. — tchrist 3 mins ago

If at first you don’t succeed, spam spam again.

A: What should a reply to "What's up?" be?

5:51 PM

1

An infinite variety of molecules, waves, the vacuum of space and sub-atomic particles we may or may not have discovered yet - stretching to an infinite end or in some theories warping into a donut shape as Stephen Hawking has conjectured. What's up with you?

I have some pity on the people who put funny non-answers in.

They aren’t reppy enough yet to comment properly.

6:02 PM

@MattЭллен what is it?

Shiny.

6:17 PM

Yup, that about sums it up

KitFox

yawns

Is that what the scan pattern looks like?

Cliteracy is in vogue.

Cliteracy? Really? It’s cute but gosh.

I’ve just done my good deed for the day.

I went through the review queues with 10 close voting, 4 first posts, 5 low quality, and copyedited every single one of them to make them read or look better, have better tags or titles, etc.

@KitFox You could start offering courses in Comparative Cliterature.

cliteracy, cliteracy hour, cliteral, cliteralism, cliteralist, cliteralistic, cliterality, cliteralization, cliteralize, cliteralizer, cliteralizing, cliterally, cliteral-minded, cliteralness, cliterarian, cliterarily, cliterariness, cliterarism, cliterary, cliterary editor, cliteraryism,
cliterary property, clitera scripta, cliterata, cliterate, cliterati, cliteratim, cliteration, cliteratist, cliteratize, cliterato, cliterator, cliterature, cliteratus, clitter, clitterae humaniores, clittérateur, clittératrice, clitter box, clittered, clitterer, clittering, clitter tray, clittery.

Mmm clittératrice.

Not to mention enclitic, postclitic, proclitic, synclitic, anaclitic.