English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

hey

9:25 AM

Around 13k people rescued. Till thousands of people are stucked in floods.

in Jammu and Kashmir.

Jez

hello

hey

hi

Jez

where are you from @hey

hey

@Jez India

Jez

ah

hey

9:31 AM

Where are you from?

Jez

UK

i tell you what, you guys should be happy you're not in a country in the process of being ripped apart

with all its diversity and different languages, yet India seems to hold together fine as one country

yet Britain can't even manage to, though it shares the same damn language, culture, geography, etc.

and i have to put up with idiots in my office talking about how companies pointing out the real-world consequences of splitting up the UK is "nothing more than bullying"

they're not just unpatriotic, they're anti-patriotic

i really wish I knew how that psychology worked. Why doesn't Mumbai try and break away as a separate country? Why is it happy to be part of India?

Ice Boy

what about all the starving homeless people in India?

Jez

what about em? it's a poorer country, but getting better

hey

Indian main problem is population and corruption.

Jez

not to mention there's a myriad of rich countries i could give as examples of national unity. USA, France, Spain, Italy, Germany...

but not Britain, oh no, we have to have constant bullshit squabbles about breaking the country up. i don't get it.

i wish i lived somewhere else. :-(

Ice Boy

9:37 AM

move

Jez

easier said than done

hey

@IceBoy There are very less homeless in India!

Jez

i'd probably go for Canada or Australia

where are you, @IceBoy ?

hey

Because homeless people are people who have lost their home. Here some people are without home for generations.

Jez

both of you are in India??

hey

9:40 AM

I don't think Ice Boy is from India.

Andrew Leach

@Jez Well, Spain has Catalonia and the Basque Country.

Jez

which AREN'T separate countries.

QED.

Andrew Leach

But would dearly love to be.

Jez

but they're not. because the Spanish govt. isnt dumb enough to let them

Andrew Leach

In fact Catalonia is pressing for a referendum citing Scotland as a precedent.

Jez

9:42 AM

yeah i bet

and i bet they wont get it.

it's just so idiotic. there will be negative economic consequences north and south of the border and for what, so Salmond can get more goddamn power?

ugh.

makes me wanna puke

Andrew Leach

@Jez google.co.uk/search?q=catalonia+referendum

Jez

what's the frigging point in breaking up countries whose people share a language and culture?

reform the electoral system, fair enough, but being 1 country has all sorts of advantages

i hate these seperatists.

hey

People never want to be apart. This is all due to some leaders

Jez

@hey yeah, and some successful jingoism on their part

appealing to the greedy nature of some people, the xenophobic nature of others

if a US state were look at seceding, though, you think the people in the rest of the USA would just shrug?

RegDwigнt

amazon.com/dp/1608194752

Jez

9:49 AM

or you think they would call the separatists "traitors", "unpatriotic", etc

Andrew Leach

What happened with Quebec?

Jez

there wouldn't be much talk of their precious "self-determination", as there is with "the Scottish people" (by the way, what about the ~50% who votes no? If they are 49% i guess their self-determination aint worth shit)

@AndrewLeach still part of Canada AFAIK

Ice Boy

@RegDwigнt nice

Jez

and they have far less in common with the rest of Canada than Scotland does with Britain

Matt Эллен

@Jez Texans often see themselves as part of a separate county.

Jez

9:50 AM

thats why scottish independence is so insane

Matt Эллен

(i.e. Texas)

Jez

@MattЭллен yeah, but again: they're NOT.

that's the point

Matt Эллен

But they want to be and no one calls them traitors

Ice Boy

confederates?

Jez

anyway they would never describe themselves as Texan, they'd call themselves American

RegDwigнt

9:51 AM

@IceBoy they almost made the switch. But then the opponents found the magic word: Unamerican. It always works.

Matt Эллен

@Jez you'd be surprised

Jez

yeah, people in Texas who didnt call themselves American would be called Unamerican

Britain needed to integrate better. it's tragic that it didnt IMHO.

Ice Boy

@RegDwigнt patriotism does strange things to the brain

Jez

during the height of the British empire we should've renamed Scotland to North Britain and wales to West Britain

then there wouldn't be this idiotic scottish national identity

we'd be 1 happy country like France

RegDwigнt

What do you expect from people who still live in a kingdom.

Ice Boy

9:53 AM

:D

Jez

@RegDwigнt what's that got to do with it?

anyway the Scots want a kingdom. With a fat man as their king.

Matt Эллен

@Jez yes. of course! oppressing people will always make them happier. I forgot.

Jez

(some of them do, anyway... i feel sorry for the sane ones)

@MattЭллен bullshit, it's not oppression, it's integration

@MattЭллен or are the Bretons, the Provencals, the Normans, etc. "oppressed"?

Ice Boy

you want a melting pot like the US?

Matt Эллен

@Jez "You are not allowed to call your country Scotland. you are now "The North UK""

RegDwigнt

9:55 AM

@Jez Obviously if you can't even bother with renaming your country from "Fairytale La-la-land* into something more serious, you can't expect to be renaming parts of your country that already do sound way more serious.

Jez

@MattЭллен North Britain, yeah. integrate them like the French integrated their regions.

Matt Эллен

@Jez I don't know, but I bet they used to think so

Jez

@RegDwigнt uh, you think the UK sounds like fairytale la-la-land

anyway yeah, i would've renamed it Britain. the UK is a dumb name

in comparison

Matt Эллен

You're so unpatriotic

Ice Boy

Jez for Prez

RegDwigнt

9:56 AM

He is so Unkingdom.

Matt Эллен

This is the United Kingdom. anyone who disagree is against the country

Ice Boy

1 min ago, by Ice Boy

you want a melting pot like the US?

RegDwigнt

@MattЭллен Wait, since when do you care who disagrees and who doesn't? I thought you just spied on everyone anyway.

Jez

the US know how to integrate. Westminster apparently doesn't.

Matt Эллен

@Jez LOLOLOLOLOL #Ferguson

Jez

9:58 AM

in fact, almost all countries know how to integrate their cultural and linguistic kin!

@MattЭллен oh, Ferguson is a separate country now? i didn't get the memo

Matt Эллен

@RegDwigнt everyone except our own. we have the NSA do that

@Jez Ferguson is an example of how the United States has not integrated cultures

one of many

Jez

@MattЭллен they would mostly all call themselves American

Ice Boy

you call it integration I call it melting

Jez

that's pretty integrated

Matt Эллен

you idealise the external and condem the internal without having a balanced view of either

RegDwigнt

9:59 AM

@MattЭллен You sold off all the CCTV? Whoa, no wonder your budget is so strong.

Matt Эллен

@RegDwigнt yeah! it's syndicated on CBS, too

RegDwigнt

goes off to build his own CCTV to sell

Jez

@MattЭллен you're calling whether people are in the same country an 'external'?

anyway, even ignoring the patriotic aspect, scottish independence is a terrible idea.

Matt Эллен

@Jez I'm calling out your nonsense. The police in Ferguson say they're American. The people who live in Ferguson call themselves American, but they do not see themselves as integrated.

@Jez I agree

Jez

economically, it's stupid, and as for the SNP's green credentials? hah, funny how they vanish when it comes to North Sea oil

drill, baby, drill

and then they want to go for 100% wind power because they buy into the greenie nonsense that nuclear is "too dangerous"

so yeah, cover the scottish landscape in ugly wind turbines. i tell you, i'd take Farage over Salmond any day

but then im not some braveheart in a kilt

heard someone on the radio the other day saying that Scottish rationality had to be married with Scottish passion, or something. what a joke.

rationality goes out the window when it comes to scottish nationalism

RegDwigнt

10:03 AM

@Alraxite you just go to the biggest sites and sort their users by the number of votes they have cast.

Ice Boy

Jon Skeet, Reading, United Kingdom

709k 296 4616 5981

c# java .net linq generics asp.net xml

709,000

is that the highest?

Matt Эллен

yes

Ice Boy

-_-

RegDwigнt

Nah, that's not the highest. Check back again tomorrow, and it will be a couple thousand higher.

Matt Эллен

:D good point

Ice Boy

10:08 AM

talk about the snow ball affect

RegDwigнt

Given enough time, every user on every site will have 709k reps.

Jez

you know the best thing? this one in my office who thinks people warning of negative economic consequences of Scottish independence is "bullying" really wishes the UK had joined the Euro too. hahaha

crazy all round

Alraxite

@RegDwigнt Yes, but I was wondering what the highest is among all the users of all the sites.

Ice Boy

politics is crazy

RegDwigнt

@Alraxite that's why you go to the biggest sites.

It's a matter of seconds.

Alraxite

10:13 AM

@RegDwigнt Yes, probably the highest one would be in one of them.

But it still doesn't get the top downvoter.

RegDwigнt

Yeah which way the votes went you'd have to look up manually.

Still, I think it would take me OVER 9000 longer to write a SEDE query.

Matt Эллен

plus the SEDE won't let you link votes back to members.

Ice Boy

painstakingly

RegDwigнt

@MattЭллен oh. Right. Forgot all about that nonsense. Too used to NSA.

Matt Эллен

although if the vote count is just stored...

Alraxite

10:16 AM

One of the members over at Maths.SE has a list of site-specific top downvoters (but not for all sites) in his profile description

RegDwigнt

At any rate, it is already taking us longer to just discuss whether or not it's possible with SEDE than it would take us to just pull up a couple pages.

Alraxite

One of them had about 33k downvotes.

Very impressive.

Johan Larsson

@IceBoy 30,000.0 answers

Alraxite

How do you even get the time to do that.

Johan Larsson

Boring job is my guess, maybe not for Skeet.

RegDwigнt

10:18 AM

I have 5k downvotes here on ELU. 33k is a damn lot.

Johan Larsson

Link to 33k guy?

Alraxite

Let me see.

RegDwigнt

Yeah I can't risk going to Meth.SE again, it always freezes my browser forever.

Jez

Thursagen? :-)

Alraxite

gnat

16.2k 10 52 105

java testing design documentation issue-tracking terminology object-oriented

Johan Larsson

10:20 AM

One Math many maths

Jez

yipes, a work colleague just told me to "bare with him". is that sexual harrasment?

RegDwigнt

@Alraxite Oh haha, well that's Programmers for you.

They probably have ten times that many posts worth downvoting.

Not because they are rubbish, but because they are opinion and it's trivially easy to disagree.

Alraxite

He is probably the top downvoter in all of SE. I wonder who is the top upvoter.

Matt Эллен

turns out SEDE does store down votes as a count in the user table

data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/224796/…

Alraxite

Run query returns captcha:true

Matt Эллен

10:23 AM

Wooble

35.9k 8 51 76

python google-app-engine perl gae-datastore python-2.7 python-3.x php

RegDwigнt

@MattЭллен wow. That's the single most useless visualization in the history of mankind.

I mean. Dafuq I'm looking at.

Matt Эллен

all the things!

RegDwigнt

It visualizes these results about as well as any other results.

Matt Эллен

at EL&U I bet you can guess the top downvoter

RegDwigнt

@MattЭллен people who only downvote questions don't count. Except as cheapskates.

Matt Эллен

10:26 AM

It's not RegDwigнt

RegDwigнt

Awwwww....

Matt Эллен

@RegDwigнt oh, well I didn't know about that exclusion

RegDwigнt

I only just introduced it. Because it's good.

Matt Эллен

that isn't possible to know from SEDE

@RegDwigнt (excluding community) you're No. 2

RegDwigнt

That can't be.

Matt Эллен

10:28 AM

it's true!

RegDwigнt

No. 2 including Community I would understand...

Matt Эллен

there is one in the land more downvotey than you

RegDwigнt

I am looking frantically already.

Alraxite

The SEDE query doesn't work for me

RegDwigнt

Oh that guy.

Impressive.

Alraxite

10:30 AM

Perhaps my browser's broken.

Matt Эллен

@Alraxite I don' tknow what to tell you. if you got the captcha right it should (eventually) show the results

Alraxite

It shows no captcha.

Matt Эллен

it took a short while for me and made my browser stutter

@Alraxite hmmm....

Alraxite

I click the button and then it just says on a new blank page "captcha":true

I have ran SEDE queries before

Matt Эллен

do you have some scripts blocked?

Alraxite

10:31 AM

I don't know, probably a browser issue.

I don't think so?

Let me see if I can make it work again

Oh, I made it to work now.

I sort of glitchy.

Probably because of my browser.

I'll use a fresh version soon.

Strange gnat doesn't show up as second?

Matt Эллен

the query's for SO. you can select Programmers underneath the "Run Query" button in the "Switch Site" text box

wholly crap. gnat has more downvotes than community!

Alraxite

OK. I'll try it later. It's causing some problems.

He must use all his downvotes every day.

Matt Эллен

yeah

Alraxite

There is a downvote cap, right?

Matt Эллен

yeah, it must be the same as the vote cap

Alraxite

10:38 AM

Which is?

Matt Эллен

I think... 30 (+10 if you use them for questions)

Alraxite

OK. Thanks

You can do a top upvoter query?

tchrist

It’s 30 degrees.

I’m waiting for the sun to come up to see if there’s snow on the hilltops and mountainsides.

But that won’t be for like two hours yet.

Matt Эллен

@Alraxite data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/224799/…

Alraxite

@MattЭллен Uh, it doesn't work for me. Can you tell me?

tchrist

10:44 AM

@Alraxite Never knew you were from Tennessee!

Matt Эллен

@Alraxite user998692 for SO

Alraxite

@MattЭллен Okay, thanks.

RegDwigнt

I come from Alabama with my banjo on my knee, I'm going to Louisiana, the one next to Tennessee.

tchrist

jwpat7 is our top voter.

RegDwigнt

No news there.

tchrist

10:47 AM

shhh

Matt Эллен

sorry!

Alraxite

Wow, 32,773 upvotes.

And 0 downvotes!

tchrist

@MattЭллен Without which, I’d be leaving Reg behind in my dust.

RegDwigнt

Mmmmmhhh... dust.

Alraxite

I restarted my browser and the problem still persists.

And it freezes by browser.

RegDwigнt

10:51 AM

Yes, when the problem is the browser, restarting it will only restart the problem.

Alraxite

Fresh install should fix it.

It's been acting up at other places too.

tchrist

sh install

RegDwigнt

setenv EVERYTHING="works"

tchrist

s/=/ /

Common mistake.

I actually make it annoying often.

RegDwigнt

Works for me.

tchrist

10:53 AM

Stupid csh.

RegDwigнt

You sure you not confusing it with bash?

tchrist

export EVERTHING="whorls"

RegDwigнt

Hah, so it's the other way round?

tchrist

That’s bash.

Jez

> [Edmund has unwillingly given up his lands in Scotland to McAngus]
> McAngus: Hey, I hope life doesn't become dull for you not being able to pass laws over Scotland.
> [Edmund laughs nervously and turns away from the violent Scotsman]
> Prince Edmund: [under his breath] I wouldn't pass water over Scotland.

tchrist

10:54 AM

But csh takes no = on the setenv, yet requires it on the set.

Jez

I can't get that Blackadder classic out of my head right now for some reason :-D

tchrist

Just wait: the Orkneys are going to secede next.

@RegDwigнt It’s been 30 years and I still sometimes do the wrong one in the wrong place.

RegDwigнt

You can get it if you really want. But you must try, try and try, try and try. You'll secede at last.

Matt Эллен

I hope my knees stay integrated with my legs until I die

tchrist

@RegDwigнt No pr0n in this chat.

Jez

10:56 AM

@tchrist hah, no way. Salmond wouldn't allow that. independence from Scotland? out of the question!

tchrist

@MattЭллен Said the lumberjack.

RegDwigнt

@tchrist I (am forced to) switch from bash to tcsh or vice versa every couple years. That's when I care. At all other times it's just muscle memory.

Jez

i'll give him this much: he knew how to totally manipulate Blair

tchrist

Maybe they could trade the Orkneys for Nova Scotia.

Jez

ironically if there's a yes vote, Blair's scottish parliament may result in his party never being able to win a commons majority again

gun, meet foot

RegDwigнt

10:57 AM

Who did not know how to totally manipulate Blair?

Jez

the voters?

they protested and got nowhere

tchrist

thinks

RegDwigнt

@Jez Oh those. Nobody gives a rat's tail about those suckers.

Matt Эллен

Is Scotland's parilament not affecting the UK parliament part of devomax?

tchrist

poll tax

Jez

10:58 AM

@RegDwigнt except when they might vote in favour of your political agenda... then it's all about what the "people" think. well 51% of them, anyway

tchrist

@MattЭллен What, Devon wants out now?

Jez

@MattЭллен devo max. there's another dumb idea. that should only be done as part of a comprehensive move to a federal UK

RegDwigнt

@Jez luckily that only ever happens like twice in a decade or something. The rest of the time you can relax.

tchrist

I really disagree that Devon naturally belongs with Kernow.

Matt Эллен

@tchrist :D probably, but nah. "devomax" is an extra level of devolution for Scotland, rather than complete secession

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