English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

They make one button for me, I will press it. They make a job for me, I won't even tell them to go fuck themselves because even that is already too much of an effort.

tchrist

You are notably irascible of late, Mister John. I feel it helps your close-voting.

RegDwigнt

1:30 PM

I've closed like a total of ten questions in the last four weeks.

tchrist

Kodak makes jobs for no one these days.

RegDwigнt

I used to close twice as many on a single day, every day.

tchrist

Nortonn.

RegDwigнt

Also, if you keep poking a dog for six years, you can't call it irascible if it bites you in the seventh.

tchrist

I do keep telling my tormentors that, but they never see it my way.

I have used that same metaphor. They don’t buy it. But they’re wrong.

RegDwigнt

1:33 PM

> If I'm curt with you it's because time is a factor. I think fast, I talk fast and I need you guys to act fast if you wanna get out of this. So. Pretty please. With sugar on top. Proofread your fucking car before posting.

tchrist

Sorry! My question would have been: Why did they write should in the beginning of the sentence. — Eleonora 8 mins ago

That makes it now a duplicate.

Do you swear as often in German or Russian as you do in English?

data.stackexchange.com/english/query/354578/…

Participatory pissiness is inevitable.

Well, no. Peter Shor is never pissy.

Nor perhaps jwpat7. The rest of us, yes.

RegDwigнt

@tchrist I barely ever swear in English. I swear in English like five times a day, if that. If you only come across me at those exact five times and no others, that's not my motherfucking fault.

I swear in Russian silently to myself at various people that annoy me in daily life.

skill patrol

how often?

tchrist

You sound older than you claim.

RegDwigнt

I swear in German about as much as any German does. Every normal sentence has a Scheiße in it, but that's not swearing because it's a normal Scheißsentence. It wouldn't be scheißnormal otherwise, no?

skill patrol

1:44 PM

how does swearing make you sound older?

tchrist

No, not that.

That people annoy him throughout the day.

RegDwigнt

All things considered, all my life in its entirety, I have used one swear word for every 37.2 people that Quentin Tarantino has brutally butchered.

tchrist

As they age, many people become less tolerant of the bullshit brought into their lives by others.

skill patrol

right

tchrist

Not everyone, of course.

RegDwigнt

1:45 PM

@tchrist Yeah about that. That's an excellent thing to do. I should do it more often.

skill patrol

of course

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@RegDwigнt age? yeah, you should. In fact, you are.

skill patrol

@tchrist I wonder why that is?

RegDwigнt

Do note that becoming less tolerant does not mean becoming more active. Quite the opposite, in fact. You don't need to tell people to bugger off. You just walk away.

No need to close questions if you can just ignore them.

tchrist

One theory holds that we have a finite capacity for bullshit, and as we age, our bullshit buffers become encrusted from years of accumulation.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

1:48 PM

ew, you should clean them from time to time

tchrist

Another theory is that we become less flexible and adaptive as our frontal lobes shrink.

RegDwigнt

@tchrist Yeah makes sense, all poison is stored in the liver as we know, which is of limited size.

tchrist

The liver ever restores itself.

Until it doesn’t.

RegDwigнt

Yeah you go drink a bottle of vodka a day, see how your liver ever restores.

skill patrol

also people tend to become more conservative with age

tchrist

1:51 PM

There are less unpleasant ways to off oneself, and more expedient.

RegDwigнt

I am pretty sure even our frontal lobes are better at restoring themselves.

@skillpatrol I don't know that that's a tendency. It's pretty much the very definition.

tchrist

It’s not clear that they ever do. The stem-cell centers in the brain seem to crank out new cells for use in memory.

Well, when they do that. Most often, those new cells find no purchase. It requires a combination of factors for them to take root and flourish.

RegDwigнt

Like casually playing the piano every two minutes.

While simultaneously not instagramming.

tchrist

It requires not just trying to learn some new hardish thing. It also requires physical exertion. We don’t know why.

skill patrol

requires?

RegDwigнt

1:53 PM

Chemistry is hard. Let's physically exert shopping.

tchrist

SSRIs can also give those cells a place to live in the same way. That’s why they’re used for depression patients. Again, we don‘t know why.

@skillpatrol Yep.

skill patrol

hmmm...

...I'm not so sure about "requires"

tchrist

You learn much, much, much better when you have regular exercise. There is evidence that this is because only then is there an environment for laying down new brain cells in your memory centers, and the new connections that need to accompany them.

I could dig up the literature on this. It’s there.

skill patrol

please

tchrist

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19544415

skill patrol

1:57 PM

thanks

tchrist

And the next one: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16271278

> Physical activity induces adult hippocampal neurogenesis.

skill patrol

in mice

tchrist

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19544415 "Exercise increases neural stem cell number in a growth hormone-dependent manner, augmenting the regenerative response in aged mice."

> These findings now provide a novel basis for understanding the ability of exercise to delay the onset and rate of decline in neurodegenerative conditions not typically associated with the hippocampus and suggest that the GH-dependent activation of endogenous NSCs may be effective in reversing or preventing age-related neurodegeneration in humans.

@skillpatrol So?

There are solid reasons for using mice for developing models. There are also solid reasons for testing these.

skill patrol

you've given me a lot to read...

Matt E. Эллен

there will be a written exam on the material in two weeks

skill patrol

2:04 PM

:(

RegDwigнt

tchrist

@MattE.Эллен Best exercise then.

9 mins ago, by skill patrol

please

Matt E. Эллен

@skillpatrol don't worry, it's all essay questions, no multiple choice

tchrist

Silly rimnods are trying to reöpen the should-inversion dup.

english.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/137142

Duplicate of english.stackexchange.com/q/2631, not to mention of english.stackexchange.com/q/26450, english.stackexchange.com/q/1308, english.stackexchange.com/q/95943, english.stackexchange.com/q/20479, english.stackexchange.com/q/32830, english.stackexchange.com/q/66113, and doubtless countless many others. — tchrist 2 mins ago

Mitch

2:30 PM

@MattE.Эллен Also, only adult mice will be taking the test.

kills adult mouse study group to lower the curve

Matt E. Эллен

:-o

tchrist

Why no pinkies?

Because the snakes ate them all!

animals.mom.me/pinkie-mouse-5610.html

Pinkies, fuzzies, hoppers, weanlings: who knew?

Mitch

The Rats of NIMH didn't quite turn out so well after all.

It's a quiet painless death, like falling asleep.

tchrist

Frisby

Mitch

And his sickly little brother, Hula-Hoop

Matt E. Эллен

2:48 PM

Who la hoop?

Mitch

Hop la!

@tchrist Something just doesn't seem right about that whole thing. "Hey mom, what's an owl pellet?" "It's the remains of a mouse or other small animal that an owl has partially digested. Makes it easier to dissect."

"Eww. Where does the owl catch the mice?" "They don't. They're fed frozen adult mice"

"Eww. Where do they get the frozen mice from?" "There's companies that grow mice until they're adults, then they freeze them, so the owls can eat them and then regurgitate them so you can dissect them"

"Eww."

"What's for dinner?" "Bird's nest soup"

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector ] Email in answer: Antonym of all: none, not all, both? by Febryianto on english.stackexchange.com

Jez

3:39 PM

OK, this is the 3rd time today I've got this:

For the love of God, they just won't give up.

tchrist

3:54 PM

What the hell is that?

Never seen anything like it.

Oh, that's not some SE thing.

Just more spam from the Evil Empire.

Just Say No.

Who upvotes these?

1

Q: What is the meaning of word rhetoric?

Please explain the meaning of word rhetoric in detail. Please give some example how to use the words rhetoric and rhetorical in a sentence. Also if possible, please give an example sentence which we can say is a rhetorical statement.

vocabulary

Jez

@tchrist I do say no. time and time again

i've never really seen MS do anything quite like this. they are abusinhg their update system to push malware to every windows 7 and windows 8 system

tchrist

Of course they are.

Jez

you can't get rid of it, save for basically stopping automatic updates and vetting them all manually, which i am now doing. it's insane.

tchrist

This is news?

Jez

not really "of course"; they didnt do this with winXP

tchrist

4:03 PM

Of course they are committing grave evil.

Jez

the stupid popup is news to me, yeah. the systray icon was intrusive enough

tchrist

And that is nothing new.

Jez

well during the windows 7 period they seemed to almost become decent

Jez

4:20 PM

@tchrist please be Dr. Johnson for me

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Jez You can uninstall the one update that causes this thing to happen.

crl

@Robusto I've done that climb several times, now my right thigh is hurting :)

I didn't know bike could hurt

Robusto

5:44 PM

@crl Occupational hazard. Or perhaps recreational hazard is more appropriate.

Neil Fein

6:06 PM

1

Q: In play writing, script writing or theatre is there a name for some exchange of dialogue between characters that is supposed to make a point?

Suppose you want to show that two characters have some animosity towards one another. In some scene you set up a meeting between the characters in the elevator and an exchange of lines occurs. This develops as some kind of important factor that sets up the story in "Act 1: The Beginning". The exc...

character-development screenwriting playwriting

^ Anyone here know if there's a word for this?

Matt E. Эллен

I do not know. are you thinking of migrating it?

tchrist

8:17 PM

So many wrong answers.

1

A: "Accentuation signals" in English

Diacritics: Accents and Other Markings These are properly known in English as diacritics, or sometimes as diacritical markings. They indicate various things, but stress is only one possibility. They also change the pronunciation of letters in other ways. The OED says of diacritic: diacriti...

But perhaps the question was unclear.

Cerberus

10:23 PM

@tchrist 25,000 houses north of Amsterdam lost power today because of the storm. Apparently, it does happen here! A substation was flooded by the rain.

Luckily, power was restored within the hour.

user116848

@Cerberus Looks like a peaceful place.

Cerberus

Yes, but look at that cloud...

It brought storm.

user116848

Oh.

user116848

That sucks.

user116848

Here we lose power every time we get rain.

user116848

10:33 PM

Heh.

user116848

Or almost every time.

Cerberus

How awful.

user116848

Yes it is.

user116848

Here:

user116848

10:42 PM

My city at night sometimes.

user116848

Shucks!

user116848

Man, it is late at night here. I better get some rest.

user116848

Ciao!

Cerberus

Hmm impressive, not even street lights!

Good night.

tchrist

11:03 PM

Eh?

Just got back.

Only 25,000?

You know, I haven't had my power go out for quite a while now. Usually I only go a few months or even weeks. But I can't remember the last time; probably last winter. Usually the summer storms get something.

Cerberus

Good!

Only 25,000, probably because it was in a thinly* populated area.

*) To your standards that would probably still be densely populated...

I presume cities are better protected, with quicker rerouting options and redundant substations.

tchrist

11:22 PM

I don't know the population density of Boulder. America doesn't back people together like you guys do. We have one home per property usually, with lawns and such. We don't live stacked up in tenements if we can possibly help it. Students tend to live denser.

Cerberus

You just don't live in a big city...

tchrist

My friend is verging on mental health issues because of having to live there.

No thanks.

All the panhandlers and druggies and hookers and freaks and scum.

Gunshots in the night.

Cerberus

Haha.

I've never heard a gun shot.

Drug deals and hookers are fine, they don't harm me in any way.

tchrist

It isn't the dealers, it's the victims victimizing everyone, crimes against person and property. You have person or property?

He's riding his bike to work one morning before dawn. Because he has a tail-light, five tweekers run him down and trap him and make him say that he's not a cop taking their picture. Who the hell wants that shit?

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