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1:19 AM
@Tonepoet Nice...thanks. That was not apparent (to me) from the home page. There is a link to it way at the bottom which I found only because you mentioned it. I must have been blind to it from the rest of the page.
 
 
2 hours later…
3:15 AM
@tchrist I've decided to add the edit myself to avoid all hell breaking loose in the meantime. I was really just meaning to ask though.
 
3:38 AM
@Tonepoet Thank you.
 
 
2 hours later…
Anonymous
Such a beautiful word.
 
7:33 AM
@Mitch No not paid. Just find a conversation partner and send them a friend request and a little message. If they accept it/are cool with it then you have your language partner. Teachers are not free, I have never used them. Yes I'm there for free and practicing English with a native speaker for free. I'm exchanging Hindi for English,
Jinx!
Tonepoet already helped you out. =)
 
 
1 hour later…
8:41 AM
@Mitch If you are interested in practicing Spanish, French etc. then there are many language learning groups on Whatsapp too. You will have to find them though. Maybe ask someone who is learning the particular lanuguage. I was part of one voice chat group on Whatsapp (for English learners) but left within a month, not my thing. I like one to one voice chat, it is more focused and without distractions.
 
9:11 AM
I guess that question was... two hot. Don't bother, you can't shame me more than I feel right now. — Won't 13 hours ago
 
 
2 hours later…
11:00 AM
@Tonepoet We can write it like this too I reckon: "I had orange juice, toast, ham and eggs for breakfast." What do you think?
I was also thinking a ham but I don't know.
 
11:26 AM
@englishstudent Ham and eggs almost has the character of macaroni and cheese..
Ham as a count noun would probably refer to a much bigger portion too.
@englishstudent Also, that's not how jinxing works. It only works when you say something at the exact same time. =P
 
@Tonepoet Yep. You are right, that's not 'jinx'. I said it too fast I guess without thinking. So what's the good word to use there? Reading transcripts the correct way? =)
I mean some people read it from below. Dunno. =)
@Tonepoet Are you learning any languages too there in italki?
I mean your research of the site was pretty good. :P
 
3
A: Meaning of "go figure" and its origin?

Sven YargsDictionary discussions of 'go figure' John Ayto, Oxford Dictionary of English Idioms, third edition (2009) identifies the phrase go figure as "North American informal": go figure! work it out for yourself (used to suggest that the conclusion to be drawn about something is obvious). North Ame...

Underappreciated answer of the day
 
11:53 AM
hello
I am new to this Chat room.
I wish to brush up my English Lanuage.Hope you guys Help me!
Mr @M.A.R. are You there??
 
Nah sorry, I'm going to eat lunch
Back in 20 minutes or so
 
ok WHere are You From?
 
BBL
 
Wow
 
@RAJMOHAN Welcome
 
11:56 AM
Ok Bro Have it
@Tonepoet Are you There??
 
@RAJMOHAN Yeah. I'm not sure how much of a help I can be though.
 
Ohh no Problem
just Chat ,that enough if there is mistake point to me
Is there any Grammatical error in this sentence?? @Tonepoet
 
Just chat: That is enough. If there is a mistake, point it out to me
Is there any grammatical error in this sentence?

End sentences with periods, start them with capital letters and try to avoid using double terminal punctuation in most cases.
The colon can sometimes be used instead of the period if the following sentence is grammatically complete, and closely related to the preceding one.
@RAJMOHAN Is that the sort of help you want?
 
12:18 PM
Back
 
@RAJMOHAN BTW, @RAJMOHAN this chat is for more rigorous discussion of English, by confusing native speakers who like to confuse themselves and the readers of this transcript. English for learners has its own dedicated chatroom, which isn't necessarily of lower level, but is usually tailored for learners.
@MattE.Эллен Up
 
Up and away!
 
Through
@RAJMOHAN Iran
 
@M.A.R. Huh, I thought it was for rigorous discussion of latin between Tchrist and Cerb! =P
 
12:29 PM
@Tonepoet That's a side mission. The main mission is uttering sentences that are supposed to have a meaning but don't
Another side-mission is doing Politics.SE's main chat's job
 
This sentence is false.
That^ is where rigour leads to.
 
That's no sentence, that's a fully operation battle station.
 
Indeed.
 
@M.A.R. I suppose I also have a side mission of trying to get at least one of you to watch Puella Magi Madoka Magica (subbed) or play The Battle for Wesnoth. I'll get a big sidequest bonus if any of you do. XP
 
12:36 PM
Oh, like referring an Area51 proposal?
FAT CHANCE, BUDDY
 
@M.A.R. Ppbt, Area51 is for small fries. I'm trying to make an illuminati conspiracy proposal. That's when all of the moderators subconsciously target their efforts towards... Oh, I almost said too much!
 
You be exposed
Also WTH is 'ppbt'?
Parts per billion text?
 
Bill the cat.
 
I tried that, but the stingy little thing never pays up.
 
@M.A.R. It stands for Prestigious Pedants Brag Tediously.
 
12:43 PM
Purple people build tardigrades
 
@Tonepoet That's fitting for ELU
But probably not helping Illuminati
 
What do they brag about?
 
Baby steps M.A.R., baby steps. =P
 
@skullpetrol Being pedants? Or maybe being pretentious
 
@skullpetrol They're pedants, so they brag about how trivial the facts they know are.
 
12:45 PM
People's Participatory Banquet Trust
 
Ping Pong Bandits Train
 
Porn Platitudes Bore Toothfairies
 
Preaching Pesters Beat Tanks
 
People Pretending Being Truthful.
 
@Tonepoet You like pretending, huh
 
12:48 PM
@M.A.R. Oh no! I'm totally honest. ;-)
 
Poster Private Banking Tavern
 
Polypropyl bromide toluene
 
@MattE.Эллен That can't exist, nice try though
Wait, maybe it can
No it can't
 
Yes it can
Nope
 
12:50 PM
Not even a little bit?
 
Pondering Pee Brawling Trolls
@MattE.Эллен Can't think of a structure
 
oh well. there goes my nobel prize
 
Chem Nobel prizes are reserved for biochemistry discoveries
They keep getting excited about something new found about DNA
 
I'll just feed it to a rat
 
@M.A.R. Huh?
 
12:55 PM
@terdon IIRC the 2016 Chem nobel prize was DNA-related
 
@M.A.R. The 2015 one was. The 2016 is indeed biochemistry but not about DNA (ribosomes).
 
Man, my brain must have skipped a whole year
 
Mine had to look it up, so don't worry about it :)
 
This is, like the seventh time I mistake something from 2015 to be from 2016
Maybe it was such a shitty year, I had to erase it completely from memory. o.o
 
lol
chemistry pedants getting in on the EL&U pedantry
 
1:01 PM
math pedants are the worst
Noun: pedantry (plural pedantries)
  1. An excessive attention to detail or rules.
  2. An instance of such behaviour.
  3. I don't want to listen to your pedantries anymore.
  4. An overly ambitious display of learning.
because there are so many details and rules to pay attention to
 
@MattE.Эллен Yeah, known bug causing examples to render as definitions
I don't want to listen to your pedantries about the SE bot bugs anymore.
 
awww. that's a shame. I thought wiktionary had a sense of humour :D
 
I would have thought that would be relatively easy to fix.
 
1:07 PM
If paid attention to
 
Excessively.
 
@MattE.Эллен Wikitionary, truly the final authority on when to shut your mouth. =P
 
Always is the answer. At least in my experience
But I never listen
 
The devil is in the details; that is, the details of math are the most problematic aspect
 
@MattE.Эллен Remind me to never eat lunch with you.
 
1:17 PM
@Tonepoet don't forget to never eat lunch with me
 
It's hard to see the forest when you're surrounded by trees.
 
@MattE.Эллен For some reason the site scales the screenshot and decreases its quality
 
which is why we, at Helicopters R Us, offer helipad access near all forests.
 
@MattE.Эллен So you're the guy who's destroying Amazon rainforest
ಠ_ಠ
 
1:25 PM
@M.A.R. we prefer "consumerist repurposing"
 
Anti-environment alien
I see it now
You're trying to destroy all trees so hoomins eventually suffocate
 
Suffocate? Not at all. Any human can buy our tanks of air. You all have access
 
We must destroy all the trees so that we can finally see the forest.
 
@M.A.R. He's a troll, not an alien and they eat hoomins.
 
@MattE.Эллен Oh now you sound like Apple
 
1:28 PM
:D I was trying to sound like Paul Ryan, but that'll do
 
@MattE.Эллен 'tis biologically impossible for anybody to look that good. Neil Degrasse Tyson is a god. The question needs to be migrated to Roleplaying S.E. to ask how does someone become a god in some sort of board game.
 
> I don't like to drive fast, because I'm afraid to crash / of crashing.
 
@Færd "Of crashing" is how I think it would be more commonly said.
 
@Tonepoet I guess that would require a succession of natural 20s
 
@Tonepoet Is that an exaggeration? because I never saw Neil Tyson as attractive.
 
1:34 PM
@englishstudent Yes.
 
@Færd of crashing
 
If they were talking about someone like Chris Hemsworth then yeah, makes sense.
 
@MattE.Эллен And a coin flip check at the end, just to make you look for something you probably don't even have.
 
5
A: What's the difference between "afraid of + verb" and "afraid to + verb"?

John LawlerAs McCawley 1998 puts it (p.126) Roughly speaking, • that-complements [tensed clauses] correspond to propositions • for-to complements [infinitives] correspond to situation types • 's-ing complements [gerunds] correspond to events Afraid is a psych predicate adjective (formed from...

> the infinitive may refer to fear by the subject of the results of the action (a situation type), while
the gerund can refer to a fear that the subject may perform the action anyway (an event).
 
@Tonepoet Mm ugly indeed.
 
1:38 PM
Based on that, both would be possible, but maybe of is preferred because it's an accident I'm afraid of.
Well, thanks @Tonepoet and @M.A.R.
 
@Færd Please make the slashes italic when you split the examples. I almost read that as an I.
 
@englishstudent ah but there's probably an assumption of basic competence in the language first, a basic ability to brokenly express onesself, before trying to converse with a non-professional
 
@Tonepoet That reminds me in some chats we see dot, dot, dot when someone is typing like ". . . .". Something like that.
 
@Tonepoet But that would be illogical.
 
@englishstudent Ellipsis points. They represent omission. In recent years, this includes tropical omission of something that should have been said, but was not, and hence represent an awkward silence.
 
1:50 PM
@Mitch Yeah. You mean "second language" I guess Mitch, no? Maybe I'm misreading what you just wrote.
"basic competence in second language" I guess.
First language is our mother tongue right?
@Tonepoet Yeah I know. I mean we see something like ellipsis but not quite, when someone is typing in some chats. It's a signal that your partner is typing. Sort of. I'm not talking about the punctuation punctuation here.
 
@englishstudent Well, that is indeed an ellipsis
It just happens to be animated to make UI look fancier
 
@englishstudent Oh that. I think an argument could be said that it's the omission of what's going to be said, being used as a placeholder since it's not known yet, but that's a longshot
 
@Mitch Ah sorry. I understand now. I misread :P You wrote "language first" I read that as "first language".
@Tonepoet Ah yeah. Sure.
 
2:09 PM
@M.A.R. wait wait wait. There's a mission?
@terdon +1
 
Thought you'd like that one.
 
@Mitch Wait wait wait. You mean you weren't doing all this on purpose?
 
@skullpetrol I think you mean a worst. there a number of equally bad but also maximal elements in that partial order.
@Færd both are ok, but like the others, 'of crashing' seems more natural to me, even in formal language.
@snailplane petaloso petaloso petaloso petaloso petaloso
doing my part
 
Anonymous
Thank you. Your contribution is appreciated.
 
it could also mean someone who farts a lot.
just saying
which is also in need of a word.
so win-win
 
@MattE.Эллен Yeah, that one's pretty good :)
 
@englishstudent yes. first you need a certain minimal competence in the new language before you can really hold a basic conversation.
 
@englishstudent that is also an ellipsis. or ellipses. I'm sure some pedant will figure out which one is best.
 
Anonymous
@Mitch Doing my part to research your question, I typed "latin for fart" into Google, and it said "momentum". I was puzzled for a moment, before I realized that it auto-detected Swedish as the language fart was written in.
 
2:24 PM
@Mitch Yep. So is your basic competence in French, Spanish etc. okay?
Anyway. Good luck.
 
@mitch I don't think Hashim is looking for a phrase, or deadbeat dad would be the obvious answer.
 
@Mitch Stoney back in ELL chat once proposed ellipsees.
Hey @Mitch should I ask on ELU?
 
@englishstudent That's the point, no. Duolingo is a great introduction, but barely gets you to A1. to hold a conversation, you really need a lot more vocabulary plus some ... ease in speaking (not perfect grammar or complicated grammar, but just ease in having things come out of your mouth. I don't know how to bridge that gap from the end of Duolingo to that stage. online. and free.
 
I'm desperately looking to ask a mediocre question to get the required rep to downvote.
 
This is a ridiculous answer. No part of my answer implied that I was looking for an insult - I asked for a very specific word for a very specific scenario. If no such word exists, and therefore the answer to the question is "no", then it's up to me as the questioner to select the closest one posted as "best answer". Voting to close the question because you can rattle off a list of catch-all insults entirely unrelated to the context of the question asked is puerile. — Hashim 14 hours ago
 
2:33 PM
@Tonepoet maybe you haven't been here long enough to realize the culture. SWRs are almost always ill-defined and ill-directed. To make them good questions, they almost always need to be rephrased as phrase requests to get what the OP doesn't realize they are asking for.
@M.A.R. I'm pretty sure the answer is very obvious, and a dupe, and all over the weba lready, I just don't have the excess brain power at the moment.
 
@Mitch Hmm good point.
 
@Mitch On ELU, I only found one question asking whether "ellipsis" or "ellipses" is the correct name for the ellipsis mark
 
I'm concentrating on figuring out if Boko Haram is a new McDonald's sandwich or the lost fifth Teletubbie.
@M.A.R. and...?
 
And no other questions
 
@Mitch I know the culture and I have seen posts on meta regardng the subject (that I can't find), but I think this is a misapplication of the principle. We have separate tags for separate reasons and there are various meta threads regard
 
2:41 PM
@snailplane scoreggioso. doesn't have the same je ne sais quoi
@M.A.R. argh! no! what was the answer? I'm dying to know...
 
Given the context of the question, there would still be no "word" that acts as a compliment to wh're or ba***rd
 
@Tonepoet Whre is really offensive
 
we're not answering a crossword clue or trying to fill in a blank in a poem that has to fit the right rhyme and meter. Usually SWRs are really 'what is the right way to call something like that and is there a set term for it?' which really means single word or phrase or whatever is appropriate. (Or 'no there is no such thing, you just have to give a descriptive phrase.')
 
79
Q: It’s time to retire the term “rep-whore”

JaydlesGoing forward, “rep-whore” (and its derivatives) will be treated like any other term that’s inconsistent with the community’s “be nice” policy: it will be removed. It’s totally okay if you’ve used it in the past. Nobody’s judging the many users who’ve used it. And users will NOT start being s...

 
@M.A.R. whre are you?
 
2:46 PM
@Mitch Usually may be right, but this isn't usually.
Also the question was already closed for being overly broad.
 
@Tonepoet Sure it is.
 
@Mitch Flagged. Please revisit the Be Nice policy.
 
@M.A.R. Gah, I read that as a question...
 
@Tonepoet tchrist was just being proactive. he was reacting to the comments and deleted suggestions (which are the norm), attracted by easy rep by giving poor answers that are not wrong but are way to sensitive. Contrary to superficial analysis 'X is a B' is not symmetric, it is a subset relation.
 
hello. Is everything alright in here?
 
2:49 PM
@M.A.R. counterflagged for frivolous fla...dangit.
 
Bah, I can't find Stoney's message anywhere
 
@MattE.Эллен No. Not at all. You misspelled 'all right'
 
I remembered Stoney said we could use ellipsees if we intend to avoid ambiguity with the plural of 'ellipse'
 
Just because Stoney said it, don't make it right
 
Yeah, but an important thing to note
The reason I can't find it is ELL has had three main rooms
And a weird history
 
2:51 PM
@Mitch I'll make alright alright all by myself, if I have to
 
You left out 'roué'. — Mitch 1 hour ago
@Mitch you left out ". . . the day".
But what a great word! I didn't know that one.
 
@Mitch Of course, of course. It's just that I think narrower rather than broader is the right way to address the problem. Anyway, since the questioner seems to be keeping tabs on the question, I think I'll leave a comment.
 
@MattE.Эллен I've all ready taken care of that for you
@Tonepoet nothing I did really changed the question. adding 'specific' is just emphasis that shouldn't ever be needed. all those things like 'douche' were intended to be jokes anyway.
 
Mitch just edited the question an hour ago and I have my doubts about it. Are you just looking for just a single word to complement the others to verify the quotation as par the question underneath the quotation, or is any concise enough phrase to describe the concept acceptable? Judging by the partially deleted commentary under the deadbeat dad answer, it seems like you really just want the former, but I'm not sure enough about your intentions to roll it back myself. — Tonepoet 1 min ago
@Mitch We'll see how he responds and that should settle it (if he does), eh?
 
@terdon It's conveniently vague, like did he leave here pregnant and a crack addict and debts owed to a local loan shark, or did he just leave a couple over-due library books.
@Tonepoet That's misleading. People are always looking for a single word, and that's the problem because a single word is not always the answer.
 
3:05 PM
@Tonepoet I am allergic to "I have my doubts" too, apparently
 
That's the culture we should be promoting rather than your encouraging them to answer 'yes, just a single word'
 
in Ask Ubuntu General Room, 9 mins ago, by Serg
@terdon so . . . question. Besides text processing, what's the second and third biggest thing that Perl is used for ?
in Ask Ubuntu General Room, 47 secs ago, by Serg
I'm just looking for a more or less serious project to pick up to practice and learn.
@tchrist any suggestions? ^^
 
@Mitch How can a he get pregnant? Or am I missing something?
 
Well, I misspelled 'her' as 'here'. Does that help?
 
@terdon sysadmin, giant re-entrant webapps, etc
 
3:08 PM
Ah, yes, sysadmin stuff is a good point.
 
re-entrant?
 
@Mitch pre-forked FCGI servers
Running under Plack.
 
googles a bunch
 
It's how you do "enterprise web apps" in perl.
Usually uses Catalyst or some equivalent technology.
Plack is to Perl as Rack is to Ruby.
 
oh...interactive?
 
3:10 PM
Yes, for Web v2.0 apps.
Whatever that means. AJAXy.
 
right
 
Most data is stored in a db server, access through an ORM like DBIC.
 
Perl isn't being used for just plain old OS scripting?
 
Course it is.
 
the intended successor of sed/awk?
 
3:11 PM
cron jobs and such
init.d things
general admin
 
All of which fall under the sysadmin tag.
 
yup
 
@Mitch Sure, a single word is not always the answer, but in those cases we can say no if we have good reason to do so. I've done so on occasion myself.
 
oh. duh
 
we use it for our deployment tools
Not sure if you can call that sysadmin exactly.
Connecting to JIRA and Confluence and Slack. All those things.
 
3:12 PM
for moving stuff around.
 
Suggesting changes to the type of question being asked also seems more like the job of a comment than an edit.
 
sure that's sysadminny
 
@tchrist Thinking of it as a catch-all phrase for "manipulating stuff on your machine"
 
hullo world o/
 
oy
 
3:12 PM
Hey @Serg.
 
It's more like repository management with git et al.
 
instead of git or with git?
 
Serg is a python person who's learning Perl and was looking for something to practice on. What would you recommend @tchrist?
 
With git.
@terdon Is he a Unix admin type?
 
And scripting aficionado.
 
3:14 PM
Ah.
Tell him to swing by. :)
 
Oy, @Serg!
 
For the most part I've been working with text processing, general scripting, moving files around and developing a few indicators for Ubuntu desktop. Slowly moving towards making bigger GUI apps in Gtk
Also,yesh, I'm here
 
Here's a tally script, for example:
#!/usr/bin/env perl

my %seen = ();

while (my $line = <>) {
    chomp $line;
    $seen{$line}++;
}

for my $line (sort {
                      $seen{$b} <=> $seen{$a}
                            ||
                      lc($a) cmp lc($b)
                            ||
                         $a  cmp $b
                   } keys %seen
             )
{
    printf "%5d %s\n", $seen{$line}, $line;
}
Use it as a filter in a pipeline to prefix each unique line with however many times it's been seen.
Then sort by number descending.
That "lc" is primitivese for the Unicode "fc".
You don't want to know. :)
 
Those new sort things are really cool. Although I had to rewrite all sorts of scripts where I'd been using $a as a tmp variable name and couldn't figure out why they were behaving so strangely on newer perl versions.
 
Well, it's always $a and $b I think, unless there's a sub($$) proto on the function.
Something like that.
 
3:17 PM
@tchrist Yes, but the $a and $b were only made special for sort in perl v 5.10 or something. So a lot of my older scripts broke.
 
@terdon naw!!!!
It's been this way since time immemorial.
 
Huh? Really? I thought I'd seen it in a changelog but this was >10 years ago now.
 
perl3 or perl4
something like that
 
I do know that my scripts suddenly started breaking where they did not break before and I tracked that down to my using $a as a variable name combined with sort elsewhere. I don't remember the specifics though. I've just switched to $i and $kl for silly names instead.
 
The change from back then was the proto
I have to run now but I can track that for you later.
 
3:22 PM
Maybe we were using perl4 then, but that seems strange since I'm talking about Red Hat machines in ~2002 or so.
 
sorry, was a bit distracted just now - had a student asking question
 
@mitch Ah, I couldn't find it because phrasing doesn't have the e... This is what I was thinking of earlier, and this.
 
@tchrist what about stuff like networking ? Is Perl suitable for scripting something like curl or wget implementation ? Maybe diagnostics tools ?
 
Perl is plainly useful for sysadmin scripting because it's easy to create write-only code.
 
3:50 PM
@Serg Yes all those things. Gimme a couple hours. At dentist. Google tchrist fwdport
Or perlipc
Perl cookbook
 
I wrote an IP over uucico tunnel in Perl once. Or maybe C.
 
 
3 hours later…
6:30 PM
Oxford comma or lack thereof decides 10 million dollar lawsuit: huffingtonpost.com/entry/…
I KEPT TELLING EVERYONE BUT NOBODY LISTENS TO MY GRAMMAR RANTS
 
I AGREE WE SHOULD ALL USE THE OXFORD COMMA
6
 
6:51 PM
Dec 24 '12 at 3:53, by tchrist
Those ones we call a comma chameleon.
 
You have the link to that comment saved on your desktop, don't you?
 
I AGREE WE SHOULD USE THE OXFORD COMMA, UNIVERSITY, AND HACKSPACE
 
Most especially the hackspace!
 
I just realized I've been humming Karma Chameleon for the past 20 minutes.
 
7:06 PM
it comes and goes
 
7:51 PM
@Mitch Aw, I'm surprised! Thank you very much.
 
@JackArbiter great, now I'm humming it
 
YOU
8:40 PM
Send an message OR Send a Message
Which is correct?
 
only use an if the next sound is a vowel sound
 
YOU
so send a message ?
 
YOU
Thank you
 
I wonder why Thailand has such a high rate.
 
8:53 PM
The war on drugs gets such a bad rap. Least use of napalm in any modern war: war on drugs. Most use of roundup in any modern war: war on drugs.
So many things going for it.
 
@Cerberus La racaille courant dans la rue.
In Alaska the prisons are better than dealing with the polar bears
@MattE.Эллен +1
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Silly Love Songs.
Sorry
@MattE.Эллен "I like doughnuts"? "I like changelings"? "I like oregano"?
 
9:25 PM
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in answer, mostly non-Latin answer: Meaning of "the scales begin to tip" by user228114 on english.SE
 
@Mitch Not in the dark countries!
@JackArbiter Absolutely!
It is a great success.
Drug use has all but disappeared; the war will soon be won.
 

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