English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

12:00 AM

Maybe you should work on your delivery? Try practicing in front of a mirror.

@Robusto I would be distracted by noticing what a handsome raccoon I am.

Funny, I was wondering why raccoons are never seen with mirrors. Vanity, thy name is Procyon lotor!

1 hour later…

Mitch

1:29 AM

@Cerberus IDF is Israeli Defense Force. It's a common enough acronym when talking about Israeli-Palestinian issues that most people don't feel like they'd have to explain it. @M.A.R.

@Mitch Why use an acronym for the army of one country?? Why?

That makes no sense.

1:52 AM

@Cerberus It is an odd but widespread usage. I'm not sure why; I think the acronym IDF is used equally widely by supporters and opponents of Israel.

@alphabet No reason to mimic the insanity of others.

No pet names for armies, which are machines of destruction.

Not to mention the fact that abbreviations are ugly, bad style.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Email in answer (79): What is a 'Swivel Servant'?‭ by Don Curtin‭ on english.SE

@Cerberus I don't think it makes the Israeli army sound better; I wouldn't call it a pet name. People also often use the acronyms IRGC and IRA without suggesting any support for those groups.

I mean, I wouldn't call ISIS (or ISIL, which the government insists on using) a term of endearment.

2:25 AM

2:37 AM

@Robusto Beat that: ;-)

Blossom Puzzle, April 14
Letters: A G I T N O R
My score: 24 points
My longest word: 4 letters
🌺 🌹 🌸 🏵

Word of the morn: hip thrust, a kind of strength exercise. I should look up the Russian term for it.

3:06 AM

China to start adoption of reusable rockets in 2025 space.com/china-catch-reusable-rockets-wires-video

This is good.

Daily Octordle #811
5️⃣🕐
4️⃣🕛
7️⃣🔟
9️⃣8️⃣
Score: 68

Daily Sequence Octordle #811
6️⃣7️⃣
8️⃣9️⃣
🔟🕚
🕛🕐
Score: 76

3:33 AM

@alphabet Surely you realise all of those are essentially different.

2 hours later…

5:30 AM

1 hour later…

M.A.R.

6:50 AM

@CowperKettle translating a sports science article?

@CowperKettle affirmative. This is good.

@CowperKettle maybe primitive humans were just really big.

People started shrinking as soon as they stopped living in the moment and picked up all these digital evils.

@Cerberus you'd go insane if you read a medical article on ScienceDirect

M.A.R.

7:11 AM

Daily Octordle #811
2️⃣🕚
3️⃣9️⃣
🔟6️⃣
7️⃣5️⃣
Score: 53

Xanne

Wordle 1,031 3/6

⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
⬜⬜🟩🟩⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

2 hours later…

9:04 AM

Some wordplay, I guess.

@M.A.R. No, unfortunately, I'm now a delivery courier

I only translate small bits for a couple persons I know, this brings me some 3000 to 4000 rubles/month

My translation speed is about 5% of what it was, so I closed my single-entrepreneur registration, in order not to pay taxes.

I've been translating this stuff for 2 hours 7 minutes, while previously it would have taken me a half-hour max, I guess.

And I'm only half-way through.

My brain gets tired after each sentence.

And still it's better than it was before I added L-methylfolate to my antidepressant in September.

3 hours later…

11:40 AM

@CowperKettle No wordplay, just dark humor. There are wordplays on some of the character's names though: Hägär the Horrible is Hägär Dünor in French, and his son Hamlet is Homlet.

Hägar the Horrible

Hägar the Horrible is the title and main character of an American comic strip created by cartoonist Dik Browne and syndicated by King Features Syndicate. It first appeared on February 4, 1973 (in Sunday papers) and the next day in daily newspapers, and was an immediate success. Following Browne's retirement in 1988, his son Chris Browne (May 1952–February 5, 2023) continued the strip until his own death, with artwork by Gary Hallgren. As of 2010, Hägar is distributed to 1,900 newspapers in 56 countries and translated into 12 languages. The strip is a caricature commenting on modern-day life in...

1 hour later…

12:57 PM

Word of the day: main of cocks - a fight between two cocks

> Don Juan, who had shone in the late slaughter,
Was left upon his way with the despatch,
Where blood was talk'd of as we would of water;
And carcasses that lay as thick as thatch
O'er silenced cities, merely served to flatter
Fair Catherine's pastime -- who look'd on the match
Between these nations as a main of cocks,
Wherein she liked her own to stand like rocks.

It just occurred to me: "wherein she liked her own to stand like rocks" - here Byron probably means something sexual. I mean, Catherine liked cocks to stand like rocks.

I wonder how it got into print in those days.

1:16 PM

@jlliagre You're kidding, right?

1:31 PM

May 26, 2023 at 0:55, by jlliagre

I never kid.

1:53 PM

@Cerberus If you want, you can read South Africa's complaint to the ICJ: icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/…

2:28 PM

@jlliagre Ouch!

2:54 PM

Wordle 1,031 4/6

⬛⬛⬛🟨⬛
⬛⬛⬛🟩⬛
⬛🟨⬛🟨⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Daily Octordle #812
6️⃣8️⃣
3️⃣7️⃣
9️⃣4️⃣
🕚🔟
Score: 58

Daily Sequence Octordle #812
5️⃣6️⃣
7️⃣8️⃣
9️⃣🔟
🕚🕛
Score: 68

3:17 PM

Blossom Puzzle, April 15
Letters: C E H R M O S
My score: 347 points
My longest word: 11 letters
🌷 🌹 🌸 💐 💮 🌼 🏵 🌻 🌺 🌷 🌹

300 average now.

4:00 PM

@Robusto poor guy.

> A Sex Ed teacher walks into class, reaches into his desk, and pulls out a banana and a condom… He says “ok kids, today I’m going to show you how to put on a condom and I need this banana because I can’t get a boner on an empty stomach.”

"Duchowny found that about 45% of the sample reported experiencing one or more adverse childhood events, and that both men and women who reported adverse childhood events had poorer ATP max production—that is, they weren’t producing as much ATP as people who experienced fewer or no adverse events in childhood." news.umich.edu/how-trauma-gets-under-the-skin

Childhood trauma is associated with poor mitochondrial function in muscles in adulthood.

How did Stephen Hawking maintain such mental clarity if his muscles were all but wasted through inactivity.. According to all this research he should have been in very bad shape mentally.

Nina Simone - Feeling Good

4:30 PM

►

Wordle 1,031 4/6

⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬛⬛🟨⬛🟩
🟨⬛⬛🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

5:02 PM

@Robusto As it was clear I'm not competitive on that game, I decided to try to get the lowest possible score. Shortest accepted words require four letters and avoiding the bonus letter gives two points per word. I discovered that in that last case, the bonus letter doesn't change. It proved quite difficult for me to find twelve four letter words but I did it. The game comment was "Good" which is lenient.

Cherry blossoming.

5:42 PM

@jlliagre Ha, so you were kidding. ^_^

I gave up on WhenTaken because it's way too much work for so little reward. Plus some of the scores do seem too good to be true.

Mitch

6:40 PM

@Cerberus Are you annoyed at all acronyms or just Israeli ones?

@Mitch I hope the answer is AAAA

Mitch

@MetaEd ICWYDT

@Robusto Too bad. I like WhenTaken. Not sure about why you say scores are too good to be true.

7:16 PM

#WhenTaken #48 (15.04.2024)

I scored 875/1000 🎉

1️⃣ 📍 670.2 metres - 🗓️ 21 yrs - ⚡ 151 / 200
2️⃣ 📍 479 km - 🗓️ 2 yrs - ⚡ 184 / 200
3️⃣ 📍 817 km - 🗓️ 3 yrs - ⚡ 173 / 200
4️⃣ 📍 932 km - 🗓️ 3 yrs - ⚡ 169 / 200
5️⃣ 📍 35 km - 🗓️ 0 yrs - ⚡ 198 / 200

https://whentaken.com

The time for the first one is BS! :(

2 and 4 are also super generic. I have no idea how you were supposed to get those down to less than a country.

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle :( so sorry to hear that. I thought the courier job was just a side gig

@Mitch At all which are unnecessary.

But armies make it even worse.

7:57 PM

"Given a choice between grief and nothing, I'd choose grief." ---William Faulkner

8:45 PM

"Together"-flavored milk

C'mon, seriously? There gotta be someone not knowing Together is an ice cream?

@MetaEd Given a choice between joy and grief, I'd choose joy. —Robusto

@Robusto Given a choice between joy and grief, I'd choose happiness.

So what's wrong with joy?

@Robusto There's nothing wrong with joy.

Thank you.

9:04 PM

I'd prefer fun over joy tho

Joy is more fun than fun.

Joy is an occasion, but fun lasts forever.

Now you're making things up.

9:31 PM

I prefer contentment.

#WhenTaken #48 (15.04.2024)

I scored 832/1000 🎉

1️⃣ 📍 872.2 metres - 🗓️ 6 yrs - ⚡ 193 / 200
2️⃣ 📍 717 km - 🗓️ 17 yrs - ⚡ 143 / 200
3️⃣ 📍 925 km - 🗓️ 17 yrs - ⚡ 136 / 200
4️⃣ 📍 572 km - 🗓️ 7 yrs - ⚡ 174 / 200
5️⃣ 📍 63 km - 🗓️ 8 yrs - ⚡ 186 / 200

https://whentaken.com

9:50 PM

@XanderHenderson Why BS?

@Robusto Where was taken my second cherry blossoming picture?

BS because the cars look much older than the photo, and the grain of the photo feels old.

@XanderHenderson The white Ford Escort Van could be from 1997.

10:08 PM

@jlliagre Yeah, I've never seen one of those (it may be that they were never sold in the US). But they style of that vehicle is, as you note, very mid-80s to mid-90s. And the other cars I can see look older.

But even if I had recognized the car, I still would have been off by more than 15 years.

(And now that I know that the car is called a "Ford Escort Van", I see nearly identical models as early as 1991.)

10:30 PM

@XanderHenderson Oh, you are right, The photo is actually from 1998.

SmokeDetector

10:48 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] No whitespace in answer (97): "With what [...]?" or "What [...] with?"‭ by helena‭ on english.SE

@jlliagre so they have cheated!

It claimed 2011.