Language Overflow

I do wish it had an origin story and, along with it, a Marvel cinematographication.

periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/desterro/article/viewFile/8721/…

@M.A.R. By the way, when you cross a sheep with a kangaroo, you get a woolly jumper. (:

wow I got a hat

to can-cook is to cook canned food without removing the food from the cans

An English teacher decides to quit. He says: Headmaster, I quit. I'm a terrible, terrible English teacher. I don't do simple. I'm not in the least being progressive. And, frankly, I have never been perfect.

pnas.org/content/106/25/10130 (REM, not incubation, improves creativity by priming associative networks)

Word of the day: devil-may-care

Word of the day: van (wing)

Word of the day: inutile - Useless; pointless.

Incidentally I've always wanted to respond with "Are you calling me fat?" after a waiter says "Sorry for your wait."

@snailplane Just for you! sciencemag.org/news/2017/10/jeremy-leftysnail-1-foot-under

@AIQ my advice: enjoy the site, enjoy helping learners, enjoy responding, but stop engaging outside the Q&A realm. Avoid discussions like the plague, it will only upset you more. Free expression (I guess I have to state the obvious, excludes incidents of bullying and any forms of discrimination and disrespect) is not possible here.

There is no good faith since the CoC (code of conduct) was updated. Too many things are shrouded because...I don't know. It used to be that you had people like Shog9, Monica and Jon Ericson who knew exactly what to say and when. Then things returned on an even keel. Instead we have people who hide behind the CoC and use that to deflect criticism and questions.

@AIQ I'm on shaky grounds here, so I have to be careful if I'm not I will get suspended for a year, and I don't want that. It's gotten to a point on SE where deleting discussions and putting out statements which give a biased view of what was said has now become the norm.

This is a big problem - people want to do things behind doors - that is not something I can agree with. I'd have the community make the decision, not mods of other sites, not CMs who have no connection to ELL. Someone who cheated to gain reputation points, should never have been allowed to run for mod in the first place. And it was many many months ago when I raised this issue with the mod team. I was told that the CMs were aware of this and they were looking into it.

But nothing was done and they ran for mod. Many of the voters vote based on candidate's reputation points. And I knew they'd win based on that.

Okay, the CMs are really pissing me off now. Stop deleting my comments. Let the community know the truth and decide for themselves.

So, I came across another interesting word while I was looking for an interesting name for a ship in a video game: redamancy : act of loving in return Despite his lack of redamancy, her passion for him was unabated for several years. It's a "lost" word from 1656, so only use it if you want to test whether someone will ask a question if they don't understand something ;)

Words of the day: neoplasm and pleonasm

Where would I look for "the official statement" once things have been sorted out?

Who knows though. Let's just hope the silence is deliberation and not just acting slowly or trying to cover things up.

@ColleenV what's with the silence by SE? No official statement? Announcement? Is there the remotest chance that once the suspension has ended the newly-elected moderator regains their position? Surely not?

My coworker coined a phrase today "there's no need to make a meeting out of it". It means the same thing as make a production out of but it's funny because we've been stuck in a lot of of pointless meetings lately.

@Randal'Thor comments on chat cannot be deleted, so my supposition is out there. The user has been demodded and suspended, so something was fishy and the user is paying the price. I may sympathise that they may be feeling distressed, but to demod a newly elected moderator is pretty serious. After all, it clearly says the user was suspended for voting irregularities on their account page.

"If this was all right and as per SE rules, they probably wouldn't feel the guilt." Actually, that's completely untrue, but that aside, if it really was against the multiple account rules, then they definitely should have their moderatorship removed (I respect that you're not interested in pursuing that, but that's objectively what should happen). If there really was fraud, then both the policy should be upheld, that they are removed, and the truth should be available.

I just found a cool word - cryptochrome. It came up as a search suggestion when I typoed cryptocurrency.

Regular community members answer English questions. Moderators make judgement calls about what to do when someone is rude, or a newbie is having trouble asking well-received questions. They don't teach that stuff in University;)

@AIQ The most important quality of an SE moderator is that they care about the community they're moderating, and I think you have that covered :)

nonstandard contraction of the day: I'd've

Since time immemorial, philosophers have pondered, Why do good people answer bad questions?

Word of the day: bailiwick

Word of the day: to run into the sand

Word of the day: littermates

Word of the day: loosestrife

Here’s a word I haven’t seen used in a long time: rapacious. What is voluntary is not rapacious from a tweet by John Stossel