@nitsua60 I didn't even notice the awkwardness until you mentioned it, but then I use singular-they all the time. But then after you mentioned it, I noticed it. (That's an interesting effect, aside…) If you want to make it less singular-they, two approaches I use are: give two sample sentences, one with ‘she’ and one with ‘he’; or just use default-she (because there's plenty of default-he around already).

Yep, looks like you mostly got around it by using nominal constructions and passives and things like that, and if you had not pointed it out, I would have missed (the question for being about D&D and) the themself in your answer entirely.

Oh, there is another singular them in there. I had to look again to see that.

@SevenSidedDie I'm growing sensitive to binarism recently, so I think I'll shy away from the "he"s and "she"s. But if it didn't catch your and @Anaphory's eye on first read, then I'll not worry about it. (That "themself" in there is what really stuck in my throat.)

@nitsua60 I hear you about binaries. Yeah, “themself” takes some getting used to.

That's a side benefit of singular-they: it doesn't just serve as a wildcard that stands for “he or she”, it also gives NB people the opportunity to recognise themselves in others' writing.

I am – linguist mode on – wondering how much further the process of English losing its grammatical plural will be going.

@nitsua60 Ha, totally unintentionally. :)

It's been a real lesson for me in RL. I used to be a grammar "purist" holding the line on "'he' is both the gendered and neutral in English." Then one person asked me not to use either 'he' or 'she' in reference to them, and I've completely flipped on it. To the extent that I've changed my institution's communications practices on the matter.

@Anaphory Hm. Even 1.ps.pl has the “Royal we” eroding its plural-ness.

@Anaphory just within pronouns, or do you see it elsewhere? (I guess just nouns & verbs left, since we already don't number modifiers, generally.)

I'm mostly thinking of you=you, they=they, plural verbs with grammatically singular group nouns, and some quantifiers (a lot of)

@nitsua60 I was once a grammar purist, until I learned about the revisionist history Victorian grammarists perpetrated on us, such as erasing the original historical singular they; and even more when I studied linguistics and learned that prescriptive grammar is like swiss cheese… :)

@SevenSidedDie Delicious and foreign?

@Anaphory Yeah. Just I was thinking of the pronoun chart and was going to say that we/us is at least safe, but it isn't.

@SevenSidedDie I think you mean "it aren't."

=D

@Anaphory …Actually kinda, yeah. Grammar is fun-delicious, and utterly warped by foreign (Latin) intrusions. :D

Mmmm... grammar fun-due.

@nitsua60 I am resisting the urge to seriously language-analyse that contention. ^^

@nitsua60 Actually, plural marking on verbs will be important, because otherwise you fully lose that distinction, which can be useful in contexts.

@SevenSidedDie it's like the linguistic version of

@Anaphory Maaaybe. We lost nearly the entire case system, which is hugely useful. That makes me not so sure that the remaining usefulness of case (edits: augh, getting my things mixed up) marking on verbs (which is already massively reduced) is any safer.

We have a strong positioning system for agent/patient/focus distinction. If noun morphology becomes non-indicative of number, that might increase the strain to see it in verbs.

@Anaphory That's true. So semantics remain, they just migrate to other parts of expression when they're squeezed out. Like how we have helping verbs now, when no such thing was needed when we had more verb declension.

@SevenSidedDie On that note. Next hypothesis: *to don't will become more of a separate verb, taking over from not the function of marking negation, like Finnish en.

@Anaphory "to don't"? I feel like I've had too much fun-due =\

=)

It's mostly behaving like a separate irregular auxiliary anyway. I don't know enough about Uralic language typology to say where it's different from a proper negation verb, but there may be a step left it has to go before becoming one.

I'm not sufficiently familiar with Finnish (like, at all) to really see the idea without examples of how don't is used similarly. But sight-unseen, I wouldn't be surprised if it's plausible.

@SevenSidedDie Some time--though not now for RL reasons--I'd be interested in picking your brain about this, if you're amenable. (If not I'd, of course, understand to don't do that.)

@nitsua60 Interesting. That's a curious example.

@nitsua60 Yeah, that's cool. The short version is that I always wanted game-recs to work, but they never quite achieved the hoped-for working-ness envisioned originally. So I has a sad, but it's a pragmatic sad.

Hello, people of the Stack.

Hello!

I prefer the term "sheeple."

Or "sherson," as long as @Anaphory hasn't completely done away with the singular yet =)

@Zachiel how's PbF going?

@nitsua60 It's not going

We're still at the dead character's turn

And not only nobody posted, which I'm ok with. Nobody told me what they want to do.

@Zachiel =(

Hey, I have a question (but not a Question question), CryptographySE seems to be totally focused on computer cryptography, so if I have a question about text ciphering, specifically historically, where should I ask it?

History.se seems like a ggod place for an historical take.

Is cryptography.se just mostly about modern computer things, because that's what people ask about? I mean, if you went to rpg.se you might not consider asking about LARP either, but it's in scope, same might be for classical cyphers on cryptography.

… Also, Simon Singh, The Code Book, if it's general curiosity and methodology …

@TiwazTyrsfist My only question at History.SE--about how long paper records might last--was soundly rejected as off-topic. It seemed (to me) that they were being very protective of their turf as for "real" history and the "doing" of history, rather than the casual interest I was showing. YMMV, but know you're in good(ish) company if they don't like your question.

In other words, definitely post, but I just wanted to give you a heads-up on my (limited) experience.

Now it is for me to wish you a good weekend, because I'm off to bed, then LARP, then other things.

@Anaphory The examples in the Tour page, the "Ask about these things here" for Cryptography are all very specifically computer encryption related, and all the questions as well. I think I'll try history then.

@Anaphory safe travels! Come back with your shield or on it!

hopefully not on it

that seems like it wouldn't be good, just a guess

well ok, if it is like that it is fine

but normally being carried on your shield seems like at least one cultures death-in-battle custom

There's a SHIELD joke in there somewhere, but I'm not awake enough to find it.

ugh

SHIELD was pretty good the first season, and then they just kept jumping the shark over and over

Alas, the shark-jumping wasn't even like this:

it was not no

it's all the more sad specifically because I liked the first season a lot

not sure what I could have expected though really

Joss Whedon sure does like to ruin good stuff

It's a little weird that their best season was the one where the season arc basically boiled down to "Clark Gregg is everyone's father figure but he has a weird vocal tick."

well, when you say it like that it sounds a lot sillier than it was XD

though to be fair it was rather silly

It was silly. That's what made the "dysfunctional family" drama work in contrast.

yeah

but it wasn't THAT silly, like, it was at least un-silly enough that they made it work

When they dialed up the drama and backed down on the silliness, the show burnt through its whimsy capital and the drama started being oppressive.

(These are all in the Timely pin, but deadline reminders are easy when they come pre-Tweeted.)

@BESW yeah I also felt most of the characters, by the end at least, were buying into this weird theme that the show was trying to force you to think actually fit in the world, when I really really felt like it just didn't fit

that theme was mostly the "all Inhumans have a purpose" thing

and some variations of it

I get that they really were designed to have purposes, but the way that panned out was a lot more like a straight up religion than the actual way those purposes would have panned out ( considering what that design actually was)

it seemed to me like just another forced plot device

the fact that the end of season 3 basically tied into that theme, when it could have been explained any other way and been left at that,... really annoyed me

Earlier this week deep-sea scientists found themselves in the pre-credits sequence of a monster film.

Or, you know, they discovered a cool little glowy thing.

lol

Any 5e experts around <cough>@SevenSidedDie @Miniman</cough>, I'm beginning to think that the last header in this answer is part of what's causing some difficulties. If you've a minute and can look at the post and the comments, I'd be very receptive to suggestions on how to best present the material.

Also, afk a bit =)

@nitsua60 "Arguably official"?

hey @JoelHarmon

oops, wrong category. How about a simple "Not Official"?

@nitsua60 Move the Sage Advice stuff upwards into a “Quasi-official” header?

hey @Shalvenay; I haven't forgotten about the conversation promise, but I think I still have a few hours, and also a room that needs another coat of paint, so I'll be back later

That's as much as has been said about the Crawford tweets as far as I'm aware. It's not exactly definite about their exact status, sadly.

@JoelHarmon ah. yeah, I can catch you then :) don't make too much of a mess ;) (and if you have paint questions, there's always DIY.SE)

all of those questions are in the vein "why didn't I do more prep before last weekend, so I could have gotten the painting done then?" and the answer, in all its irony, is Stack.

@nitsua60 Actually, I think the trouble is that “Sage Advice” is an overloaded term. It means both an official thing and a website run by 3rd party. Maybe change it from “Sage Advice (Twitter) and, really, the rest of Twitter” to “Sage Advice (3rd party website) and non-Crawford Twitter accounts” or something?

@JoelHarmon I like this too: Make a big Not Official header, and put “Sage Advice (unofficial 3rd party website and twitter account)” in its own bullet point, so there's more room to say who they really are(n't). Then have a separate bullet point for “Other Twitter accounts” for non-Crawford twitter.

Also, sadly, the process of compiling the 3rd party Sage Advice website is not always error-free.

How dare that one guy who's voluntarily doing a valuable service for the community not do a perfect job of it.

@Miniman you're the kind of guy who complains about spotty open source documentation, aren't you [glares]

@Miniman It's pretty useful. I think the official SA PDF is trying to make it obsolete though; it was more useful when the game was new and all we had was tweets.

@JoelHarmon Worse; I'm the kind of guy who does it sarcastically, but everyone can tell I really mean it :P

I'm just worried about all the people thinking "Jeremy tweeted it, so it's so." When the most is that SA(article) says "Jeremy's might be official" and there never (to my knowledge) been a single tweet he sent where he said "this one's official."

@SevenSidedDie It depends on what you use it for - it's great for answering questions to get fake internet points, but I've never used it around a gaming table.

I think we need a confusing-tables tag.

[asks Bubblegumshoe question]

@BESW do you want to be swamped by questions on how to find the right modifiers to an attack roll in 1e and CT =)

lol

@nitsua60 are there really all that many people still playing/trying to play 1e AND who don't know almost everything about it already?

@trogdor That's why they're still playing! They've been trying to work out the rules this whole time.

Suddenly Grognard Rage makes sense.

I find it hard to believe that they have not gotten it already

@trogdor I've tried to read those books. It's totally believable.

Any 1e players: That joke is at the expense of the needlessly confusing rules, not yourselves.

(I actually don't, it sounds like a really confusing system)

@nitsua60 never mind that the CT designers lost track of which guns shoot what ammo at some point in the universe, or something, because I can't really explain the damage table otherwise :P

@Miniman don't worry, no one play it (please don't hurt me anyone who plays it XD)

table flips @trogdor

@Shalvenay I like the idea of a gun that shoots at some point in the universe. "Yeah, we fire it every 30 seconds. No idea if we've ever hit anything, but it seemed like a good idea."

Actually, in a sufficiently hostile universe (looking at you, WH40K), that's mathematically sound.

@Shalvenay table flips produce cookies

@trogdor Having been in a classroom where a student actually flipped the teacher's desk: No they do not.

@Miniman look, if you think I mean actual physical ones instead of ones in this room that is not a physical space,... I can't help you

I am surprised you have not been mad every time I BURNINATED something

:P

But BURNINATING is love, BURNINATING is life!

@Miniman Related.

Re: 5e/Sage Advice/twitter: whaddya think now?

@Miniman Digital table flips probably do produce digital cookies, though.

@Miniman until you do it in real life, then it isn't so great,.. usually

[Waits for someone to answer "both" so I can say "you haven't read the book, have you?"]

@BESW I really wanted to answer: A dork, obviously.

I'm proud of myself for resisting :)

Yes, yes.

that is quite a baited question