English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

8:00 PM

@GraceNote This dude might have made the first grammar written in English but it's not an English grammar. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86lfric_of_Eynsham#Life_and_works

Kit

@GraceNote Kosmo could have told you all about it.

Cerberus

@GraceNote Never use emoticons, or do so much at look at them! Always avert your eyes, or be corrupted.

@Kit Awww...

If only he came back.

Grace Note

@Cerberus I should note that at worst, here I only use a music note. And really it's only an accentuated punctuation mark rather than an emote, so to speak.

Mana

:3

aedia

@GraceNote And for print you gotta learn about Caxton, but he weren't no grammarian. Just standardized language through printing. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

Matt Ellen

8:01 PM

single-word-request I need a word that describes a person who builds up static charge when sat down and gets electrocuted when he uses his sink. Every time. Damnit OW!

Cerberus

@GraceNote If you say so... I use ellipsis, and hah/heh, so I should shut up.

Grace Note

@MattEllen "Resident of Pennsylvania"?

@Cerberus Well, "heh" is like what you might actually say in response, neh?

Kit

@MattEllen That word is "dead." You mean "electrified."

Matt Ellen

@GraceNote Is this where I should be living? Do they have treatment for me there?

Grace Note

@MattEllen The treatment for me had always been "Discharge the buildup".

Matt Ellen

8:02 PM

@Kit maybe I mean I'm dead. But ok. I probably mean electrified

Kit

You could say "lifted" if you want to use electrician lingo.

Cerberus

@GraceNote Yeh.

Grace Note

As well, an ellipsis is a method of punctuation at this point. Often abused as if people didn't know what a comma was, but it has its uses.

Like...

Kit

...you know.

Cerberus

It does; but I tend to overuse it.

Grace Note

8:04 PM

Leaving a cliff hanger for people to expect something of a dramatic reveal only to either not say anything useful or to just forget the whole thing.

Also, to quote a friend of mine from elsewhere:

Mana

@Grace Those people are jerks who hound innocent people because of starred messages only vaguely related to them.

Grace Note

> ...if I just start all of my sentences with ellipses then I don't need to start with capital letters, score!

Cerberus

That would be a substantial gain...

Matt Ellen

...if I start with an ellipsis do I get a dotted left border?

Cerberus

Hey, I have a question.

Matt Ellen

8:05 PM

:(

Grace Note

@Mana You're only innocent up until you start the road of fanart.

Cerberus

@MattEllen >

Grace Note

@MattEllen Start with >

Cerberus

Use that.

Grace Note

@Cerberus Fire away

Mana

8:06 PM

@Grace Uh. Let's not think about uh. Fanart of that.

Cerberus

Do you know of an easy way to auto-correct all words with red underlinings in a text field in Firefox?

Grace Note

I do not know, no.

Matt Ellen

@Cerberus with your face. I mean, no, no I don't

Cerberus

I made a script that lets me auto-correct it by pointing the mouse over it (not clicking) and double-tapping control, but I have to do that for every word, and I have to use the mouse to point/hover.

Grace Note

@Mana The response I have to that could be scarring.

rumtscho

8:07 PM

@Cerberus Um. switch the dictionary into the language you are writing in?

Cerberus

@rumtscho It is, but I tend to wtype things like this all the time.

Grace Note

@Cerberus I heard that larger keyboards can help with that kind of thing.

Cerberus

The suggested word of the built-in spellchecker is nearly always right; but I hate to have to use the mouse.

aedia

@Cerberus Twype slower.

Matt Ellen

@Kit What does it mean in electrician lingo?

Cerberus

8:08 PM

Thank you, both neither suggestion is ptracticable at this moment.

rumtscho

@Cerberus I wouldn't trust an autocorrect with automatically changing everything.

Cerberus

I want to type fats.

Matt Ellen

congrats. you just did

Kit

@MattEllen "Lifted" is when you are shocked. By electricity, I mean.

Grace Note

That's an... unusual lingo. I wonder what it comes from.

Cerberus

8:09 PM

@rumtscho No, exactly; that's why I want to trigger it with a hotkey. I'd like separate hotkeys for "last underlined word" and "all words".

Kit

@GraceNote It's because it lifts you off your feet, I imagine.

Matt Ellen

@Kit ah! Well, that's part of my problem. I am frequently lifted due to something in my seating arrangement.

aedia

@MattEllen Once again I have to pretend I am coughing to hide my bursting into laughter at work.

Cerberus

Already my mouse script is a great improvement; but it could still be much faster if only I had what I just described.

Kit

Even 220 can knock you on your ass.

Grace Note

8:10 PM

@Kit Isn't any current capable of actually lifting you going to have accomplished a lot more than that in the meantime?

Cerberus

@MattEllen Oh, why, thanks you! I feel much better now.

Grace Note

That said, I'm speaking with my last safety seminar on arc flashes, so I may have an exaggerated interpretation of electrical strength.

Kit

@GraceNote If I parsed your sentence correctly, no.

Matt Ellen

@GraceNote static is high voltage very very low amps

Kit

@GraceNote Oh. Yes. Arc flash. I have nightmares about that.

Grace Note

8:11 PM

@MattEllen Static doesn't sound like something that'd lift you off the floor.

Matt Ellen

@GraceNote it makes me jump though ;)

Kit

@GraceNote Well, it would if you're a pussy...cat.

Matt Ellen

in surprise, although I'm getting used to it.

Grace Note

Pfft

Kit

Have you tried grounding your chair?

Grace Note

8:13 PM

Or buying a new sofa, that sometimes helps

Matt Ellen

@Kit that's not a bad plan

Grace Note

Most people I know are far more obsessed with how to pick up a charge, than how to avoid picking them up.

Matt Ellen

@GraceNote it's just a desk chair :)

Kit

@MattEllen I've had worse.

Grace Note

@MattEllen Huh.

Kit

8:14 PM

I still occasionally get shocked something awful from my car.

I think it's got a loose wire somewhere.

Matt Ellen

!!

Grace Note

Car shock always scares me just because of all the static hazard warnings at the gas station.

Kit

@GraceNote Especially where they tell you to discharge your static on the car first.

Grace Note

@Kit Aye

aedia

@Cerberus It would be even better if it just autocorrected as you were typing. Though I can imagine that being more dangerous than manually accepting the changes. I have searched a bit and I don't see any plugins like that, sadly.

Martha

8:15 PM

@aedia That sounds like what the iPhone does. Which is pretty terrible.

Grace Note

@Martha I've heard many horror stories about that.

Mana

@Grace Indeed, FallenAngelEyes posted a thing in The Bridge just a few days ago detailing quite a few incidents.

Martha

Basically, a computer should not behave like it's smarter than me unless it actually is smarter than me. Calculate things really quickly? Sure, go ahead. Try to read my mind? Please don't.

Matt Ellen

Damn you auto correct!

Kit

@Martha Reminds me of my project leader...

aedia

8:18 PM

@Martha Android's autocomplete is not exceedingly much better (I had an iPhone before), but I wouldn't live without it; my thumbs would be tired.

Grace Note

@Martha And yet the one thing I always see people requesting is that the computer should do these things. And it makes me sad every time because it is wrong oh so many times.

Cerberus

@aedia Thanks for looking! Yes, autocorrect would be too dangerous for a great many words. I do have it enabled for some that are absolute safe.

OK, peoples. TTFN!

@Kit SLATFATF

@Kit stay titties!

8:20 PM

@Mana Eh?

Cerberus

@Martha I agree in all respects. Don't get me started on Apple...

Bye Kit, whatever that means!

Mana

@Martha So long and thanks for all the fish.

Martha

@Mana Oh, right.

@Kit And just so you have useless pings waiting when you come back: Bye Kit!

Mana

@Kit BYE KIT

So uh. Yeah.

Grace Note

Hm...

Mana

8:25 PM

@Grace What other cool rooms are there on chat.SE?

Grace Note

@Mana There's always the Fridge.

Mana

The...the Fridge.

Martha

@GraceNote Is that for Cooking?

Grace Note

@Martha No, it's a nickname for Gaming's mod-only room.

Mana

argh

Martha

8:26 PM

If it's mod-only, it cannot possibly be as cool as The Incomprehensible Room.

Grace Note

When it was just us pro-tems, the three of us could not manage to meet each other. Ever. So whenever we "chatted", it was more like we were leaving messages for each other to find when waking up, not unlike putting Post-It notes on the refridgerator door.

@Martha I'm just happy you didn't thwack me.

Cerberus

@Martha Indeed. Nor as incomprehensible.

Mana

@Grace That's adorable!

Cerberus

@GraceNote Hah, a felicitous name.

Martha

@GraceNote Should I have?

Grace Note

8:27 PM

@Martha If you have to ask that question, you don't ♪

Cerberus

Thwack her, I say!

Martha

@Cerberus There shall be no thwacking of The Mistress of Thwack. Hmph.

(In other words, I believe the consensus is that GraceNote = he.)

Grace Note

The whole pronoun thing I thought was decidedly on an individual basis rather than a consensus.

Martha

Oh, and I finally figured out why I should've thwacked you, @GraceNote. It's Monday, what can I say.

Grace Note

@Martha You could spare me.

Martha

8:31 PM

You're getting off with a warning this time. Just don't let it happen again.

Grace Note

I'll do something resembling my best to avoid that fate.

Mana

@GraceNote Is there a pronoun you prefer?

Grace Note

@Mana Of course there is.

Cerberus

@Martha Oh! Really? @Grace, can you confirm this?

Grace Note

But in the same spirit that I ask people not to violently defend their viewpoint (and it has happened, much to my dismay), I don't really specify which it is.

@Cerberus Well, if you want to go by consensus, fanart is heavily slanted in the direction of XX.

Cerberus

8:33 PM

Fan art?

Mana

There's...fanart?

Matt Ellen

@GraceNote there is fanart of you?

Cerberus

If you have no preference, I shall chose feminine. I must choose either one or the other sex.

Mana

That was a pretty nice lineup there. It's like each message expanded on the previous one.

Grace Note

@Cerberus Is appreciated by me.

Cerberus

8:34 PM

OK. Then so shall it be.

Mana

"Grace dude" just doesn't really sound correct, anyways.

whereas like "badp dude" is totally cool. Totally rad. radp.

aedia

@Cerberus There are all these but they get hard to keep track of.

Cerberus

Incidentally, I have been assuming that all the pink unicorns here were girls. If not... it is their own fault.

Grace Note

@Cerberus If there's one thing Stack Exchange taught me, it is that unicorns largely appeal to men.

2

Cerberus

@aedia Ack, not that duplicate again!

@GraceNote Tell that to Aedia, Z7, and Kit...

Grace Note

8:37 PM

1

Q: Is the visual design of Area 51 intended to appeal largely to geeks?

Space, aliens, freakin' unicorns. Area 51's all a bit geek-centric (making it inherently more male-oriented). However, aren't we supposed to be proposing sites for the internet community at large? Isn't that community pretty much 50/50 male to female and not entirely geeks? I'm just a little con...

Cerberus

Haha. I see you were the first to object.

Mana

I dislike the implication there that geeks can't be female.

Cerberus

BRB.

Martha

Going back to this:

0

Q: First grammar book

In early times, even though people did not have a set of rules on grammar, they have continued to write and study English. During Shakespeare's time, there was not even a standard rules on spelling. However, sooner or later someone had to write all those rules of grammar right? So, who was offici...

grammar

I don't think this is really general reference.

Grace Note

Oh. Right. Before wild speculations. Right. Yes, there's artwork that is intended to depict me. It happens when you hang out in communities of artists, everyone likes to draw artwork of each other. Usually awesome.

aedia

8:38 PM

@Cerberus The only one of those pronouns I really have any fondness for is "co", but "she" is much better, and I'm a big advocate of singular "they", anyhow.

@Cerberus I think z7sg has said that he's male. Also, he's more purple than pink :)

Grace Note

Since no one ever sees each other, you always get to see interesting results. Some people ask for research notes, others go purely by what their interpretation of the person is via chat.

@Martha I think I agree if I think about it. At the very least, "Being easily referenced" is not what I'd call any negative point of that.

Since it isn't all that easily referenced.

simchona

When can you delete questions?

Some of these aren't getting any better

Questions by one user, that is

Grace Note

@simchona If you are the author, if there are no answers or only one un-upvoted answer. If you are a 10k user or above, 2 days after it gets closed. If you are a 20k user or above, after it gets closed.

simchona

@GraceNote I really need to get more rep...

aedia

@Mana More problematic is the assumption that the visual design is the only thing that matters about making something welcoming to women and girls. (Better "shrink it and pink it" or they won't buy your product!)

Mana

8:44 PM

@aedia True.

Martha

In other news, I just got a second call from some organization that's begging for money. Both times, their first question was, "do you or someone you know suffer from diabetes?" What I want to know is, 1. Why do they go around asking such personal and private questions from random strangers, and 2. Do other people they call actually answer the question?

Grace Note

@Martha I don't know the answer to 1, but sadly the answer to 2 is "Yes"

Matt Ellen

@GraceNote so people guess what you look like and draw you?

Grace Note

@MattEllen Not just me. Everyone. There's artwork of us all there. Ranging from amusing caricatures to awesome-biker-in-alley full environs paintings. Usually you get things closer to the latter for things like birthdays.

Mana

@Grace What sort of forums do you hang out at?

Martha

8:47 PM

A few years ago, we kept getting calls at work where the first question was "does your company provide health insurance". I refused to answer them, too, and they were utterly surprised.

Cerberus

@aedia Oh, dear... then I give up. From here on, my she's and he's are all to be taken as bisexual pronouns.

Grace Note

@Mana Right now? None. This was ages ago.

Martha

But I don't see that as any different from asking "what is your salary".

Grace Note

@Martha That's a very personal question...

Cerberus

@Martha 1. Because they are immoral. 2. I might automatically answer before thinking.

Mana

8:49 PM

@Grace Oh!

Grace Note

Well, not very personal, but point is, normal people don't just go and ask that kind of thing. And yet at the end of the day, people still answer it.

Part of it I think stems from people not realizing that they probably should not reveal this kind of information so readily. Part of it also comes across that people think that withholding it may even seem unnatural, especially if the questioner doesn't act too intrusive.

Cerberus

I live in the busiest area in the country. There are always countless people on the streets trying to get you to buy subscriptions to magazines, telephone subscriptions, children in Africa, etc. etc. They used to ask "how old are you?" as an introductory question, because minors were useless to them. I always answered "no, thank you", without slowing my pace in the slightest.

I used to live about 50 meters from the nearest supermarket. A couple of subscription sellers would usually be standing right at my front door, and another one in front of the supermarket. So I had to counter them four times whenever I went to buy a bag of cookies. Err, carrots and applies.

Martha

The problem is, usually the caller is some non-native-speaker who can barely manage the script, so waxing sarcastic ("Now why would you ask me such a personal question, dear? Do I know you from somewhere? Did our parents go to school together?" etc.) would be useless.

Matt Ellen

@Cerberus One charity tried to stop me when I was in a rush with "Do you like animals?". I harked back "I like to eat them!"

simchona

@MattEllen Meat is murder. Tasty, tasty murder.

Matt Ellen

8:54 PM

@simchona :-D

Cerberus

@Martha But still fun?

@MattEllen Excellent!

Grace Note

@Cerberus Fun is lost when the impact is gone.

RegDwight

@simchona ಠ_ಠ

Cerberus

I sometimes say, "yes, especially with lemon and thyme".

Grace Note

My mother once countered a petition for aid by noting we were victims of the recent tornado. That got them to back out quite quickly.

Cerberus

8:56 PM

@GraceNote Partly... but when you're in a foul mood, it may be some relief.

Grace Note

@Cerberus I find chocolate to help a lot if I'm in a foul mood. Taking it out on people has never had a positive consequence.

Cerberus

@GraceNote Excellent! No people wounded, I hope?

@GraceNote Right, chocolate. Good idea.

Grace Note

@Cerberus Nope. Our homes and family are 100% intact.

The debris all around it? That not so much.

Cerberus

OK, that's what matters.

rumtscho

@Cerberus I see you are using your autocorrect at full speed.

Martha

8:59 PM

@Cerberus Well, sorta. If I can remember to do it in time, that is. I suffer from a severe case of "staircase wit".

Grace Note

Aye it is, especially considering how much damage there was overall.

Cerberus

@rumtscho Yes, it is very advanced! I am glad you noticed.

@Martha Whadda?

How many houses are destroyed in America every year by tornadoes?

Grace Note

@Cerberus (Applies)

Martha

@Cerberus Staircase wit = coming up with the perfect rejoinder after you've already left.

Cerberus

OK... why the staircase? Because you'll be out the door on the stairs?

Grace Note

9:02 PM

@Cerberus I don't know. I don't live in the areas like Ohio which have seasonal tornados. The recent one was the first in, what, 40 years in my state? Some long time. And the last one barely did any damage.

Martha

@Cerberus Something like that, yes.

Cerberus

Ohio, even? But isn't that far from the coast?

Grace Note

@Cerberus I'm in Massachussetts, which is right at the coast, I don't think coastal proximity is actually a figure in tornado activity (compared to, say, typhoon activity)

rumtscho

@Cerberus Tornadoes usually appear on great flat planes, not on coasts.

Martha

@rumtscho s/plains/planes

Cerberus

9:03 PM

Oh... I always confuse those things. We don't have any of that, praise the Lord.

rumtscho

@Martha At least this was 100% me. My autocorrect is always in a language I'm not typing in ATM, so I disregard it.

I wonder, is it possible to get a tornado on a great flat plane? A mini-tornado maybe.

Martha

Yeah, Europe is kind of low on severe weather. The worst you guys get is flooding, and that can be prevented with sufficient investment/planning.

Cerberus

In fact, I can't think of any natural disaster that could threaten me, except really bad lightning or something. Phew!

Grace Note

@Cerberus I didn't think I was at threat of tornadoes for over 20 years.

rumtscho

@Cerberus Cerberus I think you live in one of the most problematic areas in Europe.

Cerberus

9:06 PM

We are 25 % below sea level, and yet flooding only occurs in the areas between the winter dikes and rivers, where there shouldn't be any houses at any rate.

@rumtscho Problematic? Why?

Martha

In America, you get to choose between earthquakes, hurricanes, and tornadoes. There is no "none of the above, thank you".

rumtscho

@Cerberus Because you live under the sea level, as you noted. (25% of what?)

Matt Ellen

@Cerberus 25% below sea level?

jinx

Cerberus

Last wind-related disaster we had must have been very long ago. I remember the tornado-like thing that destroyed some of the Cathedral at Utrecht around 1660...

Grace Note

@Martha We were fine with "Snowstorms" up here before.

Cerberus

9:08 PM

@rumtscho 25 % of land area is below sea level. Probably more than half the population. But that is quite safe!

We had bad flooding in 1953. But the dikes have been reinforced tremendously.

rumtscho

@Martha I think you left out the flooding rivers. But we have those too, so maybe not as noteworthy.

Martha

@GraceNote There are actually quite a few earthquake faults that run throughout the Eastern seaboard region. It's just that they're not terribly active faults.

Grace Note

@Martha Can't say I've ever had one happen in my life. All my prior non-snow-related weather disasters have been when I was in Taiwan.

Cerberus

I don't think the Randstad (major urban area) has ever had serious flooding in the last couple of centuries, except when we broke the dikes on purpose to stop the Spaniards in the 16th century. But even then the cities remained dry, so far as I remember.

Matt Ellen

Hi @brachomonacho!

Good night people of the chat.

bracho monacho

9:10 PM

Hello!

aedia

@Cerberus en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27esprit_de_l%27escalier (By the time you've left you can think of what to say.)

Bye Matt!

Bye @Matt

G'nite, @Matt

good night @matt

9:12 PM

Wow. 'Staircase wit' is actually a proper term and all that.

Cerberus

@aedia Ah, au bas de l'escalier... that makes sense.

Martha

@GraceNote Well, of course it is! I used it, didn't I?

Grace Note

@Martha I can't tell what is and what is not a common proverb versus what is and what is not a pet name, as it were.

aedia

@GraceNote glad no one was hurt in your tornado! Those were scary; I was worried about family and friends. The northeast is not a usual place for them (tornadoes, I mean).

Martha

My point is, if I use a term, it by definition becomes a proper term, even if it wasn't one before. :D

Grace Note

9:14 PM

@Martha Point taken.

@aedia No, no it isn't. It's especially frightening when you lose all phone access and so you can't even call to see if everyone is alright.

rumtscho

@GraceNote Maybe somebody should make a game out of it.

Like http://cheeseorfont.mogrify.org/play.

Have you ever had this bug in chat?

My cursor is on the second row in the textbox

Grace Note

Bug?

rumtscho

For every new message

Grace Note

Can't say I have.

rumtscho

I can hit backspace to get to the first row

Grace Note

9:16 PM

Argh! My intentional losing streak has been ended!

rumtscho

If I don't, my message is posted with a blank line before it.

Cerberus

Do the phone lines run high up on poles in America?

Grace Note

@rumtscho Does it persist if you leave and re-enter?

aedia

@Cerberus A lot of places in the US, power and phone are on poles, yeah.

rumtscho

And after some time (maybe 30 sec), the blank line is automatically removed.

bracho monacho

9:17 PM

@Cerberus I have a terrible voice that causes most telemarketers to immediately ask "Is one of your parents at home?" when they ring up... To which I always reply (as squeakily as I can, "no!"

Heehee

rumtscho

Got it for the first time tonight. Both here and in the Frying pan.

@GraceNote Yes it does.

Grace Note

Curious.

rumtscho

Do you see a blank row above my messages for a short while?

Grace Note

Nope

Martha

@GraceNote It's often a good idea to have an emergency contact who lives far away - i.e. Florida or California or something, so that he or she is unlikely to be affected by the same emergency. Very often, phone lines within the affected area will be hopelessly congested, but you'll be perfectly able to call long-distance.

Cerberus

9:18 PM

@aedia It is the same in parts of Europe; luckily, we have all clay and sand, so all electrical and phone lines are underground and never break.

@brachomonacho Haha, very nice.

Grace Note

@Martha We have contacts in Taiwan, so that's pretty long distance. But that said, we actually lost phone service, not so much it was congested.

aedia

@Cerberus In the cities a lot of them are buried. And in new construction, like recent housing developments, they tend to put things underground. But everything was on poles where I grew up.

Cerberus

@rumtscho I have the blank line problem too, now and then. Just not at this very moment. It is very weird.

Martha

@GraceNote Well, yeah, it doesn't help with that.

Grace Note

(It also doesn't work when your mother not only leaves her cellphone in her room, but also doesn't check her email because she's blissfully unaware that there's a tornado ripping through the city her husband and children work in!)

Cerberus

9:20 PM

I think it is the chat engine that automatically removes the blank line, but it is still entered when you send the line.

rumtscho

@brachomonacho This reminds me of the FOAF who kept black candles and a replica of a bloody goat head near the front door and whenever the Jehova witnesses came to visit, tried to convert them to Satanism.

@Cerberus Have you noticed any pattern? When does it happen?

Martha

Oh, Jehova's witnesses are incredibly easy to get rid of if you have just a modicum of Biblical knowledge.

Cerberus

@aedia I'm glad they are putting everything underground now. But it is said that burying the lines is much more expensive if the ground is all rocky. Then again, sewer pipes are always underground, aren't they? You'd think they could just lay the phone and power lines in the same ditch.

bracho monacho

@rumtscho So cool!

Cerberus

@rumtscho It happens in streaks. Refreshing didn't seem to work, at least not consistently and/or for a long time.

But today I have only seen it for a short while.

I think it started not long ago. A week? A few weeks?

rumtscho

9:22 PM

@Cerberus Any browser dependency?

Cerberus

I've only tried it on FF.

aedia

@Cerberus I don't even have a land line phone any more. It's more essential in rural areas if there isn't good cell phone service, but I feel safe enough without it in the city because there are so many people around all the time. Do most people have land line phones near you?

bracho monacho

@rumtscho The key with Jehovahs witnesses is to never show an interest... Otherwise, they write down your address and keep coming back.

Cerberus

@aedia I don't have one either, for the same reasons. Many young people in the city don't any more. But I will probably get one again if I have plenty of money, some day, somehow.

Grace Note

Not having a landline seems risky, but that may be more of the "Prepare for anything" side of me than the "Prepare for feasible dangers" side.

Cerberus

9:25 PM

I could walk over to friends who do have land lines...

aedia

@Martha They are the worst for me. I am so good at saying "no, sorry, I'm not interested" to charity callers and such, but I once had a set of Jehovah's witnesses that kept coming back, because I was not forceful enough in telling them to go.

bracho monacho

@rumtscho The last pair that came to my house dragged their poor 10yo boys with them, (presumably so that they wouldn't get abused by heathens).

Grace Note

I should be glad I've never had a Jehovah's witness pay a visit.

aedia

I was home while job-hunting and they would explain to me that they had to make a certain number of house visits and I felt guilty for sending them off.

Martha

@aedia The key is to totally embarrass them on some point of theology they espouse. Politely, of course. Doesn't seem very nice, I know, but strictly speaking, it is the Christian thing to do.

rumtscho

9:27 PM

@Cerberus OK, after 7-8 tries to log in with Chromium, I am back in chat and the bug is away.

Grace Note

Makes sense

bracho monacho

@GraceNote Our phone lines are all above ground, and the first thing to go when there's bad weather.

rumtscho

@brachomonacho And take the brand new 56k modem with them when hit by lightning. Oh, the memories.

bracho monacho

@rumtscho I love the crazy noises those things would make when connecting.

Grace Note

@brachomonacho Yeah, for bad weather a landline won't help. But that surely ain't the only threat we face these days.

bracho monacho

9:31 PM

►

Martha

@aedia Another option is to tell them you already have a church you're happy with, and invite them to it. (Look up churches in the phone book beforehand, if needed.) That usually scares them away for good.

Grace Note

I'm jetting home. Later all ♪

aedia

@Martha My better half has a much easier time scaring away proselytizers, as "I'm sorry, I'm Jewish" works almost all the time (even if it is a bit of a white lie from someone who's been to temple like, once ever). But one time we got these Jews for Jesus people and he was just as flummoxed as I usually am. That was weird.

Bye @Grace!

bracho monacho

@Martha Wow... Never tried that before. Does it work better if you tell them that it's a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints?

Cerberus

@rumtscho Such is life!

Bye Grace!

aedia

9:37 PM

@brachomonacho <3

Martha

I swear we've had a question like this already:

0

Q: Is "We have the power, so can you" (from She-Ra) grammatical?

The lyrics of the closing theme of the She-Ra cartoon include the line "We have the power, so can you". (Listen to it on YouTube.) I'll grant them their poetic license, but it doesn't sound right to me and I can't quite put my finger on why. Would you say it's ungrammatical? Why?

grammaticality

... but I have no clue how to find it.

bracho monacho

@aedia Unexplainable photo + modem noises = Gold!

Martha

Oh, wait, I think I found it:

6

Q: Please explain "I Am America (And So Can You!)"

As a non-native speaker, I found Stephen Colbert's book title "I Am America (And So Can You!)" a little hard to dissect. Why so can you? Why isn't it "So Are You"? What's the full phrase that "And So Can You" implies?

grammar phrases book-title

But now I'm not so sure it's a dupe.

aedia

@brachomonacho Careful, I think that church encourages members to go door to door too. Don't want to accidentally lie to their face.

rumtscho

@Cerberus This was meant to tell you that changing from FF to Chromium might solve the problem, it wasn't whining (OK, maybe a little).

bracho monacho

9:42 PM

@aedia Mormons are always easy to pick, though, because they always wear a name tag, and usually a men-in-black style suit.

Cerberus

@rumtscho Oh, you succeeded in logging in! That is interesting: it could be FF or an add-on...

Black suit? Ouch.

bracho monacho

@Cerberus: I unicornified you profile, just for fun... Your polycephalic hound turned into a purple unicorn.

Cerberus

You did? What, how?

rumtscho

@brachomonacho But they are also easy to get rid of. At least I've always just said "I am happier without a religion, thank you" and they let me go.

bracho monacho

@Cerberus Link on the bottom of this page: unicornify.appspot.com/use-it

I unicornified this chat once, and it was positively scary.

aedia

9:43 PM

@Martha Yeah, my mistake in the first place was being honest and telling the peeps at the door that I had been raised Quaker but not gone to a meeting in the area. I shoulda just invited them to the one I knew about.

rumtscho

@Cerberus I think the newer FFoxes have the option to load without addons. But it will probably only make sense when tried in the middle of the bug manifesting.

@brachomonacho you unicornified the chat? I thought it needed an email address to unicornify.

bracho monacho

@rumtscho "How many wives do you have?" also works with Mormons.

@rumtscho Na, if you drag the link at the bottom of the page onto your browser bar, it turns into a JS button that turns any Gravatar into a unicorn.

rumtscho

@brachomonacho The guys who stopped me have always looked a bit too young to be legally married.

Cerberus