English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

:O how tragic :'(

1:52 AM

Very tragic.

Did you know them?

I think the snow-plows are to clear out any debris.

No, I didn’t know them. They just died two blocks away from me.

reminds me of the 911 couples jumping off holding hands...

Currently 73 roads and highways closed.

That's awful.

By the way, were attempts made to save people from the Twin Towers by helicopter?

And not a few will not reopen, since they aren’t even there anymore.

They have to be wholly rebuilt.

1:55 AM

@Cerberus I think the smoke was too thick.

Oh, really?

Damn.

@tchrist So how come this is all so bad? Is it merely the amount of water, or some other factor?

There were police helicopters flying above lower Manhattan while the WTC towers were on fire (I've seen videotape footage of the collapse taken from one of the helicopters). However, it was impossible to see the roofs of the towers due to the smoke, and the updrafts from the fire would have made flying near the towers suicidal. Plus, in both of the towers the roof doors were locked. The observation decks did not open until 9:30. No one was able to get out onto the roof.

source

@Cerberus “Merely” the amount of water, basically. But you have to keep remembering that the terrain rises to me immediate west, going up about 2 miles vertically and 15 horizontally. It is extremely steep. All that runs down here.

But he have had more water in a day than we normally get in 8 months.

There simply is no place for it.

It cannot soak in. It is utterly saturated, so when it falls, it just sits on top.

And the whole diagonal-up thing going on to my immediate west is a killer.

Imagine living at the bottom of a hill.

All the rain comes barrelling down.

Now magnify those yards by miles. It is an immense amount of water, all running down at us, very very fast.

And we are at the bottom waiting for it.

Does that make more sense now?

We’re now in an inch to an inch-and-a-half per hour downpour.

But we get everybody else’s inches, too.

This is the um 4th night of heavy rain, and it has barely let up at all during that time. Nor shall.

For days, apparently.

Happy Friday the 13th, @Cerb.

2:12 AM

What is the long term weather forecast like?

Define long-term.

weeks...

Nobody ever knows.

@cyberskull Hmm that's really bad. I guess a helicopter couldn't get close enough to the tower wall to swing a ladder at the people in the windows.

@tchrist they must have some idea

2:13 AM

@tchrist You've lost me there. I can only imagine flat land.

Two dimensions.

@cyberskull Huh? No they don’t. Nobody knows what the weather will be like weeks from now.

Except the butterfly.

@Cerberus Was afraid of that.

The land is diagonal, up-west.

So this has never happened before?

So we get all their water, too.

No, it hasn’t never happened before.

So

It last happened in 1894.

2:14 AM

That is a while ago.

It is.

Hasn't something similar but slightly less severe happened more recently?

Yes.

In 1976.

OK that's fairly recent.

Big Thompson Flood, hundreds dead.

But that was localized.

2:15 AM

Could they have built dams and/or canals to control the water?

This is the entire Front Range, from way down in Colorado Springs all the way up to Fort Collins.

Um, no.

You just cannot do that.

It’s like 200 miles.

And there are multiple perennial streams per mile.

And they HAVE dams.

More dikes?

Has Denver been hit too?

The water is overtopping at least 12 dams right now.

I don't know how serious the damage will turn out to be, but it could be worth it.

2:17 AM

Yes, Denver has been hit, too.

@Cerberus I don’t see how that could work.

Anything can be done.

Every single piece of diagonal land is a source of this.

You cannot dam it.

No, honest.

It comes from everywhere.

You can build dikes around places where people live?

This is not something that people can "fix" with technology.

Dig canals to lead the water to the side?

2:18 AM

Where?

Everywhere?

You are talking about an area 200 miles by 100 miles, that’s 20,000 square miles OF VERTICAL TERRAIN.

Anything can be done if you expend enough resources. But it may be too expensive to be worth it.

No.

It really cannot.

What if you built a dike around Boulder?

2:19 AM

You don’t understand the geography.

Okay.

Party in here

who was dat?

@Cerberus It isn’t just Boulder. It is the entire County, and neighboring ones, too. Aurora is flooded, Denver is flooded, many other places. All the little mountain towns are seriously destroyed.

You can’t tell people they have to live in a tiny little place ringed with walls when they have thousands of miles open to them. It will never happen.

They can choose to live outside the dikes if they want to?

Individual houses could be built on little hills or plateaux?

2:29 AM

Golden and Eldorado Springs and Manitou Springs and Lyons and Louisville and Longmont and Lafayette and Estes Park and Jamestown and Ward and Gold Hill and many more besides.

You just don’t understand. It was like this with the fires, too.

This is a huge place.

It could be too expensive.

Would you build a dike around Germany and Switzerland and Austria, too?

What good could that do?

It rains on @Robusto as well.

@tchrist Around cities, why not?

weather.com/maps/maptype/currentweatherusnational/…

The Jersey Shore burned down. WTF.

Time for vidya games.

Sudhir

2:47 AM

Hi @Cerberus

Sudhir

3:01 AM

@Cerberus: One of the boys who has/have done his works..

Hi.

But what do you mean by "works"?

That phrase is not right.

Can you make a full sentence (this is but a fragment) and explain in other words what it is supposed to mean?

4:13 AM

@Cerb Still here?

Sirens are screaming, telling people that imminent flood is crashing down Boulder Canyon, and to leave their houses and climb to higher ground immediately.

All of downtown is being told to run away fast and far and high.

I wonder if Barker Res dam blew.

Says our little 80 cfs creek is at 5k right now.

Tonight is running higher and wetter than last night, which was already “biblical”.

The sirens are so eerie-sounding.

Scanner says that local oil wells are buried under 15' of water.

> President Barack Obama signed an emergency order Thursday night, approving federal disaster aid for Boulder County after torrential rainfall prompted 100-year flooding.

Or worse. Longmont police say they’re following a 500-year flood action plan right now there.

I have no idea what that means, but that’s what they said.

I gave up trying to save the basement.

Turns out 7–8 other houses up on my hill have same issues. Of course.

4:52 AM

They’ve evacuating downtown. Telling people to run, not drive.

Boulder Creek is now 600 feet wide instead of 30, and moving 5,000 cubic feet per second.

@Cerberus There are a trillion gallons of water rushing down the mountains at us right now. Nothing could keep that out.

Downtown is looking like New Orleans after Katrina.

Yikes!

But your house is safe, right? Except the cellar.

7:22 AM

Kim Jung Un: Barack, we are good friends now, aren't we? (In Korean)

Rodman: (Does this guy really think I'm Barack Obama?)

Johan Larsson

7:55 AM

@tchrist Still leaking? I'm thinking wood wedges.

Johan Larsson

8:11 AM

Another option could be a plate of any material held in position with what I call 'stämp'

Both could be combined with window putty or something similar.

9:10 AM

@JasonMarsh more like

Kim Jung Un: pew pew pew!
Rodman: owie man, you hit my chin!

@Robusto yeah that's the thing, I was at a loss when I learned it was MacLaren.

I mean, here's the deal. Not only is this an otherwise fine story development that's been poorly put to celluloid; that is only one half of my concern. The other half is that this is BB we're talking about, so we know where they are coming from, how they actually managed to pull of the exact opposite thing on several occasions: when on paper, things were meh, or even utterly preposterous, but the execution was so brilliant that you didn't notice, and even if you did, you didn't give a shit.

You just went for the ride that it was.

Oh well. Wevs. Looking forward now. Hoping Cranston was right about the next episode. And perhaps this last one helps establish additional contrast to make it even better.

@Robusto not so fast. I read on Reddit that Marriott give away that shit at that precise time of the day every day. So actually, that's less than the least they could do.

Hello and welcome to "How much less will they invent next?"

9:37 AM

over 9000?

That is very less!

is it fewer less than the most less?

It is approximately somewhere about not that.

10:33 AM

amazon.com/Jewish-Japanese-Cook-Book-Raise-Wolves/dp/0399110437

everything you could want to learn in one handy book

It's not that handy. That's a deep subject.

I suppose it was handier when it was in print

"Misquoting Jesus" :D I'd like to read that

You could write it.

Then read it.

"Don't read this book" — Jesus

10:44 AM

"He who reads this is a Jew" — Jesus

"Why'd my disciples let them kill me?" — Jesus

apparently the book is actually a history of how the bible has been translated over the years

"750 AD: poorly. 1482 AD: very poorly. 1992 AD: meh. 2013: more poorly still."

"My dad's got such a god complex" — Jesus

"My father, my father, and dost thou not hear the words that the Alder King now breathes in mine ear?" — Christ

11:00 AM

> This article is about the mythical creature. For Tolkien's fictional version, see Elf (Middle-earth).

:D because elves are real

History became legend. Legend became myth. Myth became fictional version.

11:16 AM

@RegDwighт You can't get less than zero in this respect, unless you actually removed the service as a proposed in memoriam, therefore I submit that zero is the least Marriott could do. QED

Nice try, Marriott CEO.

We have a new ad campaign coming out: "Marriott: not less than zero."

"Marriott: less than ground zero"

"Marriott: less than zero grounds in our coffee."

"Marriott: TO THE GROUND!"

11:18 AM

You have zero grounds to make that statement.

Anyway, the work day begins. Laterz.

11:32 AM

No work day here.

They evacuated downtown around midnight when a 30' wall of water and debris, including cars tossed around like toys, came surging down the canyon.

Some clips at Huff Post from yesterday, not including last night.

All roads in and out of Boulder are closed.

difficult to imagine such a thing. glad you're keeping on

Water still safe, and I still have power. No phone.

Heavy rain here in Colorado. Here's what was blocking my gutter.

I had gone to bed when the sirens blasted telling people to run not drive to safety.

Lotta that going on.

Gave up on the basement.

The news crews were of course trapped here like everyone.

Guys, I figured out a magic

11:36 AM

Abracadabra

Ananizapta

If you see a word that you do not know its meaning appeared in sentences like 8~10 times. Then you can figure out its meaning without looking it up on dictionary

and usually you will never forget these words

How old are you?

21

why

That's how every word ever works, yeah.

11:37 AM

20, technically

@JasonMarsh looks like you're getting the hang of English :)

@Reg I kinda like yer Sharknado.

Thank you. It's not mine. I don't really live in Colorado.

you were a shark, though...

And now I'm not. Coincidence????

11:42 AM

!!

Happy Friday the Thirteenth

Nederland has lost power, and none expected earlier than tomorrow night. And the evac center there has itself flooded. Good thing it is still “summer”.

And Longmont has been cut in half by the St Vrain River there. Right now they’re trying to figure out how to get to the people in Lyons, who’ve been cut off since Wednesday.

Our former creek’s waterflow last night was about 50% of the Seine’s. Like 150 tons of water per second.

A year’s worth of rain in three days. What place on earth can support that? Answer: the ocean.

12:15 PM

@MattЭллен Viva Zapata?

@JasonMarsh What? That makes no sense at all. A wordses meanings come from their definitions, and -only- their definitions. Their is no definition by 'use'. If you're using it wrong, you're using it wrong.

Oh... for languages -other- than English? Yeah, sure. That's possible. They have no discipline so it's OK.

Stop scarbling the booy buy. He'll never krantle mar da English work at that rate

@MattЭллен Exactly

:D

time to go!

I'll krantle your mar.

Wait...I hope that isn't something about your mom.

So does she.

12:25 PM

@MattЭллен Someone told me the other day that some dictionary has added as a secondary meaning of 'literally' to be, well, 'not literally'. I don't know if I believe them but they did say it (that a dictionary had that). I mean it is a secondary meaning by use, but...

12:38 PM

The rain has been produced by a low pressure system that has been stationed over Nevada since late Sunday, said National Weather Service meteorologist Todd Dankers in Boulder.

The low has drawn subtropical moisture from the Mexican mainland over New Mexico and into the Rockies’ foothills in Colorado — and it’s been trapped by a stationary upper level ridge over the Great Plains and another system over the Great Lakes, Dankers said. The moisture becomes rain when it hits the mountains, the end result of a system he described as “a monsoon conveyer belt.”

@Cerberus See above picture. You cannot and will not get people to move away from the forests and mountains to live in concentration camps. They came here for this way of life, and they live simply everywhere. You cannot stop them, and must not try.

ConveyEr?

That's what they call it in Russian, but English?

Heh.

Good catch.

It’s from the Washington Post.

1:29 PM

And people wonder why streets care closed and impassable.

Haha. City of Boulder. "City". Haha.

Seaty, perhaps.

I also like the word cluster "canyon creek".

user87637

2:01 PM

@RegDwighт I have found a new Maria, lol.

user87637

Ah, it's so hard to earn any reps these days. Think it's time to retire at 1k, lol.

I just had piss shivers so hard that I almost dislocated my jaw.

user87637

Why did you have them?

Name seven reasons why I would not.

user87637

Ah, actually, I don't know what piss shivers are...

2:04 PM

I'd love to know what a piss shiver is. — Barrie England 3 hours ago

user87637

Are they shivers you get when you pee?

user87637

I see even the English expert does not know.

Probably because it's not English. Just a guess.

user87637

I will now spend the rest of my life finding out what piss shivers are.

Um. Just click on the above link.

Or do you mean your life will end in three seconds?

user87637

2:06 PM

Haha, I see. OK, I must now think of what to do about my new Maria who speaks French. Ouvert et haut !

Arrive et derci !

later

2:18 PM

@RegDwighт Did you see the waste of LEGO?

Oh, where?

Here (-:

@RegDwighт Yeah, we have so many creeks and canyons we kinda ran out of names. Wanted to show the impossibility of somehow “blocking” all those mountain creeks coming at us. I think the dark blue is now mostly under water.

There are actually a lot more than those. Those are just the big ones.

They are essentially everywhere.

If it Two-Mile Canyon, and it has a creek, it becomes Twomile Canyon Creek, apparently.

Usually the creeks are named for their canyons, albeit not quite always.

It’s begun to rain again. Damn it.

►

2:38 PM

Those are yesterday’s rainfall totals.

From here.

We virtually never get even an inch in a day, let alone double-digit inches.

It saddens me that Lyons is no longer on the map at Google Earth.

Yikes.

Yes, the town is obliterated, but please, they’ll rebuild.

The National Guard was hauling people out yesterday. 2,500 of them. Downtown looked gone.

No power or water since Wednesday.

> Times it comes in handy to be Wiccan: when the power goes out and you've got all the candles.

Gotta commute. Lators.

Wackos.

Aw shucks, this is the intersection where my friend lives. I’d better call them.

O_O

2:47 PM

Plus we just got a report that it is again raining heavily up on Peak-to-Peak Highway connecting Nederland to Estes Park. That will all come barrelling down at us in an hour or so as it rushed down the steep canyons.

A 30-foot wall of water pushed trees and cars down Boulder Canyon last night as though they weren’t even there.

Any more injuries?

@corn What happened to your brother?

@cyberskull Well, we have 17 people officially missing, but most we expect to find alive, just out of touch.

@tchrist I'm not sure. He was liking things on Instagram last night, so. I just texted him with regard to triskaidekaphobia.