English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2015-05-13 (page 1 of 3)

« first day (1644 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (3289 days later) »

1:15 AM

@Cerberus I want the proportions to be reversed.

1:53 AM

@Cerberus I meant something when I wrote it but it doesn't make sense now. I think I meant that as written it sounded like the captions were written from the point of view of the US, and that point out those four and others as 'world religions' made it sound like Christianity was not and so mainly American. But I'm not sure any more if it still reads like that.

@Cerberus he was a smart dude. coordinates are so obvious now, but back then it was revolutionary.

like the idea of variables (that's not Descartes though)

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Mitch It's referring to religions of other worlds. Like how the Na'vi worship Eywa.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 those fluorescent flying jelly fish can't be safe

I think 'other world religion' bothered me because it reminds me of 'world music' which is so ... patronizing and self-centered. It's just effing music just not made by your big companies.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Wait... didn't she use to sing with the world music powerhouse Clannad?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

2:08 AM

@Mitch dunno

Enya (born Eithne Ní Bhraonáin; Irish pronunciation: [ˈɛnʲə nʲiː ˈvˠɾˠiːn̪ˠaːnʲ], anglicised as Enya Brennan; 17 May 1961) is an Irish singer, instrumentalist, and songwriter. Enya began her musical career in 1980, when she briefly joined her family band Clannad before leaving to perform solo. She gained wider recognition for her music in the 1986 BBC series The Celts. Shortly afterwards, her 1988 album Watermark propelled her to further international fame and she became known for her distinctive sound, characterised by voice-layering, folk melodies, synthesised backdrops and ethereal reverberations...

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

ah

2 hours later…

3:49 AM

[ SmokeDetector ] Email in answer: The expression "by my checks the bet should be winning" is correct? by Andrew Lydia on english.stackexchange.com

5 hours later…

8:37 AM

@Mitch Enya-nya-nya-nya.

Pikachu - Nya Nya Song (10 Hours)

3 hours later…

11:35 AM

@Mitch I always thought she was New Age.

Funny how New Age music is now Old Age music.

Whatever happened to the Windham Hill label?

The wind blew all the ham off the hill.

With no ham left, no humane human can expect them to be strong and carry on.

Ah, I see they got bought out by Sony. Which is where music labels go to die, I imagine.

I did say no ham.

No ham doesn't harm orthodox Jews. So it can't be that bad for you. Well, maybe for Germans, for whom having a Schwein is good luck.

Sony is not even the opposite of Batman. It ain't even the same fuckin' sport.

@Robusto yes, Germans love Totenham.

11:42 AM

Half of a German's vocabulary is Schwein and the other half is Scheiss.

Das ist mir scheissegal.

Tell that to the Brits.

Yesterday I was playing World of Tanks and some Brit sent me the message "FICKEN FEIGLING!!!!"

Little did he realize that he was offering me intercourse. Hilarious.

Had he said it in English, it would have been insulting. Instead he wrote something that was pathetically comical.

Some people.

I just told that to the Brits, just as you said to, and they said "Ficken sod off!"

Oh, and did I mention that his team won and came out on top in his team, while I came in second in mine, and died?

He only wrote it to me because I happened to have killed him in the process.

And here I thought World of Tanks was a touchy-feely, New World Order kind of game, full of sweetness and light.

There's people who suck at losing, and then apparently there's people who suck at winning.

11:52 AM

@RegDwigнt Well, everyone sucks at winning if you lose to them.

@Robusto Both Enya and Clannad can be found in the New Age section or the world music section, despite all new music being new and coming from the world.

@Robusto Schweinegal zu sein ist nicht so kosher.

@Robusto from what I'm being told, all other MMORPGs are full of sweetness and light. People handing out good ratings to good players and all. While in WoT you only ever get negative ratings, except by begging your platoon mates like a whore.

@RegDwigнt Did that work for you?

No matter how good you are, people will even send you "OMG I'm in love with your style and I want to be on your friends list forever" messages, but nobody, ever will give you a good rating.

What everybody will give you is a bad rating just because you kill their tank.

Which is, um, the whole point of the game.

So, tanks but no tanks?

11:54 AM

"He handles his tank with such ... panache"

@Robusto My rating went from ★★★★★ to ★☆☆☆☆ in just a couple months.

"I thought his maneuvers were stylish but perhaps a trifle prissy, even affected. What starts out as an elegant fusillade morphs rapidly into curlicues of play-it-gay affectation."

@RegDwigнt And you still believe in crowd-sourcing?

And if you look at my stats (public on the official sites and all), I am objectively a very good player.

@Robusto yeah no shit.

No shit, man.

So maybe their ratings are a form of litotes.

That was the review for "Pikachu vs Predator"

Guess who did the curtsy.

11:57 AM

Thing is, all those actual cowards hiding in the back in their premium tanks not doing anything, or actively running away from the enemy, or even going AFK as soon as the match starts -- those folks all have a ★★★★★.

That's because in the time they are AFK from this game, they play Battlefield or CoD or some other rubbish, where everyone only ever gives positive ratings.

The system works.

0

Q: Word for "observing something with the purpose of gaining knowledge from it"?

And for a long period of time. Example: He spent several nights [...] the terrorist's building. I checked the synonyms of watch (noun lookout), but found nothing that could fit. There's also track, but I think it implies walking: track follow the trail or movements of (someone or som...

single-word-requests

Look at the edit trail.

I submit that from may be better employed than about in that question title.

And that this kind of meddling is, as has been recently discussed on Meta, anathema to this site.

Matt E. Эллен

using from or about changes the meaning significantly. so from should be kept as that was the askers original choice

That was my feeling.

12:27 PM

independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/…

> Britain is too tolerant and should interfere more in people's lives, says David Cameron

> “For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone',” he said.

3

great. we now have a totalitarian fascist as dictator.

So two days after the election suddenly he's Mussolini?

Jinx.

my and UKIP's solution to Islamic fundamentalism: 1) control immigration 2) integrate people

@Robusto Nah, Mussolini had lovers you could look at without puking. Cameron doesn't even know what "not puking" means.

Cameron's solution: sweep away the rule of law

@Jez to be fair, at least Cameron is being frank. Your "solution" is 1) empty slogan and 2) empty slogan

12:31 PM

1) certainly isn't

@Jez This statement is made by regime opponents everywhere regimes have opponents. It is more often ludicrous invective than anything containing a kernel of truth. Sometimes, though, the opposite situation prevails: totalitarian states do occur from time to time.

2) is i guess a broad spectrum of measures

@Jez certainly is. Immigration is being controlled. In fact you won't even let me into your self-indulgent joke of a kingdom.

@tchrist so how would you describe the sentiment against the statement "as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone"?

@RegDwigнt What? There, too?

12:32 PM

It's populist bullshit propaganda. Is there any party at all anywhere in the world that would say "immigration must not be controlled"?

Demamogy at its finest.

@RegDwigнt yes. most UK parties.

are you in the US?

@Jez stuff and nonsense.

@Jez I would describe it as something a traffic cop might say. Or a public prosecutor.

@tchrist no; the sentiment against it

@RegDwigнt I’ll take Nonsense for $500, Alex.

George Alexander "Alex" Trebek (/trɨˈbɛk/; born July 22, 1940) is a Canadian American television personality. He has been the host of the syndicated game show Jeopardy! since 1984, and has also hosted a number of other game shows, including The Wizard of Odds, Double Dare, High Rollers, Battlestars, Classic Concentration and To Tell the Truth. Trebek has made appearances in numerous television series, usually portraying himself. A native of Canada, he became a naturalized United States citizen in 1998. Trebek is signed as host of Jeopardy! through 2018. == Early life == Trebek was born in Sudbury...

12:34 PM

I know I know.

I get references.

I figured, but wanted to make sure you didn’t think I was being . . . inappropriately inappropriate.

I won't think that for $3000.

@RegDwigнt I'd say we have 3 major parties in the UK who basically say they don't want to control immigration; either quantity or quality.

the rest (apart from UKIP) have that policy internally

Your definition of "control" is different from that in a dictionary, then.

Every traveller to your country is getting controlled, and no party wants to get rid of that.

@RegDwigнt you literally cannot control one iota of immigration from fellow EU states

how are they getting controlled?

12:36 PM

I am in a "fellow" EU state. I cannot even travel to your country.

Getting all jizzed up over potty-licks is bound to leave a bad taste in your mouth, whether coming or going.

You will not let me in.

Calling the states "fellow" is a slap in the face.

@RegDwigнt you have an EU passport?

Schengeners.

@Jez Yes.

12:37 PM

surely you have a right to come to the UK

I do not.

@RegDwigнt You must have done something very bad. QED

No More Polish Plumbers!

@RegDwigнt on what grounds do you not have the right?

@Jez they will not let me in.

12:37 PM

They can’t read Cyrillic.

I am not from a Schengen state.

Oh and by the way, even if they did let me in, that would require a written invitation by a Brit, and a full disclosure of my banking details going back 6 months.

Now that is fascist, and has always been, and no party at all thinks it's not okay.

Your money or your wife.

@RegDwigнt You shouldn't have done whatever you did.

@Robusto yes, being born is a crime.

europa.eu/legislation_summaries/justice_freedom_security/…

12:39 PM

Kant was the first to notice.

Or maybe Plato.

> The Union has adopted a Directive on the right of citizens of the Union to move and reside freely within the Member States, which brings together the piecemeal measures found in the complex body of legislation that has governed this matter to date. The new measures are designed, among other things, to encourage Union citizens to exercise their right to move and reside freely within Member States, to cut back administrative formalities to the bare essentials, to...

> ...provide a better definition of the status of family members, to limit the scope for refusing entry or terminating the right of residence and to introduce a new right of permanent residence.

Oh right, I forgot. Thank you, Jez. All I need to enter your country is to show them an Internet link. Of course!

> All Union citizens have the right to enter another Member State by virtue of having an identity card or valid passport. Under no circumstances can an entry or exit visa be required.

I can write bullshit like that all day long, myself.

this is a summary of EU legislation

12:41 PM

@RegDwigнt Ooh ooh.. I have a joke about Kant.

Yes, and the summary of the UK legislation is "we would say 'fuck the EU', but we don't even know who the fuck a EU is".

Wait, that doesn't sound as good as I thought.

It'd be actually easier for me to travel to UK if they were not in the EU on some stupid sheet of paper no one has even seen in decades.

@Jez Or a boat. at night. You have good beaches right?

@RegDwigнt It's called Original Sin in some circles.

12:43 PM

Arguing with immigration cops is tantamount to per se evidence of intent to commit crimes of mass destruction.

@RegDwigнt well, about 50% of our immigration is non-EU

Or so they take it.

@Jez not sure what that statement is even supposed to mean.

cuz there's no such thing as an original sin

All my sins are highly unoriginal.

12:45 PM

@RegDwigнt non-EU immigration... as in immigrants from non-EU countries

@Jez yes, but what is the point of that statement? Random number is random.

@RegDwigнt See, that's your problem right there. You can point to it.

people wonder who people vote UKIP. I think UKIP should've just taken this chart and put it on a big poster campaign: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/…

I don't get it.

That's even more useless data.

there are more net migrants per year now than there were total immigrants the year i was born.

12:47 PM

And?

@RegDwigнt i'm quite aware you're trolling but i'm just summarizing my position for anyone who cares.

No I am not trolling.

I am asking what your point is. But apparently you don't have one.

You are not summarizing your position. You're not even telling what your position is.

If your point is that "all immigration is generally bad", then you are going to great lengths to avoid stating it.

mass, uncontrolled immigration is generally bad.

I see no mass, uncontrolled immigration.

we have mass, uncontrolled immigration. if you say otherwise, i disagree.

12:50 PM

You do not have mass, uncontrolled immigration.

hi

I might in just as broad strokes paint the picture, "You have people coming to your country because you have bombed their homes into nonexistence."

It's nonsense.

What is not nonsense, is that the above chart can be just as well titled "British immigration to Berlin". Look it up.

@user24857 Hi!

@RegDwigнt lolwut?

Berlin has mass, uncontrolled immigration of Brits that destroy everything.

@Jez lolthat.

Look the fuck up.

12:52 PM

i see the ceiling

Your patience is remarkable.

i know

You can't afford London anymore, so you move to Berlin in swarms, and then do to their economy just what you did to London's.

How about you stay home, and preferably in your kitchen if you're a woman, like UKIP suggests.

sorry, is there some confusion about where i am staying? i live in the UK, not Germany.

@RegDwigнt Meanwhile, the Russians move to London.

Well, the olis.

12:56 PM

@Jez sorry, is there some confusion about where I am staying? I live in Germany, not the UK.

nope, don't remember any confusion about that.

some people brazilians?

is correct?

Well, then what's your point, then.

0

Q: How i would be speak good english

I know English is then global language, I have problem with speaking in correct English. Might be problem of grammar and no proper words i found while i speak so how can i Improve it?

speech learning

Self-parody.

I mean, seriously, someone has to be trolling us with that.

0

A: How i would be speak good english

Listen english songs, watch english movies or just read english novels and books. It will take sometime.

And look, someone answered him in kind.

Fuck it, we'll do it live.

May 5 at 15:11, by RegDwigнt

This site has become Facebook.

12:59 PM

All sites have become Facebook.

Q: I don't use proper words. How can I improve?
A: Use proper words.

Don't Tell??

Good tip.

That's what this site stands for.

That's why it exists.

you know what has started forcing me to use "if" in place of "whether"? Twitter. and it's damned annoying.

i'm starting to understand some of why English is getting so screwed up

you write a tweet, then scan for a minute searching for things to remove and word less well to save a few letters

1:01 PM

I find it hilarious how they don't even have a reason for that character limit to exist in the first place.

room topic changed to English Language & Usage: Might be problem of grammar and no proper words [full-disclosure]

When they first started, an SMS could already be arbitrarily long. And certainly they didn't need to reserve 20 characters for anything.

Twitter?

Yeah Twitter.

i thought they always had a 140 limit

1:02 PM

Exactly. For no reason at all.

well i guess some people were tweeting messages that were too long

They pretended it had to do with the SMS limit of 160, but that explanation was hilariously rubbish.

> The reason is so that when tweets were sent via SMS, messages wouldn't be split. SMS messages are 160 characters and they wanted to leave 20 chars for the username.

Yeah.

> The MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) for Ethernet, for instance, is 1500 bytes.

1:03 PM

As I said, hilariously rubbish.

so why do some people say the limit is 144?

When they started, even the worst phone could handle split SMS messages gracefully.

I mean, my phone is from 1902, and I don't even notice if a message is split in the first place. It is presented to me as a single text.

@RegDwigнt but without that limit, we couldn't have TwitLonger.

Yeah.

in fact, they should limit tweets to be just big enough for a TwitLonger URL.

1:04 PM

Or Longer Twits.

full circle.

I smell a conspiracy.

Yeah, but if Twitter allowed variable message length it would turn into Reddit.

Which would be good, because Reddit has turned into Digg.

oi

1:05 PM

And Digg has turned into Geocities.

It's the circle of life. On a path unwinding.

Digg offers free website hosting?

Last thing I heard, they'd offer you anything at all as long as you paid them.

Including free hosting.

look at this guy's defence of the 140 character thing:

> There are other forums where you could have longer conversations and if you think 140 characters is not enough then cut the fat from your argument and make it concise.

moronic. it just leads to usually meaningless soundbites, and terrible English.

@Jez that's 168 characters.

Won't even fit an SMS, for crying out loud.

@RegDwigнt when are ya gonna come down? / when are ya gonna land?

1:08 PM

I should of stayed on the farm, should of listened to my old man.

Instead of trying to go to England.

I was made in England, out of Cadillac muscle.

whoosh

Matt E. Эллен

out have cadillac mussels

No you.

@MattE.Эллен oh right. blushes

1:09 PM

@MattE.Эллен so who did you vote for?

Yeah. The government demands to know!

Fuck secret elections.

Matt is too nice to be a Tory.

Damon is too nice to be a gangsta.

Matt E. Эллен

Greens, of course. the only party taking humanity's impending doom seriously.

... by opposing nuclear power.

1:10 PM

Haha, that argument clinic again.

We seem to spend most of our energy trying to keep people from killing us just so we can do the job ourselves.

Sorry, I've had enough for today.

Nobody opposes nuclear power.

They only oppose mass, uncontrolled nuclear power.

arent you guys doing a combination of importing nuclear from france as well as ramping up coal power to deal with your nuclear shutdown?

especially given the massive variability of solar output

"Massive variability of solar output" is just lobbyist talk for "we don't want to buy accumulators".

why would you? that tech is terribly inefficient compared to just having a constant output from nukes

1:15 PM

Your suppositions are correct: 1. that the pun involves two kinds of plot, and 2. that it isn't very satisfying. — Robusto 8 mins ago

@Jez because I'd gladly have an accumulator in my house, but you'd never want to have the nuclear waste in yours.

Matt E. Эллен

nuclear fission power is no sustainable, fissile material is in even shorter supply than oil

@RegDwigнt you do realize how little waste modern nukes produce, and the fact that governments need to store various dangerous things safely.

The output from nukes is not constant. The whole point of nuclear stations is to control it.

in fact, the UK's stockpile of nuclear waste could be significantly cut by processing it as nuclear fuel.

1:17 PM

@Jez that has nothing to do with my point.

@Jez still has nothing to do with my point.

I will gladly and immediately switch to 100% nuclear power forever as soon as you agree to store the waste in your kitchen.

It is very little, as you say yourself.

Matt E. Эллен

I'm all for nuclear fusion and even have a reactor within 10 miles

@RegDwigнt we have plenty of places to store nuclear waste that aren't my or anyone's kitchen

@Jez no you do not. Germany's been looking for such places for six decades now, but you wouldn't let them store it anywhere.

Every uninhabitated rabbit hole on the bottom of the ocean turns out to be some Brit's kitchen.

I mean, they even offered money. What's wrong with money?

anyway, i'd take a nuclear plant next to my house over a wind turbine.

Oh I forgot, it was nazimark, and then Euro. Okay I take the question back.

@Jez very good, then by all means do so.

I'd take the opposite, and so let me have that.

1:23 PM

well that would be a mix

trouble with the greens is, they dont want a mix. they want zero nuclear.

How's that trouble.

Someone has always to be on the extreme end, so that some sort of consensus materializes in the middle.

Not even the greens live by the greens' utopic rules.

Not even UKIP lives by UKIP's.

And certainly the love described in Shakespeare's sonnets never existed in his life, or anybody's.

the greens' "middle ground" is "no nuclear"

their extreme is probably "kill anyone who says nuclear"

Yeah so what.

Who cares what their middle ground is.

Their middle ground is not the middle ground.

Simple as that.

well, i was discussing the problem the greens had inflicted on germany

that's why it was relevant

The Greens inflicted no such problem on Germany. You are misinformed.

The conservatives, of all things, did.

Hilarious.

1:26 PM

the greens were in a coalition there for a time, and pushed huge amounts of anti-nuke rhetoric

The conservatives looked at Fukushima and went all oh noes. And then did a 180 on everything.

as i understand it, Merkel's party pathetically caved in to the pressure

@Jez no. The Greens were never in a coalition with Merkel.

not with merkel

And Merkel does not give one shit about the opposition.

1:27 PM

Stupidity is the thing that is dangerous.

She doesn't care about pressure. She's an opportunist. You could say, same difference, but it's actually not.

@Robusto and ignorance.

1:51 PM

@RegDwigнt OK, suppose we go for storing in Jez's kitchen. Is it OK if he eats out a lot more?

[ SmokeDetector ] Bad keyword in username: In the phrasal verb 'put up', what is the meaning of 'up'? by 박용현 on english.stackexchange.com

Anonymous

I was under the impression the 140-160 character discrepancy was due to 8-bit vs 7-bit originally

Matt E. Эллен

max 8bit number is 255

max 7bit number is 127

or is the max 8 bit number 511?

I get confused with off by one errors

signed or unsigned?

Anonymous

You can fit 160 7-bit characters in the same space you can fit 140 8-bit characters

Matt E. Эллен

1:57 PM

I'm assuming unsigned because it's for a count

unsigned max is 2^8 = 256

though zero-indexed, it's 255 yeah

Matt E. Эллен

@snailboat oh!

« first day (1644 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (3289 days later) »

Transcript for

May '1513

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…

Not for the faint of heart or those easily triggered by Englis...

phrase-requests pronunciation single-word-requests synonyms

join this room
about this room

00:00

06:00

12:00

18:00

all times are UTC

site design / logo © 2024 Stack Exchange Inc; legal

mobile