English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2015-09-16

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Anonymous

12:00 AM

@Cerberus Yes.

Anonymous

I didn't expect it to be so simple and generic.

Alas!

You can always make up a fancy word of your own.

2 hours later…

2:19 AM

25

Q: Why the phrase "thunder and lightning", and not "lightning and thunder"?

So there was just a thunderstorm, and my sister came with a question I couldn't answer: Why is it "thunder and lightning", because the lightning comes before the thunder? Shouldn't it be "lightning and thunder"? And now I wonder, where did the phrase "thunder and lightning" come from, and w...

etymology expressions

Have people been keeping an eye on this? I don't understand why so many people voted for the accepted answer; so many of the other answers are more plausible. "We may imagine that today expression thunder and lightning is related to this bible sentence." Maybe we can imagine that, but is there any evidence at all this is true? The phrase "thick cloud" is also used in that passage; is this evidence that it comes from the Bible?

2:50 AM

I know of none, no.

Spanish has three words for these where English as far as I know has only two; they distinguish the electrical discharge itself from the light and sound it produces.

rena.edu.ve/primeraetapa/Ciencias/rayosytruenos.html

3 hours later…

6:23 AM

user image

@sumelic blixtar och dunder in Swedish

2 hours later…

Matt E. Эллен

8:26 AM

Being one of the 2 others responders, I didn't downvote, because I usually don't downvote answers and because your answer is sensible. However, in French, thunder before lightning is not significantly more frequent than thunder after lightning. — Graffito yesterday

this seems to undermine his own answer. why would French deviate in its use, but not English?

9:14 AM

Because nobody cares about French?

They just use words willy-nilly in a random order and with a terrible accent!

Matt E. Эллен

9:27 AM

They're all deviants!

Who cares if it's "tonnerre et foudre" or "foudre et tonnerre", it's incomprehensible either way.

Dead Language - Futurama

1 hour later…

10:49 AM

@MattE.Эллен Because that is the Gallic temperament.

@MattE.Эллен Strange things happen when questions hit the MC.

Murder your mom for religious reasons in Denmark, go to prison for only nine years.

@RegDwigнt UR incomprehensible.

Well see if the BF gets more time because he's more obviously Muslim.

Matt E. Эллен

11:19 AM

2 hours ago, by Matt E. Эллен

They're all deviants!

@MattE.Эллен I don't know, @crl seems pretty normal.

Matt E. Эллен

On average, they're all deviants :D

@MattE.Эллен But if deviance is the norm, can anyone truly be deviant?

Matt E. Эллен

so, you're saying that @crl is deviant, by not being deviant and therefore is not deviant again. This is a complex web we weave

France must be very boring is everyone is normal

11:36 AM

@MattE.Эллен And yet he could merely be not deviant by not being not deviant.

-1

Q: 'Out of office Friday' vs 'Out of office on Friday'

Which one of the above is correct grammatically.

grammar american-english email

@Matt, he needs an answer for this by tomorrow!

Matt E. Эллен

good for him. I need good question for this site by yesterday

Why you close? Have you no pity for people who are going to be out of the office on Friday or Friday?

@MattE.Эллен Too late.

0

Q: English of Modern Technology

English is a dynamic, fast evolving language. Many new technological terms and expressions have been recently added to the language. My question is where to find good resources (books, forums, ...etc) to learn proper usage, grammar, word choice, articles, ...etc used in modern technology. By mode...

usage technical technology

Is there a question here?

Seems like it's looking for a list of books.

Matt E. Эллен

@Robusto NO PITY AT ALL. Let them stew in their prepositional uncertainty.

Heartless.

Matt E. Эллен

wtf? who wrote pronoun?

11:49 AM

You.

1 hour later…

12:58 PM

Mmm...stew

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Robusto Presumably she got 9 years because she was only 15.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 And female, and blonde.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

maybe. The BF didn't get much more. only 13 years

I don't know how prison sentences work in that country. Maybe if you're sentenced to 13 years you actually serve all of them? in Canada, you're eligible for parole after 2/3 of your sentence, so judges make sentences longer to compensate.

I don't know either. But it sound like she watched all those ISIS beheadings over and over and loved them. I wouldn't want to know her after she gets out.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

yeah. well, who knows. if their youth detention centres are any good, maybe she'll get counselling and get sorted out. It's probably a long shot though.

1:10 PM

@Robusto I am coming more to the opinion that to make the ELU site have actually interesting questions, these list and resources questions should be allowed.

That is your prerogative.

I'm sick of drive-by thinly veiled homework or proofreading questions.

Find a new site?

It feels like holding too close to the letter of the law to exclude list or resource questions and they are easy to spot and enforce.

I wasted time on code review today.

1:12 PM

THe idiot question should be sent to Yahoo answers and the list or resource questions should be here.

So are the mod tools for total rep on SE or per site?

I want to see flags with a minimum amount of text on main sites.

What does that mean?

@JohanLarsson Could you please explain what you mean by that a bit more?

@Robusto So tired of these tchrist-impersonators.

1:28 PM

@tchrist I want to see chat flags.

@JohanLarsson Really?

If you mean offensive flags that you see at 10k network rep, those are annoying because they are always approved or dismissed too quickly for due diligence.

No one who actually reads the transcript will ever be able to vote on approving or dismissing, because people who don't will have voted already.

so it is network rep, good

might even hit the cap today for the first time

bored

Actually, now that I think about it, there are three chat domains.

SE chat flags look at all SE rep, but MSE chat flags look only at MSE rep.

I can't really tell the difference for SO chat flags, because I have 10k there.

I have found the ideal strategy for not earning much rep on SO

1) Not answer many questions.
2) Only answer old questions.

Makes sense.

1:49 PM

60 reps after three walls of esl

bored with being bored now

2:05 PM

Камнепад

OHAI

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

that links to the last second of the video

WTF YouTube

Tis this stupid Autoplay-Next-Video-TM feature.

You go back to previous video, you get a URL that is a stinky liar.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

huh. I always turn autoplay off.

Well. I never turned it on.

In fact I never heard of autoplay.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

It turned itself on for your convenience.

2:12 PM

I just use YouTube like I always did, but then one fine day they CHANGE EVERYTHING.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

yup

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 yeah, see, that is questionable even by their own standards. Exhibit A: it was only yesterday that I first heard you could now slow down any video by 50%, making absolutely everyone in it sound like they're high.

Did they enable that feature automatically for my convenience?

Answer: no!

And that's a feature that is extremely useful on every video by default.

Like honestly, watch any "Everything Wrong With" video at 50% speed. You will never watch one at regular speed again.

@RegDwigнt Get off my long!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@RegDwigнt wow! that's really useful

Anyhoo, that's beside the point, though. The point right now is that they put in all features but switch on by default only some of them.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 at last you can understand Zero Punctuation!

2:17 PM

@RegDwigнt What's wrong with that? Seems logical to me. How else would you want that to behave?

@Robusto not switch them on by default, ever. Always ask me what I want my default to be.

I don't even know where to turn off autoplay, or what autoplay is, or why it's there, or who the fuck would need one.

Same for their intrusive commercials.

I agree about autoplay. We hates it.

And same for every second video missing because OMG GEMA, even when GEMA has nothing to do with anything there.

what the heck is gema? what is gema? how to video?

It's NSDAP rebranded.

2:20 PM

Gema should be a girl's name, and if it were she would never get any dates.

i've also never heard of nsdap

Basically if you're Axel Rose, and decide to sing a line for your fans, and release it yourself on your very own verified official YouTube channel, nobody in Germany is allowed to watch that video because it features copyrighted material by Axel Rose, so they first have to contact Axel Rose to ask him whether he approves of Axel Rose releasing Axel Rose material.

And if he does, then they take three months to calculate using seventy-five different formulas how much money Axel Rose should make from that Axel Rose video, then charge YouTube that.

Why would you watch Axel Rose at all, though? You could solve this problem by simply having taste.

And that's not the fun part. The fun part is that, according to the same seventy-five formulas, they also calculate how much Axel owes to every single other singer, painter, dancer, and artist by releasing his video of Axel Rose performing copyrighted Axel Rose material.

They came for Axel Rose and I did nothing, because I think he is a bore.

2:25 PM

And then they actually pay ¢0.00000000000000000000000000000174 to some girl in Austria who draws elephants using her kidney, because hey that's what Axel owes her.

But until they have figured out just how much to ~~keep to themselves~~ pay to everyone, they cannot release that video in Germany. No no no.

I'll remember next time I need a kidney to procure one in Australia.

Austria.

A lot of people get them confused.

Not so the GEMA.

@JSBձոգչ yeah it's an even more obscure German thing. Very little known.

The National Socialist German Workers' Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei , abbreviated NSDAP), commonly referred to in English as the Nazi Party (/ˈnɑːtsi/), was a political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that practised Nazism. Its predecessor, the German Workers' Party (DAP), existed from 1919 to 1920. The party emerged from the German nationalist, racist and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, which fought against the communist uprisings in post-World War I Germany. The party was created as a means to draw workers away from communism and in...

@Robusto it holds true for Johnny Cash, too. Or yourself, for that matter.

@RegDwigнt That was mean.

Never sing a song of yours on YouTube. You will be charged money to pay yourself, of which only a fraction of a percent will actually be paid to yourself, and by yourself I mean not yourself.

@Robusto um what.

I say the GEMA regulations hold for everyone.

I don't say the lack of taste holds for Johnny Cash.

That's not what you were replying to.

2:30 PM

Yes, I was replying to your solution. By saying it is not a solution at all because it affects every artist, not just the crappy ones.

Jesus.

How can anyone, ever, possibly, misparse anything of mine, or of anyone else's, as saying or implying "Johnny Cash is not really too very good"?

That requires amounts of malice that won't fit three White Houses.

@RegDwigнt It was a joke. Geezis.

Get off your Hochpferd.

Jun 26 at 14:56, by Robusto

Aren't jokes supposed to be funny? I'm confused . . .

I think you've amply proved they don't have to be.

Accusing anyone of not liking Johnny Cash is a crime against humanity. Most definitions of which literally include the words "not a joke".

Drones banned for pope's visit.

Maybe he should visit Afghanistan and see if that works.

2:34 PM

@Robusto yeah yeah don't change the subject. For once, you're the one doing the proof.

GEMA =~ NSDAP

@RegDwigнt Proof? My favorite is 100.

Ha. You fool. Everyone else's is pie.

A close second. But pie tastes better with 100 proof whisky.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@Robusto wuzzat got ta do with dags?

2:36 PM

Ninja keeps trying to sneak into this chat, and failing.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

I only came back because of the pong.

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Just trying to confuse you enough that you would shed big tears. Sorry.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Y'all were fightin'.

@Robusto geezis.

No, w'all were borin'.

He was fighting. I was being bored.

2:36 PM

Jinx.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@Robusto will you be tapped?

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 I already put an arm bar on him.

user image

Boring coke.

An arm bar? Is that like not a gay bar?

Jul 30 '13 at 21:16, by RegDwighт

user image

user image

That is totally gay.

2:40 PM

Then you have your answer.

Yeah, it's just that once again I failed to guess the meaning of word in language english correctly.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Liz Carmouche?

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 BTW, I pung you days ago and you're only now leaping to answer?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@Robusto Big Tears was from yesterday.

@Robusto it never shows them to me until I leave.

Speaking of, BRB coffee

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 It seems like only yesterday.

2:41 PM

Well, leave at once then.

Oh you already did.

Mm, coffee might help me stay awake.

Damn them ninjas is fast.

Just dodged a bullet. There was only French Vanilla in the kitchen, but I managed to squeeze out half a cup of regular from a different container.

user image

Squeeze them out one step at a time.

Mine was a carafe.

But perhaps your Deutschdumpsters are clean enough, so go ahead.

2:47 PM

I don't think it will taste any worse than regular coffee in most parts of the world, including Germany and America.

-1

Q: Another term/phrase for kill two birds with one stone

What is another phrase for kill two birds with one stone? Or another term that implies similar meaning?

Synonyms?

Oh, I know, I know!

"Kill three birds with one stone!"

Kill one question with five votes. Or less.

That's another good one.

But is it a term or a phrase?

@Robusto Hawt!

2:50 PM

See.

I did say it was gay.

QED

@RegDwigнt What is an arm bar? It sounds vaguely familiar.

@RegDwigнt Yes, I've switched to being Lesbian.

I know, I know, I've been telling you it's a choice all along.

Feb 24 at 18:17, by Robusto

A wise policy.

A pice wolisy.

@RegDwigнt How do Dutch and German coffee compare?

2:52 PM

They compare as follows: crap vs. crap.

@Robusto Because nothing beats a pair of Lesbians in a fistfight?

In theory, lesbianism is the only homosexuality heterosexual men really like. In practice, not so much.

@RegDwigнt OK.

@Robusto It depends. I know some hot Lesbian couples...

Read it again, slower this time.

Well. I know some rich idiots.

But that doesn't mean that all idiots are rich.

2:53 PM

But the other way around?

No, not all idiots are the other way around, either. Most are straight, actually.

I think we should go back to asexual reproduction. Something like what the British royals do.

Whoa whoa whoa those fuckers reproduce?

What? You don't read the tabloids every time one of them fuckers drops a new heir?

I don't know what to say. I blush with shame as I admit quietly through my teeth that I don't read the tabloids every time for all values of "every" and "time".

You got me.

2:56 PM

user image

Who is Princess Diana's?

Keeping secret offspring secret is harder for women, obviously.

Not if noone has ever heard of the woman herself.

Like, did you know Sho Fung Il had seven daughters?

I thought that was the 7 Chinese Brothers. Maybe they got the Bruce Jenner treatment.

Call him Caitlyn.

2:59 PM

REM - 7 Chinese Bros

I rest my case.

Manual against the animals.

R.E.M. wouldn't lie to me.

Nonono, you're thinking of Charles and Eddie.

May 20 at 19:25, by Robusto

The Phlorescent Leech and Eddie.

Andrew the Phlorescent Leech?

3:03 PM

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者: I don't recall, did Phlorescent modify just Leech or Leech and Eddie together?

It modified nothing. Leech and Eddie are clearly verbs in that sentence.

@MattE.Эллен might call them pronouns, or even prepositions.

I'm pronoun, but I'm also proverb.

I don't play favorites with parts of speech.

The poor stumble and fall. The rich complain and run for President. The phlorescent leech and eddie.

This just in: Queen uses Skype to talk to her heirs. I don't think that makes her "tech savvy" though.

She obviously has people come in and set things up for her.

bbc.com/culture/story/…

3:07 PM

Yeah. She dictates letters to be read over Skype by her butler.

The Queen uses technology the way a thoroughbred horse uses a racetrack.

> Arsy varsey: To fall arsy varsey, ie head over heels

3:29 PM

@RegDwigнt Putin Calls Elton John.

Why would you call someone John if their name is Elton?

Those Russians are drunk again.

I suspected you had something to do with that.

I will not deny or confirm the presence or absence of my (in)ability or (un)willingness to comment or not comment on that or anything else.

Or will I?

4:14 PM

@RegDwigнt Putin still gonna getcha.

Are moderators not Tagged in the chat?

What?

4:41 PM

All moderators are colored blue

or is it italics?

being colored italic is a great burden

5:12 PM

88

Q: What are the review queues, and how do they work?

I see a "review" link on the top of the page, which takes me to a few "review queues". What is a "review queue"? What are the various queues for? What can I do in each queue? Return to FAQ index

support faq review

This describes the review queues...but what exactly does 'Looks OK' do? is it a negative close vote? or is it two to one? Or what?

5:36 PM

Good question.

6:01 PM

@MattE.Эллен I'm a devious devoted dev

devastating devil deviants

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

6:50 PM

devotedly devocalising devolution

Sounds like we need a devival.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

7:23 PM

Huckabee: Citizens should obey the law only if they think it's right This opens up a lot of possibilities.

7:34 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Whatever happened to the separation of church and state? I guess these people don't believe in the Constitution.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

8:04 PM

@Robusto Don't you see? They don't have to follow the parts they don't like, if they don't think it's right.

They didn't say that when they were sending kids to die in Vietnam.

8:23 PM

[ SmokeDetector ] All-caps title: SUBJECT OMISSION by Caian Dorneles on english.stackexchange.com

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

8:34 PM

@Robusto That's politicians for you. Specifically, Republicans.

@Mahnax! long time no see

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Hi! Yeah, been awhile. 140 days, it would seem!

How're you keeping?

Aloha!

Welcome back.

Hi! Thank you.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Mahnax good! got a surprise phone call from the school telling me my 5yo wasn't in his kindergarten class. Luckily, it was a mistake on the attendance form.

How've you been? Have you started a new semester?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Eek. Glad all's well.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Been alright—worked away the summer and now I'm back in school again. Also doing a research class!

8:44 PM

Yay!

What is the research about?

Characterizing multimodal columns in HPLC.

Ah, yes, of course.

pretends to understand

LOL. I don't fully understand it yet, but hey. It's a lot of fun so far.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I, er, don't even know what subject area that falls into. :(

feels old

9:00 PM

It's analytical chemistry! :)

Basically, this sort of column will allow us to separate all sorts of stuff at once—specifically, active pharmaceutical ingredients, fillers, and counter ions.

In other HPLC columns, you can't do that all at once. So we're working on figuring out how to best use these columns!

@tchrist do you know of a company that offers decompilaition as a service?

@Mahnax That sounds efficient!

9:23 PM

@JohanLarsson You mean disassembly? Depends on the compiler. But still, the answer is no.

I mean decomplie, sources not to be found for an old lib

Just a shot in the dark since you are a sage

9:41 PM

You cannot turn machine language into source code in any sort of one-to-one relationship, and in the face of optimization passes, usually not at all.

Answers are competitive and I have an unfair advantage. Comments are less responsibility. — John Lawler 41 mins ago

I vote #2.

Pah.

Or perhaps he suffers from the unfair disadvantage of a déformation professionnelle.

10:11 PM

So everyone knows about the cot-caught merger

east coast separate but midwest to west coast merged (oversimplified)

Your what hurts?

I’m not merged.

So that provides a name distinction

Don Dawn

Way different.

Don = cot, dawn = caught

right, way different for me too

I’m from the Midwest.

user image

10:13 PM

(OK, I'm just reporting what I've read...I don't think MWers merged them

Not merged, see?

oh nice... I was about to look for that

In fact, I'm from a very dark red part, so the merger sounds especially weird to me.

anyway that map has the oborder right in the middle of the midwest

Huh?

10:14 PM

ok back to the names...or rather about two different names

ok back to the border.. kansas is not midwest?

nebraska?

Plains states.

anyway, there are people who merge them and some who don't.

I just saw this:

blog.oup.com/2015/09/future-english-language

and pt 9, says there is a possible difference/merger difference in Aaron/Erin

I don't differ those in pronunciation (but I obviously verb everything possible)

No, those homophone me.

Is that in the merry/Mary/marry difference?

or for us those three are merged but for some people different?

user image

10:19 PM

If different for real, then what name rhymes with what merry?

Berry.

The people who don't have the merger have the vowel of met in merry, the vowel of mate in Mary, and the vowel of Matt in marry.

is the vowel in 'mate' a diphthong like 'may'?

assuming that for everybody English speaking

mäjt

@tchrist the color scheme should be much lighter for under 50%

@JohanLarsson but a monophthong in Mary?

@Mitch For most people, I think so.

10:24 PM

man, monophthong

> does not compile

mac(tchrist)% man monophthong
No manual entry for monophthong

it even broke Tom's wall-of-text generator

[ SmokeDetector ] Offensive answer detected: Can "sufficient" be used in a negative sense? by elver galarga on english.stackexchange.com

and triggered detector guy

@Mitch careful with that right?

> More California fiber optic cable severed as AT&T offers 250K reward
"It's something the FBI is taking very seriously," a bureau spokeswoman said.

arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/09/…

I wonder who would do this.,

10:50 PM

Luddites?

You think?

you don't?

How about vandals?

Blackmailers?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Resisting unjust laws is bad?

@Cerberus Perhaps anybody who read the NYT article about AT&T and the NSA.

Which one?

11:04 PM

Which article?

Yes.

nytimes.com/2015/08/16/us/politics/…

So somebody is cutting cables? That seems ... bad.

Ah, that.

Could be.

Sure, it's bad.

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Sep '1516

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