English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

1:49 AM

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Q: Name for the logical fallacy of asking for unreasonable amount of sources?

The fallacy is when someone demands either an impossible source or their criteria for accepting a source as believable is impossible to meet. Example: "Driving stoned is dangerous and you should not do it." "Unless you can can produce a peer reviewed, double blind study that conclusive...

Færd

3:22 AM

@Mitch (With a hoarse sound and proper hand gestures and an orange wig)

"The failing state media and other fake news agencies, with ratings going down very fast, ...".

But I don't get it; did I say anyone was going bankrupt or losing power?

I just wanted to say if an Iranian damns the bad press they get from foreign media, they must follow it up with damning their domestic media on account of how it's screwing the public from the other side (or, in the polite words of @M.A.R. , marrying them).

CowperKettle

5:21 AM

My old attempt at translating a passage from Mikhail Lermontov

M.A.R.

6:59 AM

@Færd polite words of . . . MAR?! Washes mouth

@Færd so is there a ritual for damning media?

Feeds

8:30 AM

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Q: What is it called when an exchange is equal in both directions?

In a typical commercial transaction, you might buy a meal for $10 from a restaurant, but you wouldn't expect to bring the same meal to the restaurant and receive $10. The exchange isn't 'equal' in both directions. In piezoelectricity, however, compression produces electric energy, but the same a...

single-word-requests phrase-requests

CowperKettle

9:44 AM

Word of the day: theogony

2

> Oh, ye immortal gods! what is theogony?
Oh, thou too, mortal man! what is philanthropy?
Oh, world! which was and is, what is cosmogony?
Some people have accused me of misanthropy;
And yet I know no more than the mahogany
That forms this desk, of what they mean; Lykanthropy
I comprehend, for without transformation
Men become wolves on any slight occasion.

Gigili

10:48 AM

@CowperKettle Interesting

Is the original text Russian?

Gigili

11:01 AM

I think you could change the sentence structure on line 6, it doesn't read well as is:

[...] have drawn her entire life inside them and [...]

I might be wrong.

CowperKettle

12:17 PM

@Gigili Yes

Lermontov generally tended to write in Russian )))

Phil Ochs - Automation Song

►

Feeds

1:19 PM

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Q: Hypernym for climbing/descending stairs but not walking on even ground

Writing a concept description for a product, I'm trying to describe the possible modes of operation tersely. One of those modes of operation is "Walking on even ground", another is "Ascending or descending stairs, holding hand rail". I was wondering, is there a hypernym I could use instead of "...

single-word-requests hypernyms

Mitch

1:43 PM

Pfft

Matt E. Эллен

Ftpf

Feeds

0

Q: A word for someone paid to do an unpopular thing

I'm looking for a word (or perhaps a couple of words) to describe a person who willingly takes on the job of doing something unpopular or unkind so that they become the target of resentment for this, rather than their boss/employer. Example:- People still trust the politician as he always ge...

single-word-requests

Tonepoet

2:06 PM

I"ve noticed people commenting on how the shrug emoji doesn't quite render right before here, so I figured this might be of interest if it works.

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Hmm, not quite.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Hmm. So you use two backslashes instead of one, to escape the first one, which disappears because the backslash is an escape character in markdown.

Feeds

0

Q: A word for someone who shallowly emulates someone/something they wish to be like

To detail further; I'm looking for a word for someone who makes shallow attempts to be like someone or something they like or admire by doing nothing more than acting out the perceived actions, whilst making little to no effort to understand the deeper knowledge that facilitates those actions. B...

single-word-requests

Tonepoet

Also @NVZ my duplicate flag was declined, so I suppose my hypothesis was wrong.

CowperKettle

2:36 PM

> Oh thou "teterrima causa" of all "belli" --
Thou gate of life and death -- thou nondescript!
Whence is our exit and our entrance, -- well I
May pause in pondering how all souls are dipt
In thy perennial fountain: -- how man fell I
Know not, since knowledge saw her branches stript
Of her first fruit; but how he falls and rises
Since, thou hast settled beyond all surmises.

..

> Some call thee "the worst cause of war," but I
Maintain thou art the best: for after all
From thee we come, to thee we go, and why
To get at thee not batter down a wall,
Or waste a world? since no one can deny
Thou dost replenish worlds both great and small:
With, or without thee, all things at a stand
Are, or would be, thou sea of life's dry land!

Mitch

@MattE.Эллен for when a teenager rolls their eyes and tells you your file transfer is lame

NVZ

3:14 PM

@Tonepoet I'm still wondering how your proposed duplicate answers my question. I gave it a lot of thought, but nothing..

Matt E. Эллен

@Mitch what's FTP? why don't you just use Google Drive?

Tonepoet

@NVZ Have you heard back from a moderator yet?

NVZ

@Tonepoet No, and I guess we'll never know.

@Tonepoet this seems likely: english.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11098/…

This looks like it might be the all-flags-are-one thing again. If someone flagged the answer for a different, non-applicable, reason and that flag was declined, all flags on the answer, regardless of type, are automatically declined along with it. This is absolutely idiotic, but it’s how I believe it’s always worked: if a post has both correct and incorrect flags, mods are forced to either approve the incorrect ones or decline the correct ones. — Janus Bahs Jacquet 3 hours ago

CowperKettle

@Gigili Probably yes - I'm not a native speaker and the whole translated text must be clumsy to read. I just loved the original passage and decided to try, considering it good exercise

Tonepoet

@NVZ It seems that way. I might disclose my hypothesis as an answer to your question later.

@NVZ That is silly. Flags should be sorted into groups based on the flag reason.

NVZ

3:28 PM

@Tonepoet I think only the one who handled it can actually respond..

@Tonepoet meta.stackexchange.com/a/215397/309993 Usually we blame Tim Post for any random drive-by downvotes since he loses his keys often. Perhaps this time this explains the declined flag. lol

Tonepoet

@NVZ Only the person who handled the flag knows for certain, but anybody's free to discuss things on meta as far as I'm aware and if the moderator isn't going to disclose their motivations, the next best thing we can do is speculate.

NVZ

@Tonepoet Of course, just like I responded to ML's Q about a locked Q.

It's free for all.

Tonepoet

@NVZ Heh, yeah, I saw that before.

NVZ

@Tonepoet That's my go-to for when things don't go as planned. Missed the bus? Blame Tim Post for losing his keys, which led to a chain of events that ended up in me missing my bus.

Tonepoet

Reasons why weird things happen in Gensokyo. XP

NVZ

3:42 PM

@Tonepoet No idea about anime(?)

Tonepoet

@NVZ Touhou's originally a video game series. It's a beloved cult classic, for lack of a better term, so there are all manners of derivative works.

Feeds

4:18 PM

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Q: Is there a term for something that is "beyond believable"?

"Extra believable" might be another way to phrase what I am trying to find. I feel like "unbelievable" is a term that is often paired with incredulity, whereas if something is believable, it is a very temppered response. Is there a term that goes past that into overwhelming certainty? In fact, ...

single-word-requests

CowperKettle

It turns out Tatyana Gnedich, a Russian translator, translated Byron's "Don Juan" from 1944-1946 in solitary confinement in prison. She spent the years 1946-55 in the GULAG

Her translation was published only in 1959, to great acclaim

CowperKettle

5:22 PM

> Love had made Catherine make each lover's fortune,
Unlike our own half-chaste Elizabeth,
Whose avarice all disbursements did importune,
If history, the grand liar, ever saith
The truth; and though grief her old age might shorten,
Because she put a favourite to death,
Her vile, ambiguous method of flirtation,
And stinginess, disgrace her sex and station.

^_^

M.A.R.

6:12 PM

@CowperKettle 🙄

😃

My head is probably not as round though

CowperKettle

🙄 --- it renders as a rectangle on my computer

Probably some font is lacking

MetaEd

7:01 PM

🙂

CowperKettle

7:12 PM

Word of the night: beard snood

> As "Auld Lang Syne" brings Scotland, one and all,
Scotch plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills, and clear streams,
The Dee -- the Don -- Balgounie's brig's black wall,
All my boy feelings, all my gentler dreams
Of what I then dreamt, clothed in their own pall,
Like Banquo's offspring; -- floating past me seems
My childhood in this childishness of mine:
I care not -- 't is a glimpse of "Auld Lang Syne."

0

Q: Meaning of "and those things which for an instant clip enjoyment's wings" in Byron's Don Juan

From Byron's Don Juan: We left our hero, Juan, in the bloom Of favouritism, but not yet in the blush; And far be it from my Muses to presume (For I have more than one Muse at a push) To follow him beyond the drawing-room: It is enough that Fortune found him flush O...

meaning lord-byron don-juan

Mitch

7:54 PM

Dum, dittle lee dum, dittle lee dum, dittle lee doo.

And I mean it to sting

Feeds

8:23 PM

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Q: Is there a term for hyphenating words at margins that normally aren't hyphenated?

'Hyphenation' is too ambiguous. It doesn't distinguish mandatorily hyphenated compounds like 'time-consuming' (more examples) vs. optional hyphenation at the margins in publications (example).

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…