English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

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A: A guide to moderating chat

What tools are available to room owners? Room owners are users that have some elevated permissions in a chatroom. Typically, they will be the first line of defense when it comes to inappropriate content or behavior in a room. Users will look to the room owners to guide the room. The room owners...

12:31 AM

What's your take on this post? @tchrist

12:59 AM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 We read about it and were wondering about you the other day. Quite horrible. But at least you're alive.

1:19 AM

@skull My "take" is that it's important, serious, and complex, and that I'm not up to having any take at all just right now. I'd like to think about a lot of things here.

yeah I've been watching the news compulsively to see the list of victims as they identified them, dreading that I might know someone. If this attack had happened on a Thursday I would have been right there at that time. My daughter's friend was there an hour before.

I wish no one knew what that felt like.

This year I've had family members on lock-down during a fatal active-shooter incident. It's incredibly nerve-wracking. You're helpless and terror-stricken.

Sorry meant to reply to cerb but I'm on mobile

Yeah

I'm not used to that

life is fragile, handle with care

@skull That it is. But sometimes an entitle asshole takes the choice away from you.

1:29 AM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I can image it's terrible when it gets that close.

I would be in favour of a car-free inner city (except with a special permit).

And of requiring lots of checks before renting out a car to someone.

A car is like a bomb.

A lorry is like a big bomb.

@Cerberus Well, that's just it, we're not in the inner city.

Then expand the zone to include wherever there are many people afoot.

Our society only works because most people aren't psychopaths

Very true.

@Cerberus Honestly, I'm in favour of lots of restrictions on cars, but I don't think that'd work here.

1:32 AM

But inner cities will probably become car-free anyway because of the pollution and traffic.

Maybe more time is needed.

North American cities are totally different from European cities, traffic-wise.

I imagine.

I think the root of the problem is psychological fragility, especially male fragility. We need to address how we raise boys so that they don't grow up to be delicate little man-children who throw temper tantrums by crashing cars into people.

That is also a good approach.

But why not both?

honestly I'm trying to imagine which will be harder, that, or banning cars :p

1:36 AM

Heh.

I also feel that perhaps we shouldn't have such a winners-losers society.

I mean I'm operating on the assumption that the attacker's "incel" facebook post is genuine. I may be wrong.

Oh, I'm not up to date.

What is incel?

oy.

it stands for "Involuntarily Celibate"

Oh.

How odd.

it's an internet subculture of men whining about how they can't get laid

1:37 AM

Just rent a hooker.

it's rife with misogyny

That's why we should have legal prostitution.

I imagine.

no, see, paying for it doesn't count

Then they should get over themselves!

If they can get a machine gun, they'll use a machine gun. If they can get bags of fertilizer, they'll use that. If they can get C-4, they'll use C-4. If they can get a truck, they'll use a truck. If they get a car, they'll use a car. If they can get none of those, they'll eventually think of something else. Gasoline, maybe. I don't know.

1:38 AM

Ah, the NRA argument.

Guns don't kill people, it's not the guns.

The gunpowder, treason, and plot.

But that never happened.

A facebook post attributed to this attacker said something about the "incel" revolution, killing all the "chads and staceys", praising the asshole from a couple years ago who for similar reasons shot up some people in California (I think), and included a serial number which was this guy's number when he served in the Canadian Forces for a couple weeks. That number is private, secret almost, so it's unlikely that the post is a fraud.

I despise the NRA beyond words.

I just don't know that banning cars will help here.

Maybe it will.

Banning guns helps.

1:40 AM

Cars are useful tools. Guns less so.

Whenever many are gathered...

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 That sounds rather awful. And the publicity, too...

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Cars cause lots of cancer and traffic jams...

@Cerberus This guy just makes me so mad.

But, yes, at least cars have a legitimate use.

I'm amazed at how fast the Las Vegas massacre got forgotten :(

1:41 AM

People need to get over themselves.

That's the whole problem.

@Cerberus Cars could be made that don't cause cancer and aren't so bad for the environment. They're incredibly useful, but also, our cities (here) are built to require them.

@skull Did it? I remember watching a new video reconstruction of the event a few weeks ago.

Think about other people instead. Involve yourself with other human beings.

Stop feeling sorry for yourself.

@skull I'll be honest. Gun violence in the USA is so common that it's hard for the rest of the world to keep track of it all.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 True about cancer. Less so about CO2 and traffic jams / uglifying cities.

1:43 AM

In Canada, mass murders are very rare.

The sexual predations by those in power are the same thing.

Still, the attack in Vegas was so big.

Treating other people like garbage at the dump.

@Cerberus Well, electric cars can mitigate the CO2 thing.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Only if we have enough clean energy, which will be a very long while...

And clean battery production...

1:44 AM

@Cerberus Sure. But there's a straightforward path from here to there.

It doesn't require a paradigm shift in how we structure our society.

It will probably be possible in an unknown number of decades. Could be ten.

@Cerberus I'm optimistic that, barring catastrophes, our vehicles will shift to electric fairly rapidly, assuming we can find enough rare earth elements to build batteries.

I'm also hoping that self-driving cars will remove the need for human drivers - maybe certain areas will be self-driving-only.

But that will probably take decades.

@tchrist It may console people to know that the Ancient Greeks already observed how society and morals were going down the drain and society must soon collapse.

@Cerberus And yet, there were lots of societal collapses between then and now

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes, both of those things will happen, but it will indeed take many decades.

1:47 AM

humans muddled through eventually but it wasn't always smooth sailing

@Cerberus It is the nature of the old to see decay everywhere.

Yeah and those Greeks were Ancient

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Athens never collapsed entirely. Certainly not in Plato's millennium. And, when it did collapse partially, it wasn't due to the things they observed at Plato's time.

@tchrist Quite so. We must try to resist the temptation!

@Cerberus Whenever I hear people complaining about young people these days, I quote to them some ancient Greek texts, where some guy was complaining about young people those days, then I point out that the complaints haven't changed in thousands of years.

The young have no position to see a difference between a long-ago then and now. They have only now, so there can be no difference and no change, and thus no corruption, and so no decay.

1:50 AM

Strangely, pointing out how people are wrong doesn't always change their behaviour.

Quoth Father.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Who knew that you should be quoting the Greeks to hoi polloi!

@Cerberus the hoi polloi

Hardly.

He'll get you.

Don't do that.

@tchrist But the old have a romantic tendency to see the past as a better place than it was, and to fear change no matter what.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 !!

Let's not make jokes about such a serious matter!!

How dare you.

1:52 AM

come on, you knew I'd say that

you pushed the button on purpose!

D'oh.

Of course.

@Cerberus Nostalgias, saudades, e morriñas

I knew providing you with an opportunity to vex me should cheer you up a bit.

@tchrist Morriñas I didn't know.

heh, thanks

Mourning.

I didn't know saudade was also Spanish, though.

1:54 AM

@Cerberus The Galicians, whose words those both are, say that a morriña is a saudade that can kill you.

Ah, I see.

Yes, the Castilian-speakers have imported saudade but that was Galician.

You're so Gallic, these days.

A: What is the meaning of "saudade" and what good translations into other languages exist?

19

Nostalgias e morriñas It is an oft-repeated myth that the Portuguese and Galician word saudade “cannot be translated” into other languages. It certainly can! It just may take more than one word to do so adequately. The basic sentiment is one that mixes together aspects of melancholy, lonelines...

I remember reading a good translation of Plato where they translation many important words in twain.

It worked rather well.

Because one word could not catch the meaning adequately.

It was like a hendiadys.

1:57 AM

I see.

I also read an article this week about how prevalent pessimism was in Europe in the early 20th century.

But the bad things that happened were not the things people were afraid of.

People were afraid that society was about to collapse etc.

Technology was about to destroy society.

And the disappearance of religion.

Fascism could thrive in that Zeitgeist.

So it was perhaps pessimism itself that could be said to have caused all the destruction of the early 20th century (both Wars).

"Technology was about to destroy society"?

That's how those pessimists felt.

Human labour was being replaced by machines.

Homo was no longer mensura.

2:15 AM

@Cerberus It sounds like you're describing today, not 100 years ago

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Exactly.

This was from a dissertation that's just been published.

@tchrist I guess it was black activists who coined or adopted the term "the black community".

At the dawn of the Black Power era, or earlier.

To infuse themselves with a sense of unity against a common enemy.

But the term may have outlived its usefulness.

Or maybe not.

Black Power movement

The Black Power movement was a political movement that intended to achieve Black Power. During the civil rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s, black activists experimented with various forms of self-advocacy, ranging from political lobbying to armed struggle. The movement was originally inspired by the philosophies of pan-Africanism, black nationalism, and socialism, as well as by contemporary events like the Cuban Revolution and the decolonization of Africa. The movement grew out of the African-American Civil Rights Movement. Many black people became frustrated with the Civil Rights Movement...

Guess my guess wasn't far off. The origin of the term merits a main-site inquiry.

3:04 AM

@Cerberus your Zeitgeist is messing up my Weltanschauung and now I have a Weltschmerz.

L'Chaim!

Schade.

Q: Looking for a word which describes something that doesn't inspire confidence

1

I am looking for a word which describes results or conclusions which don't inspire confidence because they were reached using poor quality data or a faulty procedure. The feeling I am trying to convey is something that can't be trusted or relied on to be correct. If the data is of poor quality...

SmokeDetector

4:40 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] URL in title, bad NS for domain in body, bad NS for domain in title, bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, +4 more: greentoneproblog.net/keto-ultra-diet/ by hamejone on english.SE

Q: Does Stack Exchange really want to conflate newbies with women/people of color?

7:13 AM

News update:

232

The Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming blog post says: Too many people experience Stack Overflow as a hostile or elitist place, especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups. There have been accusations of elitism against SO since time immemorial. Basic...

discussion etiquette blog behavior welcoming

@tchrist^

Q: Best verb opposite of verify

10:05 AM

0

According to verified and unverified adjectives I am looking for the best verb to use as opposite of verify verb. anybody has a verb in mind?

single-word-requests verbs

Xanne

@skull Unfortunate to conflate two very different issues in one blog post, or to try to solve these problems as though they were one.

Q: Word meaning: "containing no electronic components"

10:24 AM

0

I want to find a single academic-sounding word that means: "containing no electric parts" or "containing no electronic components" I originally thought "analog" would work here, but after double checking the definition, I have reconsidered. I can easily think of a few examples, but the naming c...

I agree @Xanne but, is an underlying "unwelcoming behaviour" issue growing across the network, in my opinion.

Q: Single word request for both the pupil and iris of the eye?

10:40 AM

0

Say you scooped out both the iris and pupil, for a transplant or what have you, what would you call them togheter?

Q: Word for the moving part of a slider?

1:59 PM

0

An example for a slider is the scroll bar that lets us move down a long web page. A slider consists of a line and a thing that you can move along that line. What do you call the moving component of a slider? Example sentence: "For most sliders, if you click somewhere along the slider line, the _...

Q: Words for deep thought, concern... (Sentence example inside)

2:16 PM

0

I am writing about a character who is currently pacing around his home in deep thought and concern. There is trouble approaching him shortly, and he is trying to find a solution. He is not afraid or nervous per-say - but he is in deep thought and concentration. A sudden block of sorts has me se...

Q: word for more frequent than "frequent"

4:16 PM

1

I wanted to say that "I'm a frequent restaurant visitor" in order to express my authority on the restaurant subject. But "frequent" doesn't quite catch it: I visit a restaurant almost every other day. The first word that comes to mind after "frequent" is "often", but you can't say "I'm an oft...

KannE

5:24 PM

I just realized what this site is really for--to learn how to curb all your defensive tendencies--for example, learning how to say "no biggie" while you're lying in the crosswalk (while the pedestrian light is still green) instead of "[bih] hit me with a [effing] car"...now that's a skill. You can just google grammar. Duh, what was I thinking...

6:06 PM

keeper
loaner
looker
thinker
...

6:21 PM

Another of the vocab counting tests online: vocabulary.ugent.be .

This one controls for false claims by including a lot of fake words. And it doesn't give an exact number, but rather the percentage of the English vocab that you know.

Tell me if you found anything interseting on the FAQ page or wherever they introduce their method of assessment, but I don't thing I can trust it.

Still, looks better-thought-out than the ones I took before.

6:59 PM

@KannE I guess you could google everything these days.

Why not just engage in discussions you enjoy?

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

@KannE you were here for another reason? Haha, sharing knowledge?! Silly.

Grrr, the M&TV chat is full of Infinity War spoilers

Congrats @Mitch for getting your name squashed in chat

@Xanne I can't speak for women, but evidentially, the race gender issue is almost non-existent

Which is more than I can say for real life, or that hell called "The Rest of Internet"

I don't think there's anything to change on that part, and if we try to, we'd end up with lazy people pulling a gender or race card to whine about downvotes on their lazy question

The harshness against newbies, well, let me repeat myself

in The Screening Room, 10 hours ago, by M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

The SO comment culture resonates too closely to the Edge of Darkness. Some comments always appear whose tone is uncalled for

Edge of Darkness is a good movie, but could be better

So there's room to improve obviously, but the solution is certainly not to call downvoting offensive

7:30 PM

super
duper
pooper
scooper

KannE

@Færd You really can. I('ve) just googled "I just" (like in my comment that I would've edited if I knew how, assuming it's possible at all). If you just scroll past the first few comments (two out of three are english.stackexchange.com--Oh! A possible duplicate! I'll get right on it!), you'll easily find it's a choice between two evils: Being "correct" in an outdated way (in the minority) vs. Being "incorrect" in a modern way (in the majority since 2000 in America).

room topic changed to Nutella Spoken Here: ðiː ˌɪŋkɒmpɹɨˈhɛnsɨbəɫ ˈɻʷuːm (EL&U main chatroom) meta.english.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/chat-faq [phrase-requests] [pronunciation] [single-word-requests] [synonyms]

You're all very welcome

KannE

@Færd I'm sort of a hip granny, so it's a hard choice...I could just fly to England...but I think I'll just go with "I'('ve)"...until I have at least 40k points...then I'll just state anything I want to as fact in the comment section, exlusively and repeatedly, until I die.

8:17 PM

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ I fear I'm going to regret this question, but... what is 'The Edge of Darkness'? Is that a soap opera about a group of men and women who live and love on a dilithium mining colony on Mercury right at the sun-facing threshold (night-day)? And the complications that arise in their living circumstances when they realize that Mercuruy is not tidally locked and in fact has a 3:2 rotation-revolution ratio (or is it the other way around?).

Sort of a bedroom farce.

I'd watch it.

@Færd checking for false positives is good. But percentage? What is the number of words? Are they counting all possible word formations?

@Færd wait...is that what you're referring to here?

@Xanne That question and all the answers and comments are just a lot of thoughtless complaining. The blogpost was about being jerks to anybody, and people responded by just being jerks to the blogposter.

@Mitch My question, exactly.

@Mitch That one's actually about this odd meaning of -er, which makes an object kind of noun out of the verb.

You keep a keeper, look at a looker, loan a loaner, and think about a thinker.

So, two unrelated topics.

@KannE Are you referring to a specific thread? I don't follow.

As for correctness, I guess if you've got your people who speak in your language/dialect then that could be your standard language, and you wouldn't have to be worrying about conforming to majority rules.

8:33 PM

@Færd a thinker thinks ('-er' is 'agentive' here). You don't think about a thinker. But yes to the other three. Well, sometimes not 'keeper'. Sometimes a 'keeper' is the one that keeps.

@Mitch Hmm. That's a thinker.

'Looker' always sounded weird to me. 'That's a real looker' for something that's good to look at? Sounds almost uneducated, like you can't think of a more articulate word for the thing.

@Mitch Yeah. I didn't mean that the object-like meaning is the only sense they have.

@Færd haha. have you heard the latest? You know how a real easy thing to do, something that shouldn't take any thought at all to decide to do is called a 'no-brainer'?

Yeap!

8:36 PM

Like "I just got free tickets to see Madonna and Sting" "well, that's a no brainer"

So a no-brainer is the opposite of a thinker.

(sorry, that's the only example I could think of. vary according to tastes. I don't think I'd go see that even if paid)

@Færd Well, yeah, but the point is that people are starting to say "That question is really hard, do you have the self driving car save the passenger or the pedestrian?" "I don't know. That's a real _brainer."

@Mitch (anyone could fill in, according to the artists of their generation.)

Oh. I didn't know brainer was a word.

But that sounds understandable.

(My point was that thinker is not always the one who thinks, but I guess we moved past thta topic)

@Færd I worry for the great majority of people who are not conforming to my rules. hey must be finding it hard to fall asleep with their concerns.

@Færd It's not.

@Mitch You could be a real nightmare.

8:41 PM

But if someone says it, you (meaning me) will probably be taken aback wondering what they're saying. Is it easy or hard? It's a real brainer trying to decide if 'brainer' is easy or hard to understand.

Hmm. Depends on your facial expression.

@Færd Probably.

Context could clarify the most outlandish of non-words.

That's totally argblargable.

I agree.

8:43 PM

Well-played

Or is it well played?

You've been to Italy lately?

Lately?

You're leaning like that pizza tower.

haha!

You're name's in italics.

8:44 PM

wait. I don't get it.

Oh... Pisa

Yeah, didn't feel like looking up the correct spelling. Sorry.

Why hasn't that thing fallen over yet

You're Mitch now, not Mitch anymore.

I'm sure there are lots of pizza places nearby that tower

@Færd Oh. Right. I've been abusing my powers.

Giving myself timeouts.

Making announcements for things I'll never keep to.

@Mitch You're earned it after putting so much time in this chat, I suppose.

8:49 PM

Mitch has added an event to this room's schedule.

@Feeds No Nutella rocks for me. I'd like Nutella jimmies.

Mitch has added an event to this room's schedule.

just an fyi: adding an event to the schedule of a room pings basically everyone that has ever been in the room

@Færd Hmm.. that is a good idea. Chocolate jimmies are pretty good. Nutella would be even better.

@quartata OH YEAH

@quartata Glad I didn't say what I was going to say though.

There's only so much personal information that others want to know.

There's a threshold

@quartata He's got the newbie's enthusiasm. It'll burn itself out.

8:53 PM

no it's fine I don't care that much

@Færd And pretty quickly.

I mean, it's Nutella

It's not fun anymore

the message needs to be heard

Time travel is really old news

8:53 PM

just be aware

@quartata Wait wait wait... I don't think you should take that tone.

@Mitch Come on. Rock on now.

Or jimmis on.

You're in the prime.

I'm really getting into the groove

Like a smoove move

So is there rocky road Nutella?

(Is it what it's called? Rocky road?)

I think Nutella is just a spread?

Rockin to the groove in the early morn
rockin to the beat to the break of dawn

8:56 PM

I guess that rhymes for some people.

Oh, it does.

if you're non-rhotic

or singing a song

KarlG just said the other day that few american singers sing rhotically except for country-western.

The vowels are different though?

They're close enough without the r's.

actually...

OK. We're in the age of hip hop after all.