English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

2:15 AM

@Cerberus Oh. I wondered what you meant by that. But I suppose the change now is more noticeable. In the cold darkness of winter, it's not terribly different between terribly cold and horrifically cold or summer between scalding hot and blistering hot. Now it's on total opposite sides.

3:17 AM

@Mitch Well, not for us.

It was around 16 degrees in mid-Feb, now it's like 12.

In between, we've seen 6, I think.

I still have to use Google and convert most temps expressed in Celsius. Even though I pretty much use metric for everything else. Which is actually a lot since I scale and play with recipes and do a lot of experimenting with very tiny amounts of pure sweeteners.

But temps make no sense to me unless expressed in F. (except 0, 100 and -40)

It's kind of weird.

I have converted A LOT of temps on Seasoned Advice.

But I still have no gut sense of what the numbers mean.

4:24 AM

@Jolenealaska The converse applies to almost every other place on Earth!

I know :)

At least a foot is suggestive of how long it might be.

The other measurements only if you know their history.

A mile is mille passuum.

A thousand steps (which should really be a km, since one fairly big step is actually a metre).

I wonder how they ever came up with miles so long!

Even soldiers don't march like that.

Speaking of which, you've caught me at my bed time again! It's time to cuddle up in bed and read my Roman detective novel.

I'm writing an anti-Trump video intended to persuade a friend.

It's a metric crap-ton of work.

What did the Romans call detectives?

Gigili

8:37 AM

@Cerberus Not really, I do a little bit of everything every now and then, but didn't choose a specific path to go in the future. It's a tough choice to make and sometimes I feel it's late for me at this age to make such decisions.

As they put it, we're now in the future pictured ten or so years ago.

Abhishek Madhani

8:50 AM

Hi Guys,
Is there any specific word in English language for statues / idol are built of person while he is still alive

11:14 AM

You'd think Bertrand Russell would know about the phases of the moon

What with his space teapot and all

@AbhishekMadhani Nothing reasonably well known. If such a word was in any kind of common use, I'd know it. For some reason, naming anything (like airports) after a living person is a pet-peeve of mine. I'd be drawn to that word.

11:51 AM

@MattE.Эллен What did he say this time?

Q: Meaning of a phrase "showed up on a white charger with a new moon"

0

There is a fragment of a short story by Louce Baker. Sladen Morris is the boy next door. The girls all think he’s fascinating and tend to deify him now that he’s touched six feet on the wall where his mother has been marking his height since he was two. But I keep remembering when he had braces ...

meaning-in-context

I was thinking of sending it to Literature

but now it has an answer

also no close votes

it's more about interpreting authrorial intent than English

12:51 PM

@MattE.Эллен I keep reading that over, and even with all the commentary, I still don't get what was intended. I've never heard of 'a new moon' as a thing that people would think is a special attribute, likewise a red cape. A white charger makes sense when explained (if you have a Mac, all their chargers are white and very expensive).

@Mitch exactly

Maybe those are set phrases I've never heard of.

you can't see a new moon, so I have no idea how you'd capture it

Maybe that's why it's special?

@Mitch maybe, but I couldn't find it on duck duck go

google just hits the EL&U question

12:53 PM

also, who is "Louce Baker"

never heard of them

@MattE.Эллен 1) That's some real good SEO by SE. 2) maybe too good.

:D

Well, yeah I figured out that "A new moon under a red cape" is a metaphor for something outstanding and beautiful, the problem was that I couldn't understand "a new moon". Is this an idiomatic phrase? Or reference? — Бертран Рассел 12 mins ago

Oh Bertie!

3:31 PM

@KannE I totally missed this question. I didn't see it on the queue at all.

My opinion is that the situation itself is very clear, it's just complicated and the naming of the relevant mental states is difficult.

I commented that the whole thing is exasperating.

The discounting the baby carrier rule thing by your mom.

That's been the case for 25 years at least. I remember being told multiple times to make sure to bring a baby carrier, the hospital can't let you get into a car without it (forehead slap: why doesn't the hospital give you one then?)

3:56 PM

But as to your mom, there's lots of adjectives that might apply. She was being dismissive (the way she didn't believe you) or difficult (not as specific as dismissive) or flighty or 'not reading the room' or 'didn't get it' or ... there's just so many aspects that could be described..

4:43 PM

@Mitch You say "your mom"...instead of "the mom"... Do you think it was my mom? I put a footnote at the bottom, but it wasn't very clear, I think, because I didn't want to come off like this: This is a close friend's mom, not my mom! It's just wrong. But I wonder now if people are not being forthright because they think she's my mom, my personal experience...hmm. I'm having the hardest time with this. I don't think I'm very relatable.

SmokeDetector

5:02 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive body detected, toxic body detected (109): Meaning of the word "s--t" ✏️ by Cayden on english.SE

@SmokeDetector it's alright, smokey, that's a question about shit, nothing to worry about

5:26 PM

@KannE Sorry, I just assumed naturally. Often 'asking for a friend' is almost transparently 'I'm asking for myself' but is annoying to those who are really asking for a friend.

Also the situation described, except for not the birthing part, sounds very familiar to me with my m-in-l.

Or really any kind of family situation where two people disagree.

@Mitch the trick is to befriend yourself

7:03 PM

@Mitch You really thought I had a baby in this century? Notice the cat, recently deceased, in the wicker chair...anyhow, I'm flattered. BTW, "MIL" is easier, I think, and is a perfectly acceptable for "mother-in-law" nowadays. Also, see my reply to your comment to my question. They had a misunderstanding about what "the law" meant (mass noun vs. a countable one). And...so does my question. Should I re-edit? I'm so tired of that...I know how 'expediters' feel now. In denial.

SmokeDetector

7:48 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Potentially bad keyword in answer, blacklisted user (70): Word/phrase/idiom for 'taking flak' (any kind to any degree) from people who can't handle everyday details well by Stafford Rc on english.SE

8:31 PM

@MattE.Эллен I am my own worst enemy

8:44 PM

@Cerberus The Roman army measured paces by what we think of as two paces: left foot down to left foot down.

Which works out fine at about 2.5 feet per "half" pace.

@Robusto Ah!

That kind of makes sense.

Although their paces were rather small, in that case.

But then they were smaller than we.

They were shorter than we are.

Jinx.

We measure rooms by pacing from one wall to the other.

One fairly long step is one metre.

@Cerberus Yeah, that makes me fel better. A meter for one step is literally a stretch.

@Cerberus a lunge more like

@Cerberus That's a pretty long step. You have to stretch to get there. A "comfortable" pace is smaller.

8:49 PM

@Mitch It's no regular step, but a 'longish' one. But soldiers march like that, think?

@Robusto Yes, it isn't a comfortable step.

@Mitch I wouldn't quite call it that.

But it depends on the length of your legs...

If you think about it, it makes sense that an army marching in formation would adjust their pace to the shorter soldiers. Easy for tall people to take a shorter step than it is for a shorter person to take a giant step.

If you're only 1.84, like Robusto, then it might be a lunge...

ducks

@KannE Sad to hear that. If it makes you feel any better, cats are really hoping their owner would go first.

@Cerberus rethinks joining the army

@Cerberus Heh. At least I can fit more comfortably in bed.

@Robusto Yes, but marching is much faster than normal walking. It is meant to be as fast as possible without becoming physically overwhelming.

@Robusto Touché.

Marching music was meant for exactly that, letting soldiers march faster, to the beat/song.

Speaking of which, I think I'll listen to some more Red Army songs.

8:52 PM

I am very annoyed by pedestrians when I'm driving. Why do they look like they're intentionally going slow when crossing the road?

@Cerberus More?

@Cerberus It depends on how fast you walk. A marching cadence is about 120 steps (half steps) per minute.

Red Army Choir - Partisan's Song

@Mitch I used to listen to them quite a bit.

I am very annoyed by cars when I am walking. What's their rush? They're already going faster than magic allows.

@Mitch Especially tourists.

Ugh

Look where you're walking, not at some dumb building that's not going anywhere

8:55 PM

@Robusto At 1 m per half step, that would 7.2 km/h. That is rather fast, even for marching?

Or perhaps not?

@Cerberus You mean 1 m per double step. We just went over this.

Umm.

@Cerberus OMG. JLo should sample that to do some fly dance moves

You said half steps?

Wait. What I meant to say was that 1 m was a giant step.

8:56 PM

@Mitch I think it's great music.

NOBODY walks like that in real life.

Soldiers marching take big steps.

@Robusto is a step two foot plants or one?

@Cerberus See? 120 half steps per minute, 2 steps per second.

> In the military there are various military steps or standard paces. One step occurs on each beat. A pace is the length of one step (assumed to be 75 cm or 30"); do not confuse this use of "pace" with the ancient Roman unit of length (2 steps or 5 Roman feet = 148 cm or 58").

8:58 PM

@Mitch For the Roman soldier it was two, left heel to left heel.

whats a pace? whats a stride?

it's like laps vs lengths

or flights of stairs vs whatever the other word is

Actually, 75 cm makes sense.

A: Average height of Ancient Roman Men and Women?

18

It was probably approximately 155cm for women, and about 168cm for men. We have direct evidence for this from analysing the skeletal remains of the Romans. For example, in a study [1] of 927 adult male Roman skeletons between 500 B.C. and A.D. 500, Professor Geoffrey Kron of the University of Vic...

Their steps are very quick, but not very long.

@Robusto Actually, 5.4 km/h seems rather slow, for military marching.

I thought it was more like 6.

Even faster on a forced march or similar.

Is 'Pygmy' a pejorative?

9:02 PM

@Mitch Not as pejorative as Hogmy.

Anyway, the shorter people of Congo, traveling through the forest, are supposed to be super fast, much faster than the pace of much taller people. From vague memory of some anthro text.

@Robusto How dare you

Red Army Choir: Smuglianka.

Another classic.

Two years ago, many members of the choir died in a plane crash.

I remember now.

> Sergei Novikov - Are ou even in a NATO country ? Here in France, it was a very sad day for a lot of people, Vincent Niclo, a french singer who sang a lot of time with them even said that this day was a tragedy because he also lost some friends ..... He told that on TV .

@Cerberus First comment made my joke for me: Stalin 1, Despacito 0

Despacito is a band?

I'd not heard of them.

Luis Fonsi - Despacito ft. Daddy Yankee

just a song

9:07 PM

OK.

Girl dancing to Despacito.... everytime

I was in the same ignorance as you at one time.

To wish for those days of innocence

You couldn't get away from:

@Cerberus They're a bit on the slow side.

haha

@Mitch Aww.

That's kind of cute.

I've heard that song.

Could be worse!

Yeah it's totally cute. but the lyrics might seem a little strange for the context of 'cute'

9:18 PM

Who listens to lyrics?

I know I don't because I can never understand what they're saying. Eventually I look them up.

I think they say "egg corn" in that clip.

Lyrics are hard enough to understand in your own language, let alone a foreign one.

I generally can't understand more than a couple words per line in Japanese songs, maybe not even.

The music screws up the natural beats of that language.

@Mitch I know, right? I wrote a 'poem' about it once, sort of...

@Cerberus Let's just say that in most 'romantic' songs, there is plausible deniability in the euphemisms, but in this song not really.

9:23 PM

50 Words on Being 50

Don’t need no fuel efficient car,
Uh, coffeehouse or smoke-free bar,
Some dumb-a$$ friends who love me “to”
Solve all their $hit like Scooby-Doo...
Just Lucky jeans and logo tees,
Organic fruit, a cat with fleas
To eat me when he’s home alone
Before the blow flies know I’m gone.

@KannE nice

@Robusto Yes. But they are a great motivator to learn the language.

The most Italian I ever learned (which is not a great lot) I learned from opera.

Of course I needed the libretto, without which I would only ever pick up a few words.

But an aria with a libretto is good stuff.

Both singing and listening.

Kaspar

@Cerberus Do you sing?

No.

I know you do, and well, too.

Kaspar

I was listening to a Shakira song just now.

Someone complained that the song was plagiarised, but they sounded quite different to me.

That made me wonder how plagiarism for songs can be judged or determined...

9:34 PM

@Kaspar you can use science

musical science

track the intervals between notes and the corresponding rhythm, the chord progressions, things like that.

there's always some amount of subjectivity "Does it really sound the same?" Some people will totally think yes, others no.

@KannE I did not know you'e a poet.

Kaspar

@Mitch I am also a poet: Mitch had an itch after falling into the ditch. He laughed so loud that he got a stitch.

9:50 PM

You've just captured my life

But...

Shakira could probably put it to music

@Robusto What does that mean 'the hips don't lie'? Even reading the lyrics it's unfathomable.

Whatever her hips are saying, I feel I'm being misled.

@Mitch I'm not really. I just write stuff...that rhymes with you or me a lot. It's an outlet for emotions...I prefer to be devoid of them.

10:10 PM

Just what a poet would say.