English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

1:48 PM

Do you use regroup in its personal sense?

> Summer is a time to relax, regroup, and catch up on all those things you've been putting off all year.

Would that be a likening of the individual and their resources to a general and their troops?

2:10 PM

I don't know: this is probably some colloquial invention?

2:25 PM

@Færd It's just one of those words I never use but I've often seen it used this way.

@Færd I always pictured a guy tired from too much work melting on his seat and regrouping would be them getting their shit together, finding a reasonable sitting position, and starting planning ahead again

That actually is probably the context I've seen it used most often

The endless workers endless consumers giving each other advice on 'maximizing productivity' and stuff

2:39 PM

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ Huh. I thought it was more about gathering your thoughts together.

Thanks.

@Cerberus Probably. Has more traction in some dialects.

I think "hmm" would be appropriate.

@Færd For that they literally say "regroup my thoughts". I sometimes have . . . poetic interpretations of certain colloquialisms which tend to be imprecise, if not wrong.

Take my advice with a grain of salt.

^ Take that advice with a grain of salt too.

Salt is the worst. It kills.

1 hour later…

4:13 PM

@Færd Yeah. It's a metaphor usually used in a business team environment. Regrouping sounds military lingo to me, and that is often transferred to the business situation. It's not 'colloquial', it's more managementese.

I would say "managementese" is colloquial at best.

It's all in the same 'Office Space' cliche area as 'Let's take a step back', 'take a 10,000 foot view'

@Cerberus 'colloquial' has a feel of informality to me, and managementese is not informal.

"ain't" is colloquial

Well, it is not acceptable in normal formal English, is it?

Let's call it "bad", then.

That is, if it's managementese, it's bad; but you can use regroup as a metaphor properly as well.

Sure it is acceptable. Or rather it is poor style because it is cliche, not because it is vulgar or low cant or characteristic of uneducated speech.

Well, it's not just cliché; it would be silly even if it weren't cliché.

4:18 PM

There's so much worse.

Have you ever had a command line that worked in a programme, but not in a command prompt, not even when started as admin?

I have that now, it's hh or hh.exe.

And it fails silently in the command prompt.

> 10 Tricks to Appear Smart During Meetings
Draw a Venn diagram.
Translate percentage metrics into fractions.
Encourage everyone to “take a step back”
Nod continuously while pretending to take notes.
Repeat the last thing the engineer said, but very very slowly.
Ask “Will this scale?”
Pace around the room.
Ask the presenter to go back a slide.
Step out for a phone call
Make fun of yourself

thecooperreview.com/10-tricks-to-appear-smart-during-meetings

@Cerberus what is hh?

It is the programme that deals with Windows help files.

It can display them, or decompile them.

And what does fail silently mean? No errors, no effects on any files?

It's what you see when you read the help info on some thing in WIndows.

@Mitch Yes, all of that.

4:22 PM

The usual problem with CLI vs batch file is the paths not set up right.

but in windows an exe file you have to click on in the UI to get it to appear.

@Mitch Hmm but I have the paths all nice without spaces.

in the command.exe CLI entry a windowed program won't do anything.

it will launch

4:24 PM

@Cerberus Hmmm... OK so it can be used for both

look at the help for it

the CLI help

hh -h

or hh --help

or something like that.

@MattE.Эллен Oh.

hh ? launches help as a kind of file explorer. which is weird

@Mitch Yes.

But Cerb is trying to use the part of hh that is a file processor that should output to the diagnostics and errors to the command line and modify files, without doing any GUI stuff

yeah, I was trying to get it to display command line help

but I got a weird looking file explorer instead

@Mitch Those aren't language cliches (except for 'step back'). but they are annoyingly true.

4:28 PM

God, I'm stupid, sorry.

that's OK!

When I isolated the working line from my script, it didn't work, even though it did work in the full script. Turns out the required .chm file was only present at the right time while the script was doing its stuff, but it was auto-deleted after.

It's just annoying how this hh.exe thingy doesn't give out any errors.

yes

I'd expect at least "file not found"

4:30 PM

poor error notifications are the worst

Yeah.

Oh, and did I tell you that it won't accept any quotation marks?

quoting is the next worse

So you basically can't use it anywhere near paths that have spaces.

sometimes you have to quote the quotes

You can't!

You always can, except with hh.exe.

4:31 PM

@Cerberus I'm sure there's a way but it may not be clear at all how to do it

that's crazy

how about "This\ has\ spaces.exe"?

you'd probably have to use the 8.3 notation instead

@MattE.Эллен That's weird (and useless?) indeed!

@Mitch Hmm I'll test that. I might need it in the future.

It's almost 2020 and you can probably use emojis as file names, but it still has problems with spaces.

4:32 PM

Hah.

hh.exe thishas~1

@MattE.Эллен Is that the short notation? I didn't know that also worked for folders.

@Cerberus I think so?

i'm not sure

I'll test it.

Most UI programs seem to deal with spaces OK. It's knowing how to type them in the CLI that's the problem.

4:35 PM

doesn't look like you get shortnames anymore?

dir /X should show them, but I can't see any

ok, it works in some places

and it does affect directories

OK!

It does indeed.

Madeleines remind me of the long sultry hours being bored out of my skull trying to read Proust.

Hah.

Hmm now the issue is that I can't seem to get a short path before the folder or file is created.

I suppose that is a limitation of the file system.

CowperKettle

4:57 PM

I'm just in from a walk in the park ))))

That's spring in the Urals

5:09 PM

Cold!

A friend of mine is now in Moscow.

2 hours later…

Curio

7:25 PM

Has anyone watched "The Mill on the Floss"?

Robusto

7:40 PM

@Færd My cycling club uses regroup when we wish to ... regroup. Like if we're climbing a long grade and some riders fall behind, we wait at the top at the regroup point. It's a fairly unremarkable usage and it's well understood.

Robusto

7:50 PM

@CowperKettle So you have two seasons there, winter and mosquitoes?

8:28 PM

It's winter and fake winter

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ No worries. Two grains of salt won't kill anyone.

@Mitch Interesting that business lingo should borrow military cant. Almost unsurprising. Thanks.

I was not too far off after all

I should celebrate and buy myself something

@Robusto That's literal re-grouping, but without any military connotations, presumably. Thanks.

Q: Did the myth of carrots improving eye sight begin as WWII propoganda?

8:47 PM

I've often heard that the myth that eating carrots helps you see better at night (not to be confused with carrots helping with vitamin A deficiency) was started by the British in World War II, as propaganda to help conceal the fact that the RAF planes were equipped with radar. The story was that ...

Reminds me of the air cushion prank

This is My World, MY WORLD!

@Færd Yes, it's literal, just like the military idea is literal. Get the group back together.

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ For those two, improving eyesight at night and preventing night blindness, I find it very hard to make a distinction about. ie calling one a myth and one science seems splitting hairs if you're trying to say your night vision is good.

RegDwigнt

9:28 PM

Wait. Who added an "a" to the room description?

That was my pun, Mr Anderson, my pun!

►

Doesn't appear like the room search will let me search for it.

I'm not reading the entire transcript! Not again.

Robusto

9:45 PM

@RegDwigнt Slacker.

Here's a treat for you anyway:

Beethoven: Violin Concerto, Arthur Grumiaux Concertgebouw Orch/van Beinum 1958, restored

►

The whole thing is wonderful, but listen especially to the cadenza in the first movement.

Then wish you had that kind of technique, along with a Stradivarius like that to use it on.