English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

1:35 AM

@Robusto Why would a Republican want to follow the teachings of Jesus? His kingdom is an absolute monarchy, to the best of my admittedly small understanding.

Robusto

2:40 AM

@Conrado The point is, they claim to be the party of Jesus. But they are corrupt. As Jesus would call them, they are "whited sepulchres."

> a whited sepulcher A person, group, place, or thing presented as being virtuous and morally upright on the outside, but being hypocritically corrupt, immoral, or evil on the inside. A sepulcher is a burial vault containing the corpse of the deceased. Originally taken from a line in Matthew 23:27 in the Bible.

2

Færd

5:52 AM

@Cerberus So, two issues:

One is that the composition of the "popular vote" depends to some extent on the form and formalities of the system that people vote in. There are non-voters in the US who don't accept that the Democratic Party could represent them, and so they don't vote at all. (Whether that's a rational choice is not the question here.)

They are people who would vote if there were a European-style Labor party, or if the Dem Party didn't have to broaden their appeal as far as the center right of the political, economic (and sometimes cultural) spectrum in order to win elections. (there are supposed to be studies on this; I'll link to them when I find them).

That takes me to the second issue: that these seemingly small discriminations in the voting system has allowed the Republican Party to aim at an ever-narrowing demographic: "whiter, older, more Christian and more rural voters", while the Democrats are left with the rest of the population ranging from traditionalist Blacks to Irish Catholics to liberal atheists to woke urbanite youngsters to socialists.

A "normal" voting system would punish Republicans for narrowing down their message when they lost the popular vote, and therefore make them to listen to more moderate and pluralistic voices in their party, and subsequently allow the Democrats to adjust their own messaging and aim for those who currently don't vote at all. But the systemic flaws have stuck the positioning of the Parties, especially the Republicans, in a rut.

Now you may argue that a two-party system can never cover this broad a range of potential voters. I don't disagree with that. But it doesn't have to be this narrow either.

Færd

7:47 AM

*this narrow and this gravitated to the right

*discriminations... ~~has~~ have allowed

*make them to listen

etc etc

CowperKettle

8:07 AM

CowperKettle

8:22 AM

> A British biscuit is an American cookie and an American cookie is a British cookie and an American biscuit is a British scone and an American scone is something else entirely

And Russian biskvit is sponge cake

There should be a biscuit harmonization conference.

Xanne

@Robusto Would it cover lemon cake, and would it be held in Y-burg.@CowperKettle

@Robusto xxx

M.A.R.

9:36 AM

@CowperKettle If it was a chemistry term, IUPAC would already have recommended a canon version

@Færd So is it etc. etc. or etc etc., I never paid attention

CowperKettle

9:56 AM

-16°C

M.A.R.

10:16 AM

@CowperKettle Damn global warming

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in link text in body, link at beginning of body, potentially bad keyword in body (113): Top 29 Pain Is Very Sweet Hacks You Need To Know About by user417156 on english.SE

Færd

10:40 AM

@M.A.R. Who knows. Maybe it's e.tc .et.c.

CowperKettle

12:43 PM

The authorities warned that it may hit minus 37°C this night and in the morning. e1.ru/news/spool/news_id-69806528.html

Goes to wear his thermal wear

Conrado

1:40 PM

@Robusto Sad but all too often true!

I was emphasizing the other point: that they cannot be the "party of Jesus" anyhow. He said: "My kingdom does not belong to this world. If it did, my followers would fight." From this, it can be inferred that his policies are quite different from any of the countries that I've ever lived in or visited. Also, it is perfectly clear (1) that his followers would not fight, and (2) by extension, that his followers are not in the business of forcing other countries to be subject to his policies.

Robusto

@Conrado They pretend that they follow the teachings of Jesus. It is manifestly clear that they do not.

Conrado

A pretense that shows a provincial and touching naiveté about his teachings. Don't take such pretenses too seriously. Anyhow, cheers!

Robusto

@Conrado What you call naiveté I call hypocrisy.

Anselm678

2:01 PM

Bitter truth of english

Matt E. Эллен

I wouldn't call pineapple bitter

Conrado

Sour is more like it, no?

Matt E. Эллен

Yeah, sweet and sour :D

Conrado

But I thought they were called piña in Spanish!

Mitch

Sweet sweet pineapple is a bitter pill to take

Matt E. Эллен

2:03 PM

Aug 1 '11 at 20:19, by JSBangs

(pineapple is our code word for people who aren't native speakers)

Aug 1 '11 at 20:19, by Cerberus

Non-native speaker = NNS = ananas = pineapple

ah, those were the days

in our youth

almost a decade ago!

simple cares

Is the pineapple actually native South American?

ananá

== Español == === Etimología === Del portugués ananás, a su vez de guaraní nana === Sustantivo masculino === 1 Botánica. (Ananas comosus) Planta de la familia de las bromeliáceas, nativa de América del Sur. Es una hierba perenne, de escaso porte y hojas duras y lanceoladas de hasta un metro de largo, que fructifica una vez cada tres años produciendo un único fruto fragante y dulce, muy apreciado en gastronomía. Es un cultivo claramente tropical pero muy versátil en cuanto a suelos; en volumen es el segundo fruto tropical en producción, sólo superado por la banana. Sinónimos: ananás, p...

Matt E. Эллен

as far as I know, yes

Conrado

2:06 PM

I bet that there aren't many other words in German, borrowed from Guaraní.

Matt E. Эллен

:D

Conrado

@Mitch Ah, yes. Someday, if I live long enough, I will also be an old man with a historial on ELU chat. Perhaps, I might even learn to use the search box!

So far, it has only made me angry several times, and I never found what I was looking for.

But I did find several related chat transcripts.

I try to look on the sunny side.

M.A.R.

@Robusto IOW, they only pretend to do that because Jesus and his teachings are old. If they were new, they would have opposed them.

Matt E. Эллен

@Conrado google translate agrees, both piña and ananas mean pineapple. piña also means pinecone, and cone (according to google translate)

Conrado

Sighs, thinking about the day when I will be able to point back to that time in 2021

Youth is optimistic by nature, but it lacks scale!

Robusto

2:26 PM

@M.A.R. They do it to pretend that they are virtuous.

CowperKettle

3:31 PM

Mitch

4:28 PM

@M.A.R. A lot of religiony stuff is made up recently. The whole American evangelical 'rapture' mythology was only made a thing in 1827 by reinterpreting a hint at something barely there in the New Testament. The whole Mormon thing was created when some guy got lost in the woods and got hallucinations from hunger and thirst.

When was the Bahai stuff invented? Sometime in the 1800's? Scientology... Hubbard just sat down and wrote a book in the 50's. The British Royal Family headed by Queen Meghan? Implanted in our brains last week. Did you know that the real current dynasty is the house of Markle but is really Windsor? That just blew my mind when the lizard people helped me unzip my cocoon.

Matt E. Эллен

4:43 PM

WHat's this conspiracy nonsense you're spreading? God Save Queen Meghan

CowperKettle

I recently listened to a book about Jesus by a former Christian scholar who turned atheist as a result of his scholarship.

He still is quite reverent in relation to the faith, but describes the glaring inconsistencies in the traditional understanding of the origins of Christianity.

It's curious how Christianity was re-molded to fit the purposes of the many moments in the first several centuries.

CowperKettle

5:03 PM

How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee

> The claim at the heart of the Christian faith is that Jesus of Nazareth was, and is, God. But this is not what the original disciples believed during Jesus’s lifetime—and it is not what Jesus claimed about himself. How Jesus Became God tells the story of an idea that shaped Christianity, and of the evolution of a belief that looked very different in the fourth century than it did in the first.

> He looks into the details of Jesus’s death and supposed return. For example, how likely was it that he was buried at all? The answer will surprise you. How about the likelihood that someone who had just tried to have him done in would arrange a burial? How likely might it be for wanted criminals, as the apostles were, to stick around after their chief had been so harshly treated? It continues, but you get the idea

M.A.R.

5:16 PM

@Mitch sure, but that's a marginal point, not why these folks are swinging religion and tradition . . . I mean, to be fair, even if the church of scientology is evil, I've never heard them fabricate history and try to find old roots for themselves or something, they just don't make any claims like that

Robusto

@M.A.R. No, they just create a different universe and try to live in it.

M.A.R.

Well yeah, their claims are pretty bizarre nonetheless

Matt E. Эллен

they think they're souls from another planet

CowperKettle

Scientology is hilarious.

Especially the stuff with airplanes that got into volcanos

M.A.R.

These sort of things often resemble a sham taken seriously

Robusto

5:19 PM

@CowperKettle The thing is, most of the teachings of Jesus are commendable. The trouble is, very few have ever followed them.

A great deal of the mayhem in the past couple of millennia has been in the name of Christianity or Islam or some other zonker adherence to religion.

CowperKettle

Absolutely all religions are human inventions.

M.A.R.

Kool Aid stuff, except it hasn't ended up sacrificing people

@CowperKettle That statement may be true or not but it says very little about what religions and their followers are capable of, doesn't it?

Robusto

@CowperKettle "Man made God in his own image."—Eckhart Tolle

M.A.R.

I mean, it can also get complicated. If the world's smartest person came up with something that we can't come up with, did "humankind" invent that thing?

Robusto

@M.A.R. I'm having trouble parsing your second sentence.

Who is "we" there? And who is "the world's smartest person"?

M.A.R.

5:23 PM

@Robusto If creating an enduring organized religion is something most of the humanity just can't do, is an organized religion a 'human' invention?

I mean, you don't attribute the contributions of the top scientists in a field to all of humanity

Robusto

@M.A.R. Even the top scientists are members of the set that includes "all humanity" ...

CowperKettle

Why, Newtown said he was standing on the shoulders of giants

M.A.R.

So I'm saying "religion is a human invention" might not tell the whole story, and we might not even go supernatural about it

@CowperKettle They were obviously just the trolls that Gandalf turned to stone

That was a weird time. You saw all these relics around and they hadn't been vandalized so much

CowperKettle

I don't think it gets the smartest person to create a religion. What if there were persons smarter and with better religious ideas than Jesus, only their versions did not get accepted? There must be survivorship bias in such thinking, that religions are created by smartest persons.

M.A.R.

Yeah I think an element of "luck" could be ascribed to it too

Matt E. Эллен

5:27 PM

mostly charisma, I would think

M.A.R.

I'm just going "food for thought" mode

Hairi

What does this mean:

"for now so we don't hold up launching next week."

Hold up?

What is "hold up"

M.A.R.

@Hairi "We will launch next week and not delay it [because of a certain problem not mentioned in the sentence]"

Matt E. Эллен

slow down, postpone, delay

Robusto

@M.A.R. Hmm, now I'm hungry.

Good news! I get my vaccine shot next week! Yay!

2

Hairi

5:28 PM

makes sense. Thanks guys

Matt E. Эллен

@Robusto good news!

M.A.R.

@Robusto Yay!

Robusto

Indeed! And it's the Johnson & Johnson one, so I only need the single shot.

M.A.R.

I have no idea when I'm getting mine and my and my dad's estimates are all over the place

A month to six months most likely

SmokeDetector

5:42 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, potentially bad ip for hostname in body, potentially bad keyword in body, potentially bad keyword in title, +1 more (197): PINOY TELESERYE | PINOY TAMBAYAN | PINOY TV SHOW | PINOY CHANNEL | PINOY TV by Pinoy Teleserye on english.SE

Mitch

5:58 PM

@M.A.R. it may be marginal to the whole thread but it directly addresses your one line point that oldness or newness of ideas decides importance (sure there is correlation that the older existing idea will tend to last longer). What's really important is that I successfully derailed the subject into proclamations of atheism... I have you all and the inquisitors are being dispatched as we speak.

Stay away from windows

Pack an overnight bag.

haha we just tell you that to make you think you're coming back, put you at ease.

CowperKettle

> How do you get along with each member?

I wonder about this question from a suicide questionnaire.

Does the answerer have to answer about each member of his family?

Or does it ask for a general reply concerning all members of the family?

@Robusto This is good news!

CowperKettle

6:29 PM

Iran has received a shipment of 150,000 doses of an Indian Covid-19 vaccine, Covaxin, local media reported Thursday

> Iran, which is in its second month of a vaccination campaign, is to receive another 375,000 doses from India next week, the health ministry's public relations head Kianoush Jahanpour announced on Twitter.

Mitch

6:43 PM

@CowperKettle As to English grammar, it is asking a separate assessment for each individual they live with.

CowperKettle

@Mitch Thank you!

SmokeDetector

6:59 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at end of answer (61): What's the formal answer to a question beginning with "Shall we"? by Majorkeyplayer on english.SE

Robusto

7:46 PM

@CowperKettle Thank you!

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle we're doing everything in our power not to borrow from Europe or America, even if it means buying their vaccines from a middle man. It's pretty comical at this point

(I mean, technically, Russia is European but eh, you know what I'm talking about)

RegDwigнt

8:47 PM

@Mitch trololol.

If there's ten steps from your kitchen to the living room, you know exactly what that means.

You don't even need a picture.

@Robusto YT recommends me a new film about Bach today, from Malaysia of all places.

Encountering BACH: a documentary film

►

Mitch

@RegDwigнt I know because your foot doesn't change. It's not variable. But how high you step (which is what the picture looks like) is totally changeable.

RegDwigнt

I'm only half an hour in but I don't mind watching the rest. So far mostly stuff you already know, but also already a couple anecdotes that were new to me.

Also, lots of people talking German, which is nice.

Mitch

A group of birds is staring at me.

Well...

RegDwigнt

@Mitch the picture looks nothing like that. To look remotely like what you propose, the line would need to be vertical.

Mitch

You know how birds are.

RegDwigнt

8:51 PM

Anyway. I'm off to write some music.

Latorz.

Mitch

@RegDwigнt So you can tell that I don't understand what is going on in that picture. Then what is that double arrow measuring, the one that goes from the back of one foot to the slightly higher boot heel of the other?

RegDwigнt

@Mitch well yes, I do, thanks to this room here.

Mar 4 at 9:43, by CowperKettle

@Mitch you know what a step is.

If you don't, use the Wiktionary link that I posted.

Mitch

@RegDwigнt it can be one rise in some stairs, or it can be the length of a stride. but the distance labeled 'shag' doesn't seem to be either of those. Is it a vertical distance or horizontal or even diagonal (which is what the picture gives)? Is it the length of a body part or the distance between two body parts or between the same body part at different times? I can't tell from the picture.

@RegDwigнt All that does is use words that I associate with the forward distance between left and right feet while walking. The picture shows nothing like that. The picture looks like they are slightly raising one foot and the arrow marking the distance bewteen the heels or ankles or maybe something about the shoe.

that is, you have to know what the idea is first before you get a picture describing it. It's not explaining the distance to someone who doesn't know what it is already.

The birds are gone, so I can relax now.

Robusto

10:31 PM

@RegDwigнt Thanks, I'll take a look.

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