English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

12:05 AM

@Vikas Here, a lot of people avoid vaccination against tick-borne encephalitis, out of superstition, despite the fact that it's widely available.

CowperKettle

12:45 AM

In the USSR, someone wrote mock Soviet lyrics to Jesus Christ Superstar

> Зимний взят! Зимний взят!
Красные заняли Петроград!

> Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ,
Who are you? What have you sacrificed?

The mock lyrics describe the red revolution of 1917.

> The Winter Palace is captured! The Winter Palace is Captured!
The Reds are in control of Petrograd! (St. Petersburg)

CowperKettle

1:58 AM

> Germany is facing a very hard winter. Yet the most apocalyptic scenarios are now looking less likely: despite Russia reducing the gas flow in Nord Stream 1 to 20% of capacity, gas stores are now over 70% full. Berlin's goal of 75% by early September now looks very attainable.

By year-end, a deliquefaction facility may come online, able to meet 7% of Germany's demand. By the fall of 2023, two more facilities may be close to commissioning.

Thus, by January 2024 the country will be off the hook.

Cerberus

3:30 AM

@CowperKettle That's good to know.

Vikas

4:54 AM

@tchrist Umm context please?

@M.A.R. Okay. But villagers have named that particular snake name "peevna", which in Hindi, is similar to one who drinks. They believe it 'drinks' (Inhale. Hindi word is similar to drink) the breath warm air.

Vikas

6:21 AM

What do they want to say here? Do they mean like a customer would be tempting to set the highest possible refresh rate on this monitor to avoid flicker? So they clarify it by saying "you don't have to set highest refresh rate available to avoid flicker, it won't flicker anyway irrespective of refresh rate. So you would be fine at lower refresh rates too"?

The sentence is a bit confusing.

Not sure if it's badly phrased.

Xanne

7:29 AM

Wordle 415 3/6

⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜
🟨⬜🟨🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

M.A.R.

@Vikas when they named a plant "devil's claw" they didn't literally think it was the devil's claw.

Vikas

@M.A.R. Yeah. But in this snake's case, they literally think snake inhales the breath of human.

M.A.R.

@Vikas well yeah, that seems to be what they're saying

Vikas

@M.A.R. Here is an article in Hindi. You may want browser translation feature for English. Not sure how true is that. But it has some details like I mentioned: rajasthanbiodiversity.org/peeuna-snake

I read another article which says:

> This snake bites at night sitting on the chest. The person does not realize this. When there is pain in the throat, when it is detected, death occurs if treatment is not received within an hour or two.

It sounds funny and scary.

At least 20% is science fiction.

jlliagre

9:05 AM

@Cerberus I guess the wife of a minister was called madame le Ministre because ministre had no feminine. On the other hand, the first lady would be called madame la Présidente (or say Madame Charles de Gaulle). Same with militar ranks (Madame la Colonelle: wife, Madame le Colonel: officer). Using husband's titles is outdated now.

#Worldle #199 2/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜⬅️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

#Statele #137 X/6 (94%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨↙️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨↙️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨↙️
🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜↙️
🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜⬇️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨↘️
https://outflux.net/statele/
:-(

🌎 Aug 8, 2022 🌍
🔥 9 | Avg. Guesses: 9.78
⬜🟨🟨🟥🟥🟧🟨🟥
🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟧🟥
🟩 = 17

https://globle-game.com/game
Hard...

Le Mot (@WordleFR) #211 6/6

⬛⬛⬛⬛🟩
⬛⬛⬛⬛🟩
⬛🟩⬛⬛🟩
🟨🟩⬛⬛🟩
⬛🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

https://wordle.louan.me

jlliagre

9:56 AM

@Mitch They certainly use the passé simple orally between themselves while it has essentially disappeared in regular speech. It is not dead in literature and journalism though when the third persons are used.

@M.A.R. It took me a while to understand your post. :-)

M.A.R.

11:17 AM

@jlliagre wow, now I say stupid things and people analyze them. I'm officially a politician.

CowperKettle

12:07 PM

For the third time over the past couple of weeks, I can hear a squad of children walking the street and singing patriotic songs of the WWII era.

I previously saw a video such squads organized in other cities.

On any other occasion, I would like that, because I loved singing this song to my grandma as a kid. On this occasion, it sounds ominous.

user4539917

The internet has put propaganda on steroids.

user4539917

12:25 PM

UK exposes sick Russian troll factory plaguing social media with Kremlin propaganda

CowperKettle

12:46 PM

Each time they were singing Katuysha, because it has nice, easily memorized lyrics.

Katyusha (song)

"Katyusha" (Russian: Катюша [kɐˈtʲuʂə] (listen) – a diminutive form of Екатерина, Yekaterina — Katherine), also transliterated as "Katjuša", "Katioucha", or "Katiusza", is a Soviet folk-based song and military march. It was composed by Matvey Blanter in 1938. The author of the lyrics to the song was the Soviet poet Mikhail Isakovsky. It gained fame during World War II as a patriotic song, inspiring the population to serve and defend their land in the war effort. The song was still popular in Russia in 1995. The song is the source of the nickname of the BM-8, BM-13, and BM-31 "Katyusha" rock...

Mitch

1:00 PM

@jlliagre "It is not dead" leaves a lot pf room between 'barely still alive' and 'while not common, it is not rare'. Presumably there's a question on [FLU.se] for this?

CowperKettle

> Patients with type I diabetes mellitus were studied at two stages: upon their urgent admission to the hospital with diabetic ketoacidosis (stage one, acute period) and two months later, during planned hospitalization (stage two, recovery period).

Can one write "at two stages" here? This is a literal translation from Russian. I want to change it to "at two time points".

To my taste, "at two time points" reads better in English, but that would deviate from the original text.

> Inosculation is a natural phenomenon in which trunks, branches or roots of two trees grow together. It is biologically similar to grafting & such trees are called gemels.

jlliagre

@Mitch There are a few questions about the passé simple in FSE. This reply summarizes well its status.

CowperKettle

1:24 PM

Europe has given $11 bn of financial help to Ukraine since February, and $80 bn to Russia in payments for oil and gas.

Cerberus

1:35 PM

@jlliagre Oh, really, how odd. I mean, ministre already ends on an -e, so madame la Ministre would not sound so strange. On the other hand, Colonels would never be women, so la Colonelle was specifically formed for this usage, wasn't it?

@CowperKettle Yeah, I used to play that song and some songs from the Red Army regularly, but now I just can't.

I can still play Stravinsky, though.

CowperKettle

@Cerberus Oh! Probably @RegDwight taught you this song.

I wonder where he is now, and what he is thinking.

Cerberus

No, why?

I have known it for a long time.

CowperKettle

You knew this song from reading history books?

Cerberus

Reg has been an irregular user for many years now.

I don't remember how I know those songs.

Mitch

@CowperKettle kids are the weirdest filter of culture.

M.A.R.

1:43 PM

@user4539917 very sick indeed. In America, they do it properly and devote whole news channels to trolling.

Mitch

@user4539917 So there's propaganda which is awful, but then there is regular people.

And regular people are putting ther thoughts out there with no explanation and no context, -and- reacting to others thoughts with no explanation and no filter, so everybody sounds like an awful sociopathic teenager.

@M.A.R. America is the best

M.A.R.

@Mitch Hey!

I'm not a teenager anymore

Mitch

@M.A.R. How dare you

I know what you meant by that

@M.A.R. Oh. That's not what I thought you meant

You're obviously wrong about your own internal feelings.

M.A.R.

I'm just confusing you because I have some Nigerian original snake oil to sell.

Mitch

-original-?

Hmm.. interest piqued

M.A.R.

1:47 PM

Right from the tap

It occurs to me that Iran can't have troll factories because we don't have that many fluent speakers.

Mitch

@M.A.R. You'd be surprised

wait

that's exactly survivorshp bias

I was about to say that the only Iranians I know are fluent English speakers

M.A.R.

I'm a survivor looks blankly into the horizon, his steel chin as tough as his resolve

says things like 'Bub' and 'ain't no more'

Mitch

@jlliagre So that is a good summary.

My experience with the passé simple, as an American taking French in High School, is that...

1) it is one of the last grammar things taught (like 4th or fifth year?)

2) Some of the literature was chosen specifically because it did not have passe simple in it. L'Étranger was famous (and it was pointed out to us) for that) and also maybe Bonjour Tristesse?. So 1950's though.

CowperKettle

@Mitch I loved singing Communist songs as a kid, dating back to the Civil War. My grandma had asthma, and was lying in bed a lot. I would stand at the foot of the bed, and blare song after song, and she would listen.

Mitch

What are some other French Young Adult Novels?

CowperKettle

2:00 PM

I sang this song often

Там вдали за рекой - Как закалялась сталь

►

A song about Budyonnyi's First Red Cavalry Army during the Civil War

Mitch

@CowperKettle There's a lot to be said for (positively) about communism from a child's point of view, just like democracy.

CowperKettle

@Mitch I used to imagine communism. I thought that communism would come then I would be an adult.

What a great life it would be, during communism.

Mitch

As to patriotic songs, I don't think I know of any communist ones like @Cerberus does. As kids, we only ever heard the tune to the USSR national anthem during the Olympics and we all wondered what that nice tune is about, and oh it's the evil empire.

CowperKettle

There would be no money. People would receive everything they need, for free.

Mitch

@CowperKettle Exactly. It sounds great. People being nice to each other and helping out.

Sick people would get the treatment they need.

No more hunger.

CowperKettle

2:04 PM

My parents decided not to criticise the system within my earshot until I was 16 years old.

But when I had reached 16 years, the USSR was no more.

So they slipped into criticizing the system within my earshot during Perestroika.

They were afraid that I would blurt something out. At the kindergarten, or in school.

Mitch

maybe it was both things, you being older -and- the political situation changing

@CowperKettle kids, man

CowperKettle

My father was an anticommunist since childhood. He was just being careful.

jlliagre

@Mitch Yes, one of the last things taught but there are conjugations introduced later like imparfait du subjonctif and some never taught like temps surcomposés.

Mitch

@jlliagre you just tripped up my brain.

it fell flat on its face

CowperKettle

Once I said "Lenin is a fool". I had learned the word fool recently, and was applying it to everybody. Mom got very afraid and told me to never, ever say that.

My brother, when he first learned writing, wrote "Charles Perrault is shit" on a door jamb. Haha. I still remember that. We were laughing. Children love applying new swear words to everybody.

We had a bookd Charles Perrault's fairy tales.

Charles Perrault

Charles Perrault ( perr-OH, also US: pə-ROH, French: [ʃaʁl pɛʁo]; 12 January 1628 – 16 May 1703) was an iconic French author and member of the Académie Française. He laid the foundations for a new literary genre, the fairy tale, with his works derived from earlier folk tales, published in his 1697 book Histoires ou contes du temps passé (Stories or Tales from Past Times). The best known of his tales include Le Petit Chaperon Rouge ("Little Red Riding Hood"), Cendrillon ("Cinderella"), Le Maître chat ou le Chat botté ("Puss in Boots"), La Belle au bois dormant ("Sleeping Beauty"), and Barbe Bleue...

Mitch

2:11 PM

I remember when I was six years old being angry at somebody, probably my brother or sister, and went out to the woods and alone in the woods called them the most vile swear words I could "dumb, stupid,... uh... really stupid"

CowperKettle

Haha

Mitch

oh yeah "... idiot"

that was it

I had trouble then just like I'm having trouble now.

I have access to better swears now.

CowperKettle

I remember when I was trying to learn counting. I got my mother mad, pestering her to explain me how to count beyond 10. Then I started walking in circles in a room, and repeating the count. And then it dawned on me that one should count to 10, then to 20, then to 30, and kind of repeat the count each time. In periods of 10. It was an epiphany.

Mitch

@CowperKettle similar.

I remember getting up to 100, being so happy, then starting right into 101, 102, and then stopping, thinking this was ridiculous, just on and on.

CowperKettle

Up until Perestroika, it was impossible for adults to swear in front of women and children. Then it went downhill, very fast.

Grown-up men, rude workers, would bite their tongues within the earshot of kids or women.

Now there are swearwords everywhere. I mean rude, sexualized words.

Mitch

2:17 PM

Some little Inuit girl a thousand years ago was counting snowflakes the same way, had the epiphany, and after the 37th time walking around the igloo, her mom tells her to stop it already and go feed the dogs.

@CowperKettle So communism was good for something.

Probably should withhold a bit among their pals too.

jlliagre

@Mitch Imparfait du subjonctif is nowadays only used to make jokes about how it sounds in first and second person plural. Deux ans durant, le directeur fut amoureux de moi sans que je le susse. or Docteur, ma femme est clouée au lit, je souhaiterais que vous la vissiez.

CowperKettle

@Mitch Who knows. There were different periods. Dad said that after the war, and especially in 1953, after Stalin's death, times were very brutal. They were afraid to walk home alone after school in their village.

And in the Central Asia, times were brutal even in the Soviet era.

Mitch

@jlliagre sounds a little like something 'about up which I would not put'

CowperKettle

Our teacher who previously taught in Central Asia said that a pupil threw a chair at her in class. There was less of culture.

She had to fight her pupils to establish discipline, physically.

Mitch

@CowperKettle Sometimes you hear religious people making the claim that atheists are immoral because without religion you have nothing to stop you from killing and raping in the streets.

I guess for them religion -is- the only thing stopping them.

CowperKettle

2:21 PM

This is a good point about religion, it reminds us that every man can be corrupted and slip to ugly things. Modern society kind of presupposes that you can always strive to perfection.

I don't believe in free will.

Mitch

I believe that we are determined to feel like there could be something like in free will.

jlliagre

2:52 PM

@Mitch I guess it does. The first sentence plays with susse (without me knowing) and suce (without me giving head). They are pronounced the same. The second one is a double pun. The idiom cloué au lit means "bedridden" (literally "nailed to the bed") and vissiez is understood to mean "screwed on" (no double meaning in French) while it means "see" here.

Interestingly DeepL understands the "real" meaning and misses the jokes while a native French will likely only understand the alternate meanings and miss the actual one.

M.A.R.

4:00 PM

@CowperKettle have you read The Dispossessed?

@CowperKettle maybe not as in free icecream, but free software

If will was open sourced humanity would have had Starships by now. Effing corporations.

CowperKettle

Word of the day: elastration

M.A.R.

A disease when you stretch so much your . . . Oh crap I googled it.

You should really give us a warning sometimes. Maybe a cough or wink or sneeze

CowperKettle

Haha

The Dispossessed

The Dispossessed (in later printings titled The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia) is a 1974 anarchist utopian science fiction novel by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin, one of her seven Hainish Cycle novels. It is one of a small number of books to win the Hugo, Locus and Nebulas Awards for Best Novel. It achieved a degree of literary recognition unusual for science fiction due to its exploration of themes such as anarchism (on a satellite planet called Anarres) and revolutionary societies, capitalism, utopia, and individualism and collectivism. It features the development of the mathematical...

@M.A.R. No. I only tried to start reading De Guin's most famous book, and for some reason I stopped, 20 years ago.

"The word for world is forest", or something like that.

M.A.R.

The book gave me some ideas I still idly play around with sometimes.

CowperKettle

The Dispossessed? I'll read the Wiki page now.

M.A.R.

4:08 PM

Read the book dude, worth every minute.

2

Vikas

4:25 PM

@CowperKettle illustration

CowperKettle

Vadim Khairullin, in Kaliningrad, has been sentenced to a year in prison for single-man pickets.

The sign says: "Smile if you're tired of Putin"

Vikas

@CowperKettle I just similed XD

Laughed silently actually!

CowperKettle

4:40 PM

@M.A.R. Do you think that anarchism can be implemented? I don't understand how.

My friend is an anarchist, and he has never managed to explain how an anarchist society (country) would ever survive.

M.A.R.

4:51 PM

@CowperKettle I think that, like any other system, with enough footnotes, it can definitely be implemented. I mean, one reason we never wonder if capitalism can be implemented is the implementations we see are not the extreme "everything is for sale" apocalyptic nightmares.

There have to be arbiters of justice, and social forces will eventually and inevitably lead to elite and inferior castes, and now I'm out of my depth so gargling I may nonsense start.

CowperKettle

There was an area ruled by anarchists in Eastern Ukraine in 1918. It was used by the Bolsheviks to crush the Whites, and then it was crushed and destroyed.

There was an area ruled by anarchists in Spain in 1936-38. It was tolerated for some time by Stalinist puppetteers, and then it was crushed and destroyed.

M.A.R.

Yeah I vaguely remember reading about that

CowperKettle

Anarchism failed to create a strong aggressive system for self-protection in both cases.

M.A.R.

More like WW2 killed more than just people.

CowperKettle

So anarchism can exist, only if surrounded by nurturing and protective non-anarchist countries.

M.A.R.

4:59 PM

Nobody with a smidgen of power gives a crap about alternative systems anyway. We need another financial disaster with millions of victims before people start thinking of rebuilding again

Now it seems we've entered the stagnation phase right before that, but I could be wrong

The only good social activists can do right now is probably cooperating with the system to make the fall easier for the common folk.

CowperKettle

Gloomy Monday, today sponsored by @M.A.R.

M.A.R.

I mean, people taking up pitchforks now are probably not serious about it

Tanner Swett

Is there a standard phrase that means "speaking using language appropriate for the time period being discussed rather than the present day"? I'll give an example or two of what I mean.

In 1800, Alessandro Volta wrote about several devices, one of which he called an "artificial electric organ" (modern terminology: electric battery) and one of which he called an "electric battery" (modern terminology: capacitor bank).

If I were talking about Volta, I might say something like "Volta knew that the effects produced by an artificial electric organ were similar to the effects of an electric battery" instead of "Volta knew that the effects produced by an electric battery were similar to the effects of a capacitor bank."

If I wrote the former sentence, I'd be using ---- language, whereas if I wrote the latter sentence, I'd be using ---- language. What I'm wondering is if there's a standard word to fill in those dashes.

CowperKettle

5:18 PM

"Anachronistic"?

> If I wrote the former sentence, I'd be using anachronistic language, whereas if I wrote the latter sentence, I'd be using modern language.

Tanner Swett

Maybe. I think if I came across the phrase "anachronistic language" in reference to this idea, I wouldn't be sure which option it's referring to, since the historical terminology is anachronistic for the present day, but the present-day terminology is anachronistic for the period under discussion.

CowperKettle

thesaurus.com/browse/anachronistic

Tanner Swett

One phrase I just thought of is "period-appropriate language."

CowperKettle

@TannerSwett Nice!

Tanner Swett

Another one I just thought of is "using the language of the time" (which obviously isn't a single word).

CowperKettle

5:32 PM

Who needs single words?

Tanner Swett

Yup, I suppose a longer phrase will do the trick just fine.

CowperKettle

> Only beetroot extract supplementation improved physical fitness significantly (p < 0.05) in the sprint exercise in men after 6 weeks (2.33 ± 0.59 s) compared to the baseline (2.72 ± 0.41 s). mdpi.com/1424-8247/15/3/290

I used to love beetroot salad. I made it with green peas and walnuts.

I once visited a Georgian restaurant, and they served this salad, and I googled the recipe, and made it regularly for years.

Vikas

7:24 PM

I had a bad day on Stackexchange today :(

forest

What happened?

Vikas

My own mistakes. Of course it will lead to bad day.

forest

uh oh

Vikas

I hope I forget it as soon as possible! And keep working on fixing it.

user4539917

yeah, mistakes happen

forest

7:27 PM

There's not much you can do that you can't just delete.

user4539917

Learn from them and move on...

Vikas

@user4539917 They happen more from me. Maybe I'm still too unfit on SE and still try to fit in.

@user4539917 Yeah

forest

You get suspended or something?

Vikas

Not suspended. But something along those lines. Much less 'severe'. But I'm going through bad time so maybe it hit even more!

#Worldle #200 X/6 (98%)
🟩🟩⬛⬛⬛⬅️
🟩🟩🟩🟩⬛↘️
🟩🟩🟩🟩⬛⬅️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨↖️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨↖️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨↖️
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

I was too close.

user4539917

Perhaps, take a break from stackexchange until things settle down.

forest

7:39 PM

Mods generally understand that people have bad days.

Vikas

@forest Nice.

Wordle 416 6/6

⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
🟨⬛⬛⬛⬛
🟩⬛🟨⬛⬛
🟩🟩⬛⬛⬛
🟩🟩⬛⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Wow!

It was tricky.

CowperKettle

7:55 PM

Word of the night: fixer-upper (from the movie 10 Cloverfield Lane)

A nice word

CowperKettle

8:09 PM

Fritz Haber

Fritz Haber (German pronunciation: [ˈfʁɪt͡s ˈhaːbɐ] (listen); 9 December 1868 – 29 January 1934) was a German chemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his invention of the Haber–Bosch process, a method used in industry to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen gas and hydrogen gas. This invention is important for the large-scale synthesis of fertilizers and explosives. It is estimated that two thirds of annual global food production uses ammonia from the Haber–Bosch process, and that this supports nearly half the world population. Haber, along with Max Born, proposed the Born–Haber...

Created a poison gas for Germany in WWI, but his relatives died in concentration camps in Germany in WWII.

> "father of chemical warfare"

> Fritz Haber applied himself in extraordinary ways to aid the German war effort. The night that he celebrated the “success” of the first chlorine cloud attack, Clara committed suicide. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4825402

forest

wow

Mitch

@CowperKettle I forgot to mention that as kids, we knew of the Jesus Christ Superstar tune, but somehow the lyrics got mangled by the time they got to us and so it was the incredibly puerile:.."Jesus Christ, Superstar. Who in the hell do you think you are?"

Just rolls right off the tongue

CowperKettle

Haha

Mitch

@M.A.R. I don't know. If somebody is just standing there leaning on their pitchfork I figure they just finished using it. But if they're marching with it and jabbing it in the air... I mean that's a hard thing to kid about.

@CowperKettle Kids are jerks

@CowperKettle Nobody smiles in Russia.

@jlliagre DL in general is not doing anything remotely like 'understanding' but one could word that as 'extracting correlations' and I wouldn't be surprised in the vectors some of them produce actually may capture the double entendres (correlations with more than one meaning, one of them happening to be outré)

@CowperKettle as @M.A.R. says, read the book. (there's a lot in The Word for World is Forest, but The Dispossessed has so much more to it). But also, I'd be interesting to see your point of view, given that TD was classic 'alternative world' sci-fi because it essentially describes a successful communist world very different from what here average reader (an American) would expect from the anti-Soviet propaganda.

Cerberus

8:34 PM

french.stackexchange.com/election

@jlliagre Oh, dear, the French moderator election seems somewhat problematic.

Mitch

@Cerberus Oh, penses-tu?

jlliagre

@Mitch Yes, I should have quoted "understands", AI is not sentient or able to understand. What I meant is that it rightly translates to English what is written, which is an achievement in itself because a native speaker might only get the jocular sentence.

Cerberus

Candidates with low reputation.

A failed previous election.

Mitch

@jlliagre oh yeah, agreed.

jlliagre

@Cerberus At least there are candidates and one open position.

Mitch

8:37 PM

@Cerberus got it. I noticed that but I suppose if they're interested that can't be bad?

I was more put off by the claims that they know French well...which sort of means that they think that a good moderator is someone who deals with the content a lot.

which it doesn't

Cerberus

@jlliagre Yes.

Mitch

it means being someone who can deal with problems, and since you like {subject matter} you'll be hanging around anyway

Cerberus

There is that, too.

Mitch

I have this funny feeling that SE is not the center of the world

that is

maybe there are reddit sites that provide the same service that are much more highly trafficked.

not that that is a bad thing.

jlliagre

@Mitch The last year was quite painful in FSE. I agree being an expert and dealing with the content is not a priority for a good moderator but mastering the Site language can nevertheless be very valuable because when heated discussions are held in French, someone without a good grasp of it might misunderstand if the rules are broken or not and miss what the issue really is.

Cerberus

8:58 PM

@Mitch I'm not sure.

They won't be as neatly searchable.

M.A.R.

9:32 PM

@Mitch the German subreddit is definitely not as populated and not as useful a resource as German.SE, but HiNative props up much more often in Google results. If only they had a meaningful system of moderation to know what to trust

@Mitch there is no room for laid back anarchists here.

In the dumpster fire that is the internet, SE is often like Switzerland or something. Expensive to be from, but pretty lush, near idiot proof and enjoyable.

@Vikas hey, once my little brother was pissed at me and went and spammed stuff on ELL.

Shit happens. Let that cortisol wash the sting away and just move on.

Reddit is very badly moderated. It relies entirely on the few mods in each subreddit to do everything, from banning trolls to pinning comments to top etc etc. They take all the blame, can never handle the sheer 3amlunt of traffic even with bots, and can be jerks themselves.

What's more, you can have a subreddit for Alex Jones, you can have one for Chomsky, and you can have one for Ocasio-Cortez. You can have pro-Trump and anti-Trump camps. So it starts to look like little military camps that occasionally launch missiles directed at each other, so mods won't be able to beat them, if they don't join them themselves.

The average user pretty quickly realizes that on Reddit, you either watch unfunny videos on funny subreddits, subscribe to 100 cat-related subreddits to watch all sorts of cats doing random stuff, or look for porn.

Cerberus

9:53 PM

Thank you for the summary.

The smaller, specialised Reddits are probably better?

M.A.R.

10:10 PM

@Cerberus A subreddit with fewer than 50 thousand members roughly sees as much activity as an SE beta site with a question per day (just off the top of my head). Based on my experience, 1 out of 10 subreddits that have enough members for a reasonable amount of activity are indeed moderated by nice people, talk about nice things, don't insult each other, and are passionate about what they're talking about. Maybe the subreddits for the less newsworthy US states look like that.

Cerberus

I'm not sure how to interpret that.

But don't you think the subject matters as well?

I wouldn't expect, say, the Tasker Reddit to have as many problems as that of a politician.

M.A.R.

2 out of 10 are specialized subreddits that oddly fixate on many few things, a phenomenon that I can't seem to explain. Say, the subreddit about Star Wars prequels fixates on a very few specific plot holes or major developments, and nothing else; not the dialogue or how the movies were made or the effects, nothing. Just why Liam Neeson didn't save Anakin's mom or something like that.

Cerberus

I don't know anything about Star Wars.

M.A.R.

@Cerberus the same holds for r/pharmacy or r/writing . . . Sure, trolls don't insert themselves into every other discussion, but every other discussion is almost about the same few things. How to deal with a writer's block, why people who give advice on writer's block are wrong, or why writing is a romanticized profession. That's almost all they talk about.

It's so weird, and I don't know why.

On r/books, they fixate on a few books and ignore almost everything else. Grapes of Wrath, Flowers for Algernon, and those obscure fantasy series that are trying to be like Game of Thrones.

"Recommend an awesome book." "Flowers for Algernon." "Recommend a book that'll make me feel something." "Flowers for Algernon" "Who is a good writer?" "The author of Flowers for Algernon".

Cerberus

@M.A.R. Hmm I have not seen this for Tasker.

It has 77,000 readers, it seems.

M.A.R.

10:22 PM

On some subreddits, mods are chosen that support one viewpoint, and they abuse their power to silence people that oppose them. Say, a mod is chosen that likes this game, and they ban followers of another game. Ridiculous, I know.

Cerberus

Games would seem like the kind of subject that attracts less mature people.

So I stick with my suggestion that subject matters.

M.A.R.

The point is Redditors tend to be less mature people. Sure, subject matters, because that's how you might find a nice little corner, away from all the chaos, with a few adults, and idly talk about something specific

But I can't seem to participate in the organic chemistry sub because it's a homework hub, can't participate in any of the science subreddits because they're full of idle conversations about this weird pink compound or that weird yellow marine animal. r/science is too popular to be any good, full of "research reveals conservatives are idiots! HAHA"

So they can't hold a candle to the worst SE sites, because they're just without substance

My current Reddit feed consists of posts from catscarryingstuffies, catslaps, cats, trashpanda (raccoons), catswhoyell, catswhoconverse, motorboat

I've said enough I suppose.

Cerberus

10:39 PM

OK interesting.

Pour Reddit!

jlliagre

11:09 PM

@Cerberus Pour... ou contre.

Cerberus

Hah!