English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Matt Эллен

12:00

yes

Cerberus

Could be a Victorian contamination...

Oh I have to run.

Matt Эллен

one

Cerberus

Later!

Matt Эллен

@Cerberus OK CU

two

three

four

five

six (might be trying to affect a foreign accent, rather than be actual English.)

seven

several links

(that's a pun, see?)

tchrist

It was 80 a few days ago, and now it’s 16 with 6" of new snow.

No such thing as spring, just tug of war between winter and summer.

Matt Эллен

12:10

How can plants grow in such changeable climes?

tchrist

Well.

If you were so crazy as to plant tender annuals, they’re now popsicles.

Matt Эллен

Fair enough

tchrist

But daffodils and violets and pansies and such will just shake it off.

I am kinda pissed that it might have spoiled our fruit crop two years in a row though.

Matt Эллен

I see.

@tchrist yeah, I bet.

tchrist

I had neither apples nor nectarines last year.

And only one grower in the state had any cherries.

Which is really bad.

Matt Эллен

12:13

yeah, can't have been good

tchrist

(I have an apple tree and a nectarine tree in my front and back “gardens” respectively. I don't have a lawn.)

Once it goes below 20 when there are buds, or the ice freezes on the blossoms, they won't work.

Matt Эллен

ah. I see. That sucks.

tchrist

Both are in town, the second is about a kilofoot higher than the first.

Up versus down.

"Metric" == SI, and yes, you will get winds in m/s if you switch.

The current wind chill is -8F.

The long-haired kitten went out for a while. The short-haired one was having none of it.

Feels like January.

Matt Эллен

crazy.

tchrist

I really wanted to put in my garden this weekend, but there was no way.

The front is full of flowering stuff, and the back has daffodils and such.

Matt Эллен

12:23

not at temperatures like that

tchrist

And I seem to have pulled a muscle in exuberance from our high 70s hiking around too much, so I just lay flat yesterday and watched the snow fall.

There is always a warming trend before these deep plunges. I don't know why.

Matt Эллен

We did get snow in March last year but thankfully not this year. So far, so springy

tchrist

Yeah, it's getting late for that nonsense.

I hear it's on its way east, though. They should be surprised.

Matt Эллен

I've been worrying that we might get a late cold spell from you guys.

tchrist

I tried to commute last week and turned around and came back home after 2h still not being more than 5 miles out of town. They're doing major construction on the road there, and because I had the audacity to try to sneak past at 9am after rush hour should have been over, they put in what were in effect 30-minute closures.

I won't even consider it today.

Kit and Rob will probably get an ice storm or blizzard. The Great Lakes are going to get theirs from this.

Then it's your turn. :)

Matt Эллен

12:29

hopefully it'll just be wet. the jet stream will keep us from feezing!

tchrist

It was almost 40 when the snow started, so it has super icy bits now.

So of course it was slow to stick at first.

And the roads not icy.

Now they are and everything has a serious glaze beneath it.

Matt Эллен

oh dear.

tchrist

alpenglow -- gorgeous

Matt Эллен

:)

tchrist

Perfectly blue sky, pristine snow, rosy-orange fingers of dawn crawling her way up out of mother night.

High today is 39 then tomorrow is 59 then snow showers again by Thursday. Damned teeter-totter weather. Or seesaw — whatever you call those toys.

Our temperature graphs look like our mountains.

Matt Эллен

12:37

so if you flatten the mountains...

tchrist

Have a trapped houseguest from Moab. Told her not to bother trying today.

It's on The Other Side.

Dunno if passes are open.

Moab is in the desert, west of the slope.

Not east of Eden.

Matt Эллен

I see. so there's mountain between her and home

tchrist

There's the Continental Divide and 12 kilofoot passes, just that.

Well, a single 12k pass, and another 11k one but that is underground.

Robusto

Hi.

Matt Эллен

Hi.

tchrist

12:40

Morning.

Robusto

Going to be 75 here today. yawns

tchrist

That's so last week.

Robusto

Colder than Curaçao, though.

tchrist

I can't see that this is going to affect you.

It will affect Wisconsin though.

Robusto

Meh, we're going to be in the 50s later in the week.

tchrist

12:42

I'll be 60 tomorrow.

Kit gets my snow come Wednesday night, I believe.

Robusto

@tchrist In age or temp?

tchrist

Age.

No, wait.

I mean temp.

Robusto

Haha, had to think about it, did you?

tchrist

1963-02-13

That was scary.

ENOCAFE

Or not enough.

Robusto

But for now you are in the hibernaculum.

tchrist

12:44

Correction, 63 tomorrow.

Yes.

wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/…

Haha, look at those storm totals for the county: Ward got a foot.

They’re 4-5 kf higher than me.

Hm that was at 1am, wonder if they got more.

Robusto

kf = kilofeet?

tchrist

yes

Robusto

Oh, the altitude, not the snow totals.

tchrist

1024 feet :)

Actually, they are only at 8600' and I'm at 5360.

Still, they got double my snow, and they are really cold right now at only 3 degrees.

Robusto

I thought Boulder was in a valley.

tchrist

12:50

It is.

I’m up against the foothills.

Robusto

Hence the proclivity for floods.

tchrist

Kinda.

I'm on a hilltop.

A local maximum.

Robusto

Mar 17 '11 at 23:51, by Robusto

Oh, by the way, this whole thing in Japan reminds me of a great quote from Will Durant:
"Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice."

We may be thankful we don't live in the Sunda Straits. On the other hand, we all survive at the whim of our Yellowstone super-volcano.

tchrist

yeah

I'd be unlikely to survive the aftermath of that one.

Robusto

Survival might be one of the less attractive options.

tchrist

12:55

Notice how close I am to nonflatness.

The white on the left is the Continental Divide, above timberline.

Robusto

Yes. Sunsets must come early for you.

tchrist

As it were.

But yes.

And it is very annoying.

But sunrises are awesome. Like today.

Paints the tops rose, then orange.

Before it ever gets to me.

Scale on that is about 2 miles per inch.

Robusto

I'll bet.

tchrist

How come I can’t get Google Maps to let me select the topo thingy?

Robusto

Dunno.

tchrist

12:59

It is so fickle.

Sometimes it lets you select Terrain and sometimes not.

Found the answer.

Robusto

Do share.

tchrist

Rolled out a new version, and still catching up.

They say.

But that was on St Valentine’s, so I wonder.

Robusto

Ah. One of the drawbacks of SaaS.

Not always clear when there's a release.

tchrist

Damn I thought I found a way in, but no.

Well, you can get it to select terrain, but I can't see topo lines.

Robusto

They change too much sometimes.

KitFox

13:07

Try setting visibility to something other than hidden.

Or better yet, use jQuery.

tchrist

Matt Эллен

Ever since I started to use jQuery I've seen topo lines everywhere

tchrist

That’s my immediate neighborhood. Notice how close together the lines are.

Robusto

Meaning steep declivities.

Also acclivities.

KitFox

Ridges and lines.

And a great flat basin.

To pour all my sorrows into.

tchrist

13:11

I live in the purple area between little "Maxwell Lake" and Wonderland Lake to its north.

Dark lines are 400'.

Kit, looks like you might get some of my snow come Wednesday night.

Jez

@tchrist please, there may be children present

tchrist

That was subjunctive, kiddo, not a come-on.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Only in this room would we find a sentence with "subjunctive" and "come-on" together.

Robusto

Come on, subjunctive?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

So I googled "subjunctive come-on" and there was nothing relevant in the first page of results. @MattЭллен blog post topic, anyone?

You could bring back the talking pineapple.

Matt Эллен

13:22

:D it's yours if you want it!

I don't know. we need to deicde who the target audience is

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I'm imagining the narrator correcting the pineapple's pick-up lines

Matt Эллен

if it's fruit, then I guess Paul's a shoo in

KitFox

@tchrist Shut your mouth.

I am not having a good morning.

And it already snowed yesterday, after we had a 60 degree Saturday.

I hate this place sometimes.

Robusto

I didn't hate New England when I was in Curaçao. And it's been nice to me since I got back.

We'll see how long that lasts.

KitFox

That reminds me, is ice cream considered a Dutch dessert?

Like particularly Dutch? Like they invented it?

Robusto

13:32

How would I know that? Ask @Cerb.

n11

off-topic the definition of a planet:
1. It is in orbit around the sun.
2. It has sufﬁcient mass to be nearly round.
3. It has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

> It has also been claimed that, in the Yuan Dynasty, Kublai Khan enjoyed ice cream and kept it a royal secret until Marco Polo visited China and took the technique of making ice cream to Italy.

oh, didn't read far enough.

n11

ice cream requires a lot of energy to be made, if you don't live in Antartica

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

There are two paragraphs of stuff like that then "this is all legend"

> The first recipe in French for flavoured ices appears in 1674, in Nicholas Lemery’s Recueil de curiositéz rares et nouvelles de plus admirables effets de la nature.[12] Recipes for sorbetti saw publication in the 1694 edition of Antonio Latini's Lo Scalco alla Moderna (The Modern Steward).[12] Recipes for flavoured ices begin to appear in François Massialot's Nouvelle Instruction pour les Confitures, les Liqueurs, et les Fruits, starting with the 1692 edition. Massialot's recipes result in a coarse, pebbly texture. Latini claims that the results of his recipes should have the fine consist…

KitFox

There's this place I pass on my way to work that's called "The Old Dutch Treat" which always makes me feel kind of sick and I wonder why anyone would ever choose that name for a place.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

13:35

@KitFox There's a brand of snack food called "Old Dutch"

KitFox

It looks like an ice cream shop.

!!wiki Old Dutch Treat

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

What's wrong with that name?

KitSox

@KitFox No result found

KitFox

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Makes me think of taking a crap on someone.

If you must know.

Robusto

If it really is an ice-cream shop, they missed the opportunity to call it The Old Dutch Teat.

KitFox

13:37

Oh, I suppose they are referring to going dutch.

Still.

Gross.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@KitFox lol. It makes me think of how people love to romanticize Europe.

@KitFox Are you sure they're not just trying to be Dutch?

KitFox

I just don't understand it.

n11

(also a dward planet satisfies only 1 and 2)

tchrist

@KitFox Welcome to my world. 16 this morning and 63 tomorrow, was 80 like Thursday.

KitFox

I think we've established that our climates are similar.

tchrist

13:39

Kinda.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@n11 Those rules are very problematic.

tchrist

There is an altitude–latitude conversion formula, but I forget what it is.

KitFox

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Well, they are the rules.

Matt Эллен

just switch the a and l around

KitFox

Hi @Matt!

Matt Эллен

13:40

hi @KitFox :)

KitFox

How are you today?

Matt Эллен

Do you want to see a funky javascript "feature"?

@KitFox good. I'm only working today, this week :D how are you?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@KitFox They are really more of a minimal set of rules that describe the 8 planets we agree on in our solar system, such that Pluto gets excluded. "Orbits a sun" is not a good criteria, because it would mean a planet stops being a planet if it is flung away, which happens.

KitFox

@MattЭллен Yes.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

"Clears its neighbourhood" is not a good criteria because you could have things that are clearly planets but live in messy neighbourhoods.

KitFox

13:42

@MattЭллен OK, but surly.

Matt Эллен

@KitFox blog.andyet.com/2014/04/07/nerdsniping

n11

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 yes kinda qualitative rules, anyway just reading some interesting stuff febanks.com/photos/magazine/pdf22.pdf it's p20

Matt Эллен

@KitFox what's made you surly?

KitFox

Everything.

Matt Эллен

ah

KitFox

13:42

Project sponsor.

Mostly.

Matt Эллен

curse them

KitFox

He keeps saying oh, yes, it's fine, except this doesn't work, when will that be fixed?

Matt Эллен

which project is that for?

KitFox

And then after it gets fixed, oh yes, it's fine, except this other thing that I didn't mention before is broken. When will that be fixed?

And then he kind of freaks out because everything is always broken.

And I appear to be out of emergency rations.

Matt Эллен

:(

KitFox

13:45

It's for the search project.

Matt Эллен

@KitFox I hate it when people say "always broken" as if they've never successfully used it and really hwat they mean is that there was a problem once

@KitFox ah

KitFox

Well, yes, and everything is mission critical in his mind.

So the fact that this thing that was critical enough to not have come up before in testing these past six months means that we don't know what we are doing.

Matt Эллен

ha! what does he know?

KitFox

OMG THIS THING I JUST THOUGHT OF IS SO IMPORTANT YOU MUST DROP EVERYTHING!!!

I know it didn't occur to me at all prior to exactly this moment, but it is SOOOOO IMPORTANT!

catches breath, pants

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@MattЭллен funny.

Robusto

13:48

@MattЭллен This is horrible. Why would someone overwrite the valueOf method of the Object class?

Also, I gained ten pounds on my vacation. That's the bad news, as of Saturday. The good news? Today the scale shows I am back to fighting trim. How I lost ten pounds in two days is beyond me. Maybe New England has a thinning effect. If so, dare I ever leave?

tchrist

@Robusto I might think of reasons. Debuggery.

Robusto

@tchrist Sounds more like buggery.

It's the Object class. Not the Palimpsest class.

tchrist

Intentionally overwritten, or accidentally?

Matt Эллен

@Robusto Javascript: nothing's ever the same

Robusto

You can't fuck with valueOf and toString methods of the Object class. I'm just saying. Bad juju if you do.

tchrist

13:56

Not disagreeing.

Robusto

@tchrist Intentionally. That's what makes it worser.

tchrist

But

I do like stringification methods -- in the subclass.

I can't imagine doing so in the universal base class,

Robusto

@MattЭллен The == operator does some type coercions that can get tricky. But that's why === is such a breath of fresh air.

@tchrist Sure. Enhance all you want, but don't overwrite directly on the Object class. That way lies madness.

tchrist

@Robusto Adding insult to injury.

Matt Эллен

@Robusto it wouldn't be JS if you couldn't fundamentally break it :D

Robusto

13:58

Yes, well . . .

While we're venting, I must say I rather hate people who add "convenience" methods to primitives.

KitFox

@Robusto Maybe it was because you were closer to the equator.

tchrist

@MattЭллен No great trick to break that which is already broken.

Matt Эллен

it's why I prefer it to python. python makes sense. unless you try really hard not to, you're gonna have a good time. Javascript, man, you just never know.

I like never knowing

KitFox

You like living on the edge.

Matt Эллен

when I'm programming :D

tchrist

14:00

@MattЭллен Don't deceive yourself.

Matt Эллен

I'll never know if I'm deceiving myself

Robusto

You can't know if you're deceiving yourself. How could you? If you knew, it wouldn't be deception.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@MattЭллен Do you know about how Python's Time object is false at midnight?

tchrist

@MattЭллен You wish.

Matt Эллен

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I saw you chatting about that. I didn't know about it before then. It's an interesting quirk

KitFox

14:02

I like quirks!

Matt Эллен

!!wiki Pauline Quirk

KitSox

Pauline Quirke

Pauline Perpetua Quirke (born 8 July 1959) is an British actress, best known for her role as Sharon Rackham (previously Theodopolopodos) in the long-running comedy series Birds of a Feather between 1989–1998, and again since 2014. She co-stars in the series alongside her lifelong friend and frequent acting partner Linda Robson and actress Lesley Joseph. Between 2010 and 2012, Pauline played Hazel Rhodes, the mother of established character Jackson Walsh, in the long-running ITV soap opera Emmerdale. She made her last appearance on the show on 25 January 2012. In 2013, Quirke played Sus...

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@MattЭллен Just goes to show that you never know in Python either.

Robusto

@MattЭллен Looks like KitSox coerced your query from Quirk into Quirke. Maybe you should complain.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 No language makes complete sense.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Robusto Some make less sense than others.

Robusto

14:05

Aug 1 '12 at 16:06, by Robusto

> "No language makes perfect sense." — John McWhorter

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Personally I hate languages that coerce types.

Robusto

They hate you back.

Matt Эллен

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 eh, it's hardly JS. I mean, sure you can monkey patch Python, similarly to JS, but PEP discourages such things, where as messing with the underlying prototype system is par for the course in JS. It's fair to say in python that you probably know. With JS you probably don't

tchrist

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Be careful what you wish for. Even C does this.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist Yes. I'm not that fond of C.

Matt Эллен

14:08

coerces @Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 to type

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@MattЭллен You can't make me type stuff!

oh, crap

Matt Эллен

:D

Robusto

Cheer up. Programmers have it easy. Actors have to do type casting all the time.

Matt Эллен

lol

Robusto

Sep 25 '12 at 12:42, by Robusto

Aug 2 at 12:42, by Robusto

Where is @Cerb? We should stuff him into a teapot again.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

14:17

Russel's teapot?

Robusto

Carroll's.

RegDwigнt

14:29

It's 2014, cars still don't fly, but people now no longer know what a dictionary is. If this is progress, I don't want to see no antigress.

@Robusto and that picture is actually on a wall in our living room, next to the piano. It is a very good picture. I like this very good picture.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt I am noticing that you do.

RegDwigнt

My explanation skills are high today.

Robusto

I am noticing that they are.

RegDwigнt

Then your noticing skills are not shabby, either.

Robusto

So, is there really no Russian word for privacy?

RegDwigнt

14:34

There's no German word for it, either.

Robusto

thinks about that

RegDwigнt

You can approximate of course, but yeah. You can try and approximate serendipity, too. Doesn't mean it's translatable.

Robusto

tries approximating serendipity

Yeah, well, Schadenfreude doesn't approximate well into English either.

RegDwigнt

And the thing is, unlike them stoopid ugly Americans, the brave and beautiful Germans actually care a fucking metric lot about privacy. Without having a word for it. Dig that!

Robusto

mind = assploded

Would be more assploded if they cared a fucking metric ass-ton.

RegDwigнt

14:36

Ton-ton-poluton-tri-tona-poluton.

Robusto

Still, Germany, like the U.S., is on the Internet. So—no privacy for anybody.

Tonton Macoute

A Tonton Macoute was a member of the Haitian paramilitary force created in 1959 by dictator François 'Papa Doc' Duvalier. In 1970, the militia was officially renamed the Milice de Volontaires de la Sécurité Nationale (Militia of National Security Volunteers or MVSN, probably taking name from the homonymous Italian Fascist paramilitary organization). Haitians named this force after the Haitian Creole mythological Tonton Macoute (Uncle Gunnysack) bogeyman who kidnaps and punishes unruly children by snaring them in a gunnysack (macoute) and carrying them off to be consumed at breakfast. ...

RegDwigнt

@Robusto Well I dunno, I don't seem to know much about Keith B. Alexander's favorite tooth paste brand.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt That can be remedied.

RegDwigнt

Bring it on, Sherlock.

Is the bot online?

!!NSA

Robusto

The NSA is well aware of Keith B. Alexander's favorite toothpaste brand.

KitSox

14:39

DEADHS FAATSA FAMS gas ICE. It's Danish for 'fat dead families on ice.' Denmark's rough.

RegDwigнt

@Robusto [citation needed]

Robusto

[citation kneaded]

RegDwigнt

That's a lot of dough.

Robusto

BTW, I overheard passengers from the German cruise ship that docked in Willemstad complaining about the lax standards of the Dutch.

Also, how hot it was.

(It wasn't really hot.)

RegDwigнt

0

Q: correct idiom for are you talking to me

sometimes you are not sure if someone is talking to you indirectly or someone else, is their any idiom, proverb, or quote for it, stating the subject are you talking to me or someone else? e-g Sometimes you are not sure if the ship coming towards you going away from you. etc

@Robusto Sometimes you are not sure if the ship coming towards you going away from you. etc

Robusto

14:43

@RegDwigнt That is not really a Dutch phenomenon. Also, the ship was moored.

RegDwigнt

Somehow that sentence reminds me of Dali.

It disintegrates so nicely.

And in what world is it an e.g.?

Robusto

No. It is an e-g

Let's get the quotes straight.

RegDwigнt

More like a meh-G. Or 50 Cent for short.

Robusto

Four bits.

RegDwigнt

Jul 26 '11 at 14:02, by RegDwight

"What does 'cheese' mean? For example, in the sentence 'I like asparagus'."

Same thing here.

Robusto

14:46

Stop with the Zen koans already.

RegDwigнt

I only just Big Un'.

No wait. The apo'strophe is all wrong.

I only just big 'un.

Robusto

A cata'strophe.

RegDwigнt

Dear next person who does not capitalize "English"...

Apr 6 '12 at 20:40, by RegDwight Ѭſ道

Dear next person to not capitalize "English": I will personally come to your house and bludgeon you to death with a giant E.

Why write when I already written.

Robusto

Dear next anonymous user + digits: you have nothing to say, so go away.

Jez

@RegDwigнt split infinitive. tsk tsk tsk

RegDwigнt

14:50

I know of no such thing in English.

Robusto

@tchrist: Joffrey is dead on HBO and everyone cheers. I had to sit on that information for years.

Matt Эллен

To split the infinitive marker from the infinitive, or to not split the infinitive marker from the infinitive? That is a question.

RegDwigнt

You should not to split the infinitive marker from the infinitive, ever.

You must not to do so!

Robusto

But to merely do so is so tempting!

resisted as long as he could

RegDwigнt

Nothing you to do you to do merely.

Doo-bee-doo-bee-doo.

Apr 2 at 14:08, by RegDwigнt

Strange Oders in the night were so exciting, Frankfurt in your eyes was so inviting.

In other news, Fecebook is a bank now.

Matt Эллен

15:00

oh dear

Robusto

Shitty Bank (rhymes with CitiBank).

RegDwigнt

It's just the South-Park pronunciation.

@MattЭллен in Ireland, no less.

Those poor Irish are not getting spared anything.

They only just mastered their previous bankruptcy.

RegDwigнt

15:19

> Among who still that need to make the transition is the Internal Revenue Service

What is this grammar?

I'm not sure I've seen this construction before.

Just an editing brainfart?

It's The Washington Post, after all.

Commie mutant time, though.

terdon

@RegDwigнt Just a typo I think, they forgot the those

Alraxite

@terdon You mean, 'Among those who still that need to make the transition is the Internal Revenue Service'?

terdon

@Alraxite More like Among those who still need to make the transition...

Alraxite

15:34

Yes, that's what I thought.

n11

fun fact saying date in italian takes 30 seconds translate.google.com/#it/en/14%20aprile%202014

Matt Эллен

@RegDwigнt missing those before who

and that shouldn't be there

oh. I'm late to the party

so late it's time to go

poddle tip

n11

@RegDwigнt french pronunciation: translate.google.com/#fr/en/fesses%20bouc

Alraxite

@n11 That hardly takes 4 seconds.

n11

dueeee-milllle cuatorrrrrdiche

reminds me of spanish ones, mil noveciento noventa y nueve, I was tempted to say dos mil menos uno

terdon

15:51

@n11 Which differs from one thousand and ninety two how?

n11

this is just long to say

tchrist

Back. Gosh. Almost two hour power outage at home. Some businesses told people not to bother coming to work.

@Robusto Yeah, tell me about it. I don't know how they'll handle not having um, certain people’s point-of-view narratives to show that they were definitely innocent.

terdon

@n11 It's exactly the same as the English!

tchrist

I guess the show-only people are going nuts with possible poisoners.

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…