English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Although each set comes with 3 books Essential/Intermediate/Advanced, be aware that it really only is basic. I think it should take you to the B1 level of the CEFR.

Damkerng T.

@JasperLoy nods -- Maybe B2.

Jasper Loy

@DamkerngT. You know about this series too?

Damkerng T.

11:51 AM

Not really. But I do have another series: Grammar In Use

(English only)

Jasper Loy

OK. That is a completely different product though =)

Damkerng T.

Ahh... They copied the levels from each other, perhaps. :-)

Jasper Loy

No. CEFR is a set of standards used in Europe for language learning.

Damkerng T.

@JasperLoy I didn't know they assigned names to those levels. I thought of the levels as A1, A2, ..., C2.

Thanks for the information!

Jasper Loy

@DamkerngT. Aha! Yeah just look up CEFR on Wikipedia!

Cerberus

12:08 PM

►

What would be the native language of this lady?

I find it hard to pinpoint.

Something European.

Maybe...Scandinavia?

Matt Эллен

eye dont half sownd

Cerberus

Heh.

Her accent is pretty good.

I have looked it up. But I shan't tell you.

Matt Эллен

is it Norwegian?

Cerberus

What part of "tell" didn't you understand?

Matt Эллен

I'm not asking you to tell me, just confirm my guess if it's right :D

Cerberus

12:11 PM

Oh, just that.

Well, I couldn't do that, now, could I?

Yes?

No?

Oh.

Besides, my bike broke down yesterday.

I hope it's just the chain.

Matt Эллен

:( how did it break?

ah

Cerberus

12:13 PM

The gears stopped working a while ago, and I had noticed the chain hung rather limp.

Now it seems to be too limp to work at all.

Robusto

I just bought a new bike yesterday.

Cerberus

How is your bike?

Congrats!

Matt Эллен

maybe you need to tighten the wires between the gear change levers and the gear changer

Cerberus

Mine was fairly new as well. That is, I paid €60 for it second hand four months ago.

Robusto

My old bike's rear wheel had a stripped spoke and some cracks in the spoke holes, so it was unsafe. So, naturally . . . new bike!

Matt Эллен

12:14 PM

yay!

Cerberus

@MattЭллен Hmm could be! But can I do that?

@Robusto ...

Robusto

I just paid $2500 for mine. It was a deal. Listed for $3900.

Cerberus

Haha.

Jasper Loy

I still can't ride a bike.

Cerberus

Your bike would get stolen in no time here.

Robusto

12:14 PM

But it's carbon fiber body and is very smooth over road wrinkles.

@Cerberus They would have to steal it out from under me.

Matt Эллен

@Cerberus I don't know. I can on my bike, since there is a thing for tightening the wire.

Cerberus

You don't park your bike?

Robusto

No. I ride out of my garage, do my route, and ride back to the garage.

Cerberus

@MattЭллен I tried tightening a certain thing on my bike's gear thingy, but it didn't do anything.

Matt Эллен

ah. oh well

Cerberus

12:16 PM

@Robusto You only use your bike to go to a single destinations, which has a garage?

Robusto

@Cerberus Oh, the gear thingy . . .

@Cerberus The journey is the reward.

Jasper Loy

I prefer walking to cycling, but that is an excuse to not try to learn cycling.

Cerberus

This is what I have.

@Robusto Good, good.

Robusto

@Cerberus There are many YouTube videos you can watch to understand what to do.

Cerberus

I suppose, if you don't use you bike for your everyday transportation, an expensive bike would work.

@Robusto I searched. But the tightening was not the issue.

And anything else is far more complicated.

Robusto

12:18 PM

It works great. I can't wait to get back out there today, now that I have my special pedals installed. I used toe clips yesterday because I was in a lather to get out and ride.

Cerberus

@JasperLoy Biking is much faster. But it may not be feasible depending on your environment.

@Robusto Have fun...

Jasper Loy

I hate the people here who cycle on the pedestrian's path. Few people here cycle on the roads.

tchrist

Whoa ELU chat from the Pittsburgh airport! Thanks to record-warm September and October I picked red raspberries and tomatoes and basil in shorts when I left a week ago. Going home now to 10" of snow that fell at my house and a HIGH of only 6 F with worse overnight. I was hoping for a record November too but not this way.

Robusto

Mine is kinda like this. Only red.

Matt Эллен

because red makes you go faster

Cerberus

12:20 PM

@tchrist Hello. The coloured weather gods are fickle.

Robusto

@MattЭллен No, because it was the only one at the shop that fit me.

Cerberus

@Robusto Looks fast!

Matt Эллен

@Robusto oh. you got lucky then :D

Robusto

@Cerberus Yeah, I rode 15 miles yesterday in about 48 minutes. That's about 5 minutes below my usual time.

I was flying up hills.

tchrist

I will have to re-teach Randy and Lorin about winter when I get back later today. They have been really depressed and frustrated at being locked inside. Just wait till they finally see the alternative!

Matt Эллен

12:24 PM

Robusto

The equipment on my bike is all Ultegra, Shimano's high-end line.

Matt Эллен

that's how I get to work

Robusto

I can pick it up with one finger, it's that light.

@MattЭллен So you have a similar bike?

Well, not altogether similar. You don't have drop handlebars.

But similar frame.

Matt Эллен

@Robusto actually the wires are in the frame. I can't find a picture of my exact bike, but yeah. this is a hybrid, though, so aluminium frame, carbon forks

tchrist

Man typing is super stupor tough! I swear it keeps inserting random things I never typed. Can fonez get. Tourette's?

Matt Эллен

12:26 PM

yes

see "damn you auto correct" :D

Robusto

@MattЭллен Yeah, mine's all carbon. Makes it really light. Also flexible. My old aluminum bike (Trek) was too hard on the rear wheel, apparently.

@tchrist Fonez is endstage Turrets Syncopedrome.

Matt Эллен

I'm guessing you've got road wheels, too, which will be slimmer than my wheels.

Robusto

@MattЭллен Yes.

What a bore. I am trying to populate my database from a 4.7GB file. It is taking forever.

tchrist

I need to make it NEVER EVER EVER do something I did not myself explicitly type. Who the bloody fuck though it was a good idea to scramble the signal with random line noise? worst fucking design fiasco in history! I'll be responsible for my own typos, fang you fairy much.

Jasper Loy

Ubuntu Mate 14.04 has been released! They said they would release it after releasing 14.10, and they did!

Robusto

12:31 PM

@tchrist You can turn off the predictive typing.

tchrist

I control the vertical. I control the horizontal. My piano keyboard doesn't do this sort of shit; nothing should. It is an abomination before Guterberg and Man. The #2 slot on the vigilante hit list just got occupied -- right behind spammers. Barely.

Robusto

Mine wouldn't let me type any variant of fuck. I found this out the hard way when I typed, "This thing is all fucked up" and after I sent it I saw what my keyboard actually rendered was "This thing is all ducked up." Which made me look stupid, or confused, or both.

@Cerberus: I thought Amsterdam had free bikes.

@tchrist Smart phones only give you the illusion of control, but you do have your choice of dimensions you wish to pretend to be the master of.

tchrist

So you're saying that dumb, dumber, and certifiably insane are the new smart?

Robusto

That is an illusive concept.

A smart phone is a way for the NSA to put a spy in your pocket.

@Matt, @Cerb, the above is almost exactly my bike.

tchrist

12:53 PM

They certainly don't require Moebius-Markov chain rewrites to do that now do they? This is the most perversely non-deterministic input method ever devised, a hundred million monkeys NOT excepted. How fucking hard is it to SIMPLY TAKE WHATEVER I ACTUALLY TYPE AND LEAVE IT THE FUCK ALONE???? Try to imagine editing program code in vi or emacs with this abomination!

Matt Эллен

@Robusto nice

Robusto

@tchrist I don't think you want to do code editing on your phone.

Jasper Loy

@Robusto Nice garage you have there, lol.

tchrist

I have no words to describe my outrage with this bullshit. At least, not ones that won't have me locked up as an imminent danger to others.

Robusto

@JasperLoy Garage not shown.

Matt Эллен

12:59 PM

Jasper Loy

I turn off the autospellcheck on all my devices.

Matt Эллен

to compensate, I have three spell checkers installed on all my devices

Robusto

That is overcompensation.

Jasper Loy

I hope to win a laptop in this Fri's lucky draw.

Robusto

Which reminds me: why is there remuneration when no muneration.

Jasper Loy

1:02 PM

Always want to spell it as renumeration instead, lol.

Robusto

That is enumeration.

tchrist

Que la tomen por culo y en pares -- sin lubrificante ni oxycodone.

Mitch

Auto cat reactor

So I don't have to

Jasper Loy

I saw a huge globe being sold for over 10,000 USD in a store today, crazy. I think it only costs 10 USD to make.

I hate those 'once broken considered sold' messages.

Matt Эллен

they're not usually enforcable in the UK

Jasper Loy

1:05 PM

I do not live in a civilised country, even though it is first world.

It is not civilised because people can go to jail for doing harmless things.

Robusto

Then I don't live in one either.

Mitch

One mans civilized is another's convenience store

Robusto

In fact, in practically all countries you can go to jail for doing harmless things.

Matt Эллен

depends on how you define harmless, too

Jasper Loy

OK, I am having some specific things in mind which I feel strongly about, just take it as my usual rant.

Mitch

1:07 PM

Gambling

tchrist

Ok I have now disabled as much bullshit as possible. WTF are they thinking delivering fonez in FMH&H mode by default?

Mitch

That's a new node to me

Jasper Loy

For those who don't know, Ubuntu Mate is a variant of Ubuntu. It looks like the old Ubuntu before the new desktop was introduced.

Matt Эллен

Like, is not paying my bill really harmful? surely it's only harmful if too many people fail to pay, but I'm only one person, so...

Jasper Loy

I think I will use Ubuntu Mate from now, until I get a new Windows laptop.

terdon

1:10 PM

@JasperLoy Mate has nothing to do with Ubuntu! The Ubuntu Mate is just normal Ubuntu that comes with the Mate desktop environment by default. Mate was developed by Mint to avoid the whole Gnome3 debacle.

Jasper Loy

@terdon Yes, I know =) There is a new distro called Ubuntu Mate, which is my point.

terdon

Yes, but why anyone would use it is beyond me. Why not go directly for Mint?

Robusto

Any SQL jockeys in here?

Can I use wildcards?

Andrew Leach

Most SQL uses % as a * wildcard, with LIKE.

Jasper Loy

@terdon I feel it is more polished than Mint. There are some things I dislike about Mint, like having to add Google search engine to Firefox manually.

Cerberus

1:12 PM

@Robusto Looks cool. 24km/h is very fast!

Robusto

@AndrewLeach update my_user set url = 'localhost' where url LIKE %.% — like that?

terdon

@JasperLoy Well, at least it doesn't pass your data to Amazon. Also, that's not true. That is firefox, not Mint (I mean the mint version of firefox) and you can just change the default engine with a single click. I don't though, DuckDuckGo is excellent and does not track me. Unlike Google.

Cerberus

@Robusto Free bikes? For whom? Not for me, alas.

tchrist

That means has a dot, right?

terdon

@JasperLoy and having used both, Mint is certainly more polished than Ubuntu, that's it's whole point.

Jasper Loy

1:14 PM

@terdon I guess our opinions differ =)

Cerberus

Then why is Ubunto more popular?

tchrist

I know that you cannot use regexes anymore in MySQL once your data are in Unicode.

Jasper Loy

@Cerberus That is debatable. It depends on which statistics you look at.

terdon

@JasperLoy True, I don't actually use either anymore. But Ubuntu's links to large corporate entities bother me. And I can't stand the idea of my searches on my own machine being passed to amazon.

Matt Эллен

@Cerberus marketing

terdon

1:15 PM

Basically, Ubuntu is spyware with that thing.

Jasper Loy

@terdon That can be turned off, I think.

Andrew Leach

@Robusto update my_user set url = 'localhost' where url LIKE '%.%'

tchrist

What I do not know is whether it knows to normalize. And I kinda need to know that.

Andrew Leach

(Note the apostrophes around the string)

Robusto

@AndrewLeach Thanks.

terdon

1:17 PM

@JasperLoy Yes, but if you object to a one click addition of google, I am surprised you don't object top that. And it's the principle of the thing that really bugs me. My computer and data are my own, the idea of two huge companies having access to them scares me,.

Jasper Loy

Those insurance and credit card companies always approach me on the streets. I tell them I have no money but they don't believe me.

@terdon Actually, the last time I checked, it was not one click. It's not changing the default only. One really has to go to a special page to add the engine that is originally missing in the Mint version of Firefox.

terdon

@JasperLoy Yes, and then it's added by a single click :)

Or you use chrome instead.

Jasper Loy

Why I don't use Yahoo and Bing is because they are heavily censored in my country.

Robusto

@AndrewLeach Thanks. Will that be really slow on a 4.7 GB database?

@terdon Not only access, but absolute control.

terdon

Aye

Andrew Leach

1:20 PM

@Robusto Probably. It almost certainly won't use an index.

Jasper Loy

@terdon Strangely, the flash in Chrome on Linux keeps crashing.

terdon

@JasperLoy Yeah, that comes and goes. Flash is always causing issues on some version or another. Either FF or chrome.

Jasper Loy

My mum is back. Time for dinner. It's fried rice tonight.

Robusto

Fuck, just changing tables crashed my Sequel Pro app.

Jasper Loy

I do know that there are two versions of flash, one from Adobe and one from Chrome itself.

Cerberus

1:23 PM

@MattЭллен Right.

Jasper Loy

The Adobe one is old but works fine on Linux.

Cerberus

@terdon Can't you just disable that?

Matt Эллен

182

Q: How can I remove Amazon search results from the dash or disable the feature?

How can I disable Amazon search results in the Unity dash?

Jasper Loy

@MattЭллен He's been wearing that cap for a long time.

The only cap I have worn is the army jockey cap.

I sometimes put on the caps lock too, lol.

Matt Эллен

@JasperLoy how can you tell?

Jasper Loy

1:27 PM

@MattЭллен I mean that he has been using the avatar for a long time =)

terdon

@Cerberus Yes but come on! 1) I have to know about it 2) I have to know how to disable it 3) AAAAAAA! factor.

Mitch

Why a gibbet? Why can't they just drag the corpse through the street like normal people? — Mitch 11 secs ago

zinging is for chat — Mitch 11 secs ago

Matt Эллен

@JasperLoy oh :D

Cerberus

@terdon Of course!

I would hate it too. But then...I am on Windows.

So...

Matt Эллен

Windows XP, no less

or have you finally upgraded?

Cerberus

1:36 PM

I have not.

Too much work...

Mitch

Windows 3.1. Comes with great color palette choices.

Matt Эллен

windows 7 is the only true windows

Robusto

@Mitch Who could possibly need more than 4-bit color?

Matt Эллен

hippies, that's who. with their psychedelic hocus pocus

Robusto

Microsoft hippies can trip in 4-bit color.

That actually explains a lot.

Cerberus

2:00 PM

Andrew Leach

That looks rather like Sainte-Chapelle.

Oh.

Jasper Loy

Saint Chapelle is the name of my friend's clinic, lol.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

3:02 PM

@tchrist That seemed to outlandish that I had to check the manual to verify and BY GODS, you're right! in 2014 the MySQL regex only works on single-byte characters!

@tchrist have you read these docs? They will make you sad

terdon

@Cerberus Where is that?

Reminds me of York Minster.

Ah it is Saint-Chapelle. I should learn to click on things.

Andrew Leach

1 hour ago, by Andrew Leach

That looks rather like Sainte-Chapelle.

terdon

I know, I know. But he didn't answer and I didn't interpret your Oh as an "Oh, it is!"

Cerberus

3:26 PM

@terdon No comment!

Happens to the best of us.

Mitch

And the rest of us too.

Zing!

@Robusto And an 80x25 character screen

Robusto

3:50 PM

You left out the BSoD.

Fortunately that is included with Win 3.1.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Robusto Technically it wasn't in Windows 3.1

Robusto

It warn't?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

No, Windows 3.1 had a blue screen for showing any low-level messages

Robusto

Ah. So it was an NT thing.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

ONE of the messages was used when applications stopped responding

But it wasn't used for OS death

The same blue screen on 3.1 was used for things like asking the user to insert a disk into the drive, in certain situations

Mitch

4:08 PM

I'm waiting for the OS death of the universe.

@Robusto Bring Someone else's Drinks

Matt Эллен

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 the blue screen of disk

Mitch

@Robusto you only need 1 ternary bit and then mix them like pointillism. just higher resolution.

@MattЭллен What is the etymology of that?

Matt Эллен

@Mitch it's a combination of random fluctuations

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Raymond Chen on the ctrl-alt-del screen from Win 3.1

Mitch

@MattЭллен That's what my screen is made of. Makes it hard to read but I get by.

Robusto

4:16 PM

My favorite Windows 3.1 feature was the fact that when trying to copy from one floppy to another it would wait till it had tried and failed to copy before alerting you that the target disk didn't have enough room.

Matt Эллен

@Mitch that explains a lot

Mitch

@Robusto But it was trying...

Andrew Leach

Very trying.

Mitch

Quit trying not to try.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 That looks cooler than my "not responsive" screen.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

4:31 PM

@Cerberus It looked crappy at the time, because it'd shift from graphical mode to text mode.

Cerberus

Just like the BSoD.

Or your face.

Mitch

Zing!

In your face!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Hey! My face has never shifted into text mode! knocks on wood

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Then what is it doing?

Your face looks like a printed Unicode character.

Matt Эллен

burn!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

4:40 PM

@Cerberus Must be your browser's fault

Mitch

snap!

@Cerberus Your face looks like it stopped a whole Unicode plane. Of Klingon and Mayan.

Your face so ugly...

um

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Cerb's face can't switch into text mode, only hieroglyphic mode.

Text hadn't been invented yet

Mitch

ooh, burn again.

Cerberus

Mitch

Wait, I thought the BSoD doesn't literally occur any more. Isn't it kind of 90's? What do kids these days have to complain about?

Cerberus

4:44 PM

@Mitch At least it stopped it, eh?

Mitch

OK you try.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Mmm hieroglyphs are a kind of text...

Besides, I know Greek.

Matt Эллен

@Mitch I get BSoDs every time I try and boot my desktop at home (apparently because I've changed motherboards and need to reinstall win 7)

Cerberus

Which is even alphabetic!

Mitch

That was a lame comeback

Try harder.

Matt Эллен

4:45 PM

@Mitch you're lame. your face should try harder

Mitch

Your Greek is so ugly... it uses letters for numbers.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Lame or lame not. there is no try.

Mitch

@MattЭллен You so ugly ... cuz you use your face to walk with. Because you're lame.

Cerberus

@MattЭллен Thank you!!

@Mitch So does your alphabet!

Matt Эллен

@Mitch You so lame quadraplegics let you have their seat on the bus

2

Mitch

4:47 PM

@Cerberus Your English so ugly, it uses letters for musical notes.

Cerberus

Lam in Dutch = lame; lamb.

Mitch

@MattЭллен :D

Cerberus

Oh yeah, then what's the O?

Mitch

@Cerberus Is that .. Freebird?

I don't see no 'O'. And WhoTH is Bob?

Cerberus

I don't know.

And I don't know, bOb.

Boob.

Oops.

Matt Эллен

4:51 PM

lol

possibly from the score for jarheads

oh. FSMscore

Flying Spaghetti Monster score

@Mitch it's part of the score for Batman Returns

Mitch

@MattЭллен O.

Robusto

So what I want to know is this: SE sites want you to include citations for your answer, but answers that are general reference get closed. So is there some narrow band of answer for which research is sufficiently recondite that it is not gen ref but also readily searchable?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

5:09 PM

@Robusto The list of general references is meant to be small, and questions worth answering should go beyond, or better explain, the references. Also should use multiple references as needed.

So yes. There is a range of questions worth answering that are more than copying out of dictionaries.

In theory, anyway.

Robusto

In theory.

Cerberus

I think "small" is key here.

It should only be a standard dictionary and an introductory grammar book.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I'm not sure even a grammar book is appropriate.

Mitch

I don't think any grammar book is really available online anyway.

Robusto

Among the best examples are Lawler linking to his own stuff.

Mitch

5:21 PM

bootstrapping

Robusto

boots trapping?

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Why not? Very basic grammar.

@Mitch It doesn't need to.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

5:41 PM

@Cerberus Well, lots of people don't have one. But there is no excuse for not using a dictionary, considering how many of them are online.

Robusto

> Does the Windows XP Add/Remove Programs control panel expose a scriptable object model? We want our program to open the Add/Remove Programs control panel and uninstall the programs of our competitors.

blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2007/03/20/1915586.aspx

Mitch

@Cerberus because people already know basic grammar and that's enough?

I just got a silver badge for a gen ref question.

Robusto

5:57 PM

Which one?

Cerberus

6:32 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I'm not sure this is about "excuses".

We just don't think it is efficient for anyone to go about answering very basic grammar questions rather than have them read an introductory grammar book first.

@Robusto Hilarious. Very good practice.

@Mitch No, because we can still close those questions even if they have to read an actual book.

Which I think they don't: there are enough websites that explain all the basics of English grammar.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

6:57 PM

@Cerberus Yes, it is about excuses. You are excused from having to perform certain tasks we deem are too onerous to require, such as completing a linguistics degree, or buying the OED or CGEL. You are not excused from using a dictionary.

If you fail to use a dictionary, we just close your question. We don't want it. Come back when you've done the homework.

Robusto

8:10 PM

@tchrist: The flickers are all over my suet feeder. Took them a couple of days, but they are loving it. Now I'm going to have to start buying suet cakes in bulk, I think.

Johan Larsson

8:46 PM

Any peckers?

wood pecker is redundant no?

Matt Эллен

pecker is slang for penis

skullpatrol

9:40 PM

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch

"There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" (alternatively, "There's no such thing as a free lunch" or other variants) is a popular adage communicating the idea that it is impossible to get something for nothing. The initialisms TNSTAAFL, TANSTAAFL, and TINSTAAFL are also used. Uses of the phrase dating back to the 1930s and 1940s have been found, but the phrase's first appearance is unknown. The "free lunch" in the saying refers to the nineteenth-century practice in American bars of offering a "free lunch" in order to entice drinking customers. The phrase and the acronym are central to Robert...

Mitch

10:08 PM

19

Q: What's a parallel for 'mitigate', for worsening a good situation?

I recently read an article claiming that employing some tactic was OK but could mitigate many of the good effects of the main action. What word should the author have used, as mitigate means to improve or to lessen a negative, not to render a positive thing less good? There may be no single wor...

single-word-requests expressions

Stack Exchange

11:00 PM

Limerick Machine: There once was a man in a bind He had to do something unkind To someone he loved On word from...

posted on November 12, 2014 by sgdi

There once was a man in a bind He had to do something unkind To someone he loved On word from above Because of a contract he signed

tchrist

11:28 PM

@Robusto Cool.

Cerberus

11:40 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Why is it about excuses? Why do excuses matter?

tchrist

11:55 PM

@Mitch You didn’t see through that one? Really?

This question appears to be off-topic because it is nothing but one user’s personal vendetta against tchrist. It is not a real question. Voting to close and delete. — tchrist 14 mins ago

Might as well edit the title to "I think that the moderators should suspend tchrist for being funny." That way it stops being a lie and says what he wants.

His examples are all of me playing with words.

I’m siding with Stephen Fry on this one:

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Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…