@Robusto Well, would is past.

Would it?

No one ever really thinks about the bears. Aren't you concerned?

@M.A.R. Butter up could work, I guess, or flatter.

@tchrist Can't argue with that.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at end of answer: What would the statement "You over there!" be called? by Nguyễn Văn Thông on english.SE

@Mitch I am. Tell me what to do about it, I'm all ears.

I love this bird i.imgur.com/iovgTNf.mp4 (as I hate cats and all pets anyway)

pictures Gigili with huge ears

i.imgur.com/C4vDSdB.jpg this is how I picture cats

you're shocked?

sorry the images are slightly violent

but that's realistic, about their impact on ecosystem

the more people are aware of that, the better

I just explained it

recently I saw a cat, approached it, and saw 2 bleeding lizards, without their tails anymore, half dead

another time it was a bird, or a bee, or any useful beast compared to cats uselessness

@caub Right on!

this is a total injustice, it's not natural and balanced, since those cats are fed, treated, unlike the animals they chase

I wouldn't even call pets "animals"

I wouldn't even save their number in my contacts, let alone call them

ha..

@caub Just like a ribbon

I translated call directly from french 'appeler' but that doesn't work ell here

"name" pets, maybe then

It works, actually

It was a humble attempt to be funny

Whatever.

@caub That video made my day

hehe, nice

just goes to show you, don't let a bird turn you around

@Cerberus I would hardly call it past. It expresses future intent or possibility.

@tchrist: Are you having forest fires up your way? A friend was going to cycle the Triple Bypass ride somewhere west of you (120 miles, 10,000 vertical feet of climbing) but the ride got cancelled.

@Robusto Oh I didn't think so.

Only fire in state that I can see is far, far away in the NW corner.

Maybe a little one north of Vail.

@Gigili it's not as complicated as I'm making it seem. They are cuddly and lovable up to the point where they rip your face off.

@Ghalib they're ok. They won't rip your face off. They do seem pretty useless otherwise.

@caub ASSASSIN IN YOUR HOME!

Never mind, found it. Sorry!

We are awesome like that.

@Ghalib Yes, it is emphasis. I thought you liked chocolate! Well, I do like it, but not with shrimp!

An ad for ELU chat: "just post your question here and you will get an answer to your question within an eyeblink"

Then we will have Terdon talking about his experience on the matter

The number of users will be doubled or tripled within a few months

Gigili Mc.Gil, the lawyer you can trust

k

@Gigili With any luck, you'll have one of the people who actually know what they're talking about instead.

@Ghalib Was your dear friend by chance a fox? :)

@Robusto It is both future and past.

> I'm telling you I will leave this ship.

> I told him I would leave the ship.

It's the future, as told from a past perspective.

Or that's what would can do: of course it doesn't always do that.

@Ghalib Yes, exactly.

  1 He says he will be back.
  2 He said he will be back.
  3 He said he would be back.
  4 I think he says that he will be back.
  5 I think he said that he will be back.
  6 I think he said that he would be back.
  7 I think he is saying that he will be back.
  8 I thought he says that he will be back.
  9 I thought he said that he will be back.
 10 I thought he said that he would be back.
 11 I thought he was saying that he would be back.
 12 I thought he said that he would be back.

More permutations are possible, like I thought he was saying that he will be back but if you stare at it too long semantic satiety will set in.

@Færd well, flatter sounds "less elaborate" than placing watermelons but I guess it's the closest thing you get to it. I think you could ask an ELU question and ask for an equivalent idiom, and say flatter came to your mind. And yeah, "kids these days" do use this idiom often enough, I guess. I know I do

Even though I might be classified in the nerdier part of people's spectrum

Whether or not that affects anything

@Ghalib yes, we do do that in English

@M.A.R. Those questions get too much attention dealing with which is not worth the simple answer I can get here or searching for it myself.

And I love it when you kid yourself.

@M.A.R. it's right in between indigo and violet

Haha nerd joke

@Mitch how did you know?

*suspicious *

@Færd well, just ask it before sleep and come back tomorrow and dismiss all pings

@M.A.R. science, duh

Just make sure it doesn't have critical problems

So answering comments wouldn't become necessary

@Mitch pfft, science is lame

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity

Singularity is apparently a media favorite

@Mitch They sound like cool names for twin sisters.

@Mitch Any opinion on our Meta question du jour?

@tchrist which?

@M.A.R. stoopid deletion one

But you can't see the originals, so you probably aren't going to be very well informed.

Sounds like a headache

It had been closed as Too Broad back when "too many possible answers" was a Too Broad reason.

Then two years following that, it was deleted.

But it was deleted by a moderator so it is not a candidate for community undeletion. The request is to undelete it but leave it closed.

@tchrist huh, think it's still a reason

Oh?

And officially made it to the close description

Maybe it varies by site. We sure could use it back again.

Oh scratch that, I misread

I thought you meant "too many questions asked"

I see no argument to keep around closed questions.

I wasn't involved at all in any of the actions.

But I still think it's part of the Too Broad CV reason

@tchrist I guess the community thinks if a post has a high score, it should be preserved no matter its state or quality

@M.A.R. That isn't the way things work, though.

IOW popular stuff should remain on the site no matter how crappy

That's not a supportable position, although neither does it appear to be a rare one.

@tchrist well, some authoritative force usually does delete this on SE sites and people nag a little

Yep.

There are zingtvagilions of these on SO.

And ELU meta is more apathetic about things than a bunch of emotional programmers, so I think nothing much will come of the meta post

Come it may, but not quickly.

Nothing here is urgent.

@Cerberus I dunno. It feels more like conditional than past.

Granted it's used in past constructions, but by itself I can't wrap my mind around its standalone pastness.

@tchrist: I'm guessing the sense of Él tiraba para atrás, pero nada: ellos, cabezones, que para delante is "He pulled backward, to no avail: they, the stubborn fools, were going forward."

@Robusto Something like that; I’d put the first verb into a was Xing form in English.

Yeah, I started to do that but backed off.

Tirar is super flexible, BTW. Does the context suggest "pull" here?

Well, atrás suggested that to me.

push forward, pull back

I can't really explain que syntactically there, however.

Doors can be marked tirar for pull, empujar for push.

Ah, makes sense.

Tirar can also be close to echar, throwing stuff.

Pitching forward, back.

My problem with tirar is it means shoot, throw, discard, etc. as well.

Yep;.

That que is probably because there could be a que there if you expand all the elisions.

I wonder if it originated with archery. You pull something to propel something else ...

Oh is this a frase suelta without a context?

Yes.

@tchrist Ah, interesting. I'm not yet sophisticated enough to always recognize when syntactical elements are dropped.

Él tiraba para atrás, aunque sin éxito dado que al mismo momento ellos, cabezones de mierda, tiraban para delante.

@Færd Indigo sounds like a dude to me. " My name is Indigo Mondoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

@tchrist I do!

Mostly ambivalent ones.

That touch on current ones ambivalently

1 - that question is 4 years old. Who cares!

2 - It was closed for good (unspoken) reasons. It's a poorly written SWR, we have no idea what the author really wants, it's totally opinion based writing advice, use a thesurus yourself. Also, the answer is overachiever.

More brand-name weirdness from Japan ...

3 - To be constructivist about things (if that's the right word) if it gets closed then that means to me it should be deleted eventually if no one cares to do activity to fix it (except for 'duplicate' questions that have answers).

4 - But (and it's a big one), it was highly upvoted (probably for the 'joke' answer about froods that are hoopy). That means it is popular and fun to have around, like that 22 year old who'll buy a keg for you and your high-school friends when your parents are away to NYC for the weekend. and besides, the cops weren't called and no one got hurt.

I kinda think the latter is sorta OK. Kick the crap out of low voted poor uninteresting SWRs, but let the popular ones (however silly) hang around.

Take for example the recent similar (but not SWR) question about the 'Y'/axe child's ball question.

I'm not taking unilateral action on this one. I'd like to talk to the rest of the mod team, who are all every one of them kicking up their heels for the summer weekend somewhere.

As should I be doing.

It is very tenuously related to English. It's just trying to figure out a mistake in someone else's second language. It's mind reading like writing advice but even worse. I mean cripes, how much more idiotic could that be?

But Dan's sleuthing was really great, and the whole process very entertaining and attracted people to the site. And Dan's answer was super cool. Little to do with English, will never help anyone with English, but still very cool.

@tchrist As to the voting procedure, mods are elites and their votes do count for a lot. The close vote is the most important (should have been close voted much sooner to stop the influx of all the crap answers (I think you said that).

If people were so in love with the question, they could have improved it over those two years and nominated it for reopening.

The delete vote was just an administrative blip, I'd prefer that there not be so many votes needed to delete.

Yes, that's part of it.

@tchrist There is a timing difficulty with a lot of design features here. A lot of the features assume that people care and are actively considering things. But once a question is off the top few pages, it is mostly forgotten (modulo google searches that dredge things up sometimes). I've found the bumping things to the top (by editing or whatever) have a tendency to not encourage activity (ie a former HNQ doesn't get back on the HNQ a month later with an edit)

@tchrist it's not too late!

It has an aggregate sum of like 367 votes.

It would therefore normally require 10 delete votes or 10 undelete votes.

But there's no way for me to convert it to a 10-vote deletion.

Oh...bac to that. It was one mod who closed it. BUt now there is a single non-mod who just happened to remember it and post on meta about it. Back to constructivism (or rule based law), see how people vote on the meta thing in the next couple days and see how it works). The mod's close vote is more powerful than a bunch of non-mods so we'd want to see a number of 're-open' votes before considering (presuming the undelete would work).

Also, probably should discuss directly with the closing mod.

I'm working on many of these things.

My guess is that the deleteing mod would probably not have much substantive to add, but may be worth getting their opinion anyway.

No need to rush things.

As I said, absolutely everyone else but me is off frolicking in the fields of clover.

@tchrist Yeah. You should put world peace on the back burner for the moment.

@tchrist Besides that plainly not being fair, there's no big rush. It took 4 years for people to notice.

Maybe tomorrow people will pipe in on meta about it.

Bang bang bang

shots fired

If you can hear the shot, its too late to do anything about it.

@Ghalib frolicking in fields of tacks doesn't have the same feel to it

Any other opinions that people want me to chime in on?

World peace is on the back-burner now so that's out.

Everyone knows my position on cats.

Right behind them with a boot ready to kick

@Ghalib Oh please.

They make a wonderful pillow stuffing

No. Too stringy

ASSASSIN!

Sorry. Just had a cat thought.

MURDERER!

That Bear Gryll's guy. They'll set anything up for that show.

@Ghalib Lamb does not taste like chicken

Duck does not taste like chicken

Beef does not taste like chicken

Pretty much everything else does, I've heard.

Oysters do not taste like chicken.

Are oysters halal?

Because it's funny. You'd expect something exotic like snake or frog or alligator to taste exotic. Then you discover it tastes boring like chicken.

@Ghalib I'd expect not. But you never know.

is the internet enough for questions like that?

forwards to friends

friends relieved because they all want to eat crab too

@Ghalib Everybody has their rules

Crabs and lobster are basically underwater spiders. So, ick, no, I'd rather have chicken.

@Ghalib Right, consult your local imam.

But then which one? The one's your parents listen to? the one's your friends parents listen to? the one on the TV? There are too many different authorities with different opinions.

There's a meta-argument there for about who to follow.

It's not like crab or lobster or oysters are really that good. They just attain this desirability because of their unattainability

If you were starving on a deserted island, your imam would surely understand if you survived on crab and fish without scales and the occasional wild boar.

But if you're not on a deserted island, those restrictions don't stop you from eating well, so really who cares.

@Ghalib I tried to read that as some arabic thing and it didn't make any sense, especially since I don't know arabic.

No you were successful and I was just adding on.

As much as beheading can be funny, of course

As long as it doesn't hurt people, what's the big deal.

People keep assassins in their own home, in their own bed even, but it's as natural as having a pet cat.

Because a cat is an ASSASSIN!

Sometimes they're just making up rules to make up rules. No killing? That's pretty easy to follow. No playing music on the sabbath? gah! I'm so bored going on walks with my family, can't I just stay home and listen to music and you all can go on ahead without me?

Uh oh... I'm being called to go an a walk.

BBL

Is that MacBeth?

Or Pratchett?

Macbeth probably or, rather, it is Macbeth

Pratchett is funny but I don't think he did poetry

In reference to quite different things altogether... OMG some people!

I think Pratchett parodied and referred to the witches.

And I seem to recall similar lines from him somewhere.

They say one thing but mean another. Not the lying kind of people that's a different sort.

I mean those who are talking about one thing but really are talking about another thing. Not another subject but another direction of the subject.

Wait...am I doing that right now?

@Cerberus Recall? Recall. I used to be able to do that. All I remember now about stories is some vague general impression about if I liked it or not. Then I read or watch it again and am surprised when it turns out the killer was the priest's niece who was covering up a minor financial difficulty for him.

Our memories are notoriously unreliable, as I'm sure you will recall reading in various journals.

Also @tchrist thanks (no thanks) for embroiling me in the 'why' question. You didn't exactly interrupt my work on world peace, but opportunity costs and all you know. But I think of it as exercise in being judicial. Despite that I really want to give actual opinions instead.

@Mitch Tell me about it.

@Cerberus I have never read a journal article to that effect. That I can guarantee you. I have read the first and maybe last sentence of a popularization article or two, and heard a few second of a prof talking about it. But journal article... no.

There are so many journal articles I haven't read

@tchrist I have a feeling you're not being literal..but I'll do it anyway!!!

It's like 'RTFM'. Or 'Pay attention to all the meta discussions we know you've seen over the past 7 years'

@Mitch Oh, you just don't remember.

I mean we're mostly adults here, and the non-majoritarians are usually well-behaved.

Havocking dogs slipping the flood gates.

Nipping at our heels beseeching strange repeals.

@Cerberus No I distinctly remember and have written it down somewhere for record keeping that for many years, I would put xeroxed copies of extremely important papers into my backpack, only to be removed a couple years later, dog eared from being roughly mushed around in the backpack but never taken out to read.

Mush, dogs, mush!

@tchrist I mean, I get it that sometimes you want something. But the particular oblique manner is just ... so... oblique. Just ask the straight question "do people want this reopened? Here are my reasons why I think it would be good"

More there are where that came from. Many more.

@tchrist Dogs and mush? Yes. Yes, I know.

Six score and ten, I reckon.

does math

A lot then?

They should be deleted.

or are those that are already deleted?

@Mitch Read the fine print: yes.

And even these are but the finger in the dike.

@Mitch "Somewhere"...perhaps you have forgotten where.

@Mitch Nice.