English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

RegDwigнt

20:00

Hell even Stephen Spielberg was afraid to make a movie about Jews. He tested the waters with Jaws first.

tchrist

@Mitch Unfortunately.

RegDwigнt

@tchrist so basically all you're saying the Internet is full of shit.

tchrist

4

A: What does the noun "Hawaiian" really mean in English?

As a mainlander on the West Coast, I did not know that only people descended from the original, pre-colonization, Polynesian population are known as "Hawaiians." Makes sense, though. According to the University of Hawaiʻi, which publishes a handy Hawaii style guide, Hawaiian: Refers to peopl...

@RegDwigнt This is the USGPO of all things! The Government Printing Office.

You have to call them Hawaii resident, which is a disgusting noun–noun compound.

Because the adjective is no longer allowed.

govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-STYLEMANUAL-2016/pdf/…

The thing is, you really should call people want they want to be called.

But Indian corn? No, sorry, plants get no say.

Maybe Indiana is supposed to be Hoosiana.

And random idiots on the street gladly tell you that the New Mexicans can go back where they came from.

RegDwigнt

So who is that tidbertum bloke and what's his beef with me.

tchrist

It's been a grey day, with fiery overtones.

RegDwigнt

20:12

How is there so much backlash against such a simple and easy to grasp thing. What is even going on.

I've not even been drinking when I posted that.

tchrist

Someday Alaskan Airlines will have to change its name if it intends to let anyone who isn't an Alaskan Native fly.

RegDwigнt

And what's with all the ad hominems.

I forgot to drink my coffee.

I want all poetry to go away.

What the actual fuck.

tchrist

looking

RegDwigнt

That is not how we do business here.

Nah don't bother Tom.

tchrist

atta hominibus

Wait, is that offensive to Persians?

RegDwigнt

20:14

Everything is offensive to someone.

That's today's motto.

I comment on someone's answer, they say lol if you're so smart, post an answer of your own. I do just that, only for them to downvote it.

What is this Kindergarten.

Let's just listen to Bach or something.

tchrist

yes please

wait, no, better.

play Bach

Listening doesn't ALWAYS reroute your brain, just usually. But playing always does.

RegDwigнt

Glenn Gould - Little Prelude, In C Minor, BWV 934

►

That's a very odd interpretation. But still a beautiful piece.

Not only do all these legati and staccati go against the actual score, they do so rather randomly.

@tchrist I already did for today. It's half eleven now, or half ten as they say in the UK for some reason, there's laws against playing Bach at this time in Germany.

tchrist

@RegDwigнt I clicked on it but it wouldn't show it in my country, and a related search took me to the Book I one not the Book II one.

RegDwigнt

Well look for the number.

934 should be easy to find.

tchrist

twit 847

yeah

RegDwigнt

20:22

The same recording is up on Spotify if you have that nonsense.

So I started applying to Facebook groups for pianists and oh what do you know, Facebook groups are like even worse than normal Facebook.

Shoulda guessed.

tchrist

got it

RegDwigнt

Well done you.

You'd think a closed group for a niche style of a niche genre with like 30 members in total worldwide would have some real quality discussion about the intricacies of that thingy. Instead it's all just politics.

You gain admittance, and the first thing someone posts next morning is some "he said she said Ima call mommy and tell her all about it".

tchrist

Really??!

RegDwigнt

Yeah politics as in group politics. Sorry.

Basically what our Meta is for.

tchrist

"Whenever two of us are gathered together there are politics made."

RegDwigнt

20:27

I hate that shit.

Which is why I'm so good with children and so bad with adults.

tchrist

> Gould the man who played the harpsichord out of a piano.

RegDwigнt

Well that's easy innit.

It's the other way round that's hard.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt All right, I'll just say that not every German I met was literal-minded, but there seemed to me to be an unstated assumption throughout German society that there were certain ways of doing things and to depart from those, even to indulge in flights of fancy, say, was apt to cause a seg_fault in a lot of people's minds. Hence the statement about Germans being literal-minded.

RegDwigнt

Oh. Hm.

Well there's no discussion about that, like. Not with me anyway. I was waiting for an explanation how any of that relates to the German word for laughing about a joke being "laughing over a joke".

Because that's what your thingie was in reply to.

So I was looking for a connection.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt I don't even remember what the connection was now.

RegDwigнt

20:32

I see.

Well by the looks of it the connection was not really to the word "over" but to the word "German".

Which is fair enough.

Robusto

Well, yes. A flight of fancy, in its own way.

But you see, you seemed to be extolling (jokingly) over as a prescription for the kind of preposition to use. Very German it is to take that sort of stance.

RegDwigнt

I just experienced first hand two days ago how a close friend of mine had just such a seg_fault moment. That kind of crushed my world really.

Robusto

Yes, it's coming back to me now, those things I felt on that warm day in July, 2018 ... or was it August?

@RegDwigнt How so?

RegDwigнt

He came over for a visit with his three children. They are moving from those Spanish isles in the middle of the ocean, forgot the name, back to Munich.

So yeah, summer time, kids having fun visiting their grandma and auntie, and him having fun drinking with me and other old buddies of his.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt The Canary Islands?

tchrist

20:36

@RegDwigнt Islas Canarias, Isles of the Dogs.

RegDwigнt

Yes. Thank you.

I honestly spent like two days trying to remember the name.

My brain's fried.

tchrist

They're canines not songbirds.

That's how you remember it.

RegDwigнt

So anyway, the next day we just meet at a playground where the kids can play.

Actually, no, we first met up at my place. Where they played with LEGO for a bit, and all the musical instruments and Rubik puzzles and fed the dog and everything.

And then we go to the playground where they just go on all the trampolins and carousels and seasaws and whatnot.

I should add them's really good kids. All three of them. Really well raised. Really smart. Like best kids ever.

So we play for like two hours and then the kids are all exhausted and sit down and say, hey uncle, you don't happen to have taken your Nintendo Switch with you, can we play for a while.

I actually have, and so I let them, naturally.

Two seconds later the father comes running across the fucking playground with a watch in his hand, shouting, "okay, you've got ten minutes".

And he stopped the ten minutes and then the kids were not allowed to play the Switch anymore.

Robusto

Echt deutsch.

RegDwigнt

And I was like what the fucking fuck. That literally came out of nowhere. I've known that guy for years. We've been close friends for 30. What the fuck is even going on.

Thing is, as I said the children are well behaved and everything, that doesn't come out of nowhere. I understand that. They are not allowed to play any video games, ever.

But this is a fucking holiday. They come over for a visit for one day. For all I care, and for all the difference that it makes, they can play the Switch for 24 hours straight. Who gives a fuck.

The day after they will have to go back and return to their daily routine anyway.

Robusto

20:41

@RegDwigнt Their dad, obviously.

It's more inflexibility than literal-mindedness, I guess.

Although the two share some common ground.

Common aspects.

RegDwigнt

That's another thing. I have all those close friends, good friends, but none of them have ever touched a video game with a ten-foot pole. Ever.

That's, like, wtf.

You don't have to like it, you don't have to play it 24/7. But you have to be at least aware that it's a thing that exists.

It's like, imagine you never once read a book in your life. Or never once heard a song. Or never once saw a painting.

That in itself would be like WTF is even wrong with you.

That's ISIS level of "you must not have music, ever".

But then they go on a holiday, and I sit down to read a book with them, and you fucking come running shouting "okay you got ten minutes to read the book and not a second more".

Or you have only ten minutes to look at paintings, that's enough for this year.

Robusto

I had a similar experience with the German bank. Someone set up a ping-pong table in a spare room, and we would sometimes go in there to play at lunch. But when the lunch period was over, even if you were in the middle of a game, it would be paddles down and back to your desk. I mean, even if it was two points from resolution, it didn't matter.

I mean, to the second.

Germans don't believe in slack.

RegDwigнt

Yeah frankly that's what Germans make fun of the Japanese for.

Robusto

Hahaha.

RegDwigнt

These days everone's pretty liberal and laidback.

Robusto

20:45

With Japanese the discipline is the game.

RegDwigнt

Actually I watched some Japanese discuss that, maybe like three months ago? How the culture is changing.

It's okay to have two weeks of vacation. It is okay to leave before everyone else does. It's slowly but steadily getting more accepted.

Obviously it was more in-depth than that, I'm abbreviating.

Lemme check if I can find that video. I probably won't.

Robusto

Yeah. But many, many people find comfort in the discipline and can't break away from it.

RegDwigнt

What it's Like Working In Japan | "Short" Version

►

Oh I actually found it.

30 minutes. Worth every second as far as I'm concerned but yeah. 30 minutes.

It's all very different people of different ages from a variety of backgrounds and professions. So it's quite a picture really.

Robusto

I'll look at it anon.

RegDwigнt

Yeah like you'll probably know 90% of it first-hand.

It's the other 10 that you might find interesting. Dunno.

The changes. The dynamics.

Robusto

20:50

I do find that my understanding of Japan (and Japanese) has begun to become dated.

Like my knowledge of just about everything, actually.

RegDwigнt

Well I'm telling you now, you leave the US for a decade, you come back you don't recognize it.

Like, it's really hard getting myself comfy in Moscow these days.

Robusto

Pretty much. I certainly wouldn't have recognized Trumplandia if I'd left even two years ago.

RegDwigнt

Not because it's not comfy, it's comfier than ever. But because that's not what I know from 30 years ago.

Robusto

You Can't Go Home Again

You Can't Go Home Again is a novel by Thomas Wolfe published posthumously in 1940, extracted by his editor, Edward Aswell, from the contents of his vast unpublished manuscript The October Fair. The novel tells the story of George Webber, a fledgling author, who writes a book that makes frequent references to his home town of Libya Hill. The book is a national success but the residents of the town, unhappy with what they view as Webber's distorted depiction of them, send the author menacing letters and death threats.Wolfe, as in many of his other novels, explores the changing American society of...

RegDwigнt

Yeah. That's a question that's on my mind occasionally. Where the fuck do I even want to be buried?

I don't have a home.

For that matter, what's my mom's plans when she dies?

Robusto

20:55

Your mom lives in Moscow?

RegDwigнt

No, here.

Whence my question.

Moscow would be easy. Answers itself.

But here, I dunno. Probably wants to get cremated and then flown over to be buried with her mom. Would be my guess.

Robusto

Same town as you, or Germany in general?

RegDwigнt

Same town.

But still lives with the stepfather whom I can't stand so we have very little contact if any.

Robusto

Not a question that's easy to ask, anyway.

RegDwigнt

Shrug. Maybe. A question's just a question.

But yeah I prefer not to ask questions in general.

That is really my very own personal problem.

Robusto

20:57

"Hi, Mom, I'm home. Hey, where do you want to be buried?"

RegDwigнt

Yeah.

Like, I'm of that "be liberal in what you accept, conservative in what you emit" school of thinking.

Robusto

What happened with your dad?

RegDwigнt

So you tell me your lifestory, I'll listen. I'll find it genuinely interesting, even. But you don't tell, I won't ask. Because none of my business.

@Robusto he's alive and well building ships for the Russian fleet.

Robusto

Are you close?

RegDwigнt

I saw him just seven weeks ago in Armenia. After like 12 years of not seeing him.

@Robusto I would say so. And so would he. But yeah we only talk like once in a decade.

Steregushchiy-class corvette

The Steregushchiy class (Russian: стерегущий – "vigilant") is the newest class of corvette in the Russian Navy. It was designed by the Almaz Central Marine Design bureau. The first ship was designated Project 2038.0 (or 20380) by the Russian Government; subsequent vessels were built to an improved design, Project 20381. At 2,200 tons it is large for a corvette and is designated as a frigate by NATO. Project 20382 "Tigr" is an export variant that has been ordered by Algeria. The Steregushchiy class has been further developed into the Project 20385 Gremyashchiy-class corvette and Project 20386 Derzky...

These are the ships he built most recently.

Well I say he, obviously there were like 20000 other people involved.

But yeah he's an aircraft engineer by trade. Used to build jet airplanes.

Robusto

21:01

@RegDwigнt Looks like the newer guided-missile frigates in the US Navy.

RegDwigнt

Yeah I know even less about ships than aircraft.

But in Armenia he told me the names of the ships so I just googled and hey there's a wiki.

That bureau built the Kursk. That fucking tragedy.

Also like 20 years ago now, innit.

Robusto

I have an interest in many things. Military aircraft and naval vessels just come by the way.

RegDwigнt

Kursk submarine disaster

The Kursk submarine disaster, the sinking of the Oscar-class submarine (Russian: Project 949A Антей) Kursk, took place during the first major Russian naval exercise in more than ten years, in the Barents Sea on 12 August 2000, killing all 118 personnel on board. Nearby ships registered the initial explosion and a second, much larger, explosion two minutes and fifteen seconds later, which was powerful enough to register on seismographs as far away as Alaska. The Russian Navy did not realise that the sub had sunk and did not halt the exercise or initiate a search for it for more than six hours. Because...

Robusto

I know about the Kursk.

RegDwigнt

I know you do.

It was very public.

Everyone offered help.

And Putin was like nah, let them die.

What a disgrace.

Robusto

21:04

More and more I understand humanity less and less.

RegDwigнt

Humanity I understand. Politics I don't. And not the Internet.

Robusto

Think of the resources we put into the bureaucracy of killing people. It's obscene.

We laud people whose job it is to take lives, and the more they take the more they are lauded.

RegDwigнt

Yeah well, the thing with any kind of infrastructure is, it's hard to set up, but once it's there it requires very little thinking to use it.

Robusto

Even now we are minutes away from oblivion if a chain of unfortunate coincidences should lock into place.

RegDwigнt

Yeah.

Robusto

21:06

I mean, oblivion if we're lucky.

RegDwigнt

I basically shrug that away by thinking, I could get hit by a bus the next time I turn a corner. Or a brick could fall on my head any moment really.

If anything, there's powers in place to prevent the nuclear bomb from actually falling. But no one supervises every single brick.

Robusto

It's like there's this guy juggling dynamite and everybody's trying to distract him, tickle him, knock him down. The whole world seems bent on destruction.

RegDwigнt

It's all fun and games for the rich and bored.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt One man's death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.

RegDwigнt

Turn off the news, and it ceases to exist.

You can't do anything about it anway.

Robusto

21:09

Well ... except to observe and lament.

RegDwigнt

What good does it serve me to know that another 200 people drowned again today.

Or 2000, even.

I can't help them, I couldn't help them, and I can't help the next 2000 that will drown tomorrow.

I can prevent my godson from getting run over. That I can do. And so that I should do. But I can't save Saddam from getting beheaded.

Or save people from getting gassed by Saddam, for that matter.

Robusto

I wrote a poem in this vein after the debacle that was Hurricane Katrina, which wiped out New Orleans.

Once you might have called it a skein or a scrim.
Should merest light shine behind it, light pushed through it.
But when water pushed in its snout, this cheesecloth
used to soak the sweat from *coeur a la creme*
was sour as rennet. It floated away just like any
other bit of trash on its way to wherever trash goes
when all used up, which is where the bodies went too;
and that is why you sometimes saw them together,
washed up on some muddy spit as if this was how the dead
contrived to cover their spastic vulnerable sprawl

RegDwigнt

That's beautiful.

See, twenty years ago, I'd've probably said, it's beautiful and sad.

Robusto

Well, it certainly is sad.

RegDwigнt

It depicts sad events and even specifically points out how they are sad, yes.

But I've transcended that in a way. I've read so many sad poems, I only see the beauty now.

Robusto

21:17

"One must have a mind of winter ..."

RegDwigнt

One sure must.

Robusto

Feb 15 '15 at 19:23, by Robusto

THE SNOW MAN

by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds

RegDwigнt

I know. We discussed Stevens quite a bit back in the day.

Robusto

Meh, you have to click the link to see the whole thing.

RegDwigнt

There was that stretch where we'd talk about him for several days.

Robusto

21:19

My favorite poet. No wonder.

RegDwigнt

Why don't you put some of his stuff to music. Rather than trying to write your own.

Robusto

Heh.

Because I'm not a composer.

RegDwigнt

I don't know that you aren't.

Also with poetry you don't really need to be fancy. Three chords are enough for Leonard Cohen.

Robusto

I can write poetry, sort of, but every time I've tried to write music it's this huge goddamn ordeal, me trying to massage musical ideas into some kind of form that keeps changing, squirming, struggling, falling off the table, resisting me at every turn, until I finally give up.

RegDwigнt

I dunno how you think. Maybe you think in too much detail. Just think in chords.

The details will come naturally.

Robusto

21:23

I have tried. I have actually composed and arranged music for TV commercials and videos and the like. But that's not the same thing as actually making music.

It's easy to do something trivial. It's hard to do something that you want to mean something.

RegDwigнt

I'm finding I have the opposite problem to resistance. Too many directions I can take any given piece in at any given moment. Lots of choice. Endless possibilities. It seems like a burden sometimes but really it's a luxury. Because you can just pick whatever, and then trim the fat, and then trim more.

Writing is not about adding, it's about removing.

Throw out half the words, then throw out half of what's left. Same with music really.

Robusto

I guess ultimately I don't know what I mean, musically. I only know that I must suck at the teat of it, not that I must produce any milk of my own.

RegDwigнt

Poetry is harder actually because of all that rhyming and metre business.

Robusto

Ya don't need rhyme to have a good time.

RegDwigнt

But in music you don't need to rhyme, period.

Robusto

21:26

Cadences are a kind of rhyme.

RegDwigнt

I dunno. More like stanzas really. And you don't even need those. Your very own Exhibit A above.

You can write 16 bars all on one chord.

And then not even have a cadence but just jump up a step. Or whatever.

In poetry you have to micromanage individual words.

And often micromanage them before you even think about the thing as a whole.

It's built from the ground up.

Music descends from above.

Robusto

I think in words. Words are easy. Words are facile. Words are malleable, ductile, obliging.

RegDwigнt

I'm finding I think in rhythms.

I see that a lot even in YouTube comments of mine.

Words are secondary as long as the beat is right.

Which is funny because as I told you a while back when it comes to music I suck at rhythms really.

Robusto

Rhythm is what is common to poetry and music.

RegDwigнt

Yeah which is why it's not that hard to start writing a song if you have the words.

Robusto

21:30

It's why one arrangement of words succeeds and another fails.

RegDwigнt

They already have a rhythm, and once you say them aloud they actually suggest a melody as well.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt Unless you're talking about Wagner recitative.

RegDwigнt

Well there you just open your phonebook and look up the leitmotif.

Robusto

And blather on for hours in that vein.

RegDwigнt

It's Sieglinde talking about love to Ingeborg, in a forest, so there you go, the piece just wrote itself.

Which is why you can make it 60 hours long, no sweat.

Robusto

21:34

And after the first 11 hours you go and tell the story all over again for the people who have fallen asleep. Which is everybody.

Even the conductor.

RegDwigнt

That one channel that I follow, 12tone, recently had a video speculating what the opposite of a leitmotif would be.

Unbeknownst to him, he actually found an actual example.

Robusto

Oh?

RegDwigнt

The Opposite Of Leitmotifs

►

It's from a video game, too.

As you can see from the thumbnail, it kinda starts as a dumb joke, that's not even right, but he gets there in the end.

And look at them top comments, and me being one of them :-D

I'm famous.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt Just the point I would have made.

Your first sentence, anyway.

RegDwigнt

Yeah I wanted to make it immediately, all throthing at the mouth, but luckily I held back the horses enough to see that he mentions it in the video eventually.

At which point I had to rewrite my hate tirade as something more polite.

Robusto

21:39

haha, how unsatisfying that must have been ....

RegDwigнt

I have that a lot with videos. Well, everyone has it a lot with videos.

YouTube is full of comments "fuck you you idiot for not mentioning X" because people are not patient enough to watch to the bit where the alleged idiot actually does just that.

Robusto

I hate when people use synth flutes.

RegDwigнt

He uses synth everything to prevent copyright strikes.

Like, even the piano is synth. And he owns an actual piano.

Robusto

Synth pianos are fine. Even better than most pianos, sometimes.

RegDwigнt

Yeah I know you play a synth, you synth.

It's not just fine, it has its advantages.

Robusto

21:44

A synth can sound like a Bösendorfer piano, but it can't sound like a Powell flute.

RegDwigнt

We discussed. It's your fault because you just won't write that synthesizer yourself, slacker.

Like, you're qualified in every particular, and you're not doing it.

Robusto

Every particular except ambition.

RegDwigнt

So imagine how people must feel who are not qualified at all yet it is their day job.

Robusto

It happens.

RegDwigнt

Ambition is that thing that just hits you like a freight train when you least expect it.

But you could spend 40 years standing on the tracks waiting.

Robusto

21:47

Indeed.

Longer, if you're as old as I am.

I used to have ambition. Now most things seem not to matter at all.

RegDwigнt

That's because they really don't.

It's called wisdom.

Robusto

I take comfort in that.

RegDwigнt

When evening falls so hard.

Robusto

The dude abides.

I was going for the Coen Bros., but Paul Simon has things to say as well.

RegDwigнt

To sing, even.

Robusto

21:51

Paul Simon - Slip Slidin' Away (Audio)

►

That's been running through my head lately.

RegDwigнt

> Der betreffende Nutzer hat das Video in deinem Land nicht zur Verfügung gestellt.

Robusto

Geezis.

Search for Slip Sliding Away, I'm sure there's a version in Deutschland.

RegDwigнt

Yeah millions like.

And look at his first two chords. You could write that Rob.

Anyone could.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt Wir benutzen ihn nicht.

RegDwigнt

His first seven chords, actually.

Robusto

21:53

@RegDwigнt And I have. But unfortunately you have to go on after those chords.

Feeds

0

Q: Hairstyle word request

Attached is a picture of a hairstyle commonly used in Fallout game. The problem is I do not know the word to describe this hairstyle (the name of the hairstyle) in the real world. The difficulty comes that the hairstyle is named two different things in Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, and Fallout 4 ...

single-word-requests

Robusto

And the displeasure at realizing you absolutely hate something you've worked so hard on is enough to keep me from going back and trying again.

RegDwigнt

That's my problem really, that I think it beneath me to write these things. Too simple. La dee daa. Simon has no such quibbles. Cohen has none. Dylan doesn't even know there's more than one chord.

And Status Quo have made a career out of writing the same song over and over again for 60 years straight.

So yeah, this slip sliding song is like every other song on the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack.

Which is precisely why it's so lovely.

Feels familiar. Feels like home.

Haha now You Can Call Me Al is playing. Fuck you YouTube for knowing so much about me.

Great video tho. These were the days.

Robusto

Yeah, but the thing we overlook is the fact that even Bach can be really simple and everybody says "Beautiful!" but when we get really simple everybody says "Boring!"

RegDwigнt

Probably.

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…