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00:00 - 19:0019:00 - 00:00

00:02
The difference between the Spanish Tour de France and the French Tour de France is that they're both boring.
Also the French one has a funny name. Probably in Spanish. And there are no trees.
Thanks for asking
Also, the Spanish hoi polloi, of which there are less, don't jump out in the middle of the road to get a selfie of themselves with a swearing bicyclist.
@Mitch Like watching any sport.
@Mitch No. The difference is that the French Tour is conducted in French and the Spanish in Spanish.
@Cerberus bullfighting is exciting.
when the toreador has only a single butter knife for defense.
and the bull has a headdress of thousands of razors.
Meh.
and fireworks?
00:09
Fireworks aren't a sport.
and a little boy comes out with a flower and gives it to the bull.
@Cerberus What do you have against sport?
and the bull sneezes and blows the petals all over.
I would totally see that
@Robusto I like playing some sports, but watching them is super boring.
@Mitch Wasn't that a Disney cartoon?
@Cerberus Which sports do you like playing? I mean, besides AutoHotKey.
00:11
They're super repetitive. The stakes are uninteresting. No intellectual exercise is involved.
@Robusto What? That doesn't seem right.
@Robusto I have played field hockey for a decade.
I liked it.
Football is OK but I suck at it.
@Cerberus Well, maybe they don't like watching you either.
Pingpong is fun.
@Mitch The're right!
@Cerberus Have you tried beer pong yet?
00:12
Not yet.
Is it ping pong while drinking beer?
@Cerberus It's like hurling but for people who like to bend over all the time
Hurling, as in vomiting?
@Cerberus Unless things have changed, field hockey has always been a "women's sport" in the U.S.
The only bad thing about field hockey is that the ball is dangerous.
@Cerberus no, as in field hockey is continental hurling
00:13
It can kill you in a single hit if you're unlucky.
@Cerberus So is the stick.
@Robusto Well, it isn't in the rest of the world.
@Cerberus only the fearless have any of their teeth left
@Robusto Yes. But that is unlikely to hit your head.
@Cerberus in the US, plaid skirts are the best
00:14
@Cerberus Unlikely? I think it would be inevitable.
@Mitch Pleated plaid skirts.
@Mitch The danger is less about teeth (we wore this kind of plastic thingy), than about your temples or just your skull at any location, if you're really unlucky.
yeah, pleated
tartan even
Exactly.
@Cerberus I don't think it's being unlucky. rather lack of important eye-head coordination
As far as sports go, I think curling is the safest. The only deaths have been from boredom.
00:16
@Robusto Not exactly: it can happen, but you generally don't lift your stick up that high except before taking a swing. It's illegal to hit the ball above knee hight, if I remember correctly. Or maybe it was waist height.
I'm dying of boredom from curling at this moment and I'm not even watching
@Robusto A world cup of curling must be mass murder.
@Mitch No! Don't leave us!
@Cerberus just the audience
@Cerberus not literally. That would be adding boredom to the whole thing which would make it worse.
The difference is that boring sports don't keep you on the edge of your seat, but slumped back supinely.
Like dinner and a show, but who cares about the show
The cyclists are identical in the Tour de France and the Torre de España
they're both ways of learning about all the mountains
not exactly the most efficient paths from one place to another
take a car
00:23
Or a paraglider.
@Mitch But in the Tour they ride bicyclettes and in the Torre they ride bicicletas. True story.
@Cerberus nice
@Robusto OK, that's messed up.
I blame the Huns
maybe the Visigoths
but mostly the Huns
@Mitch So when you call your wife "Hun" it has a different meaning?
As the French say, hon hon hon!
The French say "Hahaha" but the Spanish say "Jajaja" ... totally different.
00:28
555
@Mitch In Japanese that's "Go go go!"
And in Persian "Shah shah shah!"?
(shah > chess)
@Cerberus Beat me to it.
Uhuh.
In Mandarin it is 'wu wu wu' sounding like sobbing
CAKE!
00:35
@Mitch Sounds like a sob story to me.
Sorry.
um
It's all gone.
Is that the one that is the theme song to every show ever?
No. But this one is the them song to Mission Hill:
Mission Hill? Is that a hospital show? With Denzel Washington as the feisty orderly and Meryl Streep as the chief surgeon?
00:45
Nope.
hm
that's lots of cake
I have more.
I'd actually be listening to all of these except i'm listening to something else
00:54
0
Q: Term for "something which is easy to remember; memorable" - a noun

BugSprayA "mnemonic" is a term for a system which makes something easier to remember. Is there a term for something which is easy to remember in itself? An example might be the sign language signs of "eat" or "drink" - these things are naturally easy to remember. https://www.startasl.com/asldictionary/...

 
1 hour later…
01:58
OK, so why is HTML's "italic" element (<i>) not called "oblique" instead, since it always uses the same glyphs only slanted (or "sheared" in Adobe parlance)? To be properly italic it should use different glyphs. I think we ought to demand an answer to this important question.
I'm sure Tom will have an opinion on this...
But I believe the use of italic for simple oblique letters is fairly common?
Although I think CSS has both oblique and italic.
 
2 hours later…
03:39
@Cerberus An oblique a has two stories, an italic a only one.
So that's only oblique in this face.
171
Q: font-style: italic vs oblique in CSS

rajakvkWhat is the difference between these two: font-style:italic font-style:oblique I tried using the W3Schools editor but was unable to tell the difference. What am I missing?

2
A: Are there fonts that have both italic and oblique variants?

DavidPostillAre there fonts that have both italic and oblique variants? Most typefaces have either oblique or italic variants but not both. Few typefaces have both oblique and italic designs, as this is generally a fundamental design choice about how the font should look. A font designer will normally...

Only the italic ones have one-story a's.
 
2 hours later…
06:00
I just use the standard fonts in my browser: Times New Roman, Arial, and Courier New.
I do think that Georgia is the most beautiful font among the standard Microsoft fonts.
On Linux, they have Liberation Serif, Liberation Sans, and Liberation Mono which have the same spacing as the three Microsoft fonts for compatibility.
 
2 hours later…
08:06
@Robusto the HTML element uses no glyphs at all. It merely instructs stupid retarded people to use italics. If the stupid retarded people don't even know what the fuck italics even is, that's not HTML's fault.
Which might be part of the reason <i> isn't even a tag anymore, and hasn't been for a decade.
Hello @RegDwigнt long time no see. I hope you are happy and well.
These days it's all spelled out for the retarded. Like <caption> and <header> and <address>. Shudder.
@JasperLoy No tweening in this chat.
Tweening is a very difficult word. I suppose it comes from tween which comes from between.
No, it's a portmanteau of "tweed negligé".
I am thinking of buying a MacBook Air but it costs 975 USD here.
Maybe I will wait for 10.14 Mojave to be released and then decide, then I don't need to do the upgrade from 10.13 High Sierra myself.
@RegDwigнt What is the equivalent of the name 'Jasper' in Russian? I could not find it.
I didn't sleep well last night, so I will go and take a nap now.
 
4 hours later…
11:51
@RegDwigнt Well, stick that tag around some text and it still works.
12:23
@Robusto From the comment thread: "Cake fans are weird."
@Robusto This is also one I hear on TV shows and commercials.
12:44
@RegDwigнt Also, never mind tags: the CSS value for the font-style rule is called italic, yet arguably it should not exist if all it does is slant the (Roman) type.
@RegDwigнt I think you mean negligee.
0
Q: Word for encouraging someone to do something that's a bit of work but it will be good for them

CharlieI have been asked to translate into English the Spanish word animarse, as in Se animó a venir al cine. That could be translated into English as "he decided to come to the movies". The verb "to decide" is close in meaning, but to completely translate the word "animarse" I need to convey als...

@Mitch Hey, at least there's no autotune involved ...
@Robusto I don't think I know what autotune actually sounds like. I think on my next hip-hop dis-track (I'll call it 'That bitch Taylor Swift'), I'll just autotune everything I say.
Even better, on my universal translator, I'll just put the config switch for 'Autotune' to 'On, always'.
@Mitch Pop music already beat you to it.
♫She's all alone ♩, in her♬ time ♯ of need ♩
12:54
@Mitch Lucky you. It's horrible.
@Robusto Are you saying...
not the queen B?
I read a newspaper article the other day in which the author qualified Autotune as an "instrument".
This rapper was using it in such an exquisite way, he wrote.
@Cerberus You'd think autotune would be configurable. Like a drum kit or keyboard
@Robusto I remember you said you had a copy of Webster's Third. Before I get mine, I would like to ask if the printing and binding is OK, because I heard that it is so big that it keeps falling apart.
@Cerberus Autotune is a financial instrument, not a musical one.
12:55
@Mitch I believe it is.
@Cerberus exquisite
@Robusto Well said.
searingly poignant
gritty no-holds barred reflection on life
@Mitch ?
@Cerberus well then play it like an instrument. Go with it man!
@Robusto +1
12:57
You can configure to what extent you wish to main a voice.
@JasperLoy I hard;y ever break open my compactified OED (the one with a microscope)
it hurts my eyes. really
@JasperLoy Depends on how old it is. If you keep it on a bookstand, it should last a long time.
God, what bad taste our youth must have to be adoring heavily auto-tuned rappers.
@Mitch And yet I see no star ... curious.
@Cerberus I'm configuring it to talk to dolphins
12:57
Better.
@Cerberus keeps quiet
@Mitch I see there are good prices for the full OED on bookdepository.com.
out of blind support of family members
Can you up the frequency above the adult hearing range? Thank you.
@Robusto stars are for winners, little Timmy
12:58
@Robusto Yes, and recently I got book ends for my book stands so that they don't fall off on the right side.
@JasperLoy Also to keep the bindings from twisting after leaning on their edges for a couple years.
@Cerberus the recent trend is mumblerap
ugh
@Robusto I'd buy that, just for the glasses
@Mitch That sounds great.
@Robusto It looks very good together with your glasses.
13:00
@Mitch Well, I can only assume you are spiteful and curmudgeonly then.
@Cerberus I mean you can't listen to the it for the stunning lyrics
@JasperLoy That's from Amazon, not my house. My dictionary is the Third, not the International.
You mean it's difficult to hear what they're saying?
Also, I don't have a sweep for photography in my house.
13:02
It is indeed.
@Cerberus reminded me of the bingo card for reviews:
I made a book review bingo card. Critics are hailing it as ‘a remarkable achievement’.
Funnily enough there are a lot of cliches missing
@Robusto Oh, no wonder it didn't look like what I expected. I don't think a W4 will be published, but I am still hopeful that the 12th edition of the Collegiate will be published in future.
@Cerberus because you can't understand the lyrics. Like The song Louie Louie, they're mumbling so bad you can't tell what they're saying.
0
Q: What does he say in video? What feelings?

Григорий ХримянGood afternoon! What does he say at 2:50? What feelings? I don't understand. Motivation

@Mitch I'm sure Fowler already had several of those clichés. People have always disliked clichés.
@Mitch Yes, nor should you want to.
13:04
@Robusto what's a 'sweep'? The backdrop thingy?
Nor is there any melody to speak of.
Its' recitation(?), but of a bad kind.
@Cerberus I think that the MW Dictionary of English Usage beats all other usage guides.
@Mitch It's called a sweep because there is no 90-degree angle behind the object, as a wall meeting a floor. This makes the background nebulous. Instead the "angle" is actually a gradual curve.
If you say so.
@JasperLoy You realize I posted that picture to show you the kind of stand I'm talking about, right?
13:06
@Robusto Now I realise, and I remember a friend made the stand for you.
@Cerberus "A haunting and lyrical portrayal, shot through with poignant evocations of ... looks at notes ... vomiting after binge drinking"
@Mitch Take my money!
@Cerberus that is characteristic of rap. If there's no/little melody, spoken word, that's by definition rap.
Yes.
We know what it is.
That's why they call Kid 'wash your hair' Rock a rapper. Because he can't sing.
@Cerberus bank transfer info sent to you
13:10
Helo
@Mitch Do you take seashells?
@oliverthegreat Hi.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is very keen to update their dictionaries. They have a new printing of their American Heritage Dictionary every 2 years or so, and the same applies to their Webster's New World College Dictionary after they acquired it.
@Cerberus I'm not going to defend rap (much), but of any music for the past 40 years it is the only poetic one. They spend their artistic energy on rhyme and meter.
What?
Rap often rhymes and it is fast you know
@Mitch All songs are poetry.
But not good poetry.
13:11
I don't think so
Some bad songs aren't
I fully acknowledge that rap and hip-hop are forms of music. Nevertheless, they're a form of music I don't really listen to. Like, at all.
Nor I.
The culture also displeases me, sanctifying weapons, violence, and the degradation of women.
:46459084
Well duh
13:14
There are like 5 subjects for rap songs that never change: life sucks (including how the police suck), I'm better than you (either talent or money/possessions), explicit sex, and inability to count
Some raps aren't so bad you know
@Mitch I don't think so
@Cerberus That's a fair assessment of American culture, btw ...
@Cerberus I never said they're not.
HAHA
Anybody here is younger than 20
@Cerberus OMG You're saying out loud that you're really really old.
Like retirement age
13:15
NONONONO
can I buy you a lawn so you can tell people to get off it?
@Robusto I don't know, maybe the weapons/violence part; but the treatment of women seems to be similar to that in other countries?
I am not retired, duh
I should add money to the sanctum of rap music, by the way.
@Cerberus At my Polynesian bank. They also take those big sculpted rocks that you can roll around as currency
13:16
@Mitch I would have said the same thing when I was 16.
SO YOU ARE OLDER THAN 16
Right?
@oliverthegreat I think you're not thinking
@Mitch Oh?
Well what?
@Mitch Well at least I think SOMEBODY is not thinking right now
@oliverthegreat That will take me some thought to figure out.
13:18
well, suit yoursel
@Cerberus You doubt me?
@oliverthegreat I don't have a suit, so...
@Mitch Never!
I was just wondering about your rocks.
Oh well then
13:19
My rocks are just fine. They're convertible legal tender.
@Mitch But are you a suit.
Moving on now...
To the next continium
@Cerberus I'm a diamond in the rough.
No doubt.
13:20
Well, some have doubted that
needs washed
a lot
Not some, only me
and the diamond is small
if that
Still, a diamond IS a diamond
Funny, for a moment I was thinking the suit was called clovers, instead of clubs.
@oliverthegreat Said Ayn Rand to no one who doubted it ever.
13:21
Well you certainly were thinking for a long time here
Not that I had to look it up, but it's still strange. I've read so much about Bridge.
@Mitch Well howdy
Note that 'is' doesn't go the other way
That was your boolean logic for the day.
:/
That was your emoji logic for the day
@Cerberus Hm
13:23
I repeat, is anyone younger than 20 (I AM NOT RETIRED!)
@oliverthegreat There's an ELU question about that
Well, if nobody would answer..
@oliverthegreat I'm thinking that you're protesting a little too much
And who lives in america
I am not protesting
I was just asking
13:36
@Cerberus Well, worse than some, better than others.
Quite possibly.
14:29
Sie, Bart, Sie!
14:44
Welcome to this room @MattE.Эллен
hi @JasperLoy
 
2 hours later…
16:31
It's funny how two times bigger than sounds better than twice bigger than.
And that both of them are, of course, inferior to twice as big as.
Another funny thing that I came across today was how plural fractions tend not to lose their s when they're used attributively:
> a two-thirds majority
I remember I had a convo about this s and whether it should be kept or disposed of with @snailboat and some others way back when. She was of the opinion that nowadays it's more normal for plural nouns to be used as modifiers for other nouns.
Practical English Usage says that three-quarter is an exception. Is it? Needs to be looked into.
> a three-quarter length coat
@Mitch Call me Polyphemus.
Yet another funny thing, which I tried to figure out a few days ago, was which preposition to use with morning/evening.
The rule of thumb I came up with was to use in with the/early/next/this/that/etc and to use on otherwise.
Maybe not a very accurate, but it's a mess, really. I can't do better.
I guess you've had all the laughs you needed today, so I'll stop reporting on my funny findings now.
16:48
apart from when reporting, e.g. "on the morning of the 14th"
@Færd Ding!
@Færd On one morning? In the morrow?
So when would you use on, exactly?
@MattE.Эллен Good point! Thanks.
@Cerberus Bing!
@Cerberus On a cold morning, on Friday evening, etc, on one morning, etc
And also maybe if morning is followed by any adjectival phrase.
> On the morning he was killed ...
> On the morning after ...
So it's more practicable to memorize when you do use in, and then use on otherwise.
If a preposition is indeed needed. And if you (like me) can't just get it correct automatically.
17:15
After saying "on the morning of the 14th" you could later say "on that morning".
on that morning, so many years ago...
17:31
On that dark and stormy night ...
17:45
(future reference: PREP + morning/evening)
You two seem to go back a long way.
so many years
Who and who?
@JasperLoy M&M
@Færd Ahh, yes, of course.
But I'm not entirely sure I undersyand next, this, that.
I would use those without a praeposition?
I left the house ?in this morning?
18:01
Hmm. Yes. That doesn't need a preposition at all.
Can you even use that morning with in?
And even if it does, it probably gets on, as M&M illustrated.
44 mins ago, by Matt E. Эллен
on that morning, so many years ago...
Right.
But morning and evening are odd words, now that you have mentioned it.
Annoyingly so!
during the morning
18:07
No, before the morning.
around the morning
nah, that's not right :D
Why not?
I don;t think people say "It was around the morning". morning is vague enough already
Right.
although they would say "it was some time around morning"
possibly
although I can't see any in google books
18:11
Dear gods.
MAybe around the morning?
That would depend.
It's evening over here anyway. I'll drop by in the morning to continue this discussion.
there were two hits.
> There was always a tasty bite of wholesome fiber to be found in and around the morning.
> It was only around the morning of the second day that some sort of order settled over the camp.
CU
18:26
I think I ate something wrong last night and got food poisoning.
@JasperLoy Sorry about that!
oh dear! dry toast usually helps settle a bad stomach
@MetaEd You look strong!
@MattE.Эллен Do you know why?
@JasperLoy It's that honest work.
@JasperLoy I have no medical reason. If I had to guess, it soaks stuff up
18:28
Yes, I think so too. Maybe I will take some bread.
I no longer use Linux now that I have Windows 10.
But recently I had to reinstall Windows 10 a few times because some app got corrupted, but now it seems all good.
I use windows 10 a bit. primarily for gaming.
The only bad thing about reinstalling is that it takes 3 hours to get everything back in order.
that's a long time!
I am thinking of getting the MacBook Air I mentioned, or a better Windows laptop, because my current one is very unresponsive (because it is very cheap?).
I learnt that SSD is much better than HDD.
I have a weird issue with win10 in that when I open the start menu for the first time,many of the buttons are disabled. The next time I open it they're fine.
@JasperLoy yeah, a lot faster
18:32
And Intel i3/i5/i7 processor is much better than Intel Atom/Celeron/Pentium processor.
@MattE.Эллен One of the reasons I reinstalled was because I could not configure the start menu the way I wanted. After making the changes, it goes back to the original state! But now it's alright.
And the Photos app that I use to edit photos and videos (yes, it's for videos too) could not even be opened, but now it's alright.
I wonder whether all this has got to do with my bad hardware or the WIndows 10 itself.
@JasperLoy If you reinstall the operating system (or return it to default settings, removing all installed programmes), I guarantee that it will be much more responsive again.
Try that before buying a new computer.
@Cerberus Ah yes, and after doing that I just install all the programs I want and uninstall all the unwanted initial programs.
Yes.
If you should buy an Apple laptop, you'd pay twice as much as you would for the same hardware from a different manufacturer.
True, but the cheapest Apple laptop comes with relatively good hardware which is also what makes it more expensive than the cheapest Windows laptop.
No, if you buy a Windows laptop with similar hardware, it will be much cheaper.
18:39
Oh OK, I understand now.
Which is why I have been reading up on macOS to see if the apps bundled with it are worth paying for.
gaming time for me! CU
I must say that apple.com is very informative!
CU
@JasperLoy The cheapest Macbook Air is €900 here.
You can get a Windows laptop with similar processor, memory, SSD, resolution for €470.
@Cerberus That is more expensive than the cheapest one here in Antarctica!
In fact, its resolution is a lot higher, and its SSD is twice as large as the Apple.
@JasperLoy Do you have a link?
18:45
@Cerberus If you select Antarctica on apple.com you will see that it costs 832 Euros here.
Ah, but can you actually order it from their website?
Yes, and pick it up the next day at the Apple store!
Or get it delivered to your home with free shipping too.
@JasperLoy But you have to go to Antarctica to pick it up.
Wait wait wait... you mean 'Antarctica'
@JasperLoy I see it now, that's cheap.
The Apple store in Antarctica has the longest lines
18:49
Perhaps Windows laptops will also be cheaper there.
@Cerberus Also slower.
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