« first day (2934 days earlier)      last day (1989 days later) » 
01:00 - 22:0022:00 - 00:00

1:54 AM
> 1. No tipping waiters allowed.
2. No tipping waiters is allowed.
3. No tipping waiters are allowed.
4. No tipping of waiters is allowed.
5. Not tipping waiters allowed.
6. Not tipping waiters is allowed.
7. Non-tipping waiters are allowed.
Do those all mean the same thing? If not, do any mean the same thing as any others? Are those all grammatical? What part of speech is tipping?
 
Some are awkward.
All appear to be grammatical.
Some are strange semantically.
 
Ones without verbs?
 
The ones where the waiters do the tipping or refrain from doing so.
 
Let us assume that here the intended sense of tipping refers to presenting someone with a a gratuity, not to toppling them over.
 
Waiters are not normally instructed not to tip other people, so those are the ones that seem strange.
 
2:01 AM
True.
 
There are also a few where there is an alternative, similar construction that is strongly preferred, which renders them awkward.
 
The connection between 1 and 5 is curious.
I feel they do not mean the same thing. Am I alone?
 
Au contraire.
 
In 5, you are allowed to not tip your waiter.
In 1, you are not allowed to tip your waiter.
 
Indeed.
I suppose not modifies the gerund directly, whereas no modifies the entire gerundial phrase?
 
2:04 AM
That's exactly what started me down this.
Because not is an adverb so takes a verb full stop, but no needs a noun or NP, so the whole phrase.
 
Or perhaps the latter is a kind of raising or enallage(?), where no semantically modifies the entire praedicate rather than just the gerundial phrase.
@tchrist Never mind.
 
Yes, maybe.
 
Guys .. I really need a English native guys to join us on my Q/A website. Lamtakam is a Q/A website like SE. It's all in Persian. The issue is English-questions that are asked .. no one there can answer them as well.
 
Refer them to ELL.
 
Our association of no with negative imperatives is probably because they often contain a gerund, not because there is any direct conexion between imperatives and no.
 
2:06 AM
What's ELL ?
 
ah ok
 
@Cerberus I feel like there's a question in all this somewhere, one that might even attract actual experts. I just haven’t figured out quite what it is yet.
 
Would you consider 1 (No tipping waiters allowed) natural?
 
Ah.
That's the one that for me gets the ? of dubious acceptability.
 
2:08 AM
I'm not sure: I would expect this to have been written by someone who wasn't very well versed in literature, so to speak.
 
Because when I try to analyse it, I find myself confused.
s/literature/English/
 
> 0. No tipping allowed.
1. No tipping waiters allowed.
Adding an object to the gerund is admissible, I suppose, but there is a garden-path problem.
Because one would initially read tipping as a participle rather than a gerund.
 
For a real gerund, yes, it can take an object. But not if it’s just a noun.
Or that.
 
Maybe that's why this construction is generally avoided?
 
2:11 AM
I don't feel that there is such a black-or-white distinction between gerunds and nouns.
 
It has to be a gerund because it has an object.
But it confuses me, syntactically.
 
> No tipping your waiter
@tchrist I would say a gerund is a type of noun, but no matter.
 
@Cerberus No, a gerund phrase is an NP.
Only verbs take objects.
 
Let's not get bogged down in terminology again. We won't agree.
 
I still want to know how to analyze that whole no there.
 
2:12 AM
I feel that no tipping your waiter is perhaps better than no tipping waiters.
 
It has to be treating the whole thing as an NP, doesn't it?
@Cerberus well yes
 
@tchrist Yes, I would say so.
@tchrist So what your does is blocking the participial path.
 
Not choking your brother after his puns is really hard.
No choking your brother after his puns is allowed.
Those just bug me. And I don't even know why!
 
The first one has bad balance.
 
What do you mean?
It's really hard not to choke your brother after his puns.
 
2:15 AM
It begs to be recast, e.g. it is really hard not to choke your brother, with the finite verb in the beginning.
Yes.
The second example has the same awkward balance, plus something more.
 
I have it. What bugs me is that you can use either of no or not there and both mean something.
 
Where?
In the second example?
 
> Not choking your brother after his puns is really hard.
No choking your brother after his puns is allowed.
I feel like the second one needs an of, but that sounds stilted.
 
Only because of the imbalance, I'd say.
 
What do you mean "imbalance"? What's not balanced, where?
 
2:20 AM
The finite verb come at the end, a complex phrase going first.
 
Oh, I see what you mean now.
 
And you are right that is really hard does not allow no, which I believe to be a restriction of is really hard.
 
Well, I didn't allege they were good sentences.
 
The second sentence sounds awkward but not ungrammatical to me.
It's hard to parse.
The first one is also awkward but somewhat less so.
 
I don't know why the first one can't take no instead of not.
I think I know why the second one could take not, but doing that changes the sense altogether, which is surprising.
Horn is still right.
And it’s not just squatitive negation that we don't know enough about when it comes to negation.
 
2:25 AM
Apparently, no cannot modify just choking, but it has to at least modify the entire gerundial phrase. Not, on the other hand, can only modify the verb-aspect of a gerund, so it cannot possibly modify the entire gerundial phrase.
Let me sketch a diagram of how I see it.
 
You could save your efforts for an Answer. :)
 
2:39 AM
This is probably not right.
But it expresses my deepest emotions!
So no really stands outside the gerund-with-its-verbal-arguments.
So it cannot come between them.
It can only modify the whole of gerund-with-its-verbal-arguments from the outside.
The word not, on the other hand, can—nay, must—modify the gerund in its verbal capacity, so it could come between choking and your brother like a normal verbal argument itself.
And that difference between no and not is one of scope.
And changing the scope of a negation often changed the meaning of the entire sentence.
And mixing the nominal and verbal nature of a gerund within the same sentence can be confusing, which is why we generally don't like it. Only when it's still easy to parse, as in No feeding the elephants!.
Adding still more verbal arguments, while keeping the attributive no, makes it harder to parse.
And perhaps generally making the sentence longer in any way also makes it harder to parse.
 
 
1 hour later…
4:13 AM
@Mitch What do you call a German hat salesman in Scotland? Ein Hutmann.
 
 
3 hours later…
6:46 AM
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Url in title, bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, blacklisted website in body, blacklisted website in title, +2 more (688): User :-ketodiettrial.com/juvinex-uk/ by deswrmpson on english.SE
 
 
2 hours later…
9:07 AM
@Mitch Yeah, it's sad but it's true.
@RegDwigнt Right. It's getting complicated.
 
 
1 hour later…
10:31 AM
@Cerberus what is this font. And you post it at tchrist of all people. See how he never said anything again? Poor fellah is on painkillers now.
 
 
3 hours later…
2:00 PM
@RegDwigнt I just saw your latest video. Less than 1 hour and already 2 likes!
 
2:10 PM
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in answer, repeating characters in answer, toxic answer detected (250): Use of less and lesser vs lesser and lesser by ass123 on english.SE
 
2:36 PM
@Cerberus Oh, hey, a flowchart. I was just looking at a flowchart. I was looking at this flowchart posted by Borror0 at Sci-fi stack exchange:
 
2:57 PM
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Url in title, bad keyword in link text in body (161): WATCH www.northernstar.com.au/whats-on/dmitry-bivol-vs-jean-pascal-fight-hbo-boxing/12‌​0446/ by jr.hamid on english.SE
 
Happy anniversary to me! Eight years on EL&U! Whoopee!
4
 
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Url in title, bad keyword in link text in body, phone number detected in title, potentially bad keyword in body (231): dsfgf www.northernstar.com.au/whats-on/live-106th-grey-cup-2018/120501/ by santo on english.SE
 
 
1 hour later…
4:10 PM
@Tonepoet I like this flowchart. I think it would work well for ELU too.
@RegDwigнt I sometimes try making every font on my computer courier new. The OS, the browser, everything. Then I get the feeling I have gone back to 1950.
 
4:48 PM
@WillHunting It was the basis of General Reference as shown in Basic Questions Are Not So Basic until Gen. Ref. was replaced with Include the Research
There's more to the history of it than that though.
 
5:07 PM
@WillHunting Why would your computer courier need new fonts? The old ones ain't good enough?
 
5:40 PM
@Tonepoet Yes, this is good.
Too bad many people close questions that should be answered according to the chart.
@RegDwigнt Yes, I hoped @tchrist would like it.
The font is from the Paint drawing tools in Irfanview.
So a highly specialised font, yes.
Perhaps I should have done something artistic with the brackets as well, e.g. )nominal phrase ).
 
I subscribed to the Merriam-Webster YouTube channel. Did you know they have one?
It seems that the same editors have worked there for years, and you can see how they age in the videos.
 
6:06 PM
@WillHunting I think I saw a video of theirs regarding how the dictionary has changed over the years which was linked here in the past, but I am not sure. I haven't really thought about it elsewise though.
Oh yeah, and one regarding the plural form of octopus.
 
 
1 hour later…
7:11 PM
@WillHunting yes, I'm very happy about that. YouTube values likes above views. So much so that really you might as well walk up to people on the street and tell them they should just upvote your stuff without watching it.
Not sure if dislikes are worth anything, though. That I never found out.
I only really get dislikes on the "Learn Russian in 1 minute" video. Apparently some people actually expect to be able to do that, and are very disappointed to find out it can't be done.
@Cerberus just use the hard sign, duh.
Б nominal phrase Ъ
 
@Cerberus Virgin no longer:
0
Q: Why would the prae­po­si­tion "per" ᴇᴠᴇʀ take an ab­la­tive in­stead of an ac­cu­sa­tive com­ple­ment?

tchristᴘᴇʀ + ᴀʙʟ.: Bar­bar­ism, sœ­le­cism, or di­a­chron­ic evo­lu­tion? Lewis and Short clear­ly state that per is a prae­po­si­tion whose nor­mal com­ple­ment is in the ac­cusative. Without hav­ing dol­ven too deeply in­to dusty cor­po­ra of lim­it­ed search ca­pa­bil­i­ty, all ex­am­ples I’ve so fa...

But of course, their CSS is ƒucked up. Or course.
What the hell is "accusativ" on one line and then "e" on another?
It’s not like it’s not ƒucking hinted properly:
This is just completed ƒucked up beyond all recognition, or respect:
 
7:33 PM
@Robusto Happy anniversary to you! EIGHT years? Intolerable!
 
I've meat asinōs who were m
ore responsive tha
n their so-called repons
ive web desig
n.
They have it set to word-break: all god damn them all to hell.
@Robusto ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
8:08 PM
@tchrist That would be word-break:break-all, but why aren't they doing word-break:break-word?
Hmm, MDN lists that as "non-standard" ...
How come the smart thing to do is always "non-standard" ... ?
 
@Rob so here's my all-new definition of "someone who's got way too much spare time":
 
Tru dat.
Saw that on my feed, btw.
 
Also, my favorite bits about CSS is when it says things like "visibility:visible" or "border-collapse:collapse".
But then the next moment they do a "white-space:nowrap" or some shit like that.
 
Yeah. Why not no-wrap?
 
Why white-space, more like.
 
8:16 PM
173
A: CSS "color" vs. "font-color"

RobustoThe same way Boston came up with its street plan. They followed the cow paths already there, and built houses where the streets weren't, and after a while it was too much trouble to change.

 
I keep forgetting that one like once every three years. I have to look it up again and again and again.
@Robusto oh yeah also a classic.
 
I didn't know MIDI can play everything @RegDwigнt lol.
 
MIDI can't play anything. It just says what someone else should play. Kind of like sheet music, really.
 
If by sheet you mean shit, then I agree.
 
sheet-music:shit-music
That's only in CSS 4.62 though. And only works in IE6.
 
8:19 PM
And HTML 4.01
 
Internet Explorer works better than Microsoft Edge in some ways.
 
Did you notice how IE6 would never, ever disappear for exactly as long as everyone kept complaining how it would never, ever disappear, but the very second everyone just shut the fuck up, it vanished overnight.
There's a good lesson for life in there, but I doubt many people learned it.
 
I don't know why Microsoft is promoting Edge so much, yet they are not adding many essential features to it. It is still quite unusable.
Edge is probably the worst app for Windows 10.
 
Remember the guillotine bug and the Holly hack? Those were the days ...
 
I will give one example of how bad Edge is.
When I close multiple tabs, this box appears asking me if I want to close multiple tabs.
I check the box.
The next time I close multiple tabs, even though I already said I always wanna do so, it still asks me.
So even when I check the box 9000 times literally, there is no effect.
 
8:26 PM
@Robusto these days I can't even remember the name of that stupid CSS test that was all the rage back in the day. That people used as ammunition against IE6 like they actually needed ammunition.
 
Another example.
When I use Google Hangouts to chat, other browsers allow me to maximise the chat window.
 
@RegDwigнt Also the peek-a-boo bug.
 
In Edge, there is no such option. I cannot even maximise a chat window.
 
Why are you giving us examples of how bad Edge is. Why don't you just close and uninstall it. Not necessarily in this order, even.
Again, same lesson as above really.
You only have problems for as long as problems have you.
 
Anyway, Edge cannot be uninstalled. QED.
 
8:27 PM
Everything can be uninstalled.
 
Basically, just leave it there and don't use it.
I think you need some kind of hack to uninstall it, not recommended.
 
Still can't find that CSS test.
Found this, though.
And people used to complain about IE6 trololol.
 
Edge does beat the other browsers in some benchmarks though.
 
This is my Chrome right now.
And I don't give a fuck. Works with every site ever.
 
I think as far as browsers go, it's between Chrome and Firefox now.
If you are on the Mac, Safari might work best though.
 
8:31 PM
If Firefox is still part of your vocabulary, you might as well add phonograph to it.
 
I don't understand.
Please explain.
 
Go buy a phonograph.
 
I still don't get it.
 
Is about as good as Firefox for displaying websites, but much better at doing a bunch of other things.
 
So you are a Chrome boy.
 
8:33 PM
I am not a boy for anything.
Things don't own me.
 
I like Firefox because I get nice fonts by unchecking one box.
 
Does a fanboi like fans?
 
If you have to uncheck anything, that's a huge dealbreaker right there.
Life is short. I cannot be unchecking things.
 
The box that says 'let sites choose their own fonts'.
 
@RegDwigнt I have time to unCzech things.
 
8:35 PM
@WillHunting Yeah like. Um. That's what the sites say already. So why not just do it with no boxes.
 
So I get pretty much the fonts I choose on 99 per cent of sites.
 
Oh you mean it the other way round.
Well then. Godspeed.
 
But I think not many people are aware of the existence of this box.
 
That movie is sad.
It is a very sad movie. Don't watch it.
 
8:38 PM
Sad? It was merely horrible.
 
I watched it twice.
 
@WillHunting Sure, if I'm quoting a very specific scene from a very specific movie, that's a good sign that I never watched it.
 
Going to sleep, kthxbai.
 
@Robusto it was alright. Especially for the time.
I watched in on a rented VHS. That's the kind of time it was.
Your other options were like, that dog named Beethoven. And upcoming movies were like, Bicentennial Man.
 
It was an emotional movie for people with stunted emotions.
 
8:41 PM
It was a movie for 16-year-olds. Or maniacs.
But it was Fincher. Either of these groups could have done worse.
Like, I'm looking at Google results for Seven now and it suggests I should also go watch Silence of the Lambs and Zodiac. And I'm like, I've never wondered that before, but now that you mention it, are these really any better choices.
 
Also, Dude, it's Se7en, not Seven. QED
Movie posters don't lie.
Also, Dude, Morgan Freeman is not god, despite what you may have heard.
 
I could swear I typed Se7en just now. But now I can't see it.
WTF.
I think it was in that one part of the Beethoven comment that I then nuked.
 
Uh-huh.
 
And now I googled for "nuke beethoven" and I can't say I'm too happy that I did.
 
Have a Nuka-cola and chill.
 
8:54 PM
The Internet fails me today.
 
The Internet only has epic fails.
 
I haven't checked back on any of my Fallout Shelters on any of my devices in ages.
I must have 999 Nuka-colas on each by now.
 
I have OVER 9000.
 
You wish. Bethesda can't imagine numbers that big.
Even in Fallout 3 you can only carry like 300 pounds in your strongest suit.
A game for pussies, basically.
 
What's wrong with pussy?
 
8:58 PM
That's uncountable. Different thing entirely.
Learn English!
 
Too late.
Du kannst einem alten Hund keine neuen Tricks unterrichten.
 
Last night I looked at the site and someone had put in an SWR for a different word for first.
Like, you want to say this is the first fridge that you bought, but first just doesn't do the job.
 
GAFT.
 
Limitations foster creativity, remember.
 
Except when they're mental deficiencies.
 
9:02 PM
This here was my brobdingnag fridge.
As a side note,
Maybe this is why nobody uses dictionaries anymore.
 
Mar 22 '11 at 12:55, by Robusto
GAFT = Get A Frickin' Thesaurus ... except without the euphemism.
 
Well that's not what Merriam-Webster says.
It says I should look for GRAFT instead.
And Collins says I meant GAFF.
 
Fuck Merriam-Webster and everybody who looks like 'em.
 
Is my point.
And that is why people ask "what is spouse means" on ELU.
 
1
Q: What is the word to describe a bird organizes its feathers?

cdhitWhich verb accurately describes a bird's behavior that the bird does every day to make its feathers clean and organized. And this verb occurs most in most of literature. organize its feathers brush its feathers clean its feathers?

And the tag is ...
 
9:11 PM
Probably got rematched from whatever they had originally.
 
Maybe started typing
 
I think the answer to that question is alphabetize ...
 
Well I didn't know that bill could mean beak up until what, two years ago.
 
"The bird alphabetized its feathers."
"Many birds like to alphabetize their feathers after a good meal."
How do those questions ever get upvotes? But they do. "Hey, I wondered about that myself!"
 
9:14 PM
Careful, some birds like to se7en their feathers instead.
@Robusto thing is, they probably did.
 
SELECT FROM feathers WHERE molted = 0 ORDER BY size DESC;
 
I'll go to Cooking and ask what happens if you preen a prune.
Hah, and now I check the site and the top question is "what is a hypernym for bill and salary".
Now I need to look up if salary is a part of a bird as well.
 
That will be salarious.
 
The BBC Domesday Project was a partnership between Acorn Computers, Philips, Logica and the BBC (with some funding from the European Commission's ESPRIT programme) to mark the 900th anniversary of the original Domesday Book, an 11th-century census of England. It has been cited as an example of digital obsolescence on account of the physical medium used for data storage.This new multimedia edition of Domesday was compiled between 1984 and 1986 and published in 1986. It included a new "survey" of the United Kingdom, in which people, mostly school children, wrote about geography, history or social...
Google Earth, anno domini 1984.
Can't find a good video to link. All are like 30 minutes long.
YouTube should go back to limiting videos to 10 minutes FFS unless you're actually Beethoven. Which you're not.
 
9:30 PM
Wait, I'm not Beethoven? Then who am I?
 
Charles Ives, maybe.
Could've done worse, really.
 
"All summer long we boys dreamed about big circus toys ..."
 
I don't know that one.
So maybe you're Dr. Seuss.
 
All sumMER long we boys put acCENTs on the wrong sylLABles.
 
9:38 PM
That one had 0 likes, so I thumbed it up.
 
Ooooh ragtime now lemme hear.
 
@RegDwigнt BTW, if you really wanted more views and likes on your own stuff you should have had the foresight to be born an attractive blond chick who always has her boobs in view while playing a medley of her hit.
 
Oh you wouldn't know the kind of people I see on Instagram. In high heels and miniskirts, with breast, lip, and arse implants, playing Chopin.
 
I think I know the type.
 
I wish I didn't.
And until Instagram I did not.
You have to wonder when they find the time to practice if they need 20 hours to put up that makeup.
 
9:41 PM
I've probably linked this before, but I just happened to want to do that again:
 
And then you listen and you don't wonder anymore.
 
Love that violinist.
 
Love that waltz.
Sometimes I wonder how many likes Stravinski would get on Instagram these days.
But then I remember I don't have to wonder, I can go and check.
And that depresses me.
 
Gennady Rozhdestvensky, conductor
L. Belenky, violin
G. Vyunikovsky, clarinet
I. Laptev, bassoon
L. Volodin, trumpet
K. Ladilov, trombone
A. Gegin, bass
R. Nikulin, percussion
Never heard of L. Belenky before, but damn ...
 
Борис Владимирович (Вульфович) Беленький (17 (30) ноября 1911 года, Бобруйск, Минская губерния — 16 февраля 1987 года, Москва) — советский скрипач и педагог. Заслуженный деятель искусств РСФСР (1978). == Биография == Играть на скрипке начал в 10 лет, беря пример со старшего брата. В 1924 году поступил в оркестр Театра горсовета Бобруйска, в 1927 году был направлен для обучения в Московскую консерваторию, где поступил в класс Льва Цейтлина. С 1930 по 1931 год играл в оркестре Театре рабочей молодёжи, затем до 1932 года — в симфоническом оркестре Московской филармонии. В 1934 году окончил консерваторию…
Only in Russian, boys.
Learn Russian.
An accomplished player and teacher.
 
9:45 PM
Well ... I think I'll just listen to the music. It knows now language boundaries.
All other versions of that piece sound fat and slovenly to my ear.
Or like wedding cake.
 
It's quite a vita, I must say.
Don't they have an auto-translate button on Wiki somewhere.
 
He died in 1987. Sad.
 
@Robusto I recently had a very similar experience listening to Gardiner's rendering of St Matthew's Passion.
Hold on.
 
Interesting.
brb
 
There should be a comment of mine somewhere there saying just that.
Usually the intro is just like a mush. Just waiting for the people to start singing.
But here you can hear every fucking note in every fucking instrument. All the Kontrapunkt. All of it.
Mesmerising really.
Just listen to the first couple bars, that's enough really.
Like even just the cellos. They have this one job. And they never, ever do it. Here they nail it.
 
9:59 PM
Yes. I can see where it's going. I'm guessing it's a smaller orchestra. They usually have huge orchestras doing baroque pieces, and it just doesn't work.
 
When I heard this I got the sheet music and tried to play the individual parts on the violin.
 
01:00 - 22:0022:00 - 00:00

« first day (2934 days earlier)      last day (1989 days later) »