English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

9:46 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Pattern-matching website in answer, potentially bad asn for hostname in answer (80): Does "absent friends" have definite association with deceased family/friends? by master of ceremonies on english.SE

Robusto

3:08 PM

> In 1976, when Paul Simon won the Album Of The Year Grammy for his Still Crazy After All These Years, he wryly noted, "I'd like to thank Stevie Wonder, who didn't make an album this year."

@RegDwigнt: ^

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

Sounds like the guy is undergoing kidney transplant. I could give him some tips.

Robusto

And, of course, the following year Wonder won again, this time for Songs in the Key of Life.

Stevie Wonder - Sir Duke [HD]

►

The album was a double LP, so Wonder probably had enough material for a single during the year Simon won, but passed in order to release this opus.

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ Not sure what that means.

SmokeDetector

5:29 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad ip for hostname in answer, blacklisted website in answer (192): How can this sentence be correct? by jack smith on english.SE

RegDwigнt

5:42 PM

@Robusto good thing neither Wonder nor Simon have released an album this year. The Grammy is all mine now.

Now I just need to write something.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

@Robusto Stevie Wonder is apparently getting a living donor kidney transplant

Færd

8:09 PM

Having too many arguments with Iranian nationalists these days. About to take a break and dig into this:

Imagined Communities

Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism is a book by Benedict Anderson. It introduces a popular concept in political sciences and sociology, that of imagined communities named after it. It was first published in 1983, and reissued with additional chapters in 1991 and a further revised version in 2006. Eric G.E. Zuelow described this book as "perhaps the most read book about nationalism". == Nationalism and imagined communities == According to Anderson's theory of imagined communities, the main causes of nationalism are the declining importance of privileged access...

Mitch

@Færd That sounds like a quasi-sociological analysis of science fiction.

I'm not sure what quasi means, but it sounds good there.

Like tendentious

or abjure

or calumniate

well...

those don't sound good there

maybe elsewhere

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

8:30 PM

@Mitch sounds like some French cake.

Or maybe bread and cheese. The bread is crispy, and yellow.

@Færd about the weather?

Mitch

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ Italian. cosifantorta

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ Their opinions on the weather are just awful.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt Well, let's get crack-a-lackin', lazybones.

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ Geez, I didn't know that. Hope things work out all right for him.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

@Mitch I mean, maybe by some definitions I'm a nationalist?

Not really well-versed into these definitions.

But isn't it a self-fulfilling prophecy? If people imagine in a communion of people, then the communion exists. Especially if it's something as big as a nation.

You can yell the worst things at the next shitty driver but when the subject is nationality, he's a fellow comrade.

Mitch

I think the opposite of nationalist is a traitor.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

Or friend.

Robusto

8:35 PM

By some definitions most of us are nationalists. That is, most of any nation loves most things about it. But when someone refers to "nationalism" they mean something more distilled, more extreme.

Mitch

I'm a nationalist for the United Federation of Planets.

Robusto

@Mitch Those things are synonimized in the term "Republican" these days.

Mitch

@Robusto I'd figure not necessarily so for those citizens of Iran.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

@Mitch Did you just create life on Mars right now

Mitch

So Klingons are OK, but goddam those Romulans.

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ That's very generous of you for recognizing my genius.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

8:37 PM

@Mitch It's so weird. It's like throwing republican and democrat ideologies in a blender and giving each of the two major Iranian parties a glass of the resulting goop.

Mitch

ew

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

Alt lefties here can sometimes be more Hilterer than alt righties.

Mitch

Reminds me of a joke.

What's green and red?

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

Small minority, admittedly. We don't have a Trump yet to polarize the nation to this extent.

Mitch

A frog in a blender.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

8:38 PM

Oh there's the N-word again.

@Mitch No not really, they're really ugly

Mitch

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ what are the issues that the left there likes and what are the ones for the right?

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

But I guess when life was starting out all it could build was worms.

Lots of worms.

Mitch

They aerate the soil.

Robusto

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ So do Muslims believe in evolution?

Mitch

Which is in fact worm poop.

Robusto

8:40 PM

I mean, as an official religious stance.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

When I got my first Play Doh, I kept building snakes.

Robusto

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ You took the easy way out.

I started with the cathedral of Nantes and moved on from there to the Taj Mahal.

They looked like rocks, or snakes.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

@Robusto Official? I think science and religion are not as much in a supposed battlefield here. But I think the consensus is some form of old Earth creationism

Robusto

Yeah, I kinda figured.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

We don't contrast religion and science.

Robusto

8:42 PM

Science and religion are fairly antithetical across the board. Science goes looking for answers, while religion claims to have found them.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

Ghazali or however he's Romanized has some nice opinions on this.

Robusto

Or not to have found them, but to have been given them by God.

Just ask @Cerberus.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

To me religion is a ready-made cookbook of moral oughts

Mitch

I remember hearing about one Islamic scholar who was pretty well into what would correspond to young earth creationism and the sin of believing in evolution. But I also vaguely remember that most islamic scholars (scholars who are Muslims, not scholars of Islam, waiat, maybe both), thought that that guy was weird.

Cerberus

@Robusto Hmm what?

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

8:44 PM

Science, in its pure sense, does tell you that it speculates often strongly whether something is harmful, but it's us that make the ethical and moral implications.

Robusto

2 mins ago, by Robusto

Science and religion are fairly antithetical across the board. Science goes looking for answers, while religion claims to have found them.

Mitch

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ Well that's obviously idiotic when you should just be able to look at a menu and order them up from the chef.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

It tells us polar bears can't swim, not that you should preserve polar ice caps. That's what we deduce.

Mitch

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ ??wha??

Robusto

@Cerberus: BTW, sorry that our women beat up your women. But it was kinda cool, ne?

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

8:45 PM

So it has always been some sort of apples vs. oranges.

Or maybe grapefruits. I can't eat grapefruits.

Mitch

Both are fruit. You can compare them as fruits.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

Nah oranges are some kinda overrated nut.

Did you know that if you stab a lemon, it will electrify you.

It resembles a bitter almond.

Mitch

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ My lemon stabbing days are over.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

I'm just getting started.

Mitch

Good times ahead

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

8:48 PM

Poor frog that we're going to torture to death to observe something absolutely predictable.

Mitch

They say that a sharper knife is safer.

'They' are total idiots.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

Or maybe a gross dead cricket.

That's probably medical students. I wanna be a pharmacologist.

Cerberus

@Robusto Fairly, yes.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

I make blue eerie liquids explode in my face.

Mitch

"Here, take this and tell me what you feel"

Cerberus

8:49 PM

The vaguer the religion, the less of a problem there generally is.

@Robusto It amazes me how you people in this room always come up with new from my country that I wasn't aware of!

Mitch

That's pretty vague.

RegDwigнt

@Robusto sure thing. I'm on it. Wrote the first note already. It's a G. As in "gangsta".

Mitch

one note a day

Robusto

@RegDwigнt WTG.

Mitch

That's how Tolstoy wrote War and Piece.

But with letters.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

8:50 PM

@Cerberus Two planes collide at Schiphol gate - DutchNews.nl - Live

Wait, I copied too much.

RegDwigнt

Now I just need to repeat it a couple times, then repeat it a hundred more. Got the lyrics, too. Goes "uh, uh, yeah, uh, uh, check it out, uh".

Cerberus

@Mitch You have a typo there, it's Wore and Peece.

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ I had no idea.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

@Mitch keeps the Grammy away

RegDwigнt

@Mitch I don't recall Tolstoy ever using a "G", though. Must be why he never won a Grammy, either.

Cerberus

What's the Russian G again?

RegDwigнt

8:52 PM

Джи.

Cerberus

Tsk.

So it doesn't have a gamma?

RegDwigнt

Nonono. Джи.

Mitch

@RegDwigнt You're a poet and you don't know it.

RegDwigнt

@Mitch Wrong. I'm a poet and you don't know it.

Cerberus

@RegDwigнt I know what that sounds like.

RegDwigнt

8:53 PM

@Cerberus Good for you. Have a dog biscuit.

Robusto

The Russian "G" is gay.

RegDwigнt

Nothing in Russia is gay. By law.

Cerberus

eats biscuit

RegDwigнt

Except the President maybe.

Cerberus

It's allowed as long as you don't talk about it!

RegDwigнt

8:54 PM

He's always excepted from law somehow.

@Cerberus the president talks about it a whole lot though. Talked about it to Elton John just the other day. Uh, I mean: to me.

Cerberus

Uhuh, sure.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt But you still pronounce it "gay" ...

RegDwigнt

Putin Responds To Elton John: Respect Majority! Liberals Invented 5 or 6 Genders: Transformers?

►

Leave children alone!

Nobody ever thinks of the children.

Think of the children, then leave them alone.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

That sounds like quitting cigarette.

RegDwigнt

I've quit cigarette two dozen times and it didn't sound like that even just once.

Maybe I should quit some more.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

8:57 PM

It has a G.

RegDwigнt

Сигарета.

Almost like синагога.

Almost.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

Big crescent. Small crescent.

How is the Grammy doing

RegDwigнt

Good. Good. Big crescendo, then small crescendo.

Cerberus

@RegDwigнt He sounds so reasonable.

RegDwigнt

Oh but he always does.

Best Putin jokes

►

That's 15 minutes worth of reason.

Go find me a video of Trump being reasonable for 15 seconds.

Or Balkenende, for that matter.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

9:04 PM

@Mitch Bet you 14 million dollars that weird scholar just adapted some of the Christian ideas.

I don't have 1/14th of that so it's a safe bet. We can download your movies here.

Mitch

@RegDwigнt There's no comparison.

It's like apples and oranges

They're both fruits

Putin visits Estonia: Immigration officer says:
"Name?". "Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin".
"Address?" "Kremlin, Moscow, Russia".
"Occupation?" "No, this time just visiting".

haha.

that's funny

RegDwigнt

No, apples and oranges is Steve Jobs and Trump. Not Putin and Trump.

@Mitch inorite.

Mitch

because the squirrel gets dead

RegDwigнt

Fun fact: nobody gives a fuck about Estonia. Actually, even the fact itself is no fun at all.

They got a beautiful flag though. But again, nobody can even recognize it.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

@Mitch I think he has already conquered our hearts

Mitch

9:08 PM

Steve Martin's Standup Routine For Dogs 1976

►

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

BTW, I just found out about the British ambassador Trump thing.

Mitch

You've missed nothing

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

Who came up with QWERTY. Did they deliberate try to increase out/our typos 10000-fold.

RegDwigнt

No. That's an urban legend.

artlebedev.com/mandership/105

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

So the ultimate goal was just creating pwn

RegDwigнt

9:10 PM

The Internet is for pwn.

The Internet Is For Porn - Avenue Q - Original Broadway Cast

►

Cerberus

Never gets old.

RegDwigнt

@Cerberus you should be listening to that other song of theirs.

My Girlfriend Who Lives In Canada

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And that other other song.

Avenue Q- If You Were Gay

►

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

@Færd RE the Wikipedia summary, the causations Anderson asserted struck me as odd. Surely it wasn't hard to gather people under some national flag in the ancient past to demonize the enemy that wasn't? BTW, I guess the next step after the book should be reddit.com/r/AskSocialScience/comments/2q67yj/…

RegDwigнt

But I must go now. Got violin and guitar and piano lessons tomorrow.

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

And Grammies.

RegDwigнt

9:17 PM

Nah, you don't need to play any instruments for those.

I'm just doing some on the side because I'm bored.

Cerberus

@RegDwigнt Hah.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt Which is also, let's face it, why you're here right now.