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9:25 AM
@tchrist that reeks of confirmation bias. surely you'd never know how many men who have nothing to say say nothing.
 
10:12 AM
0
Q: What are some words for when something (or a phrase) is (or looks) familiar, and so it makes you think of what it is familiar with?

MalathynFor instance if you heard someone say something like "wheatherapore" and you think in your head weather report, like wheatherapore doesn't necessarily mean anything but perhaps somebody would still link it with weather report, or jojo's bizarre adventure, or anything similar. I'm looking for sing...

 
@RegDwigнt Close. Missed it only by a couple thousand kilometers.
 
10:27 AM
@Cerberus 🎉🎉
 
10:41 AM
Hello. I'm confused about two sentences. If you're free could we just discuss it for a while? Thanks.
 
@user8718165 Hello! What are those sentences?
 
Watch this, guys.
What a gorgeous bird.
 
@RegDwigнt the page won't show me anything. looks like I need to subscribe or something
 
11:04 AM
@Færd Hello. Sorry for being late.
@Færd My bro said to me, "When I went to the States, I waited to know if she was indeed the person I was looking for". I have to change it into reported speech. I'm very confused about if I should change the italicized 'was' to 'had been'.
 
11:31 AM
Hello people! Is anybody around? :)
 
11:45 AM
@MattE.Эллен I am not subscribed to anything ever. I only send links to pages that I can see.
You can watch the same video here, but you'll have to endure the horrible eksent, and that half the screen is covered in shit:
 
@user8718165 Well that was doesn't refer to a more distant past. So, no, I don't think you could use the perfect there.
It's possible to turn the second was to had been, tho.
 
@RegDwigнt I can't read it, so I'll show the screenshot :D
 
> When I went to the States, I waited to find out if she was indeed the person I was/had been looking for
 
I tried akzepting, but it didn't help
 
@MattE.Эллен just click on the red button, you silly sock.
How fucking hard can it be.
Oh wait, you did? Well you're still silly and I'm still right.
Maybe click on it harder. Or properlier. Or maybe try becoming part of the EU first. Fuck if I know.
Or just go watch that ledy from seuth efrica.
 
11:58 AM
At least it's summer down there D:
 
Yeah but it's apartheid summer, that doesn't count.
I'd rather have Glaswegian winter, myself.
 
apparently the problem is my browser isn't setting cookies for Der Spiegel. no idea what that's about. apartheid summer it is
@RegDwigнt she's not from SA! She's from India. Get your ex-colonies right :þ
 
@MattE.Эллен they are not my ex-colonies, mate, that's why.
 
Anyway, since when do they speak seuth efrican in India.
 
12:04 PM
that's not a South African accent
 
Also, who else finds it fucking disturbing and frankly psychotically inacceptable that they report SARS tallies like it was a football match.
Germany 4, Belgium 1. Manchester United nil.
@MattE.Эллен maybe to you it isn't. But then again you're not from South Africa.
 
@RegDwigнt true. I have spent a fair amount of time with South Africans, though. There are lots over here.
@RegDwigнt statistics will keep us safe. the more numbers we know the better protected we are from the virus
 
@MattE.Эллен anyway, I'm actually only being half facetious this time. I've seen all those viral videos of some Brits doing like 50 different accents. With a million billion trillion other Brits commenting OMG this so accurate. And yet I watch it and their Italian is Bronx at best, their French is clearly not French at all, and their Russian couldn't be further away from Russian if they spake Turkish on the Moon.
 
Point being, maybe what you think of as South African is actually Welsh.
 
12:10 PM
@Færd okay thanks... Got it :) Actually grammar books write that "simple past is always changed to past perfect". There are cases when this rule doesn't apply.
@RegDwigнt Hello
 
@user8718165 if people writing grammar books knew the first thing about grammar, they'd be writing actual books instead.
In the music world, there's a saying. "He who can't play, teaches."
 
so... linguists can't speak? is that what I should take away from that?
 
@MattE.Эллен well, let's see how an actual linguist puts it, shall we.
Feb 5 '11 at 14:07, by Kosmonaut
So, for example, I know that in the language of Nakanai, they do infixation as part of their standard grammar that is similar to the way that hip-hop artists do iz-infixation ("house" -> "hizouse")
Feb 5 '11 at 14:08, by Kosmonaut
But could I so much as say hello in Nakanai? No.
 
@RegDwigнt Yeah... Thanks a lot for that. :) I can say that every grammar book I've got does this. I sometimes frame my own sentences in my mind and that's where I get stuck.
 
12:20 PM
@RegDwigнt lucky I'm not an English linguist, then
 
@MattE.Эллен lucky indeed. That lets us focus on actual questions of actual interest. Like whether balrogs can fly.
 
now you mention it... they do have wings of shadow
 
As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I take a look at the Balrog and realize there's not much left
'Coz Gandalf's blastin' and laughin' so long, that
Even my mama thinks that his mind is gone.
 
He's the kinda G the little hobbits wanna be like.
 
12:26 PM
@RegDwigнt Hi. I want to discuss just one last sentence. Can we?
 
Don't ask if you can post things. Just post them.
 
This one please. Sadao as a boy, had climbed the pines as he had seen men do in the South when they (had) climbed for coconuts. Here I think we should use the past perfect because we're talking about an earlier point in time in parenthesis. Should we or is it okay without "had"? Please tell me. Thank you.
 
To me, the simple "climbed" refers to the general activity, while "had climbed" refers to a particular instance of it.
Also to me, there's just too much Past Perfect in this sentence altogether.
There's like four layers, each happening before the last. That's just too much. English only has two. And most other languages only have one. One is perfectly enough.
 
12:44 PM
@RegDwigнt Okay, thanks. Actually I was reading a story titled The Enemy. I was pondering this sentence. Only the last 'had' wasn't used.
Could you please tell me how could we re-frame this sentence a bit so it sounds better?
 
12:57 PM
Also, do you say that in Eng, we have two layers, past and past perfect and that it's good to use at most two layers in a sentence? I'm quite new to English so unaware of these rules. :)
 
 
1 hour later…
2:15 PM
0
Q: Verb phrases and suddenly a word usage

Blaire Senter link description here I made a question from the same article beforehand. There is one more question. Blockquote There are centuries of trial and error inside the “hero’s journey,” in which a young man is called to adventure, challenged by trials, faces a climactic battle and emerge...

Our question titles are just getting better and better.
 
2:53 PM
@RegDwigнt I think "enter link description here" is a marvel of communication all by itself. Too bad it didn't communicate anything to this supplicant.
Also "Blockquote" ... perhaps we may assume it means "Blockhead" in this instance?
@MattE.Эллен just spoiled the game with his edit.
 
sorry, I had to do it to em
 
You can do anything you want in poetry and prose except ask permission. — Robusto Feb 10 at 5:28
@MattE.Эллен There's always a reason to despoil the wilderness, I suppose.
 
3:55 PM
@Færd Heh.
 
4:47 PM
@Robusto he's just British. It's just a thing that they do.
> Hot Network Questions:
Why did the Z80 with 4-bit ALU out-perform the fully 8-bit Intel 8080?
Because they overclocked it by setting it on fire.
 
How come those are radio buttons and not checkboxes.
What if I'm in the photo and annoying.
And eating spam.
Which is, to be perfectly honest, every photo of me ever.
 
Poor user focus group testing
 
Yeah, they should've tested it on rich users instead. Like myself.
 
Would have got results more suitable to you
 
4:55 PM
That's why I voted Trump. He's the only one who still cares about the rich on Twitter.
 
rich Twitter -> Twitch
 
Well yes. I'm on Twitch but not Twitter. QED.
 
Seems legit
 
10
A: Why did the Z80 with 4-bit ALU out-perform the fully 8-bit Intel 8080?

hotpaw2Possibly a simple logic trick. The slow path in addition is carry propagation (not the individual half-adders). You can thus often double the clock rate by pipelining the carry. If you pipeline the carry, then you can reuse the bit adders at the beginning of the chain, and put them at the end....

Haha. The actual answer is they overclocked it.
It forgot to mention the fire, though.
Downvoted and unsubbed.
 
5:14 PM
Actually, hold on a sec.
Why would a 4-bit processor not be expected to out-perform an 8-bit processor.
Certainly if you never once see a 5-digit number, your computations will always be faster than if all your numbers always have a whopping 8 digits.
 
5:44 PM
There we go. Found it on YouTube after all.
 
 
1 hour later…
7:00 PM
85
A: What data about meta has eluded Stack Exchange until recently?

Yaakov EllisOriginal Data Analysis In April 2019 there was an investigation performed that looked at the number of users who regularly post and vote on Meta Stack Overflow, and how answering on Stack Overflow predicted that participation. The results were that posting and voting on Meta is done by 200-300...

 
 
3 hours later…
9:32 PM
> The results were that answering on Stack Overflow had a weak positive correlation with participating on Meta.
The results also showed that answering on Stack Overflow had a weak positive correlation with participating on Meta
But did the results also show that answering on Stack Overflow had a weak positive correlation with participating on Meta?
Also, did the results show that answering on Stack Overflow had a weak positive correlation with participating on Meta?
Also also, and most to the point: what is Stack Overflow?
 
 
2 hours later…
11:18 PM
Absent a quorum, would an e-quorum suffice?
Does the Rex asinorum owe fealty to the Rex equorum?
The answer is there for the asking.
 

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