English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

12:31 AM

-1

I would just like to know how to pronounce it, bearing in mind that pronunciations of words to change over time. Anyone heard of the phonetic alphabet?

Seriously, dude?

@RegDwigнt Saw that yesterday.

Mitch

12:51 AM

@RegDwigнt If you can't talk about it, people will forget it all.

pretty clever solution.

a clear solution would be water or carbon tetrachloride.

G Warner

@DanielRigg The accursed question, the unending circle of inquiry, like a snake that eats its own tail, a wheel endlessly spinning, and going nowhere... shall it not stop, or hast though found the secret to perpetual motion, just thoughts of one's mind caught in a vortex of confusion. Put forth a lazy hand and lift thyself from this whirlpool, for thou hast been drowning

Daniel Rigg

now what are you even saying to me? @GWarner

G Warner

its a ode to you, about this question you continue to ask regardless of our explaining it to you.. for two weeks now at least

Daniel Rigg

just struggling to understand them

G Warner

whats to struggle, you were told what it means, numerous times.

im leaving, good night

Mitch

1:07 AM

@GWarner EXACTLY!

You totally get it.

RegDwigнt

2:24 AM

@Robusto I used to watch Oliver regularly but somehow a year ago I stopped. Now this popped up in my recommendations, so I'm catching up on all three episodes about the corona. Watching the first one from a month ago is really quite morbid entertainment. "Only" 2700 deaths worldwide. The first US death just the day before. Feels like proper sci-fi grade time travel.

@Robusto everyone knows the proper pronunciation of "Ozymandias" is "Felina". Duh.

tchrist

12:46 PM

Cerberus

At least it seems your governments have taken stern measures now?

So the curve should flatten in 2 to 3 weeks?

Still a tragedy, of course.

It appears Korea, Germany, and a few other, non-totalitarian Asian countries have handled things better than we.

tchrist

@Cerberus Doubtless owing to Germany being a non-totalitarian Asian country.

@Cerberus I don't know. Two or three weeks seems as far away as the 22nd or 23rd century right now, at least in terms of our ability to predict them.

Cerberus

@tchrist Now, now, I think I constructed that sentence properly?

@tchrist It does. But even in Spain and Italy it seems to have begun to flatten a little bit at last.

tchrist

I'm pretty sure that spotty half-assed measures won't be good enough to blunt this.

Because you just get a leaky checkerboard effect.

@Cerberus Yes, a little.

Their second derivatives are fluctuating closer to zero rather than being a constant positive.

Cerberus

@tchrist The checkerboard will result in huge local/regional differences, and the need to keep measures in place for a longer time.

tchrist

12:59 PM

@Cerberus It appears that Germany, as well as Korea and a few other non-totalitarian Asian countries, have handled things better than we have.

Maybe.

Blocks the garden pathing.

The American checkerboarding is a Republican quilting design that seems destined to kill more Republicans if it can. It's the most bizarre thing.

Cerberus

@tchrist That would solve the ambiguity in my sentence, but I think you can read the latter in two ways, one of which correct?

@tchrist Quite bizarre.

And yet I hear Trump's approval ratings have risen?

tchrist

> But even now, there remains a current of conservative opinion that wants to believe that all of this is overblown, that the experts are wrong about the likely death toll, that Trump should reopen everything as soon as possible, that the liberal media just wants to crash the American economy to take his presidency down.

Related: Who Are the Voters Behind Trump’s Higher Approval Rating?

The quote, though, was from Covid Conservatism.

> At the same time, the behavior of what you might call “normie” Republicans — not Very Online right-wingers or MAGA populists but longtime Fox News and talk-radio consumers — suggests that any such conservative mind-set is easily confounded by other factors, partisanship chief among them. The fact that the virus seemed poised to help Democrats and hurt the Trump administration, the fact that it was being hyped by CNN and played down by Hannity, the fact that Trump himself declined to take it seriously — all of this mattered more to many Republicans than the fear of foreign contamination th…

Today's news-cycle has latched on to the now-Trumpian proposition that something like a quarter-million Americans will die of this even if we do everything the very best that we can.

But they're missing two crucial points. One, when have we ever executed any plan perfectly? And two, when has Trump ever been right?

For one thing, that presupposes that we immediately flatten out the curve and that it stays that way for a very long time so that our health-care system is never overwhelmed anywhere.

For another, it requires a uniform, hard-assed response, not a patchwork quilt of leaks spilling over.

And it requires contact tracing possible only under regimes that keep track of people with mandatory electronic tracking of cell phone data and submission of verified personal information to anyone taking longer-range public transport like trains and planes.

So I don't think that number is a ceiling at all. I think it's a floor virtually impossible to achieve.

Ask me again in a month if I'm still around.

Cerberus

1:35 PM

@tchrist Hmm I'm not sure I like a logarismic scale with that title.

@tchrist Interestingly, our own right-wing populist parties have been clamouring for a total lock-down since the beginning (and they still won't get it).

tchrist

Yes, there appears to have been a very tiny dip in both the blue case line and red death line, but both lie within the historical range of variation from the mean rise. We don't know yet.

Cerberus

What are those lines?

America?

tchrist

More importantly, no matter what you do with a future blue line, the future red line seems destined to track the current blue line horizontally because of the 3–4 week inherent latency of finally dying after the registered time of testing or contraction.

@Cerberus yes

Cerberus

Probably too soon to tell.

tchrist

Probably.

Cerberus

1:49 PM

As the Stoics say, worry not about that which you cannot change yourself.

> Americans’ views of President Trump have risen slightly to reach record highs

Haha, that suddenly sounds less impressive.

Robusto

2:11 PM

@Cerberus These are people who believe he is handling the crisis well. In other words, they are fools who have not the eyes to see, the ears to hear, the minds to comprehend what a bloated ignoramus he is.

Also, it's old news.

A separate Morning Consult tracking poll shows Trump’s net approval on handling coronavirus — the difference between the percentage who approve and disapprove of his job performance — sliding 7 points off its high from March 20.

Polling is like New England weather. If you don't like it, count to ten.

Mitch

2:43 PM

@Cerberus 'Every little bit helps'

@Cerberus Cripes, I'm about to give the Alcoholics Anonymous prayer.

Anyway, the US government should have done a lot more a while ago, but we're here now and we can encourage them to do a lot more now. And we can do things ourselves now. Like make a mask for yourself.

But really I just came here to say, again, that:

Feb 4 '19 at 16:04, by Mitch

My friend keeps saying, "cheer up man it could be worse, you could be stuck underground in a hole full of water." I know he means well.

Tweeted by DadsPuns on February 3, 2019 at 5:55 PM

Cerberus

@Robusto Oh, good!

@Mitch I suppose some Stoics might agree with that.

@Mitch Also quite correct!

Robusto

Feb 4 '19 at 20:57, by Robusto

@Mitch People kept saying "Cheer up, things could be worse." So I cheered up and, sure enough, things got worse.

Cerberus

2:59 PM

Heh.

adamaero

5:10 PM

whole food plant-based
or
whole-food plant-based?

ok, I decided on the second one

semi-vegetarian
lacto-ovo vegetarian
lacto vegetarian
ovo vegetarian
flex (vegan at home)
strict vegetarian
--------------------------
^ This is going to be set in stone. I want to hear your thoughts about if this is hyphenated correctly. Also, I'm hung up on "flex vegan" (vegan at home or selective vegan). Not many people know about this type of vegetarian. I had put "flex-vegan (at home vegan)" but it's a bit redundant.

tchrist

@adamaero I thought stonecutters weren't considered essential workers.

adamaero

5:32 PM

lol

RegDwigнt

7:15 PM

> So, I'm writing an editorial for the NYT contest. It's due Friday. Is anyone (WHO IS IN HIGH SCHOOL OR COLLEGE HAS WRITING AND/OR AP LANGUAGE EXPERIENCE) willing to proofread my paper for me? Thanks! If so, here's a link

Geezis, what is that doing on MuseScore. Isn't ELU enough for them.

> Growing up eating deer, I lived 15 years of my life without knowing the hidden benefits hunting and hunters provide for the world. I hunted for the fun of it, and also for the prize of a great meal when you get the kill.

Well, at least the first paragraph is parseable. I'm not a fan of the topic, though.

So keep an eye on the NYT, then. If you see an editorial titled "A study in (blaze) orange: Why everyone should hunt their own food", this guy has won the contest.

Robusto

8:13 PM

A COVID-19 Admonition ***EXPLICIT

►

So ... stay the fuck at home!

Also, I guess you could say that COVID-19 went ... viral.

Cerberus

8:32 PM

@RegDwigнt Parseable, but not great.

Passable, perhaps.

Robusto

Or arseable, maybe.

skullpatrol

yes, CoV-2 is viral

Dirty Bomb Wannabe Pro

9:36 PM

Can I post a link to my question here since nobody's answering??

0

Q: Is this even correct?

How is the "I may" part in the following sentence correct? "may" is used for asking permissions politely but here it is not used as a question and yet it is politely structured? Am I missing smth here? "It is, therefore, requested you that I may kindly be relieved from 25.04.2008 after..."

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…