English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2020-07-01

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12:24 AM

@TerranSwett You can own debt.

@TerranSwett OK, but it is the word "own" that means it must be you who is the creditor, isn't it?

Would you really say a corporation "owns" accounts payable?

Base 12 - Why Counting In Twelves Would Make Life Easier

@Cerberus ^

Why not 8!

I remember we had a conversation about this.

Because 12 is cooler.

Oh, did we?

12:35 AM

I believe we did.

It is true that 12 is easily divisible by the first two prime numbers.

But not by the third.

(Discounting the number 1.)

@Robusto This is all true.

It could be argued that the increase in divisibility (good) outweighs the increase in digits (bad).

In history, many systems based on twelve have in fact been in use.

I would love it.

Many Roman units were divided in twelves.

Btw, here's an interesting ad:

Like an uncia.

I suppose lots of Republicans agree that Trump is bad.

It's why they never wanted him to win the primaries.

But they feel their party's victory outweighs the shame of Trump's victory, I suppose.

12:47 AM

They are for their party first, their country second. Or third. Or fourth.

Ah, here's what I was looking for:

Jul 26 '18 at 20:41, by Robusto

@tchrist Which is why 1) we should have a duodecimal numbering system instead of merely decimal, 2) a 12-inch ruler is significantly easier for carpenters to use than a meter stick, 3) not even Napoleon could make people divide the day into 10 time periods, and 4) nobody can improve on 360° as the measurement of a circle.

1:24 AM

@Robusto Right, hence why "I own thousands of dollars of corporate debt" unambiguously means that I own corporate bonds or something.

Correct.

Debt market vs. Equity market: What's the difference?

3 hours later…

4:16 AM

-5

Q: Linguists question, please?

Is there a homograph or other category words like, "catchup/ketchup" would be categorized under? Thanks!

discussion tags asking-questions

Pun words.

Brace yourselves, ELU

4:44 AM

> Laakso Health Centre in Helsinki is trialing a new brethalyser test to see if it gives a reliable coronavirus diagnosis. The results are available in just two minutes and at a cost of €2 it would be the fastest and cheapest Covid-19 test in the world.

Wow

2 hours later…

6:40 AM

Great song

7:00 AM

@CowperKettle Yes it is—I have an album of theirs but hadn’t heard this one before.

We could use that Covid-19 test.

500 miles Back to 1960s A song is from Japan. .High quality

1 hour later…

8:34 AM

GT rocks

user image

4

4 hours later…

12:24 PM

@CowperKettle Nah, nothing is ever that easy in life.

See, we wanted to dig deeper than classical mechanics and the simplest we ended up with was might or might not

1 hour later…

1:51 PM

@Gigili Haha, excellent example.

2:50 PM

@M.A.R. How do you know? They would not embark on a project if they thought it was not worthwhile

@CowperKettle I'm not making a logical argument of course, just that testing is often not without merit in science, but the road has always been longer than we thought.

In 1910, they thought we're almost done finding things. In 1810, they thought the same. So did they in 1610.

I dunno what happened in 1710 but probably the same story

Maybe they were looking for jokes about how they thought they'd reached the boundaries of science at 1610.

We were amazed that movies can be in 3D in 2010.

I went to Avatar, but I could not fully take in the splendour because my eyesight is very different in two eyes.

I could see some 3d effect but that was tiresome for the eyes.

I wish they succeed with the blood test. That would be a salvation

user image

- Will the future come out to play?
- There is no future.

3:38 PM

user image

From a bicycle ride I just took

4:19 PM

@CowperKettle It's tiresome for mine too. The splendor, 3D or not, is two seconds of a movie. I could watch your tree pics instead. I'm not watching a movie for its splendor.

3 hours later…

6:54 PM

Dafuq is @RegDwigнt? He shouldn't get to drop a 90-minute Bach bomb on us and then not follow up.

3 hours later…

9:35 PM

Fellow Traveler

10:13 PM

@Robusto well yes, precisely that for starters. And then there were all the other bits just like that. Like that nameless writer chick telling us her opinion on mathematicians vs. scientists. As if anyone even gives a fuck. Stick to your guns, Gardiner.

@Robusto I never even realized I posted it here. I must've been drunk or something.

Currently listening to Menuhin and Ostrakh playing the double violin concerto. Because in the lesson today my teacher said that's what we'd be playing next time.

Ugh. So many notes.

I literally can't even remember where the middle C is.

But she insisted I am ready now.

Well then.

@Cerberus ounces, inches, or snow leopards?

LinkSys.

Oh, but I did like the bit where Bach wrote the impossible bassoon line and then called the player a faggot for not pulling it off first try, and then they fought it out in the town square using daggers.

See, all the advantages of being a Bach. Fun fun fun.

I'm still kinda stuck at stage one. Writing faggot lines nobody can even play.

@RegDwigнt Sweet revenge.

I'll keep you posted if there's any progress on the dagger front.

10:31 PM

@RegDwigнt I thought he called him a Shrek-licking fagottisten or some such, which really confused me because then Shrek never appeared in that movie after all.

> He had twenty children.

Wow, that must have bankrupted him! How did he survive?

Ten of them died.

Well yes, and it wasn't daggers either. But I suck at fencing terms. Despite having read The Fencing Master by Perez-Reverte.

That's not childhood decimation, it's childhood semimation.

Bach Double Violin Concerto - Yehudi Menuhin And David Oistrakh.

Bach - Concerto for two violins in D minor BWV 1043 - Sato and Deans | Netherlands Bach Society

What a difference, mind.

Worlds apart.

listens

Just listen to the first eight bars. Just the first two, even.

@Gigili that is phenomenal.

10:35 PM

Recording technology? Tempi perduti?

Well, that, too.

@RegDwigнt It was a rapier.

There's a lot more color in the second recording.

My dad would always correct me when I confused a rapier with an épée.

So that much I never forgot.

Except that in English they are the same thing because fucking languages.

What a poignant lesson.

Exactly. One is for stabbing, the other for cutting. Not the same thing at all.

One is a sword, the other a big needle.

10:39 PM

A rapier is thin, not heavy.

@tchrist The first two?

@Cerberus Snow leopards are two as well: Uncia uncia. :) Although now I think they've placed them in Panthera so they're closer to tigers and leopards instead of to lynxes, which themselves are onzas and onças in Spanish and Portuguese respectively.

Bubo bubo.

The plague owl.

Yeah I'm a bubo scandiacus, thankfully.

10:42 PM

Because Finland is really part of Russia.

Everything is part of Russia. Haven't you read the updated Constitution.

You really should've. You wrote the actual thing. Just like you did for Germany.

We're now just making amends.

Only so long as someone can say a word or two of Russian there.

Which is trouble anywhere harboring both intelligentsia and refuseniks at once.

Hmm odd name.

Anyway I never meant to stick around. Last choir rehearsal before summer break tomorrow. And I've only listened to Cum Sancto Spiritu 248 times today.

@RegDwigнt No shit.

10:45 PM

Gardiner should make them sing faster so I can listen to it more.

Do you take any special measures during rehearsal?

I usually start at measure 1 unless otherwise specified by the conductor.

@RegDwigнt My eyes, they bled like the sea midway through it. Then I played your second video, and it was all Cum Sancto so there it all went again.

Yeah that one was like a full minute longer than the Gardiner version.

...

Praecautions.

10:47 PM

It's all a rush.

Starting there.

There's something about the Crucifixus. The long bass line.

I mean, singing was singled out as potentially dangerous with respect to infecting others.

Especially in choirs.

@tchrist Well it's the actual end of the actual mass. It is supposed to be the pinnacle of everything he ever wrote.

So all those jokers on YouTube saying it's way too fast don't understand anything about nothing.

It is supposed to be nayplusultra.

No Et expecto?

Or the last part he wrote?

That I knew.

@tchrist yeah that one is all mine. 13 times.

@RegDwigнt It's an odd line, bonus 4th.

10:52 PM

@tchrist it was his application for Leipzig. Who were Catholics. So they only have Kyrie and Gloria and that is it. Catholics don't believe and so they have no Credo.

Non credo.

Exactly. No Sanctus/Benedictus, no Agnus Dei.

He wrote it in two halves, once for admission.

Which is why the first two parts are so fucking long all by themselves. Because they are a complete Mass in their own right.

But then he remembered that he's always been a lutheran, so he still wrote the rest but never sent it to Leipzig.

The "old church" Lutherans are very liturgical.

10:54 PM

So that's how you must sing the Cum Sancto Spiritu. As the brilliant finale to the greatest thing he ever wrote.

No holding back.

I know. It's an explosion.

The Catholics don't know that you still have another 90 minutes of singing after that.

And you won't get to the punchline fireworks after the hang on Et Expecto if you stop there.

I have to admit, the Sanctus never did as much for me as apparently it was meant to.

There's a lot of dissonance there. And not the Bach kind, the Rachmaninov kind.

Every hair on my body stands at attention for the Cum Sancto Spiritu. I don't even have to hear it played or intone it myself. My mind suffices to generate that effect simply replaying it in my head.

10:58 PM

Gloria is all Bach all the time. And then it begins to disintegrate, as it were. Or progress, if you will. Jumping two hundred years ahead.

It's very odd.

The Gloria feels more "together".

The Confiteor feels like you've stepped into a world yet to see the Trecento.

The numerology holds it all together throughout.

Always tempus imperfectum for deity. Always D major.

The brightest of keys.

Gloria, Cum Sancto, Crucifixus, all in threes.

Crucifixus is in the subdominant because it's the human that's getting sacrificed and not the deity.

And the 13 repeats with the last one being different.

Or almost D major.

11:03 PM

Back in the day people would listen for that.

Really?

Just like in Mozart's time they'd listen for the ponte and monte and the romanesca.

@tchrist well yes, it was the idiom of the time. A lingua franca. From a king to a paysant.

And even for the most clueless, you'd just throw in the trumpets to drive the point home.

Wakes them up.

The opening of Gloria. Heavenly music in every respect. Doesn't take a genius to understand. Doesn't need to, is the whole point.

You don't need a sermon after listening to the music.

Isn't the first half of the Credo, not the fast part, in a near-mode?

No, of course not.

11:07 PM

I am not very knowledgeable about the Credo yet. We've only had one first quick pass.

Ah ok.

It's still six months away. We have time. And so we take it.

I think it's in mixolydian so it sounds like it's more ancient.

But I think you get a normal sharp 7th once it gets faster.

I'd have to pull the score.

Oh look here's a score.

Bach: Mass in B minor - Credo in unum Deum - Herreweghe

Well I've been holding mine this whole time.

But I'm just no good at telling all them modes.

I can only ever really remember Locrian, and that's it.

But of course nobody ever writes in Locrian. Sucks to be me.

Mixolydian is like major but has a flat seventh in comparison, so there's no leading tone per se.

11:12 PM

Yeah I'm always getting it confused with Dorian.

So it would be C natural under a D. But that's not what I'm seeing here. He's often using a chromatic 4th.

Well a raised fourth is how I remember Lydian.

A tritonus I will always remember. Hence the Locrian, come to think of it.

> Five-part chorus (Soprano I & II, Alto, Tenor, Bass) in A Mixolydian, no autograph tempo marking, cut time .

Ok right, it's A mix not D mix.

But sevenths raised or lowered, who the fuck cares. I was raised on Romantic music, doesn't make a difference there, every chord is a seventh chord of some description.

Right A major (V/dominant relative to D) needs G# so flatting that like I'm seeing there leads to A mix.

So he gets to brighten it up and return to D for the fast part.

11:16 PM

I just never think in modes. Not even when listening to, like, Sting. Who's all modes all the time.

I only care if it sounds nice.

Scarborough Faire is in Dorian.

I could write you a piece in mixolydian and never even know. And even if you told me, I'd instantly forget again.

i-IV-v

Not i-iv-v.

That's the difference. So that makes it feel uplifting in the subdominant.

Well yes, that's more like my language, except for each of the numbers I always think in a complete chord rather than a single note.

You are intended to.

I wrote those meaning as chords.

11:19 PM

I see.

In Dorian, the root and the dominant, i and v, are minor. But the subdominant is major, so IV.

Yeah. And that's exactly why I can never remember any of them modes.

Because all I'm thinking is, hey I'm in C minor but let me just play this F major chord to throw you off.

Scarborough Fair - The King's Singers

Yes I know the song.

I've watched Lost In Translation just a hundred times too many.

In addition to just listening to Simon all the time.

You can run Greensleeves in Dorian, too. I think it sounds better that way, but maybe that's me.

11:23 PM

And yet I never once thought of it as being in any mode.

I just think in terms of purely aeolian plus a wonky chord or two for color.

Good enough.

Greensleeves to me is just pentatonic.

considers

@tchrist well yes, it absolutely is. Which is why when every ten years or so I will try to force myself to learn all them mode names again, I always fail. Because it's good enough without.

It's just a different paradigm. But the music is the same.

Like you people calling an H a B.

It's just a different way of ordering things in your head.

So for you a B flat is quite literally a B flattened. For me it is not a flat of anything. It is just a completely different note from a whole nother universe.

It's black not white. :)

11:32 PM

I can still play in F. It's just that there is no B flat in F. Because there is no B in there. You know.

Except on a harpsichord. Then it's the other way around.

So when I decide to play an H chord in F, I am thinking of it as H. Not as a raised B flat. And so to you it's lydian, and to me it is not.

Two Greek tetrachords, pasted together.

With a stepping stone between them.

B double flat is enharmonic to what, H flat??

Yeah and then you start digging into Japanese and you just give up altogether.

Miyako-bushi and ryu-kyu and ritsu and what's even that other one I forget.

Min-yo.

So you can just do that or you can say fuck that, and just re-analyze it as Western minor pentatonic over mixolydian chords or whatever.

Who cares if it sounds pweddy.

Last year I read Persichetti's 20th Century Harmony. This year I completely forgot all of it again.

You just need to keep things ordered in your own head somehow. But your head is yours alone so you can do whatever.

We call that the uncommon practice period.

11:39 PM

Well it was a damn long time the more you think of it.

We literally went from Tchaikovsky to Hindemith to Glass to Max Martin.

And John Williams copied them all.

Anyway. I must be off. Way past my bedtime.

Stop at Txai Guy, I beg you.

Where's Cerberus anyway, I thought he wanted to take over.

No, take under.

He's from the nether regions.

Guarding the sticks.

@Cerberus yo dawg, we herd you liek to chat so we put some chat in your chat so you can chat while you chat.

Alas, he'll never even get that 15-year-old reference.

Archaeologists don't think in decades.

Nighty-night!

Txaicovski is the Catty spelling, not the Doggy one.

11:43 PM

Gezondhijd!

> Orquestra Simfònica Sant Cugat
Mozart & Txaicovski
Diumenge, 18 Febrer , 12:00 h a 13:00 h
Vilassar de Mar - Sala Carrau

Suite del "Trencanous" de Txaicovski
Laia Barberà, arpa solista

Mozart & Txaicovski
ORQUESTRA DE CAMBRA & ARPA
18 Febrer 2018 - 19 h

Holy shit we had 50,000 new coronavirus cases today.

closes that window

Vlad is never going to catch up at that rate.

Trump just said he's got a black mask that makes him look like the Lone Ranger. I'm sure Stormy Daniels loved it, but just putting something around your eyes isn't going to stop you from spitting on people.

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