English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

skullpatrol

17:09

nothing happened next

Robusto

@skullpatrol Black resigned after 1. Nf3? That's pretty pessimistic.

skullpatrol

the glass is twice as big as it needs to be :-)

Robusto

So sayeth the engineer.

skullpatrol

17:28

Pats Chiefs game got cancelled

Cam Newton tested positive

Lucky Brady left

who knows

Knight

17:44

@tchrist Hmmm... google search for it shows Nitrogen Fluoride, can you please elaborate it a little more?

skullpatrol

your username is the same as the chess piece which is abbreviated N; the f3 is chess notation for where the knight moved to

So he's playing chess with you and your move is next, pal

Knight (chess)

The knight (♘,♞) is a piece in the game of chess and is represented by a horse's head and neck. Each player starts with two knights, which are located between the rooks and bishops. == History == The knight, along with the king and the rook, has the oldest defined movement of any chess piece, its movement being unchanged since the invention of chaturanga in India around the 6th century. Similar pieces are found in almost all games of the chess family. The ma of xiangqi and janggi are slightly more restricted; conceptually, the piece is considered to pass through the adjacent orthog...

Færd

(I haven't checked if it's for real)

Knight

18:13

@skullpatrol :) it’s hard to play chess with code words

CowperKettle

18:31

Byron Bay to Cairns is like Moscow to Yekaterinburg, about 1800 km.

Hobart seems to be a great place to live from April to October. Rarely goes higher than 25 °C

tchrist

18:49

@Robusto Exactly.

Ask a simple question....

0

A: Can “was not ᴠᴇʀʙing” and “will not ᴠᴇʀʙ” ever be exact equivalents in reported speech?

The short answer is that no, they do not mean the same thing. The first with an inflection of the progressive construction be playing is a simple statement of the evidentiary future, but the second with an inflection of will play is a statement of a future that the speaker insists must come to pa...

“I'm not playing today” ≠ “I refuse to play today”

Usually.

These are slippery modes, and casual speech is not always careful speech.

@CowperKettle Byron Bay and Cairns are both absolutely lovely places to visit. I recommend staying some lazy number of days unnumbered in each.

What the hell, in the time it took me to write that answer, Team Positive has pulled ahead of Team Negative with a score of 10–8!

Pass the forks.

Notice how they're all listed in order of their rank in the peerage.

Ah, the lowly-ranked of Team Negative aren't listed there. They mention there are at least 15 more they didn't mention.

CowperKettle

@tchrist Thank you for the advice!

tchrist

Honestly, they are both wonderful, wonderful places that can only be experienced.

CowperKettle

Yekaterinburg is also nice in late May to late June

tchrist

Oh I hadn't thought upon the season.

Færd

19:05

@tchrist I hope the asker can appreciate your answer.

tchrist

@CowperKettle Oh oh oh, Yekaterinburg is only in far west Asia, not at all Pacific facing in the far east!

Færd

It's hard to think of a standalone I will not do such and such as anything but a deontic.

tchrist

@Færd There's a certain formality to it, isn't there?

Færd

I think so, yes.

tchrist

I said I wouldn't let her marry him, and I didn't.

I will not let you marry him.

Færd

19:09

> If my car crashes again, I will not make it to the wedding reception.

Sounds off.

Should be I won't be able to or something.

tchrist

If my navigation app crashes again, I'm not going to make it to the wedding reception.

Færd

That's better!

tchrist

"To make it to" is hard to render deontic.

> I will make it to the wedding reception on time, so help me God!

Færd

@tchrist or "not make it to", rather!

tchrist

@Færd You're right.

It’s as though there were somehow something inherently evidentiary about not make it to.

Færd

19:15

You can't not make it on purpose.

tchrist

I really feel a great deal of sympathy for the monumental task it is for speakers of only non-Indo-European languages trying to learn their first one such.

Færd

It's hard either way, trust me.

tchrist

Exactly.

You're a native Farsi speaker though, right, not Arabic?

Færd

Yes. Arabic was the first non-IE language I learned.

But I was exposed to it as a child, so it wasn't hard for me.

tchrist

I can believe it.

Ah. I've never had any.

Exposure to a non-IE language, let alone childhood exposure.

Færd

19:18

But I did teach it to middle and high schoolers and it was an agonizing experience for them.

CowperKettle

Did you know that 20% of Switzerland's export is screensaver photos?

tchrist

I didn't grow up near enough to the Indian reservations in the north of my state, though I doubt that would have made any difference.

@CowperKettle Bits are a funny thing to count as an export.

CowperKettle

Word of the day: encopresis (from Greek en- ‘in’ + kopros ‘dung’.)

Færd

@tchrist It could have helped a linguistically curious person!

tchrist

@Færd Yes, I do rather think if I had lived on or near the Navajo Nation in the Four Corners that I would have learned something of the nature of the Athabaskan languages.

Færd

19:24

There's this language that half our relatives on my mother's side speak. I heard them speak it all the time. But I was never curious enough to learn it.

Maybe it didn't consider it necessary, or prestigious, or worthy.

A child's attitude has a decisive effect on what it learns.

Ah and they never spoke it to me. Always Farsi. Even in the middle of their conversations. Signaling again that it's not something I'd ever need to learn.

So I didn't learn it beyond the basic level.

tchrist

@Færd Would this have been a non-IE language?

> “The president’s vitals over the last 24 hours were very concerning and the next 48 hours will be critical in terms of his care,” Mr. Meadows told reporters outside Walter Reed Medical Military Center, where the president was flown on Friday evening and will remain for at least a few days. “We’re still not on a clear path to a full recovery.”

He may never make a full recovery, even if he lives.

CowperKettle

metaphysis (μετά (metá, “after”) + Ancient Greek φύσις (phúsis, “growth”), equivalent to meta- +‎ -physis.) - The part of a long bone that grows during development.

But why "meta"? It means "after". Hence, "after growth"?

Færd

@tchrist Just checked. Fortunately not.

tchrist

@CowperKettle I don't know. I am not an anatomist or physiologist.

Færd

Twitter is deleting tweets that wish for Trump's demise.

tchrist

19:38

@Færd Not wholly unsurprising.

Færd

Or is restricting such tweets somehow.

> Twitter Comms
@TwitterComms
tweets that wish or hope for death, serious bodily harm or fatal disease against *anyone* are not allowed and will need to be removed. this does not automatically mean suspension.

tchrist

No move by the Democrats could conceivably surpass this self-indictment of the current regime. All Biden has ever had to do is stand (far) back and let Trump self-destruct all on his very own.

CowperKettle

> From helm to sea they saw him leap,
As arrow from the string,
And dive into the water deep,
As mew upon the wing.

Færd

They've gotten lucky like that.

tchrist

@Færd The harder you work the luckier you get.

@CowperKettle Wait, I thought it was a she?

Færd

19:41

In this case it's the other party that's worked hard for its own defacement.

tchrist

@CowperKettle Oh that wasn't Elwing's leap into mew-form.

That comes later.

CowperKettle

I'm just reviewing my Anki records. ))

tchrist

No no, that's just the echo of the earlier tale.

Færd

It's hard to keep up with Anki. You need to work out a daily routine, or the reviews get out of hand fast.

CowperKettle

Yes

tchrist

19:44

That's Amroth and Nimrodel, not Eärendil and Elwing.

CowperKettle

tchrist

> In might the Fëanorians
that swore the unforgotten oath
brought war into Arvernien
with burning and with broken troth;
and Elwing from her fastness dim
then cast her in the waters wide,
but like a mew was swiftly borne,
uplifted o'er the roaring tide.

CowperKettle

And here's for the whole collection.

Færd

I think that's twice my débit.

tchrist

Tolkien had misplaced that part of the Song of Eärendil when he published The Lord of the Rings.

Færd

19:48

When he first published it?

CowperKettle

Because I add an average of 3 cards a day

tchrist

It falls right after "unheralded he homework sped" and right before "Through Evernight he back was borne".

@Færd Yes, his son later found the revised version lost among earlier papers.

Færd

@CowperKettle I do round about that much for a month and then give it a respite for another.

tchrist

There are just all kinds of subtle changes that most readers never had the pleasure of perusing! Alas.

Færd

But I have started using Ankie just a couple years ago, at most.

tchrist

19:50

    So for the truly curious, here I present the unpublished version pasted
    up side-by-side with the published one.  I've added blank lines to
    offset the extra verse/stanza to facilitate a parallel reading.  The
    left-hand column is the published version, the right-hand, the
    unpublished. I've added mark-up in the first-column, perhaps
    reminiscent of `diff -u`, to help see where things have been updated
    using this schema:

 +  If it's a new verse from the new 8-line group, there's a plus over

Færd

Maybe a year ago.

@tchrist They would only matter to readers with a tremendous amount of dedication.

tchrist

@Færd CJRT said his father looked hard for the intended version but couldn't find it, so had to publish the old one.

CowperKettle

I haven't yet finished memorizing Shakespeare's sonnets, so I've no time for perusing Tolkien's poems ))

tchrist

@CowperKettle That's a whole lot of sonneteering!

CowperKettle

I memorized these by February 2019

I have memorized some more by now.

I need to update the list )))

tchrist

19:55

At the first Perl Conference when we first met in person back before the internet had ought but text messages, we discovered a wondrous and most remarkable thing. We discovered that many of us there could recite many of the poems and songs from The Lord of the Rings by heart.

CowperKettle

I finished memorizing "Tired with all these, for restful death I cry" a couple of days ago.

tchrist

@CowperKettle WOW!

Have you read John Donne's sonnets?

CowperKettle

Very little. I seem to have memorized one of his sonnets.

I don't recall which.

hellopoetry.com/poem/4122/the-dissolution

I memorized this one by John Donne

A beautiful poem. But long ago, maybe in 2016

I checked. No, I haven't memorized sonnets by Donne. I need to read them ))

tchrist

Oh! Many of us know the one about the numberless infinities of souls to their scattered bodies going.

CowperKettle

@tchrist Maybe because it was a very popular book just before that?

tchrist

20:01

@CowperKettle No, it was simply the culture. This occurred in 1997 in Monterey, California Alta. Such memorizations though are oft the passion of youth.

So a couple decades earlier than that still for us.

CowperKettle

I read only one poem by Tolkien in English. This one, in 1999:

tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_wind_was_on_the_withered_heath

I remember "the wind went on from West to East, and movement in the forest ceased"

I just found it by googling this line.

tchrist

He was quite partial to tetrameter.

It was more like the older tradition than the newer.

It's a meter of ballads and hymns.

CowperKettle

nods

tchrist

Who the hell wants to set pentameter to the ponderous 5/4 time? Not I!

It's like a hippo wandering around with an extra foot.

Robusto

@skullpatrol Yeah. It was a problematic game for the pool I'm in.

@tchrist Tchaikovsky could do it.

tchrist

20:08

And yes, it's Russian.

Of course.

Robusto

Aug 28 at 0:28, by Robusto

He makes 5/4 sound absolutely waltz-like.

tchrist

No hippos?

Robusto

@tchrist Ah, Mussorgsky.

Bilder Einer Ausstellung.

tchrist

Bulgarian composers like odd rhythms.

Hungarian ones, also.

Bartók. Kodály.

It's something about their dances.

A different kind of waltz, that's for sure.

Robusto

And then there's Stravinsky, who could have a different time signature for lots of successive measures.

tchrist

20:14

fusionmagazine.org/…

> If you are familiar with the melody from Westside Story, “I wanna live in America” (one measure of 6/8 followed by one measure of 3/4), imagine it as one long measure of 12/8. This is more akin to the beat ratios encountered in Balkan meters, where the dotted quarter beats co-exist with the quarter beats in the same measure in various combinations.

Gee, and who wrote the music for Westside Story? :)

Stravinksi's best buddy, Bernstein.

Robusto

Bernstein borrowed heavily from Stravinsky. Also from Gershwin and Ravel.

Bernstein was a synthesizer, in the non-electronic meaning of that term.

Did I ever tell you what Stephen Sondheim told me about the collaboration he did with Bernstein on West Side Story?

Anyway, he said that Bernstein was open to Sondheim's musical ideas, and he was open to Bernstein's lyrics in certain cases. It was really a joint effort across the board.

I would love to have been a fly on the wall watching all that happen.

Cerberus

20:30

@tchrist Oh, my.

Don't count him out just yet.

It could go like Johnson.

A few days in intensive care without artificial breathing, then a few weeks' recovery.

And he was administered those antibodies.

tchrist

Yes, and Remdesivir. Neither is any sort of guarantee.

Isn't that a curiously unTrumpian statement from his press secretary though?

> Two people close to the White House said in separate interviews with The New York Times that the president had trouble breathing on Friday and that his oxygen level dropped, prompting his doctors to give him supplemental oxygen while at the White House and transfer him to Walter Reed where he could be monitored with better equipment and treated more rapidly in case of trouble.

Trouble breathing sure seems like a clear case of trouble to me.

And now Chris Christie has it too.

No more debate coaching, eh.

The positivity timeline is more suggestive of the triggering event being Saturday at the Rose Garden, not Tuesday at the debate in Cleveland.

Incubation is 2–14 days, but the most likely is 7 or 8 days, with 21 at the outside.

Plus you can look at the positives who were at just one of the two events.

Robusto

Biden was tested after the debate, though. He showed up negative.

I hope Fate doesn't have another sucker punch for us before the election.

tchrist

nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/02/us/politics/…

They trace the positives and each event's attendees. Wasn't the debate. They were infected before then. Still might be more to come stemming from the debate though.

This is why everybody has to go into quarantine until the question of their infection's incubation has passed.

Robusto

Trump's doctor referred to Trump as "slightly overweight" ... uh, sorry, Doc, but you just lost all credibility.

tchrist

He's slightly obese. The polite say overweight for obese.

Robusto

20:45

He's more than slightly obese.

He got his first doctor to say he was 239 lbs., which, given the Trump discount on truth, puts him at 280 to 290.

tchrist

Chris Wallace is waiting till Monday to be tested, a week after the debate.

Biden will keep retesting.

So will Pence. Daily.

I still think this is a bigger shoot-yourself-in-foot moment for his reëlection than anything the other side could ever have pulled off.

Robusto

Still, every day he is not running his mouth is a day he is not reminding us what a troll he is.

tchrist

You know.

Robusto

Yeah, I know, but you'd be surprised at the people who, after a week, will say, "Well, he's not that bad."

tchrist

If you look at it closely, the contact tracing from the Times strongly suggests that Trump himself was Patient 0 in all this. McDaniel didn't go to the Rose Garden party nor to the presidential debate Tuesday. We was with Trump the Friday before though. So was Hope Hicks, who was one of the first to report being sick.

Of course, it may not have been one of the principals. It could easily have been some unannounced attaché from the Secret Service, or the cook or the butler.

Other positives' first intersection was the Rose Garden though.

Best check the grandchildren.

The two senators didn't overlap till Saturday.

Mechanical ventilation would automatically and by sheer definition instantly mean President Pence (acting).

That Trump's cohabitant son Barron hasn't tested positive is a testament to how warm that relationship clearly is.

n't

Robusto

21:12

@tchrist It would be different if Barron were Barroness.

tchrist

@Robusto Now, now. Don't prejudge his heel-and-skirt preferences.

> Donald Trump’s doctor, Dr Sean Conley, has confirmed in a memo shared with the White House press pool that he “incorrectly used the term ‘seventy two hours’ instead of day three’ and ‘forty eight hours’ instead of ‘day two’” when briefing the press on the president’s condition outside Walter Reed medical center earlier today.

There, that's what I thought was happening.

Stupid fencepost errors.

> CNN reports that US attorney general William Barr will not quarantine despite coming into close contact with members of Donald Trump’s circle who have since tested positive for Covid-19. The Justice Department said Barr will not quarantine as he has tested negative for the virus.

Hilarious.

Talk about not getting the memo!

That just isn't how quarantining works. Or testing.

He's only negative on the other side of quarantine. Not now.

Right now he is in an unknowable state.

The entire notion of what quarantine is, what it's for, is utterly lost on these people.

It's for waiting out the incubation period to see whether someone gets sick.

Why are people so stupid?

Robusto

21:34

@tchrist If you can answer that question, there's a Nobel prize in it for you.

M.A.R.

22:09

@Robusto what's his height?

There's no tax on weight though

Robusto

@M.A.R. 6' 3".

1.9 meters

M.A.R.

Didn't expect that

But eh, puts the 'bully' side into perspective

Robusto

Yeah. But like any other bully, he runs away when confronted by someone strong.

M.A.R.

Well who said there's any muscle in the 240 lbs?

Apparently he takes pride in not exercising?

Jesus Christ. Or Muhammad Abdullah, but that doesn't seem common in English.

Robusto

@M.A.R. 240 is way understating it. As I say above, he's easily 280 or 290.

M.A.R.

22:16

He's the perfect embodiment of every bad trait you will do well to remove from your life. Political or not. He's amazing in that.

Robusto

239 is Trump's transparent lie, because it would put him at his height just under the demarcation between overweight and obese.

M.A.R.

@Robusto he'd look much more fit with 190 centimeters

Robusto

@M.A.R. He is just the worst.

M.A.R.

He's taller than me, so weird

Like, you could say Sauron was cunning. The Lannisters are brave. Voldemort was Ralph Fiennes. Hannibal is a great orator. The Joker is a philosopher. Darth Vader had some heart left still.

You can't call Trump any of those. Anyone who praises his Dunning-Kruger is a democrat who wants to praise the opposition to heighten themselves. The last arrow in the quiver was he's a businessman, and even that turned out to be false aggrandizement

Robusto

@M.A.R. I don't understand what you mean by "Anyone who praises his Dunning-Kruger is a democrat who wants to praise the opposition to heighten themselves."

M.A.R.

22:25

@Robusto I mean, some Democrats have the tendency to praise Trump for his tactics or his TV host performance.

Robusto

I don't know of any who do.

M.A.R.

I can't name anyone in particular, I wasn't paying THAT much attention. But I'm pretty sure they exist

Certain not during the election months

tchrist

23:34

@M.A.R. Inshallah = Ojalá [oxaˈla] = Oxalá [u̥ʃɐˈla]

Try the links; they are not what you may imagine.

tchrist

23:45

@M.A.R. Sauron was the lord of false gifts, a flattering deceiver, a two-faced liar, a perfidious betrayer, a spreading horror, an abominable dread. His name is Quenya for the Abhorred One. This seems an appellation not wholly inappropropriate to the current tyrant, except that Sauron was never stupid.

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