English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

@tchrist A reign?

Opposites depend on context.

tchrist

A monarchy sandwiched between two slices of republic.

Like when the elected Napoleon III seized the monarchy for a while.

Are you going to say, the Trump government?

I would call it a regime, and the interregnum is an interruption in that.

Like Akhenaten's brief interruption in the pharaonic continuum.

tchrist

1:00 AM

@Cerberus That's stretching the term, but yes. I've seen no governance.

1:16 AM

@RegDwigнt The big problem with this is, in a word, intellectualism. That's the problem I had with his view of the Mozart. Gould has all kinds of intellectual reasons for not liking Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps, or late Mozart piano sonatas, or what have you, but it all feels very contrived, a way to react to music that is intensely amusical. Which is very odd, because I know he feels music in his bones, and reacts to it intensely musically.

And saying Schoenberg was the greatest composer of the 20th century ... really? Really? So, Glenn, when you want to really feel some music you put on good old Arnold? That's what moves you? I seriously doubt that.

I loved Le Sacre from the first time I heard it because it spoke to me on a musical level. I didn't think about how it could be categorized by musicologists. I didn't think any extra-musical thoughts about it at all. I just felt the music.

I haven't listened to the last half yet because I got interrupted and now I don't have time, but I'll listen to that tomorrow, the part about Soviet music, &c. But I wanted to give you that reaction.

You have to remember that the 1950s were an era of intellectualism in music, art, writing, all that. And Gould is very much of his time in that. And I say fuck that. David Byrne said it best: stop making sense. And once you've done that, make music.

1:40 AM

Oh, and he likes Stravinsky's Agon. Probably because it employs Schoenbergian serialism? Gah.

There are two ways to dislike Stravinsky. One is to simply dislike him; the other is to like Agon. (Which is still Stravinsky, btw, but devoid of his youthful verve.)

2 hours later…

3:53 AM

> It is also of note that an estimated 17 of 100 new Parkinson's cases are linked to administration of either cinnarizine or Flunarizine,[1] making cinnarizine and drug-induced Parkinson's a serious issue.

Wow, a very "useful" drug.

4:10 AM

3 hours later…

Knight wants Loong back

7:15 AM

@Mitch Hi ! I need to talk to you about Constitution.

7:40 AM

A new criminal investigation launched against Yana Antonova, a pediatric surgreon, for reposting news on corruption. She was running for a local parliament in Russia and vote rigging was carried out to bar her from being elected. After she started a campaign to reconsider the results of the voting, a new criminal investigaion was launched against her. That's Putin's "stability" for you.

M.A.R.

7:59 AM

@CowperKettle crap, my dad takes some cinnarizin every once in a while

Xanne

8:56 AM

@Mitch flush/down-and-out

9:30 AM

@M.A.R. Oh! I'm sorry to hear that!

I came across a mention of the drug in a Telegram channel maintained by a friend, a psychiatrist.

He was raving against the use of the drug in babies.

1 hour later…

JTP - Apologise to Monica

10:37 AM

1 hour later…

11:43 AM

@CowperKettle - this raises new and troubling questions. Japanese syllable rate far higher than English, but their Information rate is lower? English has higher signal to noise within the language?

1 hour later…

Matt E. Эллен

12:51 PM

it's a more popular language, so it's been optimised

1:03 PM

@KnightwantsLoongback Sure. If it's about the comma in the 2nd amendment, then shoot.

@Xanne SAID THE VICAR TO THE PLUMBER

2:09 PM

@CowperKettle But this kind of arithmetic pays dividends.

Knight wants Loong back

2:38 PM

@Mitch Have you read the constitution? How can someone read it? It’s a sequence of rules

3:02 PM

@RegDwigнt: The latter portion of the recording has some good points. For one, he pooh-poohs the idea of a group of composers getting together to "decide" what kind of music they will produce. Yet I think he overestimates the capabilities of studio recording and underplays the effect an audience has on the musicians. He seems to wish for the power to turn the analytical side of his brain toward "perfecting" a recording in the studio.

Note that at the time of this interview, such things were already being done in the studio. In orchestral recordings, musicians were already being close-miked so that solos could be spotlighted and so forth.

I think if you were able to transport him to today and show him what can be done with ProTools and other music production software (MuseScore, perhaps), he might be able to experiment with it and "prove" his conjecture—or decide after all that there were other issues preventing the "ideal" performance from being realized.

Nevertheless, it was an interesting interview.

I do wonder what it is about Prokofiev that he sees as essentially "better" than Stravinsky. They are different, but both to me are fantastically brilliant.

3:24 PM

@CowperKettle This looks somewhat dubious...

"Information rate" is extremely complex and multi-interpretable.

It is philosophy, not hard science.

So the quantitivity of this study is suspect.

A Conversation with Igor Stravinsky, 1957

@Reg: BTW, I very well remember the day Stravinsky died. It was April, I was in Chicago, and I'd contracted some kind of flu. The weather had been warming, but that day a north wind blew in, very cold, and I remember shivering on the couch under a blanket while listening to WFMT's impromptu non-stop broadcast of his music.

Now this:

►

I do think he was past his peak, certainly, by the time of this film.

Also by the time of Agon, surely. Which this was.

I never liked the "Stravinsky conducts Stravinsky" recordings, btw. They were done when he had lost enthusiasm for his earlier works, or was indifferent to them, whatever, but they lacked the life that other conductors felt, understood and brought out.

4:13 PM

> that brings grist to his mill

A common expression?

@Cerberus Yes.

OK.

Matt E. Эллен

isn't it usuallly from not to?

With "brings"?

@MattE.Эллен Hmm but that wouldn't be logical?

Matt E. Эллен

I see

for

4:14 PM

@MattE.Эллен I usually hear it as "that's just grist for the [or his] mill."

It's funny, though: I never realised English and French had the same expression as Dutch.

Usually the.

@Robusto Yeah, without brings it sounds more familiar.

I do think his is important.

@Cerberus Yeah, but it's an understandable variation.

Sure.

In Dutch, it is also without bring, in the commonest variant.

But versions with carry also exist.

> faire venir de l'eau au moulin

Versions with water also exist in Dutch and German.

> das ist Wasser auf seine Mühle

Řídící

4:34 PM

What is the adverb for ballsy?

ballsily

@MattE.Эллен Thanks

3 hours later…

7:21 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Repeating characters in answer (80): Origin of the term 'Pom' by Lynch Steven on english.SE

7:44 PM

There's a lot going on here:
1) I've read parts of it that are common to read in American secondary education (parts of the Amendments, random selections of the main part). I also have a copy of the Federalist Papers (written to the public in support of various items in the constitution). I've only read the first couple pages of the intro and maybe part of one chapter.
2) It's easy to read, multiple online versions, here's one: https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript
3) "It's a sequence of rules"... sort of. It's a legal document, and half the legal profession is tryi…

@Cerberus It's common to the Ingvaionian mill culture.

@Mitch Oh, wow.

I didn't think there was a culture identified by its mills.

Ingvaionian?

8:20 PM

@Cerberus Another @Mitch nonce word.

So it would appear.

8:34 PM

> how do I get that like rough electric guitar sound. I dont know how to do that in musescore

Going by your description, you don't know how to do that on a real guitar, either.

@Robusto I think I recall you telling that story before.

@Robusto that was the most interesting bit for sure. Like, boggles the mind how much the world has changed in how little time.

@Robusto he was a hermit. Comes with the territory, or more to the point, the lack of it.

North Sea Germanic

North Sea Germanic, also known as Ingvaeonic , is a postulated grouping of the northern West Germanic languages that consists of Old Frisian, Old English and Old Saxon and their descendants. Ingvaeonic is named after the Ingaevones, a West Germanic cultural group or proto-tribe along the North Sea coast that was mentioned by both Tacitus and Pliny the Elder (the latter also mentioned that tribes in the group included the Cimbri, the Teutoni and the Chauci). It is thought of as not a monolithic proto-language but as a group of closely related dialects that underwent several areal changes in relative...

We think, and bemoan, that we all live in bubbles today. But compared to that, his bubble was the fucking Bastille.

@Mitch Ah, I see.

@Robusto that's a good quote.

It's so obvious

8:39 PM

I always knew those people below the Rhine, those damned Franks, were different.