English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

12:12 AM

@Robusto Usually they go into a bag.

12:28 AM

The Indian Times reports that Nalgene is producing a specially-branded water bottle some of whose proceeds will go towards getting water to those who lack it.

> Jaden Redhair, 20, designed the exclusive Tó éí iiná water bottle in collaboration with Nalgene. Photo courtesy of Nalgene.

So much for nominative determinism, eh?

Kid looks more like a Redshirt than a Redhair to me.

The PBS Newshour had a segment tonight explaining how they couldn't send sick people home to places that had no running water. Something like that.

Robusto

12:51 AM

@tchrist Really? I thought it was a box.

Robusto

1:41 AM

Putin warns that US will be controlled by Americans

> Asserting that his “darkest fears have been confirmed,” Vladimir Putin warned that the United States is on the verge of being controlled by Americans.

Speaking to reporters at the Kremlin, the Russian President alleged that President-elect Joe Biden was “the handpicked instrument of those who would seek to advance American interests.”

“Joe Biden is no more and no less than a puppet of the American people,” he charged.

tchrist

3:14 AM

@Robusto A bag is a particular sort of data structure, just as a queue is. It has different properties though.

Robusto

@tchrist Yes, I know. I was just extending the wordplay. Subclassing it, as it were.

CowperKettle

3:50 AM

Things that Donald Trump and a drug dealer might say. "Mexico is not sending their best".

Faheem Mitha

5:41 AM

@Robusto I thought this was the Onion.

But in fact it's the New Yorker.

@tchrist There's that unfortunate term, Indian, again.

@CowperKettle Aren't corporations for-profit entities?

Nihar Karve

7:24 AM

@CowperKettle This is beautiful

SmokeDetector

8:37 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad ip for hostname in body, bad keyword in body, blacklisted website in body, link at beginning of body, pattern-matching website in body, +1 more (433): 8 Stylish Ideas For Your Greenboozt CBD Germany by user406668 on english.SE

CowperKettle

8:56 AM

Patients on medical ventilators in Sverdlovsk Oblast

Putin's authorities have launched an investigation against this girl, who is a nature protection activist, against an "unauthorized political rally" -- for this photo that she took on a mountain she wants to protect from mining.

There was only she and her friend at the site at the time of the photo, and the mountain is at a distance from any town or village, yet the mere fact of taking a photo was deemed "a political demonstration", and she is charged with holding a political demonstration without a permit.

Not a single day without fresh news about Putin's stability.

Russian city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky

Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky

Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy (Russian: Петропа́вловск-Камча́тский, tr. Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, IPA: [pʲɪtrɐˈpavləfsk kɐmˈtɕatskʲɪj] (listen)) is a city and the administrative, industrial, scientific, and cultural center of Kamchatka Krai, Russia. Its population is 179,780. The city is widely known simply as Petropavlovsk (literally "city of Peter and Paul"). The adjective Kamchatsky ("Kamchatkan") was added to the official name in 1924. == Geography == The city is situated on high hills and surrounded by volcanoes. The surrounding terrain is mountainous enough that the horizon cannot be s...

CowperKettle

9:33 AM

> Note 2 to entry: Supply chain management as related to this International Standard includes the vetting of suppliers and customers from the point of initial security value, which is the point at which security is added to the product.

I have read this several times, but the meaning evades me. Is this English at all?

iso.org/obp/ui/fr/#iso:std:iso:14298:ed-1:v1:en

If I ask about this on the main site, it will be downvoted, because it's not a single-word request.

Faheem Mitha

9:51 AM

@CowperKettle What did this "charge" consist of?

Random article about Reliance. The article is missing a lot of context, but it perhaps more notable for the comments from random Indians, some of them abusive.

moneylife.in/article/…

Reliance is one of the major corporate allies of India's fascist Central govt. Run by the RSS. That's probably the most relevant fact, but it's missing from the article. The author dances around it. Perhaps he doesn't want to be arrested. (That last sentence wasn't a joke. India is becoming more and more like a police state every day.)

I think most Indians don't understand what monopolistic or predatory or crony capitalism implies. The comments about buying more Reliance shares are typical. Indians mostly think about how to make more money. Their country reflects this.

Nihar Karve

Is it correct, strictly speaking, to use apostrophes as quotes?

It's definitely becoming more widespread, probably because of Python and JS

Faheem Mitha

@NiharKarve You mean like ''something''?

Nihar Karve

oh sorry, I meant 'this'

not two consecutive apostrophes instead of a quotation mark

Faheem Mitha

@NiharKarve Oh. Yes, I think that's ok. If what you quote has apostrophes or single quotes, there is the potential for confusion, of course.

TeX uses ``something''. But that's probably just a convention.

Are you talking about in an ASCII context, or when typesetting. E.g. using TeX?

Nihar Karve

er, when writing physically (do people do that anymore?)

Faheem Mitha

10:08 AM

@NiharKarve Oh. So you want to know whether to use single or double quotes when writing by hand?

I don't think there is a universal convention, if so.

Nihar Karve

Fair enough

Faheem Mitha

Personally, I use double quotes when people are talking. But I don't think that's standard at all.

And single quotes for other stuff.

@NiharKarve Personally, I don't write a lot by hand any more, except when writing notes or doing accounts.

Nihar Karve

I find myself using double quotes when the comment is on the snarky side

Faheem Mitha

A major reason being the lack of backup of paper writing.

Nihar Karve

makes sense

Faheem Mitha

10:12 AM

On the other hand, it's trivial to backup electronic text files, especially if one is using distributed version control. In which case it comes for free.

Assuming one is pushing to a remote location. Which one normally is.

I've thought of going electronic with notetaking too. But for that I'd need a mobile computer. Something like a computer tablet, perhaps.

But then typing might not be such a great experience.

For now I just have a notebook.

One trouble with electronics is that they are quite easily damaged, lost, or stolen. Whereas a notebook is hard to damage, and nobody is going to steal it. It's still possible to lose it, though.

Note to self. The bank I'm using sucks. Find a less awful bank.

Technically I'm using other banks, but I should stop using this one.

Nihar Karve

personally, I use paper note-taking almost exclusively for maths/science-related stuff, because typesetting in LaTeX real-time requires a level of skill that my hands will probably never allow me to achieve

Faheem Mitha

@NiharKarve I was imagining just writing on a tablet with a stylus, and having it saved as a PDF, which one could then back up.

Typesetting in LaTeX real time would indeed be challenging. If you mean like taking notes in a lecture, then that would indeed be very difficult for anyone who wasn't a TeX expert. And even a TeX expert might have trouble keeping up.

Nihar Karve

Plus, how would I doodle? :)

Faheem Mitha

10:27 AM

Actually, I should say TeXpert. I think that's the preferred nomenclature.

Nihar Karve

10:52 AM

Lewis Caroll would never have forgiven you if you missed that one.

Faheem Mitha

@NiharKarve Huh?

CowperKettle

11:26 AM

@FaheemMitha Violation of the rules of conducting rallies and pickets.

One must inform in advance of any pickets consisting more than of a single person, and obtain permission - which is hard to obtain, because Putin's authorities hate protests. They will find a reason to only permit a picket on the outskirts of the city at the hours when nobody will pass around.

On one of the photos she was together with the second girl, and that is "mass picketing", a horrible crime under Putin's regime.

Sometimes the police has an undercover agent who will stand very close to a single picketeer, and the policeman snaps a photo, and voila! You are in violation of the law. The Krasnodar region is especially famous for such tricks.

Nihar Karve

@FaheemMitha Lewis Caroll coined the word "portmanteau", and his works were full of them too. I was just remarking on the fact that you almost missed that juicy portmanteau.

Faheem Mitha

12:05 PM

@NiharKarve Oh, I see. Though apparently the Knuth approved word is Texnician.

2

@CowperKettle Actually sounds worse than India, which these days is saying something.

Just learned a new word; apposition.

From english.stackexchange.com/a/552728/6099

@CowperKettle Does Russia have a functional court system, or is it owned by Putin too?

Nihar Karve

12:50 PM

@FaheemMitha Isn't that what the Congress is called right now in India? ;)

M.A.R.

1:20 PM

in The Screening Room, yesterday, by Napoleon Wilson

Speaking of Christmas movies, I built a LEGO model based on one of the all-time best Christmas films.

CowperKettle

2:03 PM

@FaheemMitha It's under manual control, the so-called телефонное право (telephonnoye pravo), meaning telephone justice, when a judge makes a judgement based on a phone call from above.

Sometimes the attending public bursts out laughing during a court hearing in Russia because the judge's actions are so blatantly out of synch with any laws and regulations.

It's horrible.

A civil rights activist Oiyub Titiyev was sentenced to a prison sentence several years ago for possession of marijuana. Which, of course, was put in his car by the police. He is a health maniac, running 10 km a day. And he abstains from alcohol and all kinds of substances.

When after his arrest he pointed out that the arrest was made with blatant disregard to the procedure, the police just threw the papers away, sat him into the car, and drove him to the 'place of arrest' the second time, and arrested him again.

When his lawyer requested that the CCTV records be released to the court from all the shops and offices en route, showing that the police "arrested" him twice, the judge said that all the cameras en route - more than a dozen - malfunctioned on that day.

Basically the whole process was spitting in the Russian public's face. This is putinism.

Oyub Titiev

Oyub Salmanovich Titiev (Russian: Оюб Салманович Титиев; born 24 August 1957, in Lebedinovka, Kyrgyz SSR, Soviet Union) is a Russian human rights activist and the head of Memorial's Grozny, Chechnya office. In 2018 he was arrested on politically-motivated charges, sparking an international campaign by human rights groups calling for his release. On October 8, 2018, Titiev was awarded the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize, which honours "outstanding" defence of human rights in Europe and beyond. == Biography == Oyub Titiev's ancestors were among the first settlers of the village Kurchaloi, Chechnya...

Anastasia Shevchenko. She has been under house arrest for more than a year now.

She read a lecture on how to achieve fair elections or something, and was put under arrest for "cooperating with a prohibited organization (Open Russia)"

Her house arrest has been prolonged until March 2021 in a decision made today.

Just for reading some lectures and being politically active.

And she is not in jail only because there have been numerous media publications, protests, etc.

Otherwise, she would have been in jail.

Mitch

3:16 PM

@CowperKettle not to belittle her difficulties, but aren't we all in house arrest at the moment?

Or rather, there are lot more people who should be in house arrest that are walking freely, breathing into each other's faces.

Faheem Mitha

@NiharKarve Huh what?

@CowperKettle All this makes India's horrific court system seem almost reasonable in comparison.

Needless to say, we're getting activists locked up here, too.

Some of them quite old, too.

Do the Russian courts file contempt of court charges on people who criticize them too? This is now becoming a thing in India.

Nihar Karve

4:09 PM

@FaheemMitha the, ahem, apposition party (best read in Yogi Adityanath's voice)

tchrist

Amicitiae Vocis "Back in the USSR"

►

Faheem Mitha

@NiharKarve I don't know who Yogi Adityanath is.

tchrist

Etymological fallacy

The etymological fallacy is a genetic fallacy that holds that the present-day meaning of a word or phrase should necessarily be similar to its historical meaning. This is a linguistic misconception, and is sometimes used as a basis for linguistic prescription. An argument constitutes an etymological fallacy if it makes a claim about the present meaning of a word based exclusively on its etymology.An etymological fallacy may involve looking for the true meaning of words by delving into their etymologies, or claiming that a word should be used in a particular way because it has a particular etymology...

Faheem Mitha

@tchrist Sigh.

tchrist

Georgia on my mind.

Faheem Mitha

4:26 PM

@NiharKarve Oh, that psycho creep. Ugh.

tchrist

4:37 PM

@FaheemMitha GARYANAOPOLIS (AP) — In a stunning victory for the nominative autodeterminative movement, the great state of Hoosieriana has at last moved its state capital to Garyanaopolis where it has always belonged.

reed

Good morning and/or afternoon and/or evening and/or hello there

I'm just here to ask about the current policy in this community, regarding questions from non-native speakers. The distinction between this community and the other one dedicated to language learners (ELL) is not really clear

Basic questions definitely go to ELL, very advanced stuff goes here, and everything in between... who knows. That's my impression

Matt E. Эллен

non-native speakers frequently do ask questions on EL&U. it's about the level of proficiency rather than how you learnt English. There is some overlap between the sites. ELL tries to be more pedagogical, I think, whereas EL&U wants to be more academic (if we succeed is a decision I leave to you)

reed

5:11 PM

Well, I don't know. I have a question that is driving me insane, I wouldn't even know where to ask it and how to ask it.

Basically, what do you call a rifle, if you don't know whether it is rifled or not? I mean, it can be either a shotgun or a rifle, you don't know, you only know it has a long barrel.

Matt E. Эллен

5:30 PM

@reed We have specific rules for single-word-request questions (see the link) If you follow them you'll be fine.

more info: english.stackexchange.com/tags/single-word-requests/info

reed

I'm trying to write a question about this, thanks. Let's hope it doesn't sound too stupid

CowperKettle

6:49 PM

@Mitch Not here, sadly. Here the streets are teeming with people. Despite the climbing numbers of deaths.

I wish Russia introduced a strict curfew to curb the curve.

SmokeDetector

7:10 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in answer, repeating words in answer (173): What's a word or short phrase for someone who knows what's going on around them by ben dover on english.SE

tchrist

9:23 PM

> With a crack that startled the Erstkin from slumber, the bow of the Wreakling ship had met the hidden skerry and lost. Their foundering ship would not last the hour, nor would her hundred souls long outlive her unless the Erstkin moved faster than the storm’s wrath to whisk them ashore before she could sink beneath the hungry waves. They had left with little, and they had landed with less.

M.A.R.

10:02 PM

> I have a pun about Chernobyl, but I think it’s a bit inaPripyat.

2

Cerberus

11:24 PM

Ulaanbaatar.

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…