English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Earlier today I was contemplating if I should be as furious as everyone else about the new WhatsApp ToS. You know, which is now saying they'll just share all your personal info with Facebook and sell it to all its affiliates.

tchrist

12:20 AM

Hate monetization?

RegDwigнt

But then I realized that after a whole fucking decade that Facebook has been tracking every click of mine on the Internet and selling every bit of my personal data to every last fucker on the planet, I realized that after a full decade of that nothing at all has come of it.

tchrist

Those are both nouns.

@RegDwigнt Maybe that's just what the brainwashing wanted you to think.

RegDwigнt

The personal, targeted ads they serve me are still for jewelry and car tyres and medicine for diseases I don't have.

Robusto

imgur.com/o7zMEWz

RegDwigнt

@tchrist no, what I'm actually wondering is how long it will take the car industry to wise up that this whole time it was them that have been the butt of the Facebook scam rather than the consumers.

Robusto

12:22 AM

tchrist

@Robusto His niece has also been cassandring about all this.

Robusto

Yeah. There was no shortage of warnings.

tchrist

@RegDwigнt I'd swear something did surface about all that of late, how digital advertising is useless.

Or ridiculously superoverpriced.

RegDwigнt

@tchrist Hancook Tyres alone must have wasted thousands of dollars serving personally targeted ads to me. I've never owned a car and do not have a license.

tchrist

@Robusto Her latest.

RegDwigнt

12:25 AM

Not to mention all those KFC ads in French that I've been getting for the past five years. We do not have KFC in this state. And I do not speak French.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Mostly punctuation marks in answer (36): *Oil produced* vs *produced oil*, take 2 ✏️ by O Lamar on english.SE

tchrist

@RegDwigнt Then how do you know what they were spamvertising?

Robusto

@tchrist Yeah. It's funny, but my brother, who has never voted and positions himself as "not part of the problem," when I talked to him the other day he's like "Can't somebody do something? Get him the fuck out of office ASAP?"

RegDwigнt

@tchrist Because I recognize Col. Sanders from South Park.

Cerberus

@RegDwigнt I do not think that applies to EU citizens.

@RegDwigнt That has only happened if you have allowed your browser to access files from Facebook.

Robusto

12:27 AM

@RegDwigнt Quel dommage.

Cerberus

Mine is kept in rein.

RegDwigнt

@Cerberus for one, if it doesn't apply to EU citizens, then why did I have to accept it. For two, how does WhatsApp know what country I'm a citizen of. They don't even know I don't own a car.

Cerberus

@RegDwigнt From what I read in the news, those obnoxious conditions are not in the text presented to EU citizens?

RegDwigнt

@Robusto yes, I think it was for something like that. The quel dommage menu.

Cerberus

They will no doubt base it on your phone number.

tchrist

12:29 AM

@Robusto Well yes, but unless it's by his own hand it's unlikely to stick.

RegDwigнt

@Cerberus my phone number knows even less about what country I'm a citizen of.

Mobile phone numbers are not even tied to countries anymore.

But even when they were, you could be Queen Elizabeth II and still get a SIM card with a Spanish country code.

Cerberus

@RegDwigнt Nevertheless, that's probably what Facebook bases it on.

Robusto

My phone still thinks I live in Boston. An easy filter for telemarketers.

Mitch

They're tied to a very particular location within countries. but you aren't

Cerberus

But I am!

tchrist

12:30 AM

@Robusto Not sure non-voters get to opine, even if it's HM QE2.

Even though the whole world has to suffer through whomever the few that vote for U.S. President elect.

RegDwigнt

@Cerberus probably, but that's very much my point. They are fucking morons. They know for a fact which citizenship I have. They probably have a copy of my passport somewhere. And of my school exams. And my medical history. And photos of my flat and all my relatives. But they are too dumb to check.

Robusto

@tchrist An irony that is lost on him.

Cerberus

@Robusto Interesting.

Mitch

@Cerberus with all due respect, you're no telephone

Cerberus

@RegDwigнt Of course they are morons.

Robusto

12:33 AM

@RegDwigнt In the aggregate they are too dumb to check. But then there's that one person who knows the system and wants to fuck you up that you have to worry about.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in body, repeating characters in body (162): lk jj jj jjj nn nn ✏️ by O Lamar on english.SE

tchrist

@RegDwigнt Can't be mobile if they're leashed.

RegDwigнt

So for all I care, they can have more of my data ten times over. It's like with the whole NSA thing that everyone has long forgotten about. Bush's wiretapping without a warrant and all that.

@Robusto yeah but that one person will do that regardless.

tchrist

@RegDwigнt Have not forgotten.

RegDwigнt

More data to mine only means worse results. Remember the haystack analogy we used to make fun of it. How NSA's approach to trying to find the needle in the haystack was basically, let's make the haystack ten million times bigger, and replace all the hay with other needles.

Cerberus

12:37 AM

And let's acupuncture everybody. Everybody now!

tchrist

@Cerberus Iron Maiden?

Cerberus

Yeah! Why not.

RegDwigнt

Well, same with Facebook now. If they can't tell my gender and nationality from me fucking telling them my gender and nationality, then I'm not worried about them somehow magically extrapolating it from the images of ice cream that someone sends me on WhatsApp.

Cerberus

Or a faqir's bed, what are they called?

RegDwigнt

Autobahn.

Cerberus

12:38 AM

I drank whiskey all night, so please ignore me.

RegDwigнt

Only @Rob will understand.

tchrist

@Cerberus Spikerbed?

Robusto

It's a Lebowski joke.

> The Pentagon is calling Wednesday’s events “First Amendment Protests.”

RegDwigнt

So anyway, long story short, WhatsApp asked me to click Accept and I did.

tchrist

@Cerberus Really? Did something horrible happen?

Cerberus

12:40 AM

@tchrist Spijkerbed, yes.

Robusto

RegDwigнt

@Robusto that reminds me of a different movie.

Snatch - You Can Call Me Susan If It Makes You Happy

►

@Robusto serves you right for reading newspapers, old man.

I only read YouTube comments now.

tchrist

@Robusto I saw none such. We do not call murderous rapists of our national treasures protesters.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt This came from Imgur. Someone texted it to me.

RegDwigнt

On that note, the fuck happened to Imgur. It's like a social network of its own now.

tchrist

12:43 AM

The Pentagon was hors de combat, allegedly because the Plunderer in Chief forbad them from helping.

RegDwigнt

Fucking Firefox syndrome. They tried to make the most simplest and lightweight thing ever, and succeeded. Then kept meddling with it till it became the very thing they raged against.

tchrist

Opera ops.

RegDwigнt

At least Google have managed to keep their start page relatively clean even long after Marissa left.

Robusto

> We could pay for 400 years of Medicare if we just charged people $1 to punch Mitch McConnell in the face.

@RegDwigнt Where dafuq have you been? It's been that way for years.

RegDwigнt

@Robusto I don't know that he would last that long.

@Robusto well not on fucking Imgur, that's for sure.

Robusto

12:46 AM

I stopped visiting there years ago for that reason.

RegDwigнt

I basically stopped using it when I stopped using Reddit. Which is what, seven years ago now?

Cerberus

@Robusto Oh, those eager students.

Mitch

what are you using now?

Robusto

@RegDwigнt About the same timeframe for me on both.

Maybe eight.

Cerberus

@RegDwigнt Hmm what happened?

RegDwigнt

12:47 AM

@Robusto I went last month or something. It is fucking abhorrent. You have to jump through twenty hoops, seven pages, three forms, fifty community posts and god knows how much advertising before you can even click "upload".

Cerberus

I use Firefox every day.

RegDwigнt

And after that it takes you like a minute to figure out what the fuck the URL of your image even is.

tchrist

George Bush's sister just died of covid.

RegDwigнt

Not to mention that it won't even work on this PC at all. You need a modern tablet with a quad-core processor.

Like what the actual, I don't have words.

@Cerberus my point exactly. Nobody at all still uses Firebird.

Mitch

I only came here to check if Gal Gadot is hot or not

Wait

that came out wrong

I only came here to check if Gal Gadot

Cerberus

12:55 AM

@RegDwigнt I think it's a great browser.

Getting faster all the time.

RegDwigнt

It couldn't possibly get any faster if they didn't go and make it much slower.

Mitch

lynx - best browser ever - no images

RegDwigнt

@Mitch well, let's see. Bad at acting, warmonger, no tits but bad command of English.

Hm.

I think in conclusion, Gal Gadot == Dubya.

Mitch

@RegDwigнt La Preuve!

Robusto

Aug 2 '18 at 15:26, by Robusto

I won't see it. I don't see comic-book movies anymore unless Gal Gadot is in them.

But I have made an exception for Wonder Woman 1984, which, I understand, sucks ass.

RegDwigнt

12:58 AM

@Mitch Vous l'avez entendu ici le premier !

Mitch

@Robusto Contemplating ignoring that movie or actively condemning it without seeing it.

Robusto

Wonder Woman 1984 - A Ridiculous Disaster

►

RegDwigнt

These days the movie studios thankfully force you to see more than enough of any movie that you can only condemn yourself for watching the rest of it.

@Robusto it's an interesting thing about early adopters. At first you welcome them with open arms, because they're the only ones there. But then the general public follows, and you start caring about the general public instead. When really it's at that point you should be paying even more attention to the early adopters than before, because they'll also be the first ones to leave you to early-adopt the next thing that'll replace you.

But somehow the thought never occurs to anyone.

Robusto

1:36 AM

Cerberus

Nooo.

tchrist

2:27 AM

He's been banned from iPhone?

On no, from pOrnhUb. He's just use Barron's account.

Robusto

I'm pretty sure that is just a joke.

Færd

5:16 AM

@Cerberus Yeah. Also like a slippery slope, or the tip of an iceberg.

Cerberus

6:48 AM

@Færd Indeed.

So what should be done about Trump's Twitter posts?

Xanne

7:13 AM

Which ones? Past or current?

Faheem Mitha

> If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

That's probably an older quote.

@Robusto That's the "clear and present danger" verdict.

If this is about the Trump thing, then it's clearly a gray area, as free speech does tend to be at the outer edges. But I still tend to agree with @Færd. The issue is really that there is lack of transparency.

Ideally there would be some kind of judicial process instead of someone saying, right, that's it, your access is cut off. It's a general problem with private entities, not about a specific instance.

It can also be a problem with govts run amok. For example, guess which govt in recent years has shut down internet access the most, usually for political reasons.

@Robusto Now that's an appealing idea. But who would do the charging?

Xanne

7:29 AM

@FaheemMitha Which gov’t most amok?

Should a country allow a foreign entity to buy ads about its elections?

Or should an ad-taking enterprise restrict a foreign advertiser? Or be required to?

Or merely ID who paid for the ad? I think FB got permission not to do so some years ago.

So Trump could get a web page with some chat software. Host his own server(s).

He’d need a little farm, sure, but he’d not be subject to others’ judgments. After all you don’t need an app, just a browser.

Xanne

7:53 AM

Well I guess I killed that discussion. Too serious, perhaps.

CowperKettle

8:33 AM

So much for "Twitter is a private company, if you are banned, go to a different platform". They went to a different platform, and that platform was promptly burned with fire from all hosting services.

Hence, this is censorship.

Faheem Mitha

8:48 AM

@Xanne I was talking about govts shutting down internet access.

@Xanne I think that must happen all the time. How do you regulate it?

Does anyone even know who multinational corporations are owned by? Or even non-multinational corporations?

Færd

@Cerberus Twitter was already taking lots of measures (flagging the Tweets as inaccurate and linking to other authorities). Legal authorities may intervene in the extreme cases of direct threats or imminent incitement to violence.

Less extreme cases could be discussed through consensus procedures among users or plebiscites or something, with an emphasis on leniency (which is not very possible when you're dealing with a private platform that profits from exciting anger and inducing mob behavior among its users).

Faheem Mitha

@Xanne These are all part of the consequences of allowing private capital to roam free. Apparently these days call neoliberalism.

@CowperKettle Interesting.

Færd

It's complicated. There's lots to be said about Twitter's algorithms, and about social media in general. I'm obviously not an expert on this. But giving blank checks to security officials to take wartime measures as they please or leaving key decisions to the discretion of near monopolistic private businesses sound ominous to me.

@FaheemMitha Indeed. (without harassing them, of course!)

Faheem Mitha

9:07 AM

@Færd As I said already, I don't understand why govt officials are using private entities in this fashion, anyway.

But some parts of the world have an unwholesome intertwining of govt and corporate interests.

@Færd That's a quote, just to be clear. A fairly well known one, actually.

Johan Larsson

12:40 PM

@Færd I agree with you that the situation is troubling

Everything is so broken now, biggest issue is the slippery slope, things like this tend to go in just one direction.

Færd

2:08 PM

@JohanLarsson Exactly.

A nation is most susceptible to being taken advantage of when it's in shock. People tend to forget how 9/11 became the pretext for wars that brought about the worst disasters of the century and also the pretext for the most expansive and sophisticated surveillance apparatuses in the world. We're still slipping down that slope.

Johan Larsson

Yes, I don't see things like that changing for the better once in place.

CowperKettle

2:21 PM

Mitch

2:35 PM

@CowperKettle That's all so wild. What is cause and effect? is there any sense at all?

Gigili

Ich kaufe lieber Produkte ohne künstliche Farbstoffe.

Robusto

@Gigili Das ist mir egal.

Gigili

Können Sie einen Apfel blanchieren, karamellisieren und pürieren?

@Robusto Quatsch!

In other news, Molecular gastronomy is a whole new concept to me.

Robusto

@Gigili Das ist Frauenarbeit.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected (78): Is there an expression to describe a poor woman who marries a rich man for money? by Poed on english.SE

Matt E. Эллен

2:47 PM

@SmokeDetector ripe for a "yo mamma" joke

Gigili

@SmokeDetector Rob's above reply is also offensive.

CowperKettle

> Vladimir Putin: in 2021, Russians will earn twice more.
- Compared with what?
- Compared with 2022.

Robusto

@Gigili Which reply?

Gigili

@Robusto Label me as feminist, but to blanch, caramelize and puré is kein Frauenarbeit!

Do not label me as feminist.

Do not label me.

Donut.

Robusto

@Gigili That was just a joke.

room topic changed to English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room: Not for the faint of heart or those easily triggered by English (or other languages) in the raw [phrase-requests] [pronunciation] [single-word-requests] [synonyms]

CowperKettle

2:59 PM

What do I call a poor woman who marries for money? Sensible. — Mari-Lou A Sep 7 '13 at 12:25

Johan Larsson

4:00 PM

Is range the correct word for a chart axis? Min and max

If so, does a range Contain a value?

Mitch

@JohanLarsson yes. that is one correct use for 'range'

@JohanLarsson and also yes

Johan Larsson

thank you my friend

Mitch

4:29 PM

But...

If you use that you'll explode

literally

not all at once

first your limbs

parts of your limbs

until they'e gone

then internal organs one by one

it's kind of a mess

but hey that's grammar for you

So if you're using these for graphs in data visualizations, those are the correct usages.

but if it is for math graphs, like the graph of a math function, they might be a bit persnickety

so from high school math
domain is the set of input points (usually the entire x-axis but parts can be removed)
range is the set of output points (usually the entire y-axis but often a subset, like therange of e^x is [0, infinity) the non-negatives)

but here 'a range contains a value' is still perfectly OK.

the informal usage, or rather extra-mathematical usage usually matches the math usage because usually weird things don't happen informally or you ignore them and the chart axis is understood perfectly well.

Færd

> Feeling lonely is just as detrimental to our physical health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

ft.com/content/16f8495e-ca5e-4c47-add6-b69bf1b2fe36

tchrist

5:10 PM

Q: Why doesn’t the proximal plural deictic (demonstrative) pronoun "these" have a possessive form?
A: Because things that rhyme with "Jesus" make people nervous.

Geezis.

Son of a beach.

@Robusto You're sheeting me

Robusto

@Mitch You are fit to be tide?

Mitch

5:21 PM

for all intensive purposes

Robusto

Say it, don't spray it.

Gigili

Save for your retirement or I'll turn your wine into vinegar.

tchrist

And our loaves into fishes?

Robusto

And don't leave your dirty socks on the floor. Put them in the laundry basket!

Murdoch & Zuckerberg need to be held to account:

Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson: Trump’s Life About to Become "A Burning Hell" | Amanpour and Company

►

Mitch

I'm not your maid

Robusto

5:35 PM

@Mitch No, but you are probably your maid. All I'm sayin' ...

Mitch

If by that do you mean that I try to get my socks close to the hamper by imagining an attempt at a three pointer, fading back, turning around before they land and the crowd cheering, going wild, as they drop limply a foot away, then yes, I am guilty.

Robusto

What is your 3-point percentage?

I've always thought there should be an intermediate-range basketball shot, less than 3 but greater than 2. Let's call it e, an e-point shot.

Mitch

or just pts by distance, 4.72 yards away, that's how many points you get.

Robusto

I like Euler's number better. =P

Mitch

I like binary better

CowperKettle

5:51 PM

> This work was kindly supported by Hunan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 2020JJ5946) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81801297; No. 81771408). Whole exome sequencing was paid by funding money.

I wonder what this could mean. Probably the clinic's annual budget money.

Mitch

I wonder how the Chinese authorities think of the Jan 6 US insurrection in comparison to the protesters in Hong Kong?

CowperKettle

Norilsk, Russia

I wonder if there is a newer version of this diagram (chart? graph?)

I guess that the US might be poisoning Mexico by being very rich and consuming a lot of drugs. This provides fertile ground for drug mafias.

SmokeDetector

6:16 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Blacklisted website in answer, non-latin link in answer (172): Translation of slang *pass* by tasropat on english.SE

CowperKettle

@SmokeDetector Thank you, Smokey

tchrist

idly speculates whether non-latin oughtn't have been illatinate

Mitch

7:40 PM

[Old English and its closest relatives : a survey of the earliest Germanic languages / Orrin W. Robinson
Robinson, Orrin W., 1947-
BOOK | Stanford University Press | c1992.](https://www.amazon.com/Old-English-its-Closest-Relatives-ebook/dp/B000OI0XJ6/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Old+English+and+its+closest+relatives+%3A+a+survey+of+the+earliest+Germanic+languages+Orrin+W.+Robinson&qid=1610393917&sr=8-1)

2

That was the source of the comparison of ON,OG,OE,OS,OF,OLF,OHG

CowperKettle

8:06 PM

Neuroscientists identify brain circuit that encodes timing of events

> To study the links between CA2 and CA1, the researchers used an engineered mouse model in which they could use light to control the activity of neurons in the CA2 region. They trained the mice to run a figure-eight maze in which they would earn a reward if they alternated turning left and right each time they ran the maze.

> Between each trial, they ran on a treadmill for 10 seconds, and during this time, they had to remember which direction they had turned on the previous trial, so they could do the opposite on the upcoming trial.

CowperKettle

8:18 PM

Robusto

9:51 PM

Cerberus

@Færd Yes, it is problematic, a dilemma.

@Robusto Cute.

Robusto

@Cerberus Shadow and The Count—for the moment, bosom buddies. Sometimes they are at each other's throats for unknown reasons. Because cats.

Cerberus

Like humans?

Robusto

Kinda.

Only on the cat wavelength.

They seem to forget from time to time that they are brothers.

Both are large.

On the left you can see the beginnings of a pair of elbow-length leather gloves, which are occasionally necessary to separate the two.

I tried once without those, and got scratched forearms for my peacekeeping efforts.

Cerberus

Hmm.

My parents had two sister who did not get along very well either, but it was mostly the smaller one attacking her sister, who just avoided her most of the time.

> German Chancellor Angela Merkel blasted Twitter's decision to ban U.S. President Donald Trump.

"The right to freedom of opinion is of fundamental importance," Steffen Seibert, Merkel's chief spokesman, told reporters in Berlin on Monday, according to Reuters.

"Given that, the chancellor considers it problematic that the president's accounts have been permanently suspended."

Seibert said that, while Twitter was right to flag Trump's inaccurate tweets about the 2020 U.S. election, banning his account altogether was a step too far. He added that governments, not private companies, should …

Gigili

10:05 PM

No wonder Berlin is such a corrupt city and no one complains.

No lighting in the parks. Absolute darkness.

Robusto

@Cerberus This isn't a limitation on freedom of speech. It is a decision made by a private company to not be a party to incitements to violence and sedition. Basically, Trump is still able to talk his shit all he wants, he just can't use Twitter's megaphone.

Republicans decided to make sure private companies could discriminate against gays, now they can enjoy the freedom to discriminate all they want.

Gigili

Genau.

Færd

10:25 PM

@Cerberus I'll give that a B-.

@Robusto Maybe there are some differences between the bakery round the corner and a tech giant?

BTW, do you think a small bakery should be obliged to sell cakes to someone he doesn't want to?

(A bakery selling cakes is what, a cakery? A confectionery store?)

Too many questions.

tchrist

10:43 PM

@Færd The pâtissier sells his cakes at his pâtisserie.

Logan Ward

The donuter eats at the donuttery.

I don't think a bakery should be obliged to do anything. It is a private business after all.

But I wouldn't refuse free cakes.

Robusto

11:01 PM

@Færd Do you think a tech company should be obliged to render its services to someone who would use its services to endanger lives?

Xanne

Common carrier

A common carrier in common law countries (corresponding to a public carrier in some civil law systems, usually called simply a carrier) is a person or company that transports goods or people for any person or company and is responsible for any possible loss of the goods during transport. A common carrier offers its services to the general public under license or authority provided by a regulatory body, which has usually been granted "ministerial authority" by the legislation that created it. The regulatory body may create, interpret, and enforce its regulations upon the common carrier (subject...

Færd

11:25 PM

@Robusto Do you think we should keep answering questions with questions? :)