English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Robusto

00:47

tchrist

01:00

@Robusto Some report said that raising the minimum wage would force businesses to fire people. I'm surprised they haven't suggested lowering the minimum wage to create them.

But a full time job at the current minimum wage is below the federal poverty line.

Robusto

@tchrist Well, that Walmart employee would quit two of her jobs, and those would be the job losses right there.

tchrist

If they eliminated the minimum wage, this would create infinite jobs paid at a penny a week. Problem solved.

Robusto

Let them eat cake.

tchrist

On a penny a week?

Robusto

"Not our problem," say the Republicans.

tchrist

01:03

Never.

That's because they are our national problem lo these fifty years and counting.

Robusto

Yeah. And is it just me, but what exactly is keeping Rush Limbaugh from keeping his appointment with eternity?

tchrist

Umbilical blood?

Apparently he's taken the day off, and his program's producer is asking that he be prayed for.

So probably not long, depending on the prayers.

Robusto

He's the one who started this leviathan that has become the GOP's outrage machine.

tchrist

It felt like that, a little.

Robusto

Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out, Rush.

tchrist

01:09

Back in the early 90s.

He fuelled Grimgrinch.

Robusto

I had Nasdaq as a client back in the late '90s, early aughts, and the point of contact was a guy who kept prodding me to go along with his idea that Gingrich would make a great president. I kept switching the subject. Having clients will sooner or later make you feel like a whore. This is why I finally gave up the big bucks and went back to working for a living.

tchrist

I see a direct line from Rush to Newt to Ryan and his teabaggers to Trump and the violent white insurrectionists at the Capitol.

Robusto

I see that line too.

tchrist

You can't watch the Senate trial. It's too awful, what really happened, the clips they replay.

Robusto

I watched some of it. The worst part is knowing that these scumbags are going to acquit this maggot.

tchrist

01:15

Traitors.

Robusto

"It's not a crime if a Republican commits treason."

tchrist

I do not use that word lightly. I do know what it means Constitutionally.

Nothing is a crime if a rich white Republican is asked to pass public judgement on another rich white Republican. NOTHING. It's in the good old boy rulebook.

For they were every one of them born without sin, and shall die that way as well. Again, see the rulebook.

Immaculately.

Of the half-dozen Republican senators who voted to sustain the trail, I'd probably still kick out most if not all of those six. The other 44 I'd update Dante for.

They've driven out nearly every single one of them with any moral fiber.

Robusto

Cowards, the lot of them.

tchrist

In what mirror earth would I find myself EVER agreeing with McCain and Romney, you know?

Robusto

Yeah. McCain actually had integrity. Romney has situational integrity.

tchrist

01:23

But even they seem like ghosts of a different century now. It's Trump's party now, not Lincoln's if ever it was, which I have my doubts about.

People like Flake and Sasse are useless. They make no difference. They do nothing. Same with Collins.

Robusto

Republicans were directly responsible for the Great Depression. They tightened money just when they needed to loosen it, and all the banks failed and the people lost their money and the Republicans tightened more. And this is one reason they hate FDR, because he actually did something for the people.

tchrist

> And you knew who you were then. Girls were girls and men were men. Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again. Didn't need no welfare state. Everybody pulled his weight.

Robusto

All in the Family

tchrist

We're a failed state.

It's humiliating.

Robusto

You should read Mary Renault's The Last of the Wine. There are direct parallels with our own era.

tchrist

01:27

I'm sure the rioters at the Capitol felt the same thing, albeit for inverse reasons. That does not dissuade me.

@Robusto I don't think I've read that one of hers. But it's been a long, long time since I've read any of her.

Robusto

@tchrist It's about Greece during the Peloponnesian War, the chaos and bad moves that put an end to Athens.

tchrist

I read something from her that involved Alexander.

But this has to have been before I got out of college.

Robusto

@tchrist That could have been any of three novels: Fire From Heaven, The Persian Boy, and Funeral Games.

tchrist

I remember thinking they were shocking for the age.

Robusto

I read just about all of her when I was in my 20s, then recently read a couple to see if they still held up, and they do. The best are The Mask of Apollo, The Last of the Wine, and The King Must Die (Theseus, the early years).

tchrist

01:33

One or both of those first two.

That's good to know.

But reading them in high school you can see why they seemed shocking at that time.

Robusto

Not only is her history spot on, but she manages to convey an actual sense of what it must have been like to live then.

tchrist

Maybe college, unclear.

Robusto

Well, yeah. Everything is shocking in high school. She's so not a high-school author.

tchrist

People have to grow up some time.

Robusto

Well, that's just the thing. She's not a YA author. Very adult.

She is to historical fiction what Ursula K. LeGuin was to fantasy/SF.

tchrist

01:37

Our entire culture seems to be stuck in a pre-adult stage sometimes now.

I am more tired of superhero anything than you can possibly imagine.

Or anything that's created from or for a video game.

I did read a lot of LeGuin in college, and after.

I've completely lost my faith in my own country, my own countrymen. It's hard.

Of course I have friends whom I have great trust in. But they are not the country. It's different.

Robusto

@tchrist Once upon a time I thought X-Men and Spiderman were fun movies. Then they fed them to us with a fire hose. I won't watch anything that is aiming for blockbuster status anymore.

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.

tchrist

I can't figure out whether I was previously delusional or am now so in my disillusionment.

Or both.

Robusto

The question being "Are you crazy if you think you're crazy, or only if it doesn't occur to you to think that?"

tchrist

I know the assassinations of the 60s shattered Mom. She has never regained any positive allegiance to any Camelot dream of our country. I remember only her crying from it, mostly Bobby.

Robusto

My parents hated JFK. They never saw a Republican they didn't like. It was a horrible childhood.

tchrist

01:44

Wow.

Robusto

Now you know why I'm a rebel and always have been.

tchrist

I come from a union family.

There's one rebel uncle on either side, but even still only the one ever votes R. The rest of us are solid to fiery progressives.

The "rebel" uncle who doesn't vote R is a former high-ranking marine drill sergeant. Changes you.

Robusto

My mother's family were union, but they lived on the South Side and they fled to Cicero and environs when black families moved in. My father's family were down-staters and, hence, Republican.

tchrist

Mom's mom's family were union in Janesville, Dad's in Beloit.

Robusto

My grandfather was a coal miner, died in a mine accident, and is buried in the same cemetery as Mother Jones. How's that for ironic?

tchrist

01:55

Mom's dad's dad was the Geneva family doctor, son of a university dean, etc. It was a scandal when her own dad married a girl from the working class. Well at least she fucking worked.

She was a union something-something for the G.M. plant in Janesville.

I imagine the doctor and the dean may have been Republicans but I don't know that. Wisconsin had progressives even in the wealthy class going on a century ago.

Robusto

What happened to them?

tchrist

Badly scarred. The doctor and the dean were canoeing up in the far north, hunting accident and the doctor had to canoe his dead dad out. Then his wife died young. Scarred grandpa, he grew up weirdly cold from an absent mother, took the train down to Elkhart Lakes and stuff while a kid, petty gambling and such. The doctor remarried a high society woman who didn't help anything. His brother, my great uncle, still lives here in Aurora.

That's what happened to them.

From here.

The son whose revolver went off and killed him was Mom's grandpa, whom she loved dearly. He too died young, but of nephritis. Her own dad had kidney issues all his live but lived into his 90s.

Our family would have been very different without all these tragedies, include the doctor's wife dying VERY young as well.

But surely all families are like this. Filled with tragedies.

There are others, related to WW2 losses, that are too difficult to go into.

Robusto

Well, yeah. My father's mother died when he was three. My mother's father when she was 14.

Illnesses that would have been treated as a matter of course today.

tchrist

02:12

Mom's grandmothers both perished before her own parents had even met, both of some uncertain cause.

Mitch

02:31

Holy crap. No tragedies in my family history because nobody is talking about them.

Year after my dad's mom's funeral, I heard him talking to someone else, saying that he asked his older sister (my aunt) what the story was about their mom. And she replied "I was going to ask -you-". Neither knew -anything- about my grandmother's past.

Robusto

@Mitch See, that is your misfortune.

Mitch

Or my ancestors actual misfortunes

Robusto

Tom and I can walk around striking poses like tragic characters, impressing the locals, while you—you just have to scrabble around looking for scraps of attention, taking what you can find.

tchrist

1

Q: Single-word-request rule clarification needed

My question Alternative to trumped was recently closed for being opinion-based. However, the tag single-word-requests has 300+ pages of questions similar to mine. Why is there the tag single-word-requests if questions that use it are closed? My question was not horrible or unusual, it had researc...

I wouldn't mind some eyes on that.

I feel bad for him.

Maybe "trump" is such a negative flash point for people now that they just close anything mentioning that word.

Mitch

@Robusto But that gives me a lot of room for making up stuff like when my great uncle saved all those school children from the landslide

uh volcano

that caused a landslide

he worked at the local seismology office

tchrist

02:38

Landslide (board game)

Landslide is a board game about the U.S. presidential elections published by Parker Brothers in 1971. == Description == Landslide, a board game for 2–4 players published by Parker Brothers in 1971, uses the mechanics of the United States Electoral College to simulate an American presidential election. The objective of the game is to obtain as many electoral votes as possible by bidding with "currency" representing each player's share of the popular vote. == Components == The game has the following components: Gameboard 20 Politics cards 35 Vote cards 51 State cards (includes Washington D.C.) 4...

Robusto

@Mitch See? You have a niche. Many people wish they could come up with fake stories like that.

tchrist

Hated Texas in that game.

Mitch

Pandemic is an awful game

not because of the content

Robusto

@tchrist Dunno what to tell you, Tom. SWRs are the Achilles Heel of this site. They are completely out of control, and they pretty much are the only exemption we give to the "opinion-based" close reason.

tchrist

I hate them.

Therefore I am biased.

Robusto

02:40

I do too. And I have the gold badge in them and I still hate them.

tchrist

All that is gold does not glitter.

Robusto

Or vice versa.

Meh, I am so thoroughly sick of the site. If it wasn't for chat here I wouldn't get on at all.

Mitch

If only FF would vote to close the SWRs and not the one's about 'does this obscure word formation phenomenon exist which he VTCs because he interprets it as a request for a list

Robusto

FF?

Mitch

no names

except for his

which rhymes with

tchrist

02:42

> All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

Mitch

bumblebingers

Robusto

> All that glisters is not gold—
Often have you heard that told.
Many a man his life hath sold
But my outside to behold.
Gilded tombs do worms enfold.
Had you been as wise as bold,
Young in limbs, in judgment old,
Your answer had not been inscrolled
Fare you well. Your suit is cold—

tchrist

> Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Mitch

I'm sure there have been linguistics listservs that have interesting content... but I've never been able to really find them.

tchrist

Beware the Odes of alt.language.english, Caesar!

Robusto

02:46

@Mitch OIC

The worst abuse of SWRs is when someone comes up with some painfully obscure Latinate word that nobody ever used in print let alone conversation, and then people upvote it because it sounds "intelligent" ...

Mitch

@tchrist usenet had an even broader range of quality to troll.

CowperKettle

04:54

EpiVacCorona

EpiVacCorona (Russian: ЭпиВакКорона, tr. EpiVakKorona) is a COVID-19 vaccine developed by the Vector Institute. The EpiVacCorona vaccine contains fragments extracted from the virus synthetic peptide antigens. The antigens-based vaccine provokes an immune reaction against COVID-19 and promotes the further development of immunity. == Description == EpiVacCorona is a peptide antigens-based vaccine. Thus, The vaccine does not contain the live virus and forms immunity due to the use of artificially synthesized peptides. == Development == In March 2020 it was reported that Russian scientists have begun...

The second Russian vaccine. Already in use.

CowperKettle

05:13

> In the 1980s, the dropout rate of participants at Kaiser Permanente's obesity clinic in San Diego, California, was about 50%; despite all of the dropouts successfully losing weight under the program.[2] Vincent Felitti, head of Kaiser Permanente's Department of Preventive Medicine in San Diego, conducted interviews with people who had left the program, and discovered that a majority of 286 people he interviewed had experienced childhood sexual abuse.

> The interview findings suggested to Felitti that weight gain might be a coping mechanism for depression, anxiety, and fear.[2]

CowperKettle

06:14

Pine trees are my outpatient clinic!
Skis are my clinicians!

CowperKettle

06:58

How do you pronounce the surname in Tomas Faresjö (Sweden)?

Far S Joe?

CowperKettle

07:16

e1.ru/news/spool/news_id-69761603.html

The number of deaths in the Sverdlovsk region exceeded the number of births by 24 thousand in 2020.

And still the flats are getting more and more expensive.

Villages are dying out and closing, Yekaterinburg keeps growing in size.

Navdeep Singh

08:02

How can I post image file here?

CowperKettle