English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Feels like I just got pulled into Bioshock Infinite or something.

1:58 AM

2:34 AM

2:52 AM

if you can read this

3:18 AM

How private equity conquered the US tax system: IRS virtually never audits a $4.5 trillion industry.

Parentectomy: A slang term meaning removal of a parent (or both parents) from the child.

Hairi

7:50 AM

Hello guys.

Again I dont know how to compose my question :|

Here is the draft:

"Hello Victor. I see the history graph doesnt show up on stage site. But I dont remeber, did it uesd to work?"
Or is rather new problem - that occurred quite recently .

Hope you get what I want to express.
Im not sure how to use "used to" along with "did it used to" or "has it used to"

8:06 AM

8:21 AM

lol

@Mitch Also, at least in the UK, would not work, because the gas has something in it that prevents suicide by oven.

apparently you could still do it but it takes a lot longer, so you have time to reconsider

9:23 AM

Went to a herbalist, but was quickly sent away because he had no thyme for me.

9:33 AM

:sad trombone noise:

YouTube put some Battlefield videos in the "see also" column, and the video there is very cool. I haven't played 3D games for 15 years

Looks like something happened at about 2008 that greatly improved video quality in 3D games.

The last 3D game I played was Quake III Arena

I wish that wasn't so long ago :D

I would guess graphics cards have become a lot better

(which is how they got coöpted into crypto mining)

I even had the 12Mb Voodoo 2 video card for a while

It worked as a 3D accelerator only, so you had to pair it using a cable with a cheap 2D video card that did the actual rendering for 2D stuff

that takes me back! I didn't have the money fro a separate graphics card back then. I could only just afford a sound card!

I also did not have money, I bought it years after it came out

9:42 AM

ahhhh

I did not care much for 3D games, so I only played Quake III years after it came out, using a second-hand Voodoo2 I bought from some guy in Yekaterinburg

2D games are a lot easier to render :D

But overall, if I were able to send a message to myself in the past, I would tell him that all computer games are a complete waste of time. They are an object of art, though. Modern art is computer games. The so-called "modern art" one sees in museums is commercial merchandise for investors, not really art.

For instance, Grim Fandango is art.

But I would tell my self-in-the-past to avoid spending even a second on computer games. Maybe just watch them as art sometimes.

If you enjoyed the time you spent gaming, I think there's no need to regret it

11:00 AM

@Hairi Hello Victor. The history graph isn't showing up on the stage (N.B: do you mean staging?) site. I don't remember, did it used to work or is this a new problem that occurred quite recently?

11:30 AM

@MattE.Эллен Genaū. It was much more enjoyable back then, SEGA and PS1/2 and all those great console games...

sighs

11:41 AM

nostalgia's a helluva drug :D

I bought Link's Awakening for the Switch and it was the best nostalgia hit I've had in a long time. Really cheered me up

11:55 AM

Oh? Nostalgia makes me feel a great sense of sadness

Why's that, do you think?

Fear of aging?

Dealing with the pain of loss

M.A.R.

12:15 PM

Oops, this page could not be translated

Has @TChrist been around when I'm not looking?

@CowperKettle they're so patriotic even commies applaud them

@CowperKettle what would you have done instead of gaming?

I mean, saying "I've been playing too many games" isn't really damning. It's just, what, technophobia?

It's not like everyone was discovering or writing or experimenting when computers weren't around. The expectation is time not spent on leisure will definitely be spent on self-improvement or finding cures and stuff. That's unrealistic IMO

@MattE.Эллен Nostalgia ain't what it used to be.

May 17 '20 at 22:25, by Robusto

@Gigili The problem is, nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

See?

12:30 PM

@Gigili I see. That makes sense. At least for Link's awakening, it's still there

@Robusto I can't hear you through these rose tinted glasses

@MattE.Эллен It didn't always used to be like that.

Now it is always used to being like this I don't mind so much, but back before it used to be I was quite upset about it

12:45 PM

On that note,

Apr 9 at 20:12, by Gigili

Dec 20 '20 at 16:26, by Gigili

2 days ago, by Gigili

Oct 6 at 19:46, by Gigili

Glad to know you missed me.

Just watched Dazed and Confused. People have praised it for its 'anthropological' value. Did 70s' high schools in the US really look like this? There was a shocking amount of normalized bullying in the film.

I don't now how accurate it is, but when I was doing my A Levels that was a highly aspirational film :D

OMG

well, not the bullying part

Ah alright. The rest was mostly fun.

12:54 PM

yeah, we didn't want to go out and paddle the first years

that was f*d up

How long ago was it?

my A levels? 1997-9

@MattE.Эллен Cool.

I can't believe that used to be a thing that adults in the school laughed about.

Yeah. I remember thinking I was glad I didn't grow up then

Also, one of the creepiest lines in Holywood history: "I get older, they stay the same age"

I know right

Tarantino says it's on his top ten. Maybe because it depicts his high school days so accurately.

1:00 PM

Also, the soundtrack is spot on

Yeah songs matching scenes is always nice.

tchrist

@Færd The hazing of freshmen by seniors wasn't something that happened in my 70s high school, but I would say that most of the rest of the nonsense was pretty familiar. There was certainly a lot of abuse.

@Færd Bullying has always been a feature of American secondary schools.

One of my friends in third year showed up with a black eye one day. I asked him who did it. "Garth Uhwat," he said, naming the top school bully. "Why did he hit you?" I probed further. "Because I objected to him kicking me."

This was in a Catholic prep school, mind you. Public schools could be even worse.

The priests publicly frowned on fighting, but privately I think they enjoyed it. If two kids were caught fighting in the halls they were sent to detention in the gym after school, where they were made to put on boxing gloves and fight it out there.

1:18 PM

I think all schools have some bullying.

It's very hard to prevent, when the teachers aren't looking.

I remember mild kicking.

@tchrist I wasn't one to jibe well with the jocks. Such an environment would've meant hell for me.

@Robusto My brother went to a religious school too. He was subjected to some bullying (not on the level that you described) and he suffered for it. He's very sensitive, mentally. And the principal could care less about all that.

So, yeah, bullying is kinda prevalent.

I also remember observing Alexander's approach from the corner of an eye as I was walking. Then he moved out of view, but I praesumed he was sneaking up behind me. So at the right moment, without looking, I swung my fist backwards, hitting him straight on the head.

What I saw in the film was particularly obnoxious because it so openly normalized and sanctioned.

@Færd The priests were the biggest bullies, beating up on kids in class or in the halls. So if the authorities model that behavior, what are they teaching their charges?

Ugh.

My school sounds like a paradise now.

Do remember incidents from school when someone was bullied and you did nothing?

1:22 PM

@Cerberus I'm having some recollections too now...

Were you Alexander?

@Robusto I suppose. Most of the abuse that I hear from the previous generations came from their teachers.

Yikes.

I've not heard of that here.

@Cerberus You broke my glasses man.

Then why did you sneak up on me?

1:24 PM

I was just going to give you a hug.

Feel guilty now.

Yuck.

From behind?

An innocent surprise hug.

Very gay.

You were always telling me I was gay, but maybe it was you.

@Cerberus I usually intervened, unless it was nothing serious and the person being bullied didn't seem too bothered.

@Færd A lot of it did. As I say, that was a behavior they modeled. But there were always fights, and when strong kids picked on weak ones, that was bullying. I learned early on that if you fought and gave back something near as good as you got, bullies would leave you alone.

1:26 PM

@Færd That is really good. I was very shy and indecisive; I didn't.

@Cerberus Hmm. Maybe you do have a point there.

We had one very fat girl in our school, not in my class but same year.

@Cerberus there was one time a friend was being held by the throat against a wall and I couldn't bring myself to stop it.

But we did some subject together.

One day, about half the pupils were in the classroom already before the teacher.

Two girls approached her, probably said something nasty, then pushed her stuff from the table onto the floor.

She cried.

But I did nothing.

Nor did anybody else.

I hated myself after that.

Still do.

@MattE.Эллен That sucks.

But's also understandable.

@Cerberus In my school, boys didn't interfere in altercations between girls. It would have been considered unmanly, and made you a target for abuse.

1:29 PM

I'm sure it's happened to me too, being part of the standby crowd.

You've probably learned from that, right? As have I.

@Cerberus yeah. I didn't drink when I was 13, but had I been drunk I would have had the courage!

I mean it's certainly happened on the street, where I feared for my safety if I intervened.

And in school, too, probably.

@Robusto Maybe I felt it was something between people I didn't really know; but we did not have this etiquette. Conversely, looking back, I rather think it would have been super humiliating for the bullies if an unknown boy had intervened.

@MattE.Эллен Same here!

@Færd Yes, if you really fear for your safety, then you might not want to intervene.

But call the police.

Last year, there was this fight about to break out in the train, between a young man and his girl friends, who were playing loud music, and a man who go angry about it.

It's telling that I got into a fight in the student lounge one time as a sophomore. I bloodied my opponent's nose and then we wrestled to a standstill. The bell rang for class, and I went with my shirt full of his blood and none of the teachers even remarked on it. That's how common it was.

1:32 PM

They refused to stop playing their music. The man and the youngster were already standing near each other, chest touching chest.

I had had time to observe them, and suddenly I felt the teacher instinct and intervened.

It was easy and it worked.

Should have done that with the fat girl.

@Robusto Wow. That's pretty bad.

@Cerberus Bravo. Couldn't it have gone another way?

@Robusto That's dark stuff.

I mean the age and its norms.

@Færd Someone else thought it might have, but intervening seemed safe enough to me.

Here you might come across police officers who abuse young people, especially young women, for the way they dress. The dress police.

The best thing to do is to take a video of the event and publish it on social media.

I just walked up the man very quickly, told him he was right, but asked him whether it was really wise to proceed. I never touched him.

@Færd Ah, I have heard of those.

Nice move.

1:36 PM

One also hears their behaviour gets better or worse depending on the political climate?

Yeah it fluctuates. But they're always there. And they're about to go rabid soon.

Social media has been a real boon in this regard. That's why they always censor those platforms.

A boon, why?

And why are they about to go rabid soon?

Because whenever a video of such an event is published, it goes viral on Instagram and faces angry public backlash.

This has changed the climate a bit.

@Cerberus Because of our next government, led by a conservative.

@Færd Good.

@Færd Is that certain?

When are the elections?

@Robusto I was really lucky I went to schools where I didn't have to deal with that stuff on a daily basis.

@Cerberus In several days. It's fixed: Raisi is going to come out of the voting boxes.

Mark the name. :)

1:41 PM

I know about Raisi.

That is unfortunate.

It is.

(Come out of the voting boxes? What was that?)

Last year there was a woman sitting on a bench beside the sidewalk, holding her face in her hands. She was crying.

There was a man standing in front of her, threatening her with insulting harsh words.

Hmm I winder why the elections aren't in the papers here yet.

They normally are.

People looked and shook their heads and passed by. I stepped near and asked her if everything was alright.

The man jumped in my face and started hitting me. That was when the passersby intervened and separated us.

Not when he was threatening the woman.

@Cerberus Our elections?

It'd be a waste of paper.

It's not even that newsworthy for us.

The recent US election created a stronger buzz in Iran than our own.

yeah, the results have been decided already

See. A witness came from the other world. شاهد از غیب رسید. :)

7 mins ago, by Færd

(Come out of the voting boxes? What was that?)

Ah the ballot boxes, not the voting boxes.

Silly.

See you all later.

1:49 PM

CU

cya

@Færd Yes.

I have now read about them in foreign media.

@Færd That's insane.

If anyone's curious about what a Catholic prep school was like in the '60s, the film Heaven Help Us gives a very accurate portrayal.

2

There's an excerpt.

thanks for sharing

2:10 PM

@Færd It was indeed hell for anyone who didn't worship the jock culture.

yeah, bullying is a part of human nature...

the reptile part

Alpha-male etc

@MattE.Эллен I actually thinks it's the smell part... natural gas is odorless so they (the providers of the stove gas?) intentionally add a smell to it. I thought it was to make it easier to detect gas leaks so you could prevent an explosion, but I suppose the smell has the unintended side effect of being desirable to avoid for longish periods including how long it is to suffocate oneself with it.

wondering if I'm think too much about this or just nerd explaining

or both

>The gas [natural gas] replaced, "coal gas" or "illuminating gas" was another matter entirely. It was manufactured locally at "gasworks" from coal heated in airtight chambers. The gas produced, a mixture of methane, hydrogen and carbon monoxide, not only burned beautifully, but was perfect for the suicidally-inclined. The active ingredient was, of course, the carbon monoxide.
With blood having more than 200 times the affinity for carbon monoxide than oxygen, it doesn't take much to saturate the blood and starve your brain and nervous system of oxygen.

so, now we have natural gas, it's harder to commit suicide by putting your head in an oven

from gizmodo.com/…

@MattE.Эллен paddling? was that in dazed and confused or was it your highschool?

@Mitch dazed and confused. definitely not my secondary school

2:23 PM

@MattE.Эллен Yay!

in the film the seniors made miniature cricket bats, aka paddles, and used them to beat the children just entering high school (juniors?)

they probably didn't use willow, though

@MattE.Эллен oh. I don't remember that at all from the movie (but on reflection all I can remember is 1) Matthew McConaughey saying 'all right all right all right', and 2) keg parties

@Mitch all right all right all right

and though I never went to one, it seemed that keg parties is all that a particular crowd talked about.

@Mitch it is no exaggeration to say one weekend my friends and I had the film on loop, so despite having a terrible memory quite a lot of the film has stuck with me

2:27 PM

@MattE.Эллен That sounds like frat party hazing in college (from that time period). it sounds really strange to think that highschool students in the US would do that.

@Mitch yeah. some messed up tradition

@MattE.Эллен I think a lot of prejudices about the US come from films which are exaggerations and concentrations of extreme experiences.

@Mitch yeah. especially with the 24hr news cycle

@MattE.Эллен ie I personally don't think it's common (or was common in the 70's) for something like that.

it's not just films anymore

@Mitch I see. I guess the writers had it rough

2:29 PM

Aren't there highschool films or TV shows in Europe where bullying occurs?

there must be. There certainly was bullying in Grange Hill, but it wasn't touted as a tradition

the main paddling scene in D&C

I haven't seen the History Boys, but probably in that?

Harry Potter had a fair amount

I think the framing is different. D&C condemns it to a point, but also makes it clear that it is sanctioned. I can't think of a film about British schools where the bullying is sanctioned The Purge style

Not even Educating Rita

Maybe that episode of Doctor Who? where The Doctor deliberately forgets who he is and works as a teacher in a school training boys for WWI (I think or maybe WWII)

I don't know if you'd count Scum as a school film, but the characters are school age. I haven't seen it, but from its wiki description it sounds like the violence is sanctioned.

2:49 PM

what is the comedy show about 4 guys... The Inconceivables? The Incommensurates? The Incorrigibles?

oh.... I know what you mean...

I don't remember bullying in that

I didn't watch it

The Inbetweeners

are we excluding internet-bullying?

I don't think so

2:52 PM

There's a cottage industry (in the US) of series/movies about jr high/highschool (wait..what is it you call in the UK, that school time?) of girls, usually a pair: Pen 15, Booksmart, Eight Grade, etc etc etc

@user85795 yeah that just doesn't translate to a good movie. guys beating the shit out of each other.

@MattE.Эллен haha yes. vulgar but good natured

Trainspotting was obviously how every one in Scotland grows up.

@Mitch depends on the school. most UK secondary schools go from 11 to 16 (or 18 if they do a levels). some split into middle and high schools

@Mitch clearly.

@MattE.Эллен Do you call it 'high school' there? Is 17-18 called something else?

A-levels

How do you complete the sentence, "When I was ..." with reference to school at that age?

I would say middle or high school

@Mitch 16 to 18 is either college (usually no attached school) or sixth form (attached to a school)

2:56 PM

Would you say 'When I was doing A levels'?

yeah

or 'When I was in sixth form'?

what about for before A levels?

2 hours ago, by Matt E. Эллен

I don't now how accurate it is, but when I was doing my A Levels that was a highly aspirational film :D

@Mitch GCSEs

A-levels = sixth-form

and by 'aspirational' does that mean you wish you were wielding a cricket bat and giving beers to girls from your trunk? Or something else (just having a beer)?

2:58 PM

I wished I was popular and partying

I did not wish to be inflicting violence

even the dweebs in Dazed and Confused were cool

@MattE.Эллен But you wouldn't say "I remember back when I was doing GCSE's, I really wanted to paddle the shit out of kids smaller than me", right? What would you say there?

@Mitch yeah, I think we would say that

@MattE.Эллен They all needed to wash their hair more often.

well, apart from the violence :P

@MattE.Эллен Even if you were referring to your time in school as an eleven year old?

2:59 PM

@Mitch oh, no I would refer to the particular year

so, before GCSEs it's year 7 to year 9

(or first year to third year if you're old fashioned)

'6th form' = years 10 and 11? but you never say 'year 10'?

6th form means years 12 and 13

Note: 13

Grade 13

We could say years 10 or 11 (rather than GCSEs)

A university prep year

3:03 PM

@MattE.Эллен wikipedia is helping with the general concepts, but not ... how you say it.

Sure, you can say "back when I was in year 3 or 4 I had a friend who snuck a beer out of his father's stash'

and you'd be... 14 years old?

just guessing not doing math

"Year 12" isn't unheard of from teachers, but I've never anyone say "year 13"

as a joke?

like here it would 'second year senior' for someone who failed senior year and is repeating.

it would be "third year" or "year 9"

"year 3" is primary school

but third year is...?

third year is 13 to 14 years old

3:06 PM

OK

Now I'm ready to be a spy

in the UK

:D

talking about high school

goddamt

already messed up

@Mitch well England and Wales. Scotland is a bit different and does have high school

Argh

or should I say

where students don't do A-Levels, they do their highers

3:08 PM

Och Argh

I don't know about schooling in Northern Ireland

@MattE.Эллен Everything I know about UK education is from Harry Potter

holy crap that whole thing is about bullying

@Mitch that's pretty accurate. ;)

So how old were you when you did your owls?

lol

3:09 PM

When I grow up I want to be an Auror?

What were A-levels in HP?

I think OWLs are O-Level equivalent, which is GCSEs

And A-levels?

I don't know, maybe those pointy tools

A.W.Ls?

@MattE.Эллен nice

So Hermione wants to be a lawyer when she grows up? And Ron and Harry want to be cops? That's what I gathered from their educational aspirations.

i mean analogously

because magic world is just like non-magic world except for the names of things

Potions = chemistry class

minister of magic = prime minister

@Mitch apparently the next level is N.E.W.T

3:13 PM

OK now that I think about it, the whole magic thing is unrealistic.

lol

haha

I mean the prime minister has no -conception- at all of any high school kid

@MattE.Эллен apparently. I have to catch up on my HP trivia. Who was Padma Patel's mom's job at the Ministry of Magic?

@Mitch I don't know. patent clark?

@MattE.Эллен If it is any consolation, I will have forgotten all the facts mentioned here in the next few hours.

wait.

-that- is the thing that needs consolation about.

don't worry I will have forgotten, too

3:17 PM

If it is any consolation, you could have told me state secrets and I won't remember al that past three hours.

That's better

luckily for us, the transcript is forever

Jun 7 '12 at 16:49, by Mitch

@JasperLoy argh..I''ve forgotten what we were talking about...how can I jump back to what you are referring to?

9 years ago :O

AHA!

nine, even!

> Parvati was born to an unnamed father and mother as one of their twin daughters; the other being Padma.

3:20 PM

I can't count this pandemic year :P

@MattE.Эллен I forgot about that

@user85795 easy to imagine it's all one long year

eternal pandemonium

is when the internet changed from eternal September

Hairi

Guys how would you say:

"The window works now, it now opens and closes"
Or may be
"The window is fixed, it is able to open and close"

Thanks !

4:09 PM

I would say, "The window works properly now."

Ella Fitzgerald Too Darn Hot

Взрывы на заправке в Новосибирске. Видео со всех ракурсов

5:22 PM

The state of Mississippi has the lowest covid vaccination percentage, at 31.5%

Взрыв АГЗС в Новосибирске цестерна протаранила дом

Today's explosion at a gas station in Novosibirsk

Here, gas tank is seen flying through the air towards the operator

Looks like from a video game

@CowperKettle Mississippi is the reddest of red states.

It's also last in education and about anything that matters.

6:57 PM

Pet Peeve of the day: ELU answers (to a question like "What does 'X Y Z W' mean"') that say 'Z appears in a book title that I like' or 'Shakespeare'. It's a very particular case of my pet peeve "Not answering the effing question"

8:06 PM

I'm also very annoyed that I can't remember where I put my pen or rather I explicitly was in another room where I left my pen and was freaking out in a zoom call because I thought somebody had moved my pen (-and- notepad).

No, nobody else moved my pen. It was me.

@Mitch Haha I see.

@Mitch Pens move on their own, get eaten, and disappear.

Nothing else can explain it.

@Cerberus You know how there's a sock trap in a clothes dryer which is where all the other socks go (explains all the missing second socks of pairs)?

I thought it was a black hole at the centre.

Although, honestly, all my socks are identical.

There's a similar thing for missing pens. They all eventually get drawn to some drawer of missing pens.

So I don't need to care about pairs.

Yes, it must be so.

8:15 PM

@Cerberus That's crazy. There's a perfectly mechanical and designed reason for missing sock pairs.

@Cerberus That's one way to fool the gods.

For which they will take their revenge in other ways.

Such as?

Make holes in my socks?

They do that.

Gods are more clever than that. Those holes are there because of wear, not some god intervening.

mentions that to gods as a good way to annoy people just the slightest bit

Hmm... maybe lost pens get resurrected as computer cords in the 'drawer of obsolete computer paraphernalia'

@Mitch Come on, how likely is that?

@Mitch That must be it!

Especially USB cables that no longer fit any of your devices.

With USB on one side and on the other side...a mysterious, stunted shape.

10:49 PM

> • The green anaconda is the largest (most massive) living snake. The silhouette is scaled to 5.21m which was the longest measured and published in a study by Jesús Antonio Rivas that measured hundreds of anacondas.[1] There are reports of longer anacondas but these are questionable.[2][3][4]
• The reticulated python is the longest living snake. The silhouette is scaled to 6.95 meters which is the length of a reliably measured wild reticulated python.[5] A captive reticulated python named "Medusa" is reported to measure 7.67 meters.[6] There are reports of ~10 meter specimens but these…

11:06 PM

@Cerberus Estimated? Puh-lease