English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

@Cerberus sure. there are metaphors, and then there are dead metaphors which are no longer metaphors. but I wouldn't call e non-dead metaphor a living metaphor without the context of dead ones.

Cerberus

@Mitch I think you may have been caught in a hermeneutic circle.

@Mitch A dead metaphor is a still a metaphor!

Mitch

3:01 AM

@Cerberus 'dead metaphor' is a metaphor, but a dead metaphor is not a metaphor.

It used to be a metaphor but the semantic drift has gone so far that its literal meaning is ... itself, the new meaning

@Cerberus using hermeneutic non-ironically is already biting its own tail.

name a dead metaphor.

Cerberus

@Mitch Oh, hah.

Mitch

'post' for 'mail'

Cerberus

Well, no, a dead metaphor is still a metaphor. It just died.

@Mitch Who says anything about non-irony?

Mitch

@Cerberus Where do you bury a dead metaphor?

In the capital of the state of mind/

Cerberus

You don't bury it; you use it as a tool.

Mitch

3:05 AM

@Cerberus I just threw that in there to complicate things needlessly

Cerberus

You would!

Mitch

Not only would I but I did

anyway 'post' as 'mail' is only the latest in the strong of semantic drift by metaphor starting from 'post' meaning a post in the ground (or past participle of ponere, to put (already dead metaphored)

so if you're looking at a post office, there is absolutely no conception that a literal meaning might have been 'put'. the literal meaning is the post office.

there's no analysis that could extract any other meaning out of post office other than post office. whatever metaphor was there is gone.

Cerberus

@Mitch If so, then how can you talk about it?

Is this even a sensible discussion without proper definitions?

CowperKettle

3:49 AM

> The Serbian government handed over to Russia’s FSB the transcripts of wiretapped conversations between Russian opposition members. Two weeks later, Andrei Pivovarov was arrested. echo.msk.ru/programs/graniweek/2968512-echo

Mitch

@Cerberus How can we talk about anything then? We expect to share something about meaning.

CowperKettle

> Back in 2008, Russia acquired majority shares in NIS, Serbia’s national oil and gas company.

Russia uses oil and gas assets to make foreign government officials its whores.

Mitch

@Cerberus We probably have the same set of definitions, enough to make some connection. But I suppose since you're asking the question, you have large doubts. When in doubt just assume I'm right.

Well...

CowperKettle

By the way, Putin tried exactly this trick in December 2013, and exactly this trick sparked the outrage of the Ukrainian people. Ukrainians saw the Russia was overtaking the country through oil and gas.

Mitch

Even if you don't have doubts, you should probably have some anyway, and then you just default to assuming that I'm right.

If I doubt myself, then I suppose you could have some leeway.

CowperKettle

4:20 AM

About 1000 electric cars were sold in Russia in 2021, which is 2.6 times more than in 2020.

Wow. Probably in 2022, every day three electric cars are sold in Russia.

Not bad.

CowperKettle

4:38 AM

Попытка самоубийства Петра Чайковского

Ряд исследователей на основе воспоминаний профессора Московской консерватории Николая Кашкина предполагают, что в 1877 году Пётр Ильич Чайковский совершил неудачную попытку самоубийства, и относят её к пребыванию композитора в Москве между 11 сентября (23 сентября) и 24 сентября (6 октября) 1877 года. Он зашёл в холодную воду Москвы-реки с твёрдым намерением заболеть тяжёлой простудой или воспалением лёгких. Обстоятельства этого события излагаются в воспоминаниях коллеги и друга композитора Николая Кашкина, которые были написаны вскоре после смерти композитора. Публикация их журнального варианта...

The Russian Wikipedia has a whole article dedicated to Pyotr Chaikovsky's failed suicide attempt in 1877.

CowperKettle

5:29 AM

The USA is clearly on a diet

Xanne

5:57 AM

The feeders vs. the fed.

Or rather, the feeder.

CowperKettle

6:21 AM

Word of the day: gematochezia (from Greek αἷμα ("blood") and χέζειν ("to defaecate"))

@Robusto Duplo is a Russian word meaning "tree hollow" (дупло)

joe biden doing a kick flip on his skateboard.

CowperKettle

6:45 AM

First Russian-made visual cortex device has been implanted in the brain of a monkey. neuronovosti.ru/…

The scientists plan to bring the device into human use in 2027.

Until then, it will be installed into dozens of animals to make sure it works properly

I wonder what resolution it has.

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle hemato, right?

CowperKettle

@M.A.R. Oops! Yes

I was busy flipping my Anki records and trying to recall words

I skipped a couple of days, and there's a deluge of unrecalled words.

M.A.R.

I was busy drinking soup

@CowperKettle Yeah that's what I hate about, well, not Anki, but I dunno, the backlog builds up reaaaaally fast

CowperKettle

Today I had a bowl of Olivier salad

Olivier salad

Olivier salad (Russian: салат Оливье, tr. salat Olivye) is a traditional salad dish in Russian cuisine, which is also popular in other post-Soviet countries and around the world. In different modern recipes, it is usually made with diced boiled potatoes, carrots, brined dill pickles (or cucumber), green peas, eggs, celeriac, onions, diced boiled chicken or bologna sausage (sometimes ham or hot dogs), and tart apples, with salt, pepper, and mustard added to enhance flavor, dressed with mayonnaise. In many countries, the dish is commonly referred to as Russian salad. A variation called Stolichny...

M.A.R.

Oh we know what Olivier Salad is alright

CowperKettle

6:53 AM

Yes? You tried it?

M.A.R.

Hundreds of times

Not with onions. Who the heck adds onions to that mess

Other ingredients check out

CowperKettle

It was a fancy dish in Imperial Russia. But in the USSR, they started using cheap ingredients, and now it's a common dish.

Had I lived in Iran, I would not eat it. I would rather instead eat the wealth of fruit and nuts found in Iran. Especially nuts. And greens.

M.A.R.

Well nuts don't make a meal

2

Our staple food often involves rice

Rice and some stew.

Olivier is pretty high calorie, isn't it?

Well, we don't make cakes and weird stuff from rice though, no one has time for that unless you buy it

CowperKettle

Yes, Olivier includes mayonaise, which is considered the worst ingredient. A lot of bad quality fat.

I like majadrah made with rice and green lentils

The lentils give it the texture and feel of protein.

The rice gives a lot of carbs.

Together, an ideal combination.

The lentils prolong the absoprtion of sugar.

CowperKettle

12:57 PM

CowperKettle

1:31 PM

CowperKettle

1:59 PM

What does he say? "The thust fork at the bottom of the booster.."? youtu.be/VlCkW-qdl1o?t=255

I don't understand this "fork" or "fog", it's unclear.

Robusto

@CowperKettle He says "thrust puck" ... due to the shape of the item in question.

CowperKettle

2:22 PM

@Robusto Ah! Thank you!

I only knew about the hockey usage of "puck", and some antique usage too.

> (now rare) A mischievous or hostile spirit

29

Q: What is a thrust puck on Starship?

Elon Musk recently mentioned a Thrust Puck on Twitter, "We’re stripping SN2 to bare minimum to test the thrust puck to dome weld under pressure, first with water, then at cryo." He also mentioned this: "There’s a puck at the base that takes the engine thrust load. Don’t shuck the puck!" What e...

Robusto

2:41 PM

@CowperKettle From Puck, a character in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

CowperKettle

3:51 PM

> Eric Clapton claims people vaccinated against COVID-19 are under ‘hypnosis’

Cerberus

4:02 PM

@Xanne What did you mean by that?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Everyone around the Interwebs now seems to be linking to this video, I saw it just today on a Dutch website.

CowperKettle

4:21 PM

NTFs? The vapid senseless pictures sold for huge sums of money. I head of them. Probably a good investment, if they are really digitally unique. I'm too old to pay more attention.

Cerberus

5:01 PM

@CowperKettle They are not pictures, but just a short range of bits.

CowperKettle

> Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, at least 20% of the U.S. population has been infected with the virus, Johns Hopkins University's COVID Resource Center reports.

Sounds like bullshit. Only 20%? Come on.

Ti-cul Ti-caille

@Cerberus Thanks for the feedback about boutique and pool. I guess boutique used like that is recent and not something set.

Cerberus

@Ti-culTi-caille Yeah I'd recommend against using the word at all...

CowperKettle

@Cerberus Yes, I know, but they are kind of "linked" to pictures.

They are used to denote your ownership of a picture.

Cerberus

@CowperKettle Not necessarily, and 'linked' means nothing more than just using a hyperlink on the Internet.

Not even ownership.

Ti-cul Ti-caille

5:07 PM

@Cerberus I had to translate it is all, and it's always funny because it's borrowed from French but ends up being something else in French for the suggested meaning. Anyways.

Speaking of which things that are not set, do you guys consider because reasons (the intricate set of reasons) better today than it was a few years ago? I had read the answer by J. Lawler and he didn't like it at all. Did it fade, I haven't heard it in some time?

Another day another cookie. Cheers.

Ti-cul Ti-caille

5:31 PM

Yeah, I forgot to ask, do you consider because alone an acceptable answer-phrase to a why question?

Cerberus

6:09 PM

@Ti-culTi-caille It is an informal cliché.

I see no merit in it.

@Ti-culTi-caille Also very informal.

Vikas

@CowperKettle lol

@CowperKettle Source please

CowperKettle

6:38 PM

@Vikas medscape.com/viewarticle/967190

> As of Monday, a total of 71.3 million cases have been reported in the country, with more than 867,000 COVID-related deaths. The U.S. had more than 204,000 new cases reported Monday and 572 deaths, Johns Hopkins said. Over the last 28 days, the U.S. had 18.3 million cases and almost 48,000 deaths.

Here in Russia, tests that distinguish Omicron are not widely available, so we can only guess by the shape of the curve that it's indeed Omicron that we're seeing.

Mitch

7:30 PM

@Ti-culTi-caille 'Because NOUN' is not grammatical in standard English, but it is a recent phenomenon that gained popularity in the past ten years presumably because of the internet. I don't have a good impression on whether it has staying power. It's probably OK informally among younger people (under 30's).

That said, there's a book with it in the title: Because Internet

@Ti-culTi-caille As to 'because' alone, it is very common informally among all ages (or rather it's been used by youth as an abrupt answer for a long time (did Shakespeare use it?). So grammatically it is fine, but stylistically I'm sure it is forbidden by school teachers and newspaper editors as being an impudent and puerile answer.

Ti-cul Ti-caille

@Cerberus Thanks!

@Mitch Ok, thank you for the explanation... Time will tell as those younger speakers age up.

So because alone is a bit lazy, but it doesn't carry the supposed intricacy.

It's either lazy or the person doesn't want to tell.

I thought because reasons hinted there was something complicated about explaining.

Vikas

@CowperKettle This tells more truth: foxnews.com/health/…

Mitch

9:24 PM

@Ti-culTi-caille If we're ignoring grammaticality (because NOUN' sounds really off to me because I am older, but I think it has become popular -because- it sounds a little weird (at least that's my interpretation)...

If we're ignoring grammaticality and just thinking about the thought processes of the speaker and hearer, 'Because' by itself, or 'just because' implies something like "Because I said so" or "there's no reason other than that I said so" or "I'm just being stubborn" (usually when the question is "Why did you tell me to shut up?"

If you say "Because reasons" (or the much more traditional "Because of reasons") you are intentionally saying a vague word to avoid saying anything specific, meaning "I have my reasons but I'm not telling you"

Xanne

10:55 PM

@Cerberus Just a little American cynicism.

Cerberus

@Xanne If you think America is sending food to Thailand or Hungary or Chile or South Africa, I think you might be mistaken!

Like all rich countries, it may be sending food to very poor countries, mostly in Africa.

But why didn't sign the agreement?

I have no idea.

Xanne

11:29 PM

@Cerberus Itks explained here geneva.usmission.gov/2017/03/24/…

Cerberus