English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

tchrist

00:12

@alphabet Definitely sounds ungrammatical to us.

alphabet

01:01

@MetaEd I'm thinking of moving into a more sysadmin-type role. Of course, I'd call myself a "DevOps Engineer" because that's the current euphemism. I'd prefer the job title "Lord of the Servers, Guardian of the YAML Files, Protector of the Immutable State."

Laurel

Are you at some sort of tech job rn?

alphabet

Currently I'm doing full-stack development for a web app & backend work on some associated services. My potential new role would be more cross-team, managing infrastructure.

Within the same organization, just a shift in responsibilities. Not sure if it helps or hurts my career path but I think it'd be interesting & I like messing with files in /etc.

Currently we have a group of physical servers in a data center somewhere (long story) but we might be moving to an on-prem k8s cluster or into some sort of hybrid cloud thingamajig.

MetaEd

@alphabet very tech, but also I sit on the company's, well you might call it a steering committee

and just to show how competent I am at tech, I've just locked myself out of my server

alphabet

The perils of sshd_config.

Laurel

Aw sweet I do full stack. My stack is very full in fact

MetaEd

01:10

to be fair, all I did was trigger a firewall rule that I can back out

@Laurel My job description consists of anything my boss doesn't want to do himself

alphabet

I do full-stack development insofar as the entire project has exactly three engineers. So all of us end up working on everything.

Laurel

Like I think I have to do sysadmin stuff, like deal with connecting stuff to AD and monitoring

MetaEd

yeah, everything from kernel upgrades to financial reports

alphabet

No no we call it DevOps now because that term has more cachet despite having become meaningless.

MetaEd

when you worked for a small to mid-size business you wear a lot of hats

*work

Laurel

01:14

I work with mostly network engineers so luckily I'm not the one banging my head against the internet directly. I have a coworker who helps with server stuff but I'm the only one who does code

Although I guess I am trying to get more into network stuff because I'm on call watching it every so often

But anyway, it's a well known secret that the only people on ELU are tech people, with the exception of a few randos who must have gotten lost

alphabet

Hey, not Prof. Lawler! Though I think he has done a lot of computational linguistics

Is there a way to learn Kubernetes without wanting to punch whoever designed it?

Laurel

@alphabet He's a rando. We don't know how he got here :p

I don't do kubernetes. I considered doing docker since they have a whale tho

alphabet

Docker is reasonably sane. One could have designed it while not on drugs, unlike certain other systems.

Laurel

I looked at both of them a while back and I'm not really sure the point of it all

It seems like I could just use VMs instead, which is what I do

alphabet

01:38

I find it useful. Cheaper/faster to spin up than VMs, helps you keep things isolated.

The problem is that everyone puts 500 layers of abstractions on top of Docker to "improve" it.

In Ukraine news: apparently Prigz is still hanging out in Russia, neither arrested nor dead.

tchrist

> To address the issue, it is recommended to adjust the command as follows:

Where in the world does that sound grammatical?

Or is this just bad ChatGPT training?

Cerberus

02:08

I would say it is grammatical?

Just very bleh.

Where did you find it?

tchrist

02:19

-2

A: docker: Error response from daemon: invalid mount config for type "volume": invalid mount path: 'C:/Program Files/Git/etc/todos' mount path must be

To address the issue, it is recommended to adjust the command as follows: docker run -dp 3000:3000 --mount type=volume,src=todo-db,target=//etc//todos getting-started

Sounds very blah.

Cerberus

@tchrist Ah, for an SE answer, it sounds fakish.

tchrist

I searched ELU for the "it is recommended to" pattern, and it's almost only ever from outside North America. It isn't common.

@Cerberus Yeah, not enough to flag for investigation into being AI-generated because there just isn't enough data to go on, but it sounds like blech.

Why it has the cover from some trashy romance paperback on it for the picture, I daren't guess. :)

Cerberus

@tchrist Oh, interesting.

tchrist

This search.

Cerberus

Yeah my first thought was GPT, or some non-native speaker who was trying really hard (and succeeding, but still).

There is a time for passives.

tchrist

02:26

LPH is French, Shoe and Brillig and maybe Fattie are UK, Lawrence from Australia.

@Cerberus It's not the passive that's weird, it's the infinitive.

It is recommended that you do X.

It is recommend to do X.

They recommend you do X.

You are recommended to call.

That's weird.

CowperKettle

@alphabet "Prigz" sounds like someone from a Woodehouse book

tchrist

@CowperKettle Doesn't it!

CowperKettle

Hah

tchrist

All those posh nicknames.

CowperKettle

Goldcrest

tchrist

02:29

Looks like a ruby-crowned kinglet, or golden-crowned with extra spice. :)

Oh duh, same critter nearly. The goldcrest is also a kinglet.

It's the European version of the two North American ones I just showed.

It's got the nominate epithet, the king of kings.

Regulus regulus

> Cytochrome b gene divergence between the Madeira firecrest and the European bird is 8.5%, comparable with the divergence level between other recognised Regulus species, such as the 9% between the goldcrest and the golden-crowned kinglet.[3] The split was accepted by the Association of European Rarities Committees (AERC) in 2003.[4]

The golden-crowned kinglet is similar in appearance to the common firecrest and has been considered to be its New World equivalent, but it is actually closer to the goldcrest.[3]

This is why it popped out as a kinglet to me: because it is one. :)

Regulus (bird)

Regulus is a genus of bird in the family Regulidae. It contains most kinglet species aside from the ruby-crowned kinglet (Corthylio calendula), which was formerly classified in Regulus but is now known to belong to its own genus. == Taxonomy == The name of the genus is derived from the Latin regulus, a diminutive of rex, "a king", and refers to the characteristic orange or yellow crests of adult kinglets. Several forms have only recently had their status clarified. The Madeira firecrest was formerly considered to be a subspecies, R. i. madeirensis, of the common firecrest R. ignicapillus...

Kinglet kinglet.

Cerberus

@tchrist Ah, hmm.

But the lack of a person is what makes it so bland?

Do you feel recommend + infinitive is bad?

I suppose I would always say, I recommend that you should leave immediately, never I recommend you to leave immediately.

CowperKettle

Deck and thatch are both related to Ancient Greek τέγος (tégos, “roof”), from a PIE root, hence German dach, Ukrainian дах (dakh, roof).

Cerberus

OK I agree with you.

tchrist

> 1934 P. G. Wodehouse Right ho, Jeeves i. 15 Mr. Sipperly..recommended him to place his affairs in my hands.

WODEHOUSE!

CowperKettle

ah

Dutch dak (roof), diminutive dakje

tchrist

02:39

@Cerberus I'd just say "I recommend you leave immediately", which already sounds imperious and stuffy. :)

@CowperKettle techo in Spanish

CowperKettle

Cool

tchrist

Means roof.

Cerberus

@tchrist Americans love their praesent subjunctive!

tchrist

I recommended she leave immediately.

Could not use left there.

Even in the past.

Cerberus

No, it's fixed now.

tchrist

02:43

But "She recommended him to me" is completely unremarkable.

Unlike the Wodehouse citation.

Cerberus

Sure.

But that is a direct object, not an a.c.i.

tchrist

Prigz in St Pete's.

> On Tuesday, Prigozhin managed to recover some of the items seized from his home and office by Russian Interior Ministry special operations police, including 10 billion rubles — about $110 million — in cash and personal weapons, including a Glock pistol awarded to him by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, according to Fontanka, a St. Petersburg media outlet.

Just no idea what's going on with all that.

Cerberus

I read yesterday or the day before that he had left Belarus and was praesumably in SP.

Part of the deal?

tchrist

> Lukashenko said Putin’s relations with Prigozhin went back decades and were “maybe even more than kind.”

"Even more than kind"?

@Cerberus Probably. Why, I do not know.

Cerberus

@tchrist That's just something cultural which doesn't translate.

@tchrist I don't know either.

Perhaps Prigozhin can blackmail him.

And the 110 million are worth nothing to Putin so he can easily give them away.

tchrist

02:56

@Cerberus Oh that might be what it means.

> Early Thursday, Prigozhin’s jet was tracked flying to Moscow from St. Petersburg, the Reuters news agency reported. But there was no confirmation that he was on board.

jlliagre

@tchrist Il est recommandé de prendre tout ce qu'affirme LPH avec des pincettes...

tchrist

@jlliagre I have no doubt that's why he says it.

jlliagre

@tchrist Right, there is no problem with that construction in French. LPH his nevertheless very controversial. Don't take his French as standard.

tchrist

Oh, I didn't realize that.

> But a gravitational wave? That’s a distortion of space-time itself — a stretching and squeezing of the fabric of reality, a wave of deformation tearing through the cosmos, warping everything in its path. The monstrous denizens of the intergalactic deep reveal themselves not through the light they emit but by how they stir the space-time we share. When a gravitational wave moves through you, you are, for a moment, a different shape.

"monstrous denizens of the intergalactic deep"

jlliagre

03:13

@tchrist From a former French SE moderator

tchrist

@jlliagre Some card-carrying professionals on ELU have been quietly angered by this user's inaccuracies.

jlliagre

@tchrist What means "card-carrying" here?

tchrist

@jlliagre Someone doing professional linguistics work.

alphabet

@tchrist I find it a bit unusual, but not incorrect.

(I mean "It is recommended to...")

tchrist

Right.

Jeeves-talk.

jlliagre

03:21

"Ask Jeeves" was kind of an early chatGPT but without the technology.

tchrist

I was there, you know. :)

It really wasn't very long ago. Early or mid-nineties, like.

The Atlantic: The Vindication of Ask Jeeves, 2023-03.

alphabet

@tchrist Does that qualify as "not very long ago"?

tchrist

@alphabet Of course.

It was after they let the grubby hands of commerce reach into the internet, so the post-diluvian era.

Before that, the world was different.

> Many years later, it seems I owe Jeeves an apology: He had the right idea all along. Thanks to advances in artificial intelligence and the stunning popularity of generative-text tools such as ChatGPT, today’s search-engine giants are making huge bets on AI search chatbots.

@alphabet My memories stretch back to the mid-sixties.

Given that, the mid-nineties isn't very long ago.

I remember when they shot MLK and RFK, the day we first walked on the moon, the day Nixon resigned.

I remember watching Star Trek when it wasn't a rerun.

And UUCP paths for mail addresses.

jlliagre

My first memory was JFK assassination.

tchrist

I wasn't quite one yet, so don't remember it.

Cerberus

03:37

I remember the fall of the wall.

alphabet

@tchrist Still, the nineties are almost half your lifetime ago, no?

tchrist

@alphabet We are still the people we were. Our youth only recedes without; we are still young inside, and that is the world when we burned the brightest, so it is seared forever.

It's like why musical tastes get locked in at a certain age.

jlliagre

@tchrist I didn't know who he was when it happened but I was impressed by people around me being shocked so I ran everywhere telling Kennedy est mort! Kennedy est mort !

tchrist

Even to a ninety-year-old, the treasured memory of the little girl or the little boy they remember being is who they feel they "really" are inside. Ask them if you don't believe me.

alphabet

@tchrist Oh dear god, I do not treasure memories from my childhood.

tchrist

03:42

So my memories come out of the social evils and the civil unrest, the "turbulence" of the sixties.

alphabet

I hope that wasn't when I burned the brightest.

tchrist

@alphabet I'm deeply sorry to hear that.

alphabet

@tchrist No worries. The upside is, I don't spend time wishing I was younger.

Robusto

@alphabet Sadly, we're all just shadows of our former selves. I think I peaked when I was five and I learned to read. I never quite recaptured that feeling of conquest. The world of books was open to me. Read on!

Cerberus

@tchrist What age is that?

tchrist

03:45

I grew up in a little house in the woods, with a bright meadow to one side, at the end of a dirt road that had only our house and the old farmhouse that was the landlord we rented from on it. I was surrounded by wonderful young family.

> As revealed by the data, woman's musical “tastes are formed between the ages of 11 and 14, while an average man's music tastes are virtually cemented between the ages of 13 and 16”. It furthers states that exposure in individuals early 20s seem to be about as “half as influential” as exposure in our teens.

Cerberus

My taste still changes, though.

In my teens and early twenties, I would mostly listen to metal.

Robusto

@tchrist Well, that is an average, not an individual result. I still find music I fall in love with.

tchrist

> Research shows that musical tastes shift as we age are in line with key "life challenges." Teenage years were defined by "intense" music, then early adulthood by "contemporary" and "mellow" as the search for close relationships increases, with "sophisticated" and "unpretentious" allowing us to project status and family values later in life. This study used data from more than a quarter of a million people over a 10 year period.

Cerberus

Late twenties and early thirties, mostly classical.

Now a bit of a mixture of many things.

@tchrist That applies to all cultural expressions to some degree, one is recommended to surmise.

Robusto

I find it difficult to listen to music from my teen years now.

Cerberus

03:48

I don't!

I absolutely love hearing the old metal again.

alphabet

@tchrist Idk. I lost interest in boy bands when I got too old to find them attractive (at least without being creepy).

Cerberus

It's better than I remembered.

@alphabet Why is that ever 'creepy'?

Robusto

@Cerberus Heh. But there is so much more now.

tchrist

I certainly always "hated" crashing metal for metal's sake. I enjoyed ballad rock, and some folk. I mostly listened to classical in my teens and twenties though.

Cerberus

@Robusto Absolutely!

I occasionally listen to e.g. System of a Down again and enjoy it.

Robusto

03:50

I never liked metal, especially the kind that has a singer with a Cookie Monster voice.

alphabet

Sometimes I find one song I really like and listen to it on repeat constantly for a few days/weeks/months.

Cerberus

@Robusto Grunting!

It is quite the affectation.

Hardly melodious.

Robusto

Yeah.

Cerberus

Perhaps it is best compared to drums or something.

Robusto

@alphabet Seriously? I couldn't do that.

Cerberus

03:51

Just as I feel that rap music is hardly music.

It's even worse than e.g. the recitative parts of Saint Matthew's Passion.

Robusto

Well, I certainly don't listen to rap. I grant that it is music, but not the sort I care about.

Nov 14, 2018 at 22:36, by Robusto

Is it music? Sure. Shitty music.

Cerberus

You are wise not to.

Is a drum beat alone music?

alphabet

I feel like I'm not sophisticated enough to properly appreciate rap.

Robusto

@Cerberus Yes. Which is an interesting revelation, because the only necessary component of music is rhythm.

Cerberus

There isn't enough melody in it to be music, in my opinion. It is only rhythm.

Hah.

@Robusto I don't quite agree!

Robusto

03:54

Well, you're entitled to your opinion.

Cerberus

Because poetry is defined as rhythmic language.

And yet not all poetry is music.

Robusto

Yet there is music to poetry.

Cerberus

That's a metaphor.

Do you really consider e.g. war drums to produce music?

Robusto

Babatunde Olatunji Drums of Passion 1959

►

I rest my case.

alphabet

By the efficient market hypothesis, if classical music were good music, it would also be popular.

Robusto

03:56

Oh, please.

alphabet

The simplest explanation for classical music's relative unpopularity is that it's just less good than more recent innovations.

(I'm being about 50% sarcastic.)

Robusto

Now you're just trying to be provocative.

Cerberus

Yes, the best selling music is by definition the best.

Just as the language used by the most people is the best style and should be recommended to everyone.

Robusto

Flavors of the month come and go, but people still listen to Bach and Beethoven.

Cerberus

Yeah, but they will soon go where all the Roman composers are.

alphabet

04:00

@Robusto People used to, before better music came along and displaced them.

Cerberus

Watch out or his heads will explode!

hides

ducks

alphabet

@Cerberus Well, yeah. The purpose of music is to be enjoyable. People usually listen to music they enjoy. So popular music is likely to be music that best fulfills its aims.

Cerberus

@alphabet Q.E.D.

Even though @Jasper would use it differently.

Robusto

You can listen to whatever you want to, even the same three minutes over and over again non-stop for months at a time.

alphabet

I do find it odd when people think that the pleasure they derive from listening to music is somehow "better" than the pleasure other people get when they listen to music they like. It makes zero sense.

Robusto

04:03

@alphabet And by extension, the best films are Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, and the best prose is in People magazine, etc.

And gangsta rap is the best poetry.

Sure.

All art and music is personal. Some people just have more sophistication than others, I suppose.

alphabet

@Robusto It depends. The purpose of prose is not purely to entertain people; it can also (say) convey information. Music, at least classical music, really serves no such further purpose.

Robusto

I sense a hostility toward me.

alphabet

Nah, I'm just being a gadfly.

Robusto

Like I said, think and enjoy what you like.

@alphabet Is that the purpose of your life?

alphabet

One might also question the proposition that the best music happens to have been composed entirely by white Europeans during the age of imperialism. While saying that the "least sophisticated" genre happens to be the one most closely associated with black people.

@Robusto Only about this one topic.

Robusto

04:07

Well, you're a raccoon. I suppose you can sift through the trash bins for some "good" music.

Me, I'll just dream on.

And with that, I bid you all good night. I have to get up and ride early, since it's very hot in this world currently.

alphabet

My favorite song is "incoherent growling and screeching."

3

jlliagre

04:36

@Mitch Yes! I used jinx for the first time. :-)

tchrist

04:51

@alphabet Too white you mean?

Apr 8, 2022 at 0:15, by tchrist

Dec 25, 2012 at 15:32, by tchrist

@RegDwighт “Non est enim consilium in volgo, non ratio, non discrimen, non diligentia, semperque sapientes ea quae populus fecisset ferenda, non semper laudanda dixerunt.” —Gaius Tullius Cicero, Pro Plancio IV.

@jlliagre I don't think perfect means what he thinks it means. :)

alphabet

05:20

@tchrist If the purpose of music is to be enjoyable to its listeners, are not those listeners likely the best judges of it?

Certainly one can only judge music by the effects it produces in its listeners.

Xanne

Taylor Swift?

Music, and maybe most art, is originally a communal experience. But that’s really too serious for this medium.

M.A.R.

06:16

@alphabet well that's easy to say but those effects are subject to change

I suppose a "more sophisticated" taste in music is when the person has given to some thought to what type of music won't lose its magic for them.

So "better taste in music" should be clearly definable

Xanne

07:06

Wordle 748 3/6

⬜⬜🟨🟨⬜
⬜🟨⬜🟨⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

jlliagre

08:07

@tchrist Right, neither perfect nor parfait can be used to something that has an obvious defect, not to mention that in that particular case, the suggested adjective is actually very imperfect. LPH seems to have virtually no experience of spoken and idiomatic French and to base his answers on personal interpretation of dictionary entries.

Araucaria - Not here any more.

08:45

Oh, dear. Academia.edu is being pummelled with spam and the mods are on strike ...

Mitch

11:17

@jlliagre woohoo!

I'm still trying to get ptdr to work

It needs a lot of ... control.

@Araucaria-Nothereanymore. beginning of the end. I've heard that cats and dogs are living together

jlliagre

12:11

@Mitch Fart control? ;-)

@Mitch Actually, here pété is slang for cassé (broken), meaning you are plié de rire (bent in laughter).

tchrist

12:37

@jlliagre Perhaps he grew up in French Indochina or French Africa?

jlliagre

@tchrist No, not at all. A few years ago, his French was extremely broken and full of anglicisms then it improved a lot. His behavior is actually typical of ASD.

CowperKettle

13:09

tchrist

@jlliagre Oh, I see.

jlliagre

@CowperKettle Haha, it took me some time to parse it. I'm sure you asked this question secretly anticipating that one day you might post this image in the chat ;-)

Robusto

13:25

I woke up with Elton John's "Philadelphia Freedom" going through my head, for some reason. This is the danger of earworms.

Why does Prigozhin always look like he's about to puke?

jlliagre

13:44

@Robusto That's because people publishing these pictures are biased against him. He is actually a nice guy.

Robusto

@jlliagre Even murderers have people who love them, I guess.

jlliagre

14:11

@Robusto You are unfair to a potential Nobel Peace Prize winner.

4

Robusto

@jlliagre I'm unfair to all potential Nobel Peace Prize winners.

That is a form of fairness.

jlliagre

@Robusto That explains a lot! ;-)

Robusto

If Henry Kissinger won the prize, it can't be worth very much.

jlliagre

Is he still alive? He was already old when I was a kid.

Robusto

Yes. Only the good die young, as they say.

jlliagre

14:15

I'm glad not to be too good then.

Robusto

Same here. If we were worse, maybe we'd be candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize. Who kows?

We're just not trying hard enough.

jlliagre

TBH, I'm not trying at all.

Robusto

Now I wonder if lazy comes from Fr. laissez ...

> 1540s, laysy, of persons, "averse to labor, action, or effort," a word of unknown origin.

Now I wonder if Etymonline is just lazy. Or if I'm too lazy to pursue the matter further.

jlliagre

@Robusto Lazy les bons temps rouler ;-)

Robusto

Oui!

I didn't know you were a fan of zydeco.

jlliagre

14:23

@Robusto I didn't know either.

Robusto

Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler-Let The Good Times Roll

►

jlliagre

@Robusto La musique est bien mais j'ai énormément de mal à comprendre les paroles. Avec le texte sous les yeux, c'est mieux mais tout juste.

Quand t'es mort, t'es gone. Very true.

Robusto

@jlliagre Sometimes I take comfort in that.

Robusto

14:58

@jlliagre BTW, that's Cajun French he's singing. Perhaps as difficult for you as the Jamaican patois is for me.

jlliagre

15:21

États-Unis : en Louisiane, avec les Cajuns qui veulent préserver leur identité • FRANCE 24

►

Yes, Cajun French. The fact it's sung doesn't help. It also depends on people, their age, accent and the context. I fully understand the old guy here (apart some very regional vocabulary). I remember having a meal in Louisiana a couple of decades ago and next table to mine, there was a couple of persons talking a perfect French with an accent I had never heard before. The language spoken in the French Caribeans islands is much harder when they speak créole, much less when they speak French.

Mitch

15:45

I'm really looking forward to lunch.

Leftover spaghetti

mmm

jlliagre

@Mitch Spaghetto ma non troppo!

Mitch

Yeah... it's easy to overeat. And then the enjoyment turns to ... not as much enjoyed.

Also, and this may be sticking my neck out, I prefer to break the noodles in two before boiling.

Eating really long noodles is just a mess.

jlliagre

@Mitch Heresy!

Mitch

@jlliagre One man's trash is another man's trash but maybe it's recycling?

jlliagre

Mitch

15:50

Awww...

But also, not hygienic.

Jun 26 at 13:06, by Mitch

@CowperKettle May favorite so far is "Ask your doctor about Prigozhin."

Robusto

@Mitch This is why dogs don't let people use their restaurants.

Mitch

(because all the advertisements on TV for fancy new expensive medications end with 'Ask your doctor about... [Ozempic, Humira, Leqembi, etc]'

And 'Prigozhin' sounds like a medication.

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