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01:50
Etymology of the day: chevron -- Borrowed from French chevron (“rafter, chevron”), the mark so called because it looks like rafters of a shallow roof, from Vulgar Latin *capriō, from Latin caper (“goat”), the likely connection between goats and rafters being the animal's horns.
> Altruism is pointless. So are dogs. A cat is a far more sensible pet. A cat is objectively valuable.
> ... supporting abortion rights,[97] opposing the Vietnam War and the military draft (but condemning many draft dodgers as "bums"),[98][99] supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur War of 1973 against a coalition of Arab nations as "civilized men fighting savages",[100][101] claiming European colonists had the right to invade and take land inhabited by American Indians,[101][102] and calling homosexuality "immoral" and "disgusting", despite advocating the repeal of all laws concerning it.[103]
@CowperKettle Chevron is Mr Capra's first name.
A hat named after a novel of the day: trilby -- The hat's name derives from the stage adaptation of George du Maurier's 1894 novel Trilby. A hat of this style was worn in the first London production of the play, and promptly came to be called "a Trilby hat".
@tchrist So you're a Rand libertarian. Got it.
01:54
I thought that circles were pointless
Not all who are randy are Randy.
I quoted it because I was trying to figure out what made a cat objectively valuable in a way that a dog is not.
I believe the term is "Randish" ... like radish, but with an n.
Randy is dandy but Victor is quitter
@CowperKettle OK, stop feeding prompts to older LLMs, please.
LOL
> This paper describes a case of small cell carcinoma of the lung with ectopic adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) production which presented with mania. The association between manic syndromes and the various forms of glucocorticoid or ACTH excess is discussed. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2840887
So.. high stress → ACTH → mania
01:57
@tchrist Yes, and I think we can all agree that cats have class, whereas dogs ... I don't think I can say it in chat. Cats throw up and walk away; dogs throw up and eat it. There, I said it.
Both ends.
Thanks, I was trying not to picture that.
Herbal remedy of the day: motherwort (Stachydrine is extracted from the leaves of Motherwort and has demonstrated various bioactivities for the treatment of fibrosis, cardiovascular diseases, cancers, uterine diseases, brain injuries, and inflammation.)
Mania triggered by a two-week course of prednisone. I should relate this story to my friend who uses prednisone to fight off cough ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7046414
@CowperKettle Yes of course.
@tchrist It's not working.
02:26
@Robusto I'm honestly surprised that the Times published that. I expect blinding furor. Yes, it's awful. And tragic. Everything is awful.
Irish term of the day: Galway hooker
@tchrist I think the point of all this is that, uh, disturbed people are disturbed. Whatever they do to try to get out of that, they only wind up more disturbed.
I've lost track of how many good people I work with are struggling so hard to raise kids with these issues. It's completely messed up.
@CowperKettle "treatment of fibrosis" heavy eye roll
My eyes hurt from that one.
Old French pelote - ball → French/English peloton - group of people → English platoon (three platoons per company); related: pellet
02:31
Also
Jun 1, 2023 at 17:57, by M.A.R.
@CowperKettle I'm becoming allergic to the word "inflammation"
I wonder if pellet is related to ballot then.
Pelotas, no me digas.
Gee, I wonder why they spend so much money researching anything if a simple proline analog can treat "fibrosis, cardiovascular diseases, cancers, uterine diseases, brain injuries, and inflammation"
@M.A.R. Corporate greed
@M.A.R. Throw in alcoholism and improved weight-loss and you've got a winner.
Or is that a wiener?
02:35
@CowperKettle also treatable with stachydrine
@Robusto This is the first time I've seen a connection be drawn between rapture and rape in writing, and I was disappointed to see that they didn't use any other etymologically connected expressions like "rapid velociraptor"
@Robusto oh BTW I expect a lot of really good weight loss drugs in the next decade
LOL
Malthusoglutide
The best weight loss drug
Thomas Robert Malthus (; 13/14 February 1766 – 29 December 1834) was an English economist, cleric, and scholar influential in the fields of political economy and demography.In his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus observed that an increase in a nation's food production improved the well-being of the population, but the improvement was temporary because it led to population growth, which in turn restored the original per capita production level. In other words, humans had a propensity to use abundance for population growth rather than for maintaining a high standard of...
@M.A.R. Yet not half so well as with strychnine.
> Ancient Greek ἅρπυιαι was associated by popular etymology with ἁρπάζειν to snatch away, seize, but the word may be of substrate origin.
Oh, really!
I didn't know that.
02:44
The substrate theory?
A "harpy" was once a "rapacious" person.
@tchrist Yes.
@Laurel Try using the word subreption.
@tchrist Fun fact, the gender affirming care we give to cis women who think they're cis is regretted much more frequently than the gender affirming care we give to treat gender dysphoria. It's also true that cis girls get said gender affirming surgery in much higher frequency than surgeries done to treat gender dysphoria in trans youth, I believe (wish I had the numbers off hand)
> 2008 Mismanagement is not criminal, but co-opting national services and risking lives through subreption, or deliberate misrepresentation, qualifies heartily. — State Jrnl.-Reg. (Springfield, Illinois) (Nexis) 19 June 7
02:49
@Robusto for some reason I read it in Homer Simpson's voice
@Laurel Are you just saying that we treat girls badly who hold themselves to be girls?
> < classical Latin subreptiōn-, subreptiō act of taking secretly, stealing (2nd cent. A.D. in Apuleius), in post-classical Latin also action of snatching away by death (6th cent.), deceit, trickery (from 8th cent. (frequently from 12th cent.) in British sources) < subrept-, past participial stem of subripere (also surripere; < sub- sub- prefix + rapere to snatch: see rape v.2) + ‑iō ‑ion suffix1.

Compare French subreption (1341 in Middle French; earlier as subrection (1316)), Spanish subrepción (c1550), Portuguese subrepção (1573 as †sorreyçam).
@CowperKettle Looks like a whole-body mood ring.
@tchrist Maybe I'm saying that breast augmentations suck. I heard the details recently and it's actually quite disturbing.... No, I'm definitely saying breast augmentations suck and I wonder why nobody who's talking about bans on trans care realizes the hypocrisy of their position on the matter
Body sculpting works far better in marble than in flesh. I can't believe what people get done to themselves.
I can't believe it either but it's not my body so it's not my place to try to stop it even if I wanted to. Plus, in the case of trans care, the psychological turnaround (for the better) can be quite stunning, actually
I was talking about the women with breast implants!
I've heard sad tales.
03:01
@CowperKettle he's my favorite "quote research out of context and be self-righteously shocked about it" scientist
@tchrist Well, I wouldn't stop that either lol, if they're adults they just have to be informed of the risks
Trans women at least have the option of getting something there without getting breast implants
03:19
@Laurel I'm trying to read this but it seems to have been written in code...
@Cerberus Breast augmentation in cis women is regretted much more often than the type of treatment for trans people that a bunch of people are hating on
And there's thousands of breast augmentations happening on teen girls in the US every year iirc
Augmentation?
Sorry I'm tipsy, I can't function properly yet.
Do you mean surgery to make breasts bigger, smaller, or what?
My boyfriend's mother has implants.
Because of cancer.
My friend had hers made smaller because she had back problems.
Use helium. :)
03:48
@Laurel Why do I have a feeling that, when these authors say "We don't have enough evidence," they really mean "We don't have enough evidence that I'm right"?
Incidentally, the main study cited in that article comes from Archives of Sexual Behavior, about which Wikipedia has this to say:
> In May 2023, an open letter, signed by a hundred researchers who had previously published in the Archives of Sexual behavior, accused the journal of editorial bias against the LGBTQ community. The letter also garnered support from five professional groups specializing in the study of LGBTQ people.
> The letter cited a number of articles published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior which they described as having poor research ethics and which failed to declare their financial ties to anti-LGBTQ political groups.
@Cerberus I think it probably referred to implants (larger). I don't know if reduction surgery has many negative effects like its opposite; but it definitely does not have all of the same major downsides. I guess scarring might be a concern in both
Somehow I am willing to believe that studies published there might not be entirely high-quality.
@alphabet There will never be enough evidence for some people
@Laurel The second-to-last paragraph helpfully advises activists to only promote positions that are already popular.
@Laurel I don't know, I don't hear any women I know complain about scarring!
Mother in law's implant began to leak after decades, had to be replaced.
03:56
@alphabet I don't think I was able to read that far lol. It was so long
@Cerberus It might only be a problem if you have sensitive skin or something
@Cerberus yup, there it is... shudders
One of the studies the article cites has this helpful note:
> We also found that individuals who start gender-affirming hormones before reaching the age of legal majority are less likely to subsequently discontinue use when compared with individuals who start hormones after becoming a legal adult.
> If replicated in future studies, the improved continuation rate among patients who are not legal adults at the time of treatment should provide some reassurance to those concerned about the ability of minors to provide informed assent to use of gender-affirming hormones
04:42
@Laurel You a fierce and rapacious creature, ain't ya?
@M.A.R. I didn't figure you for Simpsons fetishism, but hey, whatever floats your boat.
@M.A.R. Well, they'd better improve on Ozempic. I've heard hideous things about that one.
@Laurel I really don't get all the hate for people who are just trying to live their lives. Whatever happened to "you do you"? The haters seem to be saying "be miserable, just so long as you follow the narrow path our religion has prescribed for you" ...
Yeah I don't get the hate either
Strictly speaking, given the usual meaning of the word "do" with animate objects, the phrase "you do you" should mean the same thing as "go fuck yourself"
05:03
@alphabet I would characterize that as a different kind of strict. I've only ever heard "you do you" in a live-and-let-live context.
@Robusto Well, yeah, it means "live and let live." But logically, it should mean "Do yourself," i.e. "Fuck yourself"
I think you're confusing should with could.
@Robusto You do you.
Wevs.
@Robusto "is Homer there?" "Homer who?" "Homer Sexual"
05:07
@M.A.R. Shhh. The imams might hear you.
@Robusto pancreatitis? It's theoretical AFAIK. Even if the risk is real, it's very small.
@M.A.R. I think it does other harmful things, and if people quit the drug they gain back more weight than they had before.
IMHO it's more backlash against influencers advertising it than legitimate scientific concern.
Well, your opinion is more informed than my hearsay, so ...
@Robusto well that's been true about every obesity drug to date. Genetics or lifestyle, a drug doesn't eliminate the underlying cause of obesity for most people.
A crude analogy would be giving someone a drug that would prevent alcohol withdrawal. The reason the person turned to drinking in the first place (depression? Social influences?) remain, and if only because it used to be a habit, they would likely not commit to quitting drinking
05:14
@alphabet You too.
That's it for me. Peace on all of you.
@Robusto Most of these jobs I don't even understand what they are.
Bus stop on the Square of 1905
With estimated times of bus arrival
марш is an abbreviation of marshroot, from German Мarschroute
Noun: Marschroute f (genitive Marschroute, plural Marschrouten)
  1. (military) route of marching
  2. (figuratively) line of approach, tactics
Noun: marshrutka (plural marshrutkas)
  1. (transport) A share taxi in the CIS countries, the Baltic states, and Bulgaria. The role of the modern marshrutka is similar to that of the minibus in other countries, except that some implementations of marshrutka allow passengers to stand.
  2. marshrutka
  3. marshrutka (share taxi in Russia, usually a minibus operating on a fixed route)
 
4 hours later…
09:34
@Robusto that bag icon is under all of them. Seems pretty redundant
 
4 hours later…
13:42
> < scientific Latin Antechinus, genus name (W. S. MacLeay 1841, in Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. vol. 8 242), apparently < anti- anti- prefix + echinus hedgehog (see echinus n.).
Notes
The semantic motivation of the name is unclear, but since MacLeay initially believed that the animal was an insectivore, he may have taken it to be the counterpart to the hedgehog on the southern (i.e. opposite) hemisphere (compare antipodes n.).
Next we'll learn how anteaters actually anti-ate bugs that didn't appeal to them.
I'm reminded of echidnas, which are anteaters and live in Australia and are etymologically related to antechinuses
Just when you thought the political games about eponymous taxa (see Audubon's Warbler et al.) couldn't get any worse:
Anophthalmus hitleri (Slovene: Hitlerjev brezokec) is a species of blind cave beetle found only in about fifteen humid caves in Slovenia. The blind cave beetle shares its genus with 41 other species and 95 different subspecies. Members of its subfamily (Trechinae) are, like most Carabidae, predatory, so the adults and larvae of A. hitleri are presumed to be predators on smaller cave inhabitants. == Name == The scientific name of the beetle comes from an Austrian collector, Oskar Scheibel, who was sold a specimen of a then-undocumented species in 1933. Its species name was made a dedication to Adolf...
@Laurel I was, too.
But Echidna is from Greek mythology, I think.
ἔχιδνα
That doesn't there are no etyma in common, though.
> 1847 The Echidna, or Porcupine Ant-eater..is about the size and form of a Hedgehog. — W. B. Carpenter, Zoology: Systematic Account vol. I. §320
@tchrist Oh I might have misread the entry which just said to "compare with"
I think the prickly bit is there.
> Coined in scientific literature around 1811. Probably from Ancient Greek ἔχιδνα (ékhidna, “snake, viper”) via Latin echidna. Compare ἐχῖνος (ekhînos, “hedgehog, etc.”). However, this sense is problematic (unless it is a reference to the ant-eating tongue). The name perhaps belongs to Latin echinus (“sea urchin, hedgehog”) from the aforementioned Ancient Greek term's alternate sense of "sea-urchin" (also "sharp points"), which Watkins explains as "snake-eater", from ἔχις (ékhis, “snake”), though it may actually be from Proto-Indo-European *h₁éǵʰis (“hedgehog, hedgehog-like animals”). The 1
I wonder where Wiktionary is sourcing the OED on that. I can't find it.
14:00
@tchrist Heh, this phrasing makes me think of the males' genitalia, which I've heard is also quite distinctive (and arguably plural)
14:14
Do we have a canonical question on bastard enumerations, a.k.a. series out of control?
It would be nice to have a single focused page to link people to that defines and explains the issue, and the English stack might be a good place for it.
14:28
> A five-year study by Willamette University sports science professor Dr. Peter Harmer in 2005 found that fencing is especially safe for children and novices; that soccer was 14 times more dangerous than fencing, and basketball 10 times more dangerous, and that of the 22 sports examined in the study, fencing was tied with golf as having the lowest risk to competitors.[1]
I would not be surprised if fencing is among the few sports where safety is taken seriously.
@Cerberus Which ones are you having trouble with?
A digital camera stores images directly in DNA nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38876-w
@Kodiologist Yes, after the 1982 death of World #1 fencer from Kyiv
@Robusto Operations managers, personal care aids.
Steelmaking term of the day: maraging steel, from martensite + aging (a process of gradually cooling prepared molten metal)
14:40
@Kodiologist I have no idea what you're talking about
@tchrist Personal care aids would be barbers, manicure/pedicure practitioners, etc. Who knows what operation managers are? Fast-food restaurant managers would be my guess.
@Laurel A bastard enumeration is a failure of parallelism in a comma-separated list. For example, "The group has interests in Germany, Australia, Japan and intends to expand into North America next year." should be "The group has interests in Germany, Australia, and Japan and intends to expand into North America next year."
Specifically, a syntactic failure.
@tchrist He says "just think how incredulous [sic] it is to defy the sea" ... I stopped watching there.
yes well
Were you incredulous about his defiance?
14:46
It's a nice tribute to the Dutch resolve.
I have major problems with the way he chews his lips.
Yeah, but "something weird" is rather overstating the case, innit? Every schoolchild, I think, knows this about the Dutch.
He renamed it for clickbaity.
It used to be called something more reasonable.
Yes, and I hate to reward clickbait. No matter how tantalizing, I refuse to click on those headlines.
He's not consistent in his chewing. Sometimes his tulips are just two lips.
Har.
14:49
And his range of vowels is remarkable. He doesn't have STRUT-FOOT split, but that's a simplification of what he's really doing it.
@Kodiologist I know we have some similar questions, but I can't remember if there's any overarching tag or terminology that's used to be able to easily find them. I call them "veni, vidi, vici constructs" because sometimes we drop & on purpose for poetic effect or whatever
It's his vowels that made me keep listening.
Yes, we were taught about the Dutch wonders in grade school IIRC.
He also has th-fronting on occasion.
Or maybe I'm mostly thinking of a slightly different thing. Either way, I would have to do some digging
He's from Lancashire.
I would say that omitting the "and" purely for stylistic effect in a wholly parallel list is a different phenomenon. A bastard enumeration is one that looks like a list, but the syntax doesn't quite work out.
14:56
One could be forgiven for thinking this was about something besides music.
It's raining here. Drizzle and mist and rain. I cannot remember when last we saw rain.
But it won't last. We're on the cusp of transitioning. Perhaps six inches will fall.
@tchrist We had rain yesterday. Might get some more today, but mainly wind.
> WINTER STORM WATCH NOW IN EFFECT FROM NOON MST TODAY UNTIL
MIDNIGHT TONIGHT...

* WHAT...Rain and snow, transitioning to snow Saturday afternoon and
early evening. The snow may be heavy at times. Potential for
greater than 6 inches of snow, mainly in the western and southern
Denver suburbs.

* WHERE...Boulder and the western suburbs of Denver, and Denver.

* WHEN...From noon MST today through this evening.

* IMPACTS...Plan on quickly changing travel conditions, especially
this afternoon and early evening as snow intensifies.
It's impossible to know what will happen because it all depends on when it stops being a liquid.
15:13
@tchrist Winds up to 30 mph here. I declined to do the club ride today.
16:08
TIL: the word erm is supposed to be pronounced like um (i.e. [əːm] rather than [ɹ̩m]). This makes sense when you remember that it's primarily used in the UK.
@tchrist We also had little rain today.
@alphabet I don't get it. Do you mean Americans don't say 'erm'?
Americans are weird.
I lurrrrrve that about them though.
@Mitch Look at Cambridge. It only gives a British pronunciation, and transcribes it as /ɜːm/.
16:29
Wordle 959 5/6

🟨⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬛🟨🟨🟨⬛
⬛🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟨🟨⬛🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Yuk.
@alphabet What did you expect from a non-rhotic accent?
@Robusto I hadn't put together the fact that, since erm is primarily used in BrE, "um" is really the only common pronunciation.
I think theirs is actually a bit different, with the tongue more forward maybe?
I don't think there's much consistency in um/erm pronunciation.
16:52
Oh snap, I've been pronouncing it rhotically in my head this entire time!
To be fair, "this entire time" started at least as far back as when I was 10, so it's not like I knew any better
Looks like Google is messing up again. Now YouTube videos take a bit longer to start when ad blockers are used.
17:09
@Laurel This is the problem with having read a lot as a child. You pronounce things as they are spelled, not as you've heard them (or been aware that you've heard them). For the longest time I misread misled as /ˈmaɪzɛɫd/ (myzled), thinking it meant being in a state of consternation of some kind.
@M.A.R. She wrote that her mom and her grand-grandma had asmtha, she herself has been having troubles breathing when in presence of smokers or in bad atmospheric conditions, so when she fell ill with cold and had that trouble breathing again, she at first used the beta2-agonist bronchodilator spray, and then tried out Methylprednisolone, and it unexpectedly helped a lot
She's been using the beta-2 spray for a decade. Salbutamol. So she just took the next step
@Robusto XD
There are definitely a lot of words I pronounce wrong too
I also have an unfortunate tendency to not pay close attention to the spellings of at least some words towards the middle or end, which makes it much worse lol
And I learned so many words from context that even today I sometimes get a shade of meaning wrong, putting the wrong nuances on some words.
@Laurel Fortunately I don't have that problem.
Can't think of any examples off the top of my head other than pokemon names of words I mess up like that. For example, I really thought it was kelceon instead of kecleon
@Laurel Ah, well ... words I learned much later, like names in video games, I often have trouble remembering spellings for.
17:18
@M.A.R. that dose of methylprednisolone also switched off the "beaten-up" feeling of fatigue and tiredness she'd been having. Hm. What if some cases of so-called depression are really derangements of all this hormonal corticoid system? Complicated derangements.
I think John Lawler once said: Any honest EFL teacher will tell you that English is like Chinese: you need to learn the spelling and pronunciation of each word individually, rather than relying on consistent patterns for determining how a word is pronounced.
@CowperKettle It's chemistry all the way down.
English is one of the few languages in which the idea of a spelling bee makes sense.
French is another one.
@Robusto Yes. Because I felt horrible in 2016 when my 24 h cortisol was hovering at 150%, but when I found out the cause, the clotrimasole ointment, and stopped using it, voila. The depression vanished, tiredness vanished, rumination inside my mind switched off.
17:20
@Robusto If I didn't actually believe it was pronounced "Kelsey-on" I don't think I would be had a problem with the spelling lol
@CowperKettle All because of a topical anti-fungal?
@Robusto Yes. I had been sent to do an MRI, and CT, and do a Dexamethasone test.
They failed to take my medical history.
I checked the PubMed, and found some 1970s articles on how clotrimazole can increase cortisol
And just stopped using it.
And the "depression" went away, and I could normally work.
I wonder how many people are treated for "depression" while they should be checked for ailments that are curable.
@CowperKettle Doctors do sometimes misdiagnose anemia and thyroid issues as depression, as I recall.
@alphabet That's why my psychiatrist friend cares sweet FA about Russian psychiatry textbooks, and uses Western manuals. He sends people to have their iron levels, B12 levels, and thyroid hormones checked regularly.
Whaddya do when someone tells you something is sarcastic or snarky when per se the comment would require intonation to decide one way or another? Like this: Please fix your grammar; it makes your question hard to read.OR: Learning English phonemes helps.
17:35
@Lambie How could either of those be construed as sarcastic or snarky?
I don't see how they could be read except as blunt expressions of frustration.
@alphabet I agree. And this: Please do some research before posting questions like this which are very broad based. Also, please fix your punctuation. [on the one hand and on the other, not on one part] Your question is somewhat naive, I think. We say writing systems, not scripts.
Just statement of fact, and even says please. :)
@Lambie I feel confused in such cases.
@Lambie Are these things people have said to you, or to new users?
How people in the US even dare be snarky about grammar, if anyone could be concealed-carrying some gun?
@alphabet They are moderators...[sigh]. And they are similar to remarks I made in the French site, which got me suspended twice. There, too, I think something else was at work/in play.
@CowperKettle Yeah, well, we are not all gun advocates. :)
17:46
@Lambie Such comments aren't exactly tactful and understanding; if I were a moderator, I'd discourage that tone.
As soon as one starts feeling genuinely annoyed/frustrated/angry at someone else online, one needs to stop posting. That attitude hurts the community and everyone is worse off for it.
Well, I disagree. This: Please fix your grammar; it makes your question hard to read. is fine. One cannot tell very often if something is sarcastic without hearing it. The grammar was SO BAD it was virtually not understandable.
@Lambie There is no possible way that any reader would interpret that comment as sarcastic; it's obviously a genuine expression of one's attitude.
At one point, I did not understand something. I said so twice. And in frustration, I said what is the matter with you guys? Meaning the commenters. They were criticizing my question which I asked in ALL HONESTY. Now, they have removed whatever the comment was but you can see one person repeating "what is wrong with us" and again criticizing my question. So, where is the problem? With me or him?
@Lambie One should never post comments "in frustration." Ever.
No, but one can respond to a series of comments which are unfair. He was mean and aggressive, not me. I think one has to be careful with the idea of frustation. It's not so simple...
Also, saying: What's the matter with you guys? is not per se aggressive.
17:59
@Lambie One should never respond to mean and aggressive comments; doing so can only escalate things. After all, why would you want to win over someone like that? Better to ignore them (or flag their comments if they're bad enough to violate the rules).
@Lambie It's generally understood as an insult, not a genuine question.
I said that after twice asking for clarification and being shot down. I think context is important. I don't know if it was 'bad enough'. I just know we have the right to ask questions in comments and not get hassled.
I wanted an answer from the OP, not the people criticizing me.
18:21
@CowperKettle People don't usually carry guns in SE chats.
18:46
@Lambie I don't know the context. But I do think it's always better to try to deescalate conflicts than to try to "win" them. (I'm referring to cases where people are genuinely upset, not to purely intellectual debates.)
instead of asking whether harsh words are "justified" in a particular case, the relevant question is whether those words are actually going to achieve anything or benefit the community.
Yes, and to me trying to get an answer to my question seemed fair.
I was not escalating in that sense. Often, mods don't take into account the context. Also, they are not all native English speakers...
Look at this: (not me, by the way). Isn't all that quite over the top? ell.stackexchange.com/questions/347332/…
It's usually better to tolerate some level of unfairness than to get into an unwinnable argument.
Or to find ways of responding to people that try to defuse an argument rather than win it.
@Lambie That's not really the kind of dispute I'm talking about, since it's a purely intellectual debate where nobody seems to have any emotional investment. (The real problem in that thread is that people are getting into disputes in the comments section when they could have just posted answers and let the upvoters/downvoters decide the matter.)
Go and take a look at some of the arguments on the linguistics site. You will see that my comments are pretty vanilla compared to some...But nobody is threatening to suspend those people. Try this one: Spurious Fs spawning [shiver my timbers on that expression].
The problem on SE sites is that if you complain about mods, all the person above them does is requote what they said. There is no discussion possible. It's pretty totalitarian in my view.
@Lambie Have you been suspended there also, or just on ELL?
No, I am ONLY suspended on the French site. Nowhere else.
That ELL example I gave constitutes clearly berating of the OP. I mean...
19:04
@Lambie Different SEs are, I think, allowed to have different policies in this regard. The moderators are elected and entrusted with managing the community; if anything, SE the company is the totalitarian overlord.
@Lambie I don't see anyone berating the OP in that particular thread.
Though I think FumbleFingers, Stuart F, and yourself should have posted answers instead of comments.
@alphabet Yes, that is what I said, the people OVER the mods. //Saying the OP doesn't need some definition to understand someone's speech and saying it several times is not berating even if not directly? Saying, basically, the question is stupid? It is clear from the dialogue which we cannot actually hear, could be set up for sit up OR organize ourselves with our stuff at that place.
Sorry, my grammar broke down there. FF often posts very long comments instead of answers and it is tolerated very well by the mods. So...
@Lambie FumbleFingers isn't saying that the question is stupid, only that the OP doesn't actually need an answer to it. He could have posted an answer explaining why he thinks that; you could have posted an answer explaining your understanding of the term. Either would have been more helpful for the OP.
My understanding is not clear: I think it might be set for sit, because it takes place in upper NY state in the boondocks. Apparently. That did not seem enough for an answer but enough to agree with Michael and disagree with FF.
@Lambie Yes, FumbleFingers does that a lot; it's a bad practice and likely against the site's rules. I think he just gets away with it because he's been around forever and is, in all other respects, an excellent user.
But I think he was pretty demeaning in the sense that he decides what learners need or don't need. This is a common theme with him. There are some very advanced users who need all sorts of things that beginners and intermediates may not need.
19:16
@Lambie That seems like enough for an answer to me. I would've posted it, if I could find reliable sources to cite that explain this regional usage of set.
Well, I just try to do damage control. And by the way, Alphabet, as I have said before, there are some things you can't prove. Even if a find a dictionary of regional usage that says set can be sit, that doesn't mean it does there. Btw, did you see that discussion on the linguistics site? A whole lot of meaness way beyond anything I have ever said there.
@Lambie But it isn't "set"; it's "set up". They're talking about setting up a firing position to kill wild dogs.
@Lambie If you can't find reliable sources to back up your answer, you can't post it. Them's the breaks.
@Robusto My dearest Robusto: in a backwoods accent and location, if set is sit, it could take UP or not. It is not the up that would change the meaning...:)
@Laurel I have to come clean. I always used to pronounce 'awry' as 'awe ree rather than the accepted uh 'rye
The to me you find out you've been pronouncing it wrong all along is the worst
19:20
@Lambie But you wouldn't sit up in that context. You would set up.
@alphabet Allow me to say there are some things that have no "proof". We can discuss that later. Also, I am my own reference.
@Mitch My wife grew up with the same impediment. She also used to pronounce gazebo "gaze-bo" ...
@Robusto The term was set up and what it means: We can set on the porch and drink beer. We can set up on the porch and drink beer. SAME thing. The up because the porch is high. But the meaning in both is sit (the way I am explaining it here).
Sit up on the porch and drink beer (the porch is high and they are down in the holler) Ha ha. Not a NY state backwoods term. It's southern, pretty much.
I disagree. People with guns "set up there", they don't "sit up there" to fire at dogs.
> Dogs. Couple dozen, I'd guess. I saw them slinking around the elementary school tonight. I'm pretty sure they're sleeping in a drainpipe. We could set up there and pick them off.
These are people who shoot animals, and they use military-ish vocabulary as a matter of manly pride.
It means getting your equipment ready to kill dogs from the most likely location.
@Lambie If you have specific personal experiences, you can absolutely cite them. But you'll have to hedge your answer to acknowledge the fact that your experiences may not generalize. Example: "While I haven't been able to find it in a dictionary, I've heard three different people from rural areas of the US who consistently use set to mean sit. Given that upstate New York is such an area, this may be a case of the same phenomenon."
19:27
@Robusto I'm going to start saying maizled though.
@Mitch Good man.
I've been maizled so often by people trying to 'fix' my pronunciation
Not to mention your spelling.
@Robusto omg you get it
Don't let anyone tell you how to grammar
Why ain't everyone on Star Trek overweight? I'd just stick my head under the replicator nozzle getting a continuous stream of cake.
The Expanse was a very realistic account of the near future of interplanetary colonization but the author didn't touch on food production.
When I say author, I mean screenwriter. Those books are way too long.
@Robusto Cashier I have a clear picture of.
"Fast food worker": I assume it doesn't mean a food worker who is fast, but someone doing work related to fast food, i.e. junk-food chains. But what kind of work? I almost never go to those places, but I imagine there is a lot of work to do, from making fries, to cashier work, to administrating, to accounting, cleaning, etc.
"Retail salesperson": I assume this is like a shop assistant? The word "retail" seems to be ugly code for shop.
OK I assume "registered nurse" means "nurse".
The rest I didn't understand enough to even guess.
Since when do normal jobs not have simple titles consisting of one, very common, word each?
19:46
@Cerberus Yes.
@Cerberus Well, there are classes of nurse here. LPN (Licensed Practical Nurse), RN (Registered Nurse), NP (Nurse Practitioner), etc.
Why would those not be grouped together as nurse in this map?
Every healthcare system has different nurses with different training and competencies.
@Cerberus Possibly they would. The map leaves something to be desired.
Yeah.
Like chocolate, why does it not have chocolate for me?
Seems rather unfair, doesn't it?
Quite!
19:53
@alphabet At what point is experience just knowledge? How do I know that set can mean sit? Because of years and years of hearing it. And knowing it is part of a discourse that is likely to contain other similar things. "We set up on the porch and that's where I seen him." For example. It's a pain to prove a discourse.
@Cerberus The problem here is that which job is the most common depends entirely on how fine-grained each category is. If you split "Laborers & Freight" into more specific categories, it's unlikely that any of them would be #1.
Hi, I have a question about English grammar.
Well, I have been studying different things about the question which created some confusion in my mind.
@tchrist
@Cerberus
@alphabet Yes, there is that too, besides the silly titles themselves.
He is one of the boys who__________good at English. Which verb should be used "is" or "are" here? I understand we will use "are" but I have seen some books using "is" too.
@alphabet Yeah, it might be handlers...
19:56
@Lambie Yeah, nobody's disputing your résumé in that regard. But that trick works in some cases but not in others. And it doesn't work in this case.
Can you guys clear my confusion about the above mentioned grammatical point?
@Idon'tknowwhoIam. It can be either, depending on what is meant.
@Robusto. HOW?
@Idon'tknowwhoIam. Without comma, are. That is the normal way to write a sentence like this.
But we will use verb according to "the boys" here.
19:57
If all the boys but him are not in the set who are good at English, singular; if all of the boys are good, then you can use plural.
However, you will often see is, a common mistake.
In other words, if he is the only boy who is good at English, use singular; if all are, use plural.
Yes, but I need an authentic source where I observe both of the verbs.
> - He is one of the boys, who is good at English = he is one of the boys, and he is good at English.
- He is one of the boys who are good at English = he is one of the boys-who-are-good-at-English.
I didn't find any authentic sources or books in which singular is used.
@Robusto. Can you attach any references?
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