The AI is failing.

O tempora, o mores! Tinfoil has been branded combative merely for citing the OED. Could someone please check the projection booth?

@alphabet Being inconsistent makes it less effective.

So does sloppiness.

Things that are jarring distract.

And I don't know what you wanted to say about beauty.

But that is the central issue.

He doesn't care about beauty; he even condemns those who do. However, that is not even sincere, because he writes and speaks highly conventionally himself, of course. So it is also hypocrisy.

@XanderHenderson Yeah I got that impression.

Some hostility towards Israel is warranted.

But I can kind of understand why Israel doesn't like it.

@Cerberus One can learn to get jarred less easily, which is surely a more effective solution to the problem.

The normal solution, which he and everyone else practises, is to try and write in a somewhat beautiful way when possible.

How dare you use "try and"?! Surely you've been informed that "try to" is the only form serious authors consider acceptable.

Any standard usage manual will inform you that "try and" is an ugly barbarism, a horrible violation of the True Proper Rules of English Syntax.

@Cerberus Perhaps, but I think it is fair to draw a line at inciting violence.

There's a certain kind of regime that bans news outlets that criticize the government. Israel falls in that category.

@alphabet So you say.

@alphabet Arguing in the margin.

Straw man.

Can you see why this is a straw man?

@XanderHenderson I don't know, if Israel uses violence against others?

@Cerberus No, because the authors that insist on pronouncing "mischievous" the old-fashioned way are also the ones who condemn "try and."

First of all, that is not true. Secondly, that is just one example. What I was arguing against is the whole attitude of this school of linguistics.

@Cerberus That's what was IS. Using violence against others.

@XanderHenderson Not sure I follow.

But inciting violence against a government that uses violence unjustly against another people is a special circumstance.

@Cerberus Okay, but I think that a government which is engaged in hostilities with another party is well within its rights to say "Hey, you don't get to come into our house and incite violence against us."

I don't know about rights, but it is quite understandable from their perspective, yes.

And inciting violence is one of those places where nearly everyone says that it is acceptable to draw a line with respect the free speech.

Israel shut down Al Jazeera for "incitement." Like how Hong Kong's government shut down Apple Daily for reasons of "national security."

So you say.

@XanderHenderson Yes, but consider that Russia will use the same argument to ban any news agency arguing against the invasion. And IS will use it to ban any agency arguing against the existence of IS.

@Cerberus This seems to be a logical fallacy.

"Bad people happen to do this thing, so anyone who does this thing must be bad!"

No, I mean that, if your argument is followed, then we could say that Russia and IS are within their rights to ban those agencies.

Because your argument does not account for the moral status of the banning government.

@Cerberus If someone is calling for violence against a government, it seems entirely reasonable that the government will attempt to shut down that voice.

I would call it understandable and expected.

And there is a fairly well accepted limit on free speech when it comes to incitement ot violence.

Because reasonable or rights suggests a moral high ground.

What Israel’s shutdown of Al Jazeera means

Moral judgements about whether or not that government is "good" on are a tangential and largely unrelated issue.

For me it is very grey, in the case of Israel.

> For years, many experts in Israeli politics have been warning about the country’s gradual embrace of far-right undemocratic principles.

> Now, as Israel prepares for an imminent invasion of Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, the Netanyahu government is impinging on freedom of the press in a way that may limit oversight and should put the world’s liberal democracies on guard.

@XanderHenderson Why? For me, it seems important in this case. If Israel is morally right, then it is immoral to incite violence against it. If the country is morally corrupt, then I don't know any more.

@Cerberus I would argue that any incitement to violence is fundamentally immoral. War is immoral.

Right.

I don't think Al Jazeera ever outright told people to go out and join Hamas. What exactly have they incited?

So how about encouraging people to defend their own country against an invasion?

@Cerberus Again, my point is about whether or not it is reasonable to expect an organization to tolerate incitements to violence against itself within its borders. I don't believe that anyone would suggest that this is reasonable. If you are in my house, and you start breaking my dishes, I get to kick you out.

It sucks for me if you are cop or an armed robber (I may not have the power to kick you out, or even the moral high ground), but it is not unreasonable of me to attempt to assert that you need to go.

And catastrophizing about Al-Jezeera (the shuttering being an entirely predictable and expected outcome) in the midst of the shitshow that is the Middle East right now rather seems to miss the point.

@XanderHenderson Ok and what does reasonable mean here, exactly?

@Cerberus I'm not sure what you are asking.

I said I found the shut-down understandable from the perspective of the Israeli government, and expected.

@Cerberus Very much so.

But reasonable suggests that some party is doing something which is morally justified here? Or what does it suggest?

I don't think it is about morality---it is about rationality.

I take reasonable to be a near synonym of "rational", I suppose.

I would certainly expect it of the Israeli government also.

@alphabet Netanyahu seems to have said that Al Jazeera incited violence against Israel. I'm not sure whether that is entirely true. But they have certainly been vitriolic against Israel, the Arabic version of the channel.

This is, by the way, the first definition that Google gives for reasonable:

> (of a person) having sound judgment; fair and sensible.

@XanderHenderson Fair is moral; sensible is not moral.

@XanderHenderson Then I suppose I agree.

Reasonable, as in "rationally reasoned".

But I think the word reasonable is not clear enough in this context.

@Cerberus It's nonsense. Yes, Al Jazeera's coverage has portrayed Israel in a very negative light. But they don't instruct people to take up arms against it.

@alphabet Are you certain of that?

It is not in Israel's rational self interest to host an organization which calls for further violence against it.

No, indeed.

But perhaps violence against Israel would be the best moral choice at the moment.

I can't say.

It is too complex for me.

I would prefer to put a literal iron dome over the whole region and only lift it a hundred years from now.

It is a big mess with mainly evil organisations.

@Cerberus Indeed.

My lunch today is going to be homemade risotto. I'm my own cook.

Rice is the king, barley is the queen, beans are the jack, and the rest are commons.

That sounds a lot better, if not messier.

Korean idiom of the day: Three-layered rice ― The bottom layer burnt, the top layer uncooked, only the middle layer okay.

Does that have a figurative meaning?

No, only literal.

@Cerberus Not to my knowledge. The main allegation is that they report on statements made by Hamas, sometimes repeating their messages too uncritically.

@alphabet Are you not talking about the English version here?

@Cerberus No, that's the allegation made against the Arabic version also.

To my knowledge they do not literally tell people to join Hamas. One could argue that they provide overly positive coverage of inciting statements made by others, but I doubt that anyone "incited" by Al Jazeera wouldn't have taken up arms otherwise.

I don't know.

I would like to see what the other side points to as inciting reports.

By the way, I think it is really confusing how English does not distinguish between participles and gerunds formally.

@Cerberus The German ones are nicer: capitalized infinitives. :)

Conveniently, the law passed by the Knesset allows them to ban media outlets without any sort of indictment or due process, so the Israeli government doesn't need to provide any sort of case against it laying out the allegations.

Hmm although, actually, here it is ambiguous even if you read it as a participle.

@tchrist Do they really capitalise them?

But, yes, infinitives are easier indeed.

@Cerberus Yes of course. You have to. Otherwise it can't noun.

Just like Dutch and Greek.

@tchrist Well, pronouns aren't capitalised either.

@alphabet If that is true, then that does sound very illiberal.

Sie?

Only Sie.

But not sie.

Nor sie.

Everybody uses the same words differently. We would not call these "gerunds" in modern grammars in English:

> A gerund is a verb used as a noun, as in "The Taming of the Shrew" or "the running of the bulls." The gerund in German is just the infinitive, capitalized. (Like all nouns.) All gerunds are neuter, and when there's a plural, it has no added ending or umlaut.

Those are just nouns not verbs now.

We would definitely call those gerunds.

@Cerberus Yep. Al Jazeera was shut down almost immediately after the Knesset passed a law allowing the Cabinet to ban foreign media outlets for "security reasons."

That is exactly what it is, a verb used as a noun.

Not in modern English grammar. Those are deverbal nouns.

No charges, no court case, no nothing. Just an order from the executive branch.

> Running bulls through the town is dangerous.

That's a gerund.

That is just some school of anti-traditional linguistics with which I do not agree.

But I think we have argued about this many times.

It's just a model.

So it is.

It's not something to argue about.

In Dutch, we also use the infinitive for gerunds.

> Lachen is moeilijk.

It's just a classification system that chooses to make a distinction between two things that other systems may not, or which may do so differently.

> Het lachen is moeilijk.

The article doesn't change anything except add definiteness.

Definity?

Definitude. :)

@tchrist The main, normal system that most people know and use has the benefit of making a clear distinction between verbs used as adjectives and those used as nouns.

But you know all this.

In Greek, the article is compulsory when you make an infinitive have any other role than subject or direct complement of a verb.

Just as in Latin one changes an infinitive into a gerund.

One reason modern grammar distinguishes those two cases is because of what sort of modifier each takes. One can only take adjectives and rejects adverbs and objects. The other can only take adverbs and objects and rejects adjectives. This seems important to me. Perhaps it does not to you.

It seems less important, it does not seem to touch the heart of the distinction.

(A correction: the law allowing this was passed in April; until recent events Israel had yet to use it.)

"NP prep NP" is another restriction.

Modifiers are, from my perspective, not characteristics so essential to the function of these words as is whether they can be used instead of a noun or adjective.

But that can become confusing with adverbials, so let's not.

Wow, my sentence is ugly, it must be hard to parse.

Those are not really comparable elements. Modifiers and predicates and subjects and objects are one class of thing, but nouns and verbs and adjectives and adverbs are another class altogether. Part-of-speech is not something that applies to larger syntactic constructs, to the role which that constituent is playing.

I don't agree with that, I think.

I think pronouns are a kind of nouns.

And gerunds are a kind of nouns.

And participles are a kind of adjectives.

And adjectives can function as nouns.

Now you're claiming that multiword phrases are single parts of speech. Nobody does that.

@Cerberus This is why it's important to distinguish between syntactic functions (like "subject") and syntactic forms (like "noun phrase").

And so can infinitives.

@tchrist I would not say "are", but "can function as / can replace in a sentence".

The inherently recursive nature of the grammar of human language requires that syntactic constituents sit above mere parts of speech. Parts of speech are not recursive in definition, but syntactic constituents very much are so.

This is on a lower level.

In "Getting to the summit proved difficult," "Getting to the summit" has the form of a verb phrase but has the role of subject. That role is prototypically, but not always, filled by a noun phrase.

So the fact that you can replace it with a noun phrase doesn't establish that it is a noun phrase, only that its function is one that a noun phrase can (and usually does) fulfill.

Nobody said "is".

> that its function is one that a noun phrase can (and usually does) fulfill

That is what I call, "functions like a noun".

Yes, it functions like a noun in a sense, but it isn't a noun, it's a verb that's the head of a verb phrase.

But, when a word in its typical usage can function like a noun, then I would be inclined to call it a noun?

@alphabet Again, "is" is a straw man.

In terms of its syntactic structure, "Getting to the summit" is like any other verb phrase. "Getting" can take an object or locative complement, be modified by adverbs, etc.

"Functions like a" is a bit of a red flag to impudently wave before the bull. It's a negative flash word.

@Cerberus It's not that something "functions like a noun"; it's simply that it is a noun.

And for "can function like a noun", what I consider most important is whether or not it can replace a noun while keeping the construction the same—not whether or not it can take certain modifiers. The latter seems non-essential to what it means to be a noun.

@alphabet That is why it is said that a gerund is externally a noun, internally a verb.

@tchrist It is the normal way to describe such things.

Consider: a long-sleeved shirt hanger.

@tchrist Like a gerund.

@Cerberus It's not externally a noun. A noun can take a determiner, but a gerund can't. "Finding them proved difficult" is correct; "The finding them proved difficult" isn't.

Saying that "long" is an adjective that is functioning like an adverb and that "shirt" is a noun functioning like an adjective is wrong.

@tchrist I disagree.

I think it is right.

It's because you can't reduce and replace with a syntactic constituent that it's clearly wrong.

So I think this discussion is a bit pointless.

There are modifiers.

I describe what I see as the normal, widely used terminology.

You describe another system.

It's not used that way professionally.

And hasn't been for more than a century.

Nope: not used by a certain school of linguistics.

Because it fails to do the job that people need to put it to.

@tchrist It is used now.

So it was abandoned.

In "He remained dangerous," we can replace "dangerous" with a noun, as in "He remained the leader." So, is "dangerous" a noun?

@tchrist None of this is true.

Well, I will retire from this repeated discussion.

@Cerberus Not professionally. You cannot have syntactic models with higher constructs.

Disagree.

Little pieces join together to become bigger pieces. It just keeps self-assembling.

But the bigger pieces are never parts of speech. They are syntactic roles.

Did I mention that I had a cuddle date this evening?

@Cerberus Aww.

Did I mention that I had emergency surgery this evening and thus am highly medicated?

Oh, dear.

What was wrong?

Stupid domino effect. Failures cascading into failures.

What organ?

Started with a failing cyborg part.

Dental implants.

Pacemaker?

Ah.

Hah!

Did it cause an infection?

This is why I shouldn't extract my wisdom teeth.

No, I walk 4 to 9 miles every day, hard, at elevation, with significant elevation gain (usually 600'). I have issues but cardio is not one of them.

Good.

@DannyuNDos I haven't had mine pulled either.

I'm 41.

@Cerberus No, one piece had some sort of manufacturer defect that made it break in my mouth. That was taken out a month ago. But then the next one in line started to shift without the support and it took too much pressure and it crunched and cracked the bone ripped out the bottom of the sinus and all kinds of things you never want to see.

I've had a dentist try to persuade me to get an implant to fill the gap between my two front teeth, giving me a single front uni-tooth that would look slightly different from all the others.

@tchrist What about the nerves?

Oh gosh. Sorry to hear that. Not that tchrist can see my messages.

@DannyuNDos Did I mention it hurt?

Oh.

Hurt excruciatingly.

I will communicate my sympathy telepathically.

Hence emergency surgery.

@tchrist Wow, I had no idea that was possible.

Me neither.

Quite a mess.

I saw the screw implant with all the bone attached to it when he pulled it out. That wasn't supposed to be able to happen either. Just a mess.

Yikes.

How old were the implants?

Ouch ouch ouch.

The first was only four years old.

The second maybe six.

By the way, Alphabet communicates his sympathy to you, don't know whether you want to hear it.

@tchrist It is crazy that such new implants could malfunction so destructively.

The surgeon is still baffled. These things have to be sent in to the manufacturer and reported to the federal government. They are extremely tightly regulated.

I wonder, is there a dentistry channel corresponding to Chubbyemu?

I know people say they have a hard time getting opiate painkillers in this country any longer, but surgical patients and burn patients still get what they need.

So you don't feel much pain now?

Much? No, not much. My brain is very fogged. But the pain is not truly gone. Up in the place where the bone got smashed it still hurts a little.

And he used a super long-acting nerve block. I forget its name.

Any idea how long this will take to heal to an acceptable level?

In some senses, 3 months. In others, 12.

It was bupivacaine he used as the block.