Is it that Turning test you guys are trying on me with? I used to believe Turning test is, as the name implies, about seeing if the entity is able to turn around a few times without falling over. Which is obviously something no robot has ever been able to do, and something every single real human person is able to do 100% time without failure.

@user402514 Well, not so fast:

Etymology of the day: bâton -- Inherited from Old French baston, probably from a Vulgar Latin bastōnem, itself a modification of Late Latin bastum, or possibly noun use of the verb *bastāre, from Ancient Greek βαστάζω (bastázō). Compare Italian bastone.

@NickAlexeev Interesting, it's a French leave in English, Spanish, Portuguese and partially in German but an English leave in Russian, Czech, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Ukranian.

Ukrainian even.

-_-

"If you wish to live, wisely ignore sayings"

If you wish to live wisely...

If you ignore the wishes, live wisely by the sayings.

@CowperKettle Similar here.

@user402514 OMG it's the Tuning test. There's a interface that you see if the other person, well if they're a person or not by how well they can stay in tune. That's what AI -means-.

@jlliagre awesome health care for those.making it to >= 80

Soon there will be none nuns.

Should this be closed for the "answered by a dictionary" reason? Genuinely unsure.

You won't find it in Merriam-Webster, but Green's Dictionary of Slang lists it.

Nope, imho.

Also the meaning is very obvious from context.

Also I can't help thinking it could be a troll.

Trollers gotta troll.

The f-word gives them way.

@user85795 if they're your gramma's then they'll be

Nan's nuns

You are correct, sir.

And if it's midday...

Nan's noon nuns

Oh for the days of macaroons

@CowperKettle Is the number of nuns dropping as fast as the total number of Catholics, or slower?

Those 20-40 year olds gotta be dedicated though

I wonder what the application pool for the priesthood looks like?

@Mitch MeToo movement grabbed most of the fresh nun material.

Should I answer that question just to make it go away?

But they're -nuns-. Isn't that the point to take themselves out of the game?

@alphabet go for it, just for that reason.

@Mitch Yes, and there are many ways to take oneself out of the game.

Soon enough we'll have MeToo convents, MeToo mother superiors...

@alphabet I keep saying that everything in. Quotes is on-topic but that question is really playing the plausible deniability game

What's that kind of game about?

I don't think it's offensive, but I think the asker just wants to ask about sex because they're 13 and think it's hilarious to pretend to be confused about this.

@alphabet yes exactly

14 is the age limit here.

Nobody enforces that.

If they did, hardly any raccoons could use this site.

Bio age, not mental age

@alphabet systematic bias

The Age of Aquarius.

This is the setting thereof.

Alternatively, I'm sure there's some EFL teacher who thought It would be a good reading assignment. Better than Dickens, who (going by ELL questions) seems to forced upon every student at some point.

@user85795 Hasn't Pluto moved on to the next house yet?

@alphabet just watch the movie

Kids watch too many dickens movie, already on the internet.

@user85795 parents will let them do -any-thing

At least they didn't ask what part of speech the word "nobody" is. That'd be a much better way to start a fight in the comments section here.

@Mitch Yes.

@alphabet wait...

The normies say it's a pronoun. H&P say it's a determinative acting as a fused determiner-head.

What do nuns say?

George H.W. Bush, on campaigning for president: Nobody said it would be easy, and nobody was right.

:-/

Nobody = zero people

Zero people were right ---> everybody was wrong.

If nobody was right, then everybody was wrong.

It makes me wonder why that family stayed in office for two generations.

Today in CURE vowels: TIL that some people don't pronounce the first syllable of jury with the same vowel as the word jerk.

@alphabet Speaking of fuses in the heads. I've repaired a Chinese laser cutter once. It had a 5mm steel dowel instead of the fuse. When I tried to take it out, it has melted the plastic holder that it was in.

@misk94555 Wait, what was the head?

Maybe the people who make laser cutters are natural pyromaniacs.

@alphabet Or did you mean fuses in the warheads?

@alphabet Nah. Just lazy slobs. Pyro is a lot of work.

@misk94555 I meant fuses in the noun phrase.

ILIKEANALYZINGSENTENCESBECAUSEITISSOMUCHFUNITISMOREFUNTHANKILLINGWILDGAMEINTHEFORESTBECAUSEGRAMMARISTHEMOSTDANGEROUSTOPICOFALL

I have the same issue with my powerbank I carry along inside a bag in the bicycle frame.

The USB sockets got loose, and the phone stops charging, and the front light stops working.

I wonder if the solution is optimal here.

Doesn't sound natural to me.

@MichaelRybkin Exceptions are not expected except when they are ;-)

Let's say I'm talking about exceptions that you encounter in computer programming.

@MichaelRybkin A well written program properly handles many exceptions so they are kind of part of the plan. Unlike checked exceptions, unexpected exceptions are things that happen but were not anticipated, like actually trying to divide by zero.

Then write that.

@MichaelRybkin First, you almost always want to say 'according to plan' (no article) unless your context really specifies a particular literal plan.

Next, the statement is fine and idiomatic English -but- not the usual way you would say it.

The normal way to say it is "Exceptions are things that don't happen according to plan."

Saying "happen not according" is as I said natural English but -poor- English, not exactly uneducated but as though you didn't think through the sentence before hand but somehow realized what you had to say in the middle and fixed things up at the last moment.

One could make a case that the sentence you gave is intentionally saying 'happen not according' to delay the negation for effect, but that is just not as common as saying it 'don't happen according'.

I hope that makes sense.

It's just a more detailed example of what I said before, that there are degrees of grammaticality.

Which is to say that your sentence (without 'the') is grammatical (sounds fine), but it is -more- grammatical to say 'don't happen according to plan' (or at least more natural).

@Mitch And same reason we shouldn't use 'the' before 'things' in that sentence?

@MichaelRybkin Exceptions are things that do not happen according to plan.

@jlliagre If you ignore sayings, wish to live wisely.

@Vikas Actually "Exceptions are the things..." and "Exceptions are things" while having minutely barely distinguishable meanings, are both equally (and very) acceptable. (ie the reasoning for 'the plan' vs just 'plan' is not the same). I don't feel any reference to anything specific or referred to prior with 'the things'.

"The time for action is past! Now is the time for senseless bickering."

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at beginning of answer, potentially bad asn for hostname in answer (39): "water pool" vs "swimming pool"‭ by Ellis Edward‭ on english.SE

@Lambie Thank you very much.

@Mitch Thank you very much.

@MichaelRybkin It's fine, either in speech or writing. There are many different ways to say this, but anyone here who hears or reads that sentence in the proper context would not raise an eyebrow at it.

@Mitch Yes, the impact of railway stations on votes has never been taken seriously enough. And now, see the results!

@jlliagre we don't use "impact" in the same sentence as "railway stations"

I'd love to see a collaboration with randy rainbow

@Robusto Thanks.

@MetaEd Prescriptivist!

I'm getting really tired of people, especially professional audio and video narrators, who pronounce coup de grâce as coup de gras.

@Robusto to be fair, it would still be a big blow.

@Mitch I suspect that getting hit by a bullet to the brain would be more of a blow than getting hit with a similarly sized packet of fat.

@jlliagre I mean the explanation works in the US where there are only railroad stations in the very center of high population density which heavily favors the left.

@Robusto Quel fromage.

Depends on how much fat

Word of the morrow (two years hence): semiquincentennial n half of five hundred years. It will be how old the US will be on July 4, 2026 — if there is a US by then, that is.

@Robusto scheduling a notification now

Mark this one down, too:

but re your pessimism, the US will be just fine.

we have a long way to go to be like Russia is now. And Russia, while not popular with Europe, is just fine.

An frankly the only civil war that will happen is if Biden wins.

@Robusto It sounds like coup de gras is the mainstream pronunciation.

@jlliagre Hearing that pronunciation is literally like getting hit with a bag of fat.

@Robusto Now you get it!

Youglish says: "Modern IPA: kʉ́w də grɑ́ːs"

@Mitch Why would they do that to me? It's not fair.

despite half the versions (all the UK versions?) saying "kʉ́w də grɑ́ː"

@Robusto Think of it more as lard that you can use for cooking.

@Mitch I gave up cooking with lard a while back.

@Robusto You should take it up again since you're being hit with all these coup de gras.

add it to your collard greens (maybe along with some fatback)

definitely needed for your flaky pie crusts.

fry your eggs in it

a little bit to make your grits smooth and tasty

durn... anything you cook can be improved with a little pat of lard.

@Mitch Even a fat elbow?

anytime you think "Hmm... this dish would be better with a little more butter" you can instead use lard and it'll be a lot better.

@jlliagre Tiens! Un gros coude de gras

@Mitch You got it, just a coude gras.

@jlliagre For Rob's benefit, all this lard is not considered nutritionally optimal.

But your heart will stop happy.

@jlliagre How about a cul de gras?

I think we have enough of that here in the US.

I was visiting Oklahoma recently and when you get off the plane you notice that people are supersized.

also signs everywhere for available semaglutide

= Ozempic

= ostensibly for diabetics

= really for weight loss

makes squinchy face

Gone fishing.

fish4flies.eu/Define/CDC

huh. duck butt fat.

for fishing

not for soup

You might try.

Thanks for the suggestion. But I asked my doctor and she said it has too much LDL and not enough HDL.

@jlliagre amozon.us has it but they leave out the 'butt' part.

I mean they leave out mentioning what part of the duck it comes from.

Il faut souffrir pour manger bien.

@Robusto holy crap that's long. just tell me up front who I should buy/sell/hold.

@Mitch If you haven't the stomach for it, perhaps you can work on your cul de gras instead.

@jlliagre You've turned my joke into a genuine product. applauds

I've seen so many clips of Jensen Huang (NVidia) and so many graphs of their value passing Apple and Tesla and the economy of India that I don't think that can be sustained.

@Robusto They're covering a lot of stuff, like the 'enshittification of the internet'.

@Mitch Well, it's definitely true. What happens when the world wakes up to the fact that the Web is no longer 1) new and exciting, 2) actually useful beyond question, 3) always growing in utility and value, and 4) actually worth the trouble?

@Mitch It's something of a mystery why obesity rates vary so much between states; I've heard a few different hypotheses.

Diet?

Massachusetts is (or so I've read) the slimmest and smartest state in the Union.

I know I was definitely smart when I lived there.

@Robusto Yeah... the online products are improved not for the users but for earnings which are more likely advertising.

@Mitch Yes. Advertising is the parasite that destroys substance.

@Robusto low access to duck butt fat

@Robusto "dead mall" syndrome

Pardon me for being on-topic, but is that happening to ELU?

@Mitch Yeah. It's not the fun game it used to be.

@Robusto Interesting. Its obesity rate seems to be 35.5% among adults, versus 16% of those over 20 in the Netherlands.

Solution: get Americans to smoke more

Avec!

@Mitch Bring back Obetrol!

China: Humanoid robot-run car factory to be built by FAW-Volkswagen, UBTech interestingengineering.com/innovation/…

Walker X excels in flexibility and motion control, performing intricate movements with precise balance. It can handle up to 22 pounds (10 kilograms) and walk while carrying 6.6 pounds (3 kilograms) in each hand.

@CowperKettle Why would you make a robot in the shape of a man, though?

I don't know. Maybe so that in case of wide-scale adoption, people would not be afraid.

If you make it in the shape of a large spider, it might be more efficient but people would run away screaming

Heh.

Usually the shapes look nothing like animals or men.

@CowperKettle I think a robot that looks more humanoid is more scary, not less.

@alphabet wikipedia tells me that they eventually changed the name from Obetrol to Adderall.

Which seems interesting.

@CowperKettle I'm looking forward to the Chinese factory that builds robots that work in robot building factories.

@CowperKettle if you get rid of the people there won't be so much annoying screaming.

Word of the day: diarthrodial joint (freely-moving joint, usually a synovial joint)

@Mitch They also removed the meth, though it's still just a mixture of amphetamines.