English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

jlliagre

00:00

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (sometimes also spelled Shaykh; also known by at least 50 pseudonyms; born 14 April 1965), often known by his initials KSM, is a Kuwaiti or Pakistani terrorist, mechanical engineer and the former Head of Propaganda for al-Qaeda. He is currently held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp under terrorism-related charges. He was named as "the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks" in the 2004 9/11 Commission Report. Mohammed was a member of Osama bin Laden's Pan-Islamist terrorist organization al-Qaeda, leading al-Qaeda's propaganda operations from around...

Robusto

Heh, I thought that was Saddam.

My bad.

These enemies of the US all look alike to me.

That's Saddam, rising from the grave, as it were.

But shave the beard and we have another Khalid Shekh Mohammed, I do believe.

Sheik Yerbouti

Sheik Yerbouti is a double album by American musician Frank Zappa, released in March 1979 as the first release on Zappa Records, distributed by Phonogram Inc. in the United States and Canada. The album was released in other countries by CBS Records. It is mostly made up of live material recorded in 1977 and 1978, with extensive overdubs added in the studio. In an October 1978 interview, Zappa gave the working album title as Martian Love Secrets. It was later released on a single CD. Sheik Yerbouti is Zappa's biggest selling album with over 2 million units sold worldwide. == Inspiration == Zappa...

jlliagre

Robusto

Another enemy of the US who committed suicide by nicotine. ^^

jlliagre

Shaved Saddam ↑↑

Robusto

Sheik Yerbouti ^

jlliagre

00:07

Looks like Zappa.

Robusto

It is Zappa.

Frank Zappa - The Sheik Yerbouti Tango (Visualizer)

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For those who don't get the pun, Sheik Yerbouti -> "shake your booty" -> "shake your ass"

jlliagre

K.C. & The Sunshine Band - "Shake, Shake, Shake" Shake Your Booty (VJ's Edit) [Remastered]

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Robusto

00:31

Katrina And The Waves - Walking On Sunshine (Lyrics)

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I walk on your YouTube link.

My Fox News Dad's Shocking Take on Pete Buttigieg

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This is kind of ... stunning.

Criggie

01:14

@Robusto Is that a pun? In a longer form it would bes a shaggy dog story, but in two words.

Robusto

@Criggie pun 1. the humorous use of a word or phrase so as to emphasize or suggest its different meanings or applications, or the use of words that are alike or nearly alike in sound but different in meaning; a play on words.

Criggie

@jlliagre NERD!! Then again, as a kid I was never allowed a "fun" computer. I had a 286.

@Robusto fair point - I remember the Asimov story about the Shah, which was its own shaggy dog.

Probably needs to be a long and meandering tail to be a shaggy dog story

                                 ^^^^   see what I did there ?

jlliagre

01:37

@Criggie When I was a kid, even 4 function pocket calculators didn't exist or were unaffordable. I still remember the first one I saw for real in Geneva Switzerland around 1972 and I was fascinated by its power :-)

I thought, maybe one day I'll be rich enough to buy one for myself.

Ten years later, I could buy that one:

Dec 2, 2022 at 21:19, by jlliagre

Mitch

@jlliagre man you were so lucky. When we were kids, we weren't even allowed to calculate. Numbers were things only rich kids could play with. We had to count on our fingers and toes. Sometimes we were so innumerate we were only allowed to count on our toes.

jlliagre

@Mitch Ha ha.

Robusto

02:19

@jlliagre I remember in college seeing the first digital calculator, bought by the math department, which could add, subtract, multiply and divide! And it cost $400 and it was the size of a textbook!

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, phone number detected in title (281): Easy Lend Loan app customer care helpline number₹-_8653891140 ((+91))9065796080++ call me‭ by user530493‭ on english.SE

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer (88): Easy Lend Loan app customer care helpline number₹-_8653891140 ((+91))9065796080++ call me‭ by user530493‭ on english.SE

alphabet

@Cerberus It's kinda hard to build a court case around confessions gained through torture.

After you've been waterboarded, essentially all of your future statements become unreliable as evidence, since you could reasonably see them as made under the threat of violence and coercion.

Of course, for a long time he wasn't brought to trial because the government preferred to hold him extrajudicially offshore.

Cerberus

02:58

@alphabet Then you either convict or acquit.

alphabet

03:36

So: you know how, in Winnie the Pooh, the donkey is named Eeyore?

His name is onomatopoetic for the sound donkeys make.

The writer is from England. This onomatopoeia only works in non-rhotic dialects.

I just learned this.

My world has been turned upside down.

Granted it's been a long time since I consumed any Winnie-the-Pooh-related content.

CowperKettle

Phrase of the day: to fill a much-needed gap smallpotatoes.paulbloom.net/p/…

alphabet

Also: neither the Korean surname Park nor the word Burmese have /r/ sounds in their languages of origin. The American pronunciation is based on misreading transcriptions created for non-rhotic dialects.

Criggie

03:55

@Mitch So you're saying, you're Digital ?

@jlliagre I had something similar - was programmable in BASIC.

Cerberus

04:48

@alphabet Makes perfect sense!

I suppose I did always interpret it as onomatopoeic.

Although I think he is Ioor or similar in Dutch, which is rhotic.

Vikas

06:22

Rainy day.

Cerberus

06:40

Oh, dear, that's a bit too much.

Vikas

@Cerberus Now it's even more.

Cerberus

07:52

@Vikas I hope it won't be a problem?

Vikas

09:31

@Cerberus Not in areas like my town. It's still less than what happens in Delhi. Only problem could be bugs and mosquitoes later.

Vikas

09:43

There's a famous meme on Instagram about Delhi's Chief Minister. He said, "We're going to make 300 lakes in Delhi". And also clean the roads of Delhi with water, like Europe, so there would be no dust on roads. It would be much cleaner.

youtube.com/shorts/TdFaoaWHVwM

So he got trolled when Delhi's streets are full of water.

jlliagre

11:14

@Criggie Sharp PC-1211?

Criggie

Nah mine was some kind of Casio, I don't even remember what happened to it in the end.

Used to sit in uni lectures with my friend Dave2 and we'd type stuff to each other and push it back and forth.

Then I got a newton and he got a HP48g

no wait I gor an atari portfolio, then he got the HP, then I got the newton

Robusto

13:31

@alphabet I heard this a while back, but fairly recently. It makes sense.

Mitch

@Criggie beep boop

Criggie

@Mitch Oh man - dude's speaking like a droid.... where's C3PO when you need him ?

Robusto

That raises a good question. If C3PO can speak perfectly well, why does R2D2 speak in beeps and books?

Mitch

@Criggie First I had a -5- function calculator (with a % button which I never understood how to use or why it existed at all)... then the next year for xmas I got a sinclair effing scientific programmable which meant 1) it had trig functions and exp log, and 2) it had 32 registers/ops and if I recall correctly the only control op was Jump If Accumulator = Zero.

it was awesome.

@Robusto robotoicism

Robusto

BTW books -> boops

Mitch

13:41

@Robusto We got it. But 'books' could work in its own weird way.

Robusto

@Mitch My first calculator was a slide rule. What Heinlein called a "slipstick."

Mitch

In some sense it is going half way to humanizing robots. before R2D2, robots might beep mechanically and incomprehensibly, but with R2D2 it might actually mean something.

Kind of like Chewbacca. Or gymnast guy in Ocean's Eleven who speak only Chinese, but everybody in the show understands him even though we don't.

Robusto

AI prompt: "Render Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in R2D2-ese."

Mitch

@Robusto Have you seen the (intentionally awful) Powerpoint version of the Gettysburg Address?

Robusto

@Mitch Of course.

A gem.

Mitch

13:48

Original Gettysburg Address:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

R2D2 Version:

"Beep boop beep boop beep boooop beep beep, whirr beep beep beep, boop beep boop beep beep boooop beep beep, boop boop whirr beep beep beep boop beep boop beep beep boooop beep beep, boop boop beep beep beep boop beep beep beep beep beep boooop beep beep."

OK that tracks.

oh

but it didn't put in the whistles.

Robusto

But you're saying it in a different accent than in the movies.

Speaking of PowerPoint, does anybody remember Aldus Persuasion?

Lotus Freehand?

Criggie

No.

Was R2D2's beep ever transcoded to some language structure, like how Klingon was ?

Mitch

@Robusto no

and no

@Criggie Let me check Duolingo...

Robusto

14:11

@Mitch Exactly.

Aldus Corporation

Aldus Corporation was an American software company best known for its pioneering desktop publishing software. PageMaker, the company's most well-known product, ushered in the modern era of desktop computers such as the Macintosh seeing widespread use in the publishing industry. Paul Brainerd, the company's co-founder, coined the term desktop publishing to describe this paradigm. The company also originated the Tag Image File Format (TIFF) file format, widely used in the digital graphics profession. Aldus was founded by Brainerd (who also served as chairman of the company's board), Jeremy Jaech...

Criggie

I think I was using some early DTP software at high school - darned if I can remember the name though

I remember there was a standalone version of Excel, which ran from DOS.

It didn't need windows 3.0, and you could make it run about 4 things like print manager and get them all minimised to icons across the screen.

Mitch

14:33

I remember when there was a crazy wild new release of Windows that allowed, shockingly, things to run in the background.

Which, of course, sometimes I'm still not sure it can do.

Robusto

@Mitch The spy software always runs in the background. Duh.

Mitch

14:55

I remember when computers were new and you had to push the electrons through the circuit with a shovel, and every so often you had to clean the shovel from all the quantum residue.

-3

Q: Knock Knock (this ain't a joke)

Who's there? Grammar Police, OPEN UP! Or in other words: why was my question closed? Is "sort of like" hypercorrectur? The close-reason is nonsense. Any mediocre English speaker knows that sorta and sort-of are legitamate variants, allomorphs in technical lingo, and our own @JohnLawler has defend...

support

I am 12 and what is this

A lot of life is filling in the gaps, benefit of the doubt, assuming coherency on the other side, and connecting the dots based on past experience. But for this, I just couldn't. What the hell is going on?

Robusto