English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Robusto

01:22

The Reopening of the Notre Dame Organ Was Ruined?

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tchrist

01:32

@Robusto BOOOOO!

He'll make you scratch your head for a while trying to figure out which Vito wrote a toccata. :) (It's Widor, but he talks phunnie.)

WIDOR - TOCCATA - CAVAILLÉ-COLL ORGAN OF MANCHESTER TOWN HALL

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HELL'S CORNER!

Hell's Corner IPA: [ɑ] [ɒ] [ɔ] Vowels

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Robusto

01:52

@tchrist OK, I read your explanation of the "special year," and I'm still at a loss.

Dannyu NDos

Can "few multiples of ten minutes ago" mean "four days ago"? 'Cause someone insisted it can.

alphabet

02:18

@DannyuNDos No.

That someone doesn't know how time or numbers or English work. Or more likely is just effing with you.

Xanne

Connections
Puzzle #552
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟨🟪🟨🟨
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟪🟪🟪🟪

alphabet

02:42

Israeli teens jailed for refusing military service

> Why [bring] a short [book to read]? Isn’t prison a time for long reads?

> Behar Tsalik: Because I’m addicted to Instagram so I have a short attention span.

Gen Z goes to prison.

M.A.R.

02:54

@alphabet at least Gen Z is honest

Or maybe he was being cheeky.

tchrist

03:30

@Robusto Ed knows, but he's not telling. :)

Yeah, you can't punch my puzzle into any of these LLMs and have it give you the right answer, but I won't tell you why not, either.

Usually they think it's something about American elections or wars or both.

@DannyuNDos It can't, for two reasons. First, we never talk about multiples of ten minutes. You can have hours or half-hours, or sometimes quarter-hours/quarters of an hour. Nobody talks about sixths of an hour. And the natural groupings in English are by dozens; that we have no special word for "tens" of things gives away away how much more that we like dozens.

@DannyuNDos The other reason is as you guessed: using "few" to mean even six is stretching matters, and it would take six sixths of an hour for each hour, so there's no way in hell you can get to ninety-six times six sixths of an hour ago starting with "few".

There are a dozen five-minute spans in hour, though. Isn't that nice? :)

Dannyu NDos

I see.

tchrist

The Babylonians were geniuses. All number bases since theirs have been worse.

2

jlliagre

03:53

@DannyuNDos Even in French which have both dozens and "10zens", il y a quelques dizaines de minutes would never be acceptable for "four days ago". The expected time would be between 20 minutes and one hour.

tchrist

> “You can have a list of quotes five pages long of nutty things he said. But don’t stereotype him,” Nader said. “Put that aside. He is very good on chronic disease, junk food and obesity and pollution, and we have never had an HHS secretary who was very good on those points.”

Nincompoops.

Party pooper.

I wish he weren't right.

About any of that.

Yes, that's that Nader.

The Ralph one.

alphabet

04:29

@M.A.R. I think they'd have felt more than a bit disappointed if they hadn't gotten jailed.

MetaEd

06:14

Wordle 1,275 4/6

⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬛⬛⬛🟨⬛
⬛🟩🟩⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

MetaEd

06:27

Connections
Puzzle #553
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟪🟩
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟩🟩🟩🟩

Strands #287
“Moonlighting”
🔵🔵🔵🔵
🔵🟡🔵

Xanne

07:13

@tchrist The HHS secretary operates, though, mostly in public in open debate. So you could argue that RFK Jr. is far less dangerous than, say, Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, where she would be, in some sense, overseeing 17 USIntelligence agrncies.

agencies, that is

Michael Rybkin

10:33

youtube.com/watch?v=lgVBgZbrjCo Buff 'n' Stuff - (how do you guys understand the title?)

Xanne

13:42

@MichaelRybkin Someone who is buff is in good shape. “Stuff” can refer to “things” in general, or, as a verb, to stuffing your mouth—eating too much.

Araucaria - Him

@tchrist 2116 per chance?

Michael Rybkin

@Xanne Okay. Thank you.

tchrist

14:18

@Araucaria-Him Yes.

Robusto

14:41

#travle #732 +1
✅✅✅🟧✅✅🟩✅
https://travle.earth

@tchrist OK, well ... have fun with that.

tchrist

@Robusto Monkey puzzle boy got it.

Robusto

Monkey Puzzle

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So ... Anton Newcombe got it?

tchrist

Araucaria

Araucaria ( ; original pronunciation: [a.ɾawˈka. ɾja]) is a genus of evergreen coniferous trees in the family Araucariaceae. While today they are largely confined to the Southern Hemisphere, during the Jurassic and Cretaceous they were globally distributed. There are 20 extant species in New Caledonia (where 14 species are endemic, see New Caledonian Araucaria), eastern Australia (including Norfolk Island), New Guinea, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay. == Description == Araucaria are mainly large trees with a massive erect stem, reaching a height of 5–80 metres (16–262 ft). The horizontal,...

Robusto

Wordle 1,275 5/6

⬛🟨⬛⬛⬛
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬛🟩⬛⬛🟩
🟩🟩🟩⬛🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

jlliagre

Wordle 1,275 4/6

⬛⬛⬛🟨⬛
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬛🟩⬛🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

#travle #732 +0
✅✅🟩✅✅✅✅
https://travle.earth

#WhenTaken #292 (15.12.2024)

I scored 858/1000🏆

1️⃣📍16.2 m - 🗓️0 yrs - 🥇200/200
2️⃣📍1.1 km - 🗓️10 yrs - 🥇185/200
3️⃣📍7.7K km - 🗓️12 yrs - 🥉88/200
4️⃣📍411 km - 🗓️0 yrs - 🥇187/200
5️⃣📍643 m - 🗓️2 yrs - 🥇198/200

https://whentaken.com

Robusto

15:20

Connections
Puzzle #553
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟪🟪🟪🟪

Took me a while, but I got it.

tchrist

15:37

None of these six possibilities is actually wrong. Some of them may be somewhat more idiomatic than others, but take a look at this Ngram — the architecture of London and London's architecture are almost equally common today. — Peter Shor 56 mins ago

I love Peter: he still knows how to make his verb agree with his subject, something that's just so old-school I can't even. Soon we'll all be dead though, and English will lose all inflections.

Which will make it far more agreeable for the unthinking.

tchrist

15:53

I was pretty bummed out when I saw how much money African Americans had contributed to Trump's re-election, but then I saw that that was mostly all just from Elon.

2

Robusto

16:11

#WhenTaken #292 (15.12.2024)

I scored 775/1000🏅

1️⃣📍162 m - 🗓️9 yrs - 🥇187/200
2️⃣📍1.9 km - 🗓️25 yrs - 🥈135/200
3️⃣📍3.6K km - 🗓️0 yrs - 🥈134/200
4️⃣📍391 km - 🗓️25 yrs - 🥉123/200
5️⃣📍28.4 m - 🗓️4 yrs - 🥇196/200

https://whentaken.com

Daily Octordle #1056
9️⃣🔟
6️⃣5️⃣
🕚3️⃣
8️⃣7️⃣
Score: 59

Daily Sequence Octordle #1056
4️⃣5️⃣
6️⃣7️⃣
8️⃣9️⃣
🔟🕚
Score: 60

Tightrope, a daily trivia game | Britannica

Dec. 15, 2024

T I G H T R O P E
✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ 🎉

My Score: 2130

jlliagre

16:30

Connections
Puzzle #553
🟩🟦🟩🟩
🟨🟩🟦🟩
🟨🟩🟪🟦
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟪🟩🟦

@Robusto Over my head.

Tightrope, a daily trivia game | Britannica

Dec. 15, 2024

T I G H T R O P E
✅ ✅ ✅ 💔 💔 ✅ ✅ ✅ 💔 🤕

My Score: 1180

Robusto

@jlliagre The relationships are quite subtle. Luck for me the hardest one is a gimme, since once you guess the first three the last one is simply pro forma.

Cerberus

16:59

Connections
Puzzle #553
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟪🟪🟪🟪

We're Conexions twins, identical order.

I must admit I would never have known the purple one, because I just don't know the things they refer to.

Robusto

@Cerberus Good on ya, mate.

Cerberus

Was the blue one really that 'difficult'?

Robusto

@Cerberus Not once you get it ;-)

Cerberus

Oh, really.

Like the Oracle of Delphi.

Robusto

Yes.

Robusto

17:25

@tchrist This.

Strands #287
“Moonlighting”
🔵🔵🔵🟡
🔵🔵🔵

jlliagre

17:41

Strands #287
“Moonlighting”
🔵🔵🔵🔵
🟡🔵🔵

Robusto

nytimes.com/puzzles/letter-boxed

That one doesn't appeal to me.

Cerberus

18:01

@Robusto Hmm yeah, it's meh.

And it only seems to know American spelling.

Robusto

@Cerberus Same with NYT's Spelling Bee. I think all of English spelling should be fair game.

And its vocabulary is unnecessarily limited.

jlliagre

@Robusto I just completed it but it seems there is no way to share results, at least for non suscribers.

Robusto

@jlliagre Another drawback of a lot of NYT games.

Cerberus

@Robusto That is also annoying.

jlliagre

> Wordle was acquired from its creator, Josh Wardle, a software engineer in Brooklyn, for a price “in the low seven figures,” The Times said. The company said the game would initially remain free to new and existing players.

Cerberus

18:09

I don't understand 'acquired', do they mean the website?

Robusto

Jan 20 at 15:10, by Robusto

NYT Spelling Bee doesn't take bended. What about the fixed phrase "on bended knee"?

Jan 2 at 14:42, by Robusto

@Mitch NYT Spelling Bee now doesn't accept bole? WTF?

Cerberus

Lazy.

Robusto

Sep 13, 2023 at 16:27, by Robusto

@Mitch: NYT Spelling Bee won't take mayhap. I swear, they have such a small vocabulary.

Aug 21, 2023 at 15:34, by Robusto

NYT Spelling Bee doesn't accept midden. Really?

Jul 10, 2023 at 14:57, by Robusto

@Mitch: NYT Spelling Bee won't accept porphyry. I bet it's seen often enough in their crosswords, though. Hypocrites.

jlliagre

@Cerberus The brand, the game itself. It's copyrighted. Now they can sue anyone copying too closely the concept.

lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2024/03/13/…

Robusto

Feb 27, 2023 at 16:52, by Robusto

Hmm, Spelling Bee accepts nouvelle but not nacelle? How dare they!

May 13, 2023 at 13:33, by Robusto

@Mitch NYT Spelling Bee started accepting nacelle. Must have been my email to them.

Cerberus

18:12

@jlliagre The game is super old and certainly not 'invented' by that person.

Robusto

Dec 13, 2022 at 3:06, by Robusto

@Mitch The fuck do you want, a medal? Maybe you are doing these puzzles for candy bunnies or gold stars or SE rep, but Spelling Bee is a puzzle from the New York Fucking Times, bruh. The solving is the reward.

Cerberus

It has been on Dutch television since...1989. And no doubt it is much older than that.

Robusto

I cou8ld go on, but I'll stop there.

@Cerberus But the name itself is probably where the copyright lies.

Cerberus

Well, who cares about a name. A name a trademark, not copyrighted anyway.

Robusto

@Cerberus Obviously someone who's spending "low seven figures" on a game's name cares in that proportion.

Lambie

18:16

@tchrist It took me a moment. Anyway, I'm not sure he still has South African nationality so he wouldn't qualify as African-American, would he?

Robusto

Dec 11 at 17:22, by Robusto

> I hope the first naturalized immigrant Trump deports is Elon Musk.

@Lambie Thereon the joke depends.

> Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. —Oscar Wilde

tchrist

@Lambie He has been an American citizen since 2002. Apparently he worked here illegally previous to that, however.

Robusto

Que pedo.

tchrist

If African Americans aren't Americans from Africa, then something smells funny. Musk?

Robusto

Mexican Slang Words You Need to Know | Advanced Spanish

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Lambie

18:40

@tchrist Yeah, but he wasn't brought to the states under duress.

tchrist

@Lambie Ye sand?

Lambie

@Robusto No güey. jaja

Robusto

Watch Elderly Woman DESTROY MAGA BRO in 60sec

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Lambie

@tchrist You said he was African-American, right? No duress, no African-American. No South African nationality, no African-American in that sense either....

tchrist