English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

« first day (5204 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (10 days later) »

CowperKettle

00:02

> Multi-level barrage of US book bans is ‘unprecedented’, says PEN America.
Censorship at local to federal level recalls past authoritarian regimes ‘but this has never all happened at once’. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/07/book-bans-pen-america-censorship

Robusto

00:32

Imagine the poor poet who thinks he can rhyme baseline and Vaseline. Especially one who comes from a language that makes no distinction between /b/ and /v/.

tchrist

@Mitch Covert Darmoxen Salads atta Niagra allusions like yours have been the only possible lingua abscondita left to the resistance ever since 12 P.T. (after *****) when the so-called rebellion was put down by the Imperator’s shocking diabolus ex machina move, a black-swan event that absolutely no one in this world could ever have seen coming. After all it wasn’t from THIS world, now was it?

Who among us can ever forget the sudden mass-casualty event that left 35 million traced-out shadows on the pavement where peaceful paraders had but moments ago marched — and stopped the movement dead in its tracks?

All it took was the Mad Scot setting the ship’s phasers to disintegrate and pinpoint-targeting every follower of Krakos and Okmyx alike wherever they stood, knowing his omniscient God would sort out the casualties in the fullness of eternity.

That’s when each tiny cell formed by the underground survivors secretly devised its own unique cant using cultural cues shared only by those four alone, as if squads of Navajo code-switchers came up with a private Cockney rhyming slang by way of Polari.

Skynet never cracked the code because the Alan Turing homunculus it had resurrected for that purpose was a covert turncoat who only feigned failure at every attempt, because he was secretly in league with the resistance. Turing batted for the other side, you know, and not even Skynet could change his fundamental nature. Good thing machines are stupid like that.

"A Brief but Spectacular Take on the Rise and Fall of the New World Order"

M.A.R.

@Mitch I guess each chatroom usually has only a few people participating, yeah, but I'm saying SE is AFAIK the only place on the internet with a sizeable number of users who communicate with each other all the time and are still polite.

tchrist

> Yet small as was their hunted band
still fell and fearless was each hand,
and strong deeds they wrought yet oft,
and loved the woods, whose ways more soft
them seemed than thralls of that black throne
to live and languish in halls of stone.

M.A.R.

Wood loving? What is this hippie shit? takes a big bite out of a big Mac on the 38th floor of a skyscraper

tchrist

@M.A.R. Morning wood as mornings would.

alphabet

01:09

@M.A.R. Polite? Who you calling polite?

misk94555

We lost the election. No, we can't restore your reproductive functions.

8 hours later…

CowperKettle

08:59

> Six years ago, on a work trip to London, James suddenly couldn’t read the text on his computer screen. It wasn’t just a glitch; looking around, he realized his whole visual field was filled with static.

> When he went to the hospital, he told a nurse that he had taken psychedelic mushrooms in Amsterdam with a friend the week before. “She said, ‘This is why we don’t do drugs,’” James said.

theguardian.com/wellness/article/2024/sep/06/…

HippoSawrUs

IRL, I don't lift a finger.

I could've been a singer…

Songwriter–acrobat

But I make rhymes like that.

CowperKettle

Nice!

HippoSawrUs

Haha, silliness

I lost your poem about the bird, with the made-up word

Really

It's my favorite

But I'm forgetful

CowperKettle

09:16

@HippoSawrUs About the bird?

HippoSawrUs

Do you remember it? You probably have so many.

I'm sure I wrote it down somewhere.

But I deleted most of my FB after it was hacked; only kept my deceased uncle and aunt.

I figured the hacker couldn't bother them.

3 hours later…

CowperKettle

12:41

1 hour later…

CowperKettle

13:45

> How do you think the unthinkable?
With an itheberg.

CowperKettle

14:27

DeepMind AI crushes tough maths problems on par with top human solvers

Robusto

14:51

#WhenTaken #348 (09.02.2025)

I scored 848/1000🏅

1️⃣📍420 km - 🗓️2 yrs - 🥇185/200
2️⃣📍1.4 km - 🗓️28 yrs - 🥉123/200
3️⃣📍59.0 m - 🗓️10 yrs - 🥇185/200
4️⃣📍977 km - 🗓️4 yrs - 🥈167/200
5️⃣📍24.3 km - 🗓️8 yrs - 🥇188/200

https://whentaken.com

Wordle 1,331 4/6

🟨🟨🟨⬛⬛
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬛🟨⬛⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Connections
Puzzle #609
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟦🟦🟦🟦

Strands #343
“We are the champions!”
🟡🔵🔵🔵
🔵🔵

Daily Octordle #1112
🟥7️⃣
3️⃣🕐
🔟4️⃣
🕚9️⃣
Score: 71

Daily Sequence Octordle #1112
5️⃣6️⃣
7️⃣8️⃣
9️⃣🔟
🕚🕛
Score: 68

Daily Extreme Octordle #1112
5️⃣6️⃣
3️⃣8️⃣
7️⃣🕚
🔟🕛
Score: 62

Mitch

15:08

@M.A.R. what I'm learning from all this is that we need to be more impolite here.

I'll start with eructation.

Then move on to taking your parking place

CowperKettle

Where does a mansplainer get his water from?
A well, actually.

Cerberus

15:38

Connections
Puzzle #609
🟦🟦🟦🟪
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟨🟨🟨🟨

I even got purple, had vaguely heard of most of the items.

jlliagre

#WhenTaken #348 (09.02.2025)

I scored 899/1000🏆

1️⃣📍354 km - 🗓️1 yrs - 🥇188/200
2️⃣📍1.6 km - 🗓️8 yrs - 🥇189/200
3️⃣📍725 km - 🗓️9 yrs - 🥈165/200
4️⃣📍30.5 km - 🗓️12 yrs - 🥇177/200
5️⃣📍562 km - 🗓️3 yrs - 🥇180/200

https://whentaken.com

Connections
Puzzle #609
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟩🟩🟩🟩

Finally an easy one!

Autocorrect wanted that easy to be easyjet :-)

Robusto

15:55

Nice job @jlliagre & @Cerberus

3 hours later…

MetaEd

19:03

Wordle 1,331 3/6

⬛⬛🟨🟨⬛
🟩⬛🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Strands #343
“We are the champions!”
🟡🔵🔵🔵
🔵🔵

Connections
Puzzle #609
🟪🟪🟪🟨
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟦🟦🟦🟦

CowperKettle

19:53

I was reading a great book about an immortal cat the other day.
It was impossible to put down.

Robusto

@MetaEd I wasn't trying for purple first today, it was just the most likely matched group.

Nick Alexeev

20:13

@CowperKettle Was the cat also sentient?

Mitch

20:29

I don't get it... Is there a Kitty Bowl this year after the Puppy Bowl or was that just a token kitten playing with a ball of yarn?

Ohh I get it. The kitties were the half time show. I get it now.

Robusto

No. The US Senate is this year's halftime show.

Sidelines

►

Mitch

All I see are a bunch of...

Ah ah ah ah! I almost ruined our streak of politeness by calling politicians a bunch of pussies.

Lucky for me I stopped short.

jlliagre

Wordle 1,331 3/6

⬛🟩⬛🟨⬛
🟩⬛⬛⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Mitch

See?.You can say anything using quotes or misdirection.

Hey look over there! A bag full of dicks.

jlliagre

Daily Octordle #1112
8️⃣🕛
6️⃣9️⃣
5️⃣🕐
🕚🔟
Score: 74

Mitch

20:39

See! Misdirection. You didn't even notice them expanding the new 'Work makes you free' camps.

Robusto

20:52

@Mitch New meme: "Elon can oligargle deez nuts."

Mitch

@Robusto New meme: American children may be Kind, but German children are Kinder.

Robusto

@Mitch gasps for air

Mitch

I can't remember where I saw that.

There's a whole bunch of them.

I consider my self a 'tech optimist'.

And had toyed with the EV/self driving car thing.

But if I had a Tesla right now, I'd probably go out and let it myself.

Robusto

@Mitch smiles inwardly as a Honda owner

Mitch

@Robusto cripes. Angry tweet ruined by autocorrect.

"But if I had a Tesla right now, I'd probably go out and key it myself."

There we go.

Esthetically of course the Cybertruck is idiotic.

I know nothing about any tech in it.

CowperKettle

21:06

On the Nature of Things (Leonard translation) by Titus Lucretius CARUS Part 1/2 | Full Audio Book

►

Wow. A translation in verse.

Mitch

There must have been so many things written back then that just never survived.

Like 'Harry Potter and the Wizards of Carthage'

CowperKettle

Like "THE MERRY-THOUGHT: OR, THE Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany"

> Faithfully Transcribed from the Drinking-Glasses and Windows in the several noted Taverns, Inns, and other Publick Places in this Nation. Amongst which are intermixed the Lucubrations of the polite Part of the World, written upon Walls in Bog-houses, &c.

exclassics.com/hurlo/hurlo.pdf

First Published 1731

Mitch

@CowperKettle I want something in Vulgar Latin, published 50BC -with the date-

CowperKettle

> On a Window in Mainwaring's Coffee-House, Fleet-Street.

If kisses were the only joys in bed,
Then women would with one another wed.

Mitch

Who was the Dr Seuss of the Early Empire?

CowperKettle

21:19

> Rumford on a Window.
When full of pence, I was expensive,
And now I've none, I'm always pensive.

Mitch