English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Can you really see the difference between DVD and Blue Ray from several m away?

@Cerberus yes

user19161

@mitch One way not to have to change your pants when relaxed is not to wear any.

Hmm.

And does it make your experience any different?

user19161

8:07 PM

I only have VCD.

@Cerberus but also, many movies are restored before being made high-def. So they fix up little problems.

@Cerberus It can. It's nice to have a clear picture.

I am all for perfectionism, but, once I'm sucked into a film or music, I really don't care about the quality much. Unless it is really, really bad, as in 320x240.

user19161

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Especially when you view boobs.

I just don't notice.

@JasperLoy I don't usually view boobs on my TV.

8:08 PM

I'm paying attention what what's happening in the film, not to some meta-detail.

@Cerberus yes but it's nice when you can see the other detail and notice the effort the crew put into making the movie.

admittedly it's annoying when high-def reveals details that shouldn't have been revealed.

that's always a problem.

Meh.

Sorry.

Also I've seen many DVDs that were not mastered all that well. Sure, they can get HD wrong too, but customers expect more out of their blu-rays than they do out of DVDs.

I'll just ask someone to dance in front of the television if I want really high res.

Gigili

@Mitch Hum, that was intended to be amusing and not serious as well.

8:19 PM

@Cerberus That's fine. But I like my movie picture quality to be nice and clear (when cinematically appropriate), and a movie like Ghostbusters is a good candidate for being an HD movie. Most of the movie is live-action, well-lit, bright scenes.

8:54 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 OK. Suum cuique.

No, no, not sting ray. You're thinking of those beetles that smell bad when you step on them.

9:11 PM

?

user19161

A sting ray is a fish that I eat, I don't know if it means anything else.

user19161

9:29 PM

Sting ray is actually cheap and delicious, and is often used for barbeques.

9:45 PM

Nice.

It is sold here, but I think it is expensive.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Did you know you could set a swipe action for each icon in Nova Launcher?

Long-press the icon, Edit.

So you can, say, swipe up to navigate home, normal press to open Google Maps normally.

user19161

@Cerberus Cod fish is very expensive here.

@Cerberus Best viewing is 80X24

@JasperLoy Hmm cod is medium-expensive here.

@Mitch Perfect.

A ubiquitous resolution of course.

10:01 PM

@MετάEd no no not a dead beetle, you meant ... eeewww.

@Cerberus is that 'to each his own'? 'De gustibus bla bla bla more latiiny stuff bla bla' takes too long to say.

Yup.

since you seem to know things...why does Latin use 'c' sometimes and 'q' most of the others? like 'cujus' instead of 'quius'?

@Gigili Well played.

The I and J do not matter; that’s misleading. However, CU and QU are not at all the same sound: one is a consonant and a vowel, the other just a consonant. The QUestion is whether PIE had /kʷ/. And it apparently did.

Latin only used <qu> for /kʷ/. It used <cu> for /ku/.

10:16 PM

@Mitch Oh, yes, I believe the q is a remnant of older (Etruscan) alphabets where they had several characters with k-like sounds.

It was a complicated history, I think.

Tchrist is right that qu is only used in classical Latin for voiceless labiovelars.

Qui is /kwi/, while cui is /kui/.

10:54 PM

@Cerberus ok then. But what then does 'cui' mean? I thought it meant the same as 'qui'. 'cujus' -is- the same as 'whose' right? Which I would have expected to be 'quius' but I guess they pronounce it a little funny therefore the 'cuj...'?

@Mitch All those words are different cases of the masculine relative pronoun.

Qui = nominative

Cuius = genitive

Cui = dative

Quem = accusative

Quo = ablative

So "who/which", "whose", "to whom/which", "whom/which", "by/etc. which/whom".

There are also plural forms, and of course feminine + neuter.

The j is a Mediaeval invention, now used where Romans pronounced the i as /j/ (which is not like English j).

Note that j was used differently before modern times.

I don't know why some forms have qu and others cu. Probably has to do with the following vowel:

Labiovelars apparently disappeared before certain vowels as in Greek, but were kept before others.

Latin equus = Greek hippos, because the labiovelar changed into p in Greek before o.

A labiovelar is kʷ, gʷ, or gʷʰ.

Labialized velars were an important set of sounds coming down to us from PIE. That’s why the quessetéma get their own full column in the tengwar.

That is, column IV.

There is something about an -o following that does something to the labialization. Look what happened to English who, whole, whore.

The Scots used to spell those quho and such. Not clear to me exactly what sound they were making there.

11:09 PM

Yes, it has to do with lip-rounding.

How do you feel about Nutella sandwiches?

What if you put Nutella on one slice and crunch peanut butter on the other?

Umm.

I prefer my Nutella unadultered.

I’ve never tried. Hence the question.

Is that even a word?

I have never tried it.

Maybe try it with an expensive pure hazelnut paste and an expensive true chocolate paste.

Hm.

11:18 PM

Nutella is probably about half chocolate, half hazelnut.

You meant unadulterated.

That is, it also contains tons of dairy and starches, probably.

Ah yes, unadulterated.

It’s it weird that the pope is an elected absolute monarch?

Why?

These seem opposite things.

Absolute monarch versus democracy.

11:20 PM

Oh, nah.

Yeah yeah: as if.

It's no different than getting Hitler as an absolute dictator. That was done democratically too.

The oldest monarchs in the Germanic tradition were elected.

Like the HRE.

It's a bit better than a hereditary monarch.

Is it?

I prefer Queen Beatrix over Hitler.

But I'm eating my absolutely divine crème brûlée, so I don't care who rules the world at the moment, be she absolute or divine.

11:22 PM

It's not always better than a hereditary monarch. Better in principle, not always better in practice.

Indeed.

@Cerberus Not a pretty picture.

I have no issue with the hereditary system. I wish the House of Lords were still hereditary.

I think she's pretty.

Not atop Hitler she isn’t.

11:24 PM

@AndrewLeach Yeah I'm on the fence.

I don't want too much unaccountable power.

At least with heredity there is some randomness.

Yeah.

I think the proportions should be just right.

How are the Queen's proportions?

Is your Queen still Queen?

Yes.

I wonder who the last person the Pope ordered executed was, and when they were killed.

11:26 PM

But she lost her main remaining power, appointing the formateur, the person who is to form a new cabinet.

Oh. Our Queen still does that.

@tchrist I don't think it was a group.

Nice try.

@AndrewLeach So whom she picks is always a surprise?

She doesn't pick whomever Parliament tells her to pick?

She picks the person most likely to form a government.

Usually that's the leader of the largest party.

11:28 PM

Here, she used to pick someone else, often times.

Burning at the stake, probably.

A trusted Minister of State, for instance.

In the UK all the Ministers of State are appointed by the Prime Minister.

By that I mean a former minister.

It may not be the right term.

I was talking about whom she picked for formateur and informateur.

It could be some well-respected professor.

It seems your constitutional monarchy isn't the same as ours.

11:31 PM

So your Queen's power in that regard is a bit of a dead letter?

Spose so.

Past monarchs have picked someone who didn't win an election.

Didn't work out well.

Can't she pick someone who isn't leading a party at all?

He won't be in cabinet.

He just leads negotiations between the various parties.

In theory, but that subverts The Will Of The People.

But I suppose you always had one party with an absolute majority.

Near enough. The last election produced a coalition.

11:33 PM

@AndrewLeach Nah, the parties still decide whom they will form a coalition with and who will be in cabinet.

@AndrewLeach Yeah I wonder why Clegg doesn't do more.

@Cerberus Yes. But the Queen didn't invite someone to form a government until there was someone who could do that.

@Cerberus I hope he doesn't. He's a liability.

That's why she appoints an informateur first!

Why is he a liability?

He has crackpot ideas.

Such as?

Er...

11:35 PM

Switching to proportional representation seems like a good idea...

Hmm. I shouldn't have had that second glass of wine...

But I think it was defeated in some referendum?

Haha.

Not wine from the Continent??

Tsk.

Vin de Pays de Cotes de Gascoigne.

It's just taken me five hours to get home from work.

We had a bit of snow.

Pas mal.

Oh, dear.

Five hours is a bit long.

Normally takes two.

11:37 PM

Hmm still long, but not as long.

There was someone who jumped in front of a train this afternoon

which started the rot with the timetable

then the snow started, and points froze

Is the embedding of image/tiff in HTML officially deprecated anywhere? Or is it just badly supported?

And my rear-wheel drive car couldn't get out of a carpark

:-(

@MετάEd Probably patent issues? And now it's been overtaken by other formats.

Yikes.

Actually, I got it out of the carpark, but I couldn't get out of the town I was in.

The one-way system was all uphill.

11:42 PM

Eek!

Robusto

11:52 PM

There goes @Cerberus again, eeking out a living.

Do you ever use a program to see how much space the various folders and files on your hard drives take up?

Robusto

Who, me?

@Robusto Always!

@Robusto Yes, you, for example.

Because I have just found the greatest program.

Robusto

I, for one, seldom worry about it. I have 2 TB of storage, so I really don't care. I have more space than I know what to do with.