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00:53
@tchrist Can't you talk like a normal person?
I am not a child.
Who etc. are not conjunctions, d'oh.
So, “The person that I saw” has that as a conjunction, but “The person whom I saw” has whom as a non-conjunction. Got it.
Makes perfect sense.
“I don’t know [that] the person [that] I saw thought the same thing.” Which of those instances of that is a conjunction? Which ones aren’t?
Go ahead.
Because either you are talking about something else, or you have invented new names for old things.
In “I went to the store so that I could buy some milk”, the two-word phrase so that acts as a conjunction.
But I’m pretty we weren’t talking about that situation, since that that is not omissible.
If that that that we are talking about is omissible, it is a relative pronoun, never a conjunction.
In “I went to the greengrocer that I might acquire some leaks” you have a that which is a conjunction, but it is not omissible.
It also sounds like something from the 18th century.
01:16
It is so strange to me to read questions like "How do I tell my parents that I'm not Christian?"
On ELU?
I don't recall ever feeling like my parents so ruled me that I had to hide my identity from them.
No, on Parenting.
I suppose “How do I tell my parents I’m not a carnivore?” probably never comes up while one is living at home.
I don't get why parents would want to be so controlling.
@tchrist Nah, that's pretty common.
But it will be obvious, I meant.
01:18
Oh, yes, true.
"How do I pretend to eat meat?"
Maybe “How do I tell my parents I’m not into the opposite sex at all?” might be closer to the religious thing.
Maybe. Still and all. That's no big deal either.
Ya think?
Maybe we know different families.
I never felt like I had to hide that from my parents.
Nor my lack of religion.
Of course, my mother was never interested in anything but herself.
They say that Mom never has to be told, that she always knows.
01:20
So it didn't really matter what I did.
There are all kinds of families.
Or didn't.
Or who.
Telling your parents that you are not something that they think you are, or want you to be, or something like that, has got to be hard.
But I don't plan on ruling my children. I have enough of my own stuff to figure out without having to tell them what to do until they turn 25.
@tchrist I guess they never laid that burden on me.
If your five-year-old tells you he doesn’t ever want to go to school, that isn’t something you let him get away with.
I suspect that for church-going families, the same applies to church.
The question is when they should be allowed to make up their own minds.
01:23
Well, if he didn't go to school, he'd have to get a job.
Not at 5.
Precisely.
That was the deal in our house.
Hm. Never an issue in mine. Nobody ever thought of dropping out. I think I was the first when I bailed on a PhD.
I think me too.
But when I was eight and didn't feel like going that morning, my daddy told me I didn't have to go, but then I was going to have to find a job.
Hah.
01:27
So either way, I had to get dressed.
If I ever did that, it’s blotted out of my memory. I was one of those kids who could never imagine skipping school.
That was what the “bad” kids did.
I was a nerdy girl who wore glasses. I loved class, but school was hell.
I never thought about cutting class, but there were many days when I wanted to stay home sick.
It was hell before junior high?
It's complicated.
Don’t worry about it. Sorry.
01:30
The students weren't bad, but my mom made it bad.
That sounds horrible.
Did you read Little Bunny's Planet? It is based on reality.
No, I didn’t.
Horrible is probably overstating it.
01:35
The advantage of my upbringing is that I stopped caring what other people thought right about the time everyone else started to care.
I really never much noticed.
It's different for girls.
I'm assuming you weren't one.
Well, I never thought of myself as one, that’s for sure.
I had a really great boyfriend my last two years of high school. I think that relationship probably kept me out of a lot of trouble.
I should probably email him and thank him and also apologize for being such a crazy bitch.
So you intend to have a different kind of household for your kids as you had yourself?
They say that history repeats itself there, but I think they’re often wrong.
01:43
It's probably true for people who have had less therapy.
But yes, I intend to incorporate my father's legacy and utterly cull my mother's lunacy from my parenting style.
Things are different now. Dads have more involvement with the home, with their kids.
Amongst many other things, of course.
My dad had the unconditional love thing down pat.
I wish he'd been involved in the parenting part more, but of course, he was the bacon-bringer.
Still. I never had any question about how much he loved me.
See, with two breadwinners, it isn’t so split.
Yeah. My husband complained once about how other guys blah, blah, blah.
We all say dumb things when we're sleep-deprived.
Raising kids takes at least two or three parents.
01:48
He's got a great mom, and the three of us are doing a pretty good job with our kids.
I don't know what we'd do without her.
That would be three.
Yeah. Good math skills there.
Do your kids have their tonsils?
Yes.
Tonight, Gramma D is making us batty.
I wonder if that isn’t done as much anymore as it once was.
01:50
She's come out of her room probably a dozen times.
I had mine out as a kid, and it looking like I’m going to have to go in for a re-snip. I hate that.
She's extremely agitated and confused.
@tchrist Bummer.
You or your husband’s grandmother?
My husband's.
Very kind of you.
01:50
What is?
To be around a person who makes you batty.
We don't have much choice. Gramma is on vacation this month, so we're caring for Gramma D.
Unfortunately, she's got an infection and that's making her pretty demented.
That’s hard. Hope it doesn’t get out of hand.
Which is why she is agitated. Which is why she keeps coming over to see us.
Fever dementia is a horrible thing.
Or infection dementia, or whatever it is. But yeah, I’ve seen it.
01:52
She just needs to go to sleep. She's had three doses of antibiotic, so she should be fine in the morning. She just needs to go to sleep.
It's like having an infant all over again.
Except that the elderly person can actually talk to you with words.
But if she's still out of her head in the morning, then I can't go back to the house to do work like I'd planned.
@tchrist Yes, but about as comprehensible.
Well, that's not true.
She thinks I'm my MiL sometimes.
She wants to know where her purse is.
She can't remember where she is or that her husband is dead.
She thought the boys were all at a baseball game this afternoon.
The boys being my husband's uncles and grandfather.
That’s really sad.
Yeah, tell me about it.
No benzos?
01:55
Sometimes we play along, sometimes we explain it to her.
If you just need her to sleep.
@tchrist No. She's been off meds for years now, so no backup supply.
Or at least, to quell the anxiety.
We gave her benadryl.
That’s what I take for a sleeping pill.
01:56
And if she's still agitated in the morning, I'll call her GP.
Benzos are a seriously more serious situation, of course.
But sometimes useful.
It's not safe for her to be up all the time.
Why?
She forgets that she's old.
Falling risk?
01:57
She needs a walker to get around. The house seems strange to her.
@tchrist Yeah.
Oh.
Poor thing.
I think she was determined to go outside earlier.
Something she never does.
Can she sit with you guys?
She spent most of the afternoon with us.
Usually she comes over and spends ten or fifteen minutes, then her back hurts and she wants to go back to bed.
Today, she chatted with us in the kitchen while we made dinner, and watched TV with the boys.
"Chatted" is a stretch here of course.
Can you tell her that she should get some rest so that she feels better? It’s ten o’clock for goodness’ sake.
02:02
We have. She keeps forgetting.
I'm going to bed though, so my husband's on watch.
Hopefully, he'll get some sleep. Her too.
Good night.
I’m about done, too. Time for benadryl.
Night.
Probably should check for fever, neck hurts too much.
02:20
?
Tonsil. I keep getting strep of the tonsil. Fever at 101.2, dang it. Going to bed.
This is like the 3rd time this year, at which point they will consider snipping it.
Again.
They say that when you get old, you get things growing where they shouldn’t, and things not growing where they should. Apparently tonsils are one of them.
 
9 hours later…
10:59
@Tim And so it begins anew.
11:17
I'm not sure how to get this back to the cumminty bulletin, but we need more blog posts!
2
19
Q: EL&U Blog, the reboot

Matt ЭлленWe have a blog. We've had it for a while. You should take a look, there is some great content. I'll wait here while you read it... Good, no? This is a call for regular contributors. You don't have to have an idea immediately, just a willingness to write coherently about English and EL&U. If...

I tried a minor edit, but it didn't help.
More Norton spam this morning.
-5
Q: Call Off Usages

busandAccording to dictionaries, "call off" means to tell a dog or person chasing and/or attacking another to stop doing such act. But on google, sentences of the following type, in the context off policing searching for a missing person, could be found: They called off the searchers. They cal...

-3
Q: Usages Of "Call Off"

busand---.-.,-------,.-,.--,.---- According to dictionaries, "call off" means to tell a dog or person chasing and/or attacking another to stop doing such act. But on google, sentences of the following type, in the context off policing searching for a missing person, could be found: They calle...

@MετάEd Not to mention ban-evasion.
Wow, isn’t even the Wet Coast up yet this morning?
I just came across a Japanese person learning English writing "Fukushima 1" rather than "Fukushima daiichi". It's like they've overdone making the sentence English.
Oh, I think that’s ok.
Please go downvote Norton to get him off the front page.
Thank you.
@AndrewGrimm But daiichi means "Number 1". Fukushima 1 and Fukushima 2 is how they would be referred to in an English-speaking country.
The UK uses A and B: Sizewell A and B; Dungeness A and B.
Indeed, I have heard them thus referred to.
11:31
@StJohnoftheCross 本当に?
If that means "Do you speak Japanese?" then No.
@StJohnoftheCross it was actually Japanese for "really?". Trying to be humorous, and thought you had learnt Japanese.
:-)
Is daiichi not "Number 1" then?
@StJohnoftheCross It is.
It's a correct translation, but I've seen "Fukushima daiichi" more often than "Fukushima 1".
That may be because not many English-speakers would know it means "Number 1" as opposed to "Fukushima daini" and just treat it as a long name in Japanese.
11:36
now I have "Stand by me" in my head. It's the Pennywise cover, so I'm enjoying it.
I can't believe how badly I misspelled community.
@MattЭллен I taught it was intessional.
@tchrist me two!
sadly no, it was because I was distracted by making sure I spelt bulletin correctly.
I always have trouble spelling builtin, too.
Presumably a spelt bulletin is a communique about wheat.
11:48
how wheaty of you
I have a chauncy gardener to help me control my weedy problems.
Spelt, also known as dinkel wheat, or hulled wheat, is a hexaploid species of wheat. Spelt was an important staple in parts of Europe from the Bronze Age to medieval times; it now survives as a relict crop in Central Europe and northern Spain and has found a new market as a health food. Spelt is sometimes considered a subspecies of the closely related species common wheat (T. aestivum), in which case its botanical name is considered to be Triticum aestivum subsp. spelta. Evolution Spelt has a complex history. It is a wheat species known from genetic evidence to have originated as a hy...
> An episode of the popular TV series Star Trek, "The Trouble with Tribbles", revolved around the protection of a grain developed from triticale, which writer David Gerrold called "quadro-triticale" at producer Gene Coon's suggestion, and to which he ascribed four distinct lobes per kernel. A later episode titled "More Tribbles, More Troubles", in the animated series, also written by Gerrold, dealt with "quinto-triticale", an improvement on the original that apparently had five lobes per kernel.
aye, I looked up the other meaning. All that is left for me to say is "no no, not spelt, you're thining of being slender or elegant".
@MattЭллен No, not svelte, you're thinking of a soft material.
No no, not felt. You're thinking of large brown seaweed.
12:05
No, not kelp, you're think of puppies.
Why do people upvote things that are completely illegible due to errors of spelling and grammar and punctuation and formatting?
because... um... maybe Kris or Carlo upvoted? They sometimes exhibit odd behaviours
Yeah, I smell their spoor.
12:22
@StJohnoftheCross no no, not whelp. You're thinking of a short, sharp noise made by someone in pain.
-4
Q: ___Calling Off___

busand---------------_- According to dictionaries, "call off" means to tell a dog or person chasing and/or attacking another to stop doing such act. But on google, sentences of the following type, in the context off policing searching for a missing person, could be found: They called off the...

E più si muove.
Do we have no mods around at the moment?
That’s right.
We've had no mods for the last hour
12:24
Hi.
So we have to police ourselves. Downvote to get it off the front page, flag as spam to get it autodeleted after enough of them. Closevote so we can delete it ourselves as necessary.
Do we need any mods?
I have to commute. Please keep on top of this.
Hasta luego.
12:25
@Cerberus Nortonn has raised his head
@tchrist What is the problem with this question?
the face of a troller
@Cerberus It has been posted three times by Norton, that is what is wrong with it.
12:26
Proof-reading the internet, as a comment has it.
@tchrist Oh, I see.
Then delete two questions, keep one.
@StJohnoftheCross That's not proof-reading...
@Cerberus So, we allow Norton to post freely?
What the bloody hell is a ban about then?
So you are advocating removing the ban?
I must disagree.
@Cerberus "Could it be an error?" is asking for proof-reading. I agree with that comment.
If that is what our mod team and the community mgmt team prefer we do, then fine. But until I hear them actually say that, I vote for not letting Norton post. Period.
Consensus was reached a long time ago that asking about a specific idiom was not proof-reading. That's not what proof-reading means.
12:29
Banned.
I never understood the Norton problem. Many of his questions seemed OK.
He’s banned.
But whatever, I won't stand in your crazy way(s).
@Cerberus you don't remember why he was banned?
Apparently not.
And apparently we should reward ban-evaders with answers.
12:30
he repeatedly posted copyright material without even a hint of attribution
I believe he did some crazy shit, but, again, many of his questions were OK.
Pretty sure that is contrary to the SE terms of service.
Still has nothing to do with attacking his many "normal" ELL questions.
if he could have waited out his first ban, then we wouldn't be having this conversation.
but he just ignored the mods and carried on
Still pretty sure that ban-evasion is contrary to the SE terms of service.
12:32
you can't let that slide
Don’t you remember what he just did to Andrew???
no. I don't think I know what he did to Andrew
Our policy used to be to judge each question on its own merits.
Why the screaming bloody **** we should be accommodating to terrorists is nothing short of appeasement.
time for lunch! bbl
12:33
So let a thousand banners post!
I’m sure this will help.
And everyone will have a nice day.
If people had been nicer to him, he might have behaved differently.
Bah.
He is an effing loon.
There is no excuse for his criminal behavior.
And I do not use that term guardedly.
Calling all delete votes.
-5
Q: ___Calling Off___

busand---------------_- According to dictionaries, "call off" means to tell a dog or person chasing and/or attacking another to stop doing such act. But on google, sentences of the following type, in the context off policing searching for a missing person, could be found: They called off the...

And a close vote yet here:
-7
Q: Call Off Usages

busandAccording to dictionaries, "call off" means to tell a dog or person chasing and/or attacking another to stop doing such act. But on google, sentences of the following type, in the context off policing searching for a missing person, could be found: They called off the searchers. They cal...

@tchrist Speaking of terrorists, perhaps you are creating your own problem, just like the American government.
12:57
so, the mods are going to get unmanned drones to take out banned posters...
Yay!
As long as band posters are safe.
unbanned band posters are safe. banned band posters are not
My main page chat box came home.
good
did you send it somewhere dangerous?
13:18
It just left me.
how rude! did it leave a note?
Main page chat boxes today. They've no manners. No considerations for the feelings of others.
Perhaps it thought it was a cat. They can just wander off for days on end.
@tchrist A ban evasion calls for a flag. That is orthogonal to whether the question is off topic. In this case, the question is both off topic and ban evasion.
13:32
@MattЭллен it isn't like when I was a kid.
Oh aye! When I was a young un, I knew my place. Down bottom o' coal pit, canary in hand. And I was grateful too.
@MattЭллен I was happier then and I had nothin'. We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof.
@MετάEd Sure, the rains came in, but we was grateful for the water to drink and wash our plate and fork.
There's a lot t' be said for having nothin'. Gives you something to aspire to. Folks today don't aspire. They've got roofs and walls and clothes not made of cardboard
@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 You were lucky to have a plate and fork! We used to have to eat off the table with our fingers and drink out of a rolled up newspaper.
@MattЭллен Well, when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us.
13:42
Oh, aye, tarpaulin's nice. Better 'un the puddle we lived in. Some nights we tried to burn our clothes for food, but they were too soggy. I daren't eat the canary, either.
@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 hey! nice name
there's an image I didn't think I'd see :D
it's a spoof of a nirvana album
with the baby on the cover
13:49
is it nevermind?
yes
the first song on that Weird Al album is "smells like nirvana" which is a spoof of "Smells like teen spirit". The last track on that album is an unlisted track where Weird Al just screams and hits things for 45s.
When I got that album, I put it on on a little cd player that I shoved under my bed, then fell asleep. But it was on repeat. So every 45 minutes or so (the length of the album) that hidden track would come on and wake me up. I was too tired to turn it off and it was too short to fully wake me up, just startled me.
lol. how frustrating
yeah it was funny. I stopped putting CDs on repeat after that :)
back in the day when you could only load one album at a time into a music-playing device
13:59
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 hey yourself! Thank you! :)
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 reminisces
@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 So, new name, new house, what's next?
Sorry, I wandered off to get ready.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I'm going to Disneyland!
@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 sweet :)
At this point I feel obliged to tell you that disney is evil.
0_0
Yeah.
I'm having tubes delivered at newCave today!
Speaking of, laytors.
14:18
welp, now I've got "under the sea" stuck in my head.
stupid catchy songs
I'm listening to moonlight sonata
Classy(cal)
they played part of it in a youtube ad and I had a flash-back to playing Thexder on my computer way back in the day
so my coworker is trying to sell a PS3 online. he got an email from paypal telling him that they had the money and would release it to his account once he puts in the shipping tracking number into the form. turns out it was a fake email. the scammer has also been sending him text messages trying to pressure him into shipping.
oh!
how unpleasant
was the scammer the person who bought the PS3?
14:34
"bought", yes.
people can be so horrible.
luckily he hasn't shipped it yet
would you be surprised if I said that the "buyer" is in Nigeria?
sadly, not very.
It seems like any time a person in Nigeria is using the Internet to make contact with someone in North America, a crime is being committed.
I wonder if normal Nigerians get upset that their international reputation is being so badly ruined
I should think so.
14:35
Or does that whole country just hate us
it's difficult to know. I would assume they want to stop crime regardless of the target.
The Nigerian government wants it to stop.
The name "619 scam" comes from the relevant section in their penal code.
I read an article where some journalist supposedly went to a few countries that were big sources of these kinds of scams, and spoke to the scammers. They were treating it like a regular job. They had this notion that the West had money and goods to spare and there wasn't really any harm in what they were doing, and they felt entitled to what they were stealing. That we didn't deserve to have what we have, so they were right to take it.
@StJohnoftheCross 419
@StJohnoftheCross They officially want it to stop. But they haven't made much headway.
14:39
Probably not easy, short of taking down entire ISPs.
@StJohnoftheCross :) This is the EL&U room. We maintain the right to be hyper-corrective when it suits us :)
@StJohnoftheCross You'd think that if they wanted to they could easily find the people involved. Just set up some spam-trap addresses and respond to scams.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Hmph. :-)
Then, being in Nigeria and being law-enforcement, they could follow the money trail, and start putting people in jail.
I guess there are bigger problems than people scamming foreigners
@StJohnoftheCross We also maintain the right to be lax about spelling, grammar, facts, whatever, when it suits us.
@MattЭллен probably.
14:41
mai spelig is porfct
Apparently the Nigerian government has a problem with corruption. surprise, surprise.
Not to paint Nigeria as the worst place in the world. But once again, I read the news, then feel thankful that I live in Canada.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Hmph.
So anyone here use Google Reader?
Yes. Hmph again.
Not sure what to replace it with.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 is that for reading books bought on the Play store?
14:50
@MattЭллен no, it's the RSS reader
ah, then I don't
It's being shut down
by definition, almost all its users are tech-savvy individuals, many of whom are prolific bloggers
you'd think Google would like keeping tabs on what those signed-in users are reading
instead they're just shutting it down
It's my gateway to the internet.
The primary app I use on my smartphone.
The first website I open in my browser.
maybe they're trying to force people to use Google+? I'm not sure how it would link to RSS
they do want them to use G+. But it's in no way a good replacement.
Does G+ do RSS? I hadn't noticed.
14:57
@StJohnoftheCross I don't think it does.
I think they want sites to publish on G+, which many do now.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Fat lot of good that is then.
How do I get the sites I read to publish on G+? Madness.
I might just have to write my own aggregator.

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