The more complicated your subject matter is, the shorter your sentences and clauses should be.

I don’t even know what it is trying to say.

Perhaps they will be clear if you read the introduction?

I do not know how the final "that is relatively low" connects to anything.

I do not know what "worthy" means here.

@Cerberus No, the major idea should lead in the sentence.

@tchrist Worth it.

@tchrist Nor I. Could it be a non-defining clause?

@KitFox Worthwhile?

Yeah.

@Cerberus Oh. Maybe. Needs lots of commas.

@KitFox I mean perhaps the previous sentence would help.

@KitFox That really is much better.

It establishes the context first.

So the rest of the sentence makes sense.

@tchrist Well, I write a sentence and I rewrite it as long as it seems strange to me. That's how I write and this is the first version.

It probably should read "while possible is not practical".

But I'm glad for the feedback :)

Because the school's management ultimately decides class [designations or whatever], generating subgroups automatically for each class according to a set of predefined rules, while possible, is not practical for such a low number of classes.

@KitFox It sounds much better :) Thanks!

Because school administration ultimately decides class [makeup], generating subgroups automatically for each class according to a set of predefined rules, while possible, is not practical for such a low number of classes.

tch There is some word I can't put my finger on.

Yay!

Put the adverb in front of the verb.

Oh yeah.

Because school administration ultimately decides class [makeup], automatically generating subgroups for each class according to a set of predefined rules, while possible, is not practical for such a low number of classes.

That's better.

And "a set of" is probably superfluous.

What's that damn word?

@KitFox The school management decides how each class is divided into groups of students -- this is what it is really about.

Because school administration ultimately decides class enrollment, automatically generating subgroups per class according to predefined rules, while possible, is not practical for such a small number of classes.

@MartyIX I usually hear "administration" and not "management" in a school context.

Enrollment was the word I was looking for, btw.

@KitFox It may be better. I don't know. I found a few sentences where the noun "management" was used.

@tchrist I had "is" there as well, but I think it conveys the wrong idea.

The possibility doesn't exist because of administration deciding enrollment.

But putting the "is" there makes it sound like that's the case.

is possible albeit impractical

It's an 'although' kind of situation.

I must say that my (forced) desire to continue with writing of the thesis suddenly disappeared. :)

I still think "a set of predefined rules" should just be "predefined rules", and that "for such a low number of classes" should just be "for few classes" or "for so few classes".

hullo

Yo.

Hi. I just finished the first level of Heretic.

16 minutes in three weeks. pretty good.

puts head on desk

I think I should go home now.

Fun?

It is archaic, right?

Yes, but I don't have a lot of time to play.

OK.

And it's not like these days where you have lots of in-game information about what things are for.

You just have to sort of figure it out.

Yeah, I remember...

Obscure icons!

Game mechanics that you only read about long after finishing the game!

red key blue key yellow key!

Have you heard of Dwarf Fortress?

indeed

Well, luckily some things are like falling off a bike. I pressed the Esc key without even thinking about it.

Heh.

Yeah, long live key conventions!

I was not privy to most key conventions when I was 10...

And my English sucked.

at least now you know key conventions, eh?

Yeah!

Like...Escape?

wasd?

The arrow keys?

Actually, I don't remember seeing wasd at all back then.

WASD. The actual keys.

For left hand control of movement.

I used the arrow keys for ages. I didn't start using wasd until... hmmm

HL2?

Oh, I'm playing that now!

or maybe earlier. I'm not sure

But on a console. So...

yay!

oh

It is hard to get used to a keyboard again.

I use a game pad for Just Cause 2

I think maybe I should get a bluetooth dongle and map my PS3 controller.

@KitFox I know, I know. I typed "the arrow keys" before seeing Matt's line. I know wasd, just don't remember seeing it back then.

I wanted to use it for Guild Wars 2, but it isn't an option

@KitFox Good idea!

> On the other hand, there is 10% chance that hitting somebody with a morph ovum will turn them into 10-foot tall, 999 hp demonic chicken whose steps shake the ground, and whose peck causes instant death.

I don't think I ever knew that.

:O

is that heretic?

Yeah.

Suddenly, I feel like playing some more.

But actually, I don't.

I think I will go home. I swapped today for tomorrow so I could take tomorrow off, with the advantage that no one is here to know if I was here or not.

And the people who are here have seen me, so they can say "Yeah, I saw Kit on Monday."

And I can go shove cardboard into cracks.

bdsm?

time to eat!

@KitFox That is actually an excellent idea.

Bai, eaters!

Probably old news for you Lego fans

@MattЭллен Haha, no. I need to fill the gaps between the mopboard and the wall before I caulk it.

Now that sounds dirty.

I don't know what I'm thinking. I should just use an XBox controller.

Then maybe I can convince my husband that we also need an XBox 360.

And then we could plug the computer into the TV and play PC games while sitting on the couch.

The couch is the whole reason I started playing console games anyway.

OK, I have to go. Byeeee!

Byeee!

prods quiet room with LEGO pencil

It came with my writing utensil holder thingamajig.

But don't worry. I can't find a pencil sharpener around the house, so it's still pristine and you won't get stabbed.

> A bombing near the finish line of the Boston marathon has shut down the race. It is unknown how many injuries have resulted, but reports have

Two explosions.

> Two explosions shattered the euphoria of the Boston Marathon finish line on Monday, sending authorities out on the course to carry off the injured while the stragglers in the 26.2-mile trek from Hopkinton were rerouted away from the smoking site of the blasts.

Here.

> Jordan said that the top finishers would have already finished, but the slower runners would have been coming in just as the explosions went off.

This is horrible.

@aediaλ So do you like II?

@tchrist Yikes.

@tchrist Oh god. That's awful.

Dozens injured.

Top news feeds on the issue.

Hmm at least this explosion doesn't seem to have been huge?

Still, when so many people are crowed together...

sad day, is there any chance it is a freak accident?

No.

@JohanLarsson not when there are two incidents

Two explosions.

Terrorism.

When high crowd density and high TV-camera density.

Maximum exposure.

E V I L

sad

Tragic. And enraging.

the world just got worse

Somehow, it's worse when it happens in a Western country for us. It is closer to "home"?

This happens all the time in poorer countries.

But it is a lot more shocking if "I could have been there".

yes but this will fuel war on terror etc. not good.

@JohanLarsson Yeah possibly.

I believe that shows both explosions, one as it is going off, the other seconds after.

please don't onebox these things, they are graphic if you look closely.

Sorry. I didn't see anything.

Fucking humans.

@JohanLarsson yes, it is. I was the first one to upvote that answer. And post it to this room.

then don't look closely. it's ugly. the first one posted here has a shot of a guy without an arm, and another with a definitely badly injured leg. :(

Without clicking?

on my screen, yes.

(not that i'm triggered/offended, just for other people.)

Ugh, terrorism is so bad. Dishonourable, useless, insane.

like wars

Wars can at least be somewhat honourable, somewhat useful, and somewhat sane.

Still, bad, of course, but I'm kind of glad we fought the Germans.

So actually I logged in to Twitter to see what everybody's tweets would look like right now.

Except I can't use the damn thing. Where are everybody's tweets? Or anybody's tweets, for that matter?

@Cerberus ok when it comes to defend against an attacker I see your point.

@Sim I just joined your Marshal club, thanks to you know who.

@RegDwighт I have no idea how it works. I just click people's links.

@Cerberus let's not open that can of worms. All these things can be, and have been, said about terrorism as well.

I don't use twitter but maybe this?

You cannot justify violence simply because it's "better" than other violence. That's relativism. It's pointless.

@RegDwighт Less so about terrorism than about almost everything else.

I wasn't trying to justify violence. On the contrary.

I'm just saying when I'm dead, I'm dead. And it makes no difference to me if it was a terrorist, a soldier, a drunk driver, a perfectly innocent sober driver, or a hitman following President Obama's orders.

Um there’s a lot more bombs going off in Boston.

Wha.

What, really?

> Following multiple explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, police are investigating reports of bombs in other parts of the city, Time's Andrew Katz is reporting. Citing a police scanner, Katz tweeted that there was an "incendiary device" possible at JFK Library as well as "another device" in front of Boston's luxury Mandarin hotel.

Here.

Well, that's not going off. Thankfully.

Such reports are always there after such incidents.

And sometimes the bombs are even for real, but get disarmed.

I wonder about that controlled explosion.

@RegDwighт I was going to say that.

Still scary.

TWELVE DEAD

> Volgens nieuwszender NBC zijn de explosies veroorzaakt door 'thuisgemaakte explosieven'.

"Home-made explosives".

There's no way NBC knows jack shit about anything at this point.

Some info may have come from listening in to police communications.

I tuned into severl news channels, but it's the usual pointless blather. I couldn't stand it and turned it off again.

Yeah.

@Cerberus there is no way the police know jack shit about anything at this point.

Unless it's the police who staged it.

You can't know that.

Perhaps some explosives expert was consulted immediately.

You mean there's always explosives experts with laboratory equipment present at the finish line?

There are other clues, such as the size of the explosion, the smoke, whatever.

Of course.

It was about an hour ego.

If they have already found unexploded devices...

Doesn't matter. Never trust a report today if you can trust the report tomorrow.

Anyway, what I find crazy is how right after the explosing everyone runs towards the scene and tears stuff down.

I know I would have run away.

Tears stuff down??

Of course you would have run away.

Who is tearing stuff down?

Yeah those, what you call them, temporary fences.

Vandals and looters?

Weird.

The organizing stuff.

Why?

@RegDwighт Of course.

@tchrist To get to the scene.

You haven't seen the footage?

@RegDwighт To get to people to help them.

It's running in loops all over the ether.

@RegDwighт I’m on an all-day conf call.

No video.

Ah.

I guess I could, muted.

You see wounded people lying around, so you run over to help them after the explosion.

@Cerberus yes, but then there's that second explosion. And they even ignore that one. That would have been the last warning I needed to drop everything and get the hell out.

@Cerberus no you don't see anything.

You only see smoke. And then ever more smoke.

I was supposed to work with somebody on something all day, but I’ve had 6" of snow since sunrise, with 7" more coming tonight and maybe more tomorrow, so I’m not going to fight with the traffic to commute. So lots of phone time.

In fact one person collapsed in front of the fences. They didn't rush to him. They ignored him and rushed over to the fences to tear them down.

This is an outrage.

I mean, this happened just yesterday. It's insane

Only the New York Post is reporting 12 dead; the major networks are saying "at least 2 dead" and 22–23 injured. Badly.

@MattЭллен that has been happening in Iraq for half a decade now, pretty much daily.

One death is a tragedy. A million is statistics.

@RegDwighт indeed. bombings are happening everyday

YouTube is full of "false flag" comments already.

@RegDwighт I don't know. People can and will react either way, probably.

Terrorists abuse this behaviour sometimes.

@Cerberus Well yes, they have reacted differently. I've seen it on video. That is not my point.

@RegDwighт That's weird.

@Cerberus exactly.

So if anything that's one reaon less to rush in.

@MattЭллен Yeah that's also horrible. But it is less surprising in countries where it happens more often. Notice the huge impact zone btw.

@RegDwighт It's still rare, I think.

In fact, they often put bombs in an area where people will flee to / along as well.

@Cerberus that's not saying much. It is less surprising where it happens more often because that's the very definition of less surprising.

@Cerberus that is the sad fact. the day before civilians killed in Syria. The day before that a suicide bomber in Mali. not a single mention here.

@RegDwighт Indeed.

@MattЭллен Exactly.

Then again, there has always been violence, and lots of it.

@Cerb Please do not feed the troll.

?

What came first, the attention whores or the 24-hour news cycle?

The stupid bitch on CNN keeps saying "mirror thone".

TV news is always behind anyway.

Do we know whether @Robusto is okay?

Watch something like the Boston Globe Twitter thing.

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Wait, does he actually live in Boston?

@Cerberus I'm not sure; I thought he worked there.

Hmm...

It was somewhere around there...

@RegDwighт She’s lithping? Or is that the Mirror Throne?

wbur.org/listen/live

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 I’m on speaker phone. Can’t listen.

But thanks.

@tchrist marathon. She keeps pronouncing it as mirror thone.

Oh my.

Intrusive R?

And the wrong O?

I think he means i for a.

Or -one for -on.

It's not the R. The mirror is non-rhotic. It's the [i] where I'd expect an [æ].

/ˈmɛrəˌθɑn/

@RegDwighт Or /ɪ/?

It is not [æ] but [ɛ].

It's ae in British, is what Reg probably means.

Not according to the OED.

Yeah whatever. A marathon is not about mirrors is all I'm saying.

I do not hear her saying marathon. She does not say marathon. That's all.

OED link to

Mear-a-thon

That is the /a/ of Khan.

In the UK pron.

OED is free this week, remember.

I read about that.

If only I knew what to look up.

Look up marathon.

You already did.

cilantro

@tchrist yes, in the UK pron, the German pron, the Russian pron, the Greek pron.

@tchrist that link tells me to provide my subscriber login.

howjsay.com/index.php?word=marathon

/a/ really doesn't sound right.

Spake the Dutch.

JFK library was an electrical fire.

Hmm.

First they said it was just an unrelated fire, then they say it was a possibly related explosion, now it's back to a fire?

I told you.

Ima wait for the newspaper.

OMG not every single Tweet is correct!

@Cerberus they just said electrical fire on that wbur link I posted.

Now they're interviewing a thirteen-year-old.

Every news channel's whole job right now is to throw spaghetti at the wall in the hopes that the one to stick will be theirs and not somebody else's.

Yep.

@RegDwighт Yes, I remember.

@RegDwighт Yes, the login is . . . Username: libraryweek / Password: libraryweek

Login there that way first, then it will work.

@RegDwighт Or, rather, in the hopes that lots of people will watch the advertisements stuck to the spaghetti.

Gah, that complicated?

I thought it was free.

It is.

One of our three networks at the time taped BBC coverage of the Queen's coronation and flew it back to the US, only to be beaten by ABC, who bought it from Canada. Canada had received it over transatlantic cable.

They will expire the account in a week.

@tchrist free means free from effort.

Time is money.

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Nice.

@Cerberus downhill ever since.

ABC?

American Broadcasting Corporation. The other two were CBS and NBC.

They're still our Big Three, in fact. Rupert Murdoch be damned.

ABC are the ones who postpone boobs by five seconds. But not explosions.

The OED is wrong. Nobody in American actually says it the way they say we do:

Well that would explain why they are free now.

Everybody uses [a] not [æ].

How many times is Norton gonna post that damned question?

Till we hold victory over him.

summons Nike to do battle with Nemesis

It is unfortunate that someone should have messed up the OED starting with the 3rd edition.

@Cerberus Facile.

This book says that Canada received the footage from Royal fighter jets, not via transatlantic cable.

Damnit. This lady just said lone woof.

Why can't people say wolf? >_<

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Same reason they cannot say calm.

@tchrist Well, we have both British marathon and American cilantro...

We have a local radio commercial with someone saying 'eckspecially'.

Haha.

I know lotsa people who say woof.

Or goff.

Can they say wool?

Probably.

Okay, I can't listen to this anymore.

@tchrist QED.

I cannot listen to socallers.

So-Cal?

Yeah.

Like, why not?

They have like no rounded vowels.

vals?

I guess that would be consonants.

Example?

It’s like the cot–caught merger, but worse.

I heard one yesterday, and it really through me. Wish I could remember it.

I KNOW!

Dahnkee.

WTF is a dahnkee?

It’s an asinine pronunciation.

See? Their vowels are simply incontinent.

I might have cot-caught. cowers

I would say that like dawnkey.

@aediaλ And well you should! :)

don quixote

I should make a recording so that you can judge me.

I think I have the opposite of the cot-caught merger. I have extra roundedness in my caught-bought-thought stuffs compared to other people around me.

I say /ˈdɔːŋkɪ/ and they say /ˈdaŋkɪ/.

I have a lot of other mergers though.

@aediaλ Maybe that’s it.

@aediaλ pitcher-picture?

My /ˈdɔːŋkɪ/ may be extra-rounded compared to /ˈdɒŋkɪ/, which is why it seems so far from /ˈdaŋkɪ/.

Is that a thing? The guy at work who says turn around a lot and also says Mondy/Tuesdy says that.

Take a pitcher; it'll last longer?

@aediaλ yeah.

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 That’s pretty standard in GA.

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Saying -dy for -day in days of the week seems to be regional.

My family does not do it.

The first Sunday of the month and the first sundae at Dairy Queen are homophones.

Homophones are not queer hotlines.

/ˈsʌndeɪ/

> As the original pronunciation apparently rhymed with monkey (whence the spelling), suggestions have been made that the word is a derivative of dun adj. (compare dunnock hedge-sparrow), or, more probably, a familiar form of Duncan (compare the other colloquial appellations, Dicky, Neddy).

But it no longer does so.

> donkey: A familiar name for the ass.

Sure, Beavis.