English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

2:15 AM

@RegDwight, can we get past mapped as a synonym for past-tense?

there were only five of the former, which i just retagged by hand, but we really should set up a mapping.

8:21 AM

Done.

Hugo

11:25 AM

I've suggested a tag synonym: quotes <- quotations

english.stackexchange.com/tags/quotes/synonyms

If you can, please up or downvote it

Q: Mercury is the color red. parts of sentence

12:31 PM

0

Mercury is red. Mercury is the color red. Red is describing Mercury. What part of speech would color be?

adjectives

wat

hey, @Reg, i had just written an answer to that dumb contractions question when you closed it

Uh.

And the system won't accept it?

There should be a 4-hour grace period.

nope. sez that no more answers allowed

Bah.

Sorry.

Noöne told me.

There used to be a 4-hour grace period.

Do you want me to reopen it?

Or is your answer lost furevah?

i have it copied

12:38 PM

Hold on a sec.

There.

It better be super good, you know!

thx

answered

that's two questions i've answered today

You rep... um... prostitute!

Morning!

I have a new car!

Prius? Hummer? Lada?

Lada? What's that?

Oh, neat. No, not Lada.

It's a Honda Civic.

12:48 PM

Lada

Lada is a trademark of AvtoVAZ, a Russian car manufacturer in Tolyatti, Samara Oblast. All AvtoVAZ vehicles are currently sold under the Lada brand, though this was not always so; Lada was originally AvtoVAZ's export brand for models it sold under the Zhiguli name in the domestic Soviet market since 1970. Lada cars became extremely popular in Russia and Eastern Europe during the last two decades of the Soviet era, particularly in former Soviet bloc countries, where they have become a symbol of city life. The name "Lada" means "ship" in Russian. The Lada badge also depicts a Viking sai...

56 secs ago, by Kitḫ

Oh, neat. No, not Lada.

Well, your loss.

Lada Niva is the best car ever made. Ever.

Those are super cute though. Maybe I shall have one as a hobby car when I retire.

I can park it next to my Shelby Cobra.

Well, again, very cool, but not exactly what we were looking for, and really not in our price range.

12:51 PM

You ain't got no 5000 rubles?

Who are you, Kenny from South Park?

5000 rubles for a car that I have to have shipped to my house? That probably needs restoration? Hmm.

Why would it need restoration?

And they have dealerships in America.

Because it has to be older than...wait what?

They do?

Of course.

No, they don't. The closest are in Canada.

12:55 PM

That's what the canucks would have you believe.

They want all the good stuff for themselves.

I stand corrected. There is one near me in Connecticut.

Except of course, they don't have any of those.

Anyhow. That thing has zero comfort, and in fact really zero anything, but it's unkillable. Amaranthine. Xenu himself wouldn't be able to destroy it, even if he used Chuck Norris.

2

Because importing a non-US certified car is nearly impossible unless it was made before 1977.

@RegDwightѬſ道 That's impressive.

Yeah.

Also, they're cute.

Hey, @Reg, how much do you know about code repositories?

1:01 PM

Let me see.

Oh dear. That usually means you are looking for a picture.

Nope. Actually typing stuff.

Except that I am stuck on the second word.

We used to use CVS. Now we're using SVN.

I can spell both with an acceptable level of confidence.

That is pretty much it.

But you actually use them?

I'm not trying to sound thick. I am actually fighting battles right now.

I know svn st, svn up, and svn commit.

I was wondering if using a code repository would help me keep my database/website code in sync. Right now, it's a lot of juggling and having to remember things.

None of that is anything I'm much good at.

Do you know if they work for that, or are they more geared toward application code?

1:06 PM

I have all my stuff checked in. HTML, images.

When I commit a change, a script automatically uploads everything to the server.

But I used to do all that by hand. For decades. Worked just as fine.

OK. Thanks. I didn't want to spend a lot of time trying to figure something out if it wasn't actually a tool that I would use.

I'm just using it because I don't even know why.

I never had to check out an old revision of anything.

I wouldn't even know how.

Yeah, but if I made and tested changes on the testing server, it would be easier to update the development server, right?

I mean, easier than copy-paste?

Or am I misunderstanding how code repositories work?

Well, um. Not sure why you have to choose between repositories and copypasta.

What ever happened to good old FTP uploads?

I never edited anything on the server. I always just uploaded my local files wholesale.

Oh I see.

1:12 PM

Now the uploading is handled by a script, which is triggered by an SVN commit.

That would not be feasible here.

z7sg Ѫ

SVN yuck! me hates it :)

I feel like I should be more careful about versioning and backing up.

Yeah with database stuff you probably should.

Lots of things can get broken very fast and most irreparably.

Well, I usually remember to backup the whole thing before I make changes.

It's just when I don't that I worry about it.

And with all the little manual changes I've made since the launch, it's easy to forget to backup before deleting one record from a table.

1:19 PM

That color question is giving me headaches.

Four answers, all answering different questions.

Yes. It did look a bit of a mess.

I wanted to close it, but then I thought that it was not as general reference-y as I initially thought.

Lots of pedantry too, if I recollect correctly.

Yay, did I hear pedantry?

Everyone interpreting the question differently => "It's difficult to tell what is being asked here". Try again.

I don't think it is difficult to interpret "What part of speech is 'color'?"

Obviously it is.

1:24 PM

I think that people are not paying attention (@JSB cough, cough) or they are getting there pedantic panties in a knot.

Huh, now I must see this question.

Q: What part of speech would "color" be in, "Mercury is the color red"?

-1

Mercury is red. Mercury is the color red. Red is describing Mercury. What part of speech would color be?

adjectives part-of-speech

The thing is, you are not really quoting the question. You are kind of quoting your interpretation of the question, if you know what I mean.

@Kit you should totally use version control. no excuses

If it's about the word "color", then two out of the four sentences are absolutely, completely, utterly superfluous.

1:26 PM

Ah.

The answer is: it is a noun, period.

@RegDwightѬſ道 Well, OK then. Point taken. But it's closed already.

Should be closed as Gen Ref.

@JSBᾶngs Hi @JSB!

Unless there is something complicated about it that I don't see.

It's only gen ref if the OP himself knows what he's talking about.

1:27 PM

The question is quite clear.

It is still not clear to me.

Actually, it's not that clear.

"What part of speech is color?"

i agree that the question is terrible, btw

What's not clear about that?

1:28 PM

Now that I look at it more closely.

I don't see the problem.

@Cerberus That is not the question. That is your interpretation of the question.

What part of speech is the word color? What part of speech is color in general?

Is speech colored?

@RegDwightѬſ道 I don't see how it could be interpreted otherwise?

Look at the answers.

It has as many interpretations as there are people.

1:29 PM

i interpreted it as "what part of speech are color words"

so obviously it's bad

@Kitḫ Color in general can't be a part of speech?

Which I thought was wrong, but now I'm not so sure.

And someone else answered "The answer depends on which color you are referring to."

@Cerberus Is it the word "color" that he is talking about, or does he mean "color words" like JSB suggested?

@RegDwightѬſ道 guffaw

@Kitḫ Wait, I was misled by later edits. It is now in italics, but those are not the OP's!

Italics and quotation marks mean he is asking about the word, so Gen Ref.

Just plain Roman type means either the above or a bad question that needs clarification.

1:31 PM

Also, there appears to be some discussion of whether it is properly "coloured red" rather than "color red."

@Cerberus Yeah, but I am not closing an edit by an answerer. I am closing a question by the asker.

*askerer

3

:P

Mooo.

@RegDwightѬſ道 Yes, I understand: I hadn't looked at the edits yet, so I thought the italics were the OP's.

@Kitḫ Star.

Because I'm in the mood.

@Cerberus Totally undeserved, but thanks.

1:33 PM

One does not always get what one deserves in life or afterwards.

Eat that, Christians.

Shut up or I'll pin you.

shuts up

BTW, you seen that Dutch bridge?

@Cerberus what?

Oh, yes, looks very sturdy.

1:34 PM

@JSBᾶngs bread.

I mean, why look ahead more than a week in bridge building? As long as it looks pretty.

@RegDwightѬſ道 oh, well i like bread, so ok

@JSBᾶngs Edited.

Oh, and for the incognoscenti: ro-ad.org/index.htm

Though many Christians also think there is more justice in life than I do.

1:36 PM

@Cerberus i dunno, jesus got a pretty raw deal

@JSBᾶngs I said more.

@RegDwightѬſ道 ummmmmmm, wow. nice bridge. perhaps we need to go over the intent of "bridge", though

Pictured from left to right: Moses, the rest.

@JSBᾶngs What! You can walk over it, and it's on water. What more do you need?

@RegDwightѬſ道 Hey, who is that Moses anyway? Where is this?

1:37 PM

@Cerberus Hint: bridges are not on water. Pineapple.

@RegDwightѬſ道 Well, how about above, then?

♪ Laaaaaik a briiiidge in troubled water... ♪

@RegDwightѬſ道 well maybe that's the problem. the dutch think that bridges are on water, or even in water

Look, everything here is below sea level anyway, so this is just nitpicking.

You just disapprove of my entire country!

moue

But this is not below sea level. It's below river level. Taking it to a whole nother level.

@Cerberus You almost make it sound as if it's news to you.

1:40 PM

@RegDwightѬſ道 Actually we have tons of houses built along rivers that are below the water level of the river.

And fat lot of good does it do you.

@RegDwightѬſ道 I thought you were just discriminating against my language.

Why stop at language if you can hate more?

I suppose that makes sense.

i no rite

Monica Cellio

1:41 PM

@RegDwight, hi. I was directed here (to look for a mod) from meta. It looks like one of my answers (with up-votes) was deleted over the weekend and I'm trying to figure out what happened, but I don't have enough rep to see deleted entries. Is there any way I can see my own deleted items? (If there was a problem I'd like to know so I don't repeat it.) Thanks.

Hi.

Lemme see.

I have eight deleted answers.

I suppose you mean the munchies one.

The whole question got deleted.

By the way, you should be glad you can't read the descriptions of the bridge.

Unless you can.