English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

RegDwigнt

8:00 PM

@Robusto that is some lovely music though. Makes me feel all smart while posting shit on the Internet.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt It is good musicks indeed.

RegDwigнt

Also, 448 is nothing. I hear Australia pushes it up to 462 now.

Robusto

Most good music entertains your brain, your senses, your emotions ... but Beethoven reaches right down into your soul ... and pushes buttons you forgot you even had.

RegDwigнt

Well, I don't actually hear it. I only have relative pitch.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt See, the winds will always sound flat if that's the pitch.

RegDwigнt

8:02 PM

@Robusto and that's D major, mind. He's not even touched C minor yet.

tchrist

What's the plural of Johnny-come-lately?

RegDwigнt

@Robusto I guess they just use deejerrydoos, then. (sp?)

@tchrist Johnny-come-latelies.

Also (sp?)

I'd actually go with latelys there.

tchrist

Johnnies-come-lately?

Robusto

@tchrist Yes.

tchrist

Johnnies-come-latelies?

RegDwigнt

8:05 PM

Well we had a question on that like six years ago.

tchrist

By Venus, that's it!

parvenus

RegDwigнt

It was about secretaries general.

Robusto

@tchrist Not quite the same thing.

RegDwigнt

Par Venus ad astra.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt don't miss the cadenzas.

RegDwigнt

8:06 PM

I never do.

I only miss all the notes within.

Robusto

Heh.

tchrist

Was not well-received:

-3

A: Plural of "coming out?"

The correct plural is comings-out. Cf. passers-by, runners-up. Grammarphobia.com gives the following rule: “• If the word is split into parts, with or without hyphens, put the plural ending on the root or most important part: mothers-in-law - courts-martial - ladies-in-waiting - hangers-on - ...

> mothers-in-law - courts-martial - ladies-in-waiting - hangers-on - crêpes suzette - rear admirals - men-of-war - flagships - tank battalions - Johnnies-come-lately (or alternatively Johnny-come-latelies)

RegDwigнt

Rear admirals lol. That's gay.

Robusto

No. Rears admiral is gay.

RegDwigнt

I say that in my capacity as someone who at one point actually answered why they were called that.

tchrist

8:08 PM

Helloooooooooo sailor!

> 1839 C. F. Briggs Adventures Harry Franco I. 249 ‘But it's Johnny Comelately, aint it, you?’ said a young mizzen topman.
1924 ‘R. Daly’ Outpost xiv. 139 He may be an old barbarian, but he's entitled to more consideration than these Johnny-come-lately's who cruise along the coast after trade.
1933 Press (Christchurch, N.Z.) 28 Oct. 17/7 Johnny-come-lately, nickname for a cowboy or any newly-joined hand or recent immigrant.
1946 M. Shulman Zebra Derby iii. 22 Postwar planning in these United States was no Johnny-come-lately.

Nobody knows how to spell the pleural.

RegDwigнt

In the Navy, you can get yourself clean, you can get a hot meal, in the Navy.

@tchrist okay I take everything back. "Mizzen topman" is what sounds gay. Yeah. That's the one.

Robusto

New Kid In Town (Remastered)

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Don't play that till Beethoven has finished.

RegDwigнt

I was about to say I'm only 19:23 in.

tchrist

@RegDwigнt Doesn't it take three for one to be the mizzen?

RegDwigнt

I think it takes a JarJar Binks.

Robusto

8:12 PM

@RegDwigнt In fact, don't bother playing it at all. Not after Beethoven.

RegDwigнt

Mkay that dude is just showing off at this point. We can hear your cadenza, mate, you don't need to sprinkle it with double stops like it's nothing.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt Hey, blame Kreissler.

RegDwigнt

I need to find that video of Hillary Hahn playing Bach where the entire piece is like with a pedal point so it's double stops all the way.

When I first started with double stops I said whoa now that pieces sounds fun.

Then I played one bar and said fuck it, where's my bowling ball.

Robusto

Fuck it, Dude, let's go bowling.

RegDwigнt

Hilary Hahn - Bach Sonata No.2 em Lá menor, BWV 1003 (III. Andante)

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There. I'm still listening to Beethoven but you can do that in the mean time.

Listen to that intonation. She's a fucking alien.

Robusto

8:16 PM

I am listening.

Cerberus

also

tchrist

@RegDwigнt That pieces always sounds like a duet to me.

RegDwigнt

Yeah I've been staring at that typo for the last five minutes.

tchrist

I couldn't decide to go singular or plural. My ear was tricking me, they were.

RegDwigнt

I hate it how my eyes never lie to me. Only the ear and the fingers do.

Robusto

8:22 PM

Verah nice.

Just finished.

RegDwigнt

I will need another 12 minutes.

Robusto

The harmonization sounds like she brought along a violist.

tchrist

Now it wants me to listen to Joshua Bell.

Joshua Bell performs Bach's Chaconne, the final movement from Violin Partita 2 in D minor

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RegDwigнt

Yeah it's like when I first picked up the guitar, I listened to Narciso Yepes playing Recuerdos de Alhambra, and I was like whoa, that second guitar sounds awesome, and the piano playing the bass is amazing, who wrote this, it's awesome.

Robusto

Hehe.

RegDwigнt

8:24 PM

And then I bought the sheet music and it said, you know what, you go play all of that. No piano for you. No second guitar.

Robusto

Yep. And I want to hear those fingers break when you reach for those harmonics!

Cerberus

Pas mal.

RegDwigнt

@tchrist oh no not the Joshua. Prepare for some face gymnastics. :-D

tchrist

And this is a trio, not even a duet:

Isaac Stern - Bach Sonata No. 1 in G minor, BWV 1001 Fugue

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Robusto

Sep 13 '15 at 14:02, by Robusto

How do we account for, say, Bach's cello sonatas, which are a single line yet very harmonic and even contrapuntal?

RegDwigнt

8:27 PM

Oh! I actually watched a video about something related a couple days ago.

tchrist

What mind of man could conceive of THAT POLYPHONY from an inherently mono-voiced instrument?!

RegDwigнt

On a channel called, brace yourself, 8-bit music theory.

Of all things a guy talking about video game music would explain to me how Bach works.

How Melody Expresses Harmony in Cave Story

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Here we go.

Robusto

Sep 13 '15 at 14:30, by Robusto

When I listen to or play Bach I feel as if I've been invited behind the curtains of the universe where important mysteries are revealed.

RegDwigнt

And yet he never sounds aloof. Always down to Earth. That's his real mastery.

You don't need a degree to listen to him, you can like him if you like Taylor Swift.

Robusto

That may be pushing it.

RegDwigнt

8:30 PM

Well I don't know any other names that's the only one I know.

Just a pars pro toto.

I bless the rains down in Africa.

tchrist

Most of ours are white throated.

Robusto

Sep 13 '15 at 14:35, by Robusto

I can't imagine life without music. Well, it wouldn't be life, it would simply be existence.

RegDwigнt

I saw a meme about that the other day.

tchrist

Ok, Heifetz is better.

Robusto

RegDwigнt

8:33 PM

Robusto

Talk about "from the sublime to the ridiculous" ...

And fuck you for that.

RegDwigнt

And Beethoven's final chord plays over that image.

Brilliant timing.

@Robusto Hahaha.

tchrist

From the sublime to the cellarerial.

RegDwigнt

This is the Internet. More to the point, this is me. More to the point, this is me on the Internet.

tchrist

From the caelestial to the subterranean.

Robusto

8:34 PM

But this is me on the Internet too. So have a care.

RegDwigнt

You say sublime, you know that very second someone is photoshopping together a sub with lime slices.

Robusto

@tchrist From the celestial to the cloacal?

Superlime is not sublime.

RegDwigнt

- And then there's just lime, Lisa.
- What's that?
- Hey you, join the Navy!
- Okay.

Robusto

What's that, your very own YouTube comment feed?

RegDwigнt

The Simpsons - Subliminal, Liminal and Superliminal

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@Robusto the only comments I've got so far were civil. And used correct spelling's. I must be on the wrong YouTube somehow.

tchrist

8:39 PM

> "On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind." —Johannes Brahms about Bach's Chaconne

RegDwigнt

Fact: Brahms invented heavy metal. 70 years before heavy metal was invented.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt Or some other dimension.

RegDwigнt

Yeah imagine if all other dimensions are just YouTube. How's that for Lovecraftian.

With all the racism, mind. The whole HP package.

Please, may you answer one more question I have been trying to solve for days, which is that considering the sentence "Solitude is about abandoning the self as the focus of understanding", what does “abandon sth as sth” mean and if I rewrited this sentence using the sentence that "Solitude is about abandoning the self, for it is the focus of understanding.", would I be wrong? — Ahmet Öztürk 1 hour ago

Hm that's a good one actually. What does it mean.

Robusto

The reduction is not warranted.

RegDwigнt

This is some philosophy bollocks for @Cerberus

Robusto

8:44 PM

This is where meaning trumps grammar.

RegDwigнt

Yeah but what is the meaning, is my question.

The more I think of it the less meaning I find.

I do want to help that guy. But I need to help myself first, apparently.

Robusto

Abandoning the self = ego dissolution = a place to start to begin to understand (whatever)

RegDwigнt

Fuck, how do I begin to explain that to a poor beginner starting with English.

There's too many begins in that sentence. I can't even English myself.

Robusto

You just have to let it go.

There are too many hungry minds to feed.

RegDwigнt

At least some minds are actually hungry. I'd take feeding those over those that aren't.

tchrist

8:49 PM

Something to put on "in the background" . . . if you dare try.

Classic Hour: Allegri - Miserere mei Deus

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RegDwigнt

"Composed b: Allegri"

tchrist

I thought of it because I was struggling to find something Italian rather than German that incited awe.

Robusto

@tchrist I can't put on music "in the background" ... it leaps to the foreground, always.

RegDwigнt

Why do people not proofread things they put in they're video's.

tchrist

@Robusto I can't either. One of our programmers is a trained concert pianist, and he can't either.

RegDwigнt

8:51 PM

@Robusto turn your back to the monitor, duh.

tchrist

I guess that's the piece young Wolfie stole from the Sistine Chapel.

RegDwigнt

I totally can put music in the background. Even when I'm the one playing. Which is the sure sign to stop and do something else.

@tchrist oh is it now.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt But my ears aren't directional like that.

tchrist

@RegDwigнt So ’tis said.

> Composed around 1638[citation needed], Miserere was the last and most famous of twelve falsobordone settings used at the Sistine Chapel since 1514. At some point, it became forbidden to transcribe the music and it was allowed to be performed only at those particular services at the Sistine Chapel, thus adding to the mystery surrounding it.

Three authorized copies of the work were distributed prior to 1770: to the Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold I; to the King of Portugal; and to Padre (Giovanni Battista) Martini.[1] However, none of them succeeded in capturing the beauty of the Miserere as p…

RegDwigнt

Mozart sucked anyway. He needed to listen to the piece twice to write it down. What a loser.

tchrist

8:54 PM

@RegDwigнt No, the second pass was proofreading.

RegDwigнt

Yeah that's the best excuse he could come up with. Looks like he wasn't particularly good at those, either.

Meanwhile I've been staring at this "music of inner harmony" and wondering what's that even mean.

Buzzwords of buzzwords buzzwords. Malkovich.

Robusto

Great story: Camille Saint-Saens was arrested as a spy in Egypt because he was traveling there incognito (for a rest) and as proof of his spying they produced the "secret code" he was writing, which just happened to be his last piano concerto.

And now a dose of neoclassicism for y'all:

Stravinsky - Apollo (Apollon musagète)

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RegDwigнt

That's not one I've heard before.

I mean Saens, not Stravinsky.

Saens was a fucking great pianist BTW. I wish I could play his stupid Aquarium. But he's like lol.

And Stravinski was that guy who said John Cage showed quite some potential with his 4'33'' and hopefully he could muster the energy needed to write a concert-length piece in the same style.

Memes before the Internet.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt Yes. BTW, your video's reference to 4'33" was amusing.

RegDwigнt

Yeah and by complete accident it was also true. You sit there browsing your stupid sheet music to four minutes of complete silence.

There's quite some accidental stuff like that in the video. Like, how the camera fades to black at the end. That's just a thing that happened to the Sony. Was never part of the plan.

Or how that "practice" version of the piece ended up sounding like a lullaby to accompany the fade to black, very fitting but completely unplanned as well.

Kuleshov effect.

You know how you keep reading those stories of great moviemakers that keep saying you just start off with something and then you get something completely different in the end. And you go like yeah yeah whatever. But then you make your first own weak-ass one-minute short and suddenly you're like whoa holy shit, so that's what they meant.

Robusto

9:10 PM

washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/07/03/…

RegDwigнt

It's all incidental and happenstantial.

Robusto

lulz

@RegDwigнt The journey is the reward.

RegDwigнt

@Robusto not available in my country except for $9 every 4 weeks or just $90/year.

Robusto

Trump: We are very close to making some very good trade deals. Fair trade deals — I didn’t want to say “good,” I want to say “fair.” Fair trade deals for our taxpayers and for our workers and our farmers. And a lot of good things are happening. I think the E.U., we’re going to be meeting with them fairly soon, and we want to see if they can work something out. And that will be good. And if we do work it out, that’ll be positive, and if we don’t work it out, that’ll be positive also. Because -

Rutte: No.

RegDwigнt

@Robusto did you know what kind of movie American Beauty was planned to be when they started filming it?

Robusto

9:11 PM

@RegDwigнt That kind of thing appears to be the norm.

RegDwigнt

It was supposed to be something along the lines of a Coen movie. Absurdist comedy. And there were like 20 minutes of court scenes at the end. Where they all got put on trial.

And it was all filmed, too.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt Thankfully that all hit the cutting room floor.

RegDwigнt

They only threw it all out in the editing room.

Exactly.

@Robusto well that's how you have to talk to him really, don't you.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt Too few do.

RegDwigнt

That's what I've learned to do in customer support.

You don't write a solid email addressing three points in depth. You write one sentence. In simple words. If there's two ideas in the sentence, you throw one out and send it in a separate email.

Robusto

9:15 PM

Wait, you're in customer support now?

RegDwigнt

I'm in everything and have been forever. We've got no real hierarchy to speak of. Most people do most things. With a focus, yes, but not a limit.

I've done programming, I've done Web design, I've done translation, I've done proofreading, I've done image processing, I've done customer support, I've done marketing, I've done going to trade fairs and visiting distributors. Sometimes all of that in the same day.

Robusto

What does your company do, exactly?

RegDwigнt

These days I mostly write and draw, which is not really a full-time job so I help out with customer support as well as quality assurance. Testing every build manually before we send it out.

@Robusto static analysis of safety-critical embedded software. Like, worst-case execution time, stack usage, runtime errors, race conditions, compliance to coding standards. Certification and qualification. Automotive, aerospace, communication, nuclear energy.

Robusto

1 hour ago, by Robusto

Fuck it, Dude, let's go bowling.

RegDwigнt

We also done code compaction earlier in the day when it was still an issue. Like, at one point there were millions of phones out in the wild where we took the code and compacted it by 25%, without zipping, simply by doing fancy stuff with the assembly code. So the manufacturer could then put a whole bunch of additional functionality in the same very limited flash size.

Robusto

9:21 PM

@tchrist Until you get a ... what is the term? ... oh yeah, a StackOverflow!

RegDwigнt

Yes, that was very funny to us when the site first started.

Because that's literally one of our flagship products since day one. StackAnalyzer.

And since day one the tagline on its product page was "Stack overflow is now a thing of the past".

Robusto

Hehe.

Today feels like a Saturday. It's not, though.

RegDwigнt

Well it's the third day of Roland Emmerich's Independence Day. Must be worth something.

I like how that guy literally went and labeled his first second and third act for everyone to see. Except he labeled them 2nd, 3rd, and 4th.

Robusto

Dafuq?

RegDwigнt

There's a fade to black and title card at the beginning of each act saying July 2nd and so forth. Sorry if I'm being too cryptic.

Nobody remembers such details. It's an old movie.

And I watched it in a theatre. I'm old.

Robusto

9:31 PM

I'm perhaps too old to have watched it in a theater.

I was probably watching The Big Lebowski instead.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at end of answer, pattern-matching website in answer, potentially bad keyword in answer, username similar to website in answer: Is there a word for wanting, or craving, power by eminentessays on english.SE

RegDwigнt

@Robusto that I watched in theatres like three times. In two different languages.

Over the course of five years, mind. Went to see a re-run.

And in-between I watched it like twelve more times on VHS in all kinds of settings with all kinds of friends.

That also reminds me how at one point some 15 years ago I went to a screening of Pulp Fiction in English, and didn't understand a single word. Even though I knew the movie by heart.

Things take time to learn.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt I can't imagine these films in any other language. I mean ... I just can't imagine it.

RegDwigнt

I'm still waiting on starting to understand what they say in The Wire, though.

I only understand 50% of it, and that's largely due to the fact that those 50% are comprised entirely of the word "motherfucker".

Robusto

@RegDwigнt Try the CC. It can help a lot.

RegDwigнt

9:39 PM

@Robusto there's good translations out there. Even of Tarantino. Especially of Tarantino, actually. But yes, Sturgeon's Law is recursive.

@Robusto yeah but that's not how you acquire a language, do you now.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt "Do they speak English in what?"

RegDwigнt

Yeah that one's actually exceptionally easy to translate into any language, I imagine.

It's much harder to translate "fuck", though. For real now.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt Well, if you can't hear more than phoneme soup whenever a character opens their mouth, then you have to grab whatever lifeline you can.

RegDwigнt

Also I forgot how they translated the Royale with cheese bit into French. I watched a video on that at one point.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt And, as we've previously noted, "motherfucker" ...

Sep 24 '15 at 13:22, by Robusto

now tries the same thing in samuel l. jackson's voice, only punctuated with "motherfucker" throughout

RegDwigнt

9:42 PM

Well, as I believe I've said on this very site many a time, you can't even translate the word "mother" from language to language. You just can't.

Each of them brings quite some baggage to the table that none of the others do.

Robusto

Nov 27 '14 at 12:00, by Robusto

I imagine motherfucker would be kinda hard to translate into another language. It wouldn't make any sense.

RegDwigнt

There's all kinds of words for "mother" in Russian. But there is no word for mother "mother".

In Russian, the very word "mother" already carries the connotation of "motherfucker". Even though the word "motherfucker" does not exist in Russian.

Funny how it works.

Feeds

0

Q: antonym of "belong to"?

What's a verb that is the opposite of "belong [as a part] to"? e.g. A belongs to B. I belong to my group. then B __ A? My group __ me. I initially thought about "contains". But I'm not sure if "contain" is an accurate word for describing this part-whole relationship. ("My group contains m...

RegDwigнt

"Not belong to".

That was easy.

Oh that kind of antonym.

Include.

Robusto

But here's the thing: the original performances in those films are so damned iconic, I can't imagine anybody else doing Sam Jackson or John Goodman or Jeff Bridges. And you if you disagree, well ... "That's just, like, you know, your opinion, man."

RegDwigнt

9:49 PM

Yeah but those actors have been around forever, so they actually have dedicated voices in many target languages.

Like, the German voice of Bruce Willis is how people in Germany actually picture Bruce Willis talk. It fits him much better than his stupid voice that he actually has.

Or Schwarzenegger, for that matter.

And everyone immediately notices and complains when they switch the voice actors.

Robusto

OK, to be continued. I have to go do some grilling now. I don't want to, but it's 4th of July and that's the law in these parts.

tchrist

The peasants belong to their masters.

RegDwigнt

Have fun!

Robusto

Danke! Bis später!

tchrist

A question so loose it needed to be hammered twice.