English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2020-06-12

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12:12 AM

0

Q: What's the meaning of bold sentences? I have difficulty in getting the meaning of thesese sentences, especially the second bold sentence

He went off to work and it was just one mad panic. I knew, if I didn’t go that night, I wouldn’t do it, I just wouldn’t do it. And so, technically, yes, it was planned and I had support and back-up from me family. But if I hadn’t, I’d never have gone. If I didn’t…if I hadn’t said, right, I’m goin...

meaning-in-context ambiguity

Is this for real.

12:39 AM

How to BIKE in THE NETHERLANDS? ... These foreigners survived the Dutch bicycle!

@Cerberus: ^ Comments?

1:05 AM

@Mitch I’ve watched Black Mirror, including the episode you describe.

@Xanne Which episode was that?

Quite chilling.

Oh, the social ranking one.

Yeah, people seem to have a special affinity for that one.

Some of the other episodes are better, IMO.

AND much more chilling. Like "White Bear" for example.

@Robusto Mitch was recalling the woman and her rating—credit, social, appwarance—sort of like the Chinese social score.

Yeah, so I said above.

1:10 AM

White Bear? I found interesting the girl with something in her brain that allowed tracking, possibly adjustment.

Black Mirror is The Twilight Zone for today.

I will look at White Bear. I didn’t realize Black Mirror was well known.

@Xanne sci-fi becomes reality so much more quickly than we expect.

@Xanne My kids recommended it.

@Xanne another one that's twilight zonish but then it veers off into disturbing. Not for kids. Not in a vulgar way but ... Curl up in a corner way

1:18 AM

@Mitch It's very frighteningly ironic.

And what do you mean "twilight zonish but then it veers off into disturbing"? Twilight Zone was almost always disturbing. That was the point.

Look at "The Eye of the Beholder" or "To Serve Man" for example(s).

I watched the whole twilight zone series recently and while it can be spooky and weird, it's still watchable by preteens without making them stay up all night

All those you can think of it as not happening to you.

The guy stuck in the other planet

@Mitch I was a preteen and I stayed up all night a few times.

The guy who survives the end of the world and has a full library to read books but crushes his glasses.

Burgess Meredith.

Exactly

1:22 AM

Yeah, and the elephant in the room was: Fucking Nuclear Holocaust!

What was scarier than that?

Duck and cover? Kiss your ass good-bye!

That's what I grew up with.

ok yes, your point is made. the old Twilight zone was ... someetimes not for kids.

but in comparison Black Mirror is moreso.

at least that's how I thought of it.

i mean TZ was early 60's... 60 years ago

almost victorian era

@Mitch Well, yeah. Black Mirror is Twilight Zone on meth.

@mitch It’s called Mid-century Modern.

@Robusto Which one is 'Eye of the Beholder'? Is that the woman who wakes up from plastic surgery and everyone looks at her and thinks the surgery failed but she looks like Marilyn Monroe and everyone else has pig faces?

@Mitch Yep.

1:27 AM

@Xanne Star Trek TOS had so much in it.

Also, and bear with me a lot, so did Planet of the Apes.

BTW, Netflix has the entire TOS catalog now. I just saw that the other day.

I kept thinking it should be in the top ten of scifi movies ever.

But something about the sets and makeup and some of the dialog is so cheesy

I watched TZ & Star Trek, when first aired, casually in reruns now and then.

@Robusto I've watched that all recently... it's like only until the 2nd half of the 2nd season that they settle down to the classic 'seven' characters of Sulu, Chekov, Uhura, etc.

I like Planet of the Apes.

1:31 AM

@Xanne I never saw TZ as a kid but saw ST-TOS in reruns in the seventies

@Xanne It's one of my favorites, but I can see why others may not care for it (production wise)

The other 4 of the series all have a lot more production problems and extra cheesiness and poor costumery and effects

Well everything was a little cheesy back then.

@Mitch TOS was nothing but cubicle dividers with a few flashing lights. Talk about cheesy.

@Xanne Umm ... 2001: A Space Odyssey? I rest my case.

@Robusto haha. cripes.

@Robusto That -still- looks good

Genau.

And why did the computer in TOS sound like a teletype?

but Star Wars, which was amazing at the time, looks like a summer cardboard cutout project (surface of the Death Star)

1:36 AM

I mean, what was the reason for that? "Working ... chuketa-chuketa ... the answer is three point two nine nine."

@Mitch Yeah. Production values didn't compensate for the lack of a script in the later episodes.

@Robusto The voice was Majel Barrett, who also played the ship's nurse and also played Gene Roddenberry's wife.

The last Star Wars I saw was Phantom Menace, which was about as much fun as a meeting of the Soviet Politburo.

@Mitch Oh, I remember her.

@Robusto Death of Stalin was excellent

I haven't watched that. Yet.

Recommended

1:39 AM

Noted.

Supposedly pretty close to reality.

some liberties with time span.

@Robusto sigh

On reflection, yes, they are awful

@Robusto The transcripts of meetings of the Politburo are on-line, in case you’d like a url . .

@Xanne Haha, really?

Are you Russian, btw? You must be, or how would you know that?

Or maybe a spy?

Yeah. Spy.

Are you a spy?

BTW, if you ever get a chance, this movie is hilarious:

imdb.com/title/tt0069945/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

1:41 AM

@Robusto No kidding. Just the Gorbachev era. No, I’m American.

Ah.

Well then. Spy confirmed.

@Mitch not spy, but you’re not the first . . .

I'm a spy so I could tell.

I mean... the handshake.

It's pretty obvious.

So I have a question about the TV series The Americans. In it, a couple of Russian spies look and talk like Americans and go on spying for Russia. And in one episode the man is pretending to romance this female asset and he's wearing a wig. And he goes down on her wearing this wig. And I just wondered how she could not, you know, notice that ...

Apropos of nothing.

1:45 AM

@Robusto It's nice how the Iranian girl really misses her bike back in Iran.

I would miss mine.

Haha I wondered where in their big American house they had the closet of all the wigs they wore and wouldn't the kids notice.

Especially in Iran.

@Mitch Exactly.

I can imagine.

@Robusto Hilarious, isn’t it? Of course she would know.

1:46 AM

Perhaps Iranians still cycle for sport, but not to get around town?

@Xanne I don't know. Depends on the guys she's used to?

@Cerberus I don't think traffic in Iran is very bicycle friendly

My guttural theory would be disconfirmed by that though.

Yes, that is probably why.

Farsi is very sore throated.

Moral of the story: if you're being given head by someone wearing a wig, it's probably a Russian agent.

But all the 'can you put this special pen with a microphone in it in your boss's office, the head of the FBI' didn't make her wonder?

1:51 AM

Yes. Ah well, to be fair, there are/were probably Americans who fell for that kind of thing.

@Mitch @Robusto But there are some amazing spy stories, like the Soviet deputy in the London embassy who was is the middle of info between Thatcher and Gorbachev.

Sure.

2:09 AM

Do the Russians have stories about undercover Americans infiltrating the Kremlin or KGB?

2:19 AM

@Mitch I don’t recall any off-hand; I think U.S. successes were mostly electronic; some Soviets spied for the West, some Americans spied (in the States) for the Soviets. Soviets also spied for the French and the Brits.

Gordievsky, Volotov.

Sorry Vetrov not Volotov, of Farewell Dossier fame. He gave info to the French, who shared it with the U.S.

3 hours later…

5:19 AM

What is the best way to indicate that only one projection was taken (one shot) during an x-ray examination?
"Plain radiography of the chest (single projection)"?
I googled for "single projection" and there are few results.

5:54 AM

> Plain radiography of the chest (single-plane) (18-Feb-2019 21:22) Impression: Chronic bronchitis. Displaced fractures of right ribs 4, 5, and 6. Repeat radiography for monitoring.

Would this look natural? It's a translation I've made from Russian.

The radiologist advises further monitoring of the site of the injury by repeat X-rays.

Captain Bohemian

6:51 AM

be granted a favor is harder than being asked to do a favor to others

Is "As due to (cause)(result)" grammatically correct?

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at end of answer (60): Difference between dependent clause, comma splice, adverbial clause? by Индира Гапарова on english.SE

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer, bad keyword in link text in answer, blacklisted website in answer, potentially bad ip for hostname in answer, potentially bad ns for domain in answer (262): What does "Yeah, you did" mean? by pal patil on english.SE

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at end of answer, potentially bad ns for domain in answer (61): Interjecting adverbs between indirect and direct objects in ditransitive verb phrases? by Paulin1o on english.SE

7:46 AM

@CowperKettle Terminology here (U.S.) is a “view”. This would be from one direction. ZDoes “single view” get you anything?

Forget the Z, just an artifact.

It doesn’t say there’s only one shot, but given the exposure risk more than one of the same view is probably non-standard.

”Repeat radiography for monitoring” is fine but is “repeat” here a verb (an instruction) or an adjective? Maybe it doesn’t matter. It’s

like a physician’s note.

Your explanation is good and clear.

2 hours later…

10:02 AM

@CowperKettle Wikipedia en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chest_radiograph

10:18 AM

@Robusto Stig Engström. Did your news only say we now know whodunit, but then never actually said whodunit?

That's some rubbish news you're watching!

@Faerd, if you get into reading Infinite Jest or Pale King, I will be glad to chat about it here, if you like.

@Robusto with my morning coffee this morning I had the thought that the video will be appreciated more by gamers who don't know the first thing about violin playing, than by violin players who don't know the first thing about gaming.

Funny, that.

I could show it to my violin teacher, and she would just shrug. She'd commend his technique, but she'd literally have no idea WTF is even happening.

On the other hand, a life-long gamer who's never seen a violin up close (like, oh say, myself), would not only get every reference just from listening, without even looking at the screen, but also quite correctly guess that the violin playing side of it cannot be easy at all.

2 hours later…

12:28 PM

@CowperKettle I'm pretty sure that any indication of 'single image' is redundant. If more than one image is taken (like two or more), then those are either separate objects entirely, or they are part of the one instance with that label , something like 'Chest XR' or similar. If many images are taken, like in an MRI or CT scan, then those are labeled 'Chest MRI' or 'Chest CT' (Or similar) and it is understood that one instance is many many images (the slices through the body part).

That is, in my very limited experience, the number of images is not specified but it is implicit in the label. A plain x-ray is one or very few and an MRI/CT is many (no count in the label, no difference stated, all part of the patient's same visit).

Of course this entirely depends on the reader's local labeling culture. (the ordering physician and the radiology lab)

12:47 PM

@RegDwigнt Sure, but then you have people like you and me, who get it from both angles.

1 hour later…

1:55 PM

> My 4-year-old nephew has been learning Spanish since lockdown. He still can't say "please" though, which I think is poor for four.

Matt E. Эллен

:D

Captain Bohemian

2:28 PM

Is As due to (cause)(result) grammatically correct?

1 hour later…

Captain Bohemian

3:29 PM

Ambivalent

5 hours later…

8:05 PM

@RegDwigнt: No doubt you've seen this, but perhaps you haven't.

Is There a Point in Writing Music That Doesn’t Break Any New Ground? || Q&A 1

1 hour later…

9:10 PM

@Robusto yeah he's done a couple more Q&As since, and I can recommend them all.

@Robusto I struggle to think of a smaller target audience than you and me.

Well, I can think of two.

9:24 PM

@RegDwigнt There's (at least) three smaller target audiences. You, @Robusto, and no one at all.

> [Learning a modern language](https://twitter.com/maryhitchman/status/1271142945287213056): 'Where is the train station? I am well, thank you. Here is my pencil case.'

Learning Latin: 'Indeed, they desire glory. Have you expelled jealousy from your soul? We must sacrifice before we wage war.'

@Cerberus Orberg's Lingua Latina at least gives family life things like the brother beating the sister, the other brother tattling on the first brother, and then the dad beating the first brother.

@Mitch You like that, eh?

@Mitch Exactly! Learner's books for the modern languages are usually so utterly boring.

9:44 PM

@Mitch The empty set doesn't count.

@Cerberus Even worse is having to do the dialogues in class: "Wie heißt du?" "Ich heiße Luise Koch." (If you're a freshman boy and you have to pretend to be someone named Luise, you may expect laughter, catcalls, and wolf whistles at this point.)

But you can turn that to your advantage. At this point in the school year the teacher didn't know our names, so when the teacher asked who I was I responded smartly, "Ich heiße Luise Koch!" And now the laughs were on my side.

@Mitch @Mitch, no, seriously, it cannot be enumerated so therefore it cannot count. QED

Haha, two @Mitch references and I'm not going to fix it. Let's see if this breaks the chat ...

10:05 PM

@RegDwigнt I said "people like you and me," not "you and me." There are certainly more people like us who 1) have an appreciation of violin technique, and 2) have some experience with Nintendo.

10:36 PM

@Robusto Exactly.

"Ich bin Inge, und ich gehe in die Einbahnstraße."

Or whatever.

We already mocked those phrases in our first year of German in school.

11:09 PM

32

Q: What was the crime described as "letting out of ponds" during Elizabethan England?

During Elizabethan England, "letting out of ponds" was a crime: In like sort in the word felony are many grievous crimes contained, as [...], stealing of whatsoever cattle, robbing by the high way, upon the sea, or of dwelling houses, letting out of ponds, cutting of purses, stealing of...

meaning phrase-meaning

I genuinely thought it was about pissing in public or something

@Mitch Wait, no it's not?

I mean we have /x/ but that's about it.

We don't pronounce the "q" in Quran as strongly as Arabs

Heck, have the word Arab عرب pronounced by an Arab and a Persian and see the difference for yourself

11:25 PM

@M.A.R. I have no idea.

I haven't read the question.

Something related to pawnbrokers?

@Cerberus No it's pretty sweet actually

To catch loads of fish, the felon would drain the water in an artificial lake behind a dam

This is unlawful

@Cerberus But you can't ask anyone where the bathroom is

3:58 a.m. is showing

@Mitch Second door on the left. Always

@Robusto Uh, yeah it does.

lays down gauntlet

Or you can trace the, smell.

11:29 PM

Is that how it's done?

puts gauntlet back on

My hand was getting cold

Are you feeling inevitable?

Was the gauntlet in craigslist?

I don't even know if they're a thing anymore. Excuse my potentially outdated knowledge

@M.A.R. Sure, it's not like Arabic or German, so maybe not a sore throat but maybe unable to swallow a popcorn husk every so often.

@M.A.R. At the Vatican

@M.A.R. They're like socks but they go on your hands and a little compartment for each finger, and also leather all around your forearm in a stylish flange.

Haven't you been to Three Musketeer Land?

OK. Three Musket eers? Did they lose them and pick up the nearest swords instead?

Now I can't trust kids lit anymore.

@Robusto nah, now you're just imagining things. You have no frame of reference here. You're like a child who wanders into the middle of a movie and wants to know...

... anyway. Back in our day we called every console a nintendo. Kids these days can't even name one console that's a nintendo.

They call everything fortnight for some reason.

I submit as further evidence that I literally don't know a single flutist other than you.

I think that if there really were more people like you, there'd definitely be more flutists. Maybe even some flautists, but we don't talk about those. Point is, the world would be a better place.

11:45 PM

@Mitch OK, it counts to zero. Which is nothing.

And if there were more people like me, the world would definitely be a worse place. Like, there'd be LEGO bricks lying everywhere. And I mean everywhere.

@RegDwigнt This is why I never walked into my son's bedroom in bare feet.

And I'm told by everyone that that really hurts. Which is further proof that everyone is not me. I literally have never been hurt by a LEGO brick in my entire life. And there's 400k of them in this room here alone.

@Robusto see, even you are not people like you and me.

In conclusion, QED.

So moving on, the fuck is @Mitch on about with his musket eels.

I dunno. I suspect that @Mitch secretly has a mullet hairstyle. Secretly to us, that is, but to his employer it's all business in front, party in back.

He must've forgotten to clean his hovercraft again.

@Robusto the German word for that is Vokuhila. And you can spend the rest of your days trying to figure out the etymology.

It's an abbreviation for "vorne kurz, hinten lang".

11:50 PM

I thought it might be "Fuck you, Hila!"

Who says Germans don't care about brevity.

Other than Mark Twain, that is.

@RegDwigнt And yet somehow they left out the soul of that expression, didn't they?

Vokuhila ist die Kurzform für „vorne kurz, hinten lang“ und bezeichnet den entsprechenden Haarschnitt. == Geschichte == Diese Frisur war etwa von 1982 bis 1987 ‚trendy‘, tauchte jedoch auch später und bis heute immer wieder in Abwandlungen auf. Ihre Entstehung lässt sich aber bis in die späten 1960er oder frühen 1970er Jahre zurückverfolgen zum Beispiel abgeschwächt bei David Bowie. Sie zeichnet sich dabei durch Pony-Fransen an der Stirn, kurzes, mitunter anrasiertes Haar an den Seiten und mindestens schulterlanges Haar am Hinterkopf aus – letztgenannter Teil wird auch als Nackenspoiler, (Kicker…

I am sorry, are you suggesting this thing has a soul?

Looks to me like it laid down and died on their head.

Wait, that was ‚trendy‘ in 1987? That's at least a decade and a half after it was popular in the US.

That's why Mr Gorbatchov went and tore down the wall.

So news would spread faster.

Then the news spread that the Soviet Union had basically long collapsed, and it was so surprised to hear that that it actually collapsed for realsies.

11:54 PM

And now it's back. And this time, it's personal. In the person of Vlad the Impaler.

Lessons learned, always test your projects in a sandbox first. Especially if your project is about smashing concrete.

@Robusto I think you mean Orban. Putinski ain't building nothing no more. Certainly not his career.

See? Sweden has a lot to answer for. Besides IKEA, that is.

@RegDwigнt So you think he'll lose the next one-candidate election?

Yeah good luck with that. You asked Johan just one simple question just last night, and he refused to answer.

Yet he's still nominally here in chat.

Oh, and besides ABBA as well.

@Robusto what election? They are changing the Constitution so we don't have to worry about those.

11:58 PM

Why are Swedish things always in all-caps?

Mar 2 '11 at 13:47, by Robusto

I will say this about ABBA, though. They are the best band out of Sweden whose name is a palindrome.

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