English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

user19161

3:14 PM

@tchrist Hmm, maybe you could drop them an email. I sent Chrome a few suggestions but not implemented yet.

@JasperLoy The f” situation is particularly egregious in Georgia: the font is unusable without respecting its kerning pairs.

It’s (rather arguably) a bug in ELU.SE’s style sheets. They should use this.

“Optimize legibility”? How very duh! Why the hell would people want the default to pessimize legibility?

user19161

Chrome just needs a check button that says "incognito" rather than make me set the --incognito flag in the launcher.

user19161

This has been asked by so many people all over the internet but nobody cares.

tchrist

This wouldn’t be a problem if they’d simply used Comic Sans for all our postings.

Isn’t there some facility on SE sites whereby a user can have customizable style sheets, so I could test this out?

Robusto

3:31 PM

@RegDwightАΑA Of course there is a Spooner. Solche Arroganz geht mir auf die Nerven!

Matt Эллен

@tchrist firefox allows it with user styles

tchrist

Sigh.

Matt Эллен

styling per URL, I think

user19161

@MattЭллен Just more and more addons...

Matt Эллен

@JasperLoy well, no user styles is p\rt of firefox, the addon makes it easier

user19161

3:32 PM

That's why they are called addons. You keep adding them.

Matt Эллен

well done

tchrist

This doesn't help.

Robusto

We don't need more addons. What we need now are a few subtractoffs. Especially on Verizon smart phones.

tchrist

It has to be in what SE gives me.

So I can test the effect from within various browser/platform/config permutations.

Post-facto hacking what they give me is not going to help that.

user19161

@Robusto Subtract is too difficult a word. Just use minus.

tchrist

3:35 PM

dec

Robusto

@JasperLoy Are you saying I have to dumb it down just for you?

user19161

@Robusto But then again, on second thoughts, add goes with subtract and plus goes with minus.

Robusto

Durr.

tchrist

@Robusto Everybody rides the short bus now and then.

Robusto

I don't tailor my speech for the short bus. If you ain't on that loooooong bus, maybe my posts will whooosh right past you.

My bus is also not handicapped-accessible. It is not an omnibus.

tchrist

3:38 PM

I’m pretty sure this is just a relativistic effect.

Robusto

@tchrist I don't let my relatives ride, either. At least, not for free.

tchrist

There is no such thing as a handicapped-accessible automobile; there are only cripple cars. Same with bloody buses. They’re just crip buses.

Well, in crip hoods.

user19161

I miss the non-airconditioned buses of the past. They are making everything worse, including the buses.

Robusto

@tchrist But not in Crip Bloods.

user19161

I like to feel the wind in my face when I take a bus ride.

Robusto

3:42 PM

@JasperLoy Just sit behind the fat guy with the bag of bacon rinds in his hand.

tchrist

@JasperLoy AC is obligatory. Non-AC is not only an OSHA violation, it’s a human rights violation.

user19161

@Robusto Sorry, no eating on buses here. Sad panda.

tchrist

I think feeding tubes are allowed.

Luke

@tchrist No AC = human rights violation????

Matt Эллен

foodtube!

Robusto

3:43 PM

@JasperLoy Seriously? You're sad about that?

tchrist

Just sit on the top floor.

Or bottom ceiling.

user19161

@Robusto I'm just trying to copy you guys and use sad panda somewhere. I figured that was a good place.

user19161

Actually I'm still not sure what sad panda means, though I probably got whoosh and thwack right already.

Robusto

@JasperLoy You're scoring for the other team.

tchrist

@Luke I sentence you to a 75-minute bus ride in at 105 degrees while gridlocked in a constipated metropolitan highway — without air conditioning.

Luke

3:46 PM

Can I open the window?

tchrist

The righteous rather of Health & Safety will come down on you so hard you won’t know what hits you.

Do you really think that helps?

Robusto

As fans of the non-American style of football will no doubt remember, scoring against your own team is sometimes a valid strategy.

tchrist

Really?

user19161

In fact, even the bus terminals are air-conditioned now, so I must wait for the buses in air-con as well. Luckily the ordinary bus-stops are not air-con.

Robusto

A/C is not a luxury; it is a basic human right.

tchrist

3:47 PM

You would die. Or think you were doing so.

You cannot seal up the plebes in the sardine can and stick ’em in the convection oven.

Mahnax

@Robusto Tell that to our '96 Chevy Suburban.

user19161

Of course, I agree that offices and malls should be air-con.

Luke

@robusto So before AC, every bus driver was a human rights violator?

tchrist

You will kill people.

Robusto

@Luke No. Every bus company.

tchrist

3:48 PM

Murderer!

Luke

Who??

tchrist

Whosoever denies their passengers a survivable imprisonment.

A woman was rightly arrested here this summer for leaving her pre–school-age children in the car while she went inside shopping under soaring triple-digit temperatures.

Luke

Well, you can't roll down the windows and feel the breeze then. On a bus, you can.

tchrist

This crap kills pets, children, and people.

Luke, where do you live?

Luke

St. Louis

It''s on my profile page

tchrist

3:53 PM

You should know better then, but maybe it doesn’t get hot there.

The concrete or asphalt is hotter than the air, and heats the air above it.

Luke

Oh, a few weeks ago, we went over 100 degrees over two weeks straight, even at night.

tchrist

It is not enough to "roll down the windows". Period.

Robusto

►

@Reg: Is she saying "Learn to understand [my] German and I'll come back"? Oder? Also, what dialect is the guy speaking?

tchrist

Because you will still not bring the heat index down out of the danger zone.

Luke

Alright, but I think it is not a human rights violation not to have AC. Nobody's forcing you to ride the bus.

tchrist

3:55 PM

Yes, they are.

How do you get to work?

How do you get the doctor?

How do you get to the grocery store?

How do you get home?

For some people, those things will not happen without a bus.

This is not a private company.

This is a public service.

Luke

Alright, you win...

tchrist

Tenacity always triumphs. :)

Robusto

@tchrist You are truly the new FF.

tchrist

I reason.

Robusto

@Luke Where in St. Louis? I used to live in U-City.

Luke

3:59 PM

maybe a half hour from there.

Robusto

So ... west? St. Charles, that kind of thing?

Luke

Yes, around the Missouri river.

Robusto

Sounds like a potentially sucky commute.

Luke

???

Robusto

I worked downtown, near the Arch. If I had lived out there, my commute would have been horrible.

Luke

4:02 PM

right now it's in the upper seventies where I'm at

Robusto

Wait, we already have a Non Sequitur in our group.

Luke

who?

tchrist

Non sequitur = “Your facts are uncoördinated”.

Luke

Me???

tchrist

At least that was the comic refrain when I was growing up.

No.

Luke

4:06 PM

I know what it means.

Robusto

Work it out, Grasshopper. Hint: search the transcript for bolded Non Sequitur.

tchrist

But people would actually say “Non sequitur: your facts are uncoördinated” all the time. They always appeared together.

Luke

wouldn't that be redundant?

tchrist

People say the darnedest things, don’t they?

Luke

Thank you captain obvious.

tchrist

4:10 PM

Grasshoppers ubiquated in the wrong place are dislocusts.

Robusto

Oh, @Luke, I didn't realize you were 15. I thought you were an adult. Disregard my earlier comments.

tchrist

Thanks, Rob.

Robusto

Anyway, gotta go take advantage of the Massachusetts tax-free shopping holiday. Laters.

tchrist

Shop-free days are taxing holidays.

What the heck is this read-only mode crud?

This site is currently in read only mode, we'll return with full functionality soon.

Nimrods. Should read: “This site is currently in read-only mode; we’ll return with full functionality soon.”

2

Mahnax

4:26 PM

Ooh, looks like I'll need to fiddle with the code font in my extension.

tchrist

Why?

Mahnax

It's too big.

Well, sort of.

tchrist

I see what you mean. The x-heights don’t match.

Mahnax

Yeah.

tchrist

Normally you want the x-height of your mono to be a bit smaller than your regular font’s.

Have you seen this?

1 hour ago, by tchrist

It’s (rather arguably) a bug in ELU.SE’s style sheets. They should use this.

So what does this look like: f” f" f’ f' f” f" f’ f'

It should look ucky.

Mahnax

4:30 PM

Hm.

tchrist

Maybe you could try the text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; thingie talked about in the link.

Mahnax

I think I might, but I must away.

tchrist

Ok, thanks. See ya!

Mahnax

Bye!

cornbread ninja

4:43 PM

Hamburgefonsiv

tchrist

Google N-Grams claims that the late 1990s saw a dramatic uptick in instances of phrases like come the day and on the morrow. What might account for that?

I wonder why we’re marked read-only.

What other phrases like unto those in style might I search for? I want to see whether there appears to’ve been an uptick in this old-style language overall.

Well, besides like unto.

Add is become to the list.

All of those start going up by 2000, some steeply and others gradually, but all definitely.

Bad fantasy books, maybe?

Luke

5:12 PM

What's wrong with the site? It has a banner that says: This site is currently in read only mode, we'll return with full functionality soon.

In fact, all the sites say that.

Are there any posts about this?

tries to make meta post

We're doing a bit of maintenance right now and have put the site in read-only mode so that you can still access all the questions, answers, and general knowledge goodness.

Anyone know how long this will last?

Matt Эллен

doesn't appear to be anything on the SE blog, so no idea

Luke

I wonder why chat still works.

Are the mods in the know?

I guess I'll have to get on with my life. CUL

Matt Эллен

chat isn't on the same system as the main sites

CU

Luke

5:44 PM

It's up. To meta we go...

Luke

5:56 PM

0

Q: Site currently in read-only mode

I receive this banner earlier today on August 11, 2012, starting at about 16:15 UTC on all sites. (the picture is from ELU) It read This site is currently in read only mode, we'll return with full functionality soon. What was this about? Was it scheduled in advance (I din't see anything)? Is ...

user19161

@Luke Your post has a number of grammatical errors, but never mind.

tchrist

How many of these storied glosses of yesteryear can one craft into a single sentence:
chide erstwhile ghostly grisly gruesome guileful gyre historied hurtle
largess lilt limn limner lineage lutulent magnific manifold manifoldly
marvel menace metewand mien mislike moreover morrow nether oftentimes olden
overlip pap pouch privily proffer proffer prow prowess ratsbane sacring
sanguine scant scarce scorn selfsame spoen stalwart stead straightway tarry
temerarious tendence thence throstle tiller tope toper troublous wanchancy

simchona

I made my first NS merge yesterday

Matt Эллен

6:16 PM

woohoo!

tchrist

@simchona E pluribus unum.

tchrist

6:42 PM

@Robusto NO SAD PANDA => 🐼⃠

user19161

Ah, now everyone is saying sad panda!

tchrist

@JasperLoy I am but an honest purveyor of the codez.

say "\N{PANDA FACE}\N{COMBINING ENCLOSING CIRCLE BACKSLASH}";

say "\x{1F43C}\x{20E0}";

What you do with them is up to you.

woman : coquette :: man : pussette

1

Q: 'woman' is to 'coquette' as 'man' is to what?

Wiktionary reads: coquette, a woman who flirts or plays with men's affections. Is there an English word [X] which fits the following definition? [X], n. a man who flirts or plays with women's affections.

single-word-requests

RegDwight АΑA

@Robusto He is ordering in a Saxon dialect. She says "Go learn German first, then come back". The joke is that she says that in a Bavarian dialect.

tchrist

Excellent, Reg!

user19161

7:01 PM

@reg I hear that a mod can delete an account. Is that true?

tchrist

If you meant to ping him, you have to use @RegDwightАΑA. However, I suspect that the answer to your question will not be especially useful to you in this instance. But I may be wrong.

user19161

@tchrist Really, no I think 3 letters are enough.

tchrist

Try me, then.

user19161

@tch I am sure this pings you.

tchrist

So it is.

user19161

7:11 PM

Come on, I have been on SE for over 9000 years!

tchrist

I wish this stupid toy had extra-murine completion. Anything that takes my fingers from their homerow bliss is a cause for gnashing of teeth and punching out of lights.

Come on guys, pile on the upvotes here:

Couldn’t you pretty pretty please at least fix the message so that it reads correctly in English? It’s especially dispiriting to see such manglements on ELU.SE. The message should of course properly read: “This site is currently in read-only mode; we’ll return with full functionality soon.” — tchrist 1 min ago

Matt Эллен

nah. the comma's fine

user19161

@MattЭллен It is NOT.

tchrist

Damn Brits.

Matt Эллен

@JasperLoy sure, it, is :Þ

user19161

7:19 PM

@tchrist Nah, this is not a dialectal issue.

Matt Эллен

I don't know. I've never been much truck with punctuation.

tchrist

Then we need an accent pay zone to go with the accent free zone.

user19161

A comma must not be used to separate two complete sentences.

Matt Эллен

That does make sense, KFC is tasty.

tchrist

You can’t say that, I’m going to paint the ceiling beige.

Then we need a hyphen pay zone to go with the hyphen free zone.

The term is read-only, not *read only.

And my wish has been granted.

0

Q: Each other vs one another

If we are talking about more than 2 people doing reciprocal actions, should we use each other or one another ? 1 We gave give to each other. 2 We gave give to one another.

word-usage pronouns

Why is that still open?

RegDwight АΑA

7:26 PM

@JasperLoy I can destroy an account, whatever that means. But it can't haz much reps.

user19161

@RegDwightАΑA Ah, I asked because I thought only tptb can do it.

simchona

@Reg Can you pop into the SAI room for a minute when you get a chance?

Robusto

7:45 PM

@RegDwightАΑA Thanks. Wasn't sure who was coming back, but now that I listen again she says "kommst," doesn't she?

cornbread ninja

8:05 PM

@Mitch yeah, but there's always a time to kill.

cornbread ninja

8:17 PM

@tchrist what kind of kitty?

tchrist

@cornbreadninja Don’t remember that being part of A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted. 😼

@cornbreadninja ♬ Soft kitty, Warm kitty, Little ball of fur. ♬ Happy kitty, Sleepy kitty, Purr, purr, purr. ♬

3

simchona

@tchrist Are you preparing to woo me?

tchrist

@cornbreadninja White-footed grey, American "short"-hair with secondary undercoat. Age 20 years and counting — and healthy.

@simchona Thee? Whyever would you think that? My lullaby was for @corn’s ears.

@simchona You all thought I was wooing @Cerberus back when I thought he was a she, too. I’m pretty sure this is the first time in going on fifty years that I’ve ever been serially mistaken for a womanizer.

user19161

8:40 PM

I got flagged just now in chat, lol.

tchrist

Here?

Really?

user19161

No, in another room. I said "I am lying in bed half naked now".

tchrist

I think as long as it’s only the top half, it’s ok.

Or maybe the back half.

But probably not the left half.

user19161

Of course I would not say that in the Islam room.

user19161

There Gigili said "I am awesome like that" and she was flagged.

tchrist

8:46 PM

Grrls get flagged for being awesome in the Islam room?

user19161

Well, there is this guy (I shan't name him) who seems to flag very harmless things.

Robusto

Can women get into that room without a burka?

tchrist

Sure.

user19161

Perhaps he treats the chat room like a mosque. No offence to Muslims.

tchrist

They just can’t leave without one.

tchrist

8:59 PM

Given the silly greyed-out text in the title box before you type it, I really cannot blame Yoichi for putting a superlong question as the title of his questions, but I rather wish he would include breathing marks for the reader’s convenience, since I’m always desperately winded by the time I’m done reading his exquisitely detailed titles that form complete, and elaborate, sentences. Like that one.

RegDwight АΑA

9:15 PM

@Robusto aye.

@tchrist I usually recognize, Yoichi-san's question by the first comma which normally comes after the third word, at which point I move on.

tchrist

@Robusto You really want to play with this one, varying the smoothing between 0 and 50. It even changes who wins!

Plus if you remove the winner, as jwzpat did, it completely distorts the picture. Ngramz! We hatez them foreverz! Gollum!

David Wallace

9:34 PM

@tchrist No, awesome people get flagged for being Gigili in the Islam room.

tchrist

@Cerberus Which is faster: swift-footed Achilles, or a frog in a centrifuge?

simchona

@tchrist Seven.

KitFox

@David does a doubletake

cornbread ninja

@tchrist It's all there in Grisham's revisionist history.

@tchrist awww. I has a hair machine of a calico. Four this October.

@tchrist it's there anyway, though. a time to kill, a time to heal

tchrist

9:49 PM

Killing heals not.

simchona

@KitFox did you see my ping?

tchrist

@cornbreadninja What’s her name?

cornbread ninja

@tchrist indeed. It was supposed to be Buttercup, but I never call her that. I just call her Cat, Kittybeans, or Marshmallow Cat.

So much easier to name boy cats. Chairman Meow, for example.

tchrist

Is Buttercup a boy’s name?

cornbread ninja

@tchrist only in a boy-named-sue kind of way.

tchrist

9:55 PM

Hm.

Well, there's Mustardseed. And Cobweb. And Buttercup. And Peaseblossom. And Moth. . . . And Puck. Best not call the tricksy pucker Sue.

cornbread ninja

What is your kitty's name?

tchrist

Some call him Sam.

Other call him Tomás.

I call him Sam.

Not that he comes when I call him, mind you.

He’s a bit hard of hearing.

cornbread ninja

Sam I am, he says.

tchrist

Selectively.

It’s for Seven-Supper Sam.

For his habit of hitting up all the neighbors for a meal.

cornbread ninja

round, round, get around / I get around

I should just keep charmap open.

tchrist

10:00 PM

I keep blessap open.

cornbread ninja

Gesundheit.

tchrist

Not if you lube it first.

cornbread ninja

-_-

I lolled.

tchrist

I’ droll, too.

@ΜετάEd Moi?

Robusto

11:15 PM

@tchrist Who posted those?

Also ...

17

A: "Bob's your uncle" ... no he's not!

As far as I know this is only heard in British English. I've never heard Americans use it unless they were imitating Britons. Etymology here: Bob's your uncle - ironic expression of something easily done - like: there you have it, as if by magic - Cassells cites AJ Langguth's work Saki of 198...

How is this a downvote-worthy? Also, why after all this time?

simchona

Revenge perhaps?

tchrist

@Robusto jwpat7 posted a link to a variant of that here. I discovered how squishy the whole thing was, and mentioned a jocular variant here. It is very easy to distort the same graph into saying something completely different.

@simchona Naw, that never happens. :)

simchona

@tchrist Of course not.

tchrist

I mentioned Bob’s your uncle somewhere or other today. Perhaps that attracted it.

Oh right, it was the getting bobbed weirdness.

@simchona I don’t seem to have had any for . . . six days. :)

simchona

@tchrist Good good :]

tchrist

11:25 PM

What that should be, I cannot say . . .
. . . for I would not summon the blue swarm hither.

Robusto

@tchrist I'd say Bolt "runs like an animal," as the OP translated it from Chinese, has all of those covered: gazelles, swallows, cheetahs — all included under Kingdom Animalia.

Now, he makes the rest of them look as if they run like plants. Me, especially.

tchrist

Ents.

Robusto

Ents are faster than plants. Not much, true, but still faster.

tchrist

I will not be afraid of death and bane,
Till Birnam Forest come to Dunsinane.

Fungi aren’t great sprinters, either.

KitFox

11:44 PM

@simchona I did.

simchona