Zompist Bboard Again

The construction with "must" in "I must have been drunk last night". Is it a mode with a funny name?

Not really a confusing headline, but interesting nonetheless from a language-change point of view: a circular flash in today's Metro containing the text "property porn".

Metaphor of the day:

If British politics is a pack of cards, Nigel Farage isn't so much the joker as the card with the Bridge scoring table which keeps turning up when you want to play something completely different.

Karch wrote: ↑Sat Apr 06, 2019 1:36 pm I won the Czech Linguistics Olympiad!

Congraulations!

Raphael wrote: ↑Sat Apr 06, 2019 4:32 pm B) How exactly does one win a Linguistics Olympiad?

I'd love to know. Does it involve months of rigorous training with all kinds of phonemes?

For fun:

https://jonworth.eu/brexit-where-now-the-flow-diagrams/

A newspaper from this coming October fell into my lap via a warp in the space-time continuum. The headline: "Theresa May tries to get her deal through Parliament for the eighth time". Apparently the seventh time it fell short by 12 votes.

Best description yet: "she fell on her sword and missed".

...even she would have to resign Sooner or later, we're going to have to stop saying this. She will never resign. She will stand alone if needs be, bravely standing up proudly against those who would ruin our great country, indefatigable to the end, like a true patriotic British leader, etc, etc.

evmdbm wrote: ↑Fri Mar 22, 2019 10:47 am

I can just imagine an appeal for a further extension if the deal has not been accepted.

Oh there'll be another extension alright....

(obvious off-colour metaphor left unstated)

Borderline Ephemera, perhaps; but anyway, here's a fruitful source of very fine hairs to split. When doing the match-and-replace which is the basis of every SCA, there are three principal modes, which can operate in forward and reverse directions: - Single: replace only the first (or last) occurrenc...

Lots of Tories want to have Brexit. They don't want No Deal, but they think that if it's off the table, and it's just a choice between Her Deal and No Brexit, we might end up with No Brexit (or a long delay leading to an eventual brexit on much softer terms). They weren't voting for No Deal, just v...

Anyway: now everything is fucked up. Monumentally so. I agree with the article in a Czech newspaper a few days ago which said that the "stupid" decision to hold a referendum in the first place has brought British politics to a place where its brand of democracy cannot function. At least t...

You have to admire the PM though - nothing seems to be able to stop her, not even a sore throat. Admire is a strong word for someone who specialises in massive blunders and doesn't know how to learn from her mistakes or when to stop digging a hole for herself. She's certainly a spectacle, though. &...

@risla: That's really great news! So glad to hear it.

You have to admire the PM though - nothing seems to be able to stop her, not even a sore throat.

It's unlikely, to be sure, but if the Government falls apart before the 29th and we have to have a General Election, what would happen to Article 50?

Have there been any investigations into the ways words are abbreviated in languages of various morphological types?

Did they eat a Mars bar a day, to help them work, rest, and play?

(ducks)

Risla wrote: ↑Tue Mar 05, 2019 3:03 am

alice wrote: ↑Fri Mar 01, 2019 12:53 pm I can't, and they've had to dismiss me on grounds of incapacity.

That really sucks. I'm sorry to hear that.

Thanks. It was coming, admittedly, and they were very nice about it, which helped. All the same, I'll soon have to investigate New Ways Of Working.