Confusing headlines

[ratammer]

I know very few Brits who still use the term "chemist('s)" for the local dispenser/ary. They're nearly always called pharmacies nowadays.

Where in Britain? I'm in East London and would only ever use "chemist" - I've only heard "pharmacy" from foreigners.

[quinterbeck]

I know very few Brits who still use the term "chemist('s)" for the local dispenser/ary. They're nearly always called pharmacies nowadays.

Where in Britain? I'm in East London and would only ever use "chemist" - I've only heard "pharmacy" from foreigners.

East Midlands. However my mum is a Pharmacist, so perhaps I'm not the best source for the average British usage. I'd say it's definitely standard for official usage, e.g. in pharmacy names, NHS written material.

Ngrams puts chemist and pharmacy about equal in current usage, with pharmacy on the up. But I suppose the corpus leans official rather than colloquial.

[alynnidalar]

White Departing Civil Rights Post To Become Interim Detroit Police Chief

(“White” is a surname. Of a black man in this case, for maximum irony)

[Raphael]

From a tweet by the AFP:

Vietnam discovers new hybrid virus variant: state media

[Raphael]

Oh, and another one, from Politico:

How Harry Reid, a Terrorist Interrogator and the Singer From Blink-182 Took UFOs Mainstream

[zompist]

Not a headline, but it took a moment for this one to parse:

Hopes a meeting of leaders could smooth some of the rough edges from the debate have been dashed.

[Pabappa]

From a tweet by the AFP:

Vietnam discovers new hybrid virus variant: state media

reminds me of an article title i saw once about five years ago ...

What ISIS really wants — the Atlantic

but i held off on typing that up here because the article had a normal headline, and what i saw was just an auto-generated summary by an RSS or some other type of feed bot. This was a chat room, so I said, "ISIS wants the Atlantic?" and my comment got added to the list of comments worth preserving.

[Pabappa]

i guess sports team names can be amusing, if not confusing, if you dont know that theyre sports teams:

Bears Approved to Build Stadium by Arlington Heights Board

Not really in the same category as the garden paths, because essentially none of the people reading the headline will think it is actually about the animals, but this at least makes for an interesting mental image.

[bradrn]

Not a headline, but I found myself pretty confused by Raphael’s vent:

About 11 months after I got my new mouse, it's already showing first signs of the things that made me put the previous mouse in a drawer.

…until I realised that they were probably talking about a computer mouse rather than a live one.

[Man in Space]

Not a headline, but I found myself pretty confused by Raphael’s vent:

About 11 months after I got my new mouse, it's already showing first signs of the things that made me put the previous mouse in a drawer.

…until I realised that they were probably talking about a computer mouse rather than a live one.

Huh. Had you not said anything I wouldn’t have thought twice about it—the animal sense never crossed my mind.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Not a headline, but I found myself pretty confused by Raphael’s vent:

About 11 months after I got my new mouse, it's already showing first signs of the things that made me put the previous mouse in a drawer.

…until I realised that they were probably talking about a computer mouse rather than a live one.

I remember having a similar reaction.

[Creyeditor]

I misread "mouse" for "house" until you put in in the drawer.

[alice]

https://nation.cymru/news/gb-news-troun ... paw-patrol

"five times fewer"? Why not just say "one fifth as many"?

[Travis B.]

https://nation.cymru/news/gb-news-troun ... paw-patrol

"five times fewer"? Why not just say "one fifth as many"?

Things like "five times fewer" always confuse me, as how can something be five times less than something else, unless you are comtrasting how much less two different things are compared to some other greater thing.

[alice]

https://nation.cymru/news/gb-news-troun ... paw-patrol

"five times fewer"? Why not just say "one fifth as many"?

Things like "five times fewer" always confuse me, as how can something be five times less than something else, unless you are comtrasting how much less two different things are compared to some other greater thing.

It's like using "n times more" to mean, incorrectly, "n times as many", which really annoys me.

[KathTheDragon]

https://nation.cymru/news/gb-news-troun ... paw-patrol

"five times fewer"? Why not just say "one fifth as many"?

Things like "five times fewer" always confuse me, as how can something be five times less than something else, unless you are comtrasting how much less two different things are compared to some other greater thing.

It's like using "n times more" to mean, incorrectly, "n times as many", which really annoys me.

What is it supposed to mean then?

[bradrn]

A truly amazing one:

Rust on horse floats. Is it a problem?

Explanation:

More: show

From here. Apparently there is a thing called a ‘horse float’, which you use to transport horses. Thus: is it problematic to transport horses in a rusty float?

And if you must know, I was actually searching for the floating-point exponentiation operator in the Rust programming language. My search was: ‘rust power of float’.

[Travis B.]

A truly amazing one:

Rust on horse floats. Is it a problem?

Explanation:

More: show

From here. Apparently there is a thing called a ‘horse float’, which you use to transport horses. Thus: is it problematic to transport horses in a rusty float?

And if you must know, I was actually searching for the floating-point exponentiation operator in the Rust programming language. My search was: ‘rust power of float’.

I was even more confused because they're not called "horse floats" here in the US.

[bradrn]

Seen on Hacker News:

‘Problematic stuff’: death, memory and the interpretation of cached objects

[Ares Land]

Seen on Hacker News:

‘Problematic stuff’: death, memory and the interpretation of cached objects

Which is worse?

(I think cache is worse. But I work in IT.)