Random Thread

[Linguoboy]

I have a question for the Americans here. I bought this sarsaparilla drink. I was thinking "now I finally get to know what sarsaparilla tastes like". When I opened the bottle I was taken aback by the smell of dentist clinic. And it tasted like flouride wash. Or a little bit like chewing gum. Is this what sarsaparilla is supposed to taste like? What abour rootbeer?

Now I'm kind of intrigued to taste your fluoride wash.

[Raphael]

I've noticed that I more and more dislike the phrase "the rich and famous". Why? Because it, at least implicitly, sends the message that these two groups are the same. And they aren't. At least not really.

Yes, there's a lot of overlap between the two groups. The richest people in the world are generally famous, too, and the most famous people in the world are generally rich, too, and there's a whole group of people - the celebrities - who are both rich and famous. But, that said, most rich people aren't famous, and a lot of fairly well-known people seem to have middle-class incomes. All too many people seem to assume that everyone they've ever seen on TV or a streaming service is rich, which is nonsense. Most people in movies aren't stars.

Also, the phrase "the rich and famous" focuses people's attention on celebrities, as if they'd be the group of rich people we should worry most about, when in fact, that's the business class. Celebrities do some harm with their promotion of medical quackery, and some more through the simple fact that they have so much money, but mostly, they're just embarrassments. The business class is a lot worse than that.

[Man in Space]

Today, I saw the best billboard I've ever come across. Some context is, however, required.

Traffic cameras are almost totally prohibited in the Ohio state constitution. The sole exception to this is if there's an officer physically present with the camera to verify and issue the citation. For most localities, this is sufficient to deter them from using traffic cameras because money.

Linndale, however, is not among them. A small community that's about three blocks wide, they apparently found it in the budget to station an officer by their traffic camera. There's an infamous stretch of road where the speed limit suddenly cuts by ten miles an hour for all three blocks, and that's where the camera is. For obvious reasons this is widely viewed as an underhanded cash grab. I've never had occasion to pass by there (so far as I know) but I know a couple people who've been stung by this stealth speed trap.

The next community over from Linndale is Brooklyn, and there happens to be a billboard stationed on the Brooklyn side of the border just down the street from where the camera is. So, this. I love everything about it. The dystopian cyberpunk undercurrent. The fact that they're giving a heads-up to motorists who might otherwise be clueless. The middle finger to the Linndale PD. The sponsor plug. I've been cracking up about this for the past six hours and I just had to share.

[Raphael]

New short blog post, where I kind of ask a question and then kind of answer it myself:

https://guessishouldputthisupsomewhere. ... -or-whine/

[alynnidalar]

Today, I saw the best billboard I've ever come across.

Oh that is just stupendous. I love it.

[MacAnDàil]

Today, I saw the best billboard I've ever come across. Some context is, however, required.

Traffic cameras are almost totally prohibited in the Ohio state constitution. The sole exception to this is if there's an officer physically present with the camera to verify and issue the citation. For most localities, this is sufficient to deter them from using traffic cameras because money.

Linndale, however, is not among them. A small community that's about three blocks wide, they apparently found it in the budget to station an officer by their traffic camera. There's an infamous stretch of road where the speed limit suddenly cuts by ten miles an hour for all three blocks, and that's where the camera is. For obvious reasons this is widely viewed as an underhanded cash grab. I've never had occasion to pass by there (so far as I know) but I know a couple people who've been stung by this stealth speed trap.

The next community over from Linndale is Brooklyn, and there happens to be a billboard stationed on the Brooklyn side of the border just down the street from where the camera is. So, this. I love everything about it. The dystopian cyberpunk undercurrent. The fact that they're giving a heads-up to motorists who might otherwise be clueless. The middle finger to the Linndale PD. The sponsor plug. I've been cracking up about this for the past six hours and I just had to share.

Billboards are awful things as a rule.
Banning traffic cameras does not seem a good idea to me considering they contribute to significantly reducing traffic deaths. Vaping contributes to creating deaths.
But I suppose Linndale should be signposting it themselves.

[Travis B.]

Traffic cameras contribute to law enforcement designed as a source of revenue over actually contributing to safety, e.g. deliberately (often illegally) shortening yellow light intervals where there are red light cameras and speed traps such as this one. The only way I would not disagree vehemently with traffic cameras would be if, say, the state or federal gov't confiscated all fines from them and donated them to charity to prevent them from becoming a source of revenue for local police dep'ts and local gov'ts and thus reduce the motivation for them to engage in such activities.

[Qwynegold]

I've never had sarsparilla, but root beer doesn't taste anything like the flavors of mint that mouthwash typically come in to me.

Now I'm kind of intrigued to taste your fluoride wash.

Well, it's not mint flavored, because I use a mild one. And it's only for fluoride, not for killing bacteria. The smell is exactly like that at dentist clinics. The taste is like my fluoride, but also a bit like candy with bubble gum flavor.

[MacAnDàil]

Traffic cameras contribute to law enforcement designed as a source of revenue over actually contributing to safety, e.g. deliberately (often illegally) shortening yellow light intervals where there are red light cameras and speed traps such as this one. The only way I would not disagree vehemently with traffic cameras would be if, say, the state or federal gov't confiscated all fines from them and donated them to charity to prevent them from becoming a source of revenue for local police dep'ts and local gov'ts and thus reduce the motivation for them to engage in such activities.

Maybe traffic cameras are used differently in America from anywhere I've been.

[Ares Land]

Billboards are awful things as a rule.
Banning traffic cameras does not seem a good idea to me considering they contribute to significantly reducing traffic deaths. Vaping contributes to creating deaths.
But I suppose Linndale should be signposting it themselves.

Vaping is probably improving public health overall! But the billboard is funny precisely because it's so completely fucked up

[Raphael]

Very recently, I came across a variant of The Acronym Formerly Known As LGBT that included the letter "U" somewhere in it. I could tell what each of the other letters in that particular variant of the acronym stood for, but I drew a blank at "U". If it helps, the variant of the acronym appeared in a German text, but as far as I could tell, all the other letters stood for English words, so I assume the "U" did, too.

[Travis B.]

Very recently, I came across a variant of The Acronym Formerly Known As LGBT that included the letter "U" somewhere in it. I could tell what each of the other letters in that particular variant of the acronym stood for, but I drew a blank at "U". If it helps, the variant of the acronym appeared in a German text, but as far as I could tell, all the other letters stood for English words, so I assume the "U" did, too.

To be honest, I tend to prefer to just say LGBT and leave it at that. If people really insist otherwise I might tack a Q on the end. I've never seen U included in that alphabet soup though.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I never heard of a "U" in it either.

[linguistcat]

The only version that I know with a U in it is also mostly joking: QUILTBAG. And I think if anything the U was attached to the Q for QUeer. I have no idea why that one would be used in German either.

[Arkasas]

I think the U is meant to stand for unidentifying or something like that.

[sangi39]

Quickly searching for it in on Google, seems to stand for "unsure", seperating out the two version of "Q", "queer" and "questioning" into "QU" for "queer" and "unsure"

[Linguoboy]

Quickly searching for it in on Google, seems to stand for "unsure", seperating out the two version of "Q", "queer" and "questioning" into "QU" for "queer" and "unsure"

What I've seen most often is "Undecided" but the underlying idea is the same: to include folks who are interrogating their sexuality and don't have any hard answers yet in terms of what their identity is but are fairly sure they're not ordinary cishets.

The nice thing about the QUILTBAG acronym is that several of the letters can be multivalent. "G", for instance, can stand for "Genderqueer" or "Genderfluid" as well as "Gay". (There are some folks who say that "A" can also stand for "Ally", but I'm not down with that. I welcome allies, but they are different on a very fundamental level. If push comes to shove, they can always wash their hands of us, as they have so very many times before.)

[Raphael]

Ok, thank you, everybody, I guess that's a wrap - it's probably "unsure" or "undecided".

[Raphael]

My main ebook online store has an advertising campaign celebrating "75 years of Stephen King". They mean, of course, the fact that he had his 75th birthday yesterday. But when I first saw the slogan, I thought that they meant it was about 75 years of him publishing books. And I was like, "What? He's that old already?"

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I didn't realise he was already 75.