Random Thread

[alice]

I don't know if any of you are Halo fans, but I'm gonna humble brag. I helped make the conlang that the characters are speaking. I'm pretty proud of it and I hope anyone that check's it out enjoys it.

Congratulations!

I'd be interested to know how, or even if, regular (i.e. non-conlanging) viewers evaluate conlangs, or just think of them as stylised gibberish. Can we foresee a future Academy Award for Best Constructed Language?

[Moose-tache]

I never thought I'd see the day.

It looks like Ketanji Brown Jackson is going to be on the Supreme Court. This is the first time in over a decade that a Democrat has been allowed to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court, and you might be thinking "wait a second; I thought that was expressly illegal." Well, the Democrats found a loophole in the process called The Bottomless Republican Appetite for Self-Destruction. Back in 2017, with the government firmly, and presumably permanently, in Republican hands, McConnel lowered the vote threshold to end a filibuster on SCOTUS nominations to 51. I know what you're thinking. "Well, that can surely never come back to haunt him." But here's the thing: It did, though, instead!

So now we have the whack-a-doodle scenario in which all the Democrats have to do to put a person of their choosing on the Supreme Court is have the necessary votes to do so. This is like finding out the Secretary of the Treasury can legally kill a guy. I'm not sure there has been such a disturbance to our political system since they let women vote.

[LingEarth]

I doubt the Republicans care much if the Democrats have three justices, as long as they can make those three votes meaningless by keeping firm control of the other six seats. They're counting on taking the Senate back in November, after which they'll block any further Biden appointees--especially if they'd be replacing a conservative judge--until they can take over the presidency again too.

(That didn't stop them from making racist remarks and other noise during the process of confirming Jackson, just to keep their base riled up.)

[Moose-tache]

Oh, I know it's still a failed one-party state. I'm just surprised the Mensheviks were allowed to participate at all.

[Raphael]

As a mostly mindless diversion, some pop culture trivia pedantry:

Earlier today, I listened, for the first time in a while, to that sentimental old song Cat's In The Cradle. And I started to wonder about a trivial detail: the timeline of the song's plot.

The song was released in 1974, and tells a story that happens over the course of several decades. The story begins with the birth of the narrator's son. But when is that? The first stanza gives us this clue: "there were planes to catch and bills to pay". This indicates that the narrator worked in a profession that involved business travel of some kind, and by plane rather than, say, train. So the son was born at a time when business travel by plane was already fairly routine in the USA. What's the earliest possible time for that? My gut feeling, based on what I "learned" about history from pop culture, would be at some time in the 1950s.

Now, the last stanza takes place when the narrator is "long since retired", the son is an adult, has graduated from college and started a career, and has at least one child of his own. And that leads to the question: could that have happened by 1974? Sure, if the son had his first child in his teens or very early 20s. But that would have been at least a bit unusual for middle-class men from the USA of that time. And everything in the song's lyrics indicates that both father and son had very standard, routine, ordinary biographies for middle-class US people of their time. So, if the son was born, at the earliest, in the early 1950s, grew up, went to college, graduated at the usual age, married, had a child, and settled into the routine of a working husband and father - well that would probably mean that the last of these steps happened at least a few years after 1974.

So it would seem that, when the song was released, the last part of the lyrics took place at least a little bit in the future. Is the song a science fiction song? Well, it's a work of art, about father-son relations rather than exact timetables, which means that the most plausible explanation might be that all of the decades-long plot takes part at a generic "now" - a kind of timeless void where it's always the USA of roughly the 1960s and 1970s, and people are born, grow up, live their lives, grow old, and die without ever leaving that time period. Oh, what a can of worms all that is...

[Moose-tache]

Very interesting. The line about planes to catch is pretty bizarre, even for 1974. This was before the 78 deregulation, so flights were insanely expensive. Thousands of adjusted dollars for no-frills domestic flights. No run-of-the-mill deadbeat dad was flying routinely in 1974. If this song were produced today, it would probably have a line about Dallas-Houston HSR.

[zompist]

Now, the last stanza takes place when the narrator is "long since retired", the son is an adult, has graduated from college and started a career, and has at least one child of his own. And that leads to the question: could that have happened by 1974?

No, certainly not-- if the dude is "long retired" in 1974, he was probably born around 1900 and had a kid in the 1920s.

But I'd say you're overthinking it. The song is written in the "eternal present", where you can imagine an entire lifetime under current conditions, without thinking about specific history at all. Consider that Chapin himself was born in 1942-- he grew up in the '50s; he basically never lived in a world without planes. FWIW he wrote the song when his children were still very young, so it's not directly autobiographical.

(But see the Wikipedia article for some speculations on where the idea came from. I'd note that the theme of fathers so busy working that they don't have time for their kids is an old one in midcentury American culture. I'm pretty sure there are some Jules Feiffer cartoons (1950s) about that, and it's also echoed in Calvin & Hobbes. And most midcentury TV shows etc.: Dad works all day and is tired at night.)

[Raphael]

But I'd say you're overthinking it. The song is written in the "eternal present", where you can imagine an entire lifetime under current conditions, without thinking about specific history at all.

Oh, I know - see the last paragraph of my previous post.

[Raphael]

I took a photo of two construction site cranes yesterday, and ever since I saw them, I've been wondering about their position relative to each other. That is, the way they're positioned, shouldn't each crane keep the other one from doing anything useful?

weirdcraneposition.jpg (129.22 KiB) Viewed 9090 times

[zompist]

They look like they go through each other, but obviously they don't. It's perspective: one is higher than the other. You can probably see this for yourself by walking around your neighborhood.

[bradrn]

I took a photo of two construction site cranes yesterday, and ever since I saw them, I've been wondering about their position relative to each other. That is, the way they're positioned, shouldn't each crane keep the other one from doing anything useful?

No, I don’t think so. If you swing the bottom crane around to the right (looking from the bottom as in the picture), the left crane can now access the building more or less freely.

[Raphael]

Happy Easter to everyone celebrating today!

[quinterbeck]

Happy Easter to everyone celebrating today!

Happy Easter!

[fusijui]

I'm cat-sitting again, for a new 'client'.

Now, I'm a disgusting skin-monkey whose quarters are horribly infested with red dot, and I really appreciate my houseguests' efforts to capture and, ideally, eliminate it. This cat, however... whenever the red dot manifests, he just straightens up, stretches a bit, and stares at me accusingly. Unblinking, chilly, blank, considerate, feline contempt.

Seriously; even hours later, when he deigns to partake of my homeothermy (and ear scritches), I can still feel the disdain soaking through. I've never been made so embarrassed by a non-human (non-camel, too, technically) tetrapod before!

/dear reader

[Raholeun]

Anybody know where Salmoneus and Nortaneous have gone? I always enjoyed their contributions.

[bradrn]

Anybody know where Salmoneus and Nortaneous have gone? I always enjoyed their contributions.

Both banned. EDIT: No they’re not, see below.

[Linguoboy]

Anybody know where Salmoneus and Nortaneous have gone? I always enjoyed their contributions.

Both banned.

This is not true. Please do not spread false information about current and/or former members.

[Raphael]

I think in both cases, the person in question got temporarily banned and then chose not to return after the ban had expired. This might have led some to the misunderstanding that they were simply banned. But correct me if I'm wrong.

[bradrn]

Anybody know where Salmoneus and Nortaneous have gone? I always enjoyed their contributions.

Both banned.

This is not true. Please do not spread false information about current and/or former members.

Sorry! I can assure you I didn’t mean to spread any false information; I genuinely thought they were still banned. I have edited my post.

[zompist]

It hasn't come up much in the last few years, but just to be clear: I don't do secret bans. I try to start with a warning, then a 1-day ban, then a week, and then a permaban, always mentioned in the thread. Linguoboy can also do these things.