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12:00 AM
@Robusto Exactly.
Only pretty damn stupid people will pay up in the end.
So why waste time on people who won't?
Seriously, that may be why they do it that way.
Phishing needs to be as convincing as possible.
Because every time you cast your net, it's practically free.
Whereas Nigerian scamming is like whaling: only shoot your harpoon at weak animals, lest they get away in the end.
12:15 AM
@Cerberus not a lot of whales in Nigeria.
Q: Etymology and meaning of "When does the narwhal bacon?"

RiMMERThere's a meme on reddit where the users tend to ask, When does the narwhal bacon? The only correct answer to that question is At midnight. What is the etymology and the meaning of this question?

But how about them narwhals?
12:33 AM
@DavidM They hunt elsewhere.
12:47 AM
@Robusto I both love and loathe this at the same time.
Reddit is a hole in the internet where free time goes to die ...
@Cerberus Nigerian whalers spotted off the starboard bow, cap'n!!!
@DavidM fires starboard harpoons
Can't remember if it's Kenya or Nigeria, but did you ever read Artemis? Andy Weir's second novel?
Basically, a country in Africa becomes a super power due to its ease of launching to the moon. I can't recall the scientific reason.
1:16 AM
It’s Kenya. Wow, that took quite a bit of googling to find out . . . LOL
Interesting idea.
Q: Persistently isolated low lab parameter or isolated persistently low lab parameter?


This guy edited his post and it’s a bit more understandable now. I think it deserves an upvote to counteract the negative one he received before his edit.
Mm perhaps I will read it later.
Too tired now.
1:32 AM
Yeah, it’s a bit complex. I want to edit it because I’m not sure that his title question is even still his question.
Why not do it?
I’m trying to without butchering his meaning too badly
@DavidM Thanks for the examples. I'd never heard this phrase before.
@Mitch No worries. I think it’s primarily BrE
Apropos of other things, I've seen in the past week at least two rants by different people saying that UX and UI are totally different things, and in the course of their rants they come up with more and more subgenres, yet they don't actually ever say what those genres are comprised of.
@DavidM It kinda sound like that to me (AmE)
1:42 AM
@Mitch Me, too
Oh...I've heard something like it...
How do you embed an Ngram? Do you have to take a screenshot of it?
@Mitch *what those genres comprise / *what those genres are composed of
@DavidM Yes.
@DavidM no
@Cerberus whatever the correct version, 'comprised of' just sounds right to me.
that is the dynamic web page
is the static version: replace 'graph' with 'chart'
@Mitch Thanks. I already did a screenshot. I just learned that you don’t put a space after the comma in a comparative ngram.
1:54 AM
it doesn't display in chat because it doesn't end in 'png' or 'jpg'
I guess maybe my question should be revised to Is this usage of shut an archaic structure preserved only in this expression or is it commonly used in BrE? since it seems that there’s prevalence of all three forms in Ngrams.
@Cerberus This is one of those classic misuses in English that has become correct usage . . .
The rock band Cream comprised Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce, and Eric Clapton.
Comprised of is the common misusage that has become popular
The rock band Cream was comprised of Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton.
I liked Mary Anne better
Who didn’t? Ginger was basically just a porn star.
That escalated quickly
One of my talents
2:04 AM
I used to think I had the superpower of being able to look through things but it ended up being one eye blocked of view but the other not.
I didn’t realize how old Ginger Baker was until he died last Sunday. The guy was 80! Clapton is 74 now! It’s so strange to think of septuagenarian and octogenarian rock stars.
Supposedly in the next 5 years a bunch of famous rockstars are gonna die of old age
Is Bill Haley still alive?
He died in 1981 at the age of 55 like a proper rock star.
they all seem to have been born during the war years (ie not baby boomers)
and good music wasn't made after 1978
@DavidM So you say.
2:06 AM
I mean it's OK, but not great
@Cerberus He did.
I think so, too.
Again, it’s my talent for polarization.
It’s what has made me a good photographer, too
@Mitch I can think a of a fair amount of good music that came after 1978, but I can definitely say that it didn’t occur between 78 and 90.
Nirvana’s Nevermind was 1991. And, I would say that it ushered in a new era of good music.
@DavidM Pretty good, but great?
People fall over themselves about David Grohl, but I don't get it.
maybe some one-offs
@DavidM Oh, you used Polaroid cameras.
Oh. Michael Jackson. Van Halen. Early 80's.
2:17 AM
@Cerberus Polarizing lens filters. It was a bad joke. I did use Polaroid cameras, too. But not much.
@DavidM that was almost 30 years ago. I can't think of anything since.
@Mitch I think you’ll find some cool stuff in the Alt Rock genre these days.
@Mitch I’m not a huge Foo Fighters fan. Their music is decent, but I never bought their albums back when people still bought albums. And, I have downloaded only a sparse handful of their songs.
Beyoncé? She's a great person but I'm struggling to remember more than one song.
Her only song that I care for is Crazy In Love
That's the one
2:20 AM
My GF is 34, so she tends to introduce me to some of the more mainstream pop music that I tend to ignore on my own.
OMG young people and their music
I really detest Lady Gaga
Her music is OK (but overplayed). Nicki Minah did the crazy dresses before her.
But the meat dress was classic.
Josephine Baker did it before they did by almost a century.
We forgot about Guns n Roses. They definitely had some good stuff in the 80s.
She didn't do a meat dress.
2:24 AM
She did a feather dress
you can't eat a feather dress
I’ll give her props for the meat dress. But, her voice and presence annoy me.
but if Josephine Baker did that, then she has my respect.
@Mitch You can eat it. You just would prefer not to.
You gotta do it for it to count
2:26 AM
I don’t think Gaga could eat her meat dress afterwards. Sliced that thin, it was probably rancid by the time she got home.
quicker to grill
HBO did a great biopic of Baker a few years back.
Let me guess, no meat?
All of the dresses were meatless, but not vegan
well, that's something
Kanye West
Biggie Smalls
2:35 AM
Hmm a dress made of very thin Serrano ham.
That could be delicious.
Clingy, though.
@Cerberus mmmm
that deserves another m
You'd have to take care not to be eaten along with your dress.
wild dogs
@Cerberus leaving little to the imagination
> as she accepted the award from presenter Cher, she joked, "I never thought I'd be asking Cher to hold my meat purse."
Oh behave!
2:40 AM
@Cerberus I edited that question. It’s probably way too scientific for ELU. But, I think the guy is well intentioned in asking it here, so I went out of my way to help him. And, I gave him an answer, too.
@Mitch Unless you stuff it with goat's cheese.
@DavidM Well, done.
@Cerberus Also ... mmmmm
@Cerberus I fear that I’m in the minority, but I’ve never cared for goat cheese. I love many sheep’s milk cheeses, though.
goat cheese is a bit chalky
It’s more the funkiness that turns me off
2:42 AM
funky cheese
sounds like a comedy rap song
@Mitch I know.
I’m also not a fan of blue cheeses, either.
@DavidM Poor you.
get down, get down, to the funky cheese town
De gustibus non disputandum est . . .
2:43 AM
@DavidM They probably don't care for you either.
By the way, did you know that 250 people have died taking a picture of themselves with their phones?
Nothing personal.
In the world thus far, I think.
Well, actually, probably very personal.
@Mitch That’s really the problem. I think they’re very selfish like that.
2:44 AM
@Cerberus So far.
What are they all waiting for?
@Mitch Thus far, so far?
All the other people taking selfies.
Why are they staying so far back from the ledge?
the picture will look much better with you closer to the edge.
Just one more step
What's the difference between thus far and so far in the context of time?
just a bit more
Reminds me of the joke about the rooftop bar and the guy who claims you can jump off it
2:46 AM
@Cerberus 'thus far' is fancy talk for 'so far'
@DavidM Is that like the one about 'your aunt is on the roof'?
No. That’s different
I know that one, too
then tell it
it's Joke Monday's here at ELU
> [the designer] specifically chose cuts to ensure that the dress kept well. Flank steak was chosen as the material to use, with the meat coming from his family butcher
Don't people make dresses out of flowers anymore?
A guy walks into a roof top bar and mentions how windy it seems when you lean over the rail. One of the guys at the bar says, “It’s so windy that you can jump off the side and it blows you right back into the bar.” So, he demonstrates. Jumps over the side and blows right back into the bar. Does it 3 more times to prove his point. Then he tells the new guy, “Give it a try!!” The new guy runs over leaps into the air and splats onto the ground 30 stories below.
haha that ws funny
The bartender looks up from the glass he’s drying and says, “Hey Superman, you know you’re an asshole when you’re drunk, right?”
2:50 AM
because the guy is dead
It was too long to fit the punch line. SE Chat wouldn’t let me type it all in.
I did my duty to mess it up as much as I could.
Yeah, u did.
you're welcome
that's my super
@Mitch I thought you might be correcting me, OK.
2:52 AM
@Mitch The joke is on the roof.
@Cerberus Oh. Sorry. I meant "Yeah, so far". Not " "So far" "
Irish is crazy
Is that a pun in Dutch?
I think it's a pun in Mandarin.
Everything is a pun in Mandarin
@Mitch That’s because it’s tonal.
3:02 AM
石室詩士施氏, shí shì shī shì shī shì, A poet named Shi lived in a stone room,
嗜獅, 誓食十獅. shì shī, shì shí shí shī. fond of lions, he swore that he would eat ten lions.
etc etc
he ends up on the roof
oh it ends with the lions all dead
食時, 始識十獅屍, shí shí, shǐ shì shì shí shī shī, At the time of the meal, he began to realize that the ten lion corpses
實十石獅屍. shí shí shí shī shī. were in fact were ten stone lions.
試釋是事. shì shì shì shì Try to explain this matter.
No. You try to explain it.
It's even funnier in Western Cantonese.
It's pretty dark
poor lions
but for basically a meat dress of poetry it's awesome
OK big day tomorrow
Was the ad for the Trump ending an Obama Era program part of the poem?
Toodle-oo, kangaroo
why you still here, red tailed dear?
After a while, crocodile . . .
3:10 AM
how about now, you big fat cow
go jump in a lake , you majestic drake
3 hours later…
6:03 AM
@Mitch They don't mean just the cheesmakers. It's clearly anyone in the dairy industry
8 hours later…
2:29 PM
Anyone else think that we close more questions than we answer on this site?
1 hour later…
3:34 PM
@RegDwigнt: Think your MuseScore folks are idiots? Well, have you read YouTube comments lately? I think they're in the same ballpark.
Top comment is "Wow, the flute part starting at 65 is SOOOO HARD" with 70 replies whining about that. Well, it's hard if you're a rank beginner, sure. But you can't call yourself a flutist if you can't play melodies in the third octave. Try Strauss's Eine Alpensinfonie, the altissimo flute parts, if you want hard. And even those are fairly straightforward once you get them under your fingers. Geezis.
2 hours later…
5:32 PM
@Robusto oh I've read YouTube before. Don't think I will again. Had a very similar experience concerning a piano part.
There was that one track in Nintendo's recent Breath of the Wild game. Playing during the final battle, with very fast piano sixteenths that sounded very impressive for sure. Except of course that neither the composer (Manaka Kataoka) nor the pianist (my bad, don't even know the name) are morons, and the sixteenths are actually exceptionally easy to play. Mostly just arpeggios strung together.
But yeah there were a billion comments from Nintendo fanboys saying how impressive the piano part was and hard and fast and everything. They'd probably compare it to Horowitz playing Beethoven at quadruple tempo, except of course they couldn't because none of them had ever heard either name. That kind of discussion, you know.
So naturally I made the mistake of replying to just one of them, "Actually this is really easy on a piano. You'd know if you played the piano."
Well you can imagine the rest.
That was like a year ago maybe. I'm still getting replies once a week like.
The least inane of them all having been "I do play the piano. This is too fast for me." To which I replied, "well go practice, then".
The average reply being more like "you fucking suck moron". To which I replied "right on, I do suck. And yet I can play this no problem. So what do you expect from a professional pianist whom Nintendo picked out of all the pianists in the world to play the most central track in their most important flagship franchise."
And so on and so forth. You get the point.
If I may remind you, we're talking about a fucking arpeggiated chord here.
Specifically written by a stellar composer who plays the instrument herself to be idiomatic to said instrument.
Cerberus is right. Never argue with idiots.
5:58 PM
@Robusto also from that discussion you linked:
> try being a percussionist, waiting sometimes over 100 bars for your clash but then missing it lol
Well I can't really say you're really trying to be a percussionist, then.
I don't know what it is that you're doing, but you're certainly not trying to be a percussionist.
That "lol" at the end gives away the game.
Can you so much as imagine the percussionist of Chicago Symphony or Berliner Philharmoniker ending their sentence with a "lol" instead of a full stop.
Some fucking kid in fifth grade who doesn't know which way around to hold the cymbals. Or how to spell cymbals.
3 hours later…
9:02 PM
Q: You see a boat filled with people

ThatOneNerdyBoyYou see a boat filled with people. It has not sunk, but when you look again you don't see a single person on the boat. Why?

What on Earth is this sister site.
It's awesome.
Anyone can post anything at all.
Do they want to have half our questions maybe?
I think I should ask.
Indeed maybe I could even ask on the site itself!
> You see a site filled with very puzzling questions. It has not sunk, but when you look again you don't see a single question on it that's not been migrated from ELU. Why?
9:50 PM
@RegDwigнt I've been looking at this site. It's interesting, people post comments encrypted . . . Also, they have a way of hiding spoilers. Not sure how to do that in markup or if it's special to their site.
10:24 PM
@DavidM Click "improve this answer" or "edit" to see the code, how it's done.
10:41 PM
@Cerberus I will at some point. I didn't join the exchange yet because I don't need more time sucks.
@DavidM You don't need to.
I haven't joined it either, but I could see the code.
