It’s “different from”, not “different than”, goddammit.
Boneless wings are just chicken nuggets.
Carmel should be the hard version and caramel is the soft kind.
“an historic” is wrong and terrible if you pronounce the “h”
Thirteen months, 28 days each + one day. (Plus another day when there is a leap year).
It would just work.
Time zones shouldn’t exist. There should just be UTC time and you would go to work at the equivalent of your morning time.
Tabs, not spaces.
I don’t give a shit if your arguments perfectly align to the function. It’s only semantic indication. Use the goddamn special character that has its own dedicated key.
All dates should be formatted according to ISO 8601 standard (YYYY-MM-DD).
Months should be adjusted so September, October, November, and December are the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th month respectively (so the literally meaning of the names accords with their actual meaning).
Not cleaning your kitchen knife after sharpening is trashy and contaminates your food with metal shavings.
void main() { //code }Is better than
void main() { //code }Why would you want to put it on a separate line? Are you paid by the height of the source file or something?
void main() { //code }No, all in one line baby!! I haven’t done JavaScript in a while but I think that will work. After coming from python I thought it was funny you could just put everything in one line.
For Javascript it’s
() => { }. Lamba functions! Because at least it’s more readable than Perl.Thanks, that makes more sense.
February should only have 1 r
And what is this roo?
English verbs have historically had present form, past form, and past participle form, eg. go / went / gone. I’m sad to see the past participle form being phased out of American English. People I went to school with and who I’m sure were taught differently (not to mention innumerable podcasters and public radio personalities), now say things like: “By the time I got home I found he’d already went,” eliminating the past participle and instead using the past form. Had saw is not uncommon either. I am old enough I refuse to incorporate this development in the language. If I ever encounter had was/were in the wild I might blow a gasket. Now entering my fuddy-duddy years :(
Okay I believe you and all, but I genuinely don’t understand. My partner has even criticized this in my language but I don’t get it.
Sincerely someone who wants to understand and was unfortunately homeschooled by dumb fucks
Thanks for asking–I’ll try to keep it brief (so as not to bore), and my apologies if I am retreading stuff you already know, but I’ll have to do some lead-in to explain why I care about this at all.
Why past participles?–and why I love them:
Starting with a couple of example sentences that could help differentiate the “simple past” form versus the “present perfect” form that uses the past participle:
- I saw a shooting star last night.
- I have not seen a shooting star.
In the first example, the time mentioned is “last night”-- a time period that in the mind of the speaker is finished or closed.
In the second, there is no time frame mentioned, but we intuitively understand that it is making reference to a period of time that is unfinished or still open–in this case that period is “in my life.”
I really appreciate the nuance that a change in verb form can impart, and so elegantly done!
Participles in telling stories
When it comes to telling stories to each other we almost exclusively keep the main actions in the sequence of events in simple past forms, eg.:
- I woke up.
- I got a shower.
- I ate breakfast.
- I couldn’t find my car keys.
- I had to take the bus to work.
But what if I wanted to have a little twist in the story where I make reference to stuff that happened before my narrative? In English we’ve got this great trick up our sleeves. I could use the past perfect, formed by had + past participle, eg:
- I couldn’t find my car keys. Little did I know that my wife had accidentally dropped them into the laundry basket. So I had to take the bus…
Simple, clean, elegant, and provides a satisfying twist :) Otherwise I would have to tell it like:
- My wife accidentally dropped my keys into the laundry basket. I woke up. I got a shower…
Or like this:
- …I couldn’t find my car keys. Earlier my wife accidentally dropped my keys in the laundry basket, but I didn’t know that at the time. I had to take the bus to work.
I guess all are valid, but I certainly find option 1 the nicest. Option 2 has spoilers. Option 3 is what many other languages do.
Verbs and simplification in languages
If I recall from my dabbling in linguistics, there’s a tendency among most languages to become simpler in terms of their grammar over time. Most English verbs are now “regular,” and you can make the simple past and past participle just by adding -ed to the end of the verb, eg.:
- yell - yelled - yelled
- ask - asked - asked
- smile - smiled - smiled
But among our oldest and most common verbs we’ve got bunches of “strong/irregular” verbs, eg.:
- go - went - gone
- take - took - taken
- see - saw -seen
These are the verbs that people are changing in spoken American English at present. People are “regularizing” the past perfect forms by dropping the past participle and using had + simple past. I know it mainly comes down to linguistics drift and personal choice, but I appreciate that these irregular participles have purpose (by being a part of the perfect tenses, and the nuance they can create), and history. Moreover, I think having greater mastery of these forms in your speech and writing helps make reading texts written in English before the end of the 20th century so much easier.
Long story short: people can and will speak English however they want. No big deal. But in the case of excising the irregular past participles from English, I’ll hold on to what I was taught and grew to love about English grammar.
got a shower
That made me shudder. Are you a dog and being showered by someone else, or was it a gift granted to you for hard work that day? ;)
In my dialect it’s the equivalent of took or had a shower. :/
I’ve also noticed an increase in using “had [done]” instead of [did] in places I wouldn’t expect. I’m sure a linguist could break that down more thoroughly.
Oh no…
There is a letter G in the word recognise. Bloody use it. What people all say is “reckonise” which is not the same word. Also driving on the left just makes way more sense.
IMO right is better.
So who wins the argument now?
Seems to be unanimous. I’ll call the prime minister.
driving on the left just makes way more sense.
Only because it’s what you’re used to. Also I know there are countries (Sweden, or was it Norway?) that have switched which side they drive on, and as far as I know no one has switched from right to left.
I have a reason. Most people are right handed. In a Right hand drive car with manual gears your preferred hand remains on the steering wheel when you change gears. Also messing with the stereo or climate controls also leaves your preferred hand on the wheel.
I think I’d prefer my preferred hand in the place of high precision, which is changing the gears… and especially the very precise twist of the volume knob if I’m messing with the radio. Honestly, the preferred hand is mostly training anyway, so by the time you learn to drive a manual without grinding your gears every other shift, you shouldn’t have an issue steering with your ‘off’ hand.
That’s a fair point actually, and one I’ve not heard before. I’m not sure it’s worth trying to convert all (checks notes) 174 countries/territories to right-hand drive, but that’s reasonable.
Good point. Maybe when we run out of things to screw up in the world.
Single-speed bicycles suck.
They combine the drawbacks of a geared bike with the drawbacks of a fixed gear bike.Whaaat.
I’m not necessarily challenging your opinion because aparently you’re going to die on this hill, but …
This is not a tiny hill.
But most people would say that single speed has none of the disadvantages of fixed.
As an aside, I have 3 bikes. I’ve never ridden a fixie but holy fuck I would love to have one.
The best thing about the fixed gear was the quick and sudden slides you can do with the rear wheel.
But most people would say that single speed has none of the disadvantages of fixed.
The incessant pedaling even as you’re slowing or cruising can be horrible though. The single speed definitely fixes that.
Probably a slightly higher stair in a staircase one day
Water is wet
I had and endless argument with some someone about this a while ago here’s how it works (in my opinion) wetness is not a fundamental property of water instead wetness is having water on or inside something so a towel is wet when it has water in it. But a singular water particle by itself is not wet because it is not surrounded by water but most water is wet because they are all surrounded by other water particles.
H2O is not water
Is water a collection of H2O particles but not a H2O particle by itself?
A particle of water may be surrounded by water but when we talk about water we’re usually referring to a body of water like that in a glass or pot rather than one particle thereof.
Is the water in that glass wet? No. The glass is wet.
A room can be “airy” but the air in that room is not “airy”.
A car can be painted but paint is not painted.
… and so on and so forth.
Water is dry then?
That is a really good point, by saying water isn’t wet you are also saying that water is dry.
I disagree if there is paint on the paint which there would be unless the paint is 1 particle thick then the paint has been painted. I don’t know what airy means so I can’t comment on that though.
