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Thread: xkcd

  1. - Top - End - #271
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    Default Re: xkcd

    1980: Turkish Delight.

    I'm American, and I've only had Turkish Delight once. It was in high school, and we were rehearsing for a play based on The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. I had pretty much the same reaction as Randall.

    I always assumed that the Turkish Delight in the books had magic that made it taste better in addition to mind control.

  2. - Top - End - #272
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    Default Re: xkcd

    I have not very often had turkish delight, it can be pretty variable.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_delight

    This on the other hand, smothered in chocolate (British chocolate, not USAian salt chocolate) is almost certainly not authentic, but it used to be quite nice once upon a time:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fry%27s_Turkish_Delight
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tetrimino View Post
    Definitely my favorite comic in a while, although I wonder how much of a pain it was to add "Who's on first"
    Yeah the interactive comics are the best.

    https://xkcd.com new comics up

  4. - Top - End - #274
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    So for May 4, 2018, I really would like to see some linguistics arguments about the wrongness or okayness
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    of acronym meaning changing over time.

    I've been persuaded that words can change meaning (though I don't like the idea), but the idea of acronyms changing meaning irks me extra.


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    Tantalizing Meat Info was very funny.

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    This is why I never use acronyms in conversations.
    And people who actually say those out loud are the worst.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Fyraltari View Post
    This is why I never use acronyms in conversations.
    And people who actually say those out loud are the worst.
    Oh, I use acronyms in conversation all the time. But my use of them is as technical jargon where the involved people all have pretty good ideas about what things mean.
    Quote Originally Posted by Wardog View Post
    Rockphed said it well.
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  7. - Top - End - #277
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    I've been persuaded that words can change meaning (though I don't like the idea), but the idea of acronyms changing meaning irks me extra.
    yeah, ATM means ATM, FYI. I mean, OK is clearly brainless ( no memory), and so on.
    Not "fire at". I never used the word "at"
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  8. - Top - End - #278
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    I actually tend to pronounce "SQL" as "squirrel". Just because it's funnier that way.

    And, yes, the "H" is for "Humble", and "Honest" is wrong. I mean, really, what is "IMNSHO" supposed to mean? "In My Not So Honest Opinion"? I've been in Internet arguments where it was pretty clear that the other party was a troll trying to make the position that they claimed to hold look bad, but trolls don't generally advertise the fact.

    I usually write "IMAO", myself. I do not feign humility about my obviously-correct opinions.

    Oh, and I had to google "SMDH", which I had never previously encountered.
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    It's a process known as reetymoligization. There are a few examples, like the name of the hawk in Latin -- accipiter. Originally, it was something like "acupter" made up of aku (=fast) and pter (=wing), but it was reetymologized and made similar to the verb "accipio", to grab, and ended up meaning "the grabber" (accipiter).

    Here something similar is happening, with the components of the acronym being changed because they look like something else that also makes sense and is more familiar to the writer/speaker.

    The English example I can think of is "outrage". Some think that it's made up of "out+rage", which is, the rage pouring out, while it actually is a French loanword "outrage" coming from Latin "ultraticum", an adjective from "ultra" = beyond, meaning "something beyond your right".
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    Quote Originally Posted by Fyraltari View Post
    This is why I never use acronyms in conversations.
    And people who actually say those out loud are the worst.
    Are you telling me you've never talked about SCUBA diving?
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    Quote Originally Posted by Keltest View Post
    Are you telling me you've never talked about SCUBA diving?
    Or LASERs, wether on sharks, swords or otherwise.
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    But really, the important lesson here is this: Rather than making assumptions that don't fit with the text and then complaining about the text being wrong, why not just choose different assumptions that DO fit with the text?
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    And that's before you get into all the technology and stuff, like CDs, CPU, RAM, DOS, DVD, HDMI, HD, HTTP, www, PC, JPEG, LAN, MIDI, MP3, PNG, ROM, TIFF, GIF, URL, VPN, ....

    Wow, ever since computers were invented, we really ran off with all that acronym use.
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  13. - Top - End - #283
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    Oh, and the answer to, "How many spaces after a period?" is, "Who cares? HTML collapses whitespace."
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    I say? Linebreak.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Rockphed View Post
    Oh, I use acronyms in conversation all the time. But my use of them is as technical jargon where the involved people all have pretty good ideas about what things mean.
    Quote Originally Posted by Keltest View Post
    Are you telling me you've never talked about SCUBA diving?
    Quote Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c View Post
    Or LASERs, wether on sharks, swords or otherwise.
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    Oh, acronyms for nouns (such as GPS, LASER, IBM or what have you) are fine, it's acronyms for part (or Heaven forbids the whole) of the sentence I have beef with.

    Keltest, I am afraid I have only ever talked about "plongée sous-marine". ^^
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    Quote Originally Posted by Fyraltari View Post
    Oh, acronyms for nouns (such as GPS, LASER, IBM or what have you) are fine, it's acronyms for part (or Heaven forbids the whole) of the sentence I have beef with.

    Keltest, I am afraid I have only ever talked about "plongée sous-marine". ^^
    I saw the casual dropping of le Francaise, checked your location, and broke out laughing. I think you just won the internet.
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    Rockphed said it well.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rockphed View Post
    I saw the casual dropping of le Francaise, checked your location, and broke out laughing. I think you just won the internet.
    Yay, my first internet!
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    Quote Originally Posted by John Campbell View Post
    Oh, and the answer to, "How many spaces after a period?" is, "Who cares? HTML collapses whitespace."
    I so, and whoever put that in HTML deserves to be slapped.

    TWO spaces after a period to end a sentence. TWO. And I will write that way until the end of time, regardless of how common the mistaken single space becomes.

    Also, as a general comment to the world, STOP using apostrophes to pluralize, that's not how it works.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
    I so, and whoever put that in HTML deserves to be slapped.

    TWO spaces after a period to end a sentence. TWO. And I will write that way until the end of time, regardless of how common the mistaken single space becomes.

    Also, as a general comment to the world, STOP using apostrophes to pluralize, that's not how it works.
    Have you, perchance, read the fantastic book "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves"? It will at once horrify you with some of its anecdotes and justify your feelings of outrage at the misuse of apostrophes!
    Quote Originally Posted by Wardog View Post
    Rockphed said it well.
    Quote Originally Posted by Sam Starfall
    When your pants are full of crickets, you don't need mnemonics.
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  20. - Top - End - #290
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    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
    I so, and whoever put that in HTML deserves to be slapped.

    TWO spaces after a period to end a sentence. TWO. And I will write that way until the end of time, regardless of how common the mistaken single space becomes.

    Also, as a general comment to the world, STOP using apostrophes to pluralize, that's not how it works.
    something something "two spaces is an artifact of the dinosaur typewriter era" something something "4 out of 5 typesetters agree" something something

    (I double-space out of habit, but since most stuff I write is online, it's impossible for anyone else to ever notice. It helps when I'm editing my own writing, though.)

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    Quote Originally Posted by Lethologica View Post
    something something "two spaces is an artifact of the dinosaur typewriter era" something something "4 out of 5 typesetters agree" something something
    In my opinion, a little more space after a sentence ending period (as opposed to an abbreviation ending period) helps to cement the finality of the sentence. This works in a similar manner to the difference between a new line and a tab, a double new line, and a double new line and a tab when separating paragraphs; some documents need very good separation while others can get away with very little.
    Quote Originally Posted by Wardog View Post
    Rockphed said it well.
    Quote Originally Posted by Sam Starfall
    When your pants are full of crickets, you don't need mnemonics.
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  22. - Top - End - #292
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    When I'm typing I use two spaces after each sentence out of habit. When I am hand-writing, my spacing is not consistent enough to be able to tell the difference between one and two spaces.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
    I so, and whoever put that in HTML deserves to be slapped.
    HTML was never designed as a typesetting language, so it's entirely sensible it does stuff like that. If you want WYSIWYG then don't use HTML!

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    Wait, wait, wait. It's not "To Be Horny"?

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    I feel like there are so many acronyms around it's impossible to keep track with all of them. For example, does smh really mean "so many hamsters" or was it originally "see my hat" or something ridiculous. I'm sure there are some more obscure ones out there and then possibly contradictory ones, especially in different languages. But then, I'm so much out of the loop I hardly know any in German but I'm sure they exist.
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    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    HTML was never designed as a typesetting language, so it's entirely sensible it does stuff like that. If you want WYSIWYG then don't use HTML!
    The big problem is that when HTML is used as input, it totally destroys what the user types. The complete destruction of all formatting, paragraphing, etc. makes it useless. But since it's in the standard, it's what everyone uses -- and it wrecks everything.

    Remember, the original reason that typesetters put two space blocks at the end of the sentence was that the space blocks were small, and they wanted to make sure that the end of the sentence was recognized. Not that putting two spaces is the right thing, but that they wanted to be slightly bigger than the space between words.

    Move to monospaced typewriters -- spaces are no longer small, but the "hit space twice at the end of a sentence" came along, probably because someone influential said, "this is what typesetters do, so this is what typewriters ought to do", and the same "this makes sense to me, so it must be true" viewpoint of Aristotle came back into being as the T-truth.
    Not "fire at". I never used the word "at"
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  27. - Top - End - #297
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    If you really want to get technical, typesetters use between sentences a space that's wider than that between words, but not twice as wide, so using one or two full-width spaces are both equally wrong.

    The text editor I've used for decades has, in recent versions, switched the default for re-justifying text blocks to two spaces between sentences. The problem is that it can't tell the difference between an end-of-sentence period and one used within a sentence (e.g., in an abbreviation such as "Dr."), nor does it always recognize unusual sentence-ending punctuation, so its heuristics fail and it reformats it wrong (even if you're of the two-spaces-between-sentences persuasion) probably half the time. It's really annoying, but not quite as annoying as digging the setting out of the poorly-documented config files to switch it back, so mostly I just grumble about it.

    HTML/CSS can be set to not collapse whitespace, but note that doing so by default has implications for text portability between displays.
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    Quote Originally Posted by keybounce View Post
    The big problem is that when HTML is used as input, it totally destroys what the user types. The complete destruction of all formatting, paragraphing, etc. makes it useless.
    As I said, HTML was not designed as a typesetting language. It was designed to produce readable text where the person creating the web page cannot know what size the window the user will view it on will be or what font they'll be using. As such, removing any user-input formatting is necessary, because otherwise parts of the text might disappear or otherwise have issues on a display that isn't the same size as the formatting was intended for.

  29. - Top - End - #299
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    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    HTML was never designed as a typesetting language, so it's entirely sensible it does stuff like that. If you want WYSIWYG then don't use HTML!
    Could you point me to where that's an option on this forum?

    (Oddly, not all forums gut "extra" spaces after punctuation, plenty of them don't.)
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    As someone who’s currently learning how to drive, I find today’s comic extremely relatable.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Psyren View Post
    What this guy said.

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