Random Thoughts

[wanderer2575]

'Fun Size' candy bars just aren't as fun as the regular ones.

They're fun compared to dropping a $2 candy bar in the bag of every trick or treater you get on halloween.

I'd have more fun dropping a $2 candy bar in the bag of every trick-or-treater I got on Halloween.  (We don't hand out candy on Halloween because our family does trick-or-treating in my parents' neighborhood, and my wife and mother and I tag along with the boys.)

There was a FoxTrot comic strip installment one year where Jason and his friend Marcus were at the grocery store a few days before Halloween, with a pair of binoculars, scoping out what candy their neighbors were buying, so they could plan their trick-or-treating route.  I wonder if any kids did/do that in real life.

[vdeane]

Given that Doctor Who is resetting its season count yet again, does that mean we now have Disney Who in addition to Classic Who and Modern Who?

Wait...what?  Linky please.

https://www.dexerto.com/tv-movies/doctor-who-season-1-reset-is-confusing-but-makes-sense-2366975/
https://screenrant.com/doctor-who-season-14-ncuti-gatwa-numbering-change/
https://www.dexerto.com/tv-movies/russell-t-davies-confirms-that-doctor-who-series-14-will-be-rebranded-season-1-2362786/

Ugh.  What a poor decision by RTD.

I was hoping that Timeless Child nonsense would be retconned.  Oh well.

It's basically for Disney's benefit since the older seasons are remaining on Max for now.

[Rothman]

Given that Doctor Who is resetting its season count yet again, does that mean we now have Disney Who in addition to Classic Who and Modern Who?

Wait...what?  Linky please.

https://www.dexerto.com/tv-movies/doctor-who-season-1-reset-is-confusing-but-makes-sense-2366975/
https://screenrant.com/doctor-who-season-14-ncuti-gatwa-numbering-change/
https://www.dexerto.com/tv-movies/russell-t-davies-confirms-that-doctor-who-series-14-will-be-rebranded-season-1-2362786/

Ugh.  What a poor decision by RTD.

I was hoping that Timeless Child nonsense would be retconned.  Oh well.

It's basically for Disney's benefit since the older seasons are remaining on Max for now.

Ugh ugh.

Despite BBC's assurances that Disney would act as a distributor alone, it really is seeming like my fears are being realized about Doctor Who being Disney-fied despite the return of RTD.

No one can resist the Mouse's money, no matter what destruction it wreaks.

[Poiponen13]

2016, a number of relatively recent year, has many factors, a total of 36. When dividing 2016 by 2, you eventually reach number 63.

[Poiponen13]

Only just now I realized that Canada was founded in same year (1867) as Alaska was transferred to US.

[zachary_amaryllis]

'Fun Size' candy bars just aren't as fun as the regular ones.

Should be called 'P--s me off' size..

[kphoger]

English is among the hardest languages to learn.

English pronunciation is difficult, and we have a lot of vocabulary, but English grammar and conjugations are su-u-u-uper simple.

Example:  write, writes, wrote, written, writing . . . that's basically it.  Everything else just adds helping verbs.

Certain words have zero meaning, such as 'get'

Get some more milk while you're out.

[JayhawkCO]

English is among the hardest languages to learn.

English pronunciation is difficult, and we have a lot of vocabulary, but English grammar and conjugations are su-u-u-uper simple.

Example:  write, writes, wrote, written, writing . . . that's basically it.  Everything else just adds helping verbs.

Certain words have zero meaning, such as 'get'

Get some more milk while you're out.

Sure, but if the addition of a preposition makes that "base" meaning completely moot, does "get" really mean "acquire"?

[kphoger]

Sure, but if the addition of a preposition makes that "base" meaning completely moot, does "get" really mean "acquire"?

Several of your examples merely highlight a second meaning of 'get':  to move or go somewhere else.  Your list would be a lot shorter if we were to remove all of the cases where "get" simply means "go/move" instead of "acquire".

"Get out" is functionally equivalent to "Go out", just as "I got there in eight minutes" is equivalent to "It took me eight minutes to go there".

"Get down" means to move your body.  "Get behind" means to go/move behind something.

To "get away with" something is a non-literal way of referring to robbery, wherein a person is able to escape (to go away from the scene of the crime) with whatever he stole.

To "get around" is to go here and there—whether in the sense of "can't get around anymore in his old age" or that of "she sure gets around".

Et cetera.

[Rothman]

English is among the hardest languages to learn.

English pronunciation is difficult, and we have a lot of vocabulary, but English grammar and conjugations are su-u-u-uper simple.

Example:  write, writes, wrote, written, writing . . . that's basically it.  Everything else just adds helping verbs.

Certain words have zero meaning, such as 'get'

Get some more milk while you're out.

"have written"
"had written"

Conjugations certainly aren't limited to the ones you've listed...

[kphoger]

English pronunciation is difficult, and we have a lot of vocabulary, but English grammar and conjugations are su-u-u-uper simple.

Example:  write, writes, wrote, written, writing . . . that's basically it.  Everything else just adds helping verbs.

"have written"
"had written"

Conjugations certainly aren't limited to the ones you've listed...

All you did was add helping verbs.

Once you've learned the "have ____" construction once, you're good to use it for every verb.

And there are fewer forms to learn than in most languages, too:  I/They/We/You/Y'all have written, or else He/She/It has written.  And that covers the present perfect indicative:  just two forms of the helping verb to learn.  In contrast, Spanish has five to seven conjugations of that helping verb (depending on how you count the vos and vosotros conjugations).

And the pluperfect is even easier in English:  it's "had written" no matter what the subject is.  Just a single form to learn.

[GaryV]

And the pluperfect is even easier in English:  it's "had written" no matter what the subject is.  Just a single form to learn.

I find it interesting that you pick an irregular past tense word form to illustrate how "simple" English is.

Most verbs take an "ed" (or "d" if the word already ended in e) to make their past tense.

"I visited this site."
"I have visited the site many times."
"I had visited this site yesterday before I was on YouTube."

And then there's plurals. A couple simple rules - s, es, y changes to ies, etc.
Except: house/mouse, moose/goose, sheep, deer ...

English has so many irregular word formations which makes it difficult for people to learn. Plus the fact that words have come from many different language backgrounds, so the spelling rules are not consistent either. Weird.

[Big John]

^^ Plural of house is houses.  For mouse, the rodent is mice, but for computers it is mouses.

[kurumi]

Joe's 500-foot homer flew out of the stadium. Then Dave flied out to end the inning.

[vdeane]

^^ Plural of house is houses.  For mouse, the rodent is mice, but for computers it is mouses.

I don't think I have ever heard someone use "mouses" for referring to computer mice.

[kkt]

^^ Plural of house is houses.  For mouse, the rodent is mice, but for computers it is mouses.

I don't think I have ever heard someone use "mouses" for referring to computer mice.

It was common usage in Silicon Valley by 1980 or so...

[Rothman]

^^ Plural of house is houses.  For mouse, the rodent is mice, but for computers it is mouses.

I don't think I have ever heard someone use "mouses" for referring to computer mice.

It was common usage in Silicon Valley by 1980 or so...

1980?  Ancient times, given how often the jargon changes.

[kkt]

I think "mouses" was dropped once computers started being marketed to people who weren't professionals or amateur computer geeks.

[D-Dey65]

I was trying to find out if an old picture I had of a Florida Division of Forestry fire truck many have been in my Flickr account before the jerkoffs at Flickr took my password away and still showed up in public, when I stumbled upon this collection of vintage ambulance apparatus on Ogden, North Carolina;
https://legeros.com/blog/vintage-vehicles-of-ogden-rescue-squad/
I like that Chevy Impala sedan they've got that was obviously used by a supervisor. You don't see too many actual ambulance sedans these days.

[webny99]

If you've ever wondered about the impact of the Great Lakes snow machine on travel conditions, look no further than the I-90 corridor between PA and Buffalo's Southtowns right now. Almost solid red bars for traffic, and that's no congestion. Just an absolute torrent of snow blowing in off Lake Erie.

[Rothman]

If you've ever wondered about the impact of the Great Lakes snow machine on travel conditions, look no further than the I-90 corridor between PA and Buffalo's Southtowns right now. Almost solid red bars for traffic, and that's no congestion. Just an absolute torrent of snow blowing in off Lake Erie.

Meh.  They've seen worse out there.

[Molandfreak]

Just saw this posted on Facebook and immediately thought "but Route 66 didn't go through Nevada..."

[Big John]

^^ and New Hampshire's crumbled and no longer exists. Alaska has such a city name in it, but not the intended answer.

[Scott5114]

Just saw this posted on Facebook and immediately thought "but Route 66 didn't go through Nevada..."

That's why it's the worst attraction.

[GaryV]

Mystery Spot? How about Sea Shell City?