Advice Goddess Free Swim
It's Monday night, and my brain is on the verge of reporting me to an abuse hotline. (Book due soon, plus column.) You pick the topics.
P.S. One link per comment or my spam filter will eat your post.
Advice Goddess Free Swim
It's Monday night, and my brain is on the verge of reporting me to an abuse hotline. (Book due soon, plus column.) You pick the topics.
P.S. One link per comment or my spam filter will eat your post.
• Twitter joke about recent fluctuations in soda pop market capitalization.
• A new global catastrophe, brewing for half a billion years.
Crid at June 22, 2021 1:23 AM
• Amazon—
• The Big 3 Contemporary Fuggups are said to be education, health care and construction.
Crid at June 22, 2021 1:37 AM
• An article about staffing at Amazon, the company.
• Kerry & Danforth on Debt.
Crid at June 22, 2021 4:14 AM
(Kerrey, not Kerry. Oopsidoodle.)
There are nuances in the propensity of American blacks to die violently which is not being addressed in our rhetoric.
Crid at June 22, 2021 5:07 AM
ARE not.
Sorry, it's a typoz kinda mornin'....
Crid at June 22, 2021 5:08 AM
Actually, you were right the first time. It's "is not" since the subject is "propensity." The modifying prepositional phrase serving as an adjective is "of American blacks."
/pedantry
Conan the Grammarian at June 22, 2021 5:42 AM
Sorry. Nope. Read it again. The sentence's subject is "nuances." The verb should be "are."
Conan the Grammarian at June 22, 2021 5:44 AM
Coupla days ago a lightning map was impressive.
I kinda like this one.
Radwaste at June 22, 2021 8:37 AM
Conan, on the subject of "is/are"...
The British use of "are" to refer to an entity (business, band, etc.) seems odd, and incorrect, to our ears ("British Airways are raising their prices.") and it seemed wrong to me when I first heard it many years ago but then I realized that, to them, the subject is the not the entity as a singular item but the multiple people who are part of the entity so the previous sentence would be "[The people at, or The executives at] British Airways are raising their prices."
I actually like their usage because it acknowledges that an entity is made up of people. Assuming the British have always had that usage, I'm sure the early colonists must have spoken/written the same way and that, at some point, we changed to our current usage.
JD at June 22, 2021 10:09 AM
I'm not sure if we changed or if they did. I've always found their usage to be "odd and incorrect." Something can be made up of many people, but it acts as one - i.e. "British Airways is opening a new route." While the people of British Airways will be servicing that route, they themselves did not open it, even collectively. The entity, British Airways, did.
Where the subject is plural, the distinction becomes more awkward on our end - e.g., "the Minnesota Vikings is a football team playing in Minneapolis." While the team is a singular entity, the name is pluralized. Players call themselves "a Viking," indicating plurality when several of them are referenced.
We can thank Noah Webster for some of this confusion. He printed a dictionary and usage manual intended to separate American and British speech, including dropping the "u" or the "s" from many British spellings - i.e., "honor" vs. "honour" or "analyze" vs. "analyse" - simply to ensure they were spelled differently on this side of the pond.
One wonders if manners were similarly arbitrarily changed to separate us - i.e., Americans switch the fork back after slicing meat, whereas Europeans leave the fork in the same hand and lift the bite to their mouths. Interestingly enough, the American way is the older way, carried to the New World by the Europeans who later abandoned it at home.
Conan the Grammarian at June 22, 2021 10:35 AM
they themselves did not open it, even collectively. The entity, British Airways, did.
Certainly not every person in a company is involved in making a decision or taking an action but some people always are. The entity does nothing on its own.
The British way still sounds odd to me, just because I'm not used to it, but, like I said, I like it and actually think it makes more sense than our usage.
the Minnesota Vikings is a football team playing in Minneapolis
Are you absolutely certain is is the correct usage there? I think you'd almost always, if not always, see or hear "the Minnesota Vikings are a football team" or "Minnesota is playing the Bears this weekend."
JD at June 22, 2021 10:50 AM
Peloton, after suffering through a recall of their overpriced treadmills due to the deaths and injuries inflicted on infants and pets, has now decided to brick the machines of anyone refusing to pay $39.95 each month for an online subscription.
The online subscription is the only way to enable the 'tread lock' safety feature.
That's right. You dropped $4k on a home treadmill and they are going to retroactively force you to pay another $480/year to use it.
Considering the price, I assume many of the owners are successful attorneys. Lawsuits start flying in three ... two ... one ...
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at June 22, 2021 12:11 PM
Whenever I hear "Peloton", I envision the Speaker of the House as a cyborg.
JD at June 22, 2021 1:06 PM
My WTF story of the day: A woman sleeping with her husband's marriage counselor is "a women's right to choose."
https://www.pennlive.com/sports/2021/06/ben-zobrist-former-world-series-mvp-claims-pastor-had-affair-with-his-wife-defrauded-charity-out-of-6-million-lawsuit.html
Also an excellent way to pump (pun unintentional but true) the counselor for information while controlling the advise her husband got.
If it were reversed, we'd soon have legislation named after the wife.
Trust at June 22, 2021 1:15 PM
Onion, unintimidated by upstart satirists.
Crid at June 22, 2021 2:01 PM
The Zobrist story is proof positive that America should tax the churches.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at June 22, 2021 2:04 PM
Me, today: Tense, number, pronouns, wut-evar....
Crid at June 22, 2021 2:09 PM
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