If you still have energy after this rather exhausting week in Trump news, here’s an open thread for you! No trolls or Trump fans.
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Leaving on a jet plane: Another Trump open thread because holy crap what a week
2 questions
1. Did anyone play Paper Mario: Color Splash? Nintendo gifted it to me when my Pokémon Shuffle account disappeared. I just started playing it today and I’ve been giggling through the whole thing. It’s so creative and genuinely funny.
2. Doesn’t this vegan meal look amazing?
My Otter made it last night. The rice part is basically Jamaican rice & peas but without the scotch bonnet and with a little bit of lime juice. The other stuff is Jerusalem artichokes that have been brushed, boiled, mashed, fried, coated with a rum based sauce, and finally baked. Sweeeeeeet.
IP, that looks amazing!
…and now I’m hungry.
nparker
Depends on what you mean by “make sense”.
Bread, threat, pleasure v. treat, heap, seal;
young, country, southern, couple v. mouth, found, about, county ;
some, one, oven, brother, honey, love, tongue v. cod, topple, sorry v. move, do, to v. go, hope, so, comb;
England, pretty v. length, penny.
Scone, gone – done, one, – bone, tone.
There are good explanations behind all these apparent oddities. Even then, not all words are pronounced the same in every region of the world … remember that the largest single group of English speakers/writers in the world is in India. (Though I find the biggest difference making South Asian English speakers hard to understand is their entirely different emphasis on syllables.)
There are always local dialects or simple variations in the uses, pronunciations and meanings of English words. And there always will be.
@ mildlymagnificent
All very true. Watching Don’t Ask Me, Ask Britain (a show where people vote for the answers to questions with an app) the other day I saw that people in Scotland and Wales overwhelmingly use ‘con’ while people in England use ‘cone.’
I find that personally that when talking to South Asian speakers issues I have with understanding them are less to do with emphasis but rather on the pitch and tone of their voice.
Some people of course pronounce cone ‘c-oown’ and so they would logically pronounce scone ‘scoown’ but no one talks about that…
I was in the audience for BBC Question Time last week, and something really puzzled me about it.
The audience is supposedly chosen to reflect a demographic spread approximately like that of the place where it’s filmed – a different place every week – and it soon became pretty obvious where the UKIP supporters in the audience were (I was sitting in front of 3 of them).
Before the show starts, the panel take a question from the audience which isn’t broadcast, so the technicians can make the final checks on light and sound. The question was about Trump, and quickly became about how humiliating and awful it was when our Prime Minister dashed over the Atlantic and held his hand.
Someone in the audience commented “He’s a businessman” (like that means a genius). The compere said “He’s a businessman who has been bankrupt”. And behind me the 3 UKIP supporters chipped in “No he hasn’t.” “Not bankrupt: no,” and “No,” – and I could hear similar voices echoing around the auditorium. In fact, it was a handy way to identify where the UKIP supporters were sitting.
It’s puzzled me ever since. Is it that they don’t understand that “Filing for Chapter Seven” is USian for “gone bankrupt” or is there some kind of meme they’ve all shared about how it’s Fake News?
All enlightenment welcomed!
@ bluecat
Technically Trump himself has never gone bankrupt.
A number of companies he’s been involved with have filed for ‘chapter 11’ bankruptcy. In UK terms that’s like appointing an administrator. So it’s one step short of ‘chapter 7’ bankruptcy which is like our equivalent of winding up a company.
Companies can of course have insolvency difficulties for valid no fault reasons. But to paraphrase Oscar Wilde:
“To lose one company may be unfortunate, but to lose four smacks of carelessness.”
Ahah!
Thanks Alan. I realise I’m woefully ill-informed.
So – how about “technically not a bankrupt” as a slogan for the 2020 Trump campaign?
@ bluecat
I think the 2020 Republican candidate will be the reanimated corpse of Richard Nixon running with the slogan:
“Don’t look so bad now, do I?”
Yeah, I could see Trump not resigning before the whole process completes and he can’t be President any more.
Right now though, Trump is in no real danger of impeachment unless the Special Counsel manages to reveal something more damning than lying to Congress. Bill Clinton being the example of what happens if there’s enough support in the House for impeachment, but the Senate is still almost 50/50. An earlier President, Johnson actually faced a Senate that had 2/3s “Radical Republicans” (who were against slavery, and more like Democrats these days), and still didn’t get kicked out of office.
Counting on Repubs to suddenly change the worldview they’re so invested in now isn’t a good bet.
I’m saying he should not be President, but politics right now means it’s unlikely to happen unless either he gets rational and resigns, or he does something really extra terrible.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/maryland/articles/2017-05-21/police-charge-suspect-in-maryland-college-stabbing-death
So a wild white male Alt-Right Pepe Kekistani stabbed a young black man to death, it would see.
This was always going to happen.
nparker:
Ah, you never met my parents. It was all humour, and no indignancy, which is not a word.
Anyway, that’s not important right now, because glowing fucking orb. Jesus, does Trump now have the power of Grayskull or something? There will be so many memes!
http://i.imgur.com/GOAuQcy.jpg
Explains everything, really.
Once again, Futurama turns out to be prophetic.
@ Moggie
Glad to hear it.
Dictionary says indignancy is a word.
SFHC’s photo reminds me of this one:
@bluecat
I have heard the same from my brother (an American Trump supporter, hypothetically – he skipped out on voting day and didn’t vote for anyone…)
The line of reasoning from him is that Trump’s businesses have declared bankruptcy, but he as an individual has not, and that filing for bankruptcy is a valid business strategy for a high-stakes entrepreneur.
Which it (arguably) is – but that’s the problem. The United States can’t file for bankruptcy. Public and private sector money management are not the same at all. What about a history of risky business investments has prepared Trump in any way to run a country?
I need to whine about something.
Thursdays are Game Nights for me. I drive a couple miles to the FLGS to play board games. Kemet, Pandemic, Avalon… A couple of us were into Android: Netrunner for awhile. So there’s this guy Tom. Tom congratulaged me on Hitler’s birthday about a month back when everyone else was making the slightly-in-better-taste jokes about 420 Day. He’s occasionally tried to convince me The International Jew secretly controlled the Soviet Union, or sell me on Dolchstosselegende.
So, last Thursday, I came in and sat by him, he mentioned the “Russia stuff” was bullshit, and we talked politics. Somewhere along the line, I reprised my theory about Trump being a literal joke: I told Tom that he voted for “President Boaty McBoatface” and that he voted for Trump because of, not in spite of, his incompetence. That he wanted to watch people like Newt Gingrich humiliate themselves by kowtowing to him.
And when he denied it, I called him a liar, and that really fucking pissed him off. He literally shook with rage and invited me to step outside for a fist fight. And it’s been the whole weekend and I can’t stop feeling guilty–both for Tom, and for all our friends who had to watch uncomfortably while we argued. And I can’t stop worrying about having burned my bridges with the store–it’s a lovely little store. What if the shopkeeper kicks both of us out over this?
@[email protected]
Really sorry to hear that. That’s not a nice situation at all.
What about Trump supporters makes them think other people want to hear their wild conspiracy theories when trying to have fun in a recreational setting?
When you go back, perhaps try and go earlier than whenever you arranged to meet the others, and explain the situation. You say they are a nice shop, so they should understand, but if they do ban you then they might not really be so nice.
I find it helpful to think about the worst case scenario- the worst case scenario sounds like you being banned from the store and you having the opportunity to contact the people who aren’t ‘Tom’ and ask if they want to meet up to play individually. The other possible outcomes are much better and it sound like more likely to happen.
I don’t know if this advice helps at all, but perhaps it might
@banned –
That is an unfortunate situation. It sounds like he’s been antagonizing you for a while – maybe out of obliviousness rather than intentionally, but I think your reaction is understandable. (He wished you happy hitler’s birthday?? Gross)
Maybe you could write up an apology to your friends – and a separate one for him if you feel like he deserves one. Remember you don’t have to apologize for how you feel about his remarks – if you just want to apologize for anything you feel was misbehavior on your part, you can absolutely do that without having to take the position that you were 100% in the wrong. It’s about keeping things right with yourself – since you say you feel guilty.
If you do get kicked out, that will be too bad. But maybe you can see it as an opportunity to find a new crowd without a Tom? I know that’s easier said than done, but sometimes there are other great options out there that we don’t see until we’re forced out of our comfort zone.
I hope this didn’t come off as preachy. I’ve found myself in similar situations before because I tend to try and be easy to get along with, so I’ll wave off ignorant remarks until they build up and I snap at the other person. So I’m working on trying to speak up before it gets to that point, but it’s not always easy.
Oh hey, I got around to reading the comments, and it looks like ChimericMind made the same kind of cock-up I did. My condolences. And thanks for everyone else’s.
Also, Fran Torpedo: Mark Twain once told someone, “I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one instead.” Maybe it’s idealistic, but if you’re forced to post on Twitter, you can hope that the other people there are taking the effort to condense complex thoughts into 140 characters, rather than just saying whatever whatever they can within that span.
@Banned
Good one!
Also, liars always get angry when pinned down. The fact that Tom shit his pants with rage when you said that is all I need to know about that guy.
Well, that and the fucking Hitler jokes.
I’m officially done with people who think Hitler is Le Funnay, unless they are genuinely making fun OF Hitler and not making fun WITH Hitler.
This would fit in 140 characters; just a suggestion.
http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1897223.1407533962!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/gallery_1200/nixon-resignation-letter-1974.jpg
@Alan
You look pretty sharp in that new photo.
Also, that is the only tweet I want Drump to tweet.
“Puihal Nit”? Bloody hell, and I thought my signature was bad…