Domino Quartz's Delightfully Quaint Random Banter Thread #248

[Keltest]

Would you consider expanding that to teachers who answer any question at all with some version of "That's just the way it is", "It just works like that" or similar?

You go far enough into physics and that's the answer to every question.

[Batcathat]

You go far enough into physics and that's the answer to every question.

"I don't know" or "No one knows" are acceptable (if frustrating) answers.

[Keltest]

"I don't know" or "No one knows" are acceptable (if frustrating) answers.

True, but I think separate. I would argue the assumption that everything has a "why" is flawed.

[Peelee]

You go far enough into physics and that's the answer to every question.

"I don't know" or "No one knows" are acceptable (if frustrating) answers.

If physics, and wishing to have an ultimate solution other than "because that's the way it is", you can always fall back on "because of spinning".

[Bartmanhomer]

Well I start writing again for the New Year.

[Metastachydium]

That sounds like a lot of field-specific jargon for 'It's just there, we don't really know why' with a bit of 'people liked how it looked/sounded on one word so they started using it on other words with similar constructions.'

I'm quite confident in TaiLiu's ability to both parse it and to have foreseen I'll do this exact thing when requesting my opinion. Aside from that, "it does not carry meaning" is kind of important and the term excrescent useful for locating further reading into the subject if they want to delve in any.

[Form]

You go far enough into physics and that's the answer to every question.

"I don't know" or "No one knows" are acceptable (if frustrating) answers.

If physics, and wishing to have an ultimate solution other than "because that's the way it is", you can always fall back on "because of spinning".

Just throw Feynman diagrams at everything. That's what it all boils down to anyway.

[Peelee]

Just throw Feynman diagrams at everything. That's what it all boils down to anyway.

Bonus points if you make the diagrams spin.

[Coppercloud]

I have seen enough posts showing a kids tests or homework with correct answers marked as incorrect with explanations that prove that whoever graded them doesn't know what the **** they're doing that if I became all-powerful I feel one of the first things I'f so is create a fae like entity whose sole purpose is to show up, smack someone who gives an unfair grade across the face with a mackerel, explain why they're wrong, and then keep smacking them until they admit that they're a dumbass and fix the grades.

Does the fae work in tandem with the tooth fairy? In case they knock out a tooth with all the smacking with a mackerel thing. Anyway, this would be a sorely needed addition sometimes.
I actually have a vivid memory of one specific question during my first year of physics/chemistry class at twelve years old. The test question was something like this:

Spoiler: MS Paint diagram and explanation

Show

I guess the point of the question was to make sure we knew what a "state of matter" meant. Twelve years-old me knew that the expected answer was "solid, gas, liquid", but noticed that it was never stated that each must appear once. So I decided to be a smartass, because of course if the water had frozen while the beaker was upright, the surface of the ice would remain horizontal so there was no way to tell one from the other from the diagram.
I lost points for, apparently, failing to account for the unstated rule that each term was to be employed only once, and when I asked the teacher about it he told me that I was overthinking it and he wouldn't make trick questions. I didn't insist, but told my father about it, who replied that my answer was incomplete because the first one could be liquid as well: it was nowhere stated that the table was horizontal, so I had made unstated assumptions too. I feel like I learned a great deal about asking teachers and parents that day. I understood the importance of paying attention to what was actually stated and asked, find the logical answer, then ignore all of that and write down the expected answer instead.

For what it's worth, it was the same teacher who didn't know that Archimedes' principle applied to gases until I told him.

[Peelee]

Does the fae work in tandem with the tooth fairy? In case they knock out a tooth with all the smacking with a mackerel thing. Anyway, this would be a sorely needed addition sometimes.
I actually have a vivid memory of one specific question during my first year of physics/chemistry class at twelve years old. The test question was something like this:

Spoiler: MS Paint diagram and explanation

Show

I guess the point of the question was to make sure we knew what a "state of matter" meant. Twelve years-old me knew that the expected answer was "solid, gas, liquid", but noticed that it was never stated that each must appear once. So I decided to be a smartass, because of course if the water had frozen while the beaker was upright, the surface of the ice would remain horizontal so there was no way to tell one from the other from the diagram.
I lost points for, apparently, failing to account for the unstated rule that each term was to be employed only once, and when I asked the teacher about it he told me that I was overthinking it and he wouldn't make trick questions. I didn't insist, but told my father about it, who replied that my answer was incomplete because the first one could be liquid as well: it was nowhere stated that the table was horizontal, so I had made unstated assumptions too. I feel like I learned a great deal about asking teachers and parents that day. I understood the importance of paying attention to what was actually stated and asked, find the logical answer, then ignore all of that and write down the expected answer instead.

For what it's worth, it was the same teacher who didn't know that Archimedes' principle applied to gases until I told him.

For what it's worth, i disagree with your father and agree with you. Nothing indicates the third beaker is only liquid, and it could be both. However, similarly, nothing indicates the first beaker is tilted, or is traveling at a velocity and going on a curve, or any other means that would have the liquid not be level. The third beaker being liquid or solid is predicted on the beakers and substance appearing as presented, so the same logic that has 3 be either also necessitates that 1 only be solid.

[TaiLiu]

I will never go to Times Square to see the big ball drop on New Year's Eve ever again because there are no bathrooms at Times Square and I'm a veteran to see the big ball drop since 2006! 😫😫😫😫😫😫😫😫😫😫

That sucks. I hope you found a bathroom in the end. I've seen videos. It's so crowded there.

The history of the English language is not really my strict sense domain, but I can elaborate on the current consensus regarding these, I believe. You can't find this type of -t among standard suffixes and it is described as "unetymological" because it is understood not to be your classic derivational or inflectional affix, but rather an excrescent, an epenthetical sound that carries neither semantical nor morphological value and is believed to have entered the composition of these words for (at this point and as far as I can tell) obscure phonetical reasons. I'm inclined to suspect it might have spread further by analogy, but I cannot prove that offhandedly and I'm too lazy to look into possible modern examples.

Now, do mind that this is only the case for the adverbs. Irregular verb forms such as spelt have an entirely different origin. There, the -t is simply an archaic form of the Germanic dental tense/aspect marker and as such a proper inflectional suffix, which is much older than whatever altered the pronounciation of the adverbs (Old English versus Late Middle/Early Modern).

Thanks for the explanation. So people just started adding t suffixes and it stuck. Pretty cool.

Aside: In some countries, it's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_Day! Happy bird day!

I'm quite confident in TaiLiu's ability to both parse it and to have foreseen I'll do this exact thing when requesting my opinion. Aside from that, "it does not carry meaning" is kind of important and the term excrescent useful for locating further reading into the subject if they want to delve in any.

I appreciated the response for sure.

I would translate the jargon as "the -t ending on adverbs doesn't have any actual meaning that linguists know of, so they assume it is there because some of the forms without it ('amids', 'amongs', etc) violated some habit or preference in the language-making part of English speakers in the 1500s, and once the '-st' form was established for some adverbs, it spread to others because people's brains want adverbs to sound adverby"

As there isn't much evidence to work with any explanation will be speculative, but I would put forth for consideration several facts:

-1: This seems to happen when the historical word is an preposition that was turned into an adverb by adding the genitive case suffix -s.

-2: Modern English doesn't retain case endings, but sometimes they are still around as baked-in parts of modern English words (consider for example amidships, and ponder why it isn't amidshipst).

-3: The word abreast looks like it follows the pattern but it doesn't, it derives from an + brest "on breast (i.e. side-by-side)".

-4: the seemingly meaningless addition of a word-final dental to a word that didn't historically have one also happens in some German words (e.g. axe/Axt, moon/Mond)

-5: The word against is unusual in that the -st version is the only acceptable one in most English dialects, except some like Scottish that never adopted it.

So the most interesting conclusion I have drawn is that when depicting Scottish or derivative accents in text form, "I nae be standin' again ye" is more correct than "I nae be standin' again' ye". (quick, somebody do an analysis of apostrophe placement in Durkon's speech so I can get back to serious linguistics in the real world :D)

I had no idea "amidships" was even a word till now. :O

[Bartmanhomer]

That sucks. I hope you found a bathroom in the end. I've seen videos. It's so crowded there.

I did at the alley without no one looking. I will never pull that risk ever again.

[Metastachydium]

Thanks for the explanation.

Anytime!

Aside: In some countries, it's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_Day! Happy bird day!

Early January is a bit counterintuitive as a date for that but BIRDIES! I'll take a Birdy Day when I see one, and gladly!

I had no idea "amidships" was even a word till now. :O

Must admit I'm in the same boat, so to say. The domain of the lexical can be tough to navigate at times.

[TaiLiu]

I did at the alley without no one looking. I will never pull that risk ever again.

That's frustrating. NYC has four public restrooms per hundred thousand people, which is terribly low. More public restrooms are needed for sure.

Early January is a bit counterintuitive as a date for that but BIRDIES! I'll take a Birdy Day when I see one, and gladly!

Maybe it's about winter birdies! :D

Must admit I'm in the same boat, so to say. The domain of the lexical can be tough to navigate at times.

For sure. Especially for a layperson like myself.

[Rater202]

Decided to finally check out The Owl House.

Knew about all the gay.

Suspected the plot points about surviving and overcoming abusive parents.

Was not expecting all of the disability metaphors.

[LaZodiac]

Decided to finally check out The Owl House.

Knew about all the gay.

Suspected the plot points about surviving and overcoming abusive parents.

Was not expecting all of the disability metaphors.

The Owl House is one of the best shows that the parent company unceremoniously cut down like ****ing dolts who deserve to be ousted from their positions, preferably with a cannon. Of all time.

[Peelee]

The Owl House is one of the best shows that the parent company unceremoniously cut down like ****ing dolts who deserve to be ousted from their positions, preferably with a cannon. Of all time.

Odd way to spell Firefly.

[LaZodiac]

Odd way to spell Firefly.

I said what I said.

[Peelee]

I said what I said.

Odd way to spell Police Squad!, then.

[Rater202]

The Owl House is one of the best shows that the parent company unceremoniously cut down like ****ing dolts who deserve to be ousted from their positions, preferably with a cannon. Of all time.

Luz and Amity's defeat of Grometheus was beautiful in both its elegance and its symbolism.

I'm just... surprised by the sheer amount of disability allegory and conversely what it says about living with a disability.

Like, obviously there's the stuff with Eda's curse, especially in the episode that introduces it to us, the slumber party episode with the subplot of her being gouged on the elixir she needs to manage it, and the episode where Eda's mother shows up after having fallen for the latest snake-oil 'cure' again but...

Then you get more subtle stuff, like the fact that humans and witches, being different species, can't eat most of the same food and the financial strain this can cause which comes up twice... Yeah, there are a lot of conditions that can make finding food that safe and/or palatable a pain in the ass.

[LaZodiac]

Luz and Amity's defeat of Grometheus was beautiful in both its elegance and its symbolism.

I'm just... surprised by the sheer amount of disability allegory and conversely what it says about living with a disability.

Like, obviously there's the stuff with Eda's curse, especially in the episode that introduces it to us, the slumber party episode with the subplot of her being gouged on the elixir she needs to manage it, and the episode where Eda's mother shows up after having fallen for the latest snake-oil 'cure' again but...

Then you get more subtle stuff, like the fact that humans and witches, being different species, can't eat most of the same food and the financial strain this can cause which comes up twice... Yeah, there are a lot of conditions that can make finding food that safe and/or palatable a pain in the ass.

Without spoiling things, it goes further into it.

And if Disney wasn't deserving of death, it would have gone even further than further.

[Rater202]

Without spoiling things, it goes further into it.

And if Disney wasn't deserving of death, it would have gone even further than further.

...With the disability metaphors or in general?

[LaZodiac]

...With the disability metaphors or in general?

All of it! The series gets gayer, touches more on disability and abuse, and goes just short of teaching you how to make a molotov and telling you where to throw it for maximum damage*

*this is exaggerated to some degree but also the subtext becomes literal text

[Rater202]

All of it! The series gets gayer

I mean, I'm past this bit.(Spoilers, in case it needs to be said.)

I do not see it getting any Gayer than that. This very much feels like they just decided "**** it, we're already canceled so let's beat them over the head with it just to be damn sure."

Which, mind you, I'm down with.

[LaZodiac]

I mean, I'm past this bit.(Spoilers, in case it needs to be said.)

I do not see it getting any Gayer than that. This very much feels like they just decided "**** it, we're already canceled so let's beat them over the head with it just to be damn sure."

Which, mind you, I'm down with.

Fair, I wasn't sure how far you'd gone in, I thought you were JUST at Grom.

[Rater202]

Fair, I wasn't sure how far you'd gone in, I thought you were JUST at Grom.

To be fair, I did mention that the "difficulty and cost of finding food" thing came up twice.

The second time was in that same episode

...Also, for what I hope are obvious reasons, I find it ironic that witches apprently can't eat sweet potatoes.

[Lord Raziere]

Yeah, Owl House is pretty great. Shame about how it went, but I'm glad for what we got y'know? At least it managed to go out on a good note.

[LaZodiac]

...Also, for what I hope are obvious reasons, I find it ironic that witches apprently can't eat sweet potatoes.

... yeah you lost me on that one bud. Do explain.

[Rater202]

... yeah you lost me on that one bud. Do explain.

Okay, I'm trying but I don't think I can explain it without being a wall of text and I keep second-guessing myself on what needs to be there.

So, for clarity's sake... Do I need to explain the "apparently they can't eat sweet potatoes" part, why I think it's ironic, or both?

[Lord Raziere]

Rater, I also have no idea where your getting sweet potatoes from or why its even relevant to this conversation about Owl House, at all.

To me, its completely random and you just brought it up and not explained anything.

Please. Unpack.