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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: July 30th, 2023

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  • The social network factor was a culture shock for me. You literally contact businesses and even government officials over Facebook/Facebook Messenger. Businesses don’t have their own websites, just Facebook profiles. If you’re looking for a job or an apartment, the best place to start is usually Facebook. I had to resuscitate my decades-long dead Facebook account to find my footing in Malta, and it never stopped feeling dystopian.


  • Just off the top of my head: In some US dialects, rather than a single word changing between negative and positive form (e.g. “I didn’t take any pictures”), instead an entire sentence is shifted into a negative mode (“I didn’t take no pictures”). Traditional grammar rules would dictate that as a double negative, implying the speaker did in fact take pictures, but only an idiot would actually choose interpret it that way.

    Next, we have the impact of the internet. “lol” might occasionally be spoken aloud in many circumstances as a substitute for “that’s funny” or something similar. Colloquial written English is all over the place. We now not only use “lol”, but “fwiw,” “afaik,” and many others.

    Then there’s emoji. We’re basically using glyphs to express ideas, not unlike how kanji works, and traditional rules of grammar don’t always apply when you’re expressing an idea through pictures, though it’s interesting when it does. Animated GIFs and memes often butcher grammar rules without sacrificing any understanding of intent.

    A simple google search turns up many more examples than I could possibly be aware of.

    Now it’s your turn. Feel free to explain why you think using “they” as a singular pronoun applies as a grammar rule violation in the 21st century. If you can’t use more than a typical snarky one or two-liner, you should just consider this argument lost and rethink your life.




  • I mean, the absurdity of your argument that a sci-fi space rpg can’t meet your standards of “reality” because of a mere ignorable, pre-existing and commonly used pronoun aside, I’m going to have to step in on this particularly low-hanging morsel…

    The rules of English grammar are objective.

    If English grammatical rules were objective, we’d all still be talking the way people did way before Shakespeare. Actually, Shakespeare’s writings wouldn’t exist today if English grammar wasn’t at all subjective because he flat out made up a ton of words and phrases we still use today. Also, you’ve heard of poetry, right?

    “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” (Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5)




  • I don’t know anything about One Piece other than the fact it’s really long and super popular.

    I heard the Netflix show was pleasing fans so I threw it on when my wife was around and we both ended up getting into it. We haven’t finished the whole season yet, but we will.

    It reminds me of watching power rangers back in the 90s as a kid. The dialog is really elementary and clearly targets kids, but the character acting is endearing, and it’s fun to look up the original illustrations because the casting and costumes are so spot on.

    I’m particularly fond of how each episode goes through some kind of story and character development, but always climaxes on some big fight scene, just like in the old power rangers shows. It’s like soul food for me.