Minor annoyances

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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby Marcuse » Thu Jan 17, 2019 11:17 am

Also, Kate has pointed out to me that I said "tape measure" when I meant "measuring tape."


I also say tape measure. I think it's an English-ism.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby JamishT » Fri Jan 18, 2019 6:41 am

I say both "measuring tape" and "tape measure", and I'm not sure what makes me say which.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby cmsellers » Fri Jan 18, 2019 7:37 am

I don't know about the UK, but in the US measuring tape is a soft thing for clothes and fabric which is just a long strip. A tape measure is a (usually) hard thing with a hooked bit at the end which comes out of a hard casing and is used for measuring wood and stuff. I know this, but I haven't used a measuring tape in forever, so I started calling it a tape measure. In fact I described it to the person at Target as "a soft tape measure for measuring cloth" after I was initially pointed to the tape measures.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby CarrieVS » Fri Jan 18, 2019 11:24 am

Both of those are called tape measures in the UK. It never occurred to me to distinguish them before. They basically do the same job, it's just each one is slightly more convenient for different application.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby Australia » Fri Jan 18, 2019 3:03 pm

Since JaT dropped the ball...
Image
But yeah, they're interchangeable here. Like vitamins and pizza. Okay, that may just be me.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby Pedgerow » Fri Jan 18, 2019 9:16 pm

I've always called them both tape measures, but reading this, I think I might just be lazy and not too passionate about the accuracy of my name for ruler-string. The soft ones for clothes might well not be called tape measures, but I call them that anyway because I've never been corrected.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby jbobsully11 » Wed Jan 23, 2019 11:07 pm

I got an e-mail a little while ago saying that the tax forms from my job for this past year are ready. So naturally the website isn't working.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby cmsellers » Thu Jan 31, 2019 5:46 am

In the spirit of the post I started this thread with, here's another complaint about how spoiled I am by free content.

The radio station KGNU in Denver has all of its programs recorded, archived, and available for free on its website. If you pick a program outside the fund drives, they're commercial free too. So I've been listening to a lot of Honky Tonk Heroes (real country) and Old Grass Gnu Grass (bluegrass), but I'm less impressed with their other programs, even in genres I like. Which should be fine because they have more even excluding fundraising episodes than I would ever listen to.

Except I wanted more variety, so I looked around trying to find radio stations that might have some other stuff I like, particularly Zydeco (lots of stations in and near Louisiana have Zyedeco programs), and maybe Klezmer, sea shanties, Western swing, and other stuff I like but don't listen to much because I only know a few artists who do them. KGNU has a lot of weirdly specific programs (they actually used to have a Zydeco program, though there are no archives of it online), so surely there must be other stations that put their archives online with formats other than country and bluegrass I like?

But no, as far as I can tell, it's only KGNU. Which of course makes me appreciate what they do all the more. In the event that I finally have money, I'll probably make donations to them, something I probably won't ever do for my local noncommercial radio stations. What they do is really awesome. Still, I wish I could find free, commercial-free archives off zydeco and such.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby Pedgerow » Thu Jan 31, 2019 9:03 pm

I don't plan to listen to these myself, so they might not be exactly what you're after, but this might appeal to you. I found it by searching for "zydeco podcast", which gave me plenty of results which you might like.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby cmsellers » Thu Jan 31, 2019 11:28 pm

Thanks. I found that one yesterday, but when I saw that it said "search playlist," I assumed it was just a playlist, as on several other radio stations I had already found, and not a recording, and looked no further. It doesn't look like it's supposed to be downloadable, but they use embedded mp3s, which makes it very downloadable in practice. Also found this, which again, not supposed to be downloadable but uses embedded mp3s.

Also found three Klezmer shows by googling "Klezmer podcasts," though at least two of them look like they look like they might be an American Routes setup (mostly interviews and exposition) rather than mostly music. (Which frankly, I didn't even know podcasts could be mostly music. My brother listens to a lot of them and they're all talk.)
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby cmsellers » Fri Feb 15, 2019 8:45 am

I got a message that someone had entered my credentials into an email address I don't usually use. I assumed it was Google being confused by my VPN, but it turned out that the login attempt was from the UK, and I've only used my VPN from the US, Mexico, and Australia. So to be safe, I changed that password.

Then, out of an abundance, of paranoia, I changed my GMail password. Google has been trying to get me to revoke Thunderbird's access to my email because it views it as insecure for some reason, and it apparently took this opportunity to decide that changing my password meant I wanted to take its advice on this, so I had to reauthorize it, which was annoying.

Also, Google has been annoying me enough that I've been experimenting with other sites, but you get what you pay for. I also tried using Yandex (Russia's Google) which for some reason came recommended on a couple sites. I then tried using it to register on a website, but it turns out that if you don't give it a phone number and it thinks you're doing something suspicious, like using a VPN, it will basically shadowban you. You can't send or receive emails until you give it your phone number and it won't tell you this. And yeah, I'm totally giving a Russian company my phone number.

From looking around, the best option seems to be the Swiss-based ProtonMail (you will have to either not use a VPN or give it your phone number, but it tells you this and promises not to store your phone number), but you can only store 500 MB of mail on the free account, which is nothing. When I have money, I may start using the paid version.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby Aquila89 » Sun Feb 17, 2019 6:12 pm

Hungarian book publishers think Hungarian readers are idiots.

The British popular historian, Simon Sebag Montefiore wrote a book about the Romanov dynasty, which was recently released in Hungary. The original title was he Romanovs 1613–1918. The Hungarian title translates to The Romanovs 1613-1918; The Fascinating, Blood-, Tear- and Sex-Filled Chronicle of the Romanov Dynasty.

Sebag Montefiore also wrote an introduction to a collection of famous speeches. The original title: Speeches that Changed the World. The Hungarian title translates to World-Shattering Speeches that Changed the World.

As long as we're on Russian history, Robert K. Massie's book on Peter the Great was also translated to Hungarian. Here, the title was not significantly changed, but a Cyrillic-looking font was used on the cover. That Cyrillic letter at the end of "Peter" may look like an inverted R, but in Russian it actually denotes a sound that is like "ya" in "yard". This cover reminds me of the poster of Borat.

The English edition of the book had a long section of endnotes; those were left out from the Hungarian edition.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby cmsellers » Sun Feb 17, 2019 6:40 pm

TIL: Title Guy got his start in Hungarian book publishing.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby Anglerphobe » Sun Feb 17, 2019 8:42 pm

There is a certain irony in the fact that Peter the Great, the guy who went to some lengths to romanise the Russian alphabet, is referred to this way. tvtropes has an article on faux cyrillic, with some fun examples.
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Re: Minor annoyances

Postby cmsellers » Tue Feb 19, 2019 11:46 pm

I'm seeing people use "barter" for "bargain" (as in "haggle") really often these days, and it ranks somewhere between the use of "literally" as an intensifier and "ironically" in the Alanis Morissette sense as one of the most cringeworthy misuses of words I hear.

On the other hand, a may be an easily-annoyed and judgmental individual, but I'm a linguistic descriptivist. So after hearing it yet again, I now wonder whether "barter" for "haggle" has reached the point where it should be considered a legitimate alternative definition which gets added to dictionaries.
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