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There's something I've been wondering for a while now, so a question for you US goons: Is telephone etiquette in the US really like in the movies and tv shows, regarding ending the conversation? I mean, here in the Netherlands, and the rest of Europe as far as I know, it's pretty standard to say goodbye in some fashion before hanging up, giving the other person on the line the chance to stop you if they have another question or wanting to say something before the conversation ends. In American tv and movies people just hang up when they're satisfied, something that seems really odd and rude to me. -"Hey John, what's the deal with so and so?" -"Oh, hi Peter, well, it's such and such." -"Okay, thanks." *click* Rarely you see a conversation being ended properly with a goodbye or see you or whatever, and when you do it's most often done to emphasize a relationship between the characters, usually saying love or miss you or something similar. It's a difference I've started noticing since my mom got older and started doing it. It's really, really annoying because often I have to call her back to clarify something. A conversation should end when both parties agree it's over, not when one of the parties decides it is. Before then I guess I've always figured it was a stylistic or pragmatic choice in tv and movies, but now I'm not so sure. It could just as easily be a cultural difference.
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Oct 30, 2012 16:53
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That's what I figured, or at least hoped/expected. Now I'm left wondering why it's done that way in the movies. A quick bye doesn't seem intrusive at all, so why not make the conversation more natural?
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Oct 30, 2012 17:17
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A friend of mine in the gaming industry (Polish native) asked me a question I'm not entirely sure about, not being a native speaker myself. He's currently working on the maturity filter of a game, and his question is whether the phrase "Suck it." (as the player character shoots/kills an enemy) is considered vulgar and should be taken out or changed when the maturity filter is on. I told him yes, because although the language itself isn't vulgar, the implication "Suck my dick." is, but I've been wrong before on subtleties like this in the past, so I thought I'd ask here. Any native US/UK speakers that could weigh in? Taeke fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Dec 20, 2012 |
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Dec 20, 2012 19:43
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angelicism posted:Depends on how stringent you want your maturity feature to be, but yes, I can imagine I would be surprised to hear that in a game if the maturity filter was on. That's what we figured. Words like 'gently caress' are obviously taken out, and the less vile word 'poo poo' is too, so an oral sex reference should be as well. We just needed someone to confirm what we were already thinking, thanks. 
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Dec 20, 2012 19:52
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Fork of Unknown Origins posted:The ultimate irony here is that the drinking age law basically just ensures that nobody develops a healthy relationship with alcohol in a controlled manner so there are more problems in the college age group (and likely the same if not more total alcohol consumed) than if we had a reasonable drinking age. This is what always threw me about American culture, and something I'd worry about as a parent. Especially when you consider that people are allowed to drive at the age of 16 in the US. I imagine lots of youngsters that start to drink (legally) will be overconfident in their driving skills and think driving while having had a few is no big deal. Here in the Netherlands you can start drinking at the age of 16, but you can't get your driver's permit until you're 18, so people have a lot more respect for both. Of course, another major difference is the bicycle culture we've got, and our excellent public transportation, so getting to and from the bar or club is never an issue even if you have been drinking, and the distances are a lot smaller. Driving in the US seems scary to me.
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Feb 13, 2013 12:04
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El_Elegante posted:Pretty sure the UK has a much lower drinking age and that doesn't prevent them from having a culture where binge drinking isn't a serious public health issue. True, and binge drinking is a growing concern in the Netherlands as well, but that wasn't really my point. This is all biased by my own upbringing of course, but a legal drinking age of 21 seems ridiculously late for cultural reasons. Although it's probably a very good thing regarding the physical and psychological development of the human body, alcohol is so infused in today's society you get underage drinking, and prohibiting it isn't a solution, and instead might even make things worse. On the other hand, I feel that a 16 year old doesn't have the maturity and sense of responsibility needed to (relatively) safely drive a car and participate in traffic, but again, those are all my own biases. It's all pretty arbitrary anyway, but it seems so weird to me that drinking alcohol is somehow too dangerous or destructive for a 16-21 year old, but driving isn't. Cultural differences, I guess.
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Feb 13, 2013 14:22
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RaoulDuke12 posted:Fun fact: Here in Los Angeles, my friend got a DUI for riding his bicycle drunk. I'm sure if they could figure out a way to cite you for riding the metro drunk, they would do that too. Being drunk in public is actually illegal here, as is riding a bicycle drunk, but cycling is so safe here (cycling lanes everywhere, and you're actually a respected participant in traffic) cops generally don't give a gently caress unless you're a danger to yourself or others. They only recently (since January 1st) made possession of alcohol under the age of 16 illegal, and there's talk of raising the drinking age to 18.
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Feb 13, 2013 20:39
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I guess I was lucky then.
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May 6, 2013 19:21
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1sMTI_dmjU This is QI, and there's literally hours upon hours of it on youtube. Enjoy.
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May 13, 2013 14:42
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Three months is a shitload of time to find someone else, so if you're not a dick about it and even offer them to help to find someone, you shouldn't worry.
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May 25, 2013 19:20
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No, you are most definitely not. Unless I'm mistaken, a vast majority has that, although in my experience it's a different phenomenon from the spasms referred to in the macro. My understanding is that those are your muscles relaxing, which can sometimes cause them to jerk. I do experience that more often when I've been physically very active, and I experience them sometimes even when not falling sleep but, for example, taking a bath after some hard work. I think the falling feeling has to do with you actually falling asleep or already being half asleep, still conscious but losing reference points in your surroundings as you become less and less aware of them. This causes your body and subconscious to panic, kicking off a bit of adrenaline and causing you to literally jerk awake. I guess it has to be a defense mechanism against fainting or falling asleep at inopportune moments. Now that I think about it, it does seem to occur more often when I'm trying to fall asleep and I'm too aware of it, whereas when I let my thoughts drift, start fantasising or thinking, I still lose the awareness of my surroundings but replace that with whatever it is I'm thinking of. Sometimes the thoughts I have, the scenes I'm picturing, become extremely vivid to the point where it's much like a hallucination or dream, yet I'm still lucid. Having a 'visual' stimuli, even imaginary, prevents the body from panicking. That's usually when I fall asleep proper.
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May 26, 2013 17:57
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Experto Crede posted:How much of the oxygen you breath in gets released back as CO2? I think this will answer your question. I'm too lazy to do the maths, you can do that yourself. It's amazing how much wikipedia answers, and kind of weird to realise that our parents didn't have such a resource available to them. -"I just thought of something specific I'd really like to know more about, but I don't want to go to the library, study the subject intensively, follow a course on it, whatever, to find out about it." -"Sucks, doesn't it?" e: Just to make clear how easy that was to find out: I just set my search field in Firefox on Wikipedia(en), which it's usually in anyway, typed 'breathing', clicked the link 'breathing in gas', and there's the answer our parents would've spent hours, if not days, to find out. Taeke fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Jun 10, 2013 |
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Jun 10, 2013 23:28
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I actually liked that her face was a little bit off. It took a little while getting used to, but it's refreshing to have the main female lead of a show not be obviously attractive. It adds a bit of realism or something.
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Jul 13, 2013 16:25
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Organic Robot posted:What are some PC games that you can pit AI versus AI with no human players? I can think of older shooters like Quake 3 Arena and Unreal Tournament, but I don't know about the newer games.
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Jul 16, 2013 10:40
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Besides, once they've figure it out they'll just bring a cloth, some newspapers or whatever to sit on, so it wouldn't help anyway.
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Jul 21, 2013 17:14
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alnilam posted:Can anyone recommend a short-ish read on the history of blacks in the US from the civil war onward? Something like under 100 pages preferably. Maybe even a long article. This reminds me of something I was wondering about, and although I think I know the answer I'd like some confirmation on it. I don't intent to call you out specifically, although it might be something you would like to consider/think about as well. How acceptable is it to use the term 'blacks'? I've seen people (rightfully) probated in D&D for using the term 'browns', for obvious reasons (at least to me), but one of the more ardent Zimmerman supporters consistently posted in terms of 'blacks' and 'white people'. It seems to me that using the term 'blacks' (omitting 'people') is just as dehumanising as using the term 'browns', especially when contrasted with 'white people' where 'people' is definitely not omitted. I'm from a country where blackface is a wholly acceptable and big part of one of our major holidays (Zwarte Piet and Sinterklaas), and our race relations and racism issues are wholly different from the US, so I'm just wondering if my instinct is correct and referring to black people as 'blacks' is a pretty big no-no.
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Jul 25, 2013 18:59
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alnilam posted:You'll get different answers depending on whom you ask, in the debate of "black" vs "African-American." Generally some people will consider "black" slightly offensive, but a lot of people (both black and white) use it, and I personally have a slight preference for it for a few reasons. As for the word people, now that you mention it, I agree with you that the word "people" should probably be in there in both cases, but I guess I was lazy? I would just as soon say "whites" and it's weird that that other poster consistently says "blacks" and "white people." But "Xs" versus "X people," I think you have a point there. Thanks, so it pretty much is as I expected it to be. As for African-American, that's something I shouldn't really comment on because I'm not American, but it has always struck me as strange how adamant some people can be on using a specific terminology, especially when you consider how fluent it has always been and how much the preferred terminology changes throughout both time, people and places. From what I understand, African-American has only relatively recently become the accepted term and, for example, 'people of colour' used to be the accepted term but is now considered offense, in poor taste, old-fashioned or whatever. I'll never forget being in a literature class and one of my fellow (African) classmates got really offended at another (Asian) classmate of mine for referring to a character in the book we were discussing as black. He insisted on everyone using the term African-American, even thought the class was (1) at a British university, (2) dealing with a British book and (3) the character was British and not related to the USA in any way. After I pointed that out to him and (honestly) asked him what term we should use and why calling someone 'black' (not 'a black', mind you, but something like 'the black guy' when there were multiple people being discussed, only one was white, and he isn't named in the book) was so offensive to him, he gave me the evil eye and just left the classroom. He was a dumb, misogynistic, homophobic rear end in a top hat anyway, so nobody missed him. Gravity Pike posted:"Black people" is more acceptable. You might be tempted to use the term "African American," but that's falling out of favor, since most black people have never been to Africa, and it's not like we go around calling white people "European Americans." I thought as much, and that line of thinking seems so much more reasonable that constantly trying to invent new, inoffensive, terms that only confuse matters. Honestly, I've lost track of what a inoffensive term is for short people/dwarfs/midgets/little people/you know what I mean. I've seen people get offended at any of them and insist on any of them. It's all very confusing. Taeke fucked around with this message at 20:25 on Jul 25, 2013 |
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Jul 25, 2013 20:16
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Mordecai Sanchez posted:Does anybody else have a messed up followers count on Instagram? Mine consistently says I have 7 more than I actually do. Don't worry, that's the NSA and FBI and various other government agencies.
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Jul 28, 2013 23:55
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VagueRant posted:On a totally unrelated note - how much of a concern is walking to places (such as your home) alone at night when you're a young adult woman? I'd say that really, really depends on the area. I've got no problem with my little sister (23 years old) roaming around our neighbourhood in the middle of the night, but that's because I live in a pretty well off area and relatively safe country. I can imagine some other places where even I wouldn't feel safe walking around in the middle of the night. I guess my point is, be a little more specific.
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Aug 6, 2013 12:54
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SIHappiness posted:In jobs where your last name is likely to be used by outsiders (police work is a good example, but so is teaching), you see the last name thing. When I was teaching, I saw coworkers who'd known each other for years say, "How's it going Mrs. Jones?" I think a lot of that was down to reflex, though - if you were mentioning Mrs. Jones to the kids (e.g. "those of you going on Mrs. Jones' field trip next week..."), you wouldn't want to call her Elaine. So it just seemed to carry over for some teachers. I have known cops who confirm that the last name thing is similarly true. I think it may also be due to carryover from sports culture, where "coach" calls everyone by last name. Your teaching example is kind of funny to me, because in my small city/town (somewhere in the Netherlands) we've got 4 secondary schools, one which I went to and later taught at, but I know plenty of people from every one of them. My experience (both from my teaching at a secondary school, but also my all my other odd jobs and professions) is that it varies quite a bit from institution to institution and company to company. At the school (second biggest in town) I went to and taught at, it was pretty much unthinkable to call a teacher by their first name as a student or as a colleague within earshot of (and especially when talking to) a student. As colleagues amongst each other we'd use our first names, though, which was something I really had to get used to. For years I'd known a teacher as Mr. Smith, never even known his first name, but now I had to remember to call him Peter. At the biggest school in town, however, it was commonly accepted for everyone to call everyone by their first names, as long as it was done respectfully, of course. There's also a pretty uptight Christian school that required strictly formal addresses (I'd guess Sir or Teacher Smith as apposed to Mister, in a rough translation), and I haven't got a clue what the agricultural school does, because I never taught there, don't really know any people from there (they're all from out of town) and I honestly couldn't give a drat. In my experience it's pretty much the same in any profession. Cultural differences can be huge on all levels, and it's not just related to the country/area/profession/whatever, although I'm sure there's certain trends, of course.
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Aug 25, 2013 00:45
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Are you sure he's doing it because he's embarrassed about going alone? Could be he just enjoys the company. It's a lot more fun to go to a movie with someone else, even if you don't know them well (you always have the movie to talk about anyway.)
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Sep 9, 2013 11:46
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I usually pick names that are quite normal but are a bit off for some reason. A barbarian named Benjamin brutally murdering goblins, a sorceress called Sally mindcontrolling everything and a thief going by Theo stealing a powerful artifact from an undead overlord just seems right. I'm probably influenced by Baldur's Gate 2, though, which was the first RPG is really got into and has a pretty notable gnome thief by the name of Jan and a misanthropic mage by the name of Edwin. God, I love that game. Edwin in particular got me into the habit of giving characters mundane names.
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Sep 11, 2013 18:22
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Namarrgon posted:Honorific seems to include titles, like 'mister' or even 'doctor'. I think oral address, or if it's also in writing, term of address is your best bet.
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Sep 23, 2013 12:57
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Doctor Albatross posted:I would very much like to write about media as a career. I've had a nice little volunteer gig writing reviews, news articles and editorials for a small US-based game site since May, but I don't want to limit my options. I'd love to cover all varieties of media. I'll be heading to university next year and am looking at what courses to pick - I'm thinking Media Studies and English would be a great place to start. There is, of course, journalism - but I'm not entirely sure which is most appropriate. Any suggestions? Aside from the obvious options you mentioned like Media Studies, English and related writing courses, I'd look into cultural studies and sociolinguistics. Cultural studies will expand your perspectives and see things in unexpected but relevant ways. Sociolinguistics (and related social, cultural and language studies) will give you a better understanding of how language, the writer, the audience, the product and its environment interact with each other. My understanding of journalism courses (at least in my country) is that they're not all that useful because it's very limited. Being able to analyse and write well generally, combined with a deep knowledge of what you write about, is much more important. For most (successful) journalists and writers I know the subject matter came first and the journalism came later. I'd say, figure out what kind of writing you want to do and take a couple of pieces you either really like, really hate, or both, and read them critically. See what makes them work, or why it doesn't and what's needed to improve them. If you want to write reviews about gadgets you won't have much use for a course about gender or racial politics, but you can see how that could be relevant when writing a review about, say, GTA V. When discussing the latest science fiction or fantasy game a familiarity (at the very least) of the latest trends in the genre (not just limited to video games, but also literature and video) is important. e: Also, they might able to give you better advice in this thread. Taeke fucked around with this message at 13:44 on Oct 9, 2013 |
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Oct 9, 2013 13:33
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Doctor Albatross posted:Glad I wasn't totally misguided! Journalism here looks like there's a LOT of political stuff, and Media Studies really seems a lot more directly applicable to my field. Thanks a bunch for the suggestions by the way, I know Media Studies and English are the most obvious choices for this sort of field, but had no idea what other areas might be applicable. I'll check out those two on the university site tomorrow! See if you can get in touch with a counselor at the English department and ask them if they can point you in the right direction. They've got a far better understanding of the courses they offer than I do (obviously) and courses (on cultural subjects, for example) can be vastly different from university to university and not at all what you expect. Just recently I dropped a course on counter culture (Marxism and derived stuff, mostly Situationism, Détournement, etc) because while my initial impression was they would focus on the literary side of things, instead there was a heavy emphasis on the visual arts, architecture, city planning and other things that I'm not interested in at all and have little use for.
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Oct 9, 2013 14:57
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For me it can get extremely vivid when I'm on the verge of falling asleep, but still conscious. I'll be half sleeping and able to fully control what I'm seeing which (at that point) I see as if it were real. I've been training it for a while now and it sometimes transitions into a fully lucid dream. It's a lot of fun.
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Nov 2, 2013 22:52
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I think it'd be retrained in a matter of minutes if the difference isn't too much. I'm sure you've thrown a ball that was lighter (or heavier) than it appeared to be at first sight. Give it a few tries to get the feel of it and you're golden.
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Nov 13, 2013 23:01
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alnilam posted:-And to add onto the fraud protection bit, the sole reason I own a credit card is because I will not use a debit card for online purchases or at shady businesses where I worry my card's info could be intercepted. If someone makes fraudulent purchases with my credit card, the company will waive those charges. With my debit card's info, even without the pin, they can buy stuff until my checking account is drained. For all online transactions you want to do with your debit card you need an authentication method, here in the Netherlands. It's either a physical device, which you have to insert your card into, enter your pin and a number provided through the bank's website which will then give a response number according to some mathematical magic I don't understand, or it's linked to your phone and you get a code texted to you which you have to put in. It's always felt quite secure and I use it quite often, from online banking to ordering pizza. I've only used a credit card maybe five or so times (one of which was to register here) and I had to use my dad's because I don't even have one.
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Nov 21, 2013 17:34
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Baron Bifford posted:I've never watched Game of Thrones and I don't know the signifcance of the "winter is coming¨ catchphrase. What does it mean? From what I understand, seasons last years and years (decades, maybe? I dunno) so winter is kind of a big deal and a terrible time, especially because there's this huge (mountain range scale) wall in the north keeping out all sorts of winter baddies (zombies and the likes, I guess) which will come south.
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Nov 23, 2013 19:44
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They have two distinct meanings. `The company effected the policy` means that they put it into effect, bringing it about. `The company affected the policy` means they influenced it in some way, changing it. An effect is the result of something, an affect is an influence on something.
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Nov 26, 2013 15:38
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regulargonzalez posted:I remember reading in Discover or Scientific American a couple years back that some higher primates were shown to possibly have a sense of humor -- chimps, maybe apes? -- but that it was too complex for cats and dogs and the like. Things like this always make me wonder about emotions, experiences, whatever you want to call it that we're not sophisticated to understand.
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Dec 8, 2013 19:13
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regulargonzalez posted:Non-US folk: Does Humpty Dumpty exist in your culture? In the Netherlands only as part of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass and Charles Perrault's Mother Goose Tales, so it isn't exactly common knowledge, and especially not as a children's rhyme.
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Dec 16, 2013 00:00
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Crankit posted:What's the fastest way to develop telekinetic powers? Pick up the remote for your television.
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Jan 23, 2014 13:21
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Related to the whole epilepsy discussion, isn't it also true that driving past regularly spaced trees while the sun is shining through them can cause seizures or space you out and cause accidents? I've heard or read that before and while it sounds legit (and I have experienced it being a tad more difficult not to be distracted in such a situation) it also sounds like it could be an urban myth.
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Feb 11, 2014 12:47
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Orange_Lazarus posted:Is there a decent alternative to a lint roller? My wife uses this little handheld machine that either pinches or cuts the stuff off but it's really time consuming and not good for when I'm on the go. Get a Schticky.
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Mar 5, 2014 23:06
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I've suddenly gotten a message from YouTube to verify I'm not a robot when I try to visit the main site. It's asking me to fulfill a captcha with the message that apparently there's been some unusual traffic from my computer. Is this legit and safe or did my computer/account get compromised in some way? Gmail (linked to my YouTube account) and google are both fine, it's just when I try to go to youtube itself:YouTube posted:About this page The odd thing is that the "Why did this happen?" links back to the same page, so I'm a bit weary.
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Mar 12, 2014 18:52
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It seems to have resolved itself. We may never know what was up.
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Mar 12, 2014 19:13
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My mom asked me to figure out what kind of flowers these are growing in her garden:  I'm sure you guys can give me an answer.
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Mar 25, 2014 13:00
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poopkitty posted:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeysuckle Doesn't look like it. This is in the Netherlands, by the way.
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Mar 25, 2014 14:11
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Looks like that's it. Thanks a lot.
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Mar 25, 2014 15:02
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