Joined the Mayqueeze.

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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Has there been a feature film starring somebody who came up through the influencer game that enough people here would have heard of to be able to answer this question? I can’t think of any. Can anyone else?

    Talent is not necessarily a prerequisite for a long acting career. Exhibit A: Arnold Schwarzenegger. So maybe some TikTokers who act out silly mini one-person plays have a leg up on some established names in Hollywood.

    Also, TV and the movie industry are in trouble. Receding commercial revenues and the age of streaming and not going to the movies are hurting them badly. Going after some influencers may be more of a fight for survival, to make money off of younger demographics, than a veritable search for acting talent.










  • There are two views on this: language creates grammar after the fact, those are rules, we need to stick to these rules, and this be the hill I die on.

    The other view is more liberal. Native speakers don’t care about these rules and naturally deviate from some. Not all, not all at once, and not always to an extent that is recognized by the majority of speakers. But occasionally, certain uses make it. The use of the past tense in constructions that by the laws of grammar should require the past participle is a feature of Black American English. The popularity of hiphop and rap have spread this all over the world. With the now much derided term “woke” it has even reached other languages.

    By heart I’m a narrow minded stickler for the rules myself. The nonsensical use of “literally” still makes me mad. But that horse is so far out of the barn you can barely see it on the horizon. Fighting the fight for clean past tense/past participle separation may be one against windmills.

    English as a Germanic language comes from a protolanguage that probably only had irregular verbs in the vein of sing-sang-sung. Over time, and probably out of desperation by people who needed to learn it as a second language via migration and mingling, the verbs we now consider regular (team -ed) came about later. Language changes. English is living proof with its spelling making no sense at all and clear influences of Viking and Norman invasions and the spread around the world via the Empire. American English made spelling changes. Indian (Asia) English developed its own unique characteristics that may deviate from the King’s version. There is such a thing as EU English where you can see what happens when mostly non-natives go to town in it.

    Grammar came after the spoken version. It’s like a constitution that can be changed by quiet, gradual consensus.








  • I am going to go all Goodwin Godwin (edited) here: I just yesterday heard a snippet of a voice recording of Hitler discussing the Finnish winter war with their PM. The recording wasn’t supposed to happen, somebody forgot to hit stop on the recorder and then stashed it away. The man sounded like just another guy at the bar.

    To varying degrees this probably applies to all heads of state and government. If they don’t derive any advantage from being the bully in the interaction and they’re reasonably sure only trusted ears are listening they talk normally.

    I remember Obama being caught on a hot mic at a summit talking with then Russian president at the grace of Putin, Medvedev, saying something like: “I have the midterms coming up. Tell Vladimir that after that I can cut him some more leeway.” That’s the kind of horse trading we’re not hearing about normally. But it happens, and in normal language.

    Dictators may have a much smaller circle of trusted ears. So Putin and Kim probably don’t go full locker room: “So, Vlad, my homie, you’re really running a fucking meat grinder in the donbass, aren’t you!” - “Fuck you, your starving dwarf soldiers are also ending up in the sausage, motherfucker.” And then they laugh and pat each other on the back and order shots. But I’m sure they make fun of the orange.