Roundup
Once, again, there’s just too much going on to do full justice to all of it. So here’s another roundup.
(1) Fani Willis, Trump’s Georgia nemesis, is in trouble herself for corruption of various kinds. Ace deals with some of it here in his usual – um – forthright way. See also this.
(2) The Biden administration tried to come for your appliances, but a ruling has stopped them, at least for the moment. From the opinion:
The court’s opinion also points out that there is “ample evidence” to support that DOE’s dishwasher standards actually accomplish the opposite of their intent, stating that “they make Americans use more energy and more water for the simple reason that purportedly ‘energy efficient’ appliances do not work.”
Here, here! Somewhere in the archives of this blog there’s a post I wrote about how low-flow toilets often make people flush at least twice, thus negating the devices’ stated intent of saving water.
(3) Representative Jayapal says Trump incited an erection. Maybe they can take him off the ballot for that.
(4) More on Austin, whom it turns out was being treated for prostate cancer.
(5) Women’s groups mostly still seem to think that raping, mutilating, torturing, and murdering Israeli women is okay.
(6) Trump isn’t allowed to speak in his own defense during closing arguments at his fraud of a New York fraud trial.
And then there’s this…which I’m not even sure I can begin to understand….
“Democrats’ star J6 witness waived attorney privilege, opening door for GOP inquiry, memos show;
“Congressional Republicans looking into Cassidy Hutchinson’s key testimony to J6 committee’s final reports now have evidence she changed her story midway through the probe.”—
https://justthenews.com/government/congress/satdemocrats-star-j6-witness-waived-attorney-privilege-opening-door-gop-inquiry
Hasn’t she already perjured herself already, way back with the Trump-steering wheel accusation?
Sounds like a hoax…or a trick…or some sort of subversive exercise.
(Cuz otherwise, why would she do it? But I guess we’ll soon find out….)
Trump can’t testify in his own defense? Even CC™ may find that problematic, unconstitutional.
The Great Orange Whale must not be heard on the pane of death (ruled the “judge”)?
1. This will be overlooked and dismissed as not relevant.
2. Low Flush are required here in CO. I just spent $2,500 on plumbing repairs. Had to have waste water lines under the House redone.
3. No comment. But getting rid of Trump does cause this in Dems.
4. I had Prostate Cancer (hope it doesn’t return). I had Radioactive Seeds implanted around the Prostate. I was out same day, but during the procedure you are under sedation.
(My experiences traveling while being radioactive are for another time)
5. Just can’t comprehend these people.
6. Maybe it is a good thing he doesn’t speak. He does not have a filter.
2. I see you used the expression: Here, here!. But I’m more familiar with it as Hear, hear! I admire your precision with language so I wonder if your intention was deliberate.
When I searched the distinction online, the following reference stated that the original usage was Hear, hear; but also identified that Here, here was trending in online polls as the more popular usage.
https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/feature/Here-here-or-hear-hear#:~:text=When%20you%20agree%20with%20someone,%E2%80%9D%20or%20%E2%80%9CHear%20Hear%E2%80%9D%3F&text=The%20correct%20term%20is%2C%20%E2%80%9Chear,eloquent%20speaker%20has%20to%20say!%E2%80%9D
Ted Fitch: I’ve always thought it was “hear” and that “here” was wrong. When I read this post I had a bit of an “Et tu, Neo?” reaction. 🙂
I can’t remember whether “another think coming” vs “another thing coming” has been discussed here. May have been on my own blog. It never occurred to me until I saw someone use “thing” in print that it was not “think.” To me “think” makes sense in a way that “thing” doesn’t: “If you think that, you’ve got another think coming.” But I asked around and found a number of people who have always thought it was “thing.”
I’m kind of weird about stuff like this.
Um, shouldn’t that be, “Paine of death”?
(Or perhaps better, “Hale of death”?….)
– – – – – – – –
Is it possible we’re—or some of us are—merely confusing, perhaps even intentionally, “Hear! Hear!” (or “Hear Ye! Hear Ye”) with “Now, Now” (with echoes of “Here and Now”), a mistake even Bugs Bunny, that roguish intellectual, might have made…
Mac,
It’s definitely ‘think’. But I hear ‘thing’ misused this way all the time. Similar to ‘six of one, half dozen… um, you know…’
Reminds me of my son at three, thinking chocolate was ‘Choc Lick’ and Hide and Go Seek was ‘Hide and Go Sneak’.
Malapropisms. Cute when it’s a kid doing it.
@ Molly Brown > “It’s definitely ‘think’. But I hear ‘thing’ misused this way all the time.”
Agreed, and that’s not the only one. Don’t get me started —
When people have only heard a proverb or idiom, and have never seen it written, they tend to default to what they think they heard that makes sense to them.
One of our sons, when very young, thought he was wearing tunafish shoes, as he was at that time unacquainted with the word “tennis.”
“Cute when it’s a kid doing it.” — understandable when it’s a young person in casual conversation — inexcusable when it’s professional pundits.
“Biden”‘s Polish student is a quick study…
“Poland: Police Raid Presidential Palace to Arrest Conservative MPs”—
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/poland-police-raid-presidential-palace-to-arrest-conservative-mps/
(Have to give the Eurotrash-U a whole lot of credit too…)
THIS is the trend.
(And in Canada, Poilievre had better watch his back…)
Misunderstood figures of speech have become more plentiful with declining literacy. “Stark raven mad” is one that I ran across a few years ago. “Take for granite.” One I never ever would have imagined: “It’s a doggie-dog world.”
Comments on this post contain more examples:
https://www.lightondarkwater.com/2021/09/a-new-kind-of-crazy.html
Some of these make a quirky sort of sense, which I guess is part of the reason that they occur. Some could be auto-correct substitutions that the writer didn’t notice.
All these misuses of speech must be reigned in!
SHIREHOME, re. your #4. Let me guess. Police car drove past you and did a u-turn in traffic to pull you over, lights and siren?
Oldest son had that happen to him on the way home from getting his overactive thyroid seeded. Who knew many Highway Patrol cruisers are equipped with radiation detectors? Must be why they probably gave you a document at the time you were seeded.
For the original 1~6, Molly’s “Cute when it’s a kid doing it.” seems fitting. Too bad there were no kids involved in any of them. Pathetic when it’s an adult doing it.
Ps, Neo, thanks for the 10 minute edit timer.
But I stand by my comment yesterday about ballet.
huxley: 🙂
With the emergence of AI, how come we still have auto-cucumber problems?!
Right now at The Daily Beast…
“Officials Failed to Track More Than $1 Billion in Ukraine Aide”
I note how certain ai flag words in other languages,
I’m not a lawyer, but….. I see the objection to Trump making his own closing argument. The closing is not the same as testimony. He was free to testify at the trial, and to be cross-examined by opposing counsel; the closing argument would be a speech, unhinged from court rules or introduced evidence.
His lack of self-awareness causes him to ignore his propensity to go “off topic” and destroy his earlier message. I cannot understand how, over the past 8 years, he has not thought “Boy, I’ll never do that again…” For a smart guy, he does some dumb things sometimes.
court rules, thats amusing the judge discarded any contrary valuation of his property, apriori, he relied on the testimony of a known multiple perjurist like Michael Cohen, based on an insane legal theory conjured up by a former DOJ employee Matthew Colangelo, maybe that was the other frame, with the crazy stripper fronted by Avenattti, who can tell anymore, his own statements taking responsibility were dismissed out of hand,
Another Mike:
Trump wasn’t planning to make THE closing argument at the trial in place of his lawyer. He was planning to speak during the process of closing arguments, in addition to his lawyers’ summations.
And it turns out he did manage to get a few remarks in, when the judge asked him a question.
“Misunderstood figures of speech have become more plentiful with declining literacy. ”
I remember a doctor talking about patients who mangle illness names in interesting ways. One of them said he had “Sick as hell anemia.”
thats not even close,
https://twitter.com/AcrossTheBay/status/1745518127582990847
No Jerry. Actually a bit more serious, and comical at the same time.
My Wife and I came in on an International Flight from UK to Phoenix on the way to Denver (don’t ask). As we were exiting to get our bags to send them on to Denver we had to get a check by Border Patrol (I think). This is a 11 PM. Going fine, then he put his hand on something on his hip and ask if anyone had been near any Radiation. Well yes I said. Told him what that was, but by then he wasn’t listening. He took me to the BP enclosed area and the Door closed behind me, locked from the inside. The two agents at the desk ask me about the Radiation, I told them and offered to show them a letter from my Doc. They said “So What” basically. Oh by the way they were armed and not friendly. They did a scan but the scanner wasn’t working. They made some calls, got new software, did the scan then had to call a Doc to interpret the results. This is now about Midnight. Finally Doc says yes this is what it is – of course it was the same thing I told them and what was in the letter. Let me go. My Wife in the mean time was on the other side of the locked door, not really knowing what was going on. We were rebooked on a flight out, but of course our luggage was missing. Got it the following day.
Sorry for the long post.
Mac: those are abominations. I recoil. I really do.
I saw someone use in print the other day some sentence like “we have bid farewell” to whatever-it-was. Irregular verbs are a pain, I know, but dear God… no.
SHIREHOME, this type of crap is why I haven’t flown since 2008 and probably never will again.
Not long ago I read a comment that ended with ‘Wah La’. Took me a minute but the context lead me to ‘Voila’. Laughter ensued. But actually, I was heartened that this young person had actually heard someone use the expression and was trying to incorporate it into their vocabulary. Maybe they even knew it was French!
Small victories.
I’m sure Huxley can appreciate.
@ Philip Sells > “I saw someone use in print the other day some sentence like “we have bid farewell” to whatever-it-was. Irregular verbs are a pain, I know, but dear God… no.”
Do NOT get me started on the disappearance of irregular verb tenses.
Or subjunctives.
I mentally substitute the correct tense in everything from high-end on-line “magazines” through comments on random blog posts.
The commenters of a certain age do best. Ahem.
Did the AP put out a style-book with the degraded forms or something?
Rhetorical question.
People do not read properly written documents, and are not taught grammar in school, and just don’t know what is correct — and likely don’t care.
Huxley: I suspect that CHAT will get the irregulars right, if you can set up a test harness for the requests.
@ Mac > “Comments on this post contain more examples”
Those were delightful — “sorta speak.”
Some of the commenters called the misused words malaprops, but another useful term, especially for verbal confusions, is mondegreens.
Wikipedia: “A mondegreen (/?m?nd???ri?n/) is a mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase in a way that gives it a new meaning.[1] Mondegreens are most often created by a person listening to a poem or a song; the listener, being unable to hear a lyric clearly, substitutes words that sound similar and make some kind of sense.[2][3] The American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term in 1954, recalling a childhood memory of her mother reading the Scottish ballad “The Bonny Earl of Murray” (from Thomas Percy’s 1765 book Reliques of Ancient English Poetry), and mishearing the words “layd him on the green” as “Lady Mondegreen”.[4]
…
An unintentionally incorrect use of similar-sounding words or phrases, resulting in a changed meaning, is a malapropism. If there is a connection in meaning, it may be called an eggcorn. If a person stubbornly continues to mispronounce a word or phrase after being corrected, that person has committed a mumpsimus.[72]”
I had never heard of eggcorn and mumpsimus.
Wiki gives lots of humorous examples of all the varieties.
Learn something every day!
My favorite musical mondegreens:
” ‘scuse me while I kiss this guy” in Foxy Lady
“you and me and Leslie” in Groovin’
> Somewhere in the archives of this blog there’s a post I wrote about how low-flow toilets often make people flush at least twice, thus negating the devices’ stated intent of saving water.
I consider it a rare occurrence that I only have to flush twice. Low-flow toilets are insanely wasteful, and because of them, I have to intervene with a plunger and/or toilet snake a ton of times. And yet, if I use the toilet in the office (normally I work from home), there’s never a problem and a single flush almost always works.
This is just one of an infinitude of examples of the government using regulation to achieve an end, which makes everyone’s life worse, and has the opposite of its intended effect.