"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
Note to aspiring writers: at least learn to write halfway sensible sentences before considering a career change, mmmK? For example, the writer of this lil gem among others in just the first few paragraphs of his “magnum opus,” needs to go back to Remedial English for a refresher:
“His secrets come under threat when he starts receiving anonymous messages.” Please complete that thought. Or. . . perhaps it’s better left incomplete and the rest of the book unread. Yeh, that’s the ticket.
Building an AR-15 Under 5 Pounds
Nice article, and reads like a nice build. I do lack a bit of confidence in their math, though, given that the build they were comparing to was 5lb5oz and ~$3,500 while the 4lb13oz build was “slightly more than $1,800, nearly half the price of the carbine in the article that spawned this exercise.”
“[N]early half the price”? No, slightly MORE than half the price. “Nearly” implies “almost” or “not quite,” and $1,800 is more than half of $3,500.
Numbers. Language. Not strong suits for this writer.
To properly understand the many different fantasy “genders” that have come about in recent years, a trip down etymology lane might be helpful:
“gender (n.)
c. 1300, “kind, sort, class, a class or kind of persons or things sharing certain traits,” from Old French gendre, genre “kind, species; character; gender” (12c., Modern French genre), from stem of Latin genus (genitive generis) “race, stock, family; kind, rank, order; species,” also “(male or female) sex,” from PIE root *gene- “give birth, beget,” with derivatives referring to procreation and familial and tribal groups. ”
When speaking of _mankind_**, then, one can speak now of three specific “genders”:
male
female
batsh*t crazy.
The last class is the catch-all for all the delusional folks who are in denial of reality and claim to be some weird fantasy “gender.”
___________________________
**”mankind” here is a poke in the eye to snowflake “batsh*t crazies”
Economics. *sigh* Just another field that HAS to use words in idiosyncratic ways in order to attempt to make its jargon less acceptable to the hoi polloi. Example: in common speech “rival” and “competitor” are synonyms. In Economics, however, a good (yeh, another one, but with strong etymological roots) is rival if its use or consumption by one party denies another party its use or consumption.
Fugetaboutit.
Choose your grandparents wisely. *heh*
I am very fortunate to have only one prescription med. (At my age, that’s more than a bit atypical, I know; I’m very, very fortunate.) The thing is, my Wonder Woman is prescribed the same med, same dosage, as a part of her _wide array_ of prescription meds.
She gets all hers from a local pharmacy using her employer-provided health insurance prescription drug benefit. I make a trip ~15 miles out of town once a year to pick up a year’s supply (Yeh, I brow-beat my doctor into writing it for 360 tabs, which–given my roughly 80% compliance–means I have about eight months’ backup supply, after all these years on the same med) at a discount pharmacy, using no insurance.
My cost is 1/6 her cost, after her co-pay.
(The point isn’t where she likes to buy her prescription meds. It’s still pretty cheap, so I don’t really care where she buys her meds. Wherever she’s comfortable doing so is just fine by me. It’s her decision, after all, anyway.)
As I said up front, I consider myself VERY fortunate to only “require” one prescription med for a condition I could take care of myself, and used to, with about 20 minutes of slow, controlled breathing twice a day, but I told my doctor that was just boring and requested a chemical solution.
I took GREAT care selecting my grandparents. . .
All I really have to deal with concerning health issues are creeping arthritis and this damnable tinitus. Oh, well, for the one I can lie to myself and say that pain is just weakness leaving the body. It doesn’t work, but it makes me laugh at myself. For the other, well, I just call my tinitus “the voices in my head” (Oh! those dulcet, belltoned ‘voices’! #gagamaggot), and blame it for my various insanities.
*heh*
On another site, I read of a gal’s woes ordering lingerie from Amazon. Seems some bras that were delivered were. . . not exactly as ordered.
Off-the-wall and around the corner. . . and since I don’t wear a bra (*heh*), probably not germane, but. . .
I noticed recently that one of my Wonder Woman’s discarded bras might make a couple of good facemasks, with perhaps some added filtration material. Something to think about? *heh*
Aaaannnd,
Neon colors and psychedelic designs (the aforementioned gal’s complaint). . . Jimmy Durante said it best:
Sometimes, text written by a subliterate writer can lead to fun stuff. A silly, 20-something self-pub subliterate writer (whose “editorial” helpers are no more literate than he is) provided such a brief moment, before I ashcanned his stupid book.
“. . .tells me that a newly discovered landmark was uncovered by the storm and that the ruin is not in any kind of withered [sic] state.”
Oh, my. The subliterate writer was probably groping for “weathered,” but since
a. his ears are apparently dull and
b. he just flat-out doesn’t know the differences between “wither” and “weather,”
. . .he went with a near homophone that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
But. . . then I paused and thought of the different meanings of wither, and their etymologies. (Yes, because I spent much of my youth reading dictionaries–and still do to this day, for that matter–and have a wide range of interests in disparate fields, I knew that the noun “wither” and the verb “wither” came from two very different roots. *shrugs* So? 🙂 ) So I had a bit of personal entertainment contemplating a horse’s withers and the withering of a plant.
And then, back to the Badly Written Text to a further description of the “ruin”:
“In fact, it doesn’t look “ruined” at all! It appears to be in perfect condition!”
*head-desk* Then why, oh why, did the “eminent archaeologist” initially refer to it as a “ruin”?
Because the writer had no appropriate vocabulary to describe it else, of course.
Well, this lil incident combined with four others in the two pages since I picked the book back up to convince me I needed to delete it from my library entirely, so as not to even accidentally pick it back up.
Oh, well. At least I managed to get all the way to 4% of the thing this time. . .
Just re-read our town ordinances on one short topic (long story; just suffice it to say I was right, and citing the ordinance did the trick 😉 ). In the very short topic covered by the ordinance, I noted six grammar/usage errors that might affect some other folks and invalidate those portions as the subsection applies to them.
Will I tell the town council what those errors are and what the implications might well be? Heck no! The section involved is stupid and invasive and needs to be challenged by someone who’s being oppressed by “The Man.” *heh* If I hear of someone who’s been cited under that subsection, I will point out to them the errors that make the language nonsensical.
I’ve needed intermittent breaks from the flood cleanup, and so I selected an Indie-published space opera series to read for that purpose, forsaking all other reading–light, inconsequential, fun.
But fun marred by faulty execution. Oh, the plots are typical light space opera and the characters stalwart heroes and evil villains, etc. All Flash Gordon/Doc Smith Lensman (without the superman/superwoman aspect) type plots, etc. IOW, just good light fun.
Except. The writer bragged on his editor. That’s an almost sure sign that both the writer and his editor are not formally literate, and have a disconnect between their verbal fluency and subliteracy, evidenced in writer errors of grammar, punctuation, word misusage, and more that survive the “editing” process to publication.
And that’s a shame, because the books are otherwise quite enjoyable, light fare, something the writer stated he was aiming for.
Oh, well. It’s still better than discarding soaked boxes of books, ripping up and discarding carpeting, bleaching walls and floors, and more. And. . . all the errors actually provide a distraction of their own. *heh*
OK, one example of so very FREAKING many:
“A bright blaze of color shown from a split in the corpse’s suit.”
Shone (although “shined” would be preferable) or showed? Which did the writer intend with his misuse of “shown”? One can guess, but unless the writer (or at least his editor) improves his written vocabulary, one can only guess.
#gagamaggot
It simply conforms to the universe’s laws.
We needed rain, so I washed the cars.
It worked! (As usual.)