Messages

We already checked the glovebox. That’s where we got the Nirvana tape from.

Wordle 454 X/6*

🟩🟨🟨⬛⬛
🟩⬛🟨🟨⬛
🟩🟩⬛🟩⬛
🟩🟩⬛🟩🟩
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This is the second time this has happened to me in the space of a few days. I’ve been having a bit of a nightmare. Gone are the glory days.

>Slow down just enough to make sure to safely arrive at the meeting point

I second this. Won’t need any accidents. Plus we can be more careful going into the meeting place. Make sure we’re not being followed, get the lay of the land, etc.

I’ve changed my previous vote to “sister” too (that’s three now, so hopefully enough to move the game on).

Happy Birthday, Limpingfish. Hope you’re having a good craic.

Ok try not to laugh

Yeaaaah, I failed this challenge.

Are we supposed to input an answer to the question rather than a command? If so:

> This person is your apprentice sister.

@cat Yeah that winds me up too, especially when they’ve put text over other text, or when they put some text at the bottom and the closed captions go right over it. And you can’t pause them either.

@Snarky

An "artist-slash-art director" is someone who is both.

Why not just use “and”? That’s what it’s there for.

[edit - actually I can think of a reason why not. Using “and” could be ambiguous. Saying “an artist and art director saw the post” could be interpreted as two people. But I don’t think that’s very likely as long as you don’t put “an” before “art director” (“an artist and an art director saw my post” definitely sounds like two people.)]

Better yet, they could have used “artist-cum-art-director”. True, it tends to includes the sense that he became an art director after being an artist for some time but it also allows for him to still be an artist as well. Maybe they just wanted to avoid using the word “cum”.

I know several people who do stuff like accessing facebook by typing "Facebook" into google, and clicking the first link, so... 

I literally accessed Instagram this way today… only it was Bing, not Google.

This is petty, but it grinds my gears when people literally write "something-slash-something" or "quote unquote". Those expressions are meant for spoken communication, but it makes zero sense to write all that when the keyboard you're typing on already has slash and quote symbols. "She's a developer-slash-game designer", no, you mean "developer/game designer". "He's a quote-unquote genius", no, you mean "He's a 'genius'". 

I can’t say i’ve come across this but it would grind my gears too. It’s not like typing “period” or “full-stop” at the end of a sentence because that actually performs a function beyond just typing the actual symbol. But the examples you gave don’t do anything that just typing the symbols doesn’t already do, so yeah, that would annoy me too.

I understand that “nucular” is easier to say than “nuclear”, and I’m not surprised a lot of regular people mispronounce it… but why do even people whose very JOB is to talk about these issues STILL get it wrong?

This is just one example of a phonemenon that grinds my gears. People who pronounce words differently or wrongly, even though (or sometimes even because of) their job is directly related to the word in question.

My beef is not with the mispronunciation of “nuclear” itself. It’s a very common mispronunciation, but last time I checked it was not yet considered an accepted alternative. So at the very least those people who are in fields such as international affairs, physics, etc, where having to say the word frequently is part of their job, should make an effort to say it properly on TV, podcasts, etc.

This is looking great. I’ll try and have a play of chapter one tomorrow, if I can carve out a bit of time.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

Spoiler

Wordle 402 X/6*

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Got my 100 streak!



The average score from those 100 is 3.97.

That 101 is from back when I accidentally cleared my cache and then messed up the first game after doing that.

2:nd try today!

was that #389? I also got #389 in two shots.

I’ve been getting a lot of 3’s recently too, but I spoiled it today (#390) with a 6.

Still, my streak is currently 90, so I’ll be aiming for that big 100.

@Arjon, where can one watch Magpie Murders? I enjoyed the book but had no idea they’d made a TV series out of it.

I’m under no illusion that none of my takes are bad takes. I’m no doubt full of them. As is most this thread. I thought this was supposed to be a place to dump our stupid little grumpy peeves, no matter how irrational. I agree I could have dialed it down with language like “childish”, but I’m playing along with the grumpy Grindy-Geary tone of the thread. I’m certainly not intending to attack anyone.

That said, I still stand by the point I was (apparently badly) trying to make.

To refer to Snarky’s spicy food analogy. My beef is not so much with “I don’t like spicy food”. (That is a preference, and I already went to pains in my previous post to clarify that I’m not against people having different preferences.) It’s more the people who say “I don’t like curry *because it’s hot*”. The fact that curry is generally designed to be somewhat hot does not mean people who don’t want to eat hot food should dismiss an entire cuisine. There are some great dishes with little to no hotness that won’t burn your head off, but that still fall under the category of curry, and I feel like those people are missing out on some interesting flavours.

How’s that for a bad take-away?

Today’s was a bitch. Just scraped through:

Wordle 375 6/6*

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Spoiler

⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ RUINS (because I’d just watched ‘The Ruins’ and it contains two vowels)
⬛⬛⬛🟨⬛ BLOAT (because it was the first word to mind that contains different vowels)
⬛⬛🟨⬛⬛ CHAFE (because it contains an A and the last vowel, E. No luck)
🟩🟩⬛⬛⬛ GAMMA (I had become convinced the word would have two As. I was wrong)
🟩🟩⬛⬛🟩 GAPPY (I nearly went for GAWKY here but talked myself out of it as it’s not a common word)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 GAWKY (I was about ready to accept defeat but it was the only word left I could think of, and it worked)

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It grinds my gears a little when people say they don't watch horror "because it's scary". I mean there's so much wrong with that excuse. Firstly, not all horror is actually that scary. There are so many films in the genre which I would not say particularly scared me but which I still loved because they were very interesting (Hereditary, for example) or just fun. Secondly, is being scared so bad? I'm in my late-thirties and I still sometimes get a bit nervous flushing the toilet at night after watching a horror film. That's great, that means the film did its job. To avoid a good film because "it's scary" is childish. In fact its worse than childish because even children have the guts to mess about with seances and stuff before they're old enough to know ghosts aren't real.

(I'm aware my complaint doesn't take into account grown adults who still think ghosts are real and avoid horror out of genuine spiritual fear. I think these people are missing out. I'm sometimes jealous of these people because horror films - especially ghost stories and exorcism horrors - must be that much more effective on them, if they allow themselves to watch them.)

The only group I can forgive are people who have genuine trauma that can be triggered by the themes often found in horror movies. I wouldn't want to force anyone to watch something that could trigger PTSD or something. Having said that, I'm pretty sure a lot of us horror-lovers have traumas of our own that actually drew us to the genre in the first place. Also, I get that some people with weak hearts might have to avoid films that might startle them

I also understand that people are squeamish of blood and gore, and I can fully get why some people don't want to watch (e.g.) the Saw franchise. But that's not a reason to avoid the entire horror genre. And again, the Saw films aren't really scary, they're just gross (and fun).

Like I said about the pineapple pizza, everyone's entitled to their preferences, and I'm not trying to tell people what to watch.  It's just the "...because it's scary" part that I have beef with. That is not a good excuse.

Today was quite tricky, actually. It took me 5 guesses

Spoiler

my 4th being DRINK, so almost there.

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Ditto to this exact experience. It was a little frustrating.

The current one,371, I got in 3 guesses and was pleased with how I arrived at it.

How ridiculous. I never got why the ‘pineapple on pizza’ thing became such a debate. People either like a thing or they don’t. People only have such strong opinions about it because it somehow arbitrarily became a ‘the thing everyone has to broadcast their opinion about’. There’s another universe somewhere exactly like this one except everybody debates whether or not you should be allowed put cinnamon in a latte (something I hate but enough people seem to enjoy).