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[RedKing]

Just watched a session of our state Senate in action. Good God, how did we end up with this for a government?

Bunch of middle-aged white guy assholes, futilely opposed by a handful of black women with little skill in public speaking or debate.

Hm, do you think making public speaking and debate classes mandatory for those in office and repeating every x number of years would be a good idea?

Replace "those in office" with "everyone" and make the classes free of charge, then yes. Yes, it would.


Although, as my SO pointed out at dinner when I was raging about this same point, it's probably pointless. None of those assholes was going to be swayed by anything anyone said anyways.

[Frumple]

... which would make the next step enthusiastic arboreal discourse, I guess?

[RedKing]

Poo flinging. One of the higher art forms of political discourse among primates.

[mainiac]

The way to make the internet anonymous is to attach a stick to every computer that will whack people at the request of anyone else.  That way the desire to hunt down strangers in real life will be gone.

[nenjin]

The way to make the internet anonymous is to attach a stick to every computer that will whack people at the request of anyone else.  That way the desire to hunt down strangers in real life will be gone.

You clearly haven't thought this through. If you give human beings a button, studies show they push that button. All that'd do is reintroduce a low impact version of pre-Internet discourse to the Internet.

As an aside, last week I learned the break down of the German word for suggestion. It's Vorschlag. When you break it down, "Vor" is before, and "schlag" is some kind of violent action like to hit or strike. So in context, the word means "what I say before I start hitting you."

[mainiac]

...that's the point.

[Helgoland]

The way to make the internet anonymous is to attach a stick to every computer that will whack people at the request of anyone else.  That way the desire to hunt down strangers in real life will be gone.

You clearly haven't thought this through. If you give human beings a button, studies show they push that button. All that'd do is reintroduce a low impact version of pre-Internet discourse to the Internet.

As an aside, last week I learned the break down of the German word for suggestion. It's Vorschlag. When you break it down, "Vor" is before, and "schlag" is some kind of violent action like to hit or strike. So in context, the word means "what I say before I start hitting you."

And for semantic discussions, we have the "Nachschlagewerk" - the dictionary. "Nach" is after, "schlag" you already mentioned, and a "werk" is (somewhat archaically) something for a specific purpose. In context, it can be taken to mean "the thing I'll hit you with after our discussion".

[RedKing]

The German language is basically just a mechanism for being very precise about when you are going to start hitting someone.

[Descan]

This is why I'm trying to learn German.

[RedKing]

But you're Canadian. If anything, you need a language that is very precise about when you're NOT hitting someone. And has twenty different words for snow.

[Helgoland]

The German language is basically just a mechanism for being very precise about when you are going to start hitting someone.

Likost, if I recall, translates to "A face badly in need of a fist." So, yes.

What's likost?

[nenjin]

Now I'm wondering that too. It doesn't seem to have a literal translation in English.

[Descan]

But you're Canadian. If anything, you need a language that is very precise about when you're NOT hitting someone. And has twenty different words for snow.

Hey, I'm already a mess of contradictions! A Canadian Viking?! Come on!

[Helgoland]

You know, once you learn German you can be the friendly Canadian counterpart to the Teknoviking.

[nenjin]

Mapleviking.