This is so mind numbingly fucking stupid. I have linguistics training and my dickhead uncle tried to pull this one on me. He’s never tried to flex his grammar on me since.

Next time this shit happens to you, try this trick.

In the above question, the word “can” could be interpreted in one of two senses.

• One is the deontic sense, which denotes permission or approval.
• The other is the epistemic sense, which denotes capability.

As a competent English speaker, you will easily infer that vampire is using the deontic “can”.

The confusion seems to derive from the recipient’s inability to understand that modals in English grammar can possess different senses depending on context.

It is worth noting that the deontic “can” has been documented in writings for hundreds of years. It is a normal and standard element of English grammar. Case in point: the idiot trying to flex on you knows what you mean but they’re pretending they don’t.

It’s not my problem that you don’t understand basic English grammar. Maybe you should go read a few books and educate yourself.

Did you ever contrast it with Brave New World? In many ways the latter is more disturbing since the masses are kept busy with frivolity to question their world.

Their rationale was, get this, “people don’t know who their councillors are”

Like holy shit nobody ever knows who their local MLCs or senators are, but are we scrapping hare clarke? No.

It’s a sleazy tactic to increase the impact of major parties.

For a sec I thought this was a chrorpleth of how much people were paid to make choropleths

They really like being in opposition, the Vic coalition

🙈

I think this is a really interesting question. To me, if I hear a claim, I might say I accept it as knowledge or believe it as a worldview.

For example, I get irked by people asking if I “believe” in climate change. To me, it’s not a matter of belief: there is a body of knowledge being scrutinised by extraordinarily smart and talented people. I accept the existence of and need to mitigate climate change.

On the other hand, do I believe we’re not alone in the universe? I can’t rely on knowledge, it’s a lot of intuition.

I wish that naked TLDs were a thing. Like https://com/ or https://london/

I’m just a casual observer, but do white cats get visible scratches more easily? And are they easier fix up?

Some car models look fantastic in white, sort of going for that mid-2000s futurism feel.

I used to love forums back in the day, but I must say I’ve really gotten over the format of the medium. It promotes email-like long form responses with space used up with avatar images, handles and signature blocks. Nested replies become a nightmare steer several layer’s and you’re cooked on mobile.

Would love a Lemmy-like plugin to parse vBulletin forums. Endless scroll for topics, minimal non-content fluff, easy and quick replies. (The irony of this reply length isn’t lost on me. Most of my replies are short, promise!)

Thanks for the suggestion I’ll follow it up!

I remember HATING clothes for Christmas. But now it’s all I want (so long as it’s my style). I don’t want random useless shit at Christmas, I want stuff I can use for years and wear out.

Thank you for reminding me of this one! I keep forgetting to try it out

I remember reading in Morgan Spurlock’s Don’t Eat This Book about a guy who worked at a crematorium. He stopped eating McDonald’s after they cremated a morbidly obese person and the smell was indistinguishable to the McDonald’s smell.

Isn’t it fortunate that we have robust user-centred privacy frameworks to protect people from corporate overreach. 🙃

FHS is an absolute dumpster fire that would never be dreamed up in this day and age

Who else yawned when you saw this post

One pothole and it’s done for

Hoping that the grids are actually upgraded to ride the waves of generation by that stage

People using carriage returns as paragraph breaks 😭😭😭