For me, it may be that the toilet paper roll needs to have the open end away from the wall. I don’t want to reach under the roll to take a piece! That’s ludicrous!

That or my recent addiction to correcting people when they use “less” when they should use “fewer”

  • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world
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    Discord is not a good replacement for support forums. Discord isn’t searchable by search engines.

    Historically, if I had an issue with a product and I googled “[product] [issue]” I’d be met with a support forum post, with someone describing the same issue. I could read the thread to find how they resolved it. I don’t actually have to interact with the post at all, and I don’t need to ask the same question again. For most (decent) forums I don’t even need to make an account just to read the post.

    Discord throws that all out the window. Now I’m met with a “JoiN OUr dIScoRd SerVEr to GEt suPPorT” page. Nothing is searchable via a search engine. And Discord’s server searchability (even in the app) has always been, at best, absolute dogshit. You already need to know exactly which text thread things were posted in, (because you can’t search the entire server at once), and you need to know exactly what was said, (because there’s no fuzzed search terms).

    So 99% of the time, you just end up asking the same question that has already been asked a hundred times in the past, and now you need to wait for someone to respond. It also puts a lot more strain on the support staff, because they’re answering the same question a hundred times instead of just the once in a forum.

    And don’t come at me with the “but Discord recently added a support forum feature where people can start threads and save the conversation for later” bullshit. That’s a band-aid, at best. It still isn’t searchable via search engines, so it means the above issues with Discord’s search function still apply, and the forum function is essentially useless as support forums.

    Lastly, why the fuck should I be forced to join another server just to get support? What if I don’t have a discord account? What if I live in a region that Discord doesn’t support? What if I just plain don’t want to clog up my server sidebar with dozens of servers that I have only visited once? What if I just really hate the fact that your server has been configured to push notifications for every single message by default? What if I just fucking want to google my issue, and get an answer without any further effort?

    • BaumGeist@lemmy.ml
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      And that’s assuming they even have a support staff. Most of the time I see this bullshit, it’s small dev teams maintaining niche software with less than the bare minimum of documentation.

      The only problem I have with your stance is that it’s not petty, pointless nor pedantic. It’s a plague on the world of software. Discord is terrible for the use-case it’s intended for (group chats), why the fuck are people using it for their community forums???

  • Chainweasel@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    If it were supposed to be pronounced “jif” it would have been spelled that way, I don’t give two fucks what Stephen Wilhite said about it either.

    • ISOmorph@feddit.org
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      3 months ago

      Same with Gnome wanting to be pronounced “Gah-nome”, or Latex “Latech”. Just spell stuff the way you want it to be pronounced, or accept that people pronounce it another way

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        or Latex “Latech”. Just spell stuff the way you want it to be pronounced

        But they did! You’re the one who fucked it up by using an “x” (Latin letter x) instead of a “χ” (Greek letter chi).

        (Also, you didn’t capitalize or format it correctly. It’s supposed to be rendered as “LAΤΕΧ”, and yes, those last three letters are Τ Ε Χ Greek capital tau, epsilon, chi.)

        🤓

      • ForgotAboutDre@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Gnome is spelt the way they want it to be said. Are you suggesting that gnome should be pronounced ‘nome’ like the garden ornament with a silent g.

      • BallsandBayonets@lemmings.world
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        English being a bad language doesn’t excuse incorrect pronunciations. And if your argument was to hold any water, it’d be pronounced jraphics.

  • SLVRDRGN@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    If something’s rate of hype is too fast for my internal meter, I will become immediately skeptical of the trend/show/etc. and not care about it, solely because everyone is caring about it too much and too fast.

    • ch00f@lemmy.world
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      With very few exceptions, that popular TV show you like with either end bad or get cancelled before it gets a chance to end bad.

  • Count Regal Inkwell@pawb.social
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    “Spectacle Fighter”.

    In the late aughts, game critic Ben “Yathzee” Croshaw came up with that term to describe games like Bayonetta and Devil May Cry, beat-em-up type games where the point is less “can you get through” and more “how high can you get that combo meter? How COOL can you make yourself look while beating up all these fodder enemies?”

    A few years later the industry coalesced on an agreed-upon term for this subgenre – And called it “Character Action”.

    Yathzee has just accepted defeat and uses the term everyone uses, he has to, he works in games media.

    I refuse. Character Action is a dumb, DUMB term because every action game is a character action game, because there is ACTION and CHARACTERS in all of them.

    Whereas “Spectacle Fighter” was perfectly descriptive of just WHAT made those games special. You are FIGHTING, and the objective is to LOOK SPECTACULAR.

  • DLSantini@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    To streamers, YouTubers, etc. Your Patreon supporters are called Patrons. Not fucking “Patreons.”

  • TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    The “is a hot dog a sandwich” and similar discussions are solved with the mighty sword of language and not some rigid taxonomy about fillings and bread.

    Imagine a set of food items on a table, hot dog amongst them, but not other pseudo-sandwiches. I ask you to “Please pass me that sandwich.” If there is but a moment’s pause in your mind before you reach for the hot dog, even if it’s as you surmise I must be speaking about the hot dog as there are no other sandwich-like items available, then it is not a sandwich.

  • verity_kindle@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    “white chocolate” doesn’t exist. It’s just sugar and a little bit of cocoa butter. It’s edible wax. It’s not chocolate and it doesn’t belong in any assortment of sweets, ever. Cocoa butter is skin moisturizer and that’s it.

    • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
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      It provably does exist. And it’s delicious. I could go to the supermarket and buy some right now. Except I’m fat and trying to lose weight.

    • Smoogs@lemmy.world
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      It does exist in the way that chocolate ‘solids’ exist as an element of chocolate. A typical chocolate bar consists of both chocolate solids and cocoa butter. It’s still an element of what you’re eating,

      So just cuz you eat ‘chocolate’ because you think you only favor the solids, you’re still eating the butter too in what makes chocolate. It’s like drinking milk products and then getting pedantic over people who use butter as a food even though milk contains some the same elements.

      But again this is about stupid hills to die on. And you picked an intolerant and ignorant stance so I guess you technically win in this particular topic.

  • DirkMcCallahan@lemmy.world
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    The word “literally” has been forever ruined by people who use it to mean “figuratively.” Worse, there is now literally no way to actually convey the original meaning of the word “literally” in a concise, clear way.

    You have to say something like, “A is literally 10 times bigger than B…and I mean that ACTUALLY literally.” And then people will STILL assume that you’re speaking figuratively.

    • Anyolduser@lemmynsfw.com
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      Try using “precisely” or “roughly” where applicable. It lets people know you’re talking about firm realities and aren’t using hyperbole.

      It’s a stupid, imperfect workaround and I hate that it’s necessary, but it’s the best we have for a decade or three until people stop bastardizing “literally”.

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      There literally-literally is.

      And to over-egg that particular pudding point, word doubling might be a common thing in “simpler” languages and, ahem, pooh-poohed in “complex” ones, but that second “literally” restores the original meaning.

      For now.

      Until some bright spark starts using “literally literally” to mean “figuratively” anyway.

    • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      Literally can mean literally ( My girlfriend literally stabbed me in the back. I’m bleeding out and need an ambulance. )

      It can also mean emphatically ( My girlfriend stabbed me in the back. She emptied my bank account, shot my dog and left town with my best friend. )

      I won’t use it in the latter way, and will sometimes use the adjective proverbial ( proverbially ) if my metaphor could be plausibly read as literal. ( I could drive to Maryland and assassinate Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh for a fresh cruller right now. )

    • leisesprecher@feddit.org
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      That’s how language works.

      Many words shifted meaning over time, some gained connotation, some lost it, some turned to something completely different.

      Just look at the word “gay”, it shifted from “happy” to “haha homosexuals are outwardly happy, so we call them gay semi-ironically” to “homosexual”. The homophobic connotation was added, then the original meaning got lost.

      You can complain, sure, but just read an old text from the 17th century and try to find a sentence that means exactly the same today as it did back then.

      • DirkMcCallahan@lemmy.world
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        I’m fine with language evolving; my issue is that there used to be a word that succinctly conveyed a particular idea, and now there is no way to concisely convey that idea in English.

        “Gay” changing its meaning isn’t the same thing, because there are still plenty of ways of saying “happy” in English.

        • leisesprecher@feddit.org
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          Are there ways to say exactly this kind of happy? I’m pretty sure, happy and gay didn’t mean exactly the same. Synonyms rarely are drop in replacement.

          But yes, there is a gap now. That might get filled with another word, or people get better at discerning ironic and unironic meaning. Or maybe people stop using it in this way - groovy or rad aren’t exactly common today either.

      • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        I never called things “gay” growing up, I found it disparaging and offensive.

        I came out as queer in my 20s. Now I ironically say “shit’s gay” and stuff like that all the time hahaha

  • affiliate@lemmy.world
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    a couple always means two.

    every time anyone says “a couple”, i ask them if they mean two. it’s not pleasant exchange for either of us, but it must be done

    • Eiri@lemmy.world
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      Disagree. I’ve always understood it to mean approximately two. Usually 2-3; 4 isn’t outlandish.

      Unless that’s the meaning, the expression doesn’t have a reason to exist. So that’s how I decide to interpret it.

      • SoGrumpy@lemmy.ml
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        Wrong. A couple is two exactly. After the wedding: Oh look at the happy couple. There aren’t 3 or 4 people standing there, 2 people are standing there. A couple.

        To couple train carriages together means to attach two carriages together. There are more carriages behind that one, but they were all individually coupled together.

        • Eiri@lemmy.world
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          Aw come on, those are two very different meanings of the word in my book. As it happens, the couple of eggs I took out of the fridge aren’t in a romantic relationship.

        • fross@lemmy.world
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          Starting a post with “Wrong.” and listing a few items that support your view is… Well it gives me Reddit energy, not a good thing. ;)

          Here are some counterexamples that negate it: “I’ll be ready in a couple of minutes”, “it’s a couple of miles away”.

          This does not always mean exactly two. I mean, if you just want to yell out “it always means exactly two!” Then that’s on you, but in the English language everyone else in the world uses, it often means two, but can also mean around but not exactly two, depending on the use case.

  • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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    Canon is important to science fiction and comic book adaptations because the rules of those universes operate so wildly different from our own that it is important to put more work in keeping things consistent.

    • WolfLink@sh.itjust.works
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      A pet peeve of mine is when a work of fiction either breaks its own rules or real physics in a way that isn’t justified.

      I’ve had people go “what do you mean X is unrealistic? It has magic flying creatures of course it’s unrealistic!”

      A fiction should still follow its own rules, and should follow real physics to the extent it borrows from it! Anything else is just lazy.

    • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
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      I want to piggyback on this: canon is super important, but if it isn’t published or in the pipeline, it isn’t canon.

      I love Brandon Sanderson books, but I hated reading the authors notes for Warbreaker. A char does something inexplicable in the book and it is explained by a “fun fact” about their lives that was never written anywhere and the reader could never have known and it wasnt even relevant. It is deus ex machina. It’s all made up, I know, but this is like, double made up. Fan fiction isn’t canon even of the author comes up with it until and unless it’s relevant and published.

      It is not canon that rand al’thor puts baked beans in his shoes on cold days to warm up. It’s just shit you made up lol.

  • nick@midwest.social
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    It’s concrete, not cement. (Sidewalks for example, or foundations of buildings, etc)

    Cement is an ingredient in concrete.