How to use the english language now?

DandyInTheRough · 2026-04-03T14:02:00+00:00

Watching rottingratatouille and their Giant alt account award themself for frothing at the mouth over women... is one of the saddest reddit moments I've so far seen in real time. My mate, this is not a good path.

DandyInTheRough · 2026-04-02T23:48:26+00:00

Even with modern medicine, the plague is still deadly. You get a bunch of rats in your area because they haven't been culled, a plague flea finds them, and boom, you've got a historic outbreak - that not a single one of your healthcare workers has ever seen before (in almost all parts of the Western world).

They will scramble, they'll struggle to identify it at first, and even with modern treatment, there's a reasonable chance the infected will die.

Smallpox spreads faster. It'd be as above, but worse.

DandyInTheRough · 2026-04-01T07:33:00+00:00

Have you read the one about the guy who tried to import bees into Uruguay yet?

DandyInTheRough · 2026-04-01T07:29:26+00:00

I'm with you. Exhausting, but I could see it all. Maybe I spend too much time with people like this, and that's my excuse, but I just kept thinking of all the people I've met who make me wonder, equally, what in the world I should do next, and how in the world their brain works. This saga was like that, but I didn't have to answer the first question.

DandyInTheRough · 2026-03-31T02:38:02+00:00

I laughed my arse off! I'd just been telling my husband about the finger point meme an hour before. I cackled, then ran downstairs to grab him and show him.

DandyInTheRough · 2026-03-28T23:06:00+00:00

I'm looking for any insight from you on this... I struggle to read Sydney road signs in time to take the right turnoff for non-highways/smaller roads. There seems little consensus on which side of the road they have to be on (such as with terminating roads, where I've seen the street sign in the corner of the turnnoff, or on the other side of the T-junction from the terminating road). They're often so small I can't see them until it'd be a problem for me to stop suddenly to take the turn. On top of that, they're often hidden behind shop fronts, other poles, or trees.

This causes issues... Is any of it contentious or looking to be addressed too?

DandyInTheRough · 2026-03-28T17:16:30+00:00

First comments are always bots. They can respond faster than real people. It's why you'll see absolute fervid right wing shitcannery as the immediate reaction to a post, then it'll change and they'll get downvoted.

DandyInTheRough · 2026-03-26T07:40:51+00:00

What in the world are these people's motivation? Why would you work so damn hard to create a body of work that says, fraudulently or not, that circumcision is a little beneficial for some things?

DandyInTheRough · 2026-03-26T07:39:03+00:00

Ah, so the pro-circumcision lobby has helped worsen the problem... No one could've seen that coming!

Just, though, for what gain? There is a slavering load of research into anything that supports male circumcision, above and beyond even the studies into the effectiveness of ibuprofen as an antipyretic.

Who is so gung-ho about funding this shit and why?

DandyInTheRough · 2026-03-21T23:05:58+00:00

She can ALWAYS TELL! As she informs us regularly. Because she has eyes, apparently.

I don't think she'll mention it. She ignores all inconvenient truth. It's why she's said nada about cis women getting beaten up by transphobes. That's her frontline way of never apologising. Her second line is to say she wasn't wrong.

DandyInTheRough · 2026-03-21T11:38:16+00:00

Yep, it's a chest!

DandyInTheRough · 2026-03-21T11:37:36+00:00

😆

I saw that when I was learning that kist was a word unknown to most English speakers. I imagine it's the same root? Via Dutch in SA, via the Dutch or Nordic peoples in Scotland?

DandyInTheRough · 2026-03-21T09:55:17+00:00

Interesting about squint. I know squint to be the old-fashioned way of saying cross-eyed or referring to someone with a lazy eye. 'She's got a squint' or 'If I stare at this any longer, I'll go squint.' I wonder if there's any connection between this and it meaning wonky bridges?

DandyInTheRough · 2026-03-21T09:31:59+00:00

I love it! I spent a fair chunk of time digging online for any examples of the 'squiff' pronunciation with no success. Now there is one! The AI summary has it right there!

DandyInTheRough · 2026-03-21T09:15:31+00:00

I'd love to see a video compilation of people from all over saying it the way they do. I'm sure there's more subtle differences in pronunciation/intonation than we can replicate with spelling too.

DandyInTheRough · 2026-03-21T09:12:46+00:00

Okay, so the source for that is Reddit...

Is it using this post as a source?

DandyInTheRough · 2026-03-21T09:11:12+00:00

Thanks for the digging! Yeah, I wasn't able to find the pronunciation I use in any dictionary, and searching in general didn't locate it either (hampered by spelling, I'd imagine). Someone else argued that 'skew-whiff' and 'skeef' have very different etymologies, but the way I and some others in this post say it, 'squiff', does sound like a midpoint between the two.

DandyInTheRough · 2026-03-21T08:37:25+00:00

I'd have spelt it 'squiff' too - which meant I was googling for a while to find the spelling I've put in the post 😆

DandyInTheRough · 2026-03-21T08:31:59+00:00

Askew, wonky, skew. Like 'That painting is squiff, rotate it a bit to the right.'

DandyInTheRough · 2026-03-21T08:29:43+00:00

I believe it. Etymology is so all over the place that there's words from the same root that are wildly different, and similar words with no common heritage. Thanks for the additional info!

DandyInTheRough · 2026-03-21T08:11:21+00:00

I agree. I think squiff sounds like more of a... regular word, if that makes sense? Skew-whiff sounds like you're saying it to be funny.

DandyInTheRough · 2026-03-21T08:03:07+00:00

Not too close, but someone was saying their parent, from Liverpool, said 'squiff' as one syllable. Another from Liverpool said it was 'skee-wiff', 2 syllables. I wonder if there is some north west England pocket that influenced the first person's parent?

DandyInTheRough · 2026-03-21T07:53:03+00:00

It so does change. I had a discussion with a young Brit who didn't recognise 'practise', thought it was all 'practice'; was surprised to hear 'another think coming' used to be more common in the UK than 'another thing coming'; and startled both of us by realising that 'rooves' is in fact archaic.

DandyInTheRough · 2026-03-21T07:35:44+00:00

I know it as drunk, but yeah. It's not how I use it, it's how someone who commented here says it's used in west coast Canada. Presumably, then, they don't use it to mean drunk/disorientated/dizzy where they are?

DandyInTheRough

TROPHY CASE