Donald Trump missteps stir growing Republican worry, campaign seeks Vance reset
Donald Trump missteps stir growing Republican worry, campaign seeks Vance reset
Trump's campaign seemed more disciplined to some Republicans. Now his running mate is generating controversy, as are recent racially-charged comments.
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I enjoy that pollsters are starting to poll for what happens if Trump drops and Vance is the top of the ticket, while Washington republicans are trying to figure out how to oust Janky Douche.
At this point I wouldn't be completely surprised if that chair that Clint Eastwood shouted at a few years ends up on the ballot.
i enjoy watching republicans eat each other alive while self-immolating
What's delightful is that their whole... (waves hands frantically) thing1, takes all the most crucial tools off the table. Imagine this safety sign posted at the RNC:
Absolutely NO:
- compromising
- back-tracking
- changing your mind
- making mistakes
- wrong opinions
All one can do from there is lie while doing one of those things anyway. At a certain point people are going to take notice, which just makes it worse.1 - Machismo? Rampant authoritarianism? Sociopathic narcissism? I can't keep up.
1 - Machismo? Rampant authoritarianism? Sociopathic narcissism? I can’t keep up.
Yes.
At this point I wouldn’t be completely surprised if that chair that Clint Eastwood shouted at a few years ends up on the ballot.
That was 12 years ago :(
That hurts. That hurts deep inside.
stupid time
honestly, with the rate at which the gop has gone balls to the wall deranged it feels more like 50 years.
think about it: the reason talking to a chair became a meme was because it was so unbelievable. the reason vance fucking a couch became a meme is because it's so believable.
People told me that it was impossible for the Republican party to even concieve of replacing Trump. Yeah? How's that going now, huh? Personally, I'm looking forward to Trump ripping the party in half.
That's the problem when you have a bunch of narcissistic opportunities vying for power. Eventually, they start trying to push each other down the stairs...
And if we found the right lever to push them into destroying each other, we'd have a very effective way to fight fascism.
The chair would have less felony convictions and rapes
That's where you're wrong. The chair would actually have fewer felony convictions and rapes. Allegedly. I don't know that chair personally. But the point is that "fewer" is the grammatically correct word for the point you're making.
"Less" is going to become grammatically correct as it's used more and more. It's only a matter of time. There is no useful distinction between the two terms.
So more less begets more less, more or less?
Yes.
Linguistic descriptivism 💪
Yes, although I will lament the loss of a useful term when it happens, like when "literally" became commonly used to mean "figuratively."
"Less" and "fewer," though? Worthless distinction. "Whom" needs to go ahead and die as well.
Oh yeah I'm a staunch descriptivist, but I do sometimes mourn the changes that are going on in Finnish which is my native language.
Change is inevitable, especially when there are more learners whose native language is from a completely different family (which'd be the vast majority of immigrants here, Uralic languages aren't exactly common), but it's still a bit sad to see the language start to lose some of its unique features that have made it so expressive – but also hard as fuck to learn.
I'm a big fan of language being as useful for communication as possible for people, which means it has to evolve with the times. While it's cool that Icelanders can still read 1000 year old documents, the fact that the language was artificially forced to stay the same doesn't sit well with me. They can get away with it because it's a niche language of only around 330,000 speakers, but no world language would ever survive under those kind of constraints.
As a native speaker of a relatively small language (under 6 million speakers) in a very niche language family, I understand eg. Iceland's desire to "preserve" the language – languages are by definition communication tools, but they're also inextricably tied to the culture(s) that produced them (and vice versa), so while I absolutely do agree that fighting change is relatively pointless, I think it's understandable that speakers of minority languages try to protect them.
So yeah, even though I definitely am a descriptivist and know that linguistic evolution is just a fact of life, I just can't help being a bit sad about it at the same time when it comes to Finnish. Not that I'd want to somehow "freeze" it since that'd be silly and impossible, but at the same time I'd love to see eg. promotion of some of the features that are currently dying out (whatever the hell that'd mean in practice). The primacy of English in this age of global mass media has minority languages in a real bind.
A language being closely tied to your identity is something I've never really experienced since my native language, English, is so widespread. I definitely agree that preservation of language is important - it doesn't have to be keeping the language the same, but can also just be keeping track of the changes. I've always been fascinated by the etymology of words, and English's word origins are very well-documented. I always assumed that it was the same in other languages that aren't in danger of dying out - are you able look up a random Finnish word online to see where it came from?
English is enough of a universal language nowadays that it's understandable that it might not be immediately obvious how language and culture / identity can be linked. Any sort of written, spoken, etc. cultural artifact is tied to a language, and while translation is absolutely a thing (duh), you do lose nuance even when translating to a closely related language.
With Finnish it's not really the vocabulary I'd like to see preserved, but grammar. English grammar is relatively lightweight even compared to most Indo-European languages, and Finnish and Uralic languages in general are on the other end of that spectrum. There's a lot of cool grammatical features, which, while not super duper necessary, add a lot of nuance that can take multiple words or even nearly a full sentence to replace. Where English and most other Indo-European languages usually need a completely new word to express new concepts, we can often just express the same thing by using our frankly ridiculously complex grammar (for a non-native learner!).
As an example, let's take the verb for "to look", katsoa. If you were to use a verb aspect called the momentane – which indicates that something was sudden and short-lived – to form the verb katsahtaa, you'd have something that's close to the English word "glance". Then you could use eg. the frequentative aspect – which (quoting Wikipedia here) expresses "repetitive action, but may also represent leisurely and/or prolonged activity, or activity that is not done in a particularly determined attempt to reach a goal" – to give you katsahdella and you'd have a verb that translates to something approximately like "to glance around aimlessly".
This sort of grammatical minutia has been getting rarer for centuries now, but the speed has definitely accelerated over the past ~40 years mainly due to more. In many ways it's unavoidable, but I still think it's a bit sad.
Oh and to answer your question about word origins, there's a free online Finnish etymological dictionary, and eg. Wiktionary has an etymology section.
Very late to the comment, but I don't think and don't hope this is correct. There is a distinction - fewer is for things you can count, less is for a more abstract, less countable amount. I have fewer opportunities as I have less time. I'm just an old English major, but I like accuracy with language.
Yes, there is a difference, but as far as understanding what a person is saying, you can use them interchangeably. In what situation would you need to know whether it's a countable or abstract amount?
Problems. “I have fewer problems than I did last year” means that I understand what my problems are or am tracking some of them and no longer have as many. “I have less problems than I did last year” is more vibes based and is a statement that this year seems to be going easier than last year went