Ask Lemmy

US newspaper headlines.

"Polilitician lies, world ignores, carries on."

I get the idea is to abbreviate to fit as much in, but it hurts my mind every time! There has to be some retention of language!

On the toilet paper debate, as far as I can tell it largely has to do with whether people stand up or sit down to wipe. People who stand up want the paper unrolling on the front (because they can't easily reach under the roll), while people who sit down and wipe can go either way.

For my petty hill, "Duck" brand tape is awful and should never be bought. It's just slightly above generic dollar brand tape in quality, and should absolutely never be bought if you have any other options. Go with Scotch or anything else really.

You can be a duck and a banana at the same time.

That my wife HAS to dust off her feet before getting in bed. Dirty bed? Go fudge yourself!

The phrase "I could care less" makes more sense than "I couldn't care less." They're both idioms and therefore are both considered correct linguistically speaking.

But "I could care less" indicates you would prefer to not have to care about a subject so is expressing that you'd prefer to stop talking about it.

"I couldn't care less" doesn't indicate the current level of caring so you might say "there isn't anything in the world that will make me stop caring about my children; I couldn't care less about my children." Without the idiom those aren't contradictory. It's only because of the idiom there's an assumption the reason the person can't care less is because they don't care at all. But nothing about the phrase indicates this.

The level of concern for something with the phrase "I could care less" is indicated by context and the phrase indicates whatever someone may have assumed about one's concern from the context is actually more than the person actual concern for it.

But people will often say "I couldn't care less" is better than "I could care less". They're wrong and I could care less about their wrong opinions on idioms.

An entire fandom has been pronouncing "Evangelion" wrong for the past quarter-century.

It's supposed to be pronounced with a hard G, like hair gel.

Funny; probably the opposite of yours.

Facing the toilet paper outward increases the chance that the paper rips with the roll being in such a position that the loose portion of the roll is lying exactly against the roll: I don't want to have to spin the roll to be able to get to the loose bit. Having the loose bit closer to the wall – probably by virtue of being further away from the user – more often results in it being ripped such that a bit is hanging below the roll, making it easier to grab more often. It's, in total, a much more consistently enjoyable user experience.

Also, less being constrained only to countable objects is an artificial and unintuitive definition. It's not like further vs. farther, describing two distinct concepts which never overlap. Fewer is in reference to counting by individual elements so it wouldn't make sense to apply to things which aren't inherently segmented but it's entirely possibly to measure less of the total of a segmented collection. To say less milk is to take a reduction of the total amount of milk available; this is perfectly feasible with a segmented collection, like cookies. To say less cookies is to take a reduction of the total amount of cookies, something fully measurable and actionable. It is merely that fewer is applicable to a subset of the things which less is applicable.

To argue otherwise is to try and create an artificial construction against the intuitive logic inherent in the natural construction.

I had not realized the latter was a hill I'd die on but, boy, will I, now.