What a coincidence - I just finished the Manhunt: Unabomber TV series. It’s well made, reminded me of Mindhunter. And very sympathetic towards Ted Kaczynski actually. Highly recommend it if you haven’t seen it.
He was the isolation subject, no? Pretty much made the guy a patsy to get him socially exiled from his college campus while they ran him through the program?
No they set him up with a prosecutor out of Boston that Ted thought was another student. The prosecutor's job was to argue against any position that kaczynski took... Completely undermining his internal Tom Tom
Right! Thank you, frankly that era of Cold War adjacent shit makes me feel like I need to give my computer a bath just thinking about it. Appreciate the reminder!
Ah sorry for the tease lol it was free on Prime yesterday but the deadline JUST passed. Had to binge watch it quick over the last 2 days. But I’ve seen it before on Netflix too, so I’m sure it’ll get rotated to another platform at some point.
My (completely un-researched, straight from my ass) hypothesis is that the term comes from British English and not American English. In the UK "pants" are your underwear, so "pansting" somebody is exposing their underwear.
I think it’s different for parts of living things.
Shelling is removing the entire shell. “Peeling” something doesn’t mean adding peel, and “pitting” means removing the pit.
However, for bodies, removing skin in general is “skinning,” but if you lose the skin of just your hand it’s called de-gloving. Removing the bowels isn’t called “boweling,” but “disembowling.”
If I said someone did a “shirting,” maybe I’m weird but I’d think of getting hit with a shirt before removing someone’s shirt. And in hockey, a “jerseying” is more about pulling the jersey over the head than removing it.
To me when someone says assless chaps it refers to the configuration of wearing chaps without anything underneath. Similar to "going commando" being a configuration of clothing meaning pants with no underwear.
The difference between pants and chaps is more than just the presence or absence of an ass. There's the whole area between the legs. You can have chaps with an ass in the same way you can have a shirt with sleeves.
If a phrase conveys the opposite of their literal meaning, and the speaker and the audience both know it, then it is pedantic. Choosing to derail whatever the topic is in favor of criticizing someone's understandability when everyone did understand them is pedantic.
I get it, I hate the way people use "literally". It's terrible, it's usually unneeded, and it just makes any actual correct use of literally have less impact. But I'm not gonna correct people who say it wrong, because I do know what they meant.
If they said "I could care less" and you're comfortable enough in your understanding of the conversation to know for a fact they actually mean they do not care about it, then they did make sense and you did understand them.
If they said "I could care less" and you're comfortable enough in your understanding of the conversation to know for a fact they actually mean they do not care about it
And what if I am not comfortable enough in my understanding? When someone is hard to understand because of how non-standard their use of language is, it is a communication barrier, not just pedantry.
It's a problem, because I'm never quite sure if they're saying they care a little bit, and are using the phrase literally, or don't care, and are a moron.
That's quite a problem. You tend to get those by dividing things into black and white like that. I've known quite a few smart people that just still don't care about English being imperfect, and I've met a few dumb ones that care greatly about details like word choice and ignore the conversation to focus on errors.
Splitting the world between "people who do a thing you agree with" and "morons" is a choice, but its one I try to avoid as a rule.
It’s not like that at all. “I could care less” is just wrong. The phrase is “I couldn’t care less.” “I could care less” is more like “one and the same” or “for all intensive purposes.”
Alone it sounds normal but doesnt make sense in context because its supposed to be
eat your cake and have it too
Because the idiom is supposed to mean that you can't eat it and somehow still have it. The first implies you got cake and then were unable to eat it which doesnt make sense because thats literally the point of cake
Wikipedia:
you cannot enjoy two incompatible things at the same time; once you eat the cake, you no longer have it. It highlights the idea of trade-offs or making choices in life.
Apparently have is supposed to be synonymous with "keep" but language has evolved
It can sound misleading but the second part doesn't actually mean the "having" at the first part has ended. It's not incorrect, it's just more confusing than the other way around.
I wouldn't say the language has changed. You either have something or don't. If you eat your cake you don't have it anymore
I see this one a lot, and it always says to me that people just use these phrases because other people use them, without ever thinking about what they mean.
There was a reverse of that scenario in our neck of the wood where the murderer phoned the cops with details only he would know (from a payphone close to where he worked), and although his voice was recognized by a relative, his (somewhat successful) defence was that he never pronounced "creek" as "crick."
What do you want to do with cake other than eat it though? Apart from saving it for later because the only thing you'd be saving it for later is to eat it later.
Don't speak on my behalf. That's not what I mean when I say I'm having some food. "Yes waiter I'll have the steak. Not for eating. Just for possessing ike a psychopath."
I still don't think I fully understand, even as the unabomber put it. Can't eat it and have it? Like, I can't consume and expect the thing to remain, that it?
Side note: only in English, one can "understand", but nobody can "overstand" and anybody that "stand" is doing a wholly different thing.
I leave a shit, there's no shit when I return, so presumably someone came and took a shit. What they did with that shit, I prefer not to know, but I'm not going to fault such a vital function.
75 Comments
WhiteRabbit@lemmy.today · 66 pts · 316d
What a coincidence - I just finished the Manhunt: Unabomber TV series. It’s well made, reminded me of Mindhunter. And very sympathetic towards Ted Kaczynski actually. Highly recommend it if you haven’t seen it.
porksnort@slrpnk.net · 58 pts · 316d
I am staunchly against randomly murdering people with package bombs. But they put that poor man through hell with the MK Ultra stuff.
The big monsters that run our world turned a brilliant mind into a little monster. A massive tragedy from every angle
RFKJrsBrainworm@sh.itjust.works · 15 pts · 316d
Do you know what they actually did with Ted in MKULTRA? It wasn't drugs in his case.
scathliath@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 15 pts · 316d
He was the isolation subject, no? Pretty much made the guy a patsy to get him socially exiled from his college campus while they ran him through the program?
RFKJrsBrainworm@sh.itjust.works · 11 pts · 316d
No they set him up with a prosecutor out of Boston that Ted thought was another student. The prosecutor's job was to argue against any position that kaczynski took... Completely undermining his internal Tom Tom
Debating
scathliath@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 316d
Right! Thank you, frankly that era of Cold War adjacent shit makes me feel like I need to give my computer a bath just thinking about it. Appreciate the reminder!
PoopingCough@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 316d
Sounds interesting, where did you watch it?
WhiteRabbit@lemmy.today · 6 pts · 316d
Ah sorry for the tease lol it was free on Prime yesterday but the deadline JUST passed. Had to binge watch it quick over the last 2 days. But I’ve seen it before on Netflix too, so I’m sure it’ll get rotated to another platform at some point.
porksnort@slrpnk.net · 46 pts · 316d
That’s going to be me and my peeve regarding the malapropism “assless chaps”.
Chaps with asses are PANTS!
(Turns back to manual typewriter and resumes typing furiously.)
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de · 16 pts · 316d
calliope@retrolemmy.com · 10 pts · 316d
Indeed, chaps by definition have no ass.
They’re assless pants, really.
Tangentially, I hate it that pulling someone’s pants down became popular and was called “pantsing.” You’re not putting pants ON the person…
faythofdragons@slrpnk.net · 12 pts · 316d
My (completely un-researched, straight from my ass) hypothesis is that the term comes from British English and not American English. In the UK "pants" are your underwear, so "pansting" somebody is exposing their underwear.
burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de · 2 pts · 315d
Weird, I thought they were called bloomers or knickers.
faythofdragons@slrpnk.net · 3 pts · 315d
Those are girl's pants.
Revan343@lemmy.ca · 6 pts · 316d
Do you feel similarly about shelling peanuts?
calliope@retrolemmy.com · 7 pts · 316d
Oh excellent point, I hadn’t thought about it.
I think it’s different for parts of living things.
Shelling is removing the entire shell. “Peeling” something doesn’t mean adding peel, and “pitting” means removing the pit.
However, for bodies, removing skin in general is “skinning,” but if you lose the skin of just your hand it’s called de-gloving. Removing the bowels isn’t called “boweling,” but “disembowling.”
If I said someone did a “shirting,” maybe I’m weird but I’d think of getting hit with a shirt before removing someone’s shirt. And in hockey, a “jerseying” is more about pulling the jersey over the head than removing it.
phutatorius@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 316d
But the synonymous process of removing the guts is called gutting.
calliope@retrolemmy.com · 3 pts · 316d
That’s true, but I would argue “gut” is more colloquial.
Like, to “behead” someone means to remove their head, but it’s also colloquial. Whereas decapitation is the more medical term.
Revan343@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 316d
Should it be de-pantsing, or disempantsing, then? I think it'd be the former, but I want it to be the latter
calliope@retrolemmy.com · 3 pts · 316d
I think most people would say “de-pants” but I agree with you that it SHOULD be disempantsing.
Though I’m worried the “em” implies the pants are being extracted.
“Dis-pantsing” is also really good though. Then when it happens people can be like “Jimmy got a dis-pants-ation”
JackbyDev@programming.dev · 10 pts · 316d
To me when someone says assless chaps it refers to the configuration of wearing chaps without anything underneath. Similar to "going commando" being a configuration of clothing meaning pants with no underwear.
porksnort@slrpnk.net · 6 pts · 316d
Yeah, but I’m still gonna be salty about it.
TheOneAndOnly@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 315d
In that case, I feel like the correct phrasing should be pantsless chaps.
blockheadjt@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 316d
The difference between pants and chaps is more than just the presence or absence of an ass. There's the whole area between the legs. You can have chaps with an ass in the same way you can have a shirt with sleeves.
FilthyShrooms@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 316d
Counterpoint, saying "assless" is fun, and saying "assless pants" would probably make most people confused
Rooster326@programming.dev · 3 pts · 316d
That depends on who is wearing them
moody@lemmings.world · 5 pts · 316d
Chaps with asses are gentlemen.
Poem_for_your_sprog@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 316d
Everything must have the Oxford comma! reeeeeeeeeee
jjagaimo@sh.itjust.works · 37 pts · 316d
Is it really pedantry if the phrase makes no sense with the incorrect order
Its like "I could care less" - so you do care? Start making sense and I'll understand you. Words have meaning god damn it.
Khanzarate@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 316d
If a phrase conveys the opposite of their literal meaning, and the speaker and the audience both know it, then it is pedantic. Choosing to derail whatever the topic is in favor of criticizing someone's understandability when everyone did understand them is pedantic.
I get it, I hate the way people use "literally". It's terrible, it's usually unneeded, and it just makes any actual correct use of literally have less impact. But I'm not gonna correct people who say it wrong, because I do know what they meant.
If they said "I could care less" and you're comfortable enough in your understanding of the conversation to know for a fact they actually mean they do not care about it, then they did make sense and you did understand them.
sukhmel@programming.dev · 5 pts · 316d
And what if I am not comfortable enough in my understanding? When someone is hard to understand because of how non-standard their use of language is, it is a communication barrier, not just pedantry.
GandalftheBlack@feddit.org · 4 pts · 315d
And of course literally has been used in both sense for hundreds of years.
Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 310d
It's a problem, because I'm never quite sure if they're saying they care a little bit, and are using the phrase literally, or don't care, and are a moron.
Khanzarate@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 310d
That's quite a problem. You tend to get those by dividing things into black and white like that. I've known quite a few smart people that just still don't care about English being imperfect, and I've met a few dumb ones that care greatly about details like word choice and ignore the conversation to focus on errors.
Splitting the world between "people who do a thing you agree with" and "morons" is a choice, but its one I try to avoid as a rule.
AugustWest@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 316d
It’s not like that at all. “I could care less” is just wrong. The phrase is “I couldn’t care less.” “I could care less” is more like “one and the same” or “for all intensive purposes.”
ChairmanMeow@programming.dev · 4 pts · 316d
I think you got that mixed up there 🤔
AugustWest@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 316d
Guess my brain couldn’t bear to type “all intensive purposes.”
binarytobis@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 316d
Just because you’re being pedantic doesn’t necessarily mean you’re wrong to say it.
Zachariah@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 316d
yes it really is
hakase@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 316d
/c/badlinguistics
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 315d
Idioms don't have to make literal sense. How do you feel about being "head over heels" about someone?
wieson@feddit.org · 5 pts · 315d
It should be heels over head, obviously. It probably was that way.
In my language, we say "neck over head"
jjagaimo@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 315d
I dont like it
FundMECFS@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 315d
It’s only pedantry if you force others to do it your way.
RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 316d
I'm not sure what part doesn't make sense about the original
jjagaimo@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 316d
Alone it sounds normal but doesnt make sense in context because its supposed to be
Because the idiom is supposed to mean that you can't eat it and somehow still have it. The first implies you got cake and then were unable to eat it which doesnt make sense because thats literally the point of cake
Wikipedia:
Apparently have is supposed to be synonymous with "keep" but language has evolved
RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 316d
It can sound misleading but the second part doesn't actually mean the "having" at the first part has ended. It's not incorrect, it's just more confusing than the other way around.
I wouldn't say the language has changed. You either have something or don't. If you eat your cake you don't have it anymore
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 316d
I've always taken "I could care less" to be sarcastic. Like "It's technically possible, but quite unlikely."
Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 310d
I see this one a lot, and it always says to me that people just use these phrases because other people use them, without ever thinking about what they mean.
BootLoop@sh.itjust.works · -4 pts · 316d
Yeah if they cared enough to care less. Therefore they don't care enough to care less about something.
lagoon8622@sh.itjust.works · 9 pts · 316d
Therefore they couldn't care less, by your own logic
BootLoop@sh.itjust.works · -4 pts · 316d
They could care less, they just don't care enough to want to care less.
miss_demeanour@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 25 pts · 316d
There was a reverse of that scenario in our neck of the wood where the murderer phoned the cops with details only he would know (from a payphone close to where he worked), and although his voice was recognized by a relative, his (somewhat successful) defence was that he never pronounced "creek" as "crick."
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 16 pts · 316d
The phrase makes no sense to me at first glance because if I say "I'm going to have some cake" what I mean is I am going to eat it.
Logical@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 316d
Weirdo. The rest of us mean that we are going to posses some amount of cake for a period of time.
JackbyDev@programming.dev · 5 pts · 316d
What do you want to do with cake other than eat it though? Apart from saving it for later because the only thing you'd be saving it for later is to eat it later.
Jankatarch@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 316d
Own the cake, obviously.
ieGod@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 315d
Don't speak on my behalf. That's not what I mean when I say I'm having some food. "Yes waiter I'll have the steak. Not for eating. Just for possessing ike a psychopath."
phlegmy@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 316d
You can't eat your cake and eat it too!
bitjunkie@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 315d
Pfft hold my milk
jumping_redditor@sh.itjust.works · 14 pts · 316d
that brother is a fucking snitch
princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 11 pts · 316d
Apparently I never understood this saying until today.
ICastFist@programming.dev · 7 pts · 315d
I still don't think I fully understand, even as the unabomber put it. Can't eat it and have it? Like, I can't consume and expect the thing to remain, that it?
Side note: only in English, one can "understand", but nobody can "overstand" and anybody that "stand" is doing a wholly different thing.
Kovukono@pawb.social · 8 pts · 315d
It comes down to "You can't have the best of two situations. Pick one."
ICastFist@programming.dev · 2 pts · 315d
Ah, that's much more helpful, thanks!
princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 315d
Yeah, I think that's it?
Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 315d
Yes it means for you to get one cake. Then eat the cake and yet still have the one cake you got.
RFKJrsBrainworm@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 316d
Pretty sure his brothers wife played a big part.
8000gnat@reddthat.com · 3 pts · 316d
no that was the butthole surfers
ComradePorkRoll@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 316d
I'd love to hear the Unabomber's takes on "taking a piss/shit."
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz · 3 pts · 315d
I leave a shit, there's no shit when I return, so presumably someone came and took a shit. What they did with that shit, I prefer not to know, but I'm not going to fault such a vital function.
Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 310d
It would actually be quite funny to say you're going to leave a shit, come to think of it.
neukenindekeuken@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 316d
That's goddamn wild
rumba@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 316d
LOL that's awesome.
The statement has been around since the 1530s; it's probably due for some modernization.
Jankatarch@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 316d
Reminds me the advice "when commiting crime put a rock in your boots so people can't recognize you by your walking style."