Is 40% of a dildo funnier than a whole one?
The power of that article was vitiated by the last para., which described her as an "alumni". She's not even an alumnus, she's an alumna. If you object to these distinctions, stop using stupid Latin terms you don't understand: she's a former student.
I guess if you want to be prescriptivist about it, but I don't see why I have to follow Latin rules when I'm using an word that moved into English long before I was born. "Data" became a singular noun in less time.
Fuck you. Data will always be plural.
Yes but singular "alumnus/alumna" is still in general use.
I really don't think I've heard anybody say "alumna" from anybody who didn't graduate from an all-female Catholic school back before they switched Mass to the vernacular. I rarely hear "alumnus" either.
Mostly, in spoken English, they say "alum".
Even in Texas they don't allow prescriptivists to conceal-carry.
And when I say "they," I mean me. We are plural.
If we're going to keep to strict Latin usage, we should go back to "dildum".
It sounds like they're going to need more dildos. I hear the Malheur Wildlife Refuge has a surplus.
"We need to go back and get a shitload of dildos."
The linked article is interesting. I shouldn't be surprised by this, but I was:
While Jin was mostly just trying to make a joke about an unfortunate policy move in the state where she attended college, it took a dark turn. She was surprised by the level of anger she was met with as her campaign took off. Again and again, she said, male gun rights advocates appeared to feel threatened by women publicly expressing disagreement about their right to carry weapons onto campus. One line she heard frequently she said, went like this, "If we were carrying a dildo around campus, we'd be inviting rape." And that would inevitably lead to the assertion that "when someone does try to rape you, you'll wish you had a gun."
...
"This is a really, really thoughtless joke," she said, "yet it has drummed up this surface level misogyny and racism that we didn't realize was buried so shallowly."
Also, to the OP:
As a message, it doesn't make much sense,
I think their explanation is reasonable (with the caveat that it's clearly trying retroactively to offer a justification for something which was originally said as a joke).
"It offers a visual representation of what it would look like if the gun lobby really got what it wanted," Jin said, "which is the complete normalization of gun culture."
But how is this a visual representation of what the gun lobby wants?
"This is my rifle, this is my gun....."
"When I get all steamed up, hear me shout..."
We're already well into singularizing "criteria".
I just read this re: singular alumni (http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.nl/2016/08/alumni.html).
But how is this a visual representation of what the gun lobby wants?
I interpret that as follows:
1) For most people, seeing somebody carrying a dildo around in public is uncomfortable and weird.
2) To the extent that people don't find it weird to have reminders that, at least some of the people around them are carrying guns (either openly or concealed) is a reflection of a cultivated "gun culture."
3) To somebody not comfortable with "gun culture" the presence of guns does and should feel scary.
4) Open carry of dildos is a way to foreground the sense of feeling uncomfortable in public spaces.
That's not entirely logical, and has it's limits -- if that sort of protest became common it wouldn't take too long for at least most people to being inured to seeing dildos everywhere. But as a spur-of-the-moment protest it has some potential to make the familiar setting of being among college students on campus feel unfamiliar.
Interesting, though in BrE any form of the word is rare and would widely be regarded as an Americanism. Graduate or ex-student is the common usage.
I'll buy 23 with the added ridicule of having your gun fetish compared to small penis anxiety or whatever.
They should have brought packs of snarling rottweilers instead. Much more concrete.
Carrying rottweilers, openly or not, sounds tiring.
We're already well into singularizing "criteria".
No way. "Criteria" means a grouping containing more than one criterion. A collection of them, if you will.
Concealing a rottweiler would be pretty challenging. The necessary clothing would be a dead giveaway, just for starters.
"Office, that's not a rottweiler. I'm just ferret-legging."
As one of my friends put it: "not illegal. just stupid."
[I love that a story about college students, guns, and dildos prompts the commentariat to launch a side conversation about the proper way to pluralize English words derived from Latin.
Don't ever change, Unfogged. Don't ever change.]
I don't have any friends who do ferret-legging.
I guess you never really know everything about another person, so maybe I shouldn't speak so certainly.
It's not mentioned in the linked article, but I feel reasonably confident part of the genesis of this particular protest is the fact that dildos were illegal to sell in Texas until 2008 (and Ted Cruz reminded everyone of this more recently).
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"Sitting square," or "sitting wide," otherwise known as the roomy dodge...
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We're already well into singularizing "criteria".
And we're also on our way to accepting criterias as the plural. We live in a fallen world.
7 made me laugh.
Jesus. Criterias? No. We are not. Because very few attend the the George Bush School of Dictions, and no civilized person is going to put up with that nonsense for a second.
and no civilized person is going to put up with that nonsense for a second.
I applaud your fighting spirit, and I deeply appreciate your naive and unfounded sense of optimism. But if you can't stop based off of as a grammatically ridiculous substitute for the perfectly acceptable based on (and you can't: that battle has already been lost), I doubt you'll have much luck insisting on criterion as the singular, and criteria as the plural form.
No, I accept criteria as singular with only a small wince, but its plural is also criteria. At least for now.
When I lived in Madagascar, my landlady had a poster (I think from a catalogue?) showing an impressive selection of dildos. It was taped up in her bathroom, so that you could peruse them while sitting on the toilet.
Malagasy people are very open about sex. Although admittedly that was kind of weird regardless.
39-42: Did you know that if you google "criteriae" you get about 87,000 hits?
Oddly enough this not the only recent story featuring the distinctive combination of questionable latinity, gun violence, and UT.
46: Wow. That's really a stunning mistake.
To avoid saying "College Spree Killing 1.0" in plain English.
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News you can use!
Omaha dad finds pot brownies, eats 4 of them, says mean things to cat.
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