For me, it may be that the toilet paper roll needs to have the open end away from the wall. I don’t want to reach under the roll to take a piece! That’s ludicrous!

That or my recent addiction to correcting people when they use “less” when they should use “fewer”

    • Chaos0f7ife@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I’ve never actually heard anyone call it X before, unless they were making a joke about the whole thing. Everybody I know still calls it Twitter. Calling it X is just embarrassing.

  • TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    6 months ago

    The “is a hot dog a sandwich” and similar discussions are solved with the mighty sword of language and not some rigid taxonomy about fillings and bread.

    Imagine a set of food items on a table, hot dog amongst them, but not other pseudo-sandwiches. I ask you to “Please pass me that sandwich.” If there is but a moment’s pause in your mind before you reach for the hot dog, even if it’s as you surmise I must be speaking about the hot dog as there are no other sandwich-like items available, then it is not a sandwich.

    • tourist@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      taxonomy

      shit

      Is that the right word

      I’ve been using “ontology” when talking about item classification to sound smart

      I guess it worked bc no one said “You mean taxonomy, right?” yet. My illusion of pretending I’m not a dumbass to people IRL isn’t broken yet I hope.

    • wjrii@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Psycholinguisitics understands this effect. The “wrong” word is increasing cognitive load and slowing down the listener’s comprehension. The exact same thing happens when pronoun use is unclear and a person has to parse the most likely referent from context.

      Language, especially English, is not computer code but leveraging the existing “libraries” of meaning and declaring variables carefully is usually very useful.

  • DLSantini@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    To streamers, YouTubers, etc. Your Patreon supporters are called Patrons. Not fucking “Patreons.”

    • pseudo@jlai.lu
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      6 months ago

      Since I only ever had heard this english word in the specific context of YouTube, I’m not even sure what is difference in prononciation btw the two.

  • NostraDavid@programming.dev
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    6 months ago

    That or my recent addiction to correcting people when they use “less” when they should use “fewer”

    Remember, kids, “less” is for uncountable things, like liquids, whereas “fewer” is for countable things (like apples).

    It’s one of many weird rules that English, as a language, has.

  • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    “Roguelike” has become overused to the point that it’s basically meaningless. Nobody’s even played Rogue so it just means “a game that’s like other games that are described as roguelike,” which is like, any game. There’s a set of games where the term originated where it actually made sense, games like Angband, ADOM, Castle of the Winds, etc, that are all closely related where the term makes sense. Cogmind and Pixel Dungeon are more recent examples.

    Some of it gets resolved by describing those as “traditional roguelikes,” and using other descriptors like “action rougelike” for Hades or “rougelike deckbuilder” for Slay the Spire, but like at that point why not just use “Hadeslike” or “Spirelike” instead of constantly harking back to this 40 year old game?

    • Mr. Satan@monyet.cc
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      6 months ago

      That’s how language works. You could say that a similar thing happened to the suffix -core. Where originally it was ment to be used with one word – a certain musical genre. Now, however, I can append it to anything and it means just a general esthetic.

      As for rougelike, it no longer means a game that’s like Rouge. It means a game where you losing means starting over, where playing more doesn’t necessarily mean the game gets easier due to accumulated XP, wealth, gear or whatevet other mechanic.

  • Bronzebeard@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    Using 12 AM or 12 PM is useless. Midnight is both and noon is neither.

    The saying “hindsight is 20/20” is stupid. 20/20 is average. As someone with better than 20/20, my hindsight would be worse than normal.

  • Chaos0f7ife@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    The most pointless hill I will die on is the whole regardless, irregardless thing.

    They mean the same thing, but irregardless is redundant. My friend uses that word purely because he knows it pisses me off.

    • NotNotMike@programming.devOP
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      2 months ago

      I can only assume your friend is the one who downvoted you

      Also, I say “irregardless” when I want to sound like the mobster from It’s Always Sunny in Philidelphia

  • Destide@feddit.uk
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    6 months ago

    Stick to the side of the path your country drives on or at least move to that side if someones comming the otherway. I don’t get how this isn’t common knowledge but it also doesn’t matter all that much.

      • Fonzie!@ttrpg.network
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        6 months ago

        And going out of the way, instead of stubbornly coming towards me as if you own this road and I couldn’t run you over.

    • theskyisfalling@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      6 months ago

      Ah I see you are from the UK too. Lots of other countries seem to grasp this concept a lot better. The UK seems unable to walk on the fucking left. If everyone walked on the left then no one has an issue.

      The amount of people stubbornly walking towards me on the right hand side of the path whilst I stick to my guns on the left pisses me right off!

      Bonus points for groups of people that are so far up their own arse they feel the need to walk abreast taking up the entire path. Fuck all of you!

      deep cleansing breath

  • Count Regal Inkwell@pawb.social
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    6 months ago

    “Spectacle Fighter”.

    In the late aughts, game critic Ben “Yathzee” Croshaw came up with that term to describe games like Bayonetta and Devil May Cry, beat-em-up type games where the point is less “can you get through” and more “how high can you get that combo meter? How COOL can you make yourself look while beating up all these fodder enemies?”

    A few years later the industry coalesced on an agreed-upon term for this subgenre – And called it “Character Action”.

    Yathzee has just accepted defeat and uses the term everyone uses, he has to, he works in games media.

    I refuse. Character Action is a dumb, DUMB term because every action game is a character action game, because there is ACTION and CHARACTERS in all of them.

    Whereas “Spectacle Fighter” was perfectly descriptive of just WHAT made those games special. You are FIGHTING, and the objective is to LOOK SPECTACULAR.

  • sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz
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    6 months ago

    envy and jealousy are supposed to have different meanings, but idiots always use jealous when they mean envious. Annoys the fuck out of me.

  • monsterpiece42@reddthat.com
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    6 months ago

    I live in a high altitude area. It gets very hot. People will say that it’s because we’re “closer to the sun” as if the 6000ft/1800m difference is what matters vs the 93,000,000mi/150,000,000km distance to the sun is affected by something so small.

    The difference is the lack of atmosphere to soften the various types of light from the sun.