Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?


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Today's AWS outrage made me think of this
the_cloud.png
 



Hey, you know what YouTube did after I spent an hour looking up classic electronic riffs on classical music? It gave me this. They put out an album in 2012; it’s in Apple Music.

That visual makes me think of Delia Derbyshire, for some reason. The fact she did the original Dr Who theme using tape loops just makes me boggle.
 



I've heard "I could care less" in so much American media I have assumed it's just the normal way they say it. Just a regional variation.
There are a bunch of aphorisms that people routinely get wrong, frequently by leaving something out that changes the meaning significantly.

"I could care less." - should be - "I couldn't care less." because you clearly want to state you don't care about something.

"Pull yourself up by your bootstraps." - Originally meant something that is simply impossible, because have you ever tried to pull your feet out of mud by yanking on your boots alone?

"Blood is thicker than water." - Full statement originally was "The blood of the Covenant is thicker than the water of the womb." Means exactly the opposite of what people use it for.

"The customer is always right." - People who like to use that expression either don't know, or don't want you to know, the rest: "... in matters of taste." So the customer is always right, unless they're wrong.

... and so on.
 

There are a bunch of aphorisms that people routinely get wrong, frequently by leaving something out that changes the meaning significantly.

"I could care less." - should be - "I couldn't care less." because you clearly want to state you don't care about something.

"Pull yourself up by your bootstraps." - Originally meant something that is simply impossible, because have you ever tried to pull your feet out of mud by yanking on your boots alone?

"Blood is thicker than water." - Full statement originally was "The blood of the Covenant is thicker than the water of the womb." Means exactly the opposite of what people use it for.

"The customer is always right." - People who like to use that expression either don't know, or don't want you to know, the rest: "... in matters of taste." So the customer is always right, unless they're wrong.

... and so on.
Also, apropos to our hobby and general nerd-dom, the famous CS Lewis quote, 'When I became a man I put away childish things' and its meaning-reversing continuation 'including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.'
 


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