I just got invited to a meeting for a time zone that doesn’t exist this time of year. In the US EST does not stand for Eastern time, it stands for Eastern Standard Time (~November-~March), EST is not an active time zone, it is EDT Eastern Daylight Time. Its a pointless thing, most people probably don’t notice, but its wrong.
Fake internet points to anyone who knows why DB-9 bothers me.
Edit: corrected a missing n in an eastern
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People who refuse to change how they misuse or misspell words. To/too, could’ve/could of, brake/break, and all that. I know they’ve read the correct versions, they just refuse to change.
Followed by people trying to justify the misuse. We have dictionaries. There’s some kind of standard. Yes, language does drift. But unless we want to go back to the 1600’s or so where people just made up whatever looked right for spelling, there should be some effort in maintaining a standard and not just “I can’t be bothered to do it right so I’ll claim common usage or language drift.”
That, and people who drive with their hazard flashers on for no apparent reason whatsoever.
I see this fairly often for other two languages*, but the reasoning is the same.
The “language drifts” argument is actually fallacious (is-ought fallacy). In my opinion the main reasons to be lenient towards deviations from the standard are:
- Unless heavily overdone, they don’t affect comprehension.
- They reinforce the informal register, and the register itself helps to convey meaning.
- They allow individual expression, doubly so when the misspelling has dialectal marks.
- A standard is just a standard. It should be seen as a reference, not as encompassing everything that is allowed within a language and its spelling.
*and I use it, at least in my L1. In my case it’s typically due to #3.
I’ll concede points for stylistic or deliberately informal language, I didn’t want to belabor anyone reading what I wrote to get into the weeds over deliberate “abuse” of the language to convey whatever the author wishes to. There’s certainly room for slang, too.
I’m much more pointing the finger at the more simple things that can be corrected easily, hence the minor irritation, not someone willfully knowing they’re using an informal register. IOW, “could have” to “could’ve” to “coulda” is decreasing formality order, and deliberate, vs “could of” which appears completely unaware of how the words actually work. Break/brake isn’t even comparable. Completely different words. Plenty of room on that one for autocorrect to mess it up though. IMO there’s a difference.
With voice to text becoming more common homonyms are going to become the de facto standard. All of the there there and their confusion, will be too too much, not to mention it’s it’s and it’s…
You forgot “its”.
Should I add “people loudly using voice to text to SMS in public places” to my list of annoyances?
E: you conveniently fell into my second paragraph. Maybe we could improve voice to text contextual translation so that homonyms don’t happen so often rather than yet another “can’t be bothered to fix it” excuse.
All the voice2 text I’ve used gets these all right, by context. Better than many people.
I was going to say, these voice to text software are mini LLMs that should know which version goes where.
When you have a dispenser (liquid soap, sanitizer gel, shampoo, etc.) and it’s almost empty, so the damn bottle gets knocked over from the slightest nudge. Makes me so irrationally mad.
My partner leaves his drink bottle near the sink, empty or mostly empty.
I accidentally knock that fucker over at least twice a day. I move it to a different part of the kitchen where it’s very unlikely to get accidentally knocked, he knows the spot so it’s not like I’ve hidden it or inconvenienced him.
But he puts it back next to the fucking sink and I knock it over and it makes so much fucking noise and scares the dog and I have to stop what I’m doing to go pick it up, just in case it does have a bit of water in it and creates a slip hazard, and it’s going to be the reason I suffocate him in his sleep.
The things they do that drive us nuts. I feel your frustration in your post. 🤭
For a bit the stuff inside will keep the COG low enough that its somewhat stable, but at some point it just stops being worth it. It also seems to last forever.
Certain mispronunciations, such as when someone mispronounces “escape” as “excape,” “moot” as “mute,” “etcetera” as “excetera,” and finally “supposedly” as “supposably.”
Supposably gets me. I’m also unnecessarily annoyed by “besides the point” and “anyways”.
I live somewhere that all of this is common language. It drives me fucking crazy.
Pointless? The most pointless thing that aggravates me?
Mowing grass.
It’s not solving the problem. At all.
It annoys me more when other people care.
My wife’s car has a emergency brake PADEL (not pedal) on the dashboard that is connected on one end and you can push down on the other end or loop your finger under the padel and pull up (like a button version of a diving board). You push it to turn on the Emergency Brake, and once on, you pull it to turn it off. But what if it’s off and you pull it? Nothing. If it’s on and you push it? Nothing. This button takes 2 inputs but depending on its current state only 1 input will do anything. It’s bad UI/UX in the real world.
Here’s a stock photo of the kind of button but in a different car than my wife’s.
Of course you are welcome to be annoyed by whatever you want but I think I kind of agree with this design… Regardless of what state the car is in, you always know that if you push that button, the car should now be in park. If you’re a dum dum like most of us, and you forget whether you’ve done it already or not, you don’t need to check the dash or anything to decide whether to push it or not, you can just do it. It’s like saving twice in a Pokemon game. I like that it’s two distinct gestures, but compressed down into one mechanism.
However, I’m not sure I like that it’s push to engage and pull to disengage. In my car I’m pretty sure it’s pull to engage and push to disengage, which reminds me of the old lever style of parking brake.
Truth is, I made up which way was which because nothing about this push-pull paddle expresses which direction is which action and I can never remember. Every time I interact with it is a guess. Do it one way, if I was wrong then do it the other. I’m onboard with idempotency but I feel this trades clarity for it.
I think that’s actually good UX from a safety standpoint. It means the button is “idempotent”: doing an operation the first time puts it in a state, and then doing it again leaves it still in that state.
If you’re in a moment of panic and want the brake on, you might push the button a bunch of times in quick succession to “be sure.” If it were a regular button, this would rapidly toggle it on and off, which would leave it in an uncertain state after you pressed it so fast. This way it turns on and stays active until you are ready to turn it off, and then you do another idempotent operation to turn it off. I don’t think all buttons should be like this, but I think it’s a good design decision for a button used in an “emergency.”
There’s a place by me called Ranch Pizza and they do not have ranch pizzas. They have pizzas. They have ranch. They do not have pizza with a ranch base however.
I mean, that doesn’t sound like they lying though.
I feel like if you’re calling yourself Ranch Pizza, you’re beholden to having it on the menu. They aren’t called Ranch and Pizza after all.
Its a ranch, they have pizza. Sounds appropriate. I would expect a “ranch pizza” on the menu to be a house special, not ranch flavor.
They aren’t ranch themed. It’s just called Ranch Pizza. Here’s their Insta. Not a cowboy hat in sight.
I read your original comment as they have “a ranch”. yea, whats ups with the name. Missed opportunities all around.
I mean maybe Bill Microsoft and Thomas Nintendo’s good buddy John Ranch started the place idk, but even then it would irk me on a deeply spiritual level.
because it’s DE-9?
Bonus points for anyone who knows why VGA bothers you…
You win some points.
I really dislike that some companies even call out they do it wrong because of momentum. It is not an arbitrary name. Its a d-subminiature shell e low density with 9 pins. A B shell has a low density size of 25. They’re different things.
Its a pointless thing
ಠ_ಠ
But no, it’s not a pointless thing. Because people will say that something occurs in one particular time zone, and I’ll convert it under that assumption. Only for them to then turn around and blame me for being an hour late because they said standard time when they meant daylight time. Time communications should always be done in UTC first, with other time zones giving as optional extras, specified in terms of their UTC offset explicitly, alongside their name.
The important thing is the time gets communicated, and in the US outside states that don’t observe daylight saving time, I just assume the vernacular time for that zone.
Does it pointlessly annoy you as much as you saying EDT stands for EASTER Daylight Time pointlessly annoys me?
I’m bad at typing, I though I caught all of those, sorry.
People who walk into a building and then just stop and stand in front of the door.
People who stop and chat in the grocery store, blocking the entire aisle.
People who pull out or merge into your lane right in front of you in traffic, slow down hella, and then immediately change lanes just to be first or save 0.3ms.
People with obnoxiously loud vehicles.
People.
People… That could be a problem, there are a lot of them.
Changing the clock every daylight savings time.
Its Daylight Saving (no s) Time. And I am firmly on the side of standard time year round; I’m a morning person.
Same.
seeing “whoa” as “woah” has never sat right with me
Same… except the other way round.
so how do we proceed amicably? It just seems like a spelling that isn’t family-friendly or wholesome. I don’t know where it came from or why, but it makes me uncomfortable
so how do we proceed amicably?
We can’t. This calls for violence.
What about “Whoah”?
I had to walk out of work after that
The “open” in “OpenAI”, I know about the origins but currently…
A full grown, mature, adult person saying “pasghetti” instead of spaghetti
I’ve never heard this in my life.
What if they’re being overall intentionally childish?
It’s irrational how it irritates me…it just does.
No judgment, are there other childish pronunciations that bother you too, or is just spaghetti? There is a company called pinnacle that uses a little girl intentionally mispronouncing the company name in their ads.
No, just that one. Most of the time people mispronounce things because they have only read the word and not heard it, so I try not to judge people when they do- but that one is a real fingernails on the chalkboard one for me.
Twice as annoying.
The librarian at my school says “liberry.”
parmisian cheese
I hate when grown adults say they need to “go potty.”
Many things annoy me…
Slow walking people.
Twats on electric scooters weaving through traffic.
Drivers not using their indicators.
These are just a few things.
My slow pace is still faster than slow walkers.
Where I am, the scooters are not supposed to be on normal sidewalks, and seem annoyed your using the sidewalk.
IF YOU USED YOUR SIGNAL WE WOULD HAVE BOTH GONE FASTER!
The left lane is for passing, I really don’t care how fast or slow you are going, if your not passing somebody GET OVER!
anyway, you might have struck a few nerves.
Where I am, the scooters are not supposed to be on normal sidewalks, and seem annoyed your using the sidewalk.
Yes, same here in the UK, i dont budge when im walking on the pavement, and i walk in the middle, sometimes when the pavement becomes narrow, it forces them to slow right down.
I just don’t make an effort to move farther over.
Pavement is one of the more interesting words for British vs American English. British pavement == American sidewalk. In American English, I don’t see pavement in common use, but its more of the general material that a road is made out of, or maybe hard surface, when not specifying a specific. “They just put some new pavement down”. Anyway, I just think its one of the more interesting (and potentially confusing) British to American translations.
Sometimes I’m tempted to just stand in the middle of a roundabout with a sign that says “use your blinkers you fuckin morons” but then I remember I like being in one piece. Even worse are the people that signal going into a roundabout but not while they’re exiting. Yes, you have literally no other option but to enter the roundabout, better signal to let people know I’m gonna enter it. There’s 4 exits and people waiting to enter lol fuck you have fun guessing where I’m gonna exit.
