111–120 of 246 posts
I don't think any Christian denomination does this, so unless you attend a specfic religious school you'll never learn the Christian bible (which includes parts appropriated from the Jews)
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This method works wonders for corporate tech support. They're pretty used to the "my monitor won't turn on (it's not plugged in)" type users so when you try to tell them you know what's wrong, they assume you're there former type and you have no idea what you're talking about. Instead I very clearly tell them the specific symptoms and relevant information that they would look up anyway. Recently I had a corporate ins…
I do support along with my usual dev work and interface with users daily. I can't count the amount of times I've heard "I'm pretty sure it's because of..." followed by something completely unrelated, along with a stubborn resolve to not try the professional's recommended solution
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That's (for better or worse) an almost defining characteristic of the English language. We take words from other languages and adopt them as English words. It doesn't matter if the word in English means the same thing as the original word, it doesn't matter what language it came from, it doesn't matter if we're combining two words from different languages to make a new word (television is the Greek word 'tele' combin…
Well, that's not a defining characteristic of English but of most (all?) living, dynamic languages. I have seen it with the languages I speak or have tried to learn (Spanish, German, Portuguese, Chinese...).
English tends to just copy, at least from other latin-script languages...
I've found that pretending to know someone's profession, or one related to it, is generally a very bad approach. It's easily seen through, at which point you're worse off than before. Instead, what I do with members of other professions is try to impress on them that I do not know their business but respect its complexity and our roles within the scenario. Whether it's a doctor or a plumber or even a computer technic…
This method works wonders for corporate tech support. They're pretty used to the "my monitor won't turn on (it's not plugged in)" type users so when you try to tell them you know what's wrong, they assume you're there former type and you have no idea what you're talking about. Instead I very clearly tell them the specific symptoms and relevant information that they would look up anyway. Recently I had a corporate ins…
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This method works wonders for corporate tech support. They're pretty used to the "my monitor won't turn on (it's not plugged in)" type users so when you try to tell them you know what's wrong, they assume you're there former type and you have no idea what you're talking about. Instead I very clearly tell them the specific symptoms and relevant information that they would look up anyway. Recently I had a corporate ins…
I did similar recently. I emailed the support team with a screenshot of task manager showing what process it was, and I identified (with 30 seconds of googling) what product it was associated with. I like to think that saved everyone an hour of pointless fucking around.
I've found that pretending to know someone's profession, or one related to it, is generally a very bad approach. It's easily seen through, at which point you're worse off than before. Instead, what I do with members of other professions is try to impress on them that I do not know their business but respect its complexity and our roles within the scenario. Whether it's a doctor or a plumber or even a computer technic…
Always assume competence is, I think, a good strategy. People are more willing to help if you flatter their ego. And most importantly, sometimes, people really are competent.
Today, Jews who attend synagogue know the bible, because it's read, chapter by chapter, out loud, every Shabbat, Monday, and Thursday, and continuously studied in yearly and multi-year cycles. Yesterday, Jews everywhere heard the story of Esau and Jacob, read in Hebrew. I don't think any Christian denomination does this, so unless you attend a specfic religious school you'll never learn the Christian bible (which inc…
Bible study groups are a common Christian thing in many, many churches, for one. Also, it's fairly loaded to suggest that Christians "appropriated" the Old Testament. Perhaps you could choose less divisive language.
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Funny on the the swiss example. I was just thinking: that's not hard to say! Hebrew is well adapted to dealing with words made mostly made from subtle variations of s, sh & t sounds... Which brings us full circle to shibboleth/שיבולת
It's שבלת when referring to the biblical use. You got the modern spelling of the word for "oatmeal" from google translate. See https://www.sefaria.org/Judges.12.6?lang=bi for the source.
Netcan is using the standardized Rules for Spelling without vowel pointers (Niqqud) enacted by the Academy of the Hebrew Language, which is rejected by some Hebrew language purists.
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Yes. I am a native German speaker, and apart from grammar (people usually have a bit of trouble with cases, articles and particles) there are a few nice words to trip people up: - Streichholzschächtelchen (match box – diminutive): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:De-Streichholzsch%C3... - Austrians use a lot of different words, my favorite being Jänner and not Januar for the month January - Swiss German: Chuch…
Allegedly, during the invasion of the Netherlands by Nazi forces commencing on May 10th, 1940, the Dutch used "Scheveningen" or "beschuit" as a shibboleth to distinguish German speakers from Dutch. I don't quite understand that, as most Germans don't speak Dutch, full stop, and it would be trivial to distinguish them thereby, while presumably if you have gone to the trouble of learning Dutch, you'd know how to pronou…
Anyways, someone who is Dutch (I'm not) would know how to pronounce it. Someone purporting to be Dutch highly likely would botch it miserably.
A modern example of this sort of shibboleth is:
https://twitter.com/richardfausset/status/861297977813590019
Another article from the same author on how to be a Dangerous Professional: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r... (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15206926 )
> “But I’m not a shareholder!” A surprising amount of Americans are shareholders in large financial institutions. Do you have an IRA? Does it invest in e.g. mutual funds? If you own a mutual fund or index fund, you are highly likely to beneficially own fractional shares of US financial institutions. Someone who owns 0.01 shares is a shareholder; welcome to the magic of capitalism. I like this guy. He has great insigh…
1: https://news.gallup.com/poll/266807/percentage-americans-own...