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American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

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Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

#21

Post by shayway »

pixelpoet wrote: post #4

> one of the only That reminds me, I still have to put up the explanation at oneoftheonly.com for why this phrase doesn't make sense and is the new "could care less".

It makes sense both grammatically and logically; I think this might just be a parsing issue.

For example: Alaska and Hawaii are the only non-contiguous U.S. states. Alaska is one of the only non-contiguous states.

The 'only' is part of the group definition, implying the individual 'one' is part of a small subset of some sort.

Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

#22

Post by pixelpoet »

QuercusMax wrote: post #12
pixelpoet wrote: post #4

> one of the only That reminds me, I still have to put up the explanation at oneoftheonly.com for why this phrase doesn't make sense and is the new "could care less".

Words don't just have a single meaning. Definition 3 from Merriam-Webster[1] of "only": FEW I can say "one of the few", or "one of the only", and they both make perfect sense (and have the same meaning). You're being blindly prescriptive without even doing the legwork. 1: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/only

Yes and I'm sure Webster will also say[1] that literally is a synonym for figuratively, because of how people also like to destroy the meaning of that word, and descriptivists will forcefully (and ironically) prescribe indifference to that.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally

Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

#23

Post by dfxm12 »

pixelpoet wrote: post #4

> one of the only That reminds me, I still have to put up the explanation at oneoftheonly.com for why this phrase doesn't make sense and is the new "could care less".

From the perspective that "only" can mean only one, sole, etc., this is still the correct usage of the idiom "one of the only". Idioms don't match the literal meanings of the words that make them up. Even if unsure, the context makes it clear.

This is in contrast to people mistaking one word for another.

Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

#24

Post by hopelite »

darth_avocado wrote: post #11

America needs more land that’s under stewardship of people who want to conserve it for the future. We’ve lost so much native biodiversity, but there’s still pockets that can revive it if managed appropriately.

There is a guy in Alabama that is working to preserve and restore native habitats and plants including prairies, through things like prescribed burning and felling invasive species.

https://youtube.com/@nativehabitatproject

Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

#25

Post by toomuchtodo »

darth_avocado wrote: post #11

America needs more land that’s under stewardship of people who want to conserve it for the future. We’ve lost so much native biodiversity, but there’s still pockets that can revive it if managed appropriately.

Find people who will donate their land to conservation trusts, whether out of the goodness of their heart or a tax donation. As an owner, you can even keep the land with a conservation easement if you prefer (this is ideal if you're not near end of life, where you might want to continue to enjoy the land versus transfer it to a conservation steward org); you get the tax deduction and continue to own the land, but you cannot develop it. Buying it, imho, is a last resort, because of the legwork to put the funds together. This buy was $35M, for example (or rather, this announcement indicates that was the listing price; the transaction price might be lower, would have to look at property records to confirm).

(i work with a land conservation trust in the midwest)

Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

#26

Post by pests »

pixelpoet wrote: post #19
idreyn wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like a non-native speaker to weigh in, but I gloss it as "there are ONLY a few and this is ONE OF them" and have never found that confusing or contradictory.

That's exactly the difference: "one of the few" necessarily implies scarcity, whereas you could say e.g. "one of the only grains of sand at the beach" while clearly there are many.

I wouldn’t use that phase for sand grains exactly because there are so many. If you added a qualification like “… that is colored blue” then it sounds fine again to me.

Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

#27

Post by uybguygkjhgjk »

geye1234 wrote: post #20

The UK has a much more intelligent (though far from perfect) approach to land use. It has public rights of way (if on foot, horse or bicycle) crossing the whole country. You can walk from one end of Britain to the other without trespassing, and without using roads (much). Many of these paths are very, very old, in a few cases Roman or pre-Roman, although more are medieval. Until recently, they were based on common la…

... the last time the UK had large herds of wild grazing animals was several thousand years ago. There's absolutely no way any herd of wild bison could exist in the UK's current "much more intelligent approach".

Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

#28

Post by potato3732842 »

geye1234 wrote: post #20

The UK has a much more intelligent (though far from perfect) approach to land use. It has public rights of way (if on foot, horse or bicycle) crossing the whole country. You can walk from one end of Britain to the other without trespassing, and without using roads (much). Many of these paths are very, very old, in a few cases Roman or pre-Roman, although more are medieval. Until recently, they were based on common la…

And what happened when that doctrine was ported to America was that they used that doctrine to incrementally take the natives land and started a war in only the span of one generation.

Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

#30

Post by k33n »

huhkerrf wrote: post #6

> The group bought the land from two billionaire Texas brothers who’d kept the public locked out of one of the only western access roads into adjacent public land, There's something uniquely evil about locking the public out of public lands. I'm looking at you, too, Vinod Khosla.

There's so much biased journalism that you really have to read things twice before using words like "evil".

> locked out of ONE OF THE ONLY western access roads

So not locked out. And accessible from all 4 orientations.

(edit: lol, break the rules and downvote all you want. this site loves dishonest journalism if it confirms their wrong biases)

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