I recall getting asked for my mail address at a UK retail electronics store some time in the 2010 to 2015 time period. They wouldn't complete the transaction without it. I walked out and bought it from Amazon UK instead. I figured if I was giving my mail address away I might as well get the benefit of the cheaper sticker price.
I've not been very sympathetic to the demise of bricks & mortar retail since then.
yeah because just like every store clerk wants to know where you live and what color your morning urine had, every neighbor wants to scam you out of your insurance.
The store I was at, Currys/PC World has a track record. No, I won't be buying my sausages and bread from Amazon, but also no, I won't trust a high volume high street retailer more than Amazon either and I may as well go to them for the convenience and lower prices.
That was for radio & hifi kit, but they had a bunch of others.
I remember Enercell for batteries, Supertape for cassette tapes, Genexa TVs and VCRs, Archer TV/radio aerials and distribution systems, Micronta meters, and, of course, the Science Fair 200-in-1 electronic project kits.
The branch opposite my school had several "characters" amongst the staff who would amuse themselves by pelting you with dud resistors if you refused their entreaties to sign up to the Battery Club. A great place for nerdy teenagers to visit, but I can't imagine them actually ever having sold very much...
One hackathon project I did, we made a minigolf game what you play with your phone on a selfie stick. It was made of websockets and sshtunnels and the worlds worst python physics engine.
Another of my hackathon projects is now a company finishing up a bridge round, with our 510k equivalence paperwork submitted to the FDA a few months ago. It consisted, at time of judging, largely of powerpoint slides and burnt teraflops.
I would categorize the first as a hackathon done right, and the second as the astonishing incentives that whisper “don’t do this hackathon right”
Learning to dance a social partner dance (not a choreographed dance). There are interesting analogies with grammar and syntax in how some of dancing works.
Most unexpected benefit (perhaps predictable to an outsider, but I didn't see it coming) was getting married and moving to Sweden :)
To be fair, that really is about a startup, though that's an amusingly oddball way to categorise it, not to mention a niche category of business! Wouldn't have occurred to me to suggest it, but I quite like the thought now someone has. 1984.
I must say it hadn't aged all that well when we saw it fairly recently. Not horrible, just a bit slow paced and not quite as funny as I remembered it being.
FYI it's a somewhat regional or (in the UK) class stratified grammar distinction.
While nobody would say "fewer sand", "less" is in practice often used by native English speakers for both count and non-count nouns so it's not really wrong so much as it is revealing.
If instead we prefer to attribute it to class and say using the correct or wrong way is a class signifier and that both are correct, and that language depends on usage and there are no grammar rules really but only consensus, we can also do that. But then "Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?".
I prefer the first explanation.
P.S. Same with "if I were" turning into "if I was". I guess usage turned that one, and that is fine too. I make that mistake often.
There is no English Grammar Institute to tell us what is right and wrong, so English grammar is necessarily descriptive and not prescriptive.
It may annoy you, and you may be convinced that you are right and others are "wrong" but if a substantial body of people use English in a way that you dislike then it's just tough shit I'm afraid.
> But then "Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?".
Because nobody actually talks like that, that's why.
You don't speak Elizabethan English, or Regency English, or late Saxon, or Old English, but you presumably don't think those are "wrong" - why do you think Estuary English is wrong; could it be gasp because you're in a different linguistic group? /me clutches pearls...
You always have authorities like dictionaries and English usage references. There are some supporting each side of this debate in the link above.
> if a substantial body of people use English in a way that you dislike then it's just tough shit I'm afraid
There is no need for that language. hn is supposed to be a place of civil (and playful) discussion. I also already anticipated that take in my post.
> If instead we prefer to attribute it to class and say using the correct or wrong way is a class signifier and that both are correct, and that language depends on usage and there are no grammar rules really but only consensus, we can also do that
> You don't speak Elizabethan English, or Regency English, or late Saxon, or Old English, but you presumably don't think those are "wrong"
Because nobody actually talks like that, that's why. Joking.
You introduced the time dimension, which complicates the comparison. If somebody claimed those are all correct ways of speaking in modern English, and only class signifiers, in that context, I would say they are wrong.
In general I dislike this nihilist "truth does not exist" nobody-is-wrong take. That is why I prefer the simple rule with countable and uncountable without the class excuse. Ultimately both takes are valid, but I find the second one too nihilist for my taste.
If people one day start saying "me thinks this good" you might find yourself changing sides arguing that truth does, in fact, exist.
Who said you were annoyed? I'm just pointing out that English is a democratic language, has no centralised institute defining correctness, and drawing borders around areas of it is completely pointless.
You're entitled to believe that some grammatical forms are "wrong" and I'm entitled to have no respect for that opinion.
I, for example, strongly dislike the change of meaning of "disinterested" to mean "uninterested", but have no illusion that there's some absolute truth of His Majesty's Royal English Language to prop up my ego.
In practice, where such institutes do exist, they trail after the language bringing the rules into alignment with it, or are utterly ignored by all but the most officious.
You did. Quote "It may annoy you,". But nevermind.
> You're entitled to believe that some grammatical forms are "wrong" and I'm entitled to have no respect for that opinion.
I think you also believe this, we only disagree in which grammatical forms. Or are you arguing that "Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?" is grammatically correct?
If you are, then it is consistent with your popular-makes-correct approach as long as people say it. Whatever mistake stops being a mistake if repeated by enough people; if not, then we agree and only disagree on where the line is.
Replying to myself as we reached the thread limit. Slightly bad form, but I doubt there are many (any) others listening in the thread:
>> You did. Quote "It may annoy you,". But nevermind.
You misinterpret. It may annoy you. It may not. A cat may look at a king.
>> I think you also believe this, we only disagree in which grammatical forms. Or are you arguing that "Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?" is grammatically correct?
I'm arguing that the question is meaningless. Some will sound correct to my ear. Some will not. Some will sound correct to nobody. None of them are "wrong" because there is no authority beyond convention to dictate which is "correct" - and conventions differ between different users of language.
I would never say "on accident" but it would be fatuous to say that it was "wrong" just because I don't use it when millions do.
> ...only disagree on where the line is.
I don't really agree that there's a line. If one person uses an unconventional construction is it wrong? Not really, though they may be hard to understand. Or not. Half the art of great usage of the language is coming up with unconventional forms.
I've not been very sympathetic to the demise of bricks & mortar retail since then.
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