circuitfarmer

I think you’re getting at intended meaning versus received meaning. Which is totally a thing, but intended meaning is far less well understood than accepted meaning (not necessarily at the word level, but definitely at the sentence level).

At the sentence level, companies pay big money to have tens of thousands of sentences manually annotated for intended meaning (to try and train AI to be able to discern it automatically).

“Best I can do is Russia invading Ukraine and Israel invading Lebanon.”

Humor aside (take it where you can), yes, I think that’s enough.

You get a gross and net pay. The net pay shows how much you take home. But the taxes are taken out as big generalistic chunks, like Federal and State. You don’t get further itemization.

You’d be surprised. A lot of people are having great luck against fair democracy lately.

Believe me.

I love this

Edit: I also think taxes should be itemized on US paystubs, like is done in many civilized nations.

One reason so many in the US hate taxes automatically is because it is a black hole into which we have no insights (on paystubs).

I am prepared for prices in general to rise. I am also prepared to explain why to every dipshit Trumper I see in my vicinity.

Professional academic linguist here. (Yes, that’s a thing.)

Words have the meanings that communities apply to them. There is no governing body over word meanings. There can be a tension (e.g. two groups using the same term in different ways), but that doesn’t really mean that the word means both. Words mean different things to different groups. It has to be this way, for epistemic and pragmatic reasons.

In that sense, meanings are not consciously assigned. So the answer to your original question could be “no”.

But in another sense, all meanings are possible for any given meaningful sequence around the world. Which means, in principle, given infinite communities of practice, a word could have infinite meanings. A stretch, of course.

Edit:

There is no governing body over word meanings

I’m speaking here in terms of global English. There are some languages that have governing bodies, or at least bodies that claim to be governing bodies, like French with the Académie Française. But this is not at all the norm.

The early 2000s.

I was a Genesis kid. Loved the 16 bit era, and also had plenty of 8 bit. Much love all around.

Got into PC gaming in the 1990s. Loved strategy especially, and it’s something you can’t do well on 16 bit.

But the early 2000s were relatively dark. 3d graphics were around and pretty shitty by today’s standards. There was a lot of straight garbage in the gaming market that I don’t want to experience again. There was good stuff, like HL2, but on the whole things were bad.

Anyone else feel like WWIII has already started?

To put it in context, we are seeing much of the same stuff in terms of media grabs and power grabs that was seen in the 1930s around the world. What is left is Hitler invading Poland.

If you and me are rich white landowners from about 250 years ago, then yes.

If not, then no.

Fuck that.

Get what you voted for.

(Yes I’m generalizing, but I’m pretty secure that the whole industry had a majority vote. Those in the industry that don’t support it should be active within their industries to avoid such nonsense in the future.)

(And if they voted majority blue, I’m sorry and exceedingly surprised)

Sigh yes. You are 100% correct and I hate it.

I’ve said it many times before: America idolizes the grift. It doesn’t matter what side of the aisle you claim to be on.

The grift is apparently OK because “it’s just capitalism”. But what it actually is is the worst kind of capitalism – the kind which is fully unregulated and supports taking from your fellow citizen.

I ask simply: how can we support a system that asks us to take from our fellow citizens?

Nothing to add here, except that I also watched early Rogan. Totally agree that there was a significant shift.

I have recently been trying to enlighten my Joe Rogan loving relative as to his (what I would consider, clear) political leanings and tendency to spew propaganda. “I’m just asking questions” is one of the most powerful propaganda tactics, since it can be used to relatively quickly normalize any topic.

As one might expect, the conversations haven’t gone well. People who listen to Joe Rogan tend to think they are well informed by virtue of listening to Joe Rogan.

I think collectively we need to start referring to him only as “the former host of Fear Factor” to really drive home exactly who it is these people are idolizing.

Once again, a clueless boomer blames games.

How about YouTube? Why aren’t we going after Google?

What about Twitter? Musk’s platform is filled with extremist hate.

Plenty of extremist diarrhea spewing from the mouth of a President Elect.

It’s almost like this kind of content on Steam is a symptom of a bigger problem.