Minor Pleasures (5 Viewers)

I'm not very hopeful about the stop smoking clinic I've just booked myself into. But hey, gotta do something.

The minor pleasure is that the guy on the phone kept on saying "See you next Tuesday". English is not his first language and I don't think he got that he was saying C U n T a bunch of times. It's just a phrase he's heard a lot and has adopted. And I will actually see him next Tuesday. He was clearly perplexed by my giggling.
 
I'm not very hopeful about the stop smoking clinic I've just booked myself into. But hey, gotta do something.

The minor pleasure is that the guy on the phone kept on saying "See you next Tuesday". English is not his first language and I don't think he got that he was saying C U n T a bunch of times. It's just a phrase he's heard a lot and has adopted. And I will actually see him next Tuesday. He was clearly perplexed by my giggling.

or he had made a snap judgement on your character which your giggling confirmed...
 
To me too (and fwiw I think @pete is agreeing with you). If the crime rate in the Bronx is nine times more than Denmark, then it's the-crime-rate-in-Denmark multiplied by nine, right? Which mean the crime rate in Denmark is the-crime-rate-in-the-Bronx divided by nine ... i.e one ninth
 
Pretty sure that's why they corrected it

Not because the numbers were necessarily different but because of clarity
 
There's a gaff here that no one lives on, but recently some dude has been hanging around it.

I'm sure it's fine and it's none of my business.

He rocked in just now dressed head to toe in pink, breezed past me like I wasn't there and he owned the place.

A short while later I gestured a hello to him, and as he attempted to acknowledge the existance of other humans, his super-duper headphones fell off his head and into the water. Maximum schadenfreude.

Still didn't catch his name. But hey be nice to your neighbours. Just introduce yourself, it's not difficult.
 
Logically, “9 times less” is the inverse of “9 times more” so I don’t see what the problem is.
what if something disappears? now it's infinity times less.

'nine times' implies you're multiplying something by nine. which is fine when you're using it to express a larger number, but 'nine times less' is actually division.
also, talking about 'less' implies you're multiplying a *lack* of something. which is meaningless in many cases - you can't define a lack of crime, because you can't define something that doesn't exist. but this is the number the article was implying is nine times higher.

there's a general sloppiness about reporting of numbers which makes my brain itch. i assume the article above was corrected because many newspapers state in their style guides to avoid the use of 'X times less' anyway.
 

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Landless: 'Lúireach' Album Launch (Glitterbeat Records)
The Unitarian Church, Stephen's Green
Dublin Unitarian Church, 112 St Stephen's Green, Dublin, D02 YP23, Ireland

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