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News Summary Intelligence Report Sunday 2/14/2021
Nextrush Free ^ | 2/14/2021 | Nextrush/Self

Posted on 02/14/2021 5:29:14 PM PST by Nextrush

Late News: Syrian government media reporting air defenses in operation tonight...

White House Deputy Press Secretary T.J. Ducklo resigning this weekend. The resignation one day after he received a one week suspension for threatening a reporter...

Responding to his acquittal at the second impeachment trial, President Trump said:

"Our movement has only just begun"...

..Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said Trump was:

"practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day"

regarding the incident at the US Capitol...

President Joe Biden said in a statement:

"the substance of the charge is not in dispute"...

From Ogden, Utah the story of a woman jailed following an incident involving a group of five women confronted at Natural Grocers for not wearing a mask...

Israel's coronavirus cabinet voting tonight to reopen the country, but almost exclusively for those who are vaccinated...

It's now Monday in New Zealand where the country's largest city, Auckland, is in a three day lockdown...

Police in Cyprus surrounding protesters opposing coronavirus restrictions and corruption...

One member of the international team from the World Health Organization that visited China says authorities did not hand over vital data needed to probe the origins of COVID-19...

The internet shut down in Myanmar...A crackdown appears to be underway amidst mass opposition to the reimposition of military rule...

A British lawyer has been voted in as the next chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court...

US Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer decided this weekend not to put a hold on the extradition of a father and son wanted by Japan...

Its Election Day in Catalonia... win for the pro-independence parties and The actual vote count showing a win for those parties who will command a majority of seats...

Officials in the African nation of Guinea have declared an Ebola outbreak...

(Excerpt) Read more at nextrushfree.blogspot.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Government; Health/Medicine; Politics
KEYWORDS: 0rushvideos; 1best; 1of1of1of1of1of; 1stumps; 1sucks; afghanistan; alexandernovak; auckland; badblog; blogpimp; capitolincident; carlosghosn; catalonia; china; coronavirus; coronaviruspass; covid19; covidpassport; covidvaccination; covidvaccine; cyprus; donaldtrump; dontbotherreading; dotsofdeath; ebola; guinea; haveyoudonatedtofr; internationalcourt; iran; israel; japan; joebiden; karimkhan; lameblog; masks; meghanmarkle; michaeltaylor; mitchmcconnell; myanmar; newzealand; nordstream2; princeharry; russia; spain; stephenbreyer; stephentaylor; supremecourt; syria; tjducklo; trashblog; utah; wasteblog; wasteoftime

1 posted on 02/14/2021 5:29:14 PM PST by Nextrush
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To: Nextrush

Why… do old people… text… like this…? An investigation…

We need... answers...

Shutterstock, Inc.
Paris Martineau
FEB—08—2018 02:01PM EST

It’s not difficult to identify an old person online just by the way they write: their inability to use an appropriate amount of emoji, for instance, or their torrid love affair with the caps-lock button. Our nation’s most, uh, mature members of The Online have a pretty well-defined language. The majority of their most baffling habits are excusable. They’re... well, old. However, amidst all of the *LOL!*s and <3GMAs there’s one omnipresent aspect of Old-People-ese: Their unwavering, unending obsession with ellipses.

Unlike any of the other most egregious parts of the Old People Online Stylebook, chronic ellipsis overuse has no easy explanation. It’s not a vestige of the good-ole letter writing days, nor does it seem to fall under the ‘general misunderstanding of new things’ category. Ellipses have existed long before our grandmothers and grandfathers experimented with the gateway drug known as Facebook, and they probably will continue to exist long after we all merge our consciousnesses with WeChat or whatever comes next. When used in casual conversation, ellipses connote hesitation, confusion, and apathy — they’re the most passive-aggressive of all the punctuation marks.

So, why the hell have old people decided to co-opt them?

what is with old people and the use of ellipses pic.twitter.com/qnWVzOq3j2

— banquet™ pay me (@SOClALDlSEASE) February 7, 2018
Why do old people use ellipses so much? It’s already hard enough to determine the tone of texts and then they hit you with “lol...” or “hello...”

— ( ◠‿◠ ) (@Adrian_euplusme) January 25, 2018

In order to truly get to the bottom of this, I went straight to the source.

“I think it’s related to how, though I hate exclamation marks, I use them a lot in email so my tone doesn’t get misinterpreted as negative,” Eliot Borenstein, a NYU professor (and self-confessed ellipsis-abuser), told me over Facebook Messenger. Borenstein views ellipses as the perfect balance between the hard stop of a period and the excitement of the exclamation point. He hadn’t realized how they could be interpreted passive-aggressive by others: “But now that I think about it, if I imagine a comment ending in a ellipsis read aloud by a millennial, I can imagine the[ir] voice going up at the end, a little smile, like [they’re] indicating something ironic. But in my head, the tone doesn’t go up. It just...drifts off…”

“Ellipsis dots have always had multiple interpretations.” said linguist David Crystal over email. “As with all punc[tuation] marks, they can be used purely phonetically (to mark pause, in this case) or semantically (to imply something unsaid), and it is the latter that leads to the kind of comments you’ve encountered. Leaving something unsaid at the end of a sentence is invariably full of potential danger!”

Technically, most modern day text messages (and emails) are rife with linguistic ellipses, meaning, the exclusion of unnecessary words and/or phrases, e.g. He will help, and she will (help), too. And while some may consider this an assault against the English language, it’s really only natural. Technology has made the back-end work of communication practically instantaneous, with the only limit being, well, us and our comparatively sluggish typing speeds, so our tendency towards omission makes sense. However, the linguistic ellipsis could not be more different than the literal, which seems to — if anything — slow down both the writer and the reader as the three dots are used to replace any and all forms of punctuation.

“It’s hard to say what the context would be,” said Borenstein. “I guess I also really like them, since I like the idea of my comment just kind of....trailing off...in a thoughtful haze.... It means I’m still thinking!”

It seems like there’s some sort of grand miscommunication going on here. When I asked my grandfather (the most egregious of all ellipses-users in my life), he similarly cited an aversion to concrete endings. I understand that a period (or, god forbid, an exclamation point) might feel too harsh of a closing for most thoughts, yet I can’t for the life of me wrap my head around the idea that adding two more to the end of your sentence makes it that much better.

https://theoutline.com/post/3333/why-do-old-people-text-like-this-an-investigation#:~:text=Unlike%20any%20of%20the%20other,overuse%20has%20no%20easy%20explanation.&text=When%20used%20in%20casual%20conversation,of%20all%20the%20punctuation%20marks.


2 posted on 02/14/2021 5:52:50 PM PST by Larry Lucido (Donate! Don't just post clickbait!)
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To: Nextrush

https://writingcooperative.com/lets-talk-about-sentence-fragments-25216c24ef4d

Why You Should Stop Using Sentence Fragments in Your Writing
Writing. Like. This. Doesn’t. Make. Any. Sense.

Nico Ryan

Apr 11, 2019·5 min read

A sentence fragment is exactly what the phrase suggests it is, i.e., a fragment — a chunk, part, section — of a sentence.

A sentence fragment, by definition, is an incomplete sentence (1, 2, 3).

What makes a sentence incomplete is the fact that it lacks an independent clause.

An independent clause is what allows a sentence to ‘stand on its own’ because it expresses a complete idea.

A sentence must always express a complete idea. A sentence that lacks a complete idea can’t exist on its own, which makes it a fragment. Fragments should be corrected by transforming partial sentences into full sentences.

Technically, a string of words can be characterized as a sentence fragment if, collectively, the words:
Lack a subject (a person, place, or thing — e.g., Kelly, Italy, laptop)
Lack a verb (any sort of action — e.g., kayaking, reading, thinking), and/or
Make up a subordinate (dependent) clause (something that depends on something else for its meaning or intelligibility — e.g., “whenever she comes to visit” → “whenever she comes to visit, she brings me a piece of pie”).

Examples of Sentence Fragments
Here are some examples of sentence fragments alongside brief explanations of what makes each of them problematic:
Example 1: “Although it was dark outside.”
This is an incomplete idea.

Specifically, this is a sentence fragment because it’s a subordinate clause: its meaning depends on the ‘other half’ of the sentence that’s currently missing and for which the reader is still waiting.

Incidentally, undergraduate students seem especially fond of starting sentences with ‘although’ without including the second bit of the sentence that qualifies, i.e., that makes comprehensible, the use of ‘although’.
Here are a few ways the above fragment could be transformed into a full sentence:
“Although it was dark outside, Charlie still managed to find the pair of glasses he had left sitting in the grass earlier in the day.”

“Although it was dark outside, my son refused to show me that he was frightened.”
“Although it was dark outside, there were still people fishing on the lake.”

Example 2: “She told me she’d be here in about 15 minutes. Which was odd because I knew for a fact that the train she was taking was at least 25 minutes away from my house.”
The second sentence here is a fragment.
It’s never appropriate to begin a sentence with the word ‘which’ if the sentence doesn’t contain a complete idea.

‘Which’ is a word that, when used properly, introduces an incidental clause.
In essence, ‘which’ functions as ‘by the way’ or ‘incidentally’.

‘Which’ is not a synonym for ‘that’ (1, 2, 3):
Correct: “The dog that barked at me looked ferocious.”
Incorrect: “The dog which barked at me looked ferocious.”

Correct: “My baby daughter smiled up at me and grabbed my hand, which reminded me of a television commercial I saw last week.” [The memory of the television commercial is incidental to what the baby did.]

Incorrect: “I have three favourite colours, which are blue, green, and yellow.” [The three colours aren’t incidental to the first half of the sentence—they’re essential to it.]
Bonus: whenever ‘which’ is used to introduce an incidental clause, it’s always preceded by a comma:
“You’re very tall, which my sister would find quite attractive.”
“The movie wouldn’t start for another 40 minutes, which nobody seemed to mind because everybody was happy to continue chatting and listening to music.”

“Why he didn’t get in trouble for stealing the teacher’s pen was still a mystery, which made me think there must be more to the story than I had been told.”
Fixing the sentence fragment in Example 2 above is as simple as combining the two sentences into one sentence or rewriting the second sentence without the word ‘which’:
“She told me she’d be here in about 15 minutes, which was odd because I knew for a fact that the train she was taking was at least 25 minutes away from my house.”

“She told me she’d be here in about 15 minutes. I found this odd because I knew for a fact that the train she was taking was at least 25 minutes away from my house.”
Example 3: “These declines in standards of living.”
This is a sentence fragment because this string of words is equivalent to a subordinate clause.
The reader is left asking: what about these declines in standards of living is worth mentioning or discussing?

Examples of how to transform this fragment into a complete sentence include:
“These declines in standards of living are attributable to economic downsizing and various other structural factors.”
“These declines in standards of living may scare off foreign investment.”

“These declines in standards of living are reflective of various decades-long political processes.”
Example 4: “The use of harsh punishments in response to corporate crime.”

This is a sentence fragment for the same reason as in Example 3 above, i.e., this string of words is tantamount to a subordinate clause.
Again, the reader is left wondering: what about the use of harsh punishments in response to corporate crime is significant, meaningful, or noteworthy?

This sentence fragment would be correct if one of the following constructions were to be used:
“The use of harsh punishments in response to corporate crime has increased over the past 12 years.”
“The use of harsh punishments in response to corporate crime doesn’t receive adequate media coverage.”

“The use of harsh punishments in response to corporate crime seems like nothing but a fairytale at this point in time.”

The Controversial Case
Most, if not all, of what I’ve covered so far is unlikely to strike you as controversial or, dare I say, annoying.
However, to write an article about sentence fragments without acknowledging the fact that their use as a stylistic choice has become increasingly popular in recent years would be disingenuous of me.

Some writers (and marketers) have embraced the use of sentence fragments — more specifically, the use of one- or two-word sentence fragments — as a way to convey emphasis in their writing, i.e., to make a point as forcefully as possible.

The example that comes to mind for me is:
“Dead.”

In context, this may be written like the following:
“Johnny lay on the ground, struggling to take air into his lungs. Blood was leaking from all three bullet wounds. He felt like a truck had been dropped onto his chest. He blinked a few times, tried to whisper the words ‘forgive me’, and then let his head roll a few inches to the side. He made one final attempt to breathe, and then — silence. He was gone. Dead.”

On the one hand, ‘dead’ doesn’t express a complete idea.
Technically, there’s no question that it’s a sentence fragment.

On the other hand, however, some people find this kind of writing very powerful, effective, and emotionally impactful.
Incidentally, this is why marketers love to use sentence fragments in their copy.

Ultimately, the question of whether to use sentence fragments is a personal choice you have to make as a writer.
Technically, fragments are incorrect and should therefore always be avoided; stylistically, they’re often very effective — at least in the eyes of some folks.
In the end, ‘correct’ versus ‘incorrect’ here depends on what you, as a writer, value more in your work: what you say or how you say it.

Making this determination requires that you rank and prioritize your various writing-related objectives.


3 posted on 02/14/2021 6:00:12 PM PST by Larry Lucido (Donate! Don't just post clickbait!)
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To: Nextrush
Thank you for posting this.

I'm guessing though, that you don't post every single day--unless you do, and I just overlook it--and on those absent days, I go around less informed than I'd usually be.

Ignore your critics.

4 posted on 02/14/2021 7:47:20 PM PST by franksolich (Scourge of the primitives)
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To: franksolich
Ignore your critics.

And normal writing methods, ignore those too.

5 posted on 02/14/2021 8:07:20 PM PST by humblegunner (Balls To Picasso.)
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To: Larry Lucido

Rd later.


6 posted on 02/15/2021 4:06:20 PM PST by NetAddicted (Just looking)
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