>New Earplugs Won’t Amplify the Sound of Your Own Voice
I think part of it is that most of us speak more loudly to others when we can't hear them very well, e.g. when wearing headphones or on a mobile in a train
No, it's just a chronic lack of sidetone in these devices.
Sidetone is the small amount of feedback in the earpiece as you speak into the microphone. The telephone company figured this out 100 years ago and then, somehow, we totally dropped it when mobile phones came along. We've been shouting into microphones ever since.
They also used to feed some noise even when no sound was received. Softphones still do this today, it's called comfort noise :) if you have none most callers start wondering if the connection is still active.
Tangential to the topic but regarding the supposed Snowball Effect there is in real life no such thing. I have pushed large 'snowballs' down slopes --in reality they are snow cylinders as shown in the photo-- and they invariably do not get far. The reason being that when one side of the cylinder randomly thickens slightly with respect to the other side this causes the whole thing to turn in the opposite direction.
For example, if the RHS of your cylinder has a slightly larger radius than the LHS the cylinder will commence turning to the left.
The upshot is the thick side picks up more snow than the thin side and the disparity in radii increases more rapidly still. The cylinder becomes a truncated cone which turns sideways and halts!
It is highly dependent on the snow conditions and the recent weather. Sometimes even just the a couple hours are enough to change the conditions to have a good chance of rollerballs. The climate also has an impact, in my experience more coastal areas have more periods when they form.
And in some cases the rollerballs get too tall for the bonding strength of the snow, so they break into parts that can restart the cycle if the slope is steep enough.
That's because you're not going to Tesco the registered company, you're going to (one of) Tesco's (shops). It's just traditional and logical grammar, not misnaming.
You may not be wrong that people do say it, I'm sure people say pretty much anything, across this vast planet. Yet people use double negatives, when meaning the negative too. Doesn't make it right.
I think language is defined by real-world usage, not by the logical structure that we theorise underpins it. If so, double negatives actually are right, or at least they can be, if they successfully communicate meaning.
Interesting observation ! Might it be because Tesco and Costa resemble ordinary names, and therefore easily appear in a possessive form ?
Or it might be about imaginary hierarchy. There could only be one actual duly-anointed king of burgers, but if one were to use the definite article to mark this, saying "I am going to the Burger King's", it would imply firstly that the king of burgers does actually exist, and possibly also secondly that he has but one solitary burger outlet.
A grammatical construction not quite so jarring when used with (say) "Tesco".
Pasting my reply to someone else rather than rewrite the same thinking:
I agree it's not consistent, but who ever accused English of being that?!
My point isn't that all business names are treated that way, just that the ones that are the reason is grammatical tradition not (for the most part) people who incorrectly think the shop is called "Tesco's" or whatever.
(But as others have replied to you, it's also more common than just Tesco, definitely including "Costa's" for lots of people.)
I agree it's not consistent, but who ever accused English of being that?!
My point isn't that all business names are treated that way, just that the ones that are the reason is grammatical tradition not (for the most part) people who incorrectly think the shop is called "Tesco's" or whatever.
I agree swores. Your comment did say 'traditional' and my comment was facetious.
There's been an historical transition from small chains owned by individuals (e.g. the Victorian Mr John Sainsbury) to big brands (e.g. Superdrug), hasn't there.
The possessive apostrophe was appropriate for the former but surely less so nowadays. I would guess "Sainsbury's" was a rebrand intended to reflect tradition.
I say Sainsbury's because the name is exactly that. I don't say Tesco's because the name, as you say, is Tesco. I would guess those who say Tesco's (and maybe Asda's) are just getting confused because of Sainsbury's.
Beautiful: humans, flowers, orchids, bumble bees, butterflies, ladybirds, birds of paradise, big cats...
Ugly: most other insects, maggots, spiders, deep sea fish, proboscis monkeys, lampreys...
Thinking that some ugly creatures aren't ugly, or that beauty isn't real and objective, is part of of the aesthetic inversion of our time. It's the same phenomenon which put toilets and unmade beds into art galleries.
None of this implies that we can't disagree about specific cases, or that beauty is easy to define, or that we shouldn't treat animals well!
>Thinking that some ugly creatures aren't ugly, or that beauty isn't real and objective, is part of of the aesthetic inversion of our time.
To be clear, I think you're claiming:
1. beauty _is_ objective
2. this beauty-is-subjective thing is a recent phenomenon
I disagree with both of those claims, but the second one is more interesting to me. At least in the 1700's some people believed that beauty is subjective [1]. But perhaps you consider the 1700's recent?
I think it's because when we get to know other people IRL what they say is of secondary importance to how we perceive their intentions and motives. These determine how we feel about a person. They're subjective and hard to ascertain on the basis of written text alone.
So as a matter of caution we tend to impute bad motives to people we can't 'feel' clearly which means any textual claims made are subject to unnaturally high levels of scrutiny and demands for evidence/documentation.
Also the internet is forever whilst IRL conversation is throwaway.
>Fully elucidating these economic and cultural factors is a major future project of this blog
One rule of thumb seems to be that a new technology needs to be not merely better but ten times better than the alternative(s) for it to go viral. For instance, James Dyson built a washing machine with twin contrarotating drums. It was significantly better than conventional machines, but not ten times better when all costs were accounted for, e.g. the increased price and its unconventional larger size.
IIRC it was _not_ significantly better than conventional machines; "Which" found that it had the same performance as a mid-range Bosch.
Dyson's gadgets which really were significantly better than the contemporary competition tended to succeed, despite a cost premium. Notably the vacuum cleaners, of course.
More than a few middle-aged westerners would find it impossible to sleep with bent knees owing to a high prevalance of artherosclerosis (I think).
Also one of the great pleasures of life is turning over in bed repeatedly during a lie-in. Don't know whether it's to do with lymph circulation and/or detoxifying the brain. More investigation needed!
I think part of it is that most of us speak more loudly to others when we can't hear them very well, e.g. when wearing headphones or on a mobile in a train