Pssst, that is not a syntactic error. Syntax refers to structural rules. It refers to stuff like word order. The sentence is well constructed and makes sense. It just uses a word with a meaning different from what was intended.

I think the thing to remember with Mindy is that she’s not in the Medium Place because she was a ‘medium person’. She was a bad person with a lot of wealth who one day realised she was a bad person with a lot of wealth who could put that wealth to work to genuinely help people. The purity of intention is there, and…

The way I think of it is that getting the into the Good Place requires two things: good actions and the right intentions. Tahani fulfilled one and not the other (good actions, but for the wrong reasons). Chidi is the opposite in that he got the part Tahani was missing, but missed the one she had.

Well, I think it sort of does? I don't think it's particularly surprising that someone (feminist or not) writing the first draft of a superhero film might find themselves including a bunch of sexist tropes and clichés, given the history of the genre. I mean, if you're trying to write a good superhero story, you'll…

Yeah, I went a-googling after replying to you and found a bunch of new Oxford words that aren't in most other online dictionaries. I suppose, with online dictionaries and the virtually unlimited space that affords, most dictionary companies feel like they might as well add words that have gained small amounts of…

Doesn't MW have a reputation for being more liberal than other dictionaries in what words they add? I honestly would've be surprised if they were the first dictionary to add the internet sense of 'troll'.

In fact, the language ASL is most closely related to is French Sign Language, iirc.

You should! If nothing else, it's probably the most entertaining book about language I've read.

Well, if it makes you feel better, it's not out of ignorance. She's plenty aware of the 'destroy one in ten' original sense of the word. Her book specifically talks about 'decimate' in the chapter on etymologies. She talks about how the word comes from the Latin decimare which meant 'to select by lot and kill every…

(e)Xtremely (e)Xtra (e)Xciting?

Yup. As I understand it, it gives (or gave) you a predicted star-rating based on what people who rated stuff similarly to you gave it.

The backfire effect? Or cognitive dissonance? https://www.scientificameri…

The problem isn't so much that he has a life outside his powers. The problem comes with how it's handled. With JJ and DD, they were competent at their jobs, at least. Danny acts like a ten year old child who has no idea how a company functions and yet expects everyone to listen to him and do what he wants. It's…

I don't know why people keep insisting that coming out as asexual if you're gay is a viable strategy when you're too scared to come out as gay. It's not like telling people you're asexual will stop people who think you're secretly gay from thinking you're secretly gay. Telling people you're asexual is also not much of…

I'm Mexican. I don't know that he's the most famous teenager here, but he's not exactly barely known either. My mom and dad used to buy the (translated) comics when they were kids.

Well, the distinction generally goes that a celibate person, as you well said, chooses not to express them while an asexual person doesn't really have them in the way most people do. So the word is still there. It just doesn't mean what the writers wanted to communicate.

Isn't there like a whole paragraph in the review talking about the movie? (Well, two half paragraphs, anyway.)

I think you misunderstood my analogy. I meant that in the same way you can say a ship set sail when it took off even if it doesn't have any literal sails, it seems plausible that you can say a ship touched down when it arrived to its destination and stopped moving, even if it's not literally touching the landing…

To be fair, 'touch down' is a fixed expression that is probably more often used to refer to the moment a ship or aircraft lands (i.e. stops travelling) than to talk about the act of it actually touching the surface on which it lands. Much like you can 'set sail' without actually possessing any sails. It's one of the…