U.S. Senator Says Stop Spreading Rumours About Tekken Character Marshall Law

10 responses to “U.S. Senator Says Stop Spreading Rumours About Tekken Character Marshall Law”

1. 

   snoweee

   March 17, 2020 at 8:34 am

   Just head to a supermarket right now, feels more like Forrest Law.

   Reply
2. 

   angorafish

   March 17, 2020 at 9:38 am

   hur hur spelling mistakes aside, and not commenting on the appropriateness or otherwise of the policy, but if it looks like a duck and acts like a duck it’s probably a duck.

   Restaurants, theatres and casinos all compulsorily closed. No gatherings of more than 50 people. Home detention for at least 14 days without trial. Empty streets.

   Umm, yeah, Marco Rubio might not personally want to call it martial law but referring to something by only the politician’s preferred legally binding definition is not how language works.

   Just like I have no choice to stop people using the word “less” when they really mean “fewer”.

   Reply
   1. 

      thyco

      March 17, 2020 at 11:57 am

      until the military is litterally patrolling down the streets, then no marshal law is not happening. not even Aid to Civil Powers has been initiated. Even the LA Riots didnt have marshal law enacted, but it Aid to Civil Powers was with the national guard being called up.

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      1. 

         angorafish

         March 17, 2020 at 12:37 pm

         None of which addresses my original point, but worthy of note

         https://www.foxnews.com/us/new-rochelle-ghost-town-coronavirus-outbreak-national-guard

         https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/16/us/nj-coronavirus-update/index.html

         New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy on Monday urged residents to stay home after 8 p.m., [….] “This is not a curfew, but it is strongly recommended and travel is strongly discouraged. If you don’t need to be on the roads, you should not be on the roads,” he said.
         …. He also mobilized the New Jersey National Guard “to assist in our efforts in any way necessary.”

         So, strictly not a ‘curfew‘ or ‘martial law‘, but if you’re travelling anywhere you should be prepared to explain what you’re up to to some nice men with guns.

         Reply
   2. 

      death_au

      March 17, 2020 at 2:01 pm

      Part of me really wanted to respond to your “less vs fewer” statement with the general “common usage” argument. I thought it wouldn’t really add to the conversation, so I didn’t.

      But then I did some googling on the subject and it turns out the “rule” of less only being for non-countable nouns was first established as a preference in 1770 and there’s plenty of evidence both before and after that of less being used for countables. https://archive.org/details/merriamwebstersd00merr/page/592

      So it turns out you should not be correcting people using the word “less”, becuase it’s fine in place of “fewer”. (Although, not the other way around, that is clearly all sorts of wrong)

      Reply
      1. 

         angorafish

         March 17, 2020 at 2:23 pm

         I think I was making the common usage argument, was I not?

         Regardless, the rule has always been a little more flexible in American English, and creeping Americanisation of the language certainly explains why it has fallen out of favour in Oxford-English countries such as Australia. For what it’s worth, the Merriam-Webster is an American dictionary and not an authoritative source of English in Commonwealth countries.

         Regardless, even the Merriam-Webster says
         Less has been used this way for well over a thousand years—nearly as long as there’s been a written English language. But for more than 200 years almost every usage writer and English teacher has declared such use to be wrong. https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/fewer-vs-less

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         1. 

            death_au

            March 17, 2020 at 2:39 pm

            I may have misinterpreted you, but I thought having no choice but to correct people seemed very anti-common-use when “less” is pretty commonly used in place of “fewer”.

            You do make a fair point about American vs Oxford English, which I hadn’t considered.

            Although I do think that despite people teaching this as a “rule”, it hasn’t really caught on in common usage, so can you really consider it a “rule”?
            Then again, you can make that argument against pretty much any rule in the English language and at this point, the whole thing starts to lose focus. Like everything: If you’re a native speaker your best bet is to be guided by your ear, choosing the word that sounds more natural in a particular context.

            Reply
            1. 

               angorafish

               March 17, 2020 at 2:54 pm

               Short version of my original post:

               In popular usage the term ‘martial law’ reasonably describes curfews, closures, empty streets, involuntary detention. If Marco Rubio (or @thyco ) prefers to use the legal definition that’s up to them but it doesn’t make people using a more popular and less legalistic definition incorrect.

               Similarly, I don’t personally like people using “less” instead of “fewer”, but I don’t get to choose how people use the terms any more than Marco Rubio does.

               My post was largely trigged by the constant need for politicians to invoke Orwellian double speak to pretend they are doing something they different to what they self evidentially are doing by redefining the language. Kind of like calling speed cameras “road safety cameras” even though all they are monitoring is speed, and how all “workchoices” means is cutting people’s pay and conditions.

            2. 

               death_au

               March 17, 2020 at 3:08 pm

               Right. I’d gotten those main points, but somehow missed the way you were connecting yourself to Marco Rubio. Which, now that I read back your original comment, was blindingly obvious.
               I feel kinda silly for taking the punchline so seriously. But hey, I had a decent conversation on the internet, something that seems less common these days.

3. 

   john_stalvern

   March 17, 2020 at 2:47 pm

   An article about a typo in a tweet. Fucking quality right here.
   >hurr but it’s video game related
   BARELY. This is bottom of the barrel content right here, even for Kotaku. The biggest story here is that a politician can’t spell, and that’s neither video games or japanese culture, or even blogging.

   Reply