Comedic "things you would ban": minor things that irritate you

[dangie]

Halloween

 

[urbophile]

Even with the subscription?

It's the sponsored videos which incorporate a commercial, something that ad-blockers can't do anything about. Looking at you, Jago Hazzard (though at least they are vaguely entertaining).

 

[Kite159]

Off-road motorcycles. Pointless things which are noisy, probably bad for the environment (due to the exhaust system) and abused by idiots who think nothing better than to illegally ride them on the roads knowing the chances of getting caught are slim.

Although that might be down to someone in Crewe riding around in the early hours along side streets without a care in the world.

 

[Techniquest]

Halloween

I echo that. This year it seems to have turned into at least a 5 day event, with people 'celebrating' from yesterday onwards in fancy dress costumes. Two women I saw weren't very imaginative, going into Liverpool dressed as an angel and a devil. I've too many negative opinions on that to go into here, however I'll summarise with an emoticon:

It's the sponsored videos which incorporate a commercial, something that ad-blockers can't do anything about. Looking at you, Jago Hazzard (though at least they are vaguely entertaining).

Jago Hazzard does do a lot of sponsored videos, but as you say it does get done with some humour. There's no part of me that thinks he'd do it if there was any other way, and he does create some really good content on a frequent basis. So I'll let him off with that. If it was every video, then I'd be less willing to endure it.

OverSimplified is a channel on the other end of the spectrum. A while back, I was enjoying some of his content after watching his video on the Falklands War. So I watched many other videos on his channel, and I got so fed up of the NordVPN sponsor segments ruining the videos that I'd be happy never to hear about them ever again. I certainly wouldn't use that company for anything, and I've stopped watching his videos.

At least Jago mixes up his sponsorships! Cinemassacre has had ExpressVPN as a sponsor for a long time, and while I don't really watch the channel these days it is at least consistently at the beginning of the video. So one can choose to use that time to reply to texts or whatever instead, and I'll pardon their consistent use of the same VPN as Angry Video Game Nerd's brought me a lot of joy in the past.

Map Men use Surfshark a lot, and it used to be at the end after the video's content. However it now gets featured somewhere in the middle. Map Men and Unfinished London have been two of my favourite long-running series on YouTube though, so as much as the ads and the sponsorships annoy me something fierce sometimes, the joy both series have brought me over the last few years balances it out

 

[birchesgreen]

The Why Files always have a humorous way to present their sponsor, makes it slightly less annoying!

 

[Welly]

It's the sponsored videos which incorporate a commercial, something that ad-blockers can't do anything about. Looking at you, Jago Hazzard (though at least they are vaguely entertaining).

Tip - the sponsored segment of the video usually have the sponsor logo up - makes it easy to scroll forward past the segement.

 

[Howardh]

The United Kingdom.

Fed up of having to scroll down past, what, 180 countries to find us to click on. We should have the option to reverse the list into zedabetical order, or we should change our name to something that gets us to the top of the list. Anglo and Scot Land. Where would that put us? Fifth?

 

[Peter C]

The United Kingdom.

Fed up of having to scroll down past, what, 180 countries to find us to click on. We should have the option to reverse the list into zedabetical order, or we should change our name to something that gets us to the top of the list. Anglo and Scot Land. Where would that put us? Fifth?

A bugbear of mine is when different sites don't standardise on what to put in their country lists. Some say 'England'; others say 'United Kingdom'; some say 'Great Britain' (I know they all technically mean different things, but when I'm just wanting to get something delivered it's jolly irritating). Some put the UK near the top of the list (along with a few other countries which I assume they must get visitors from regularly).

-Peter

 

[birchesgreen]

The United Kingdom.

Fed up of having to scroll down past, what, 180 countries to find us to click on. We should have the option to reverse the list into zedabetical order, or we should change our name to something that gets us to the top of the list. Anglo and Scot Land. Where would that put us? Fifth?

Twop twip: in most browsers (desktop anyway) if you open the drop list and then type the first letter of what you want it should jump down the list to the first entry with that letter (U in this case, i think only the UAE is listed above the UK).

Alternatively we should change the country name to AA1 Albion.

 

[WelshBluebird]

A bugbear of mine is when different sites don't standardise on what to put in their country lists. Some say 'England'; others say 'United Kingdom'; some say 'Great Britain' (I know they all technically mean different things, but when I'm just wanting to get something delivered it's jolly irritating). Some put the UK near the top of the list (along with a few other countries which I assume they must get visitors from regularly).

-Peter

Even worse are county dropdowns. Avon hasn't been a thing in not far off 3 decades yet it is still there on a lot of dropdowns!

 

[Merle Haggard]

I actually don't know who it is that ends their posts with triple full stops on a regular basis! I saw someone doing it on a post earlier, and it really annoyed me. It's been going to get added to the list of things to ban for a long time, but it's finally there.

It's a fair cop; I'm guilt as charged, I'm afraid.
Interestingly, (or perhaps not) Fowler's Modern English Usage devotes more than a page to 'ellipsis' but makes no mention of it being indicated by '...', neither is it what I'm attempting to imply.
Where I use the three dots is where I think I have constructed such a sound logical argument that to go further would only be labouring the point.
You may, of course, not agree; or perhaps I should use 'Go figure!' instead - but I try to avoid U.S. English (or exclamation marks).
P.S. I would previously ended the last sentence with '...' but you've cured me.

 

[Ediswan]

Misuse of the term 'exponential'. It has a specific mathematical meaning. It does not mean 'much larger than'.

 

[Merle Haggard]

Misuse of the term 'exponential'. It has a specific mathematical meaning. It does not mean 'much larger than'.

Similarly, 'decimate' and it doesn't mean 'a very large reduction'.

 

[bspahh]

Similarly, 'decimate' and it doesn't mean 'a very large reduction'.

It depends on the context. If the reduction is a 10% reduction in the headcount in your unit of 10, then I would say it was pretty big.

 

[nw1]

Post boxes with the latest collection time 9am.

 

[Calthrop]

Similarly, 'decimate' and it doesn't mean 'a very large reduction'.

It depends on the context. If the reduction is a 10% reduction in the headcount in your unit of 10, then I would say it was pretty big.

Maths aside (I being one who on a good day, can add 2 to 2 twice running, and come up with answer 4 both times) -- as I've mentioned on this thread some months back: in this instance, I experience sympathy with the misusers. "Decimate" is a word which has an apocalyptic look and sound to it -- it feels more dramatic than just "one in ten". One suspects that had the correct word been "ninetenthsise", there'd be no temptation for people to use it wrongly.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Post boxes with the latest collection time 9am.

Or as early as 7 a.m. if it's a Saturday!

 

[dangie]

Television’s ‘The Repair Shop’
Not the programme itself, I like it very much, particularly Steve the clock man.
What winds me up is the ‘much loved family heirloom’ which has been languishing in the back of the garage for decades which nobody has bothered with.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Television’s ‘The Repair Shop’...

...What winds me up is the ‘much loved family heirloom’ which has been languishing in the back of the garage for decades which nobody has bothered with.

Indeed. Does seem like the opportunity for a 'freebie' renovation/repair if you've got a sufficiently interesting or compelling back story / sob story.

 

[Ostrich]

As any avid reader of Simon Scarrow's long-running Roman legionary Cato and Macro series will tell you, decimation was the punishment meted out in the legions for rank cowardice in battle - it meant every 10th man of the cohort had to be selected for execution by their fellow legionaries. So a pretty specific mathematical definition.

As for the 9:00 last collection times on post boxes, locally, that seems to be definable as sometime between 11:00 and 13:00 according to when the postie actually gets around to it. Ignore the published time, concentrate on the little silver metal "next collection day" tag!

 

[Busaholic]

Or as early as 7 a.m. if it's a Saturday!

In most cases the post is never collected anywhere near those times. It's a cynical ploy by Royal Mail management to allow them to collect from boxes just the once at any time of the day, and force many businesses/individuals to go to the nearest sorting office if they want an evening collection (midday on Saturdays.)

 

[Gloster]

One I dislike is the use of ‘carnage‘ for a bit of mild inconvenience. Carnage means large scale loss of life, so if a small crowd building up because a few trains are delayed is carnage, then the TOCs are really getting tough with awkward passengers.

 

[AM9]

One I dislike is the use of ‘carnage‘ for a bit of mild inconvenience. Carnage means large scale loss of life, so if a small crowd building up because a few trains are delayed is carnage, then the TOCs are really getting tough with awkward passengers.

That's one that I've brought up here before, as you say, even in the worst delays, none that I've ever seen justify the use of the word which means 'the killing of a large number of people'! Some of the pathetic replies I got last time included "The term 'carnage' has an established slang meaning of 'any chaotic situation'." As I said at the time, using such a word with a very specific meaning as 'carnage' has for any trivial event just devalues the language.
I suspect that this abuse of very specific words like carnage, decimate and exponential stems from low grade journalism that in recent times will decend to any level of sensationalist presentation to attract the simple-minded audience that they seek.

 

[Calthrop]

As any avid reader of Simon Scarrow's long-running Roman legionary Cato and Macro series will tell you, decimation was the punishment meted out in the legions for rank cowardice in battle - it meant every 10th man of the cohort had to be selected for execution by their fellow legionaries. So a pretty specific mathematical definition.

As per me above -- mathematical stuff near-meaningless for me; but again as above, we had something of a discussion of decimation in this thread, back in March. I mentioned then, that part of the nastiness of the Roman punishment, would have been the legionaries' being compelled to kill their comrades-in-arms / friends (one takes it that it was the bosses -- not the victims' peers -- who selected said victims). Someone else commented re that, that "it might depend" -- could work out to be a golden opportunity to dispose of a colleague whom one hated -- one reckons, "anything's possible"...

As for the 9:00 last collection times on post boxes, locally, that seems to be definable as sometime between 11:00 and 13:00 according to when the postie actually gets around to it. Ignore the published time, concentrate on the little silver metal "next collection day" tag!

Around where I live, the "9.00 (7.00 on Saturdays)" regime has lately been brought in. As for the "next day collection" tag -- that can be suspected to be, often, a nonsense. On my local pillar box, it seems thus to have been Monday, for the past week or so (from well pre-30/10) .

In most cases the post is never collected anywhere near those times. It's a cynical ploy by Royal Mail management to allow them to collect from boxes just the once at any time of the day, and force many businesses/individuals to go to the nearest sorting office if they want an evening collection (midday on Saturdays.)

The depressing feeling is got, re folk like me who to some extent, enjoy continuing to use "snail-mail": that we are therewith in a situation analogous to railway managements' strategies for killing off passenger services which they want to be shot of, by altering and reducing schedules to something of little service to anyone -- thus getting rid of the users, so justifying abolition of the whole thing.

 

[Statto]

Halloween

Mischief Night for me, it was awful for anyone out on a bus after 6pm last night in Merseyside with buses being bricked, it was that bad all the West Derby Road routes (12, 13, 15, 18) got suspended for the rest of last night from 9pm last night, might be suspended again tonight as further antisocial behaviour is expected.

 

[Gloster]

As per me above -- mathematical stuff near-meaningless for me; but again as above, we had something of a discussion of decimation in this thread, back in March. I mentioned then, that part of the nastiness of the Roman punishment, would have been the legionaries' being compelled to kill their comrades-in-arms / friends (one takes it that it was the bosses -- not the victims' peers -- who selected said victims). Someone else commented re that, that "it might depend" -- could work out to be a golden opportunity to dispose of a colleague whom one hated -- one reckons, "anything's possible"...

My recollection from studying the Romans in Britain (not that play!) was that the method was that the soldiers drew lots, so those condemned to die were neither chosen by the officers or picked on. I have a vague feeling that officers could be included in those who were liable to face decimation if thought appropriate. The Gods will decide!

 

[Busaholic]

The depressing feeling is got, re folk like me who to some extent, enjoy continuing to use "snail-mail": that we are therewith in a situation analogous to railway managements' strategies for killing off passenger services which they want to be shot of, by altering and reducing schedules to something of little service to anyone -- thus getting rid of the users, so justifying abolition of the whole thing.

Yes, I'm sure you're right, but I shall continue to use postal services so long as I am able. In a way see the strategy as analogous to railway booking offices, where every effort has been made to dissuade or actively prevent their use by random closures or hours cut, reductions in staffing levels resulting in people forced to use machines or jump on trains without tickets,etc etc.

 

[Merle Haggard]

Not a matter of arithmetic (exponential and decimate) but a word used without reference to its meaning is 'incredible'. It means, pretty transparently, the opposite of credible, but it's sloppily used to mean 'very wonderful'.
A politician (no names) was interviewed on a radio news programme some time ago and asked about the party's plans for a large increase in public spending and she replied. gushlingly, "Yes, these plans are incredible!'. Perhaps an unusual example of a politician n=being truthful in an interview

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Ignore the published time, concentrate on the little silver metal "next collection day" tag!

That would be quite useful info if weren't the case that most of the postboxes in my local area don't actually have any such "next collection day" tags displayed.

 

[Busaholic]

That would be quite useful info if weren't the case that most of the postboxes in my local area don't actually have any such "next collection day" tags displayed.

They were removed, in my area at least, when the new times came in, so there seem to be central directives at play.