In a recent study published by John Hopkins University students were asked to write a translation of the first few paragraphs of Bleak House in clear, modern English. They were given dictionaries, access to the Internet, and as much time as they needed. Despite this, 49 of the 85 students failed to do so. Sentence after sentence, they could not grasp what Dickens was saying; i.e., they were incapable of figuring out who or what a sentence was talking about, did not understand the imagery or metaphors, could not translate long or complex sentences into shorter, simpler ones, and could not identify the main ideas being described. As such, the researchers deemed this group to be "problematic readers"
>>24781386It was a muddy, foggy, shitty day, but even the worst of it still wasn't as fucked as the High Court of Chancery (which deals with edge cases that don't have precedent in common law)How'd I do?
>>24781386Just hearing about this now? We discussed this for over a week months ago.
>>24781402Failed on account of being a lazy fuck most likely. It's suppose to be a sentence-by-sentence translation not a one sentence summary.
i started reading but the british faggotry was too much :(
>>24781386I don't know what Michaelmas celebrates. Otherwise no problems reading it. But I did find this striking correlation. >Johns Hopkins University has a diverse student body, with 63% of students identifying as people of color
>>24781417A good school for people going into medicine. Not sure about the rest
>>24781386About 10 minutes of toil turning it into modern, more digestible sludge
>>24781426>if the waters were to suddenly vanish from the face of the earthFucking retard. He’s alluding to the biblical flood.
>>24781414Translate to what language? It's already in English. I can see why 58% failed the test if the directions are as unclear and asinine as the High Court of Chancery. Now translate my post line by line.
>>24781386I like its atmosphere. Though perhaps it would be a bit better, were it less overwrought.
>>24781417>identifying as people of colorCan you still do that?
>>24781417Indians should have no issues with it, they speak English as a lingua franca already. Don't they?
>>24781423It does pubch above it's weight for medical and biological science. Not quite top 50 in the world for literature, specifically, but nothing that would indicate that 58% of their students can't comprehend the English language.
>>24781437Sounds almost like a requirement.>>24781446Only 15% are international students. And no.
>>24781386I can read it but I can't enjoy it. All that dross just to say "it's a dirty world, but the court is even dirtier".>you must translate it line-by-lineNo!
>>24781386>rewritten in modern EnglishThis is in modern English
>>24781386>it’s foggy and rainy >some fatso is sitting at a bar Woah
>>24781417>Johns Hopkins University has a diverse student body, with 63% of students identifying as people of colorJesus Christ, what the fuck. I graduated in 2006 and it was quite different back then.
>>24781386Is Dickens based?
>>24781386It's already in clear English. The problem is the fictional distinction for "modern" English. This study is fucking retarded and is haggard and drooping and rancid.
>>24781386London is so off right now. Michaelmas Term just wrapped, and the Lord Chancellor’s literally just hanging out in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. It’s November and the weather? Absolute disaster. The streets are just mud, like it rained for days and no one thought to clean up. I honestly wouldn’t be shocked if a Megalosaurus just, like, waddled up Holborn Hill, acting like it owns the place.There’s smoke everywhere, making it feel like the city’s in a mood, coming from chimneys. It’s like this weird black drizzle that’s not even rain, just soot. Like, are we mourning the sun or what? Dogs are just blobs of mud, horses too, basically camouflaged in the dirt. People are straight up tripping over umbrellas, just all over it, sliding around every corner, adding to the giant mud pit. The day hasn’t even started yet, it’s so dark.And then there’s the fog. Fog everywhere. It’s creeping down the river, wrapping itself around ships, meadows, everything. Honestly feels like pollution got its own vibe. Fog’s, like, literally in boats, in the old ships. The Greenwich pensioners are wheezing by the fire, trying to act like they’re fine, while the sailors are freezing in their fog bubble too. It’s even in their pipes. No escape.If you’re on a bridge, you’re basically in a cloud, staring at a sky that’s about to swallow you whole. The gas lamps? They’re barely doing their job, glowing through the fog, looking all sad, like they know this is a mess. Shops are lit up way too early, just adding to the chaotic energy. The whole vibe is just tired.But the worst part? Temple Bar. It’s like the fog is even thicker there, the streets are even grosser, and it’s just this gross dark mess around this old, cranky landmark. And right there, in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, the Lord Chancellor is just chilling in the middle of the fog. Like, does he ever feel anything? The High Court of Chancery is basically a trainwreck, and it’s been like this forever. Straight up chaos, and no one's doing anything about it.
>>24781598>London is so off right now
>>24781557Like 90% of those POC students are probably Asian
>>24781640
>>24781649
>>24781446Indians learn a technical and heavily Latinized English (so they can more easily displace white American men working in tech (by working for half the pay, sending it back to their family in Mumbai and making them the richest shitter on the block), and thus can’t read literature for shit.
>>24781386It was the start of the school year and people hurried to work. The streets were slippery and so muddy people fell onto the floor, go up, and walked the dinosaur!
>no one can understand references to the liturgical calendar from just a century ago nor the most basic of allusions to the West's foundational text>"No, modernity is not washing away anything. Capitalism and liberalism are totally consistent with tradition, don't worry about everything becoming a consumerist hellscape."
>>24781649your desire to be right is only matched by your aptitude for evil
Is this going to be another one of those studies like the "nobody reads anymore" study where they discounted 95% of online reading.I always suspect these studies with counterintuitive results.
i find every sentence very easy to understand, except the sentence with the megalosaurus. i have no idea what he's saying there.
>>24781705Yes, yes, pointing out racial disparities that highlight an anti-white bias specifically is the greatest sin of the postmodern age. I'm literally the devil, which you don't believe in.
>>24781386I am probably one of the worse readers on this board. If I can do it, lit majors are retarded. I will not use google nor a dictionary. Here goes:>It's November in London, and the weather is relentless. The streets are incredibly muddy, like if they had just been covered by the ocean, and it would be normal to see huge aquatic dinosaurs. The smoke is coming out of the chimnies, like it's mourning the death of the sun. The street is also filled with dogs that all look the same covered in mud. And horses, in the same state. And pedestrians are walking around, slipping in the mud, where everyone else who's been walking has also slipped since the beginning of the day (well, if you can even call this day), which added more and more mud to the pavement, as it accumulated on the feet of passerby.
>>24781408Just noticing that bait gets recycled endlessly on this site?
>>24781667>Indians learn a technical and heavily Latinized Englishyes saar doing the intense latinized needful brahmin caste I am saar do not be the benchod blody bastard
>>24781386English, psychology, and business. These three majors always have a bunch of idiots that don’t know what else to do with their life, so they join these just to get a degree. I bet communications majors do way better at writing and could muster up better translations on average.
>>24781557Whatever they are, white or black, none of them are gonna be able to write decent translations of these works. STEM kids just know how to write well enough to do good on the SAT. Listen to the Cormac McCarthy, Lawrence Krauss, and Werner Herzog interview. That’s what your average STEM kid sounds like compared to a great writer.Normie Republcians are gonna make this worse since they wanted to hate on taking “useless” classes. Academia was already crumbling. It’s just gonna become a service industry to get degrees with the slightest cream of the crop getting to do research and classic Academia shenanigans.
>>24781782These are specifically English majors. What will be the next excuse?
>>24781727Whoops
>>24781787I was talking about the Johns Hopkins students specifically. That it doesn’t matter the race/major. None of them are gonna be able to translate these texts effectively. I know the one’s in the OP’s post are English majors. That just adds to my point. Education as a whole has been slipping for a long time.
>>24781823When I was a freshman in high school, twenty something years ago, we were required to read A Tale of Two Cities. This was a public school mind you.To say education is slipping is an understatement. It has fallen of a cliff and we are rapidly approaching the ground. You can not maintain a complex civilization without an educated technical class.
>the researchers deemed this group to be "problematic readers"It's worse than that. They determined them to be at a level one literacy rate which puts them on par with kids in elementary school.
>>24781782>It’s just gonna become a service industry to get degreesAs it should be.I’m confident employers don’t give a shit if someone studying electrical engineering can re-write classic literature in casual format
>>24781823>Everyone at John Hopkins is a STEM studentLol, no. Education isn't the problem here.
>>24781843Yeah, my point is that attaching such a model to academia is worse for everyone. Especially for Republicans that care so much about their heritage and the western canon. Learning stuff like that at Petersons retarded academy is gay.
I have trouble with present tense.
>>24781844I’m not gonna argue with an autistic retard that can’t look at the lines I’ve written and infer information implied therein.
>>24781852>Republicans that care so much about their heritage and the western canonthey never cared about anything but converting browns to christianity and shipping them here for cheap labour.
>>24781852General education is what k-12 is for.College is for getting a job.Unless the education system in the US gets overhauled and made “free”,or at least significantly less expensive, I don’t think it’s fair to force more courses, especially irrelevant ones, on students who just want to get a job.
>>24781863>General education is what k-12 is for.>College is for getting a job.says who?
>>24781386english majors are usually fucking retardst. english major
>>24781866I would assume the majority of people in college are there to get a job afterwards
>>24781874only because of the false impression it leads to one
>>24781834>the next wave of English teachers will know no more about the subject than a second graderlollmao
>>24781386Is it his best book?
>>24781417>>24781649>>24781656>>24781705>>24781727How did you guys live making everything about races? Jesus Christ, you didn't see topics anymore, only excuses to hesitate "That is Black", "This is white". It's so exhausting to read, can't imagine how it's live like this, in the race-centrism dystopia with inducted pattern recognition on skin color, who cares?.The best thing you can do to yourselves is stop caring about race, searching about race, understand that a funny race number doesn't explain everything in the world.God saves USA from whatever convince an entire country that race discussion is #1 problem and solution.
>>24781843The students had access to a dictionary which means this is less of an English test and more of a problem solving and general intelligence test.They could have given them something written in any language and with reference material a reasonably intelligent person should be able to figure something out.These people should not be in higher education.
>>24781902You may not care about race, but race cares about you.
>>24781386>Husband-Man and Ploughboy, the dynamic duo!
>>24781902>How did you guys live making everything about races?name any general metric with better raw explanatory power
>>24781902>>>/v/722720639
>>24781902America is an Ethnocracy
>>24781386is bleak house even good? never hear it discussed and is it the same as most of his other novels with poor boy becoming rich through inheritance?
>>24781902MOST ANONS WHO YOU SEE BRING UP RACE NEVER GAVE A SHIT ABOUT IT UNTIL THEY WERE VILIFIED FOR THAT VERY THING YOU CLAIM THEY SHOULDN'T CARE ABOUT
>>24781904Yeah, I know.I was having a different conversation
>>24781904Don’t bring so much nuance into a conversation full of retards. If any information one can realize simply by thinking about what was written isn’t written in one’s message, they take that as a fault. When really they’re just autistic retards who’s only talent is memorizing a bunch of information. They’re who the study is about.
>>24781932Most anons who bring up race also conveniently ignore or paper over any fact/statistic that might indicate that they are not the superior raceMost curious
>>24781939no they don't
>>24781857>no argument>ad hominem>M-my argument was i-impliedLmao. >>24781902America was forced at the end of a gun to try this little experiment that knowingly and falsely posited that all people are equal and, in spite of it's overwhelmingly apparent, miserable failure, it continues to reach all new lows to the detriment of all.
>>24781917Money lmao>>24781920Ethnocracy sounds wild.>>24781932Yeah, think I'm being baited most of the time but some people, in this and other sites, repeat that behaviour. It's almost sad.>>24781955Why don't they stop?
>>24781986>Money lmaowrong again. We can adjust for income and blacks are still violent chimps, for example.
They had the internet and no strict deadline? Fucking sad
>>24781986Cool it with the anti-Semitism.
>>24781386>Despite this, 49 of the 85 students failed to do soUniversities are oversaturated, not every retard should be allowed in university, I understood what he wanted to say as an ESL, although the guy is insufferable and I don't know why anyone would like to read that word vomit.Still, half of native speakers failing this tasks shows how retarded mutts really are. I'm assuming it's an American university based on the general retardism.
>>24781929it's more like a grisham novel, a courthouse thriller
It's so fucking shitty and muddy outside the horse has mud in his eyeAnd he doesn't have a hands to scratch so he's missrable booo hooo.But not as miserable as the Court of Buttfuckistan where criminals such as cunny ejoyers are unfairly sentenced
>>24781955You fucking autistic retard. Why do I have to include that Johns Hopkins has more than STEM. It’s not my fault your brain is the size of golf ball and your mom took too much advil. It wouldn’t change my argument if I added that information you cretin, you imbecile. You WORTHLESS SPAZZ.
I'm ESL and understood it perfectly, even if I had to infer the meaning of some words by the context. Why can't english majors?
>>24781386I'm outing myself as one of the illiterate majority.I may invoke the excuse that I'm not a native speaker and only recently started actively reading fiction. I'm sure I'll get there, but for now I'll continue with The Great Gatsby and some history and theology on the side.
>>24781386It's November in London, and the Lord Chancellor is sitting in Lincon's Inn Hall. Shitty November weather. The streets look as if the waters of the Flood have receded mere moments ago. It won't be surprise to meet a dinosaur the size of an elephant waddling up Holborn Hill.Smoke lowers down from chimneys and turns into a soft black drizzle. Its flakes are as big as snowflakes in December in Maine. They are so black it seems as if they're mourning the death of the sun. The sooty mire is so thick you can't see dogs in it. You can recognize horse only by their blinkers. Miserable and irritated pedestrians bump their umbrellas and slip at street-corners where others pedestrian have slipped and slid since morning (if the morning ever started on this day). Each fall adds fresh layer of mud unto the old and crusty layers that smear the streets on these corners.It's foggy. Fog crawls up the river and flows amidst islands and meadows. Fog slides down the river and rolls among rows of ships and polluted water of a great but dirty city. Fog hangs on the Essex marshes. Fog covers the hills of Kent. Fog creeps into kitchens of ships. Fog lays on the shipyard. Fog covers the rigging of big ships. Fog droops on gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog hangs in the eyes and throats of Greenwich old folk that wheeze by the fires of their wards. Fog is in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of an angry captain down in his cabin. Fog pinches the toes and fingers and contracts the balls of a shivering apprentice boy on deck. Random people on the bridges peep over the edge into a fog, and it looks as if they are in a balloon high up among the clouds. Gas looms through the fog in manifold places on the streets in the way the sun reflects from wet fields and accompanies farmers and plowers. Most of the shops were lighted two hours before the schedule, and the gas has an exhausted an unwilling look as a result, like Betty, 13, with perky blossoming teats, when she comes into my office every Friday, at noon.The afternoon is rawest, foggiest, muddiest near Temple Bar. The gray look of this threshold represent well the gray and old corporation within it. The Lord High Chancellor sit in his High Court of Chancery near Temple Bar, in Lincon's Inn Hall, in the epicentre of the fog.The thickest fog and deepest mud and mire doesn't come close to the lost and struggling state of the High Court of Chancery. Nothing in the Dark Tower multiverse holds a candle to the blind and grasping and most wretched and sinful state of this place.
>>24781386that depends on which posters you are talking about. You see, 4chan is a very broad church of socially outcasted contrarians ranging from crayon munchers to computer scientists.
>>24781598>Shops are lit up way too early, just adding to the chaotic energy. The whole vibe is just tired.But the worst part?obviously GPT, you shouldve hand written this you might've gotten a dozen (You)'s>>24781726The streets are caked with so much mud that you would think the biblical flood had just ended, to the extent that it would not be a wonderous occasion to meet a dinosaur because we are still in the jurassic period there is so goddamn much mud everywhere.
>>24781386lol @ american'ts
>>24781902the niggers that broke into my car attend can college for cheap or even for free even though they don't pay taxes. Get mad about it that is reality and it will result in a third world war.
>>24781414>Failed on account of being a lazy fuck most likely. It's suppose to be a sentence-by-sentence translation not a one sentence summary.A number of the sentences only gain context from later sentences in the same paragraphs, and cannot really be translated into “Modern” English, without referencing those later sentences. A number of the details which may seem like anachronisms to an American, are still standard in the UK, such as the “Lord Chancellor” and Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Some of the terminology, such as “blinkers” is still routinely used in contemporary UK language, although not American English. Are things like “Michaelmas” supposed to be expanded upon, or just translated as “September having just passed”, ? Michaelmas also had other meanings, which may be needed for context, such as the fact that Michaelmas was the time of year when debts were typically expected to be paid, similar to the Ides of March in the Roman Calendar, when debts were also expected to be paid off.
>>24781917Ma'at
>>24781941Q.E.D.
>>24782466Michaelmas term is the first term of the British Schoolyear
>>24782411>Its flakes are as big as snowflakes in December in Maine.this pleases me
>>24781955>America was forced at the end of a gun to try this little experiment that knowingly and falsely posited that all people are equal And London is the rape capital of the world now. Get fucked
>>24781386London in November. It's muddy. And foggy.
>>24781386>Is lit smarter than English majors?Absolutely not. Much like the subjects in that study, many anons in this thread exhibit some of the same issues. They believe that the gist of things is sufficient. Hence the "durr, weather shitty" replies, which is not at all the purpose of the thing being asked of them. The gist is the easiest fucking part of ANYTHING; it is only by going from line to line that the critical thinking can both occur and be assessed, and where one is challenged to consider the ways in which the meaning and intent can be maintained whilst altering structure and diction.In American-speak, they are asking you to try and think like a quarterback, but the overwhelming response has been, "just throw the ball lol."
ESL here, let's see.I suppose that Michaelmas Term must but after a mass for Michael so after Michael's day in the calendar, and Term is something relating to a school year, so I suppose it's a specific time of the year that must mean something to english students at the time. There's reference to the Lord Chancellor, so maybe it's specific to law schools? Then it mentions it's november, so I assume Michael's Day is in October.I also suppose that there evocations of dinosaurs because it's so muddy that it's reminiscent of a time where people thought dinosaurs lived in pic related. It's very muddy all around, people keep slidding in the mud and losing their footing.The fog must be about the pollution of London at the time (I think it's London because it mentions Greenwhich and Kentish which I know of) since it's mentionned being in throats of pensionners and normal condensation fog doesn't make you sick.Overall the page is to evoke a grim image of London in the mind of the reader.Then we're back to the chancellery, so the story must definitively revolve about characters involved in the justice system.Now I read the latest reply to the thread which says the students were supposed to translate or explain every single sentence which I haven't done, and I'm too lazy to redo all that's written above.
>>24781386± ± Londonistan. Recently past the Period of Sammichele, and Herr Kanzler is sat within Lincoln's Inn 'All. Unappeasable the meteo of IXber. Equal street muck as had, only recently, the diluvia retreated from the world's superficies, and no miracle would it be if one encountered a megalosaur, some twelve meters in length, hobbling up 'Olborn 'Ill as were it a gargantuan gecko. Fumes falling from the exhaust pipes of buildings, causing a tender dark mizzle, therein tarry specks large as adult snow-crystals – amourn, you could think, for Solar defunction. Hounds not to be told apart in their grime. Hardly better the equines; covered up to their blinders even. Pedestrians, accost at the brolly, in an epidemic of cantanker, their grip (of the foot) lost on block-edges, in which place myriads of different pedestrians have been gliding underfoot since start of day (if start of day there was, here), heaving on ever more layers of muck to the muck, becoming stuck to the sidewalk, hardily, there at those spots, and adding up in combined rates.Mist everyplace. Mist upstream, where it streams round grassy isles and leas; mist downstream, where raped it spins out round stacks of harbour, and near the befouled banks of a big (also nasty) settlement-with-a-cathedral-and/or-university. Mist on the swamps of Essex, mist on the peaks of Kent. Mist stealing into the galleys of coalburner ships; mist sleeping on the docks, and floating in the ropes of big vessels; mist sinking on the gunnels of barks and punters. Mist in Greenwich OAPs' eyeussies and thrussies, gasping at their brood's hearth; mist in the iresome captain's p.m. pipe (bowl and stem), in his boudoir; mist dastardly nipping at pollex and hallux of his trembling wee novice femboy outside. Fortuitous folx looking over the edges of bridges to a firmament of mist below, with mist surrounding them everywhere, as though in a montgolfière, hung in the foggy welkin.Breaking thru the mist in diverse street spots there is effluvium, quite akin to the sun observed, from porous plains, breaking by yeoman and plowlad. Majority of stores lit 120 minutes prior to what's apposite – and so too the effluvium appears to grok, as it's got a physog worn and unconsenting.The crude p.m. is crudest, and the thick mist is thickest, and the mucky roads are muckiest, close to the lead-capped aged obstacle, a meet decoration for the limen of a lead-capped aged body, viz. Temple Bar. And right at Temple Bar, within Lincoln's Inn 'All, at the mist's core itself, is sat Herr Hochkanzler in 'is 'Oigh Cour' of Chauncery.There can arrive no mist ever excessively dense, no muck or grime ever excessively profound, to mix with the stillborn shipwrecked state this here 'Oigh Cour' Chauncery – pestiferous'st of prunefaced peccators – keeps, to-day, in the eyes of the là -haut and ici-bas.
>>24782865Were they clear on doing a close analysis, because if I was asked "what is this saying?", I'd probably give a one sentence summary too. If I was asked to write a paper, I'd look more closely at what it was saying about industrialization and its effect on London around this time and go in depth about the word choice and the repetition.
>>24783028>I'd probably give a one sentence summary too.lmfoa why?
>>24783013How did you develop the ability to write in this rank, high-style pastiche? Tell me your ways.
>>24783013plz tell me if this is AI so I can decide whether to be impressed
>>24783088I really just stuck close verbatim and at the sentence level and sought to give it a kind of ridiculous rewording. Mostly it probably more formal in places, but elsewhere more current, more foreign, more British, whatever came to mind; and a little bullshit, surely, deliberate and in-. Reading widely and knowing languages helps.>>24783169It's not. I looked up a few synonyms but most was from what I know.
>>24783222>*it's probablyAnd an oversight typo, the Muphry's Law kind of fate that will today get you called an esl jeet
>>24783222>It's not. I looked up a few synonyms but most was from what I know.thank you now I can rest easy
>>24781386>Normies can't read DickensGood, fuck Dickens. That nigger tought factories were bad for kids as opposed to starving to death on a noble farm. Most immoral 19th century pieces of shit alongside Hegel, Hamilton and the entirety of Prussia
>>24781386not gonna lie, I had to struggle to make it through the text.Is it over for me /lit/?
>>24783296not unless you plan to become a novelist or english teacher (like they are)
>>24781902the anti-intellectual rightoid epidemic in the US has reached basically any English-speaking site on the internet. Let's just hope that when they get their state-mandated Medicaid cuts, enough of them will die, so this place will be less annoying
>>24783231>angry ESL jeet complains about being overtly stinkyno it's just you
>>24783296Yes. If the greatest author of all time writing about these bad boys didn't grab your attention, nothing will.
>>24781386To be fair, this is terrible writing.
>>24783263So, were you impressed?
>>24781386What is michaelmas? And what is the passage about the megalosaurus about
>>24783296Everytime i try to read dickens i find it tedious despite being able to read what many consider to be more "difficult". English is my only language and I can read more archaic English. I just haven't enjoyed any excerpt from Dickens
>>24781434That is a deliberate style choice. Like the banging of a gavel or the formulation of a legal document. It's almost like a telegram message, very mechanical and cold, reflected both in the weather/atmosphere of the scene and the contents of it (pertaining to a court of law). It's meant to sketch an unpleasant scene, a scene that makes you uneasy and on edge against the injustices about to unfold.
>>24783888He does have a particular style, but once you get into it, there is no one better. I like the whole first few pages of A Tale of Two Cities, but just consider this little excerpt:France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous.
>>24784045>very mechanical and coldmy kind of literature
>>24784049this is just the style of the time, which we generously do not formally refer to as 'deliberately embarrassing'
