Re: [edk2-devel] The rumours of Ard Biesheuvel's death have been greatly exaggerated

["Laszlo Ersek" <lersek@redhat.com>]

On 04/09/19 20:59, Al Stone wrote:
> On 04/09/2019 12:06 PM, Leif Lindholm wrote:
>> On Tue, Apr 09, 2019 at 07:58:37PM +0200, Laszlo Ersek wrote:
>>> On 04/09/19 18:36, Tomas Pilar (tpilar) wrote:
>>>> I skimmed the my emails and my eyes registered 'Ard Biesheuvel' and 'death' and my brain went 'but but but I've seen him just yesterday!'. Hope you are happy.
>>>
>>> The rumors of Leif Lindholm's reprimand, due to giving edk2-devel
>>> subscribers a heart attack, have *not* been exaggerated...
>>>
>>> Honestly mine skipped a beat. :(
>>
>> Sorry guys, I thought the "the rumours of my death have been greatly
>> exaggerated" was common enough pop culture to be globally
>> recognisable.
>>
>> Clearly it wasn't.
>> I apologise and will try to be more careful in future.
>>
>> /
>>     Leif
> 
> In Leif's defense, this may be an Americanism, often attributed to Mark Twain
> (aka Samuel Clemens [0]), one of the great American humorists.  So, I understood
> him quite clearly and knew precisely what he meant.  This is an extremely well
> known reference in this part of the English speaking world (I'm in the US), and
> perhaps the UK.
> 
> Just the same, I understand we are not all part of a single culture.  And it can
> be enormously difficult to see these sorts of references as culturally specific
> when one is fluent in a language.  I struggle with it all the time.

I'm moderately familiar with the saying, but if you replace "my" with
"someone else", then it reads quite differently. Compare:

- the rumours of my death         |stop reading here|
- the rumours of John Doe's death |stop reading here|

The first variant is funny even without finishing the sentence; the
sentence almost finishes itself. That's because "my death" obviously
conflicts with "I'm writing this message", so we start laughing.

OTOH, the second variant induces anguish between the word "death" and
the rest of the sentence, because the conflict that makes the first
variant funny is not there. The sentence could technically be finished
very differently from "have been greatly exaggerated".

Important: I'm not posting this to make Leif feel worse, just trying to
explain why we can't blame this *entirely* on cultural differences. I
might recognize a pattern from a different culture and share the laugh,
but here the pain set in before I was done recognizing the pattern.

I do agree it remains *mostly* cultural though, as I reckon most native
English speakers recognize the pattern as soon as they read just "The
rumours of", and start smiling right there, from memory.

... And, yes, I've just butchered the quip itself, by over-analyzing it.
Sorry about that. :)

Thanks
Laszlo

> 
> My only puzzlement was "those responsible have been sacked."  I thought it was a
> reference to the opening credits of "Monty Python's Holy Grail" and started
> thinking about taking a holiday in Sweden and seeing the "wøndërful telephøne
> system And mäni interesting furry animals" [1] .... which then made me think
> that maybe Ard's hair could be considered a small furry animal (sorry, Ard :),
> at which point I decided I was really not quite awake yet and definitely needed
> more coffee.  This has been remedied.
> 
> For introducing a little surrealism into my morning, I thank you, Leif.  I would
> probably have written the exact same thing under the circumstances; now I know
> to watch out for that quote, too.  Thanks to all for pointing that out.
> 
> I now return you to your current EDK2 topic...
> 
> 
> 
> [0] http://www.twainquotes.com/Death.html
> [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071853/crazycredits
> 
>>>
>>> Laszlo
>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: devel@edk2.groups.io <devel@edk2.groups.io> On Behalf Of Leif Lindholm
>>>> Sent: 09 April 2019 08:46
>>>> To: devel@edk2.groups.io
>>>> Subject: [edk2-devel] The rumours of Ard Biesheuvel's death have been greatly exaggerated
>>>>
>>>> Anyone sending email to Ard Biesheuvel today will have been met by a notification saying he no longer works at Linaro.
>>>>
>>>> Those responsible have not been sacked, but his account is in the process of being restored :)
>>>>
>>>> /
>>>>     Leif
> 
>