#parallel construction

[thejawsdevour]

Oonju Chun (Korean) - Parallel Construction (oil on canvas, 2018)

[arcticdementor]

"There are parts of the Mangione story that I doubt for this reason. I see parallel construction on a semi-regular basis in mundane drug stops. Boy, it's remarkably convenient that a local cop happened to stop this particular 18-wheeler for a traffic violation, had a drug dog ready and got a positive alert, and immediately measured the inside length of the trailer that revealed the hidden compartment in the front of the fully-loaded trailer. Incredible odds on that one. So there is zero question in my mind it's happening on a much larger basis, and the only question is just how much of it is going on. It also makes it quite remarkable that the person who planted the pipe bombs on Jan 5 has never been caught. So remarkable that it some might say it glows."

—RoyGBivensAction

[arcticdementor]

"Key Word for Espianage, resistance, dissent, etc. "Paralellel Construction" Cops regularly use intel agencies, NSA, Etc. To observe and track dissidents, solve crimes with mass surveillance, and then create false "spontaneous" "lucky breaks" to lie about how they found you. They Construct a paralellel story of how they caught you unrelated to how they actually found you, and covering up how they violated your rights with mass surveillance catching you. Basically if you're at all percieved of as a regime enemy, you have to assume they're using the entire NSA to track you and you have to organize the opsec of any crime or dissent op assuming that anything that touches a PC or is spoken in listening distance of a cellphone or smart TV is being observed... Tape over your cameras on your devices like Zuckerburg. Because if they want to crack a case they will just go back through the autogenerated transcripts of what you said in the living room, or the video of what was happening in your bedroom, or your phones's GPS and Cell Tower pings. Now... a lot of that probably decays quickly, like they probably can't go back more than a month or two... But they'll get their initial "hint" from that, then go to your house and "incidentally notice" something that gives them the right to search you... And the story in court will be that they spotted drug paraphenelia through your window or an ex girlfriend made a complaint, etc."

—CatGirl Kulak

[heardofbees]

Jimmy Dore

[writerystuff]

A MESS

“...could be used to both spy on you, but also to show you stuff that’s actually not there...”

This sentence fragment is a mess. First of all, it isn’t grammatical to use “both” with “but also.” There are two idioms to choose from: “both X and Y” and “not only X but also Y.” Combining them is not an option.

Second, if we correct that, we get the following:

“...could be used to both spy on you, and to show you stuff that’s actually not there...”

The writer used “to” twice, which is fine, but the words are in the wrong place. There are two correct formulations:

both to spy on you and to show you stuff

to both spy on you and show you stuff

In other words, if “both” is followed by “to,” “and” also has to be followed by “to.”

We won’t even go into the wholly unnecessary comma.

[writerystuff]

MISSING WORD

“...if the doctor contributed or caused the death of a patient...”

The thing about and and or is that they have to connect equivalent items. If you write a sentence like this:

He ate steak and fries.

He wanted his eggs fried or scrambled.

...the sentence has to “work” even if you eliminate one (or more) of the things connected by and.

He ate steak.

He ate fries.

He wanted his eggs fried.

He wanted his eggs scrambled.

Yup, that works.

But the sentence quoted above doesn’t:

...if the doctor caused the death of a patient...

...if a doctor contributed the death of a patient...

The author has forgotten the necessity of the word to.

...if the doctor contributed to or caused the death of a patient...

I despair. How do we eliminate this kind of error? It would help to teach grammar in schools (and maybe logic). It would help to read a lot--but only material that is grammatically correct. Any other suggestions welcome!

[writerystuff]

PARALLEL

At some point I hope to write a whole post about parallel construction, Meantime, this sad example:

“...either a batch of homemade cookies or of deviled eggs.”

[ph4z0n]

A recently disclosed document shows the FBI telling a local police department that the bureau’s covert cell-phone tracking equipment is so secret that any evidence acquired through its use needs to be recreated in some other way before being introduced at trial.