haskell wrong channel story

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A story on February 3 2011 when Alex Rozenshteyn asked a question regarding Lojban but mailed it to a wrong mailing list, namely, a list of beginners in Haskell programming language. Here is the transcript:

  • Alex Rozenshteyn:
    Specifically, I want to form a lujvo meaning "omnicide" (to ta'o this is due to the tvtropes trope "Omnicidal Maniac" ta'onai toi). ro zei catra or rolcatra seems to be wrong. ro zei se catra seems like it's all the victims, so maybe selrolselcatra? I'm not quite clear on what it means to be a lujvo if you don't have a tanru as the basis.
    • Brent Yorgey:
      Me neither. You probably need to use zygohistomorphic prepromorphisms.
      • Alex Rozenshteyn:
        ki'asai
        • aditya siram:
          I have never understood less about what's going on.
          • Alex Rozenshteyn:
            I think brent's reply was making fun of me and didn't have much meaning beyond that. If there was any part of my question you did not understand, feel free to point out a specific part, and I'll try my best to clarify.
            • Daniel Fischer:
              The entire part between the first 'S' and the last 's' inclusive? You know, it might help if you used a language spoken by more than a handful. From the look of it, I suspect it might be lojban, but I can't be sure.
              • Brent Yorgey:
                Yes, I was poking some light-hearted fun at you for sending (mistakenly, I presume) a lojban question to a Haskell mailing list. =)
                • Alex Rozenshteyn:
                  I meant to email "lojban-beginners" Apologies. mea culpa I hope you all got a good laugh at my expense.
                  • Brent Yorgey:
                    > mea culpa
                    Hmm, more lojban, eh? ;) Seriously, no need to apologize, it was an innocent mistake and we all do stuff like this on occasion. At least I know I do.
                    > I hope you all got a good laugh at my expense.
                    The funniest part (to me) was that you didn't realize what you had done even when lots of people on the "lojban-beginners" mailing list were very confused. =)
                    Anyway, since we are already off-topic, I will highly recommend the book "Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error", by Kathryn Schulz (for everyone, not just you) which gives some fascinating perspectives on incidents such as this one.
                  • Amy de Buitléir:
                    To me the funniest part was that it reminded me of when I first started learning Haskell and reading this list. Most of the messages on this list were just as incomprehensible (to me). In fact, until I noticed the reference to TV tropes, I assumed this was something to do with category theory or some other area of maths that I don't know anything about yet.