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2:44 AM
@Mitch "Alphabetical"
 
3:36 AM
@Mitch Dan Savage, is that you?
 
 
7 hours later…
10:56 AM
Abraham Lincoln (/ˈeɪbrəhæm ˈlɪŋkən/; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln led the United States through its Civil War—its bloodiest war and its greatest moral, constitutional, and political crisis. In doing so, he preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and modernized the economy. Born in Hodgenville, Kentucky, Lincoln grew up on the western frontier in Kentucky and Indiana. Largely self-educated, he became a lawyer in Illinois, a Whig Party leader...
Cotton Mather, FRS (February 12, 1663 – February 13, 1728; A.B. 1678, Harvard College; A.M. 1681, honorary doctorate 1710, University of Glasgow) was a socially and politically influential New England Puritan minister, prolific author, and pamphleteer. Known for his vigorous support for the Salem witch trials, he also left a scientific legacy due to his hybridization experiments and his promotion of inoculation for disease prevention. He was subsequently denied the Presidency of Harvard College which his father, Increase, had held. == Life and workEdit == Mather was born in Boston, Massachusetts...
Thomas Campion (sometimes Campian) (12 February 1567 – 1 March 1620) was an English composer, poet, and physician. He wrote over a hundred lute songs, masques for dancing, and an authoritative technical treatise on music. == Life == Campion was born in London, the son of John Campion, a clerk of the Court of Chancery, and Lucy (née Searle – daughter of Laurence Searle, one of the queen's serjeants-at-arms). Upon the death of Campion's father in 1576, his mother married Augustine Steward, dying soon afterwards. His stepfather assumed charge of the boy and sent him, in 1581, to study at Peterhouse...
 
 
2 hours later…
user116848
12:29 PM
Hello @snailboat. How have you been?
 
1:25 PM
@MετάEd Morning has broken. Someone better fix it.
@MattE.Эллен Is this a 'which one of these is not like the other' question?
 
@Mitch No, it's his birthday, silly.
Happy birthday, @MattE.Эллен!
Which reminds me that it is around the birthday of @aediaλ too, speaking of people we never see anymore.
 
I’ve thought @MattE.Эллен resembled Lincoln.
 
A ginger Lincoln.
 
And @Cerberus has a birthday imminent.
 
@KitZ.Fox ?? That's like you're expecting me to read those. Also, you didn't answer in the form of a pun so I didn't understand.
 
user116848
1:35 PM
@MattE.Эллен Happy Birthday!
3
 
@tchrist I thought his was in March for some reason.
 
A few days ago I was stunned to realize that I was thinking I was a year older than I was.
 
I skipped ahead myself. Nice round numbers.
 
@tchrist Nice. Like finding that missing sock.
An extra year!
 
@KitZ.Fox No, he’s 20 years my junior nearly to the day.
 
1:37 PM
Feb 23rd?
 
Like 17th IIRC.
It’s in our logues.
/me searches
 
Or was that aedia? Actually, I think hers was one of the president's birthdays.
 
((cerberus = tchrist) -= 20 years) += 5 days
So, the 18th, but it will happen on my 17th.
 
I'm confused. Your birthday is not the 23rd?
 
wonders whether Cerb’s mother was in Spain ’bout then, and. . . .
@KitZ.Fox It is tomorrow.
 
1:41 PM
hahaha
@tchrist Happy birthday.
 
Thanks. I hope so.
 
Cake! Cake for everyone!
 
user116848
Happy Birthday in advance @tchrist!
3
 
I am sure I know someone whose birthday is Feb 23rd.
I had a visit from my ex-gf last night.
 
Those can be interesting. Were you sleeping?
 
1:43 PM
She is hugely pregnant, so maybe her baby will be born on the 23rd and I can stop trying to remember who I know who was born that day.
@tchrist No. This was real life.
 
@KitZ.Fox That would be convenient.
 
@KitZ.Fox Hallelujah! It’s George Frideric Handel!
 
Hmm. Maybe.
 
user116848
@KitZ.Fox What? Your girlfriend? Kit you are... were... ;-)
 
I did like his water music.
 
1:46 PM
Fireworks are nice.
 
@Arrowfar What? What am/was I? Don't leave me in suspense like that.
 
There's not enough to entertain water.
 
user116848
@KitZ.Fox Um, how can you have a girlfriend? lol
 
@KitZ.Fox You're colloidal!!
 
@Arrowfar Anybody can have girlfriends, and most people do.
 
user116848
1:47 PM
Yeah :)
 
@tchrist Not horses.
They can read your thoughts
 
I hate it when the horses read my thoughts.
 
I know!
 
So the key to having a girlfriend is for them not to read your thoughts?
 
Exactly
Holy crap, if they could! Civilization would fall apart.
"You mean you 're not blind and you actuually like socks with sandals? AUGH!"
Wait are we talking about horses or girlfriends?
 
1:50 PM
Aren’t hose just long socks?
 
Why the long face?
 
@Arrowfar Same way you can have one.
 
Girl's best friend is a horse.
Man’s best friend is a dog.
Outside of a book.
 
user116848
@KitZ.Fox So Kit are you into girls too? :) Sorry, I couldn't resist asking you that lol.
 
The world is wider than you think it is.
 
1:53 PM
@Arrowfar I don't base my preferences for companionship on gender, if that's what you are asking.
 
user116848
Ah I see.
 
user116848
:)
 
I thought you knew that. I don't keep it a secret.
 
user116848
No I didn't know.
 
Ah, well. Girls are nicer than horses.
 
1:56 PM
@tchrist No, it's pretty set at ~8K miles.
 
wonders what a kilomile’s good for
 
@KitZ.Fox Girls will accept your choice in socks with sandals.
 
They will often even buy you sandal socks for presents.
 
@tchrist minimal progress to metric?
@KitZ.Fox that's going too far.
 
@KitZ.Fox A sandal needs a sock like a fish needs a bicycle.
 
1:58 PM
OK, what's the big deal with gravity waves?
the effect is so small.
 
@Mitch It might be useful in some kilobytes per mile measurement.
 
you need two effing big blackholes a bajillion miles away to meet in order to get any measurable effect.
 
@Mitch Actually, if it happened across the street from you, I think you'd notice that.
 
I'm going out on a limb here... wait, why are those squirrels looking at me like that?
 
@Mitch Because GR says it has to exist.
 
1:59 PM
@tchrist I don't think so. I have the drapes closed.
@tchrist why did it take so long for experimental confirmation?
 
@Mitch When a model predicts something, one tests that model's soundness by checking whether its predictions pan out empirically.
@Mitch It’s hard to measure.
> Well, gravitational waves give us another way to observe space. For example, waves from the Big Bang would tell us a little more about how the universe formed. Waves also form when black holes collide, supernovae explode, and massive neutron stars wobble. So detecting these waves would give us a new new insight into the cosmic events that produced them.
Finally, gravitational waves could also help physicists understand the fundamental laws of the universe. They are, in fact, a crucial part of Einstein's general theory of relativity. Finding them would prove that theory—and could also help
 
I'm just complaining because of all the gongoristic metaphors about 'we could see the depths of the universe, now we car hear them' or 'perturbations in the fabric of space -time... itself'
 
> Why is it such a big deal that we found gravitational waves?

For one, this discovery is more confirmation that Einstein's theory of relativity is correct.

But it also means that an entirely new era of astronomy is upon us.

Astronomers finally have a way to track all the objects in the universe that don't emit any kind of visible light, like black holes and neutron stars — and perhaps objects that physicists haven't yet dreamed up or discovered yet. We finally have a concrete way to study these mysterious cosmic objects that we know very little about.
 
I think it's like the faster than light neutrinos.
 
Or that positrons are electrons that are moving in the opposite temporal direction.
 
2:06 PM
I see what you did there. you reversed the polarity
The term 'black holes' is an unfortunate metaphor.
 
Gravity well? Quantum singularity?
 
black holes don't just sit out there in space, invisible waiting for you to accidentally fall into them.
they're surrounded by a lot of star-like material, emitting EMR -away- from the black hole. (the EMR towards the BH surely does get sucked in never to be seen again)
 
In beautiful swirls.
 
clouds in your coffee
sips coffee
 
user116848
It's tea time here.
 
user116848
2:11 PM
<makes tea for everyone>
 
There's a particular time for tea?
 
I don't like coffee, both in reality and in prnciple, but with a lot of milk and sugar and chocolate it's pretty good, with enough so that if you took away the coffee you wouldn't notice..
 
@Mitch What’s not?
 
user116848
@tchrist I drink tea in the evening with snacks sometimes. Toast etc.
 
@tchrist steak.
wait...
no, I was right, steak wouldn't be that great with all that.
 
user116848
2:13 PM
But not later than 8 pm. Because then caffeine makes me lose all the sleep.
 
user116848
Hi @Mitch How are you?
 
About 5'9 and balding.
 
@Mitch are you ... are you saying that I'm vain?
@tchrist Really? I thought you were shorter than that. :D
 
@KitZ.Fox I was reefering to Midge.
 
2:17 PM
@Arrowfar After that milk and chocolate steak, a little queasy
 
I was 5'8 when I got out of college, but it's been all downhill from then.
 
@KitZ.Fox I was think of the Suzanne Vega song
da da, da da, da-da da da, da da da da da-da da da
 
user116848
I have grown some beard.
 
user116848
I posted my new pic in the other chatroom the other day. You guys wanna see?
 
user116848
I'll delete it after like 1 min :)
 
2:21 PM
They use this all the time, this 'explanation' of gravity bending space time, which unnaturally assumes an understanding of gravity for the explanation.
also, the feather. argh!
 
@Arrowfar Yes.
 
user116848
Okay, well mods can still see after it is deleted.
 
user116848
<Searches>
 
user116848
@Mitch @KitZ.Fox Here
 
user116848
 
2:24 PM
@Mitch I have a hard time with it because it makes space-time into a 2D object, so that confuses me, and also the thing with gravity wells--why doesn't everything slide together then?
 
user116848
Sorry not smiling much!
 
user116848
:-)
 
Nice. That is a very good picture.
 
user116848
Thanks!
 
Is that very fashionable hairstyling for your area, or is it subdued and professional?
Or somewhere in between?
 
user116848
2:26 PM
It is a crew cut. Sorta.
 
user116848
I just go to barber and tell him to give me a crew cut.
 
user116848
;-)
 
So quite clean and neat then. I like it.
 
user116848
Crew cut after like 3 weeks heh.
 
@KitZ.Fox it's an appeal to senses, it doesn't hold up to thought.
 
2:27 PM
Very respectable.
 
user116848
@KitZ.Fox Thanks! :)
 
@Arrowfar how about a mustache?
 
user116848
@Mitch I tend to cut my moustache in like every three days. I like to grow beard though.
 
user116848
But not much. I trim it, of course.
 
@KitZ.Fox a physicist might say that they did all fall together, at least into many fewer things than near the beginnning of time.
 
2:29 PM
orbital resonance.
 
@Arrowfar I find both annoying...the beard itches and the stache doesn't look good by itself.
 
But how did...I have to stop thinking about it or my brain will blow up.
 
@KitZ.Fox exactly.
 
That's ultimately why I had such a crisis in my doctoral program, I think. Too much thinking about understanding how the brain works.
 
A quarter used to be the smallest denomination of coin available. So it's a metaphor of not giving even the smallest leeway at all. — Mitch 18 mins ago
 
2:34 PM
@KitZ.Fox thank you :D
@tchrist thanks! :D
@Arrowfar thank you!
@Mitch also, it doesn't explain the waves at all, or is there more to the comic in another image?
 
@KitZ.Fox Things seem so easy after that. You spend years trying to understand the smallest narrowest thing, and then someone asks you if you can solve this nonlinear dynamic system over a third order monodromy group, and you think "That? Pfft, that's easy in comparison"
 
@Mitch I'm the only one who has survived to this point in history
 
@MattE.Эллен of course it explains waves. it says it in the title, and also has some words and an arrow 'ripples in the fabric of space time'
@MattE.Эллен Oh. Good for you!
 
@Mitch oh! ok. my mistake. I totally get it now.
 
I think that's a bit of cherry picking though.
Or straw men.
or more accurately dead men.
@MattE.Эллен it's really just a matter of pointing you in the right direction.
The rest is all you.
 
2:40 PM
so, I'm a ripple in the fabric of space and time?
 
But life advice here, avoid eye contact with horses. They... know.
 
I was always told not to make waves
@Mitch the horses, too?
 
@MattE.Эллен I'm more of a lint speck on the fabric of space-time.
 
@Mitch even lint specks have mass
 
that never comes off in the washing machine of existence.
I'm in the lint-trap of the dryer of the space-time continuum.
 
2:43 PM
so, you're with your friends?
 
ha ha. no.
 
but you have so much in common
 
but i just figured out where those missing socks go... dryers have hidden wormholes.
 
do they have gravitational waves, too?
the wormholes?
 
3:00 PM
That I don't know theoretically. the whole wormhole idea is a theoretical consequence of quantum theory, and gravitational waves are for relativity theory, and those two theories are ... let's say comagisterial, they try to explain different phenomena (therefore the desire for a unified theory of realtivity and quantum theory together). So how they interact is hard to say.
 
3:26 PM
@Mitch Darmok and Gelard at Tenagra
 
3:48 PM
Bikini Atoll (pronounced /ˈbɪkᵻˌniː/ or /bᵻˈkiːni/; Marshallese: Pikinni, [pʲi͡ɯɡɯ͡inʲːii̯], meaning coconut place) is an atoll in the Marshall Islands. The atoll consists of 23 islands totaling 3.4 square miles (8.8 km2) surrounding a deep 229.4-square-mile (594.1 km2) central lagoon at the northern end of the Ralik Chain (approximately 87 kilometres (54 mi) northwest of Ailinginae Atoll and 850 kilometres (530 mi) northwest of Majuro). Within Bikini Atoll, Bikini, Eneu, Nam and Enidrik islands comprise just over 70% of the land area. Bikini and Eneu are the only islands of the atoll that hosted...
Kind of sad, really.
 
My grandfather got bladder cancer from his work degaussing hulls at Bikini Atoll.
 
It's just a horrible place at this point
 
4:02 PM
I don't think we really understood what kind of everlasting devastation it would cause.
 
@MattE.Эллен speechless
 
4:14 PM
Is that a Next Generation reference?
Like first season?
 
Let's play a game
Name the most obscure TCG you know
 
I don't know what TCG is.
 
Trading Card Game
Like Pokemon or Magic the Gathering
nerd stuff like I would know
 
Oh.
 
There is a Megaman TCG apparently.
 
4:19 PM
Yugioh, Star Wars, Bakugan
My Little Pony
 
Bakugan is stretching it, I guess.
I have too much spare time
 
@DeltaEscher BloodWars
 
@KitZ.Fox Actually very prominent For some reason
Did my image even upload?
It just says 'image not found' for me
 
4:40 PM
@KitZ.Fox That's how obscure it is!
@DeltaEscher Monopoly
 
@KitZ.Fox yes.
 
I can't reconcile my internal concept of Matthew Ellen with the fact that he just referenced old new Star Trek.
 
4:54 PM
@Mitch Monopoly is best trading card game
 
5:19 PM
@KitZ.Fox I can.
@DeltaEscher Ooh... for real... what about Wacky Packs
 
Pretty cool
@Mitch did my image load?
 
@DeltaEscher do you mean this one?
 
Yup
Mine just says 'image not found'
 
Garbage Pail Kids?
@DeltaEscher I can see it.
 
Garbage Pail Kids is a series of trading cards produced by the Topps Company, originally released in 1985 and designed to parody the Cabbage Patch Kids dolls, which were immensely popular at the time. Each sticker card features a Garbage Pail Kid character having some comical abnormality, deformity and/or suffering a terrible fate, with a humorous, word play-rich character name such as Glandular Angela or Half-Nelson. Two versions of each card were produced, with variations featuring the same artwork but a different character name denoted by an "a" or "b" letter after the card number. The sticker...
Pretty cool stuff.
I remember them from 2010
 
5:24 PM
@KitZ.Fox what is causing the dissonance?
 
@MattE.Эллен No true Brit has ever watched Star Trek.
 
I hope to have the entirety of Europe on my drawing by the end
 
@KitZ.Fox lolwhut? true Brits appear in star trek :D
@DeltaEscher that is a lofty and worthy goal
 
@MattE.Эллен Though they always wear red shirts for some reason...
 
@DeltaEscher I can see it just fine
 
5:25 PM
@MattE.Эллен Nope. No, they don't. No.
 
Cool
 
restart your browser?
 
School image cacheing
The Golden Raspberry Awards, often shortened to the Razzies, is an award ceremony in recognition of the worst in film. Founded by American copywriter and publicist John J. B. Wilson in 1980, the annual Razzie Awards ceremony in Los Angeles precedes the corresponding Academy Awards ceremony by one day. The term raspberry in the name is used in its irreverent sense, as in "blowing a raspberry". The awards themselves are in the form of a "golfball-sized raspberry" which sits atop a Super 8 mm film reel, the whole of which is spray painted gold. The first Golden Raspberry Awards ceremony was held on...
 
Did you know that Halle Berry showed up to accept her Razzie? Totally classy.
Lunch time. bbl
 
@KitZ.Fox No puns with her name ensued
 
5:27 PM
@KitZ.Fox You can't just drop a bomb like that and leave. That's inconscionable
 
@KitZ.Fox Oh! I see! Only Amuricuns can appear in something as popular as ST:TNG. I see how it is. ಠ_ಠ
 
The flag of Bikini Atoll, a member of the Marshall Islands, closely resembles the flag of the United States and was adopted in 1987. The flag is symbolic of the islanders' belief that a great debt is still owed by the United States to the people of Bikini because in 1954 the United States government detonated the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb on the island, poisoning islanders and others with nuclear fallout. == DesignEdit == The 23 white stars in the canton of the flag represent the 23 islands of Bikini Atoll. The three black stars in the upper right represent the three islands that were disfigured...
 
@MattE.Эллен I thought they were all british
 
Their flag is literally a guilt trip
 
faking their 'Federation' (= American) accent
 
5:29 PM
"Wesley! Get my space trousers!"
 
It's kinda obvious that the Cardassians represent Northern Ireland.
 
Or Cardashians. same thing
 
So would the Bajorans be ... Regular Ireland?
 
Keeping up with the Cardassians
United States, did you nuke my country again?
deadpan laughter
 
5:42 PM
@MattE.Эллен nope. the Bajorans are ... St Kilda?
what's that little tiny rock out west past there?
ha ha anyway I messed up. of course Cardassians/Bajorans are Nazis/Jews, Israel/Palestine, England/Irish, um... everybody/everybody else.
But I do feel sorry for Mr. Kardashian. He missed everything.
@MattE.Эллен ROCKALL!
 
6:08 PM
@Mitch Metal
 
@MattE.Эллен Metallica
 
6:24 PM
@MattE.Эллен That's darling.
 
@MετάEd it gave me a good giggle when I read it
 
@MattE.Эллен What are you even talking about? Jean Luc Picard is French, not British. rolls eyes duh.
 
@KitZ.Fox with an accent like that? I think it's some kind of section 31 ploy
clearly they want control of France for some nefarious clandestine reason, so they make out that their best captain is French, when he's clearly from Yorkshire
 
I had to look up Section 31. That's too new for me.
 
:D
maybe France is actually run by the Maquis
or as I prefer to believe: a marquee
 
6:40 PM
Mackey? Isn't that what you wear when it rains?
 
I thought it was just part of the name for that fast food chain
 
@KitZ.Fox Gah! Belgian!
Oh. I was wrong. Franche-Comté
So who the hell is Belgian (other than Poirot)?
 
6:56 PM
Jean Claude van Damme
 
Nice.
 
or Dam
I don't know
 
@Shafizadeh Oops, I typoed. Rathony and you are of course correct, it should be multiple strings.
 
The 'van' is a vanity title, just like Beethoven.
 
Is there a word that covers 'different or same'? I'm trying to phrase this spec -- I want to see other products with ice cream, so that I can explore products with [same or different] flavors of ice cream. Maybe I should just leave the adjective out.
 
7:08 PM
a word that means both "the same" and "different"?
other?
 
It's genetics, not ice cream actually. Here is a mouse with chocolate ice cream. I want to see all the mice with ice cream, including both chocolate and other flavors.
 
I'm still sharpening my skills for writing user stories.
 
regardless the flavour?
irrespective of flavour?
 
I think I'm going to go with I want to see all the mice with ice cream so that I can compare ice cream flavors.
 
7:13 PM
sounds good
 
Ooh. I love chocolate mouse.
But I would kill for chocolate moose.
 
Yum.
 
moves the moose out of sight
 
7:27 PM
Rule 43.
 
Sorry. Rule 34.
 
I was going to say: who are you accusing?
but since you meant 34
 
7:54 PM
Rule 43 is sometimes "you can find anything on the internet".
 
@KitZ.Fox 'all'
 
@Cerberus ah tnx
 
Other times it's about corrupting things.
 
> Rule 43 (in the UK) a prison regulation whereby prisoners, typically sex offenders, can be isolated or segregated for their own protection.
as well
 
Is it your birthday today?
Happy birthday, Matt!
 
7:59 PM
Thanks :D
yes it is
 
 
2 hours later…
9:35 PM
@tchrist Do the diacritics render properly for you on this page?
In the second paragraph, the one starting about Attic inscriptions:
I don't even know where those are supposed to go.
 
@Cerberus those are supposed to go TO THE GROUND.
Hope that helps.
@MattE.Эллен Happy birthday hideous gorgeous orc.
 
9:57 PM
Happy birthday all you February peeps!
I feel bad that I never come back here. I miss you guys.
Real life has been throwing way too much my way. Almost never have time or energy for any social media or anything lately.
 
10:23 PM
@aediaλ Real life is overrated
@RegDwigнt Pfft. That's just littering.
 
@RegDwigнt Heloooo!
> Man, this isn't my dad, it's a cell phone!
Very good.
At least someone is resisting the system.
 
10:44 PM
@Cerberus Nope.
 
OK thanks.
 
Right.
 

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