« first day (2331 days earlier)      last day (2598 days later) » 

4:00 PM
I don't think we need full-blown PMs, just a way to show other users contact info privately.
Which AFAIK doesn't exist
 
But...what do you need that for? Why should SE be interested in giving you that option?
 
in Shadow's Den on Meta Stack Exchange Chat, 42 mins ago, by FOX 9000
@ShadowWizard @Fawad is a good person
 
:0 :)
 
@ACuriousMind Because the SE community does not (and cannot) pretend that it lives in a bubble.
 
4:09 PM
@JaimeGallego I don't see how that is an argument for SE needing to provide private message functionality
 
Oh,hi @ACuriousMind what's up?
 
Come on @JaimeGallego this isn't Facebook :-)
 
No need to fear from me.
 
@skullpetrol No it isn't. That is why I say private traffic should be redirected away from here somehow.
 
Set up a separate room.
 
4:15 PM
3
Q: How do I make a private chat room?

Kendall FreyIn the access tab of a chat room's info page, the Explicit read access section says: Even when this room is private, these users will be able to read the conversations in this room. This implies that there are private rooms, but I can't find any option to make a room private. I can't find...

All of them are public
 
@skullpetrol That's not what he wants - all rooms are public, even if you can create gallery versions where only certain users can talk
 
-1
A: How to survive leap-frogging on a car that is racing towards you?

StephenG A car is coming towards you at high velocity. Get. Out. Of. The. Way. That's what you do. Nothing else. High speed car hits human, human suffers serious injuries or dies. Car has minor dent. Get the idea ? As you see it coming and you have contact Your body breaks. It's not desig...

VLQ?
deleteable?
 
@JaimeGallego no,try opening chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/4
 
@ACuriousMind but you are
 
0
Q: I've read that if taken to 4 dimensions, a 3D creatures innards would fall out and that orbits would not be stable. Is there any truth to this?

Max OsmanI assume the innards thing comes from the idea that if you would take a 2D creature and take it to 3D, it would not have protective walls (e.g. skin) in the third dimension, thus the innards could fall out. So it stands to reason that something similar would happen in the 4th dimension, what hold...

 
4:17 PM
This chat is a very social place
 
Gory! :-)
 
I don't know why you deny this
 
You on the new beast? @JohnRennie
 
@Fawad Is that a mod room? I am not familiar with mod tools
 
Can't say,ask to @ACur
 
4:18 PM
@0celo7 I don't deny that. But having a place where people can socialize is not the same as providing a functionality that is explicitly only there for personal social contact between users without any benefit to the actual SE mission.
 
@JaimeGallego I just want to show,private rooms like that exist.
 
@JaimeGallego Yes, there are certain chat rooms only moderators can access, since there are issues we can/should not publicly talk about.
 
@skullpetrol New beast?
 
@JohnRennie new lap top
 
Ah, no, I'm setting up the new laptop for a friend who is disabled. I'm currently on my usual laptop, which I'm using on a base station with a large screen and proper keyboard.
 
4:22 PM
Okay, I thought it was for you.
 
@ACuriousMind secret courts.
 
How much did you pay for it, if you don't mind me asking @JohnRennie
 
£195
 
Not bad.
 
@JohnRennie what do you think @ACuriousMind is not replying me.
 
4:25 PM
@Fawad Uh, you haven't said anything I would want to reply to? What are you asking John for?
 
It was cheap because it had no hard disk. That wasn't a problem since I always replace the old hard disk with an SSD anyway.
 
Right.
 
@ACuriousMind John know when you are bad-mouthed by me.
15 mins ago, by Fawad
Oh,hi @ACuriousMind what's up?
 
Lol
@ACuriousMind you're just too popular
 
Apparently so :P
 
4:29 PM
and his fan base is increasing exponentially :P
 
You could say haters are increasing :P
 
@Fawad Excuse me?
 
@JaimeGallego that's long story
 
@Fawad I do hope that's a language problem and not a personal attack.
 
4:31 PM
@ACuriousMind OK,excused
 
Relax pal @Fawad
 
Pretty certain that's not a language problem. Come back when you can behave yourself.
 
(removed)
 
What happened??
 
@skullpetrol You ain't fooling anybody ;P
 
4:36 PM
@skullpetrol no,open in desktop mode you will see difference
 
I missed the drama 😭
 
@Fawad cool down my friend :-$
 
OBE
@0celo7 same
 
Just asking: where I can complain for mods using their power for their benefit/wrongly?
 
To the Supreme Court
 
4:39 PM
Here.
 
@Fawad Post at Meta Stack Exchange or use the contact us form if you have a legitimate complaint.
 
@skullpetrol I can't,if iam kicked out of room.
 
I recommend complaining here
It works
 
OK,I was kicked out of room because: I was making sure iam not acm fan.
 
@ACuriousMind dw I am still your fan :)
 
4:41 PM
@Fawad No, you were kicked because you said you "hate" me, which is not very nice. I'd have kicked you for claiming to hate any other user, too.
 
@Fawad make personal attacks is not acceptable in the chat rooms. The next such offense is likely to result in an extended ban. Take note.
 
OBE
you're religious right? (based on your parent user)
that explains a lot.
 
Oh no
 
And now I'd advise you to drop the matter.
 
Why would you open that can of worms
 
4:42 PM
@OBE Now that's not very nice either and I'd ask you to stop that train of thought right there.
 
OBE
okay lol
 
@ACuriousMind one last thing. How you said iam your fan when iam not?
 
OBE
just ignore him acm.
 
@0celo7 <3
 
OBE
this looks like a pointless discussion.
 
4:45 PM
I stop
 
@ACuriousMind how's the new ME?
 
@0celo7 no idea
I was not overly hyped for it, so I didn't buy it on release
I haven't heard much good about it, though
 
5:00 PM
I've only heard bad things
I don't know how it could live up to the hype of the original series
I don't know many sequels that actually do that
 
.
the chat works when the site goes for maintenance? :O
huh
it is back now
I saw a maintenance messsage for 1 minute :|
 
@0celo7 I don't know many other comparable cases
There will be one if CDP ever return to the Witcher universe with a story that's not Geralt's, but if anyone can pull it off, they can
 
@YashasSamaga It usually works, yes. The chat runs on a different server
 
@skullpetrol wtf that went off in my QM lecture
Don't link YouTube when I'm in class
 
5:06 PM
lol
Why is your sound not muted in the first place?
 
And now we turn to QFT... "Don't believe the hype!"
That would be funny
 
@ACuriousMind I was watching Dave Chapelle earlier :P
 
Oops sorry @0celo7
I thought you were still the lab.
 
...how did you know I was in the lab
 
Where else would you use liquid nitrogen?
 
5:12 PM
I taxidermy as a hobby
 
Using liquid nitrogen?
 
@JohnRennie freezing the animals instead of shooting them preserves the skin nicely.
 
0celo7 creeps through the bush armed with a dewar
 
Bush? I prefer city animals
 
So you...have a bunch of racoons and rats?
 
5:15 PM
Members of Congress
They go cling when frozen
 
@JaimeGallego that would be extremely funny. We have 15 significant figures Don't believe the hype!
 
I'm sorry, I have watched too many episodes of House of Cards recently
 
Dawkins is overly aggressive
It's annoying
@ACuriousMind among others
 
a.k.a. "we asked the Greek girl in our group and that's what she said"
 
OBE
5:20 PM
@0celo7 nah lol. it's the people he debates with who are annoying really.
 
@EmilioPisanty heh
I guess bothering to come up with a citation for etymology does not rank highly on most physicist's priority lists
 
@ACuriousMind but then why cite anything?
 
Presumably because they found it amusing?
 
Nice one @JohnRennie
 
@ACuriousMind I think it's a reasonable inference
I think I've actually got her on social media, I'll have a jab at her over this =P
 
5:24 PM
0
Q: Is this a good edit?

ErikEPlease consider this edit to "Don't heavier objects actually fall faster because they exert their own gravity?". (Compare versions 21 and 23). Motivation for these (last two) edits: I realized that my explanation in the question was incomplete, and that when I talked about the acceleration being...

 
@JohnRennie what do you think of Dawkins' replacement?
 
Dawkins' replacement?
 
@EmilioPisanty Ah, I was wondering how you knew it was a she although the first name wasn't given
 
Does Chinese not have a plural?
@ACuriousMind sounds like a girl's name...
 
whaddayaknow, she's now an outreach officer
 
5:28 PM
Marcus du Sautoy @JohnRennie
 
@0celo7 what?
 
@ACuriousMind what?
 
^ that
@0celo7 how does "E. Surname" sound like a girl's name?
 
@skullpetrol what did he replace Dawkins as? Marcus du Sautoy is a lovely chap. His books are recommended reading for all us armchair mathematicians.
 
Who would name a boy E.?
 
5:30 PM
@0celo7 ...what?
 
Science spokesman for Oxford @JohnRennie
 
If there's a joke there I'm afraid I don't see it :P
 
Hi, everybody.
 
rob
@EmilioPisanty Some languages have gendered surnames, but I think Greek isn't one of them.
In Russian, for instance, Mr. Pavlov would be married to Mrs. Pavlova.
 
@skullpetrol Ah, I didn't know that. To be honest I find Dawkins a bit of a pain. I won't be sorry to see less of him.
 
5:32 PM
@JohnRennie we finally agree on something
 
@rob yeah, that's fair
Eastern Slavic naming customs are the traditional ways of determining a person's name in countries influenced by East Slavic linguistic tradition, mainly Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, some Southern Slavic languages like in Bulgaria, and Macedonia, and the non-Slavic Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan. The standard structure of the full name is the following: This customary name structure is similar to Gujaratis and Marathis in India (see Gujarati and Marathi names), however in languages other than Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian, the ordering is not as strict. == Given first... ==
 
@ACuriousMind oh...
 
unlikely to be shared by Greeks =P
 
OBE
I found this really cool since I didn't know it was a real thing until a few weeks ago.
Agent detection is the inclination for animals, including humans, to presume the purposeful intervention of a sentient or intelligent agent in situations that may or may not involve one. == Evolutionary origins == It is believed that humans evolved agent detection as a survival strategy. In situations where one is unsure of the presence of an intelligent agent (such as an enemy or a predator), there is survival value in assuming its presence so that precautions can be taken. For example, if a human came across an indentation in the ground that might be a lion's footprint, it is advantageous to...
 
@JohnRennie >:(
 
5:34 PM
but then
With Greek given names, until the late 18th century, almost all Christian Greeks were named for Orthodox saints from the Old and New Testaments and early Christian traditions. With the Modern Greek Enlightenment and the development of Greek nationalism, names of ancient Greek figures, both deities and mortals, became fashionable and they remain so today. Byzantine names are also used. == Given names == Male names usually end in -ας, -ης, and -ος, but sometimes ancient forms are also used. Female names almost always end in -α and -η, though a few end in -ώ with -ου being possible. When Greek names...
 
Dawkins is awesome. Sure, he's lost his patience and now he mostly yells at people, but his earlier books are excellent.
 
> Greek surnames are most commonly patronymics. Occupation, characteristic and location/origin-based surnames names also occur. The feminine version of Greek surnames is generally the genitive of the girl's father's or woman's husband's name; so, for example, Mr. Yannatos and Mrs. Yannatou.
so it does seem to be in play
 
@rob Yes.
Russian names are <first name>, <patronymic>, <family name>.
Patronymics and family names kind of work like adjectives in that they change based on gender.
 
@DanielSank he's too aggressively atheist. He puts people's backs up and that's not the way to make friends and influence people.
 
@EmilioPisanty Ah, so we have an instance of the Gettier problem here - 0celo7 was right, but for the wrong reasons.
 
5:35 PM
(Not all do, but most)
@JohnRennie Correct.
 
Aggressive is not good.
 
@skullpetrol It has a role.
 
rob
@EmilioPisanty Greek is strongly-inflected the way that Russian is, with lots of noun case endings. Not a huge surprise, but interesting.
 
But it leads to this.
 
@rob well, Greek has fewer than Russian.
Russian has six cases. Greek more or less has three.
Greek has nominative, accusative, and genitive.
 
5:38 PM
Modern Greek has no dative?
 
Russian adds dative, instrumental, and prepositional.
@ACuriousMind Not really, no.
 
@DanielSank Aggressive gets you a huge load of scientists that have deeply negative about Dawkins
 
Don't trust me too much. I took both Russian and modern Greek in college, but that was a while ago...
My Russian is much more up to speed.
 
@DanielSank what's prepositional?
 
@EmilioPisanty e.g. "In the kitchen".
Kitchen would be prepositional.
 
5:39 PM
@DanielSank Well, I only know Ancient Greek and that has got the dative, so it must've lost it somewhere along the way
Wouldn't be the first time that happens
 
kitchen = кухна, in the kitchen --> кухне
 
@DanielSank bejeesus
 
rob
@DanielSank Classical Greek had dative and vocative, but instrumental and prepositional are new to me.
 
@EmilioPisanty Wut?
Russian's hard, bro.
 
@DanielSank that
 
5:40 PM
@EmilioPisanty Pffft. That's nothing.
Heaven forbid you should ever try to say you're going somewhere in Russian.
 
@DanielSank so... kuchna?
 
^ yes
 
mighty imaginative =P
 
Interestingly, some German dialects are losing the genitive instead, expressing possession with the dative + the particle sein
 
rob
In fact, the idea of a special "prepositional case" explains something from my Arabic lesson yesterday. Good to have a name for it.
 
5:41 PM
Russian verbs of motion are very complex. Each one has two aspects, i.e. ongoing or completed action. The ongoing version has two forms, one for a one-way trip and one emphasizing the single leg of the journey. Then, for indicating approach, departure, etc. you add one of a bazillion prefixes.
 
There's a fine line between aggressive and competitive.
 
:-)
@rob Instrumental: I write with a pen.
 
@ACuriousMind how do you mean?
as in, what changes to what?
 
rob
@DanielSank Oh, that's interesting, because in English "with" is a preposition.
 
@rob Yeah.
 
5:42 PM
@EmilioPisanty Instead of saying "Karls Haus" they'll say "dem Karl sein Haus"
 
In Russian, there is a word for "with", but you don't always even use it because the case itself tells you what's going on.
 
@ACuriousMind that's stupid
 
And prepositions like "wegen" that usually demand the genitive will also be used with the dative
 
You know what's turbo fun? The endings for adjectives and nouns are different. So to learn Russian, you have to learn six cases and three genders and two pluralities of verbs and adjectives.
 
@ACuriousMind 'wegen' demanding genitive is beyond my knowledge of German
 
5:43 PM
ROMANE ITE DOMUS?
 
Oh here's my favorite Russian thing ever:
 
@EmilioPisanty I reject your prescriptivist arrogance ;)
2
 
@ACuriousMind what?
 
Counting:
one thing: use nominative
two things: use genitive singular
five or more things: use genitive plural
 
@ACuriousMind I'm not saying that it's grammatically stupid
 
5:44 PM
Why? Because Russian.
 
I'm just saying that it sounds stupid
 
@EmilioPisanty dativ ist dem genitiv sein tod
 
@DanielSank that's fantastic
 
@EmilioPisanty It's so unnecessarily complex.
Spanish is so blessedly simple.
English is horrible though.
 
rob
@DanielSank Arabic is messy like this too: there's a singular, a "dual", a plural for three through ten things, but for more than ten you use the singular again.
 
5:45 PM
We pretend we don't have cases, but we do.
"I go to the store", but "Give it to me".
 
@DanielSank You have cases, you're just too lazy to mark them in many cases :P
 
@ACuriousMind No like, we actually have them in pronouns.
 
@ACuriousMind you can just picture the guy pointing a finger at Karl and then at the house
and then grunting
 
@EmilioPisanty ??
 
rob
@DanielSank We're losing them. We have them for "he/him", but have mostly lost "who/whom".
 
5:46 PM
@rob Yeah.
hmmm, gtg. Foodz.
 
Using dativ instead of genitiv is totally fine in speach amongst friends
 
@EmilioPisanty lol, yes, indeed
 
Especially when in full dialect
 
@rob And you've managed to confuse everyone about I/me in the case where it's "[name] and I/me".
 
rob
@ACuriousMind Right. If the English case system were still strong, people wouldn't find that confusing.
 
5:48 PM
There's a weird tendency for native speakers to use I instead of me there
 
@rob that's ungrammatical
should read
We're losing they. We have they for "he/him", but have mostly lost "who/whom".
 
@ACuriousMind which one is correct?
 
@0celo7 It depends on the context!
I.e. whether "X and I/me" is suppsed to be the subject or the object of the sentence
 
rob
@EmilioPisanty What I meant was: Noun cases in English are on they're way out.
 
@ACuriousMind yeah, everyone knows that
 
5:50 PM
Wahaha the magic of mobile.
 
@0celo7 Not everyone writes as if they know, though :P
 
You're supposed to remove the second person and see if the sentence makes sense
 
@rob seems the joke was lost in translation =(
 
Something like that...
 
We're losing they. We have they for "he/him", we have mostly lost "who/whom", and we have completely lost "they/them".
 
5:51 PM
Prescriptivist bastards...
 
might be better
@DanielSank I'm not prescriptivist
 
Emilio, what are you talking about
 
but the dativ thing just sounds silly
 
@EmilioPisanty not you
 
rob
@EmilioPisanty Not at all: I saw what you did their.
 
5:52 PM
Ugh
 
rob
(I wonder if I can flag my own comment as offensive.)
 
@rob try it. See what happens.
 
rob
Probably some other moderator would give me there opinion.
 
Ugh. Stahp.
 
@DanielSank damn prescriptivists
 
rob
5:55 PM
@EmilioPisanty I believe you mean "Damned prescriptivists."
3
 
@EmilioPisanty It really doesn't if you grew up in an area where it's common
 
You're all terrible.
 
@DanielSank Should that have been "Your all terrible"?
 
@ACuriousMind so where is this again?
@ACuriousMind yes
 
Rheinland
 
5:58 PM
@ACuriousMind the descriptivist approach to language doesn't mean you go around butchering common spelling.
 
Is that even how you spell it in English
 
@EmilioPisanty german.SE got you covered ;)
It happens everywhere, but is common in the West, especially along the Rhine
 
@ACuriousMind german.se's been in beta since 2011?
 
I'm sad to see the genitive disappearing from German, because it's the only case we kept in English :P
 
@EmilioPisanty they're picking up slack from Greek.se...
 
6:00 PM
I guess they really did drop all restrictions on betas right after they killed theoretical physics
 
@BenNiehoff wat!?
 
In the Rheinland, you also get an analogue to the English progressive verbs
 
We have genitive?
 
rob
@DanielSank We call it "possessive."
 
Oh that's what you mean. Ok.
 
6:01 PM
@ACuriousMind what does that mean?
 
@ACuriousMind "bin aber kein Experte" and similar constructions jolt me every time
 
of course, we had to invent this idiotic way of spelling them by throwing around apostrophes
 
Oh, ing
 
@ACuriousMind the what?
 
Genitive does more than possession in Russian.
 
6:02 PM
yes, in Old English, the genitive was more like the Latin (and presumably Russian) genitive
 
@EmilioPisanty @0celo7 "I'm walking" -> "Ich bin am gehen"
 
rob
@DanielSank Other examples?
 
@ACuriousMind that's not proper German??
 
For non-native speakers: What we are discussing here is viewed as an abomination in High German. Do not try this at home :) — Pekka 웃 May 24 '11 at 20:33
 
like you could say "manna twegen" for "two of the men"
 
6:03 PM
@0celo7 No, it's dialect, but common dialect
 
@ACuriousMind see, that definitely sounds nonstandard, but it's otherwise quite nice
 
@rob ok check this out...
 
It's hard to separate dialect grammar from normal grammar
 
@0celo7 People from regions where that's not common will make fun of you for that construction
 
I do wish we had kept the old genitive plural...it's much less confusing than the possessive plural in modern English :P
 
6:04 PM
In Russian, if I want to say I have apples, I say "to me there are apples", and "me" is genitive.
"apples" is nominative.
However...
 
Why is Russian overly complicated?
 
@BenNiehoff there should be a law invented by Gauss and his dad just for that
 
If I want to say I do not have apples, then "apples" goes genitive.
 
@ACuriousMind how do I speak more German?
I need to üb
 
rob
@0celo7 Your school had a great International House when I was there.
 
6:08 PM
It's full of strange people with no fixed gender
 
rob
@0celo7 They're not strange. They're speaking German and you can't understand them any more.
 
@rob so what do I do
 
rob
@0celo7 Hang out there, be polite, and make friends with the folks who are speaking languages you'd like to learn. Watch their schedule: sometimes they serve free or cheap dinners. I had a great Divali dinner there one year (not that a Divali festival is a good place to practice German).
 
@0celo7 wat?
 
@DanielSank you know
 
6:18 PM
there's so much duplicate jargon in GR topology
past endless is the old timey way of saying past inextendible
 
@Slereah is that like the long line?
In topology, the long line (or Alexandroff line) is a topological space somewhat similar to the real line, but in a certain way "longer". It behaves locally just like the real line, but has different large-scale properties (e.g., it is neither Lindelöf nor separable). Therefore, it serves as one of the basic counterexamples of topology. Intuitively, the usual real-number line consists of a countable number of line segments [0, 1) laid end-to-end, whereas the long line is constructed from an uncountable number of such segments. == Definition == The closed long ray L is defined as the carte...
 
@EmilioPisanty No, it means geodesics cannot be made "longer"
 
@0celo7 so if they could be made longer, then it'd be like the long line
(do consider the possibility that I'm trolling here)
 
@EmilioPisanty No, it means they are defined on $\Bbb R$, not a subinterval.
@EmilioPisanty ok
 
6:43 PM
I think you can probably model some machines > Turing machines with the long line
Like IIRC you need to have tapes with $\aleph_1$ cells and $\aleph_1$ calculation steps
or something weird like that
A Malament–Hogarth (M-H) spacetime, named after David B. Malament and Mark Hogarth, is a relativistic spacetime that possesses the following property: there exists a worldline λ {\displaystyle \lambda } and an event p such that all events along λ {\displaystyle \lambda } are a finite interval in the past of p, but the proper time along λ {\displaystyle \lambda } is infinite. The event p is known as an M-H event. The significance of M-H spacetimes is that they allow for...
 
How's the penrose book so far?
 
it's pretty good
A nice complement to HE
HE tends to skim a bit causality in its chapter
 
Which one cost more?
 
I think HE
 

« first day (2331 days earlier)      last day (2598 days later) »