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12:29 AM
@Mitch Always the same thing: style doesn't matter, we must approve of new developments if enough people participate in them, regardless of the dvelopment.
 
@Mitch is orange syrup good for making drinks for what purpose?
You'll have to make do with my brainfarts. It's late.
@alphabet avoiding is a good policy, but it should be safer than most other inhalants. The nitrite in the body is converted to several metabolites that can be problematic when they accumulate in the blood. The problem is "recreational use" covers a very wide range of doses. You can be sure that it will be dangerous for someone, people that don't know when to stop
@Cerberus I dunno. Maybe. The body is very complicated. The brain is the most complicated part of the body.
FTR, it is possible for a drug to be extremely dangerous for someone after a single exposure (the most famous example being the anaphylactic reaction from drugs like penicillins), or to be dangerous only when acutely overdoses, or to be dangerous only when chronically used, or any combination.
Penicllins themselves can cause seizures. It's not hard to trigger seizures with acute overdose of most drugs that do penetrate the brain appreciably
Lasting seizures can cause permanent damage to the neurons somewhere in the brain, leading to epilespy. There's a lot of handwaving here
 
12:46 AM
in Ten fold, 2 days ago, by Stephan Kolassa
Always remember, physicians and MDs don't need statisticians, they get their papers published just fine without them. Same for psychologists.
 
@CowperKettle someone's salty
But sure, the psilocybin peddlers probably don't do sound science
 
@M.A.R. Huh, TIL.
 
It's generally a good idea to have a healthy dose of skepticism towards people that are pushing for the therapeutic use of compounds that have been identified decades ago. There's a good reason they haven't been until now.
When a drug is repurposed, it's usually because of statistical analyses of clinical trials. It's not because of the subjective opinion of a few experts.
There's so much sutff around about cannabinoid receptors that I get nauseous.
 
@M.A.R. You know what might treat nausea?
 
@alphabet yoga
 
12:57 AM
@M.A.R. I was going to say huffing essential oils, but sure.
Produced by my new business hawking all-natural huffing glue alternatives.
 
@Cerberus I think the only right answer is "we don't know" because no study ever probably included "couple of glasses a week".
 
Someone oughta study the health benefits and risks of converting to Mormonism
The CDC has yet to take a position on whether the benefits outweigh the risks
 
But again, this has not been directly observed for any possible amount of alcohol consumption out there. It's just an inference from the heap of data available.
And FWIW, it is a pretty big heap, since so many people have tried to find a healthy range for alcohol consumption
 
It's not like you can easily run a randomized controlled trial of alcohol
 
> To identify a “safe” level of alcohol consumption, valid scientific evidence would need to demonstrate that at and below a certain level, there is no risk of illness or injury associated with alcohol consumption.
Ditto
No identified NOAEL or LOAEL
@alphabet it's probably really hard to follow up on people for years to see if they get cancer
And besides, researchers usually want positive results. They want to show some compound does something to the body and call it a day, not sit around stalking NOAELs
 
1:07 AM
@M.A.R. What is FTR?
 
@Cerberus For The Record
 
I do wonder if anyone's studied the effect of quitting alcohol for religious reasons
 
@M.A.R. We don't know, but neither do we know what percentage of cancer is caused by alcohol as a whole; however, statistical inferences could be made?
 
Neuroscientists are the last people I'd trust with studying religion
Well, I actually don't trust anyone to study religion
 
I don't trust religion.
 
1:09 AM
I don't religion.
 
@M.A.R. I've decided to try faith healing
 
@Cerberus we can only compare people who drink alcohol with people who don't, and watch out for the interfering factors
 
@M.A.R. Why?
Why not use surveys?
Sure, it will be even less reliable.
But it can be done.
 
I don't think any "drinker group" in any study would solely be composed of people who drink a glass of wine every week
 
I believe science has established that prayer is as effective as phenylephrine as a treatment for congestion. So why does my insurance cover phenylephrine, but not Bibles?
 
1:12 AM
Because you don't need to buy anything for religion.
 
@Cerberus Those Scientology e-meters are $5000, as I recall.
 
@Cerberus I dunno, how would that work? You can blind studies to eliminate most sources of bias, and the result would probably be much more reliable than any survey with any sample size
 
@alphabet But that's science.
 
@Cerberus It has a needle that goes back and forth, so it's science.
 
@M.A.R. You just ask people, how much do you normally drink? And ask several times during their life how many glasses they had the past week. Then, when all are dead, you apply statistics. You will get a wild guess, but it is something.
 
1:15 AM
@M.A.R. Don't the existing studies work by asking "How many drinks do you have in a week?" and then trying to find the correlation between that and disease risk?
As I understand it, the real problem is that people with health issues often can't drink, so it often looks as though "zero drinks" is somehow bad for you.
 
@alphabet I'll be honest, those menthol inhalers work wonders for nasal ingestions. I dunno if it's temporary or not, just remembering the moments in my childhood when a stuffy nostril opened up
It was heaven
@alphabet only one type of study done on human volunteers
There's a lot of flexibility in toxicology studies of rats and mice
Don't even have to survey them
@alphabet I'd assume a proper survey would certainly take that into account when reporting the results
@Cerberus well some of the inferences certainly derive from that.
And then they put it on a chart, and see that there's no baseline. E.g. it's a line that starts going up from the origin.
 
@M.A.R. Yeah, but all those alcohol-industry-funded studies used it to support their claim that moderate drinking was better than no drinking at all.
 
@alphabet the hormesis you're referring to is probably a statistical artifact yeah. I don't know the specifics honestly
I just thought that even if, in moderate doses, alcohol is good for the cardiovascular system, as the claim goes, it'd still be bad for other organs
 
Indeed.
 
@alphabet coffee only really stimulates less than half of the population apparently
Who knows where the caffeine ends up. There's a lot of places in the body for caffeine to stick to before the brain
 
1:33 AM
It's tough being a nocturnal raccoon in a world where the workday starts in the morning.
I am like a raccoon in many ways. I stay up late at night. I have erratic and generally unbalanced eating habits. I reached sexual maturity at age 2.
(Sorry, I don't mean I'm like a raccoon, I mean I am a raccoon. Definitely not a human pretending to be a raccoon. Just to clear up any confusion.)
 
@M.A.R. I don't believe in faith
@alphabet I am like a human in many ways. First of all, genes.
 
Why do I spend so much time bitching about men, when I could be praying the gay away?
 
@Mitch I don't have faith in belief.
 
@M.A.R. That's something you can believe in.
 
@Mitch that was a close one. Just a couple of extra genes and you'd have been a plant
 
1:40 AM
@Mitch "Species" is a social construct invented to uphold human supremacy.
 
@M.A.R. Plants have a lot more genes than mammals.
Like 20, 000
Or is that chromosomes
 
Chromosomes
But I'm sure there are plants with 46 chromosomes
And plants with thousands, yeah
 
It feels like 20,000 genes wouldn't be enough to encode 'here's a blueprint for a human, go make one'
@M.A.R. the last time I checked it was in the thousands
 
Depends on the gene maybe?
 
That's kind of a lot for each cell to have.
Is that why plants need so much nitrogen?
 
1:43 AM
I mean, 98% of the human genome is noncoding DNA
 
@alphabet Tell that to the gene therapy scientists.
 
@Mitch I've never given it any thought. But, well, animals obtain nitrogen much more readily, that's for sure
 
@M.A.R. I thought it codes for -something- just unknown?
@M.A.R. how do animals get it?
By eating plants?
 
@Mitch I think they do things we don't know, but they're never gonna be translated. I'd think we'd have known if they did.
 
@Mitch Personally, I believe the main reasons why raccoons are so much more intelligent than humans have more to do with culture than genetics.
 
1:47 AM
@Mitch yeah. Or other animals.
 
 
3 hours later…
4:36 AM
In today's depressing news, the brave fight for freedom and democracy has apparently entered the "ban dissenting news outlets" phase.
 
I've ridden 937 km on bicycle since the end of March
 
@CowperKettle So you will be here in two months or so?
@alphabet To be fair, we have banned RT and such.
And Al Jazeera publishes what the tyrant of Qatar wants.
And it publishes nicer information in English, more hateful stuff in Arabic.
 
4:59 AM
@Cerberus Qatar is not a belligerent in this conflict.
Nor does it tend to produce the sort of shameless propaganda put out by RT.
Granted, the RT ban was also wrong.
 
@Cerberus LOL
 
@alphabet I do believe it has produced some terrible stuff?
 
@Cerberus It's not nearly as bad as RT, which might as well be an arm of the Russian government.
That's not to say it's unbiased or that it has a particularly stellar history, of course.
As you can see from Wikipedia's list.
But bias in itself is not sufficient cause to ban a news outlet; the American media can be pretty heavily biased also.
More relevant is the fact that Qatar is not a participant in this war, and that Al Jazeera is not just a Qatari government mouthpiece.
 
5:28 AM
But I bet Al Jazeera is pretty anti-Israel.
Pro-Arabic.
 
Their coverage of the actions of the Israeli government is very negative. But governments should not ban news outlets for criticizing them.
 
That is self-evident.
I'm just saying Al Jazeera is paid for and controlled by the Qatari government, so it is no ordinary, private news organisation.
Should it be banned? I would be inclined to say no.
Am I surprised that Israel has banned it? No.
 
 
6 hours later…
11:09 AM
Wordle 1,052 3/6

🟩⬛🟩⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩⬛🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
 
11:36 AM
Wordle 1,052 5/6

⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬛⬛🟨🟨⬛
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⬛🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
#WhenTaken #69 (06.05.2024)

I scored 723/1000 🎉

1️⃣ 📍 3845 km - 🗓️ 1 yrs - ⚡ 131 / 200
2️⃣ 📍 5 km - 🗓️ 27 yrs - ⚡ 127 / 200
3️⃣ 📍 539 km - 🗓️ 34 yrs - ⚡ 84 / 200
4️⃣ 📍 1 km - 🗓️ 8 yrs - ⚡ 189 / 200
5️⃣ 📍 132 km - 🗓️ 2 yrs - ⚡ 192 / 200

https://whentaken.com
 
11:49 AM
I don't follow all the philosophical debate on whether a news outlet should be banned by a country, but I do know it's something my government does and they're controlling hypocrites and I hate them for it
 
12:41 PM
@Cerberus The English-language version is... critical of Israel. The Arabic-language version could politely be called "hostile" to Israel.
#WhenTaken #69 (06.05.2024)

I scored 874/1000 🎉

1️⃣ 📍 581 km - 🗓️ 3 yrs - ⚡ 180 / 200
2️⃣ 📍 2 km - 🗓️ 0 yrs - ⚡ 200 / 200
3️⃣ 📍 395 km - 🗓️ 25 yrs - ⚡ 123 / 200
4️⃣ 📍 617 km - 🗓️ 7 yrs - ⚡ 173 / 200
5️⃣ 📍 21 km - 🗓️ 1 yrs - ⚡ 198 / 200

https://whentaken.com
 
1:26 PM
"There are three ways to get something done: do it yourself, hire someone, or forbid your kids to do it."
 
 
2 hours later…
3:02 PM
They named an animal crackers snack after a German philosopher. Nice.
More Germans here than Spanish, btw.
Rode out to Cap de Formentor lighthouse today. Lots of climbing, but beautiful.
 
3:23 PM
@Robusto Weird. That is not what I think of when I think of a Leibniz cookie.
I like the chocolate ones.
 
3:50 PM
18 hours ago, by M.A.R.
In the lab we worked with xylene like it was orange syrup
danged if I know what purpose. What do you use 'xylene' for?
Also what is orange syrup to you? Is that a thing? I have lime syrup less than ten yards from me at this very moment and I'll use it to defend myself if you so much as blink.
What I mean to say is that {anyfruit} syrup' I only think of as a drink mix. But I've never heard of orange syrup, drink mix or not, and I'm wondering if I should look for some and order it on amazon.
@M.A.R. Wait.. is the government a bunch of hypocrites who like to control others, or is the government trying to control some people who act ike hypocrites? I think I know the answer but am not sure.
I'm never sure.
@M.A.R. That's a bold scientific statement... I don't know much about genetics, but why do you think we won't know what junk DNA is for?
@alphabet Mutatis mutandis, ceteris paribus, ipso facto they have hands.
But I don't see them building no pyramids.
@M.A.R. You don't know if that hasn't already happened.
@Cerberus Scientifically, for the study of language, one -must- be descriptive, or else it is not science. Whether it should be allowed or the change should be accepted as a 'new standard' is a different story. Also, pronunciation is one thing and strategies for 'good' exposition is another.
Also, what's the deal with this guy?
0
Q: Does anybody read Fowler's books on English usage for anything other than laughs today (2024)?

S KAnd did Fowler himself follow his advice on how to write? All those run-on sentences would be laughed out of court today.

 
4:05 PM
@Mitch But it isn't about science.
It is about considering how one should write.
Facts should be based on science only and not on preferences.
Style can be informed by science, but it is mainly about beauty and effectiveness and such.
 
@Cerberus The Geoff Lindsey video in question is not about writing (by which I think you mean exposition), it is about pronunciation changes.
 
The same applies to how one should pronounce words.
Besides, mischievious is about pronunciation and spelling both.
 
@Cerberus yes, that is a borderline case, where the newer pronunciation is obviously a mistake (no other similar word ending in '-ous' adds '-i-')
But English has all sorts of weird crap like that in spelling so...?
 
It is just the constant pushing that's annoying.
Continually repeating the same condemnation.
 
@Cerberus Do you mean it's annoying that descriptivists are constantly condemning others about language change?
 
4:20 PM
"Oh, look, I have discovered that sometimes people follow outdated style guides, I must condemn them all the time in public without cease."
@Mitch Condemning others who find the change ugly and who advise people not to go along with it.
 
4:59 PM
@Cerberus Some of those changes are in things that are arbitrary (like phonology or grammar or spelling or style) and some of those things are not arbitrary like ...
I'm having trouble coming up with non-arbitrary things.
 
5:18 PM
@Cerberus Beauty is a matter of taste; effective communication generally requires using language the way others do by following contemporary conventions.
Some people seem overly sensitive, able to find disgust in anything unfamiliar or inconsistent.
 
 
2 hours later…
7:17 PM
@Mitch don't get me wrong. They don't get translated, but I'm sure they have very important roles. Some of those roles we've discovered: The various ways in which they regulate transcription.
Heck, discovering what they exactly do, is probably gonna be the next breakthrough in biology.
 
I over-ate methyfolate again, and some skin cracks have cropped up on fingers, so I've just covered them with some sticking plaster, and applied some hydrocortisone ointment, because they are painful.
I wish I knew why they appear each time I overdose slightly on 5-MTHF
2 mg/day is not that big a dose. I know people who take 15 mg and do not bat an eye
 
A lot of what he wrote is nonsense because of linguistics and he himself showed "linguistics envy" when he sniffed that pronouncing "Boadicea" with a [k] is what "the learned" recommend. a discussion can be had, but I have been roundly smacked down with "WE ARE NOT AMUSED". @EdwinAshworth I don't want to spend the enormous energy needed to fight the hideboundness of this group. — S K 2 hours ago
This guy is shouting at the void
 
@M.A.R. Iranian scientists have just published a small study replicating some previous literature data on mIR-29 in psychosis (different levels in blood serum) pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38705955
MicroRNA (miRNA) are small, single-stranded, non-coding RNA molecules containing 21 to 23 nucleotides. Found in plants, animals and some viruses, miRNAs are involved in RNA silencing and post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression. miRNAs base-pair to complementary sequences in mRNA molecules, then silence said mRNA molecules by one or more of the following processes: Cleavage of the mRNA strand into two pieces, Destabilization of the mRNA by shortening its poly(A) tail, or Reducing translation of the mRNA into proteins. In cells of humans and other animals, miRNAs primarily act by...
Noncoding RNA molecules that play lots of roles
This particular one, however, has been found to be either elevated or decreased in serum in psychosis, so I don't think it'll be a good marker per se.
I want to buy a portable battery-powered dirt blaster, to clean my bicycle after work
 
@M.A.R. Oh. I did get you wrong or rather I did not understand before. You're saying that the non-junk DNA is what gets transcribed and RNA sent through ribosomes to get translated into proteins, and DNA that is called 'junk' DNA does -not- fall into that process? So maybe junk DNA ... uh... is used as control mechanisms or even just passive spacers between non-junk DNA... or something like that?
@M.A.R. CHALLENGE ACCEPTED
@M.A.R. sure but all that noise is waking up the baby
@M.A.R. I still don't know what 'hidebounded' means.
sniff
That was a little nasal congestion. I have not been watching 'Ol Yeller'.
I have go blow my nose now.
 
7:40 PM
Summer will be back today, for a single day - it will reach +19°C
 
@CowperKettle Woo hoo! 🎉🔥🎊🕺🏻
Actually, exactly the same here.
Wait... what is today for you? May 6 or 7?
 
May 7
It has been May 7 for the last 43 minutes
I hope at least the Eliza Doolittle day will have fair weather
The 20th of May
 
Not Apr 25th?
@CowperKettle Don't you expect to sleep before the warm weather rolls in?
 
7:56 PM
> Older participants with lifetime musical activity showed significantly higher local RSFC between the medial prefrontal cortex (Default Mode Network seed) and temporal as well as frontal regions, namely the right temporal pole and the right precentral gyrus extending into the superior frontal gyrus, compared to matched controls. journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/…
Playing an instrument helps maintain your brain connections shipshape
@Mitch Yes, a lot!
> Man confronted on street dragged into an alley and asked at gunpoint ‘Are ye Catholic or Protestant’ answers 'I’m Hindu'. He is then asked ‘Are ye Catholic Hindu or Protestant Hindu’. (Northern Ireland joke)
> Crusoe,
We say was ‘Rescued’.
So we have chosen.
Obsessed, bewildered
By the shipwreck
Of the singular
We have chosen the meaning
Of being numerous.
George Oppen (April 24, 1908 – July 7, 1984) was an American poet, best known as one of the members of the Objectivist group of poets. He abandoned poetry in the 1930s for political activism and moved to Mexico in 1950 to avoid the attentions of the House Un-American Activities Committee. He returned to poetry—and to the United States—in 1958, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1969. == Early life == Oppen was born in New Rochelle, New York, into a Jewish family. His father, a successful diamond merchant, was George August Oppenheimer (b. Apr. 13, 1881), his mother Elsie Rothfeld. His...
 
@Mitch I was going to say that this was the one week of good weather we get in the spring, but apparently the rainstorms come back on Wednesday.
98% humidity on Thursday. What fun.
 
98% humidity and 2% humility
> Oppen's childhood was one of considerable affluence; the family was well-tended to by servants and maids and Oppen enjoyed all the benefits of a wealthy upbringing: horse riding, expensive automobiles, frequent trips to Europe. But his mother committed suicide when he was four, his father remarried three years later and the boy and his stepmother, Seville Shainwald, apparently could not get along.
 
Then we hit air conditioning season.
 
8:39 PM
@alphabet So soon? cripes.
@CowperKettle Is that Oppen heimer?
Seville Shainwald sounds like someone out of a Harlequin Romance.
Tallulah Bankhead
Manilva Swinnerton-Daubechies Daubechies
Jack Steele
(to fill out the cast)
 
-1
Q: Is it idiomatic to talk about "murdering" a dog?

S KKristi Noem has kicked off a firestorm of criticism when her book came out in which she says she shot her dog for killing chickens etc. But these two commentators talk about "murdering" the dog. Isn't "murdering" something only humans can do, that too only to other humans? https://www.youtube.com...

What is it with people? That one's in the Dictionary, even!
Oh, we have a close reason for that now, too.
Still, so GRRRRRRRRRR.
 
@Mitch I suppose we have a few more weeks, though I'd never be so bold as to claim to be able to predict the weather here.
 
9:13 PM
@tchrist it's a reasonable question to ask (I don't think of it as a natural way to say...it feels clunky)
@alphabet I'm always confused in June when it stays cold and rainy.
But of course then a hit wave smacks me in the face by the end of June.
@tchrist but yeah it's asked by ... that guy.
 
9:44 PM
@Mitch Big D says was not so used in Old English, where it was only human. First animal citation 1600 by Billy the Bard, with various many to follow.
 
Both English and French have homicide to exclude figurative meanings.
 
@Mitch Hit waves tend to do that.
 
10:21 PM
> Neurons are important, but they are not everything. Indeed, it is “cartilage,” in the form of clusters of extracellular matrix molecules called chondroitin sulfates, located in the outside nerve cells, that plays a crucial role in the brain’s ability to acquire and store information.
 
10:39 PM
@jlliagre The Dems did use the phrase "dog homicide" for the same incident, though it seems like a somewhat jocular exaggeration.
 
And the Korean word for "murder", namely 살인(殺人), is dedicated for humans.
@alphabet Uhh, "canicide"?
 
@DannyuNDos I think we should just call it "Noeming." Or "sending your dog to live on a farm in South Dakota."
 
11:23 PM
@tchrist some people think animals have no souls.
@alphabet cripes. heat waves.
@alphabet as is calling the dog a 'puppy' at after a year old.
 
11:45 PM
@Mitch That's right. Which is why if the dog is a he, one shall call his canicide murder. But if the dog is an it, one shall call its canicide something very, very slightly less heinous.
-1
Q: Would native speakers find the ɑː ( as in "father") vowel in place of the "Comma" vowel noticeable?

S KHere is a list of words with the Comma vowel: https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/lexicalsets/chapter/27-comma-lexical-set/#:~:text=The%20comm%20a%20lexical%20set%20is%20a%20part,the%20only%20vowel%20sound%20with%20its%20own%20name.

More confusion. Of course father and comma have the same vowels as each other, and in both syllables to boot: [ˈfɑθəɹ] and [ˈkʰɑmə]. Vowel reduction is a mandatory. You'll sound like some Alien Intelligence's poorly programmed if you don't weaken weak forms, whether function words or unstressed syllables. Your entire rhythm and cadence will be off and nobody will know what you're saying.
COME ON! [kʰəˈmɑn]
Not even the Scots have [fəˈθɑr]. Somebody doesn't understand stress at all either.
Some new Alien Intelligence on an away mission.
The syllables won't be the right length. They may not even be parsable as English because when the rhythm breaks as it does in pineapples of a certain ilk, we can no longer even tell where word boundaries occur.
 

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