@XanderHenderson I don't get that. Nor do I get why "wearing a face mask, or not" has turned into a "political act". In fact, Conservatives have been anything but conservative wrt their flagrant refusal to abide by CDC etc, related to Covid.

@amWhy Yeah, it's been rough out here.

A lot of the LDS community is really against vaccination for some reason.

Meanwhile, the Hopi, Navajo, and White Mountain Apache is on it. They are a doing an amazing job of gettin' jabbed.

It is really frustrating, because our plans to go back to in-person teaching are likely to be spoiled by a bunch of selfish folk who, for political reasons, refuse to wear masks or get vaccinated.

@XanderHenderson Latter Day Saints?

@amWhy Yes.

Mormons.

@XanderHenderson Yup. That is way too bad! (I may have inadvertently pinned that LDS comment, when responding to that comment.)

Heh.

I was curious about that.

@XanderHenderson About what? ;P

What the thing was pinned... oh... hrm... must have been hallucinating.

@XanderHenderson, @amWhy: the programme for vaccination for 18-45 year olds in India will start from May 1, but looks like it will get delayed as there is not enough supply for vaccines for such a large population. And meanwhile healthcare system is grappling with handling the existing covid cases.

I think it will take this entire month to ensure supply of vaccines so that programme runs smoothly.

@ParamanandSingh NPR was talking about India this morning. It sounds like they have opened up vaccination to everyone, but have no supply in many areas. What a mess. :(

@XanderHenderson: I don't blame the system (government) in India. No one including medical experts were expecting any such situation. But it was rather very casual of most citizens to drop covid safety precautions.

Anyone want to buy me a birthday present?

@Xander When's your Birthday? Mine is coming up soon. I love the pin!!!

@ParamanandSingh I keep hearing in the US that we've reached a point where the supply available for vaccines is exceeding current demand, so I hope the US will provide some much needed relief.

@amWhy My birthday occurs once every year.

@XanderHenderson Oh, Thanks for clarifying! :P

NP.

@XanderHenderson :P

Honestly, I don't share my birthday with folk. I am not even sure that my daughter knows the date.

@XanderHenderson Wow. No problem. Are you the same about revealing your age? Or did you just find birthdays awkward. I can relate to some extent.

Of course it helps to withhold ones birthday when one has young nieces who are highly invested in astrology!!!

@amWhy I don't really care about my age, but I find birthday celebrations to be rather gauche.

@XanderHenderson I completely understand. They were fun when I was a kid. Period.

@amWhy Precisely. Birthdays are for children.

@XanderHenderson I totally agree.

Arg! British people! I am watching some pottery show produced by the same folk who produce the Great British Bake Off. They are making Acoma-style ollas, which they keep pronouncing "OH-las".

It is "OY-yuh".

That is a Spanish double l.

It hurts my ears!

@XanderHenderson Hah! I know what you mean! I can spot a gringo in a heart beat when they open their mouths, attempting Spanish!

At least they seem to be pronouncing "Acoma" correctly...

@amWhy does it lie on a wednesday this year?

@Xander Another pet peeve of mine is how non-spanish Anglos speak 'r's. One of the best lessons I ever had in 7th grade spanish class, my teacher had written "pot of tea" on the blackboard. At the start of class, he asked us each to repeat the phrase over and over, quickly. In the end, we all learned to speak correctly, "para ti"... "for you"

@Anthony Nope. This year it falls on a significant (US?) holiday that falls on the second Sunday of May.

@amWhy ah, i couldn't wish for a better birthday, u share it with my fav scientist Feynman!

@amWhy That doesn't bother me as much, as there is a question of phonetic production to be considered, i.e. as children, we learn to make certain sounds, and other sounds are simply not part of our language.

There are a lot of distinct (but related) phones which are all, essentially, "r". Kids who learn one phone are going to have difficulty learning a new one.

But all of the phones in "olla" exist in British English!

@amWhy a quick google search also tells me it's significant day for india too! we did our first nuclear weapons tests on this day in Pokhran range in 1998

Why can't they just say it right!?

@XanderHenderson But it was a brilliant lesson, helping folks overcome the limit of the sounds they know r to be.

@amWhy Indeed.

Any instructor who can improve a bad accent is doing good work.

I'd be happy if Americans would just know the vowels in spanish, it's so much easier than in English. a: ah (or English short vowel o). e: ay (or long vowel a). i: eee (or long vowel e), o: oh (but not quite "owe**). u = long vowel u.

holly molly i accidentally checked April's calendar －O－

Who is April?

@XanderHenderson I think she's friends with June.

But both of them want very much to go out with August(us), @Xander, so who knows how long that friendship will last.

Heh.

Enero, Febrero, Marzo, Abril, Mayo, Junio, Julio, Agosto, Septiembre, Octubre,Noviembre, Diciembre. Also, the spanish j, is a hard (gutteral) h.

In CA, often plagued by El Niño, ñ is the letter that sounds like "nyay", niño pronounced "neenyo".

Spanish lesson over!! ;P

@amWhy Frustratingly, the trees out here are often written "pinon," when they should really be written "piñon" (or "pinyon" if you don't know how to make an ñ).

@XanderHenderson :(

@XanderHenderson That's like calling The Grand Canyon, the Grand Canon!!

^^^Not directed at what you wrote. I agree with you. Unfortunately pre-existing cultures saw an assault on their languages by "explorers", et al.

@amWhy BOOM!

One of the working groups here is trying to write a land acknowledgement statement. I'll admit that I find land acknowledgement statements to be an annoying kind of virtue signaling, but the effort here is particularly fraught.

I mean, do we acknowledge that the Athapascan speaking peoples are as much invaders and colonizers as the Spanish?

(The Navajo and Apache invaded from the north at about the same time that the Spanish invaded from the south.)

And what about the Mormon populations here? They see the American Government as a bunch of colonizing outsiders---I mean, they migrated out here to be apart from the US.

@XanderHenderson Wow! Indeed. But many tribes were scrambling after disruption in the plains and Da Nort... Heck, Wisconsin inherited the Oneida, one of the five tribes in the Iroquois Federation.

@amWhy Yup. And the Iroquois were a bunch of colonizers, too!

As were the Aztec, Maya, Olmec, etc.

@XanderHenderson Indeed, and into Mexico, New Mexico, etc. as well, particularly the most extreme of the Mormons, including those that refused to accept the Mormon crackdown on polygamy.

And one wonders what the mound builders were doing before they were all wiped out by smallpox.

@XanderHenderson Aztec, far more than the Mayan.

Oh, the Aztec were definitely into empire building.

And seemed to have strong economic ties to the American Southwest---we've found parrots and Aztec artifacts as far north as Mesa Verde (southern Colorado).

@XanderHenderson Yes, but they rose long after the Mayan disappeared. But yes, they were definitely an agressive.

It seems to me that, rather than incorporate a two paragraph land acknowledgement statement into our catalog, we should just teach the history. I kind of feel like every region-serving institution should have a local history requirement.

Also, Colonizing is a rather broad term, traditionally applied to cultures traversing thousands of miles via seacraft, with the intent to benefit only their own home cultures. Expansion is not equal to Colonizing. Though locally, it can clearly be disruptive.

@amWhy Not at all. The Maya lived to the south (in the Yucatan), while the Aztec were more central Mexico. The Maya and the Aztec had economic ties. Though the "height" of Mayan civilization passed before the Aztec became dominant.

@XanderHenderson Bravo! I'm on board!

@amWhy But that definition is so narrow that we might as well say "colonization means western Europeans taking over places away from Europe."

But even if we consider distance in that manner, the Athapascans invaded from Canada. :)

@XanderHenderson Pretty much. They brought weaponry not formerly in existent, etc.

I think it depends on Historical context. The Chinese, e.g., Mongolians raided the middle east. Rome tried to dominate Germany... We had the Crusades, We had Russia (non European) forcing a Republic over which they were sovereign, for a while, (Even POLAND was under their rule).

@amWhy But even that isn't unique to European expansion. For example, when Numic speaking peoples took over the Great Basin a thousand years ago, they were aided immensely by better technology (ceramics and the bow-and-arrow being quite significant).

@amWhy Indeed. Various groups have been displacing other groups since before there was history.

@XanderHenderson I am not arguing that native peoples were always innocent and non aggressors, ....

@amWhy I know you aren't.

@Xander, heck, if Trump had been King, he would have taken over Greenland! ;D

@amWhy Indeed.

@amWhy I guess my point is that history is nuanced, and that I get really frustrated by the loss of nuance which occurs when we reduce everything to this narrative of European colonization.

@XanderHenderson Absolutely. I understand. It is very very nuanced. And history, the study of history, is also fraught with subjectivity, rather than authoritative. Not that it is suspicious, just that often it is incomplete.

@40 now, @Xander !!! (And I'm not guessing ages). It's net votes on the Enforcement of Quality Standards meta post you wrote!

Maybe our next game should be "Guess the downvoters!", @Xander ;D

Where is quiddles? @quid It's Friday evening, not yet midnight for you. Come help us celebrate Friday!

@quid : Do I need to yodel for you?

Hello, @Elliot!

@amWhy Hello!

Sorry I think I ignored you the other day when you first said hello

So hello hello!

We sometimes hold a happy hour about this time on Fridays.

@amWhy 🍻

@ElliotYu Oh, no problem!

@ElliotYu ;D

@AlexanderGruber, your presence is desired in the Cafe to help celebrate TGIF!! @Xander ? @quid third and last time I will annoy you tonight. But do tell: How does May 1 Look?

I actually bit my tongue when I first saw the discussion when I saw the discussion about Greek letter pronunciations :P

Was trying not to pontificate over the great vowel shift and blahblahblah

@ElliotYu Where did that discussion occur?

@amWhy Oh crap I guess not in this room

Probably the Mathematics room then

I scrolled up and saw your comment on pronunciations of r's and just assumed :P

@ElliotYu No worries, but I have no recollection. Oh, today, yes, that was of r's in Spanish.

I used to passionately argue with people who pronounce $\phi$ as "fee", basically yelling at them why don't you say "pee" for $\pi$ because the two letter names are supposed rhyme.

@ElliotYu Indeed. It is often mispronounced.

@amWhy I was so fascinated by the video that I got sidetracked!

Well hello, @quid I hope I have not annoyed you with my persistence!

@amWhy no worries, if you annoy me I do let you know. ;D

@amWhy But I mean... I don't think I convinced anybody really. They probably thought I was a bit wack and just backed off

To be fair "those letter names should rhyme" doesn't sound particularly convincing

@quid Hah! I remember watching that episode, which is rare, but Ironically, came up when I Googled "Yodeling".

@ElliotYu Mathematicians would just likely argue, well when we, in math, use the letter, it is pronounced "fee".

@quid Record it, and use it as your alarm clock!

@quid How is May looking?

@amWhy Yeah, and I don't really have a good counterargument against that. The result is often just me passive aggressively insisting on saying fie when the other person says fee more and more hesitantly and eventually switching.

A related hill that I had attempted to die on was whether you should use $\phi$ or $\varphi$ by default... But I think I've made myself look crazy enough so I won't get into it :P

@ElliotYu Hah! There you go! Persistence is the key! ;D

@ElliotYu I don't get that remark in this context.

@ElliotYu After reviewing some documentation on the Greek letter, I was wondering too. I personally like the look of \varphi, but aesthetics isn't a reason to choose one or the other.

@amWhy I can't see much.

@quid I figured. almanac.com/content/what-may-day

@ElliotYu I have had that conversation with colleagues. Basically, I know that I am wrong... I say "fee", "ksee", etc, but also say "pie".

I do it on purpose.

Most people don't care, and I prefer to annoy the ones who do. :P

It is often called "May Day", May 1st. Folklore.

@XanderHenderson Yup, that's you!! :P

For the same reason, I pronounce the State of Nevada as "ne-VAH-duh".

Could you tell me what you consider as correct and incorrect I'm a bit lost.

@quid Well the idea is basically that if you trace the pronunciations of letters through history, you will find that they follow the same rules as the change of regular words. And when sound changes take place, they generally happen regularly and don't really leave words behind, so when words rhyme, they will generally continue to rhyme in a couple of hundred years.

@quid (skipping over a bunch of caveats here...) Since $\pi$ and $\phi$ had historically always had the same vowel, one would expect them to still be pronounced with the same vowel.

So basically $\phi$ should be pronounced fie, or if you prefer IPA, /fai/

But one of those caveats skipped over was that sometimes non-linguistic reasons produce exceptions, and I guess "conventions among mathematicians" could be one of those

Anyway thanks for coming to my ted talk

@ElliotYu why? Most everybody especially including Greeks do not pronounce pi so that it rhymes with that.

@quid Well a whole bunch of loan words in English are pronounced differently from the source language

@quid @Elliot Maybe quid is asking about which is correct: \phi, or \varphi: Wikipedia discusses Romanization, which may have led some to say "fee", and in any case, it seems Wikipedia uses primarily \varphi, but with respect to the Golden Ration, uses \phi.

To me it's an oddity of English pronunciation, which is why I found it surprising given the context.

@ElliotYu yes, but that's exactly the opposite of the surrounding conversation, which is why I was confused.

@quid Wait what was the surrounding conversation about?

The \varphi vs \phi thing was a separate thing

And in that case I use \phi because I'm lazy...

@ElliotYu that it is strange that words of Spanish origin do not get pronounced as in Spanish.

@quid Oh!

sorry.. my bad

It's because I mistook this room for where the Greek letters discussion came from

No problem. I did not want to be insisting about it, I just was genuinely confused about what was the intent of the remark.

I sort of just saw "pronunciation" and started rambling :P Turns out the Greek letter conversation came from the Mathematics chat room, but got buried far back.

@XanderHenderson Wow! Great find!!!.

@ElliotYu No problem. I've enjoyed myself. Enlightening, because even given the post Xander found from English Language and Usage, it does look like translation over countries and time, can indeed, cause issues in pronunciation!

This kind of shift happens in lots of words actually, like "pine" comes from Latin "pinus", which in Spanish and Italian turned into "pino", the first syllable pronounced like "pee". Again English is the odd one out, but we don't think about this example too much, probably because we don't really think of "pine" as a loan word anymore.

Greek letter names are weird, because we can see that they are a foreign thing explicitly

I think the answer linked explains it well, it's this vowel shift that happened, and it was applied to more common things it seems and maybe not so much to others.

Help yourselves! Sorry, I sort of, uhmm, ah, sort of, I guess, maybe, uhm, spilled a little bit (hiccup), while serving them here! ;D

@amWhy clearly you are drunk!

^^^ @Xander, @Elliot, @quid, and little ole me!

@amWhy I'm not drunk.

First I did not drink anything. Second I would not be drunk from 4 half pints of beer. ;D

@quid I had a hard time finding images tonight of more than two beer mugs. And when I found this image, I myself was wondering why they weren't full... So I thought I'd play along with it! ;D

^^^ For you, smart ass, @quid "The ultimate green smoothie" ;D

banana
apple
spinach
lime juice – freshly squeezed
frozen pineapple
chia seeds
water or more juice (freshly squeezed, preferred) to smooth

@amWhy indeed I like to tell people that I have more reason in my ass than they have in their brain. ;D

@quid Hah! ;D That's great!

@quid I just heard from the Academy of Motion Pictures: I'm nominated for best actress, best screenwriter, for pulling off that line above, and my previous line. I'm now in negotiations with Steven Spielberg who wants me to write a screenplay about life on math.se!!

So, @quid and @Xander be nice to me... mwhahaha!

"Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive"! Trivia: where did this first appear, and who authored it! ... tick, tock, tick, tock ...

Okay, sleep well, all!.

@amWhy too bad that you have to wait for almost a year to receive the prizes.

@quid I know! ... The world will have to wait, to know my theatrical talent!

@quid You are clearly well read on current events!

@amWhy if you need a reference, I can vouch for you creating a lot of drama. ;-)

@quid Yeah, I set myself up for that! ;D

By the way there is already a song about life on math.se or something like that

sounds almost the same mars and math

@quid I'll talk to Stevie about it being selected for the movie I'll write the screen play for.

@amWhy that's great. Keep me updated how it goes.

@quid ;D

@amWhy I am drinking one of these: liquor.com/recipes/paloma

But I have replaced the grapefruit soda with grapefruit juice.

And I have added orange juice.