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CowperKettle
CowperKettle
04:17
Give a man a fish and he will be satisfied for one day. Name a man Satisfied and he will be Satisfied all his life
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2 hours later…
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
06:14
Chinese alchemical elixir poisoning
In Chinese alchemy, elixir poisoning refers to the toxic effects from elixirs of immortality that contained metals and minerals such as mercury and arsenic. The official Twenty-Four Histories record numerous Chinese emperors, nobles, and officials who ironically died from taking elixirs in order to prolong their lifespans. The first emperor to die from elixir poisoning was likely Qin Shi Huang (d. 210 BCE) and the last was Yongzheng (d. 1735). Despite common knowledge that immortality potions could be deadly, fangshi and Daoist alchemists continued the elixir-making practice for two millennia....
A whole article!
 
2 hours later…
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
07:55
Would the name "Lake Shitovskoye" sound awkward in English?
A beautiful lake near Yekaterinburg (20 km to the north) but with an unfortunate name
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I took the last photo past midnight
It does not get totally dark in the end of June
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I took this photo at 3 a.m.
Alexander Nevsky Church in Baltym
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Another photo near the church
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On the bank of the Chusovaya River
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I took part in a bicycle ride that lasted through the night, then waited for 4 hours at the train station and took part in another bicycle ride. 26 hours of bicycle rides and picnics, 120 kilometers on bicycle
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Chusovaya River
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A cat that lives in a village store
 
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CowperKettle
CowperKettle
09:05
> "We see a linear trend that suggests that as the smartphone becomes more noticeable, participants' available cognitive capacity decreases," Ward said. "Your conscious mind isn't thinking about your smartphone, but that process -- the process of requiring yourself to not think about something -- uses up some of your limited cognitive resources. It's a brain drain."
sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170623133039.htm
 
3 hours later…
Man_From_India
Man_From_India
12:16
Puffy clouds hanging overhead, here n there through ragged patches sunlight peeped leaving the edges of the patches… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/878949764531965952
Tweeted by souravnaskar on June 25, 2017 at 12:15 PM
> Puffy clouds hanging overhead, here n there through ragged patches sunlight peeped leaving the edges of the patches glow like a halo.
Is it understandable?
 
1 hour later…
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
13:37
@Man_From_India Yes, perfectly
Man_From_India
Man_From_India
14:10
@CowperKettle yay thanks :-)
 
3 hours later…
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
17:40
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CowperKettle
CowperKettle
18:28
Word of the Day: to skive
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> Pare (the edge of a piece of leather or other material) so as to reduce its thickness.
> ‘to join two ends of a strap, the ends are skived’
 
2 hours later…
Cardinal
Cardinal
20:42
@CowperKettle Keep doing this. Thanks for sharing these photos. Those are great.
Word of the day: semblance
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@CowperKettle :))
Luke Sawczak
Luke Sawczak
21:07
@P.E.Dant Everyday users of the language do pick up "odd-sounding" things, even if they don't "worry" about grammar in their conversations. :) Just two days ago, I was hanging out with friends and a guy from northern Ontario referred to drinking "three or four beer". We immediately all looked at each other. When we pointed out his unusual usage, he said, "Isn't it like deer? You say 'a dozen deer', not 'a dozen deers'." None of the others study language in any way.
@P.E.Dant Of course, speakers' judgements aren't always consistent anyway. I remember one syntax class where the prof took a poll: Is the sentence "She had been being beaten" correct or is it too excrescent a compound tense? To my amazement, most of the class voted it "not correct", even though they'd undoubtedly heard sentences formed on this model (and even more complex ones) without registering them many a time throughout their 20+ years of life...
@P.E.Dant So I think there is some point in referring to "correct" or "normal" usage. I think the worse issue is the low metalinguistic awareness of your average native speaker, which leads to sweeping generalizations and pronouncements on the rightness, wrongness, or "mandatoriness" of certain wordings, in direct contradiction of their own habits and experience
Not, of course, that those who study language are perfectly reliable observers of speech, particularly their own! But some intuitions about what's least likely to ring false to native speakers (when properly qualified by region, age, etc.) seem very useful to me.
@P.E.Dant What's bizarre, though, is the huge number of questions I've seen since visiting this site on the model: "Is it true that this tense can't be used with this verb?" Surely the legitimate cases of such restrictions are very few. I wonder where the confusion stems from?

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