English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

tchrist

12:00 AM

I'm not asking.

I'm telling.

Tim

Forgive me that I am still in the aftermath of this morning

tchrist

12:23 AM

@Robusto One of yours?

Not a real question.

Robusto

12:54 AM

@tchrist Otero County contains Alamogordo, White Sands, Holloman AFB, and other relics of a violent past.

tchrist

@Robusto And apparently at least one relic of a violent present.

Robusto

I will grant you that.

Surgeons practicing with tools making origami. Can you do it?

I don't particularly like the ersatz bokeh framing, though. Why do people do that?

> INTERVIEWER: I see there's a four-year gap in your resume. Did you work in the Trump administration?
JOB APPLICANT: No, I was in prison. I swear!

4

Robusto

1:16 AM

@tchrist: Am I crazy? Whenever I hear someone talk about a "stave" in music, my brain does a little seg_fault shudder. Why can't they call it a staff and the plural staves.

Cerberus

@Robusto Sounds good.

Mitch

@Robusto what is 'bokeh framing'? the fuzzy part on top and bottom? What is 'bokeh'?

Robusto

Bokeh

In photography, bokeh ( BOH-kə or BOH-kay; Japanese: [boke]) is the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in out-of-focus parts of an image. Bokeh has also been defined as "the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light". Differences in lens aberrations and aperture shape cause very different bokeh effects. Some lens designs blur the image in a way that is pleasing to the eye, while others produce distracting or unpleasant blurring ("good" and "bad" bokeh, respectively). Photographers may deliberately use a shallow focus technique to create images with prominent out-of-focus regions,...

Cerberus

Something for silly kids.

Mitch

Oh

but the blur at the linked image is the usual (annoying) extra on the side to 'fill out' the square, so it is not blurring the original image but stretching out a blurring of the sides.

Robusto

1:32 AM

@Mitch Hence the term ersatz.

Mitch

oh

it's annoying everywhere.

I feel like that I'd prefer the narrow original with black on the sides. Why did designers think it was a good idea to add the bokeh?

I need answers

Robusto

All I have is questions.

Answers cost more.

Mitch

What is something that costs less because you gave answers in the form of a question?

Robusto

Jan 12 at 0:45, by Robusto

@Færd What, are we auditioning for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead?

Mitch

@Robusto is that like Waiting for Godot but more modern?

I should look all this up on wikipedia

Robusto

2:04 AM

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990) - Playing Questions Scene (2/11) | Movieclips

►

tchrist

2:36 AM

@Robusto I can't say whether you're crazy or not, but there has been vacillation about this for going on four centuries now.

Robusto

We hates it, precious.

tchrist

> 1659 J. Caryll Peters Pattern 3 After they had sang the two first staves of the tenth hymn of Larners twelve Songs of Sion.
1786 T. Busby Compl. Dict. Music (at cited word) The five horizontal and parallel lines on and between which the notes are placed. Guido..is said by some to have first used the stave.
1823 Ld. Byron Island ii. v. 23 One long-cherished ballad's simple stave.
1841 C. Dickens Barnaby Rudge xxxix. 162 ‘Cheer up, captain!’ cried Hugh, when they had roared themselves out of breath. ‘Another stave!’

The 1842 citation is most salient.

> There is a schism among musicians, whether this should be staff or stave, pronounced by some staaf. Authorities are mostly in favour of ‘stave’ but custom may be pleaded for ‘staff’ and ‘staves’ in the plural.

> 1654 J. Playford Breefe Introd. Skill Musick i. 3 But for Lessons for the Organ, Virginalls, or Harp two staves of six lines together are required.
1688 R. Holme Acad. Armory iii. 157/1 [Follows Playford and adds:] They are called a Staff or Stansa.
1782 C. Burney Gen. Hist. Music II. 87 The regular staff of four lines.
1806 J. W. Callcott Musical Gram. 1 The lines and spaces of the Staff are counted upwards.
1842 Westm. Rev. Jan. 34 (note) There is a schism among musicians, whether this should be staff or stave, pronounced by some staaf. Authorities are mostly in fav…

Robusto

Wah.

My world is untidy.

Words are a mess, aren't they?

tchrist

I really don't know where it got confused.

Robusto

I also hate dwarf -> dwarfs.

tchrist

2:41 AM

> Forms: Plural staves /steɪvz/, staffs /stɑːfs//-æ-/.

Forms: Old English stæb, ( stab-, steb-), Old English–Middle English stef, Old English–Middle English stæf, Old English–1500s staf, Middle English oblique stæve, steave, Middle English oblique stave, Middle English–1600s stafe, Middle English–1700s, (1800s archaic) staffe, Middle English–1500s Scottish staif, 1500s stayffe, Scottish stalf, ( stafte), Middle English–1600s genitive singular staves, Middle English– staff;

plural

Old English stafas, Middle English stafen, Middle English stafes, Middle English staven, Ormin stafess, Midd…

Robusto

Prolly because /f/ in OE would have the /v/ sound in certain cases.

tchrist

@Robusto I thought of that. But it seems more recent than that.

I think part of it is that OE had stæb, stef, stæf, staf.

Robusto

Well, yeah. OE was all over the map. At least all over the shire map.

tchrist

Notice also how we use clef to mean clave.

But that's from Latin.

The "key".

Robusto

Yeah, I thought clef was from French.

tchrist

2:45 AM

It is.

Robusto

It is a whirligig of words.

tchrist

> < French clef < Latin clāv-em key. In spelling formerly confused with the various forms of cliff n., cleeve n.

Robusto

But it still means key, which was originally the meaning of having separate staves for different keys.

Now it actually means range.

Or, in singing, tessitura.

Historians having to tape together documents Trump tore up.

tchrist

fermer à clé, cerrar con llave

fechar com chave in Portugal.

@Robusto You and I shall not live to see them finally bring to light all the evils they’re eventually able to uncover that were secretly wrought by this administration.

And even if he were to plunge into a black hole, the gaping flaws in our broken politics will continue to grow wider and consume more.

Namely, that one of the two major parties is no longer interested in democracy, preferring to push a false narrative utterly divorced from reality.

I don't know how you can have a functioning democracy under a two party system where one of them is the reality party and the other the surreality party.

tchrist

3:08 AM

The latter is something we see in personality cults, including those of civil autocrats and religious figureheads alike.

There is a well documented process by which the cultist breaks down his follower's acceptance of any external reality. He becomes the sole source of "objective" truth.

There very quickly comes a point from which there is no return for them, because to deny their cult leader's lies puts the lie to the life they have themselves been leading for so long. Now they're stuck.

I can't remember what all this called but that doesn't matter. The point is that it is a process that has been well studied and borne out again and again.

Jim Jones. Benito Mussolini.

SmokeDetector

6:34 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at end of answer (61): How can this style of writing be improved? by Dynamo gaming on english.SE

CowperKettle

7:13 AM

> ‘Approximately 50% of Americans consume less than the Estimated Average Requirement (EAR) for magnesium, and some age groups consume substantially less’ ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5786912

But they seem to be doing well.

CowperKettle

7:42 AM

Gigili

11:21 AM

@Robusto Neat! And looks yummy. Looks a lot like: Persian Halim

Hairi

11:38 AM

Hello Folks,

I have an email from client asking me:

"Can you tell me what email we are using for our side? I would have thought no email was involved."

I would like to express that I am not aware of any email being used by used by us.
Thank you

Gigili

1:15 PM

@Hairi What is the problem?

CowperKettle

Local news. A man went to a supermarket in Chelyabinsk, took a bottle of vodka from a shelf and drank it whole, then ate some baby food from the stalls and went asleep on the floor in the nook. He slept there for 3 hours until anybody noticed.

Hairi

1:35 PM

@Gigili

How to structure my sentence

CowperKettle

1:46 PM

@Hairi "Sir, I am not aware of any email being used by us specifically for this purpose"

Felix Crazzolara

2:29 PM

Hi everyone, I have a short question regarding an English sentence. In the context which is assumed, "direct thrust control" describes a method to control the thrust generated by the propellers of a drone. Is it correct then to write some like "...towards direct thrust control on unmanned aerial vehicles..." or would it rather be "of unmanned ..." instead of "on unmanned ..."?

Robusto

@CowperKettle Yeah. How dare he come back to Russia after we poisoned him.

Robusto

2:41 PM

And don't be surprised if he "commits suicide" while in custody.

Robusto

3:35 PM

Was the universe made for us?

►

CowperKettle

4:11 PM

He is being transported into a Moscow special isolation jail where floors 5 and 6 are supervised by the FSB, the same organization that poisoned him.

By the way, his laywer was notified about the court session today only after the court session began.

The court session was held right in the police station, which has almost never been done in Russia.

Only if the person is severely incapacitated or gravely insane does the Russian judge deign to hold a court session outside the actual court building.

And in some cases where expert opinion is required, for instance, a judge may hold a session in a building under construction to see with their own eyes the condition of the building. But that is also very rare.

They are rushing the procedures because there are frosts right now in Moscow, and not that many people came to support Navalny. Several dozen.

Gigili

4:58 PM

How about changing it up today?

tchrist

5:11 PM

@Gigili What does your "it" refer to there?

CowperKettle

5:33 PM

> Proposing that viruses can also be thought to have a grammar and semantics, new research presents a powerful new method for the identification of mutations that allow a virus to escape from recognition by neutralizing antibodies. science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6526/233

Viral Grammar StackExchange

> The authors have uncovered a parallel between the properties of a virus and its interpretation by the host immune system and the properties of a sentence in natural language and its interpretation by a human.

tchrist

!!

I wonder we aren't just imagining seeing patterns in chaos's tea leaves again.

Cerberus

It's just a matter of odd terminology.

You can call anything a language.

It is a metaphor.

tchrist

oh

Cerberus

5:49 PM

> a parallel

= an analogy or similarity

But it can be useful, applying methods from the interpretation of natural language when trying to interpret how certain mutations may 'translate' into virus behaviour.

(It also shows how different 'natural language processing' is from really understanding human language.)

2

Mitch

6:13 PM

@Gigili Do you want to go back to yesterday's poop questions?

Why are you being such a pre-Madonna?

We'll burn that bridge before we come to it.

The chickens are coming home to roast.

Robusto

As we say in software development, "We'll fall off that bridge when we come to it."

Mitch

@CowperKettle Uncovered? It's not like there's some crazy unforeseen parallel. It was called a 'genetic code' originally because obviously.

As to the details though, comparing it with natural language is bonkers.

@Robusto Speaking of obvious but misleading metaphors, 'technical debt' never seems to bear out in any detail. Or maybe I'm thinking about it wrong? Is it just 'time to do stuff'?

Conrado

@Robusto imgur.com/THQoVAr

Ursli crosses the bridge.

CowperKettle

> Schellen-Ursli (rarely also Schellenursli ), in the Rhaeto-Romanic original Uorsin , is a children's story by the author Selina Chönz and the artist Alois Carigiet . It is one of the most famous picture books in Switzerland .

I've never heard about it

Conrado

I cannot help it.

I have Swiss ancestry somewhere back there.

CowperKettle

6:28 PM

> Selina Chönz wrote the text, the illustrations are by Alois Carigiet . The book was published in 1945. The book caused a sensation far beyond the Engadine with its pictures and history.

Conrado

But it is a striking bridge, no?

CowperKettle

I had a friend, a girl who lived in Yekaterinburg and moved to Switzerland.

She visits Yekaterinburg from time to time.

Yes, the bridge looks dangerous

tchrist

@FaheemMitha @CowperKettle You can read about a recent documentary on his death and the disposition of his remains at Un documental sobre García Lorca apunta a que su cuerpo está enterrado en la casa de la Huerta de San Vicente.

Conrado

Perhaps there was no ISO 93.040: Bridge Construction section back then.

tchrist

@Conrado I wonder whether Ursli is somehow Rhaeto-Romanic for "little bear". Probably not, but you always wonder these things.

M.A.R.

6:39 PM

Awesome stuff of the day: Phytoremediation

On lead-poisoned soil, you plant plants, then burn them after a while. Electrolyze the ashes and extract the lead. Voila

Works with radioactive contaminants too

Conrado

Or MN DOT: Timber Bridges

@tchrist I never had wondered that yet, but I will now.

Faheem Mitha

@tchrist Thank you for the link.

Conrado

Like "Ursula".

CowperKettle

6:52 PM

Russia's Minister of Transport has launched an investigation into the actions of several female flight attendants who made a collective selfie with Alexey Navalny

Cerberus

7:07 PM

@M.A.R. The lead does not take part in the oxidation process?

tchrist

7:29 PM

@CowperKettle But perhaps for his Diván del Tamarit, for the most part Lorca’s published works are more allusive, and more haunting, than they are mirror-biased. But he did write of the great conflict of his day, and this it was that doomed him.

The preceding Generation of ’98 didn’t go in for that sort of thing, but Lorca’s own Generation of ’27 was more iconoclastic; compare Luis Cernuda, Vicente Aleixandre, Antonio Machado. But this is too vast a topic to hope to pot within a span of seven-score characters and change.

Mitch

8:01 PM

@M.A.R. Wha?? That's all it takes? would grass work? That would seem the fastest.

@Conrado follows instructions

taunts enemies on other side

lights fuse

turns to find other enemies on this side

CowperKettle

M.A.R.

@Cerberus It would of course be in an oxidized form in the first place. The point is plants concentrate contaminants several fold in themselves, which is why they're used

CowperKettle

The plant is easily lead

M.A.R.

Mislead

Cerberus

8:19 PM

@M.A.R. What I really meant to ask was whether the lead should not be dispersed in the air somehow, during the burning.

M.A.R.

@Cerberus It might be possible for some lead-y dust to be dispersed, but they don't burn the plants just like a mini-wildfire; the goal would I think either be biohazard waste disposal or extraction of lead or other metals, both of which would have strict safety protocols

Cerberus

9:04 PM

@M.A.R. Good.

Robusto

9:27 PM

@Mitch I'm not sure I understand your question.

It's hard to imagine that only 61% of the electorate thinks the recent election was legitimate.

Or that 5% of Democrats actually approve of Trump's time in office.

tchrist

@Robusto "Think" may be stretching the matter, as little actual thought appears to be involved. They have been conditioned, at some length, to no longer consider losing to be a legitimate outcome under any circumstances.

Heads I win, tails you cheat.

Robusto

Yes. I was using "think" for lack of a better term.

Reminds me a bit of "I Believe" from The Book of Mormon Broadway musical.

tchrist

I'm not smart enough to pin all this nonsense on any one root cause, let alone one we have any chance of fixing. I lack the education to draw historical parallels and conclusions, or propose solutions.

But I suffer no delusion that this is something new under the sun.

I cannot shake the impression that it is some sort of brain washing of the masses.

Robusto

9:42 PM

Trumpism is a cult. It's as simple as that.

tchrist

But most go willingly into this fantasy. They mistake their own wishes of a reality they prefer for what it is. If they want something enough, or repeat it enough, they come to believe this is really how things are, not as they would that they were. To me it seems a deliberate ruse.

@Robusto I suppose.

Robusto

Look at the cultists who Heaven's Gate cult who killed themselves because they believed that Hale-Bopp had a starship behind it that would take them away.

They even returned an expensive telescope they had bought because it apparently wasn't powerful enough to reveal the (nonexistent) starship behind the comet.

Or the Jim Jones cult who fed their own children cyanide because they believed in their evangelical leader.

This is some scary shit.

Anyway, less than two days from a return (we hope) to normalcy.

tchrist

It's happening now under Trumpian fascism, where lifesaving measures against a lethal illness are deliberately withheld.

Robusto

Yes. And the Trumpists are OK with that.

What are the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people compared with the pique of a childish would-be dictator?

tchrist

Uncontent with having just one life to sacrifice to Trump, they insist on spreading their gift.

Robusto

9:51 PM

The life they don't mind sacrificing is yours, not theirs.

tchrist

In that nothing ever changes.

Robusto

Fox News GOES DOWN Wrecked By Ratings Disaster

►

Let's hope that trend continues.

tchrist

Pandora does not sustain me.

Robusto

The Shared Psychosis of Trumpism

►

tchrist

Good luck with that, Ben.

Robusto

9:59 PM

@tchrist Yeah, Sasse had plenty of opportunities to stand up for the Constitution, and somehow let those slide.

tchrist

Like Flake.

Robusto

In other news, only 751 new cases in NM yesterday. That's the lowest since early November.

Could be the weekend effect, but it's still the lowest weekend report in months.

tchrist

@Robusto Yeah, hard to say. In some sense, nothing but the 7-day moving average says anything. But in other senses, that's nonsense.

Robusto

"O-O-H CHILD" The Five Stairsteps ~ 1970

►

tchrist

10:15 PM

The Trump presidency was marked by battles over truth itself. Those aren’t over.

Gigili

@tchrist How things are normally done

tchrist

ok

Gigili

I am the mod and you're the regular user.

@Mitch That's not what we agreed on.

Some people cause happiness wherever they go. I cause happiness whenever I go.

I guess change really must come from within.

Bohemian relativist

10:34 PM

Are you upset?

I feel quite so.

Mitch

@Gigili There's a lot that we didn't agree on. I don't think we agreed on anything. We didn't disagree on anything either. So I think we're square.

Bohemian relativist

Today I found there is a place, which may be called snow playground, where people play snow, mainly by sliding over the snow-covered slopes.

A lot of them are kids. There are also dogs there. It's freezing cold. I wonder how these people are not afraid of coldness - -11°C.

I found not wearing gloves is really not a good idea.

tchrist

10:56 PM

@Bohemianrelativist There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing. That temperature isn't really very cold to us accustomed to so very much worse. What happened with your gloves?

It was colder than that here back in October already.

Bohemian relativist

@tchrist I have not prepared gloves. My friend suddenly invited me to play with snow so that I didn't get time to look for gloves.

tchrist

Oh you can't go out without gloves. That's a problem. I misunderstood you completely!!

You didn't say anything wrong. I just didn't read carefully.

Bohemian relativist

I never have the habit of wearing gloves.

tchrist

It was already 8F/-13C here on October 27th of this past year. And on December 30th, some 19 days ago, we had a place in Colorado (Antero Reservoir) hit -50F/-46C. That’s a temperature that would have likely given even @CowperKettle or @JohanLarsson some concern. I’m glad I wasn't there.

Bohemian relativist

Though I have had the experience of feeling my hands freezing cold during snowy days, I have not prepared my gloves.

tchrist

11:04 PM

@Bohemianrelativist It's not just a good idea. It's critical. Otherwise you could lose your fingers forever.

If you have pockets, put your bare hands there. If you don't, or if that doesn't keep them warm enough, stick them down the inside of the front of your pants. I mean it.

We call it "frost bite" when the cold freezes and kills your flesh. It sounds less scary than it is; it's terrible.

People do indeed die of the cold here every single winter.

In some winters more than others. Often this is from people who have been drinking too much alcohol, but hardly always.

Bohemian relativist

I put my hands in the pockets of my jacket, feeling my hands got warmer after a little time, but once after l withdrew my hands to take pictures, my hands got freezing again.

tchrist

It was learning to survive in climates where you could not run around naked all year that finally allowed us to venture forth from our hot African cradle and cover the face of our planet.

Sometimes it gets so cold that you can't even wear gloves; you have to wear mittens. Mittens are warmer because only the thumb is separated out.

Bohemian relativist

The snow view is novel and legendary - I had only seen this kind of view in fairy tales - but it is too freezing to play with snow.

tchrist

With naked hands? Of course. :)

And they make warm, thin liners for your hands, themselves gloves, that you put on BEFORE you put on your mittens.

Do you have long underwear that reaches all the way to your ankles? Do you know about wearing more than one pair of socks, one thin and one thick?

That's why where I come from they like to say There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.

Bohemian relativist

@tchrist I tried to look for people who don't wear gloves on the snow playground, but didn't find any.

tchrist

11:18 PM

@Bohemianrelativist At only 12F/-11C? No, nobody who has faced that before would be so imprudent.

It's dangerous.

I have a friend from Lisbon Portugal who had a hard time adapting to our cold when he visited here and eventually moved here, though only to mild New Jersey. Lisbon is not quite as warm as where you are from, but it nearly never sees serious snow and cold, or even lightning.

He had never seen snow before.

Another friend from New Zealand had never worn shoes until he moved here, or so he said.

:56791373 Thin things go on the inside. You have to wear multiple layers, even on your legs.

Bohemian relativist

I just didn't predict I would feel that cold.

tchrist

I suspect he had to wear shoes at university there, but I don't know. I'm sure he seldom wore them otherwise. Came from a beach-like world, but they do have high mountains there.

@Bohemianrelativist Nature is the greatest of teachers. :)

Bohemian relativist

my friend also comes from Africa and had never seen snow before coming here, like me.

tchrist

That makes sense.

Bohemian relativist

I found the icy ground makes my feet freezing when I stand for long - I think my shoes are too thin.

tchrist

11:29 PM

You shouldn't wear shoes in that weather. You should only wear boots.

Moreover, these should be "winter" boots or "snow" boots, not "hiking" boots or "work" boots.

They do not fit over your shoes. They are used in place of your shoes.

Bohemian relativist

I trip on the ice-covered stairs - it's too slippery to grasp the ground firmly.

tchrist

Yes, that is a hazard.

They make specialist equipment even for that, but it is not worth your trouble.

Bohemian relativist

@tchrist I seldom wear boots.

tchrist

Those are examples of boots that you might wear in winter.

@Bohemianrelativist You seldom need to. But where you are now, at this season of the year, you might. What do other people wear there, the people who are from there?

Bohemian relativist

@tchrist I didn't pay attention to their shoes. I only noticed nobody didn't wear gloves like me.

tchrist

11:35 PM

I bet they were most of them wearing boots.

Cerberus

tchrist

@Cerberus Not recommended.

Cerberus

Why not? They keep your feet dry 100% guaranteed.

tchrist

@Cerberus Not when the snow is up past your knees, they don't.

Cerberus

Then maybe not.

Then better stay at home.

Or walk on top of the snow.

tchrist

11:37 PM

Once the snow is above the lip of your shoe, you are in peril.

Cerberus

We had maybe a cm of snow two days ago.

It was gone the next day.

tchrist

And that only takes a measly six inches or whatnot.

Cerberus

And my street was still too warm for it to endure at all.

tchrist

A veritable sheltered disneyland you live in there. :)

Cerberus

It was different when I was young.

But, thanks to Al Gore's A/C units, the snow is almost gone.

Bohemian relativist

11:39 PM

I think I need a lot of living guidance since this is the first time I am in so low temperature -11 degrees Celsius. The lowest temperature outside refrigerator I had experienced in my subtropic origin is 4 degrees Celsius.

tchrist

Places like Minnesota and Finland have heated sidewalks.

Cerberus

I think his energy use was about 100 average households, was it not?

> In February 2007, the day after his panicky global warming film “An Inconvenient Truth” won an Academy Award for best documentary, a shocking report based on public records revealed that Al Gore’s Nashville home consumed 20 times more electricity than the average American household.

Americans use so much energy, it could well be 100 times the European average he used.

tchrist

@Bohemianrelativist It does sound like that, yes. I have had to make sure my friends visiting from milder climates were properly dressed etc. many times before venturing outside. They just didn't have the right training not to risk being unhappy in weather they had no experience with, so that they did not otherwise accidentally put themself at risk of becoming not just unhappy but severely injured or worse.

@Cerberus That's a sillily broad paintbrush there. And it's unfair to compare Crete or Seville with Oslo and Helsinki and Moscow.

Cerberus

Well, Europe is more boreal than America.

So the brush should be stroking in the right direction.

Bohemian relativist

@tchrist before coming here, I really didn't know what kind of clothes to buy to carry here to wear to feel warm enough because I couldn't imagine what it feels like here - the subtropic zone can feel warm all seasons - even in winter, the temperature is usually over 15 degrees Celsius and can be over 30 degrees Celsius occasionally in January.

Cerberus

11:47 PM

> In 2019, the average annual electricity consumption for a U.S. residential utility customer was 10,649 kilowatthours (kWh)

tchrist

@Cerberus So why does this offend you so badly?

Eh?

Cerberus

> Very unequal level of electricity consumption per household: from around 1600 kWh in Romania, 2000 kWh in Poland and Baltic countries, around 4000 kWh for the EU average to 8,000-10,000 kWh in Finland and Sweden, and even 17,000 kWh in Norway.

tchrist

Many people did not build homes with energy conservation in mind. They use single-pane windows and the like.

Cerberus

And the American number is just electricity, excluding things like gas, oil, and other forms of heating.

tchrist

Again, why does this insult your sensibilities?

Cerberus

11:49 PM

But I suppose that might be the same proportion as in Europe.

tchrist

It's feels like you're bashing us.

Cerberus

Well, Americans use a ton of energy.

And emit a ton of greenhouse gases.

tchrist

Not everybody lives in a manicured environment the way you do.

Cerberus

And now we have no more snow here.

tchrist

Yeah, that's not real.

Cerberus

11:49 PM

I was just teasing.

But it is generally true that places like America and Australia have been doing very, very badly, even compared to Europe, which is a huge polluter.

Now China is even worse than all of us.

But I bet the total contribution to greenhouse emissions up to now by America far surpasses that of any other country or union.

tchrist

Once you have lived for a summer in Phoenix and a winter in Fairbanks, come back and we'll talk.

Cerberus

I'm sure the people in Saudi Arabia who air-condition their deserts also need to consume tons of energy.

tchrist

Provided you survive them both. Many Europeans die in such places and times. They're just too naïve.

Cerberus

That doesn't save the planet, though.

Mitch

@Cerberus Yay! We win again!

Cerberus

11:56 PM

And I'm sure they could save a ton of energy.

tchrist

Think of all that energy you waste pumping seawater from lands that are below sea level. It's a crime against the planet. Learn to live right and stop that.

Mitch

haha

Cerberus

A very small amount.

Mitch

stupid netherlanders

desalinizing is a very energy intensive procedure.

Cerberus

Besides, the numbers I gave was just for households.

tchrist

11:59 PM

You should have left.

Not tried to live where the sea wanted to be.

It's unnatural.

Cerberus

We have always used just the wind to keep our feet dry.

Mitch

I bet there's some way to turn the physical energy of rushing seawater (over a dike say) into an energy source that would desalinize it, and then the resulting salt concentration difference by osmosis would push the clean water back over the dike.

Cerberus

And we are returning to wind.

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…