English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

12:08 AM

The voiced palatal affricate is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represent this sound are ⟨ɟ͡ʝ⟩ and ⟨ɟ͜ʝ⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is J\_j\. The tie bar may be omitted, yielding ⟨ɟʝ⟩ in the IPA and J\j\ in X-SAMPA. This sound is the non-sibilant equivalent of the voiced alveolo-palatal affricate. It occurs in such languages as Hungarian and Skolt Sami, among others. The voiced palatal affricate is quite rare; it is mostly absent from Europe as a phoneme (it occurs as an allophone in most Spanish dialects...

Ahah! Found it.

> Un chasquido consonántico o clic es un tipo de sonido consonántico usado en algunas lenguas, especialmente común en idiomas del Sur de África. Es particularmente frecuente en las lenguas joisanas y en lenguas aisladas como el sandawe o el hadza, y también aparece en unas pocas lenguas bantúes que históricamente han tenido un estrecho contacto con hablantes de lenguas joisán como el xhosa y el zulú.

Fuera de las lenguas africanas, estos sonidos de tipo clic también se usan ocasionalmente con intención expresiva paralingüística por los hablantes de otras lenguas (en español, existe la onom…

> Fuera de las lenguas africanas, estos sonidos de tipo clic también se usan ocasionalmente con intención expresiva paralingüística por los hablantes de otras lenguas (en español, existe la onomatopeya ¡Ttt!), pero sin formar parte del sistema fonológico propiamente dicho.

It's what we usually write as Tsk! in English.

I sure don't blame them for writing clic instead of chasquido consonántico. :)

Trevor Noah speaks at least one south African language with clicks in it.

tchrist

12:29 AM

> But the salient issue was race. As Republican strategist Kevin Phillips expressed it to New York Times reporter James Boyd in 1970: "The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are."

Negrophobe isn't a word you hear that much anymore.

reference

Cerberus

@tchrist Because it ought to be melanophobe?

tchrist

Haha

But then you couldn't Capitalize it.

Cerberus

Why not, and why would you want to?

tchrist

I had forgotten that we used to add an E to Negroes.

Cerberus

By the way, is it true that nigger is from Dutch nikker?

It would make sense.

tchrist

12:43 AM

@Cerberus It's a derisive joke against Importance Casing.

@Cerberus I would not be surprised but do not know. What says the OED?

Cerberus

But why not capitalise Melanophobe?

tchrist

Because only the Donald fears Melania that much. :)

Robusto

@tchrist I think they're called Khoisan languages.

Cerberus

@tchrist It appears to be English.

Robusto

Also Bantu, I think.

Zulu is one.

@Cerberus White southerners used to pronounce Negro as "Niggrow." Not sure if that was deliberate or what.

Cerberus

12:46 AM

> Mnl. nicker, necker is een erfwoord dat in de Germaanse talen een fabelachtig waterdier of een waterdemon aanduidt en in het Nederlands meer algemeen een monster, duivel of kwade geest gaat aanduiden; deze betekenis begint pas aan het eind van de 19e eeuw te verdwijnen.
Nikker in de betekenis ‘neger’ (denigrerend) is ontleend aan Engels nigger, een intensiefvorming bij negro, zie → neger, onder invoed van nikker en de al zeer lang bestaande vaste uitdrukking zo zwart als de nikker of zo zwart als een nikker.

Very interesting.

Robusto

@tchrist Thanks.

Cerberus

So nikker signified a water demon.

Which was apparently thought of as black.

And then it was later used to refer to black people based on English usage.

tchrist

Sudden heavy snow here.

Cerberus

We had drinks outside today. It was 16 degrees.

tchrist

It was 58 and sunny this morning; shirt sleeve weather.

Cerberus

12:49 AM

The city was suddenly teeming with people, the streets were as crowded as I have not seen since last summer.

Even though the shops and cafés are still closed.

But one can buy drinks and food on the street.

tchrist

Teeming with suicidal people.

Robusto

@tchrist It's 58 here now, but it was warmer this afternoon.

Cerberus

They did not always keep their distance.

But at least it's all outside.

Robusto

@Cerberus But it didn't come from the water demon usage, right?

Cerberus

My father has received his note to be vaccinated.

tchrist

12:51 AM

How do you eat and drink masked? Intravenous drip?

Cerberus

I think his turn is in early March.

Robusto

You take off your mask.

Cerberus

@tchrist Nobody wears masks outside here.

media.at5.nl/images/…

Today.

Robusto

@Cerberus What age?

tchrist

Wow. Here you could be convicted for violating a public health order if within six feet of someone (read: depth of a dugout grave), fined $1-5k, and stuck in an overcrowded jail rife with covid for up to a year per violation.

Cerberus

12:55 AM

@Robusto 80.

@tchrist Really?

Robusto

75 and over are getting them here now.

Cerberus

Well, the American justice system has always been somewhat black and white. Either you're good or you're evil.

Robusto

But 38 states have 65 and over, which makes this state behind the curve.

tchrist

@Cerberus Legally, certainly. In practice, the cops just beat you up unless you're white. :)

Cerberus

Here I think they invite people by the decade.

@tchrist How bleak.

> the surname Blake can mean either "one of pale complexion" or "one of dark complexion"

Bleak and black.

Robusto

12:57 AM

@tchrist And if you're rich and white, you get off unless you somehow fuck up spectacularly.

tchrist

Fines tend to be imposed on businesses for violations. And they'll unlicense them at times.

Robusto

For every Harvey Weinstein there are tons of prep school athletes that rape and get away with it.

tchrist

Even when the staff carry firearms, like the Boebert jerks.

Robusto

Yeah, we have some idiots in NM, but you guys have Boebert.

tchrist

@Robusto When you're a star, they let you do anything.

Robusto

1:00 AM

So our Dear Leader said.

tchrist

Jock stench.

They're trying to vaccinate grocery store workers next month, but the Republican ones are declining on the grounds that they don't want to let the government control them that way.

I'm thinking they should not be allowed to work around other people if they refuse vaccination.

Robusto

Did you hear the latest about Giuliani? He admitted on some right-wing station that he enjoyed looking up golfer Michelle Wie's skirt while she was putting. And he was laughing about it.

tchrist

Skag.

Now we know what G&T have on each other; they prolly share a strumpet in common, or a cousin, or both.

@Cerberus Or Mexican or Porto Rican, which counts as black in New York.

Robusto

Has the world gone crazy? When I was young people still had shame. Nixon had shame. And so did his enablers. Now it's all about who can steal the most the fastest.

tchrist

Caligula had no shame.

Robusto

1:05 AM

He didn't have to.

tchrist

Nor have they.

Apparently.

Robusto

@tchrist That was before my time, believe it or not.

tchrist

Nero the breaker of butterflies wasn't big on it either.

Robusto

He thought himself an artist.

Qualis artifex pereo were his closing words.

tchrist

@Cerberus "Since these hairs are hollow, the Polar bears' diet and environment can affect their colour. Polar bears whose diet has a lot of seals in it can look light yellow because of the seal oils."

Cerberus

1:10 AM

@tchrist I didn't mean it like that.

Robusto

Seals are their principal diet.

Cerberus

I meant it in the sense that it has very severe punishments.

tchrist

The Vikings had no prisons.

Cerberus

@tchrist Oh, interesting.

Wow, explosives were used to break into a building a few minutes ago by criminals.

Robusto

In Amsterdam?

Cerberus

1:13 AM

I could hear them in the inner city, while the explosions were in a different part of the city altogether.

Yes.

tchrist

You need to move to somewhere safe, like Greenland.

Cerberus

I heard a very deep explosive sound.

tchrist

Or New Zealand. I'd vote for New Zealand if I were you.

Cerberus

And I saw the alarm notice in the list on the police website.

tchrist

I guess they weren't interested in keeping the door as a souvenir.

Cerberus

1:15 AM

Apparently not.

Perhaps it was just an ATM. But this loud? And several explosions?

Robusto

Do you have political unrest there?

Cerberus

The police use a word suggesting an ATM.

Nah.

tchrist

Using high explosives to break into a tyme machine sounds like a recipe for green confetti.

Cerberus

It is unfortunately somewhat common.

So it must work.

tchrist

sickos

Cerberus

1:16 AM

This does not happen where you live?

tchrist

Fuck no.

Cerberus

Interesting.

I wonder how they prevent it.

tchrist

I don't live in a crime warren.

People aren't fuckheads in my town.

Cerberus

Well, it happens anywhere where there's an ATM. It's not a city thing.

Nor a Dutch thing.

Perhaps your banks use a different system?

tchrist

No, here they create fake cards that allow them to pull out as much money as they please. No bombs needed.

Robusto

1:18 AM

We have ATMs here. I can't recall any of them ever getting blown up no matter where I've lived.

tchrist

Different class of criminal.

@Robusto Ditto.

Cerberus

Ah, I do not think fake cards are possible here.

Not since magnetic stripes, which probably disappeared 15 years ago or longer.

Perhaps that was a bad idea...

@Robusto Interesting.

tchrist

> Police have distributed a crime alert asking for help in identifying two men who have been using cloned credit cards to steal money from ATMs. Pictures of the suspects were taken during the middle of the afternoon on May 8 at ATMs throughout the Denver Tech Center. Police say the men targeted five ATMs on both Evans Avenue and on East Belleview Avenue.

Cerberus

There must be some reason.

tchrist

Idiots forgot to wear masks.

Robusto

1:20 AM

But, honestly, ATMs are pretty much on the way out. I use a card even to get coffee now. Cash is so 20th century.

tchrist

Touchlessly.

Robusto

That too. Cash is—what's the word? Filthy.

Filthy lucre.

Cerberus

This really was an extremely loud bang.

Robusto

Explosives are extremely loud.

Cerberus

It was in the western part of the city, but even in the eastern parts people heard it.

Robusto

1:22 AM

Maybe they used too much dynamite?

Cerberus

Well, these things happen tens of times yearly, but I don't think they are normally heard across the entire city.

Maybe!

Robusto

Think You Used Enough Dynamite There Butch

►

Cerberus

We have about 100 bombed ATMS yearly in the country.

So perhaps ten or low tens in the city.

Robusto

Where would they get explosives?

Cerberus

But 5 out of 6 times, the criminals fail to get any money.

I don't known, criminals know how to get weapons.

In 2019, someone was hurt for the first time, by such an explosion.

No deaths yet.

But a lot of scared people who live nearby, no doubt.

In the Berlin metro.

Probably low yield.

Robusto

1:28 AM

Marry, 'twas enough.

Mercutio's line.

tchrist

If you ask for me by morn you will find me a grave man.

Cerberus

Robusto

What are they, drug addicts? Seems like only people that desperate would do such a thing for a piddling few hundred dollars.

Cerberus

Well, I think there's tens of thousands in one of those.

I don't imagine simple drug addicts could acquire explosives.

No, it's high crime, gangs.

tchrist

This is all ugly city crap. This is why good people don't let their children grow up to be cities.

Cerberus

1:33 AM

This happens in the country just as well!

A city ATM is no more or less a target than a country one.

nu.nl/binnenland/2665249/plofkraak-pinautomaat-america.html

Funny.

When I Google "plofkraak America", I get one in...the village America.

Which is a tiny village in the country down south, very far away.

tchrist

@Cerberus There are no ATMs in the country.

Cerberus

Huh??

tchrist

Of course not.

Cerberus

There are ATMs everywhere here.

Robusto

See, our criminals steal much greater sums without lifting a finger. It's called "white-collar" crime.

tchrist

1:36 AM

No sir.

Not in the country.

Cerberus

How do old people get their money?

Robusto

@Cerb: Do people mostly use cash in your country?

Cerberus

I mean, young people don't use ATMs as much.

tchrist

This is very confusing.

Robusto

@Cerberus Well, I'm officially old and, like I say, I use a card even to get coffee.

tchrist

1:37 AM

I'm sure my mother has never used an ATM in her life.

Cerberus

@Robusto Not really, but cash is used.

tchrist

But country means no concrete, no building, just nature.

Cerberus

@Robusto So does my mother.

Robusto

I haven't used cash at all since Covid-19 reared its ugly head.

Cerberus

Yeah, I have all but stopped using cash as well, since the epidemic.

tchrist

1:38 AM

There are no ATMs whatsoever in field or forest, in pasture or prairie, in marsh or mere.

Robusto

I keep a few dollar bills for tips. But there is no exchange, just me dropping one or two in a pot.

Cerberus

Even so, there are people who depend on ATMs.

@tchrist No, but villages, of course.

tchrist

Country means no concrete, no asphalt, no buildings. Not untrammelled of course, for then it would be wilderness. It could be a farm.

Money comes from banks.

You go somewhere there's a bank.

There are no banks in the country.

If you have a bank somewhere, by definition it is not in the country.

Cerberus

Villages are in the country, not in the city.

@tchrist ATMs are usually nowhere near banks here.

Banks have ATMs, yes, but those are only a small proportion of ATMs.

tchrist

You have barns in the country, not banks.

Do you have ATMs in your barns and windmills?

Cerberus

1:42 AM

You're in this mode again.

It seems Germany had a lot more plofkraken last year than the year before, partly because of Dutch preventative measures.

A waterbed effect.

So I wonder if and why those do not happen in America (not the village).

tchrist

No, I'm not in this mode again.

You're using the word country is a wildly different way than I am using it in.

If you're in a named hamlet, village, town, city, or other urban situation, you are not in the country. The country has no name.

@Robusto Am I insane?

Robusto

@tchrist ???

tchrist

He is using "country" to mean "small town".

I am not.

Cerberus

> 84% of the United States' inhabitants live in suburban and urban areas,[3] but cities occupy only 10 percent of the country. Rural areas (villages) occupy the remaining 90 percent. The U.S. Census Bureau, the USDA's Economic Research Service, and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) have come together to help define rural areas. United States Census Bureau: The Census Bureau definitions (new to the 2000 census), which are based on population density, defines rural areas as all territory outside Census Bureau-defined urbanized areas and urban clusters.

Wiki.

tchrist

Anybody can make things up.

If it has a name, it is not in the country. It is in that named place.

Robusto

1:46 AM

@tchrist A town can be in the country. It's all relative.

Cerberus

I used 'country' in the sense of rural area.

tchrist

Yes, but the country surrounds it.

Cerberus

But it is not important.

tchrist

Towns are separated by countryside, no?

That's what the word means to me.

Cerberus

Towns, yes; villages, no.

tchrist

1:47 AM

How can villages not be separated by unincorporated countryside?

Cerberus

I'm not sure what you mean.

tchrist

What's somewhere has been incorporated into a municipality, it stops being unincorporated.

Cerberus

But, to me, villages are by definition in the countryside, in a rural area—not in a town or city.

Robusto

Compared to, say, Times Square, Perk, Nebraska is pretty countrified.

Cerberus

A village is not urban at all to me.

tchrist

1:49 AM

What word do you use for unincorporated countryside?

Cerberus

I don't know what that means.

It's not a matter of legal definitions, just of ordinary parlance to me.

tchrist

You don't have any places that aren't part of hamlets, villages, towns, or cities?

Cerberus

There are fields, forests, lone houses.

tchrist

Nowhere that is not part of some municpality?

@Cerberus Those are country places.

Cerberus

@tchrist We do not; but that doesn't matter.

It is the landscape and the people that live there or not.

tchrist

1:52 AM

This may explain the bizarreness of communications regarding this matter with you.

Cerberus

The countryside is anywhere that isn't urban.

Just as your own institutions define the term.

tchrist

But it might be a city?

Cerberus

See quotation above.

tchrist

No.

Cerberus

A city is by definition urban.

tchrist

1:52 AM

Anybody can edit Wikipedia.

And even if "official" it doesn't convey language as it is generally used.

So everybody has a postal address that's part of some municipality? What about "#231 Rural Route 23, Foobar County, State ZIPCODE"?

So like an address somebody whose house has a barn and pastures would have. They have no town.

Cerberus

I don't know why this is important to you.

tchrist

Somebody whose postal address is one of the postal rural routes does not live in a municipality. They live in the country. There is no city there.

Cerberus

I meant just any place that isn't in a town or city.

tchrist

That's what "unincorporated" means.

Cerberus

It's not about jurisdictions or administrative categories, really.

tchrist

1:57 AM

I can understand if you live in the Vatican City that there no unincorporated areas. It's all buildings and plazas and such.

That's what it looks like in unincorporated Boulder County. You are not part of any town.

And trust me, there are no ATMs there in that countryside. When you want an ATM, you come to town.

It's farmlands. No ATMs there.

Cerberus

Oh, is that a city?

tchrist

No, it is not a city.

It's farmlands.

It is not incorporated into any city.

It does not have a town address. It has a nontown/rural-route address.

Cerberus

In Italy, when you said urbs, they'd know what you meant always.

tchrist

We have no orbs here.

Cerberus

Just like eis ten polin in Byzantium.

Istinpol.

tchrist

2:04 AM

I have no doubt that Holland has farms. After all, all that cheese has to come from somewhere. I just didn't know they were part of some town.

Cerberus

We even have large municipalities with names like "Wide Lakes" or "West-Friesland".

Municipalities are just units one level below provinces.

Oh, it was Súdwest-Fryslân.

It's about a quarter the size of the entire province.

tchrist

Rural Free Delivery

Rural Free Delivery (RFD) is a service that began in the United States in the late 19th century to deliver mail directly to rural farm families. Prior to RFD, individuals living in remote homesteads had to pick up mail themselves at sometimes distant post offices or pay private carriers for delivery (this fee was in addition to the postage paid by the mailer). RFD became a political football, with politicians promising it to voters and using it themselves to reach voters. The proposal to offer free rural delivery was not universally embraced. Private carriers and local shopkeepers feared a loss...

Cerberus

Would you say a quarter the size or one quarter the size?

tchrist

Instead of making farmers drive into town to pick up their mail from a post office, rural post delivery allows for postman to take long rides out in the country to individual farms and such.

@Cerberus Normally the first, in precisionist language such as in science papers, sometimes the second.

Cerberus

Noted.

I think postmen come everywhere here.

Maybe there are some exceptions for the islands.

But probably for packages or something only.

tchrist

2:13 AM

Family homesteads were by definition not in the town. The Homestead Act granted them 160 acres of public land to "improve" via agriculture (farming). This was later amended to 640 acres in certain lands west of the 100th Meridian because there wasn't enough rainfall otherwise to live on.

Robusto

@Cerberus: Wow, Cerberus, there are counties in my state that are bigger in area than your whole country. With only a few thousand people in them.

Cerberus

I'll believe it!

tchrist

@Robusto I think this may have something to do with the impedance mismatch on terminology.

Robusto

Yeah.

tchrist

I have not done a good job at explaining this. I'm sorry.

Cerberus

2:15 AM

Well, I think anyone will agree that a village is rural, not urban.

And rus = the country(side).

Robusto

I agree that a village can be in the country, but is not itself "country."

To go down a country road you would have to leave the village.

Cerberus

That context is a bit more nuanced than the existence of ATMs outside the city or not.

Robusto

Nuances are important.

Cerberus

But the context was not nuanced.

tchrist

So like in the village of Eldora just above Nederland, there are no banks or shops, no stop lights or gyms. There is a single paved road. There are no ATMs.

Eldora, Colorado

Eldora (pronounced el-DOH-ruh), previously known as "Eldorado" then "El-Dora", then Eldora or Camp Eldorado, and still called Happy Valley, is an unincorporated community and a census-designated place (CDP) located in and governed by Boulder County, Colorado, United States. The CDP is a part of the Boulder, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population of the Eldora CDP was 142 at the United States Census 2010. The Nederland post office (Zip Code 80466) serves the area.Eldora is located within the Roosevelt National Forest, and is primarily a rural, densely forested, and sparsely populated area...

But there used to be some of those during the mining days. There used to be a general store.

Cerberus

2:18 AM

45 mins ago, by tchrist

This is all ugly city crap. This is why good people don't let their children grow up to be cities.

tchrist

Crime is low in Eldora.

And no ATMs are ever blown up there.

In contrast, Jamestown and Ward each have a general store that doubles as a café and saloon, and several churches. There might be an ATM inside; unclear.

Ditto Gold Hill.

They're places in the country, but because they each comprise a set of dwellings owned by various families, they are not country themselves.

All these places have just one paved road.

They do have a post office though.

One apiece, more or less.

Not sure that Eldora does. I think the country mailmen from Nederland deliver their mail.

Ward, Colorado

Ward is a Home Rule Municipality in Boulder County, Colorado, United States. The population was 150 at the 2010 census. The town is a former mining settlement founded in 1860 in the wake of the discovery of gold at nearby Gold Hill. Once one of the richest towns in the state during the Colorado Gold Rush, it is located on a mountainside at the top of Left Hand Canyon, near the Peak to Peak Highway (State Highway 72) northwest of Boulder at an elevation of 9,450 feet (2,880 m) above sea level. == History == The town was named for Calvin Ward, who prospected a claim in 1860 on the site known as...

We have many, many little mountain mining towns here that are quite dear to us.

In contrast, most use little places in Wisconsin have paved roads.

Springfield, Walworth County, Wisconsin

For other places named Springfield, see Springfield, Wisconsin. Springfield is a census-designated place in the town of Lyons, in Walworth County, Wisconsin, United States. As of the 2010 census, its population is 158. Located just northeast of Lake Geneva, it contains a mere eight streets. Springfield has an area of 0.673 square miles (1.74 km2), all of it land. == History == The community has a long history, dating back nearly two hundred years. Many of its early settlers are buried at nearby Union Cemetery. Some fought in the American Civil War. It was the home town of Assemblyman Thomas W....

Because they have such mild winters, it's easier to maintain the paved roads.

@Robusto There have been no frontier settlements in Holland within recorded history.

To my knowledge. It hasn't been "the frontier" of "civilization" for a very, very long time.

Robusto

I believe it.

There hasn't been a whole lot of frontier in Europe, period, for a loooong time. Just a lot of not-so-arable land that nobody cared about.

Cerberus

Do you want me to post a Question "is a village urban or rural?"?

Because that was the context.

Or "city or country".

Or just "city or not city", basically.

tchrist

2:32 AM

It is IN the country. It is not countryside itself. Has a collection of buildings.

Cerberus

But the context was that a village, to you, was in the city, for only cities have ATMs, or so you said.

tchrist

Once people civitate something by building buildings, it is citified not countryside any longer.

@Cerberus You don't have ATMs in the countryside. Cows and forests don't need them, and the farmers and woodsmen go to town when they need those.

I do know that you a wildly divergent way of referring to these things that is very weird to me.

But maybe it is as Rob has said.

Cerberus

It is not about terminology, nor about the word countryside.

You said only cities had ATMs.

tchrist

That's right.

Cerberus

But I have no interest in this discussion.

Or whatever it is.

tchrist

2:35 AM

Sometimes you find them at the odd country tavern.

Robusto

I think Synecdoche, New York, is in the country. As a figure of speech.

tchrist

The ones that are at a crossroads. They are not in a village or a town or a hamlet or a city. "City" means any of those in this context. They are a single public house whose proprietor probably lives on premises.

The point is that these are all settlements.

Country is land outside of human settlement, even when it is used for agriculture.

Country is where things grow.

City is where there are several or more clustered buildings not all owned and inhabited by the same family, and with foundations and all, and concrete or cement or asphalt.

If you use "rural" to mean "not big cities", then you efface meaningful and important distinctions. How do you distinguish a small town from a family farm or those two from the wilderness?

There are no ATMs to bomb in the country. I rest my case.

Cerberus

You're entitled to your own definition of city, of course.

However odd it might be.

tchrist

City dwellers may well call everything that is not city "rural", because to them it's all city or not city. But to those of us flyover people who are not part of the world's great cities, we enjoy meaningful distinctions of a more nuanced nature that better serve us. Times Square sees everything as them and not-them, neon belit glitzy movie stars versus the great darkness. We have other worlds to inhabit, for we too have stars, and ours are the real ones.

Mitch

2:58 AM

Well

Here we are again

@Cerberus I feel like I've been somewhere or saw a very evocative movie (not memorable though because then I would have remembered it(...

But I remember some place where your in the middle of nowhere and there's no buildings or nothing and right there is a vending machine

You know because you might need something

This may turn out to be really stupid

Like maybe everywhere has that?

Or maybe it's really a soda machine?

Just out there on the plains all by itself

But

Hmmm I forgot

Ah now I remember

I went to a museum once

Like in a big city

And I asked the concierge

Or the docent

Or whatever you call those guys

And I wanted to see some painting I remembered

But it was only vaguely something older maybe neoclassical?

And so I asked them

"where are the pictures with like you know all the ruins?"

Which is dumb of course because for a particular period and style o painting they were -all- with some greco-roman ruin of some kind

And the warden (or was it usher?) said something snide like "look in the museum map"

Well duh I wouldn't have asked you if I could have found it on the map

So we went over to the modern art area and stared at the electrical outlet on the wall

Cerberus

3:19 AM

I'm sure it was very meaningful.

Did you also ponder the fire extinguisher?

tchrist

3:35 AM

A city provides garbage collection that each home not require its own dump or burning pit.

A city provides public gas that its citizens might have heat instead of relying upon firewood, charcoal, propane, or fuel oil perpetually in need of replenishment.

A city provides public water so that each home need not have its own well.

A city provides a sewage plant so that individual homes do not require septic tanks and leechfields.

A city provides public electricity so that each home need not generate and house its own power sources, and street lights that its torchless citizens might see wh…

When you do not live in a city, you do not have most and at times any of those things.

That is the difference.

When you do have all those things, you certainly live in a city, howsoever verdant it may be.

Or however small.

Those who reside in the Vatican lack for none of those public amenities. It is not for nothing that it is called Vatican City.

It is to have those amenities that we build cities, why we have always built cities. Because these amenities ease our passage through life, and without them we would each have to work much harder.

It is for the good of the public.

Because we are safer, stronger, healthier, and more productive when we pool our powers and our resources together for the common good.

The life of a homesteader or any frontiersman is a hard life, one with many uncertainties and perils, and next to no ability to beseech rapid succour during dire emergency.

Xanne

5:50 AM

@Cerberus “
ATM blow ups from whyy.org
Jun 6, 2020 — Experts on ATM security say the string of explosions in Philadelphia this week is unprecedented. The U.S. has about half a million ATMs and probably fewer than 50 are blown up each year ...”

tchrist

6:12 AM

> rural: a. Of a person: living in the country as opposed to a town or city; engaged in country occupations; having the appearance or manners of a country person; (in early use also depreciative) lacking in elegance, refinement, or education; boorish. Cf. rustic adj. 2.

> In early use there is little semantic distinction between rural and rustic . In modern use rural is typically used for neutral reference to location in the country, agricultural activities, or country pursuits, whereas rustic is typically used for (frequently depreciative) reference to the way or life or manners of the country as regarded as more primitive or less elegant, refined, or sophisticated than urban life.

So rural means not a town or a city.

Which means it almost certainly has no ATMs for weirdos to blow up.

Maybe dairy farmers have ATMs to access the milk banks.

A house in the country is one that is outside of a town or city.

> country: Chiefly with the. Originally: †the territory immediately outside a walled town or city, etc.; the environs (obsolete). Subsequently: the areas away from towns, cities, and conurbations; the rural areas, the countryside; (in early use also) those parts of a state outside the capital, or away from the royal courts.

So the country is those areas which are "away from towns, cities, and conurbations; the rural areas, the countryside".

You so rarely find an ATM to bomb outside of a town or city that I am hard pressed to think of an example of one. Perhaps one in a country tavern at a crossroads in the middle of the countryside, if they install them there, which I don't know.

Sometimes at country exits off interstate highways there may be a lone gas station with no town around it at all.

But what are you going to spend your cash on? That gas station will take cards, so it wouldn't be for there.

Robusto

2:10 PM

@Xanne Maybe it's all these Pennsylvania Dutch taking their cue from @Cerb's homeys.

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