English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Mitch

00:07

@M.A.R. I think it must be ivermectin, though I feel I've only heard that word a few hours before the horse paste thing

I need to read more facebook I suppose

CowperKettle

00:39

Xanne

01:13

@Mitch I think Niall Ferguson makes this point in his book, The Tower and the Square.

Xanne

01:28

Actually The Square and the Tower.

@Mitch Han, Shin-Kap, ‘The Other Ride of Paul Revere: The Brokerage Role in the Making of the American Revolution’, Mobilization: An International Quarterly 14, 2 (2009), 143–62 is Ferguson’s source.

CowperKettle

@FaheemMitha I'm very sorry to hear that!

CowperKettle

02:15

Parrot drone | parrot stealing phone from a boy | city view from parrot

►

tchrist

03:05

13

A: Review queue workflows - Final release

bug feature-request Entirely Wrong "\l\a\n\g\u\a\g\e" The English Language & Usage site should not be telling people to post code examples, but somehow it nonetheless is: Yet Another Bug: Indelible Comments Every time some silly bit of text is chosen for these, a comment cascade spews forth from...

2

Faheem Mitha

05:31

@CowperKettle Thank you. My point being, they only cared about making money.

CowperKettle

05:55

When my uncle was dying from cancer, alternative medicine healers fleeced his relatives in exchange of bogus potions. But the doctors were good.

Although in Russia it was very, very hard to get narcotic painkillers.

And is still hard probably.

That was a major issue.

He flew to Israel, because he was rich, and they operated him, and run a chemo course, and that prolonged his life and returned him to good shape for a year.

But then another conflict started in Israel, and he opted instead to take the necessary tests in Moscow. And doctors there told him to wait longer and not take another chemo course, since "since you're feeling fine". Despite the fact that the marker went too high, indicating the need for anothe chemo course.

I googled and told him, according to international recommendations, you need another couse of chemotherapy. But he believed the doctors in Moscow and that prompted his death, because the cancer spread to other organs and tissues and it was no longer possible to cure it.

Russian doctors often deviate from international guidelines because they consider themselves to be smarter and more advanced in knowledge.

This leads to numerous unnecessary deaths.

But in the last 5-7 years it has become popular to adhere to the principles of evidence-based medicine, with many patients demanding that doctors do so.

So the situation is changing for the better in this regard.

Faheem Mitha

06:31

@CowperKettle Sorry to hear about your uncle. So do you think the Israeli doctors were/are better than the Russian doctors? Are Russian doctors honest or crooked? E.g. do they recommend unnecessary surgeries because they can make money from it?

@CowperKettle That's quite strange. I suppose it's better than being liars and thieves like Indian doctors.

I've occasionally has arguments with Indian doctors (not often) because they get offended because people think they are crooks. I've tried to find a polite way of saying that patients think you are a crook because most Indian doctors are. Not everybody, of course.

If you are unscrupulous, health care is a great way to make money off people, because you have them at their most vulnerable. So it is easy to rob them.

I have personally had quite a number of bad experiences with Indian doctors, so this is first hand. So I am generally very wary.

Treatment of things like cancer in India is particularly problematic. I read an article somewhere (can't remember where), that your chances of survival from cancer in India are dramatically worse than somewhere else. Probably the West, or some Western country.

@CowperKettle It's interesting you mention Israel, because I have/had considered going for medical treatment there.

CowperKettle

06:50

@FaheemMitha Russian doctors are honest, but lack equipment and training and the overall management system is in the hands of crooked administrators who funnel funds to corrupt authorities through fake companies.

@FaheemMitha Yes, it's better

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle I see. That sounds kind of terrible. Though for all I know, the same kind of thing happens in India. Indians are very ingenious when it comes to fraud.

CowperKettle

@FaheemMitha In Russia, chances of surviving cancer are lower than in the West because of poor overall management and lack of good guidelines, drugs, equipment. And good doctors move to paid clinics or the West.

@FaheemMitha For instance, it is regularly discovered that MRI or CT scanners were bought, say, for 10 million rubles/unit while the market cost is 6 million rubles/unit.

The same must be true for lesser items. But it's not firstline doctors who benefit, it's regional medical authorities.

@FaheemMitha Israel is considered the place to go for healthcare

My uncle was a Jew, so it was natural for him too.

He was born in 1941 in a bomb shell crater during an air or artillery raid as his mother tried to get farther East, closer to the Red Army.

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle Right. So similar to India, then.

CowperKettle

He only survived because a German soldier believed the Gramnda and recorded him as "Russian" by nationality.

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle Wow. That's... terrible. Was this during the German invasion?

CowperKettle

06:56

@FaheemMitha Yes

Faheem Mitha

The 1941 German invasion ordered by Hitler, that is.

CowperKettle

My grandma was a teacher, and did not live together with the rest of the family, who lived in Belarus and were all exterminated for being Jews.

Faheem Mitha

I've read stories about the Eastern Front. It sounded like Armageddon.

CowperKettle

She destroyed her documents and pretended to be a Russian.

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle Was this a smart move?

CowperKettle

06:57

@FaheemMitha Yes

> During the occupation, German actions led to about 1.6 million civilian deaths[1] including 500,000 to 550,000 Jews in the Holocaust in Belarus.

> On September 13, 1941, the Jews of Bragin were ordered to gather in a school for the purposes of selecting a monitor and his deputy, but when 300 Jews came at the indicated time the school they were surrounded by Germans and closed. After that, Jews were led out in groups to the edge of the village and shot.

Brahin, Belarus

Brahin (Belarusian: Брагін), Bragin (Russian: Брагин), or Brohin (Yiddish: בּראָהי‬ן‬‎) is a town in Belarus and an administrative center of Brahin Rajon. It stands on the banks of Braginka river, 28 km from the nearest railway (Chojniki station), and has a population of 3,700. == History == The settlement is first mentioned in the Hypatian Codex in 1147 as the important town of the Kyiv princedom. A significant part of Brahin's population traditionally was of Jewish descent. By the end of 19th century, 2,254 of 4,311 inhabitants were Jewish. During World War II, Brahin was under German occupation...

This is the town where she lived prior to WWII

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle Words seem inadequate.

CowperKettle

This is she (on the right) while studying at the Teachers' Institute in Belarus in 1939

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle I see.

CowperKettle

on the obverse, she wrote "Homel Polytechnikum" (poly-technology school)

Faheem Mitha

You have all those photos scanned?

CowperKettle

07:00

@FaheemMitha yep

Faheem Mitha

That's very organized. Did you do them yourself?

CowperKettle

@FaheemMitha I only scanned them

Faheem Mitha

If so, must have been a lot of work.

@CowperKettle Yes, I mean the scanning. I find scanning quite hard work. Time-consuming and error-prone.

In many ways, dealing with electronic documents is easier than dealing with physical ones.

CowperKettle

@FaheemMitha Don't you have any photos of your ancestors?

Photography has been around since 1840s ))

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle What is Gramnda?

@CowperKettle Sure I do. But not in scanned form.

CowperKettle

07:03

Grandmother

Faheem Mitha

My mother has many photos which she mounted in frames and put on display in the living room, right here. They're a nightmare to dust.

@CowperKettle Ah, OK. Smart woman.

I think Russians have had a terrible time. Not very different from Indians, who have also had a terrible time.

CowperKettle

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle Also, I don't know who they are. If you do, you're doing better than me. My mother mostly didn't label her photos. Some of them I recognize.

CowperKettle

My Russian ancestors in the town of Rezh, 1910

My grandfather's brother, Viktor, with his wife

An article from 1967 that mentions my grand-grandfather's brother, a Communist partizan during the Civil War

Titled "In the White Army's Rear"

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle They look happy.

You should write a book.

CowperKettle

07:09

He helped out Communist guerillas in 1918.

And my grand-grandfather got captured by the Kolchak Army, the main White Army in the East.

Imprisoned, then let go.

Faheem Mitha

I suppose I should scan my photos etc. before they crumble to dust. But my family has never been good at recording its history. And my immediate relatives are horrible people, so I don't really talk to them. All of them. It's kind of strange.

@CowperKettle These days Communist and even socialist is a term of abuse. I read Americans throwing these words around, and wonder if they know what they mean.

Though as I tell people the word Communist has been abused so much that it has lost all meaning.

CowperKettle

12:13

@FaheemMitha The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Communists took over a number of countries in the 20 century, and it ended badly. The Khmer Rouge killed every fourth citizen of their own country. In the USSR, the results of a census in the 1930s were made secret after it turned out that millions had died due to Communist rule.

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle Except it's never been clear to me what a Communist actually is. Other than in the specific sense of a member of the Communist Party. But most people who use that term aren't applying it in that specific sense.

CowperKettle

12:36

My Communist ancestors got disillusioned with the Communist Party, after they had seen that it's not workers' rule but bureaucracy rule.

Faheem Mitha

12:47

@CowperKettle The thing called Communism that took root in Russia was fairly nasty, I think. But there seem to be different things calling themselves Communism.

People tend to lump them together.

Isn't what exists in China now called Communism?

I don't know the details, but it seems quite different from Soviet Communism.

Faheem Mitha

13:00

@CowperKettle Do you have any experience yourself with Israeli medical care?

tchrist

14:18

> McCormick Spices

Me: I’m calling to complain about your herb product, Rubbed Dalmatian Sage.

John: Okay.

Me: I object to the abuse of animals. Dalmatians are noble dogs, heroic canines who will enter burning buildings to save people. They should not be harvested for their spices.

John: No animals are involved in this product. Dalmatian is just a type of sage. It’s a place. It has nothing to do with dogs.

Me: It still sounds suspicious to me. Tell me, by what process does “rubbing” dogs produce a spice?

CowperKettle

Vaccination rates in Russia

At the current rate, it will take until February to vaccinate 50% of total population

tchrist

14:36

@CowperKettle The virus may yet beat you to it: winter is coming.

CowperKettle

14:55

@tchrist I was shaking from cold during ParkRun this morning, because I was a stopwatch man, not a runner. It was +10°C in the morning.

Just before the start.

A total of 80 people ran today.

The first finished in just 18:15

My best time ever was 22:50

A friend said he runs 120 km a week to be able to make it within 20 minutes / 5 km on Saturdays.

I only run 40 km a week tops.

120 km a week... you should be running half-marathons every day.

That friens is in dark blue, facing the camera

He is pro-Putin and believes that Alexey Navalny is funded by the West.

But he runs fast.

tchrist

15:16

@CowperKettle You shouldn't wear such slinky lingerie then. :) I had like 55°F this morning, so maybe 13°C. I wouldn't have wanted to sit around motionless but for some skimpy Speedos, that's for sure!

> English listeners can use suprasegmental cues to distinguish primary-stressed syllables from secondary-stressed ones as well as from unreduced, unstressed syllables. However, English listeners’ ability to use this suprasegmental information is limited compared with that of Dutch listeners.

Dutch listeners are more accurate in determining the stress pattern of word fragments than English listeners, even when both groups of listeners are presented with English materials.

This cross-linguistic difference in performance goes hand in hand with cross-linguistic differences in the lexical stat…

@Cerberus ^^^^^ You apparently possess a hidden superpower!

Full reference here.

CowperKettle

16:42

> Cases of schizophrenia associated with cannabis use disorder has increased 3- to 4-fold during the past 2 decades, which is expected given previously described increases in the use and potency of cannabis. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34287621

CowperKettle

17:28

KannE

20:23

So I'm supposed to award the bounty to one of these answers. Will the system just do it? I forgot how it works. Looking for the info now.

Never mind. I found it. I guess you can award a bounty and then accept another answer later, as someone said they would do for a question I answered some time ago.

Robusto

20:53

Sunset seen through a rain shower.

@CowperKettle These should say x.999... where x is the current numeral. Then the clock would be accurate. Unless this clock is using numbers the way retail outlets do, in which case carry on.

tchrist

22:21

Danish, Swedes, Persians, and Dutchies: Which one of those would be least welcome at your breakfast table?

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…