English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

CowperKettle

02:28

observing American Sign Language (ASL) promotes cognition in hearing infants who had never been exposed to a signed language

CowperKettle

05:45

This Virus Shouldn't Exist (But it Does)

►

First snowfall of this autumn took place in my region yesterday.

CowperKettle

09:54

Another gas explosion in Russia

"Девочка, сиди! Сиди так!": первые минуты после взрыва в Ногинске

►

A little girl survived by sheer chance.

CowperKettle

10:41

Darth Vader tried to register as a candidate in a Ukrainian election in 2014, but was refused, because he refused to take off his helmet during regustration.

He said that he could not live without a helmet.

Вейдер, Дарт Алексеевич

Дарт Алексеевич Вейдер (укр. Дарт Олексійович Вейдер; урожд. Виктор Алексеевич Шевченко; род. 10 января 1956, село Колыбань, Гомельская область, БССР) — украинский политик, заместитель главы Интернет-партии Украины, эксплуатирующий образ персонажа из «Звёздных войн». Пытался стать кандидатом на выборах президента Украины в 2014 году от Интернет-партии Украины. ЦИК Украины отказала ему в регистрации. == Биографические данные == === Ранняя биография === Виктор Алексеевич Шевченко родился 10 января 1956 года в селе Колыбань Брагинского района Гомельской области, БССР. Там же получил средне...

Now he works as an electrician at the National University of Food Technology.

tchrist

12:05

Phenology

Phenology is the study of periodic events in biological life cycles and how these are influenced by seasonal and interannual variations in climate, as well as habitat factors (such as elevation).Examples include the date of emergence of leaves and flowers, the first flight of butterflies, the first appearance of migratory birds, the date of leaf colouring and fall in deciduous trees, the dates of egg-laying of birds and amphibia, or the timing of the developmental cycles of temperate-zone honey bee colonies. In the scientific literature on ecology, the term is used more generally to indicate the...

CowperKettle

13:24

Seeing the constant traffic jams in Yekaterinburg, I think -- why can't a city just ban private cars from the core area of the city?

Just ban private cars, and build tram rails on each street.

And the whole city will breathe a sigh of relief.

We now have vandal-proof screens with estimated times of arrival based on GPS/GLONASS data right at bus stops.

And a lot of mobile phone apps for the same purpose.

Who needs the car? Hop on the tram, ride to the place.

And the buses will really run much fasted without traffic jams. I was riding a bus recently, and saw a pedestrian overtake it twice. A pedestrian! What's the use of flooding the street with private cars?

Without all the private cars choking the roads, it would have been such a pleasure to ride a bus. Now we have low-level entry buses running on compressed gas. They do not produce heavy fumes.

And the city just bought its first trolleybus with an inbuilt battery with a range of up to 30 km.

Mitch

13:58

@CowperKettle @Cerberus probably can be proud of how his city has done something similar. But he also complains about all the tourists standing like dopes in the bike lanes.

London has some sort of tax or fee for non-resident cars within a certain area.

I think a simple ban plus public trans is going to be unpopular in general... people love their cars. I would suggest:

1) much more parking (which can be built underground

2) many more businesses moved out of congested inner cities (which has shown to be possible with covid-working-from-home situations for the large majority of office work)

3) surrogates (robot facsimiles that are controllable by virtual reality harnesses operating from home (for work that needs to be 'in person'

But then you have the difficulty of the surrogates having the parties and taking drugs (like drinking battery acid) and doing jousting battles with hammers for their own entertainment and you sitting at home all alone watching it all on twitch.

Cerberus

@Mitch Cars are not banned here!

Mitch

I'm not saying we should stop the surrogates from having fun. We should just be aware of the unintended consequences of urban design and planning

@Cerberus Maybe they should be. Maybe you're not doing enough. Maybe when it's raining you'd complain less if they just let a few more cars run.

@Cerberus Well, sure, ban ~ restrict ~ tax... @CowperKettle is just suggesting some pressure to not have so many cars. Ban I suppose is a bit extreme.

I think they should ban preemptively all the flying drone taxis...that's a lot of carnage in the skies waiting to happen.

Cerberus

@Mitch Well, taxis are a problem here, actually. And vans. But private cars are fine.

Mitch

@Cerberus NYC seems to be, from the handful of times I've been, more than half taxis/uber/lyft

if they got rid of private cars the traffic wouldn't be so bad.

Cerberus

The reason we have so many cars is that it just takes too long to get places in the inner city by car, because there is too much traffic and the streets are narrow, and because the city council has made it undesirable to drive here by ensuring that you can never drive straight from A to B.

@Mitch It's even worse here.

Mitch

14:11

Worse as in higher percentage of taxis?

Cerberus

They should forbid taxis in the inner city except on phone/Internet call.

@Mitch Yes.

Taxis are the worst drivers.

Mitch

so you think private cars are better than taxis?

Cerberus

They block the streets all the time.

Mitch

or a higher percentage is better?

Cerberus

Private cars actually go from A to B!

Mitch

14:12

@Cerberus and then need to be parked

Cerberus

Whereas taxi's are empty 75%+ of the time, so they drive very slowly, looking out for tourists to pick up.

Mitch

and street parking makes things wordse

Cerberus

And they always stop on the road to let tourists get in or out, and negotiate prices.

Blocking all traffic.

Mitch

@Cerberus Oh..tourism throws cause and effect a little.

Cerberus

And, when they have nothing to do, they block the pavements and leave their engines on, polluting everyone with toxic smoke.

Hairi

14:13

Hello guys.
I need help (again 😄 )

Here is part of email I received from a client:

_At present, the only option for a person who reaches this gate is to fill in a form. We don’t want all these random visitors to fill in forms—they are not going to be good leads._

What does it mean "they are not going to be good leads" ?

Mitch

What if... what if there were no tourists and it is just people who live there who used the taxis? \

Cerberus

In my street, on your average night, there will be 6+ taxis standing still and emitting smoke.

@Mitch Then there would be hardly any taxis.

I think their number in Amsterdam tripled in a decade or so.

Mitch

@Cerberus electric cars... algorithms to manage routes and idling and picking up and congestion

there I've solved it for you

Cerberus

Those would all help.

I think taxis must be all electric by 2025, not sure.

Mitch

now you can go back to complaining about tourists not knowing how to ride a bike properly

Cerberus

14:15

And it is already illegal to pick up people on the street, I think.

But they still do it.

And the city has no capacity to fine them.

Mitch

@Cerberus Oh...you mean the passenger needs to order a taxi from their phone and not wave it down?

Cerberus

9 out of 10 times when firetrucks enter my neighbourhood, it is because a tourist has fallen into a canal. Seriously.

@Mitch Yes, or go to one of the special taxi spots.

Where there are queues of taxis.

Like near Central Station or various other squares.

Mitch

@Cerberus Let's assign the blame correctly here. You need more city ordinances to stop those canals from jumping in front of unwary walkers.

wait... -firetrucks-? You can't have like a passerby throw a rope in?

Cerberus

@Mitch I'm sure we already have such ordinances! But who abides by them?

@Mitch No, the trucks come with blazing lights and sirens.

Mitch

@Cerberus Obviously not the canals

Cerberus

14:18

Maybe they need the ladder?

Divers?

I have no idea.

Mitch

@Cerberus I don't know...isn't that part of the appeal? City lights, city noises?

How deep are the canals?

Cerberus

Tourists eat up a large proportion of police and fireman capacity, I think. Not to mention cleaners.

@Mitch Too deep to stand in, except when you are standing on enough bike wrecks.

Which fill the bottoms.

Mitch

@Cerberus How tourist filled are the streets outside of the inner canals? Isn't there some obvious 'ring' canal' outside of which is mostly non-tourists?

@Cerberus That's probably a good startup idea in there... salvaging bikes and parts to be recycled.

@Cerberus also forgotten tourists

Cerberus

@Mitch There are various heavy tourist areas, yes. Most are within the inner, 17th-century city, but some are outside it (Museum Square, some market streets, etc.).

Even within the inner city, many neighbourhoods are manageable. But most larger streets are troubled with tourists across the entire inner city.

@Mitch They are too rusty!

And slimy.

And attached to needles, maybe.

@Mitch If only!

Mitch

@Cerberus I think there must be some kind of debate in urban design: concentrated vs spread out. I mostly hear that higher density is better, but then I only hear about the problems of higher density (concrete, heat domes, pollution, travel difficulty)

Cerberus

14:24

These are the most touristy areas.

Most are within the inner city.

Mitch

@Cerberus I'm no chemist (@M.A.R.), but it seems like you would just mush it all up and maybe add some weird acid and then you get a pool of molten metal goop that you can then make children's playground equipment with.

Cerberus

But actually this map even underrepresents the issue: some areas outside the blue lines are also pretty crowded.

Mitch

@Cerberus oh. yeah. that would put me off. maybe there's not a start-up idea there.

Cerberus

@Mitch Maybe, but it's probably not cost effective?

Mitch

1) neat
2) wait...how do they know where I was going? That's a bit intrusive.

Cerberus

14:27

@Mitch They are desperately trying to spread tourism. But they all want to go to the exact same places, which include my neighbourhood. Luckily, I live just on the edge.

@Mitch I think this is based on people's posts on social sites, with lines drawn in between the same person's locations?

Mitch

@Cerberus the rich get richer, the popular named sites get more virtual hits/more reality hits.

Cerberus

Oh, don't get me started on housing prices...

Mitch

@Cerberus got it. yes, people posting voluntarily their info.

remind me to turn off auto-geolocating

on the other hand, no one cares where I go.

If you'd see it, you'd say "Yes, I do not care at all where Mitch goes"

Cerberus

@Mitch Yes. Although I have also seen some map based on people's locations in a special app.

Mitch

@Cerberus If you own a house it's great!

Cerberus

14:29

Installed by tourists.

@Mitch Quite!

Mitch

@Cerberus Is there a hold on rental payments there? you know because of covid?

Cerberus

@Mitch No.

Mitch

Or a moratorium on evictions (that's actually been the case here for a while)

Cerberus

But the government pays most of the rent of companies in financial trouble at the moment. And most of the salaries of those companies, too.

@Mitch That's good.

We have low unemployment, actually.

Few jobs were lost.

And private citizens can get the usual benefits, unemployment and general support, if needed.

So they should still be able to pay their rents as normal.

Mitch

[Meet the ATP synthase, the amazing nanoscale machine at the origin of your life]( bit.ly/2nMRaZi)

Hairi

14:33

Any idea chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/59093565#59093565 ?

Mitch

Cerberus

Unemployment.

@Mitch That's a pretty cool coffee maker.

> "lead":
32. a suggestion or piece of information that helps to direct or guide; tip; clue: I got a lead on a new job. The phone list provided some great sales leads.
33. a guide or indication of a road, course, method, etc., to follow.
34. precedence; example; leadership: They followed the lead of the capital in their fashions.

Mitch

@Cerberus I'm pretty impressed. Everybody is all excited about evolution, but no one talks about holy shit how did molecules 'evolve' to that point, and probably within a 4 billion to 3 billion years ago.

Cerberus

@Hairi One of these ↑ will probably fit the context of your text?

It is hard to say without knowing what the text is about.

@Mitch Yeah, that is so fast, even we could do it.

Hairi

Here it is:

2nd gate on stage/live needs an X in the upper right corner so you can close the popup. At present, the only option for a person who reaches this gate is to fill in a form. We don’t want all these random visitors to fill in forms—they are not going to be good leads.

Mitch

14:39

@Hairi a 'lead' may also be 'a potential buyer'

Cerberus

Hairi

@Mitch
Yes may be she meant potential customers

Cerberus

@Mitch Here is the map based on a handful of tourists who installed a specific application.

Hairi

it is about user interface widget (close button)

Mitch

In a sales funnel (a metaphor) you get a whole bunch of 'leads' (potential buyers) and you can winnow out little by little people who are not serious, until you have a few serious prospects. at the bottom. I think the sentence means that for their situation, too high a percentage of people at the beginning are not serious and will fall away, making only very very few (if any) likely candidates at the end.

Cerberus

14:41

But the two largest spots you see are just two hotels: they had the tourists staying at those hotels install the application, so those spots are not representative. You should rather look at all the lines and expect each one to be crowded with tourists.

Hairi

@Mitch Thanks @Mitch - makes perfect sense. So leads in this context means potential customers

Mitch

@Hairi or potential button pushers on the interface? but something like that, potential buyers.

Hairi

Basically I understood what she wants to be implemented.
I didnt understand the kind of explanation or motivation she had given to me about this request - that is "they are not going to be good leads."

Mitch

@Mitch @M.A.R. that big molecule seems to be doing a lot of work just to spit out two ATPs every rotation.

Cerberus

Yet another map of tourisms, I think these are tourist bike groups (super annoying, they cannot cycle).

Mitch

14:47

@Hairi What is the popup for? (but also general UI design expects that a user should always have a 'cancel' or 'back' or 'escape' option, since they may have reached the popup accidentally.

@Cerberus You should open an ice cream stand -right at one of those hot red spots. Then you'll complain hat there are not enough tourists.

Didn't covid sort of reduce the amount of tourists to a reasonable level?

Cerberus

From my house to the supermarket is about 3 minutes on foot. On the way there, I pass by at least 4 so-called ice-cream shops (which in facts sell fatty old waffles with Nutella only to tourists).

Mitch

Shouldn't all museums now have augmented reality walk throughs, removing all need to be there physically (which is the cause of all these problems)?

Cerberus

@Mitch It reduced them to an extremely low level during the lock-downs. But now there are more than ever.

Mitch

@Cerberus mmm

Cerberus

@Mitch If only!

Mitch

14:50

Wait are you some kind of nutella waffle atheist?

Cerberus

Nobody here buys those horrible things except tourists.

Mitch

I don't know what to say

Cerberus

Those shops exist 100% only for tourists.

Hairi

@Mitch

It is part of algorithm that allows anonymous users (those who dont want to pay a subscription) to see a sample of company page metrics. These metrics are employee, comunity, environemnt, governance and other ratings.

So they want to provide a sample to anonymous users so they can get interested and finallty pay for a subscriber role. I've met similar approach on BBC news pages. You are allowed to read an article and half way trough you are being said - please subscribe to read more.

Cerberus

There were even closed when shops were allowed open, when there were no tourists during lockdown.

Mitch

14:52

@Cerberus In all sincerity, really, can't you just look at the painting in a book?

Cerberus

There is a loophole where ice-cream shops are allowed without a special eating & drinking permit. That's why they are there.

@Mitch I think Google Street View has the important musaea as well.

Mitch

@Cerberus There you go. No need to ever leave home

have food delivered

plumbing tech has existed for 100 years so you can poop in a room and never have to deal with it.

Cerberus

google.com/maps/@52.3585249,4.8813262,2a,84.2y,77.91h,77.58t/…

Yup the first museum I tried.

Mitch

@Cerberus I read that as 'nausaea'... make of that what you will

Cerberus

Well, the Van Gogh-Museum is 80% foreigners. So yes.

google.com/maps/@52.3562934,4.8790462,2a,75y,35.05h,93.4t/… They even have the interior of the Concertgebouw.

Mitch

14:55

head on:

side eye:

hmm.. that didn't come out as expected

Cerberus

Nice, huh?

Mitch

the second one was -much- bigger and easier to see.

Cerberus

google.com/maps/@52.373161,4.8911434,2a,75y,87.58h,62.96t/… The Royal Palace (former city hall).

It seems they have most important buildings.

Mitch

OK...now I don't need to visit there

Cerberus

@Mitch Was it that woman again who blocked your view with her selfie stick?

Mitch

14:57

or rather I've lost any incentive at all

the effort out weighs the benefit

Cerberus

That is often the case in life, isn't it?

Mitch

@Cerberus I didn't see her.

@Cerberus Why bother at all?

sigh

Except...

I realize that only tourists get those things you seem to despise, but really, they really top off a visit.

Cerberus

Get those things?

Mitch

It's like 'we got to see a bunch of old people's art which is great and all, but hey ... waffles!

@Cerberus the waffles and nutella

or crepes

What do you expect a tourist to eat, cold mushed peas?

Cerberus

@Mitch They are horrible. Very low quality.

And of course very expensive.

@Mitch How about normal food!

Or how about his own food, in his own country?

Mitch

15:01

@Cerberus Sure if you had a waffle maker at home and made the batter yourself it'd be so much better.

Cerberus

Yes.

Mitch

@Cerberus Look man, half those tourists are British so anything is a step up

even Dutch 'cuisine'

You're going to make me say it again...

All the European languages have a term for something like 'Bon appetit' before a meal. What do the English have? A prayer.

Cerberus

@Mitch Even Dutch 'cuisine' is not as bad as that!

We still have far fewer British tourists than normal, I think because of some quarantine rule.

But we have all the more Frenchmen and Germans.

@Mitch It is actually pretty non-U to say something like that, in Dutch as well.

People lift their glasses, and that's it.

Possible with a toast/speech.

Mitch

@Cerberus I can never keep those straight..; so it is pretentious, attempting to sound fancy poorer people who say 'guten appetit' and fancy rich people don't bother? or is it the other way round?

Cerberus

@Mitch It's not about wealth.

But, yes, maybe saying such things is considered to be in poor taste because it is trying to be fancy?

I'm not even sure. It just sounds tacky.

The reasoning is that it is in poor taste to comment on the food: of course the food is good; suggesting otherwise would be insult to the host.

Mitch

15:16

@Cerberus that's what it sounds like to me. But I don't know.

@Cerberus Oh, I think of it more as just plain pretentious, but any side connotation is actually a compliment to the cook.

Matt E. Эллен

@Mitch the English say bon appetite, jus like everyone else

Mitch

But do you feel good about it?

Matt E. Эллен

The Americans say "enjoy your meal". always seemed like a threat.

@Mitch I like it when people say it to me.

it means I didn't cook

But I guess it is kinda weird to say it

in a formal situation, anyway

Mitch

@MattE.Эллен the implied "... or else."

@MattE.Эллен That's only in restaurants.

Matt E. Эллен