English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2022-05-19

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12:18 AM

@Xanne If Russia declares war, it will have unlimited manpower in the middling term.

12:38 AM

Of what quality? Like unto the current set? What's the opposite of an élite guard? Human beings are not interchangeable parts.

@Cerberus Russia’s population is three to four times that of Ukraine; but it’s hard to call up and train inexperienced men. So I would not call it unlimited. It also gives the lie to the “special military operation” business. And more boots on the ground doesn’t fix problems with communication and the absence of an experienced “middle level”—the sergeants and corporals who know how to keep the whole thing running. This is considered a major weakness of the Russian military.

@Xanne Yes, yes, yes.

I don't disagree.

Russia also is poor, which limits its access to matérial.

I just wanted to say that the situation will be different in the middling term if Russia commits its full potential, which is not doing now.

In a way that Ukraine is not so limited due to outside provisioning.

12:45 AM

@tchrist Yes, but it has built up huge stockpiles of weapons and vehicles.

@tchrist Well, I don't know how long weapon deliveries from NATO can go on.

Assault rifles ≠ smart missiles

I've heard we are exhausting our supplies somewhat.

@Cerberus Nobody does.

@Cerberus Perhaps that's what Xi’s waiting for.

To attack Taiwan?

I do not think so.

I was kidding, I hope.

12:52 AM

@Cerberus We're using up a lot of old technology—Stingers and MANPAD, for the most part—but the US has many more modern weapons. Some of the European countries are drawing down on weapons like tanks (witness Poland) but the fact remains that there are still enormous stockpiles in NATO. NATO can afford a longer conventional war than Russia can.

@Robusto I'm not sure whether that applies too all categories of weapons, and how relevant those categories are.

But I think an important factor is how much NATO is willing to send.

I think they'll send enough, and here's the critical point: the better Russia does in Ukraine, the more weapons NATO will send, precisely because they don't want to be fighting the Russians in their own countries.

This is in some ways the perfect proxy war for Europe.

That sounds cynical, but I think we're talking about human nature here.

yesterday, by Robusto

Is NATO running out of weapons to supply Ukraine? (no)

1:50 AM

@Robusto OK, sure, this is all true.

Nobody thinks America is anywhere near leaving herself defenceless.

But how many more tanks is Poland willing to send?

How many is America willing to send to Poland to replace those?

What happens when all the Polish tanks have been destroyed, and the Russians still have 10,000 more in stock?

Of course, if NATO really wanted, it could easily overwhelm even Russian stocks.

But an important question is, how much is NATO willing to send?

Especially European countries.

2:25 AM

Does Russian preclude Jewish?

2:37 AM

Hmm.

Luckily that is not yet the case now.

2:47 AM

@CowperKettle Fun.

Which country is Kitai or something?

3:00 AM

Ahh cool.

3:36 AM

Cathay and Siam and Ceylon.

Yesternames of yore.

Isn't of yore so much more fun than quondam or d’antan or de antaño? Nobody will ever spell yore right. :)

Nor quondam, apparently. I'm far past sleep. Had a work thing come up till just now.

@CowperKettle Oh that's the only to bork I know of in my befuddled state.

Well yes, variant of bonk.

It's hackerese. I know not its origin. Check the Jargon File from ESR.

catb.org/jargon/html/B/borken.html

"It's borken!"

Should be b0rken or such.

> borken: adj.
(also borked) Common deliberate typo for ‘broken’.

See? :)

I guess that "He's broke" and "He's broken" mean very different things.

So maybe that applies here.

Björk!

> Björk Guðmundsdóttir OTF is an Icelandic singer, songwriter, composer, record producer and actress.

OTF = One Top Female :)

I doubt that the Icelandic forename Guðmund is cognate to the Spanish surname Guzmán but it sure sounds close. :)

"Goothe"

Guðmundur or Gudmundur is an Icelandic male first name, sometimes shortened to Gummi or Gvendur. The Icelandic surname Guðmundsson is a patronymic surname meaning son of Guðmundur. Guðmundsdóttir is a patronymic surname meaning daughter of Guðmundur. Guðmundur may refer to: Guðmundur Arason (1161–1237), 12th and 13th century Icelandic saintly bishop Gudmundur S. (Bo) Bodvarsson (1952–2006), director of the Earth Sciences Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Guðmundur Finnbogason (1873–1944), Icelandic philosopher Gudmundur Fjelsted (died 1961), politician in Manitoba, Cana...

Probably the same Germanic -mund there as Goldmund, for all I know.

Alonso Pérez de Guzmán

Alonso Pérez de Guzmán (1256–1309), known as Guzmán el Bueno ("Guzmán the Good"), was a Spanish nobleman and hero of Spain during the medieval period, the founder of the line from which the dukes of Medina Sidonia descend. == Biography == According to Spanish tradition, Guzmán was born in Morocco. Historians have since speculated that he was a Muslim. In a permit to export wheat signed in 1288, Guzmán was given permission to export the crop to where "he is from", very likely in Morocco. A document from 1297 signed by the Spanish king refers to Guzmán as "a vassal", i.e. a non-Spaniard. The document...

It was a toponym, the name of a place, before it became a surname there.

But I don't know where it came from. Maybe the Visigoths, who knows?

4:07 AM

> Locals are known as Asidonenses.

More Phoenician settlements.

I don't recall that I've been there.

"The City of Sidon".

@CowperKettle Gross.

Not possible. He would have been like 7 or 8.

Right?

Ok still gross.

Top story in the New York Times right now:

> U.S. Officials Warn of Substantial Increase in Virus Cases

A third of Americans live in areas where the threat of Covid-19 is now so high that they should consider wearing masks indoors, the C.D.C. said.

The head of the agency said the U.S. seven-day average of hospital admissions from the virus rose 19 percent over the previous week.

From here.

The Neverending Story.

I had to go inside somewhere today, but they wouldn't let you in unless you were wearing "a surgical or hospital-grade mask", and would provide you with a surgical mask if you weren't up to spec. It was nice to see somewhere still taking all this deadly seriously.

> Already the number of new suspected patients in North Korea has soared from 18,000 last Thursday to hundreds of thousands a day this week.

Exponential growth.

> Most people are unvaccinated, and the country is so isolated that when an estimated two million people died during a famine in the mid-1990s, the outside world didn’t know about it until the bodies of famished North Koreans started washing up along the shallow river that borders China.

Makes you wonder what all different vaccines Kim has received.

Or Putin.

> As of Tuesday, the average of new, confirmed cases in the United States surpassed 100,000 a day for the first time since Feb. 20.

So a three-month-long respite, then back into the meat grinder again we all go.

A million dead Americans, and more.

Already.

> More than 70 New York City judges descended on a Long Island resort last week to enjoy an annual three-night retreat. In the days after, 20 tested positive for the coronavirus.

Why are people doing these things!? For judges, they sure are showing how poor their own judgement is.

As you see, I haven't read covid news for a spell.

My own county is back up to almost those terrible rates that first winter.

user image

I don't like our colors:

user image

My county's 7-day-average positivity rate was 9.4% as of a couple days ago.

@CowperKettle "Beyond the Pale"

To bed with me now. I don't go inside anywhere that isn't medically necessary, and even there I wear an N95. Today was the hospital.

It's going to be like +30C tomorrow, and then we'll get maybe 4 to 10" of snow Friday night.

So much for basil and tomatoes and chile peppers!

Yes, it's going to freeze here Friday night. Probably.

2 hours later…

6:26 AM

@CowperKettle makes me wonder, why did everyone hate Jews back then?

I mean, right now there's not much reason to be antisemitic except to honor this tradition of bigotry

When did it all began? Or, like, did Egyptians have a good global propaganda network or something

@tchrist 🤨

@tchrist what happened?

New strain?

7:29 AM

@CowperKettle Are you familiar with the tweets or posts of General SVR? Or am I asking an old question?

I am giving up Semantle. I think it makes no sense.

2

2 hours later…

9:49 AM

@Xanne "General SVR" sounds like a heart condition

4 hours later…

1:26 PM

@tchrist: Biden pledged full aid to NM fire recovery.

@M.A.R. And you have your answer. "We hate them because it is in our tradition to do so."

1:38 PM

Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon fire has now burned over 300,000 acres (469 sq mi, 1214 sq km). That is an area twice as big as the modern City of Chicago. For perspective, the "Great Chicago Fire" of 1871 burned 2112 acres, or about 8.5 km^2.

1:54 PM

More proof that the ladies like the bad boys.

The world must not forget Mariupol’s defenders

> There was an undeniable contradiction between upbeat Russian war propaganda and the reality that, in the end, Moscow had to negotiate a surrender for defenders that it had vowed to annihilate.

> One lesson of Mariupol is that the Russian president did, in the end, agree to evacuate both civilians and military personnel from the Azovstal plant, as he should have. He did so, however, only because armed Ukrainian resistance gave him no other choice

Sheesh.

Sounds like the average Faux News viewer. Swallowers of pernicious propaganda.

Same here. I admire your bravery and candor, but we don't want you to wind up in a penal colony.

FWIW, this is the same kind of conversation you would hear in areas where left and right commingle in the US.

@CowperKettle Decidedly. And worse.

Caning of Charles Sumner

The Caning of Charles Sumner, or the Brooks–Sumner Affair, occurred on May 22, 1856, in the United States Senate chamber, when Representative Preston Brooks, a pro-slavery Democrat from South Carolina, used a walking cane to attack Senator Charles Sumner, an abolitionist Republican from Massachusetts. The attack was in retaliation for a speech given by Sumner two days earlier in which he fiercely criticized slaveholders, including South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, a relative of Brooks. The beating nearly killed Sumner and contributed significantly to the country's polarization over the issue...

2:24 PM

@Robusto I can't imagine anyone, left or right, engaging the other anywhere in the US between strangers in a shop.

@Mitch No. But I know families who are similarly divided.

@Xanne Yeah, it is very unsatisfying. It's too open ended (too many possible words). Also takes too much time.

A friend was telling me this morning that she has been having this kind of conversation with her stepfather, who insists that women are getting abortions to sell the organs of the fetus on the black market.

@Robusto Oh sure, and strong conversations and animosity within such families.

@Robusto That took a turn I wasn't expecting.

@Mitch But that's the kind of bullshit you will hear on Republican news channels.

2:29 PM

@CowperKettle It's fairly easy to do in Russia and other European countries, right?

'fairly' is doing a lot of work in that sentence though

#Worldle #118 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

@CowperKettle though that has a literal meaning in English (with respect to the wikipedia article) it has a much more common metaphorical meaning (which @tchrist) alluded to, which is "beyond what any reasonable person would do". eg "I know he was angry during the divorce, but moving all the money to offshore bank accounts out of her control was beyond the pale"

It is another way of saying "out of bounds" or a similar idiom.

Wordle 334 4/6

⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜
🟨🟩🟩⬜⬜
⬜🟩🟩🟩⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

@CowperKettle Oh... maybe that's where the English phrase comes from not from the Jewish settlement.

> The Oxford English Dictionary is dubious about the popular notion that the phrase beyond the pale, as something outside the boundary — i.e., uncivilised, derives from this specific Irish meaning.[3]

OK...'pale' is totally an English word so most likely the phrase wasn't about translation of the idea from the Russian situation.

3:01 PM

Wordle (ES) #133 3/6

⬜⬜🟩⬜🟩
⬜⬜🟩🟨🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

https://wordle.danielfrg.com/

@CowperKettle Related:

Caput lupinum or caput gerat lupinum is a term used in the English legal system and its derivatives. The Latin term literally means "wolf's head" or "wolfish head", and refers to a person considered to be an outlaw, as in, e.g., the phrase caput gerat lupinum ("may he wear a wolfish head" / "may his be a wolf's head"). The term was used in Medieval England to designate a person pronounced by the authorities to be a dangerous criminal, who could thus be killed without penalty. The term caput lupinum is first recorded in a law attributed to Edward the Confessor, in the text Leges Edwardi Confessoris...

But then what need would we have for lawyers? ^_^

3:45 PM

@CowperKettle I know, right?

@CowperKettle you should see Farsi legalese

30 percent Arabic, 10 percent long words that make no sense, 99 percent nonsense

(I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt)

@CowperKettle that's way before Chernobyl, WTH

@Robusto wait, they're . . . They're twisting stem cell research into that, right?

@CowperKettle well, what about it are you undecided on? Clearly one side in the debate is against any form of it being legal for any reason, so the morons and the manipulators don't leave us much room for nuance.

My 'professional ethics' course had a session on abortion, and here apparently it's legal for many purposes up until the 19th week, when apparently Mullahs have decided is when the fetus gets a soul and abortion becomes murder

Unless it's a life-threatening condition for the mother

A bunch of other unlesses I'm sure.

@M.A.R. Who knows? It's the usual fear-mongering. It doesn't have to make any sense.

The argument for 19 weeks is bonkers but it otherwise makes some sense: Killing a baby is horrible, no one would think of it. And a baby is only a little different from a 35-wk fetus. So where do we draw the line? When does a bunch of cells become a baby?

But the idea that a 500-gram fetus could provide suitable organs for even a child is nuts.

@Robusto it's really high maintenance and exhausting to constantly be afraid and paranoid

But that is precisely the state the propagandists use to keep their audience enthralled.

3:58 PM

@Robusto pretty sure there's a cutoff for organ transplantation too. Except one method or two the rest are probably classified as 'heavy' surgery or whatever other esoteric term surgeons have for it

4:10 PM

OK, here's an unfortunate headline: African scientists and technology could drive future black hole discoveries

What a difference a hyphen would make.

5:02 PM

> “The result is an absence of checks and balances in Russia, and the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq,” Bush said, before correcting himself and shaking his head. “I mean, of Ukraine.”

He jokingly blamed the mistake on his age as the audience burst into laughter.

5:28 PM

@Vikas Hahaha.

5:38 PM

I guess they "misunderestimated" him again.

6:35 PM

@Vikas this guy

@Robusto I'm being pedantic but I really dislike phrases like "African science". "Africans' contribution to science", sure, but honestly this is the sort of thing that creates unwarranted bias in research

And sends the wrong signal too.

6:53 PM

@M.A.R. I don't have a dog in that particular fight. I just thought the omission of a hyphen ("black hole discoveries" vs. "black-hole discoveries") lent itself to some unintentionally humorous lewd interpretations.

@Robusto It's not usually 'black hole' (no space)?

I don't think it has yet gone down the hyphen-waterfall (black board -> black-board -> blackboard)

Sometimes black-hole is used, but I think the standard is two words.

Not everything goes down that path (I just made up the term hyphen-waterfall, though the phenomenon is well known). I don't know what the official term is.

And stress doesn't seem to modify the spelling always. 'White House' is stressed just like 'blackboard', but also like 'Whitehall'.

@M.A.R. whatever the effect on the reader, I'm sure it was written that way as short hand for 'scientists from some countries in Africa'. Still problematic (why do they ever need to say where they came from unless it is geographically relevant?)

Sometimes you'll see 'Dutch scientists prove that living below sea-level improves cheese production' because obviously it's relevant.

@Vikas I'm still trying to figure out what's different between the two situations.

7:16 PM

@Mitch I was referring to the compound adjective: "black [hole discoveries]" vs. "[black hole] discoveries" ...

@Mitch Dutch scientists is a thing, Dutch science isn't, except for some militaristic space laser sort of technology.

As for the geographical location, yeah, that's what I meant by sending the wrong message

7:40 PM

#Worldle #118 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

Wordle (ES) #133 5/6

⬜🟨⬜🟨⬜
⬜🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟨🟩🟩⬜🟨
⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

https://wordle.danielfrg.com/

8:08 PM

@CowperKettle You don't want to get into public political arguments in a dictatorship. India is rapidly approaching the same stage. I still speak my mind behind closed doors. It hasn't got so far that people can be arrested for private conversations. But they can and are arrested for criticizing the Fascist Idiot in Chief in writing. Recently an MLA from Gujarat, in a really bizarre incident. Yes, a member of parliament was arrested for criticizing the bearded freak.

It's a strange world we live in.

@Robusto Yes, I read about that recently in an article on Counterpunch. As far as I know, that's the first time I heard of it.

I don't get the Wordle appeal. But I've never been much for games.

@CowperKettle It exists in India.

8:24 PM

Word of the night: vibrissae

And unlike Cowp's obscure medical terms, you have a 0.0001% chance of using it in a conversation

@M.A.R. That's a hairy topic.

@Robusto I'm sure Cowp won't mind that I'm losing mine

@M.A.R. I always give the faceless denizens of chat the benefit of the doubt on relative hair coverage. I can't think of a single baldy in here, especially since Reg don't come around here no more.

@Robusto I'll probably be bald when I get my boring professor badge so I can look the part

@M.A.R. You could become a mullah, and then it wouldn't matter. You'd just wrap that old turban around your noggin and imprison anyone who suggested you had a bald pate.

8:37 PM

Tempting, tempting

Except for the beard part

8:49 PM

My brother always had better hair than me ... until he succumbed to MPB in his 40s. Now he's never seen without a ball cap, while I'm still covered without one.

@Robusto MPB?

Male pattern baldness

Oh, Male Pattern Baldness? Phew, I thought it was something dangerous

Well, dangerous not just to self esteem

Some people would rather die than go bald.

Well if people stopped comparing themselves to Hollywood actors

We're constantly worried whether we look attractive, until it does affect some tangible things like a self-fulfilling prophecy

I'm convinced phones are made for half-lings

8:57 PM

@M.A.R. Or at least choose uglier ones, like, say, Jonah Hill ...

Ouch, poor Jonah

"I may not be much, but I'm better-looking than Jonah Fucking Hill ... /nod"

Or choose uglier companions.

I'm sure women are subjected to this bias way more, but it's men that aren't supposed to whine about it

Men aren't supposed to whine, women aren't supposed to get belligerent.

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