English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

1:01 AM

@CowperKettle AZ was my son's first job out of university. He doesn't think highly of the place. Maybe they aren't that advanced.

CowperKettle

1:39 AM

@Robusto Oh!

> British-style formal caning (for male students only) is fully lawful as a punishment in Singapore schools and explicitly supported by the government.

Robusto

1:53 AM

@CowperKettle The Singaporeans are into caning. They cane you for jaywalking, I thnk, and other crimes.

M.A.R.

2:52 AM

@MichaelRybkin it's not about that. Unless you're writing fiction, you should be unambiguous and idiot-proof. The reader should not double check your sentence for its language, but for its contents.

@CowperKettle here the previous generation will talk your ears off about how we have it easy at schools because caning was so common.

@CowperKettle personally I would definitely try it out

CowperKettle

@M.A.R. Here, a video surfaced of a teacher grappling with an arrogant pupil, and then giving him some strikes with a belt. The school wanted to evict the teacher, but all other pupils along with the parents stood up for the teacher.

A teacher earns a poor salary, is forced to fill out reams of unnecessary bureaucratic papers, and on top of that, to deal with pupils who misbehave. This is a heavy load.

Although in our school I don't recall a teacher physically beating a student. There was one strict teacher, who had just arrived from Algiers, who struck a long metal ruler at the misbehaving pupil's desk.

Or maybe I mixed up, it was a different teacher, a history teacher.

The teacher from Algiers told us that there pupils were caned even for running around during a recess.

He was amazed at the snow and the cold. And he soon went missing from the school, probably found a higher-paying job in the oil and gas industry.

So on the one hand I agree that something should be done about misbehaving pipils, but on the other hand - I think that these corporal punishments would be over-used by sadists. Common teachers would abstain from them, and sadists will be attracted towards them.

It's better to just transfer misbehaving students to home schooling for a spell.

Michael Rybkin

3:24 AM

@M.A.R. Thank you for your two cents.

CowperKettle

> "Since we cannot get the best, then we will have to settle for average," concluded councilman Abraham Christoph Plaz, hiring Johann Sebastian Bach as a third-line candidate for a cantor position, on April 22, 1723. dw.com/en/290-years-ago-bach-becomes-cantor-of-st-thomas-church/…

Dreamix: a model that generates videos when given a video + prompt dreamix-video-editing.github.io

CowperKettle

3:45 AM

Famous Russian actress wishes for Putin to live 800 years

►

She says that the whole world has teamed up against Russia.

Vikas

5:44 AM

Meanwhile the friendly world 🤣

It was trending on Indian subreddits.

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle More importantly, beyond a certain age, physical punishment is giving the misfit a hero badge.

@Vikas What is that? Looks like an eye lens with a barcode

Vikas

@M.A.R. Eye lens with ISS inside.

M.A.R.

@Vikas I'll never get modern art

Vikas

It's 3D art.

I wonder why it isn't colored sky blue? It would be little less visible.

Or maybe they wanted to show it.

M.A.R.

-1

Q: Was the balloon shot down recently by the U.S. spying or doing weather research?

What evidence, if any, is there that the balloon was on a spy mission? What evidence, if any, is there that the balloon was on a purely scientific mission? EDIT: Here is a link to a BBC article about the balloon: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64524105

united-states

Ooooooooh, so that's what's been going on. Which means basically nothing.

If a bunch of powerful psychopaths want to escalate things, they will do so in their own time

Vikas

5:56 AM

@M.A.R. Off topic question.

CowperKettle

6:10 AM

Based on 30 votes of my Twitter subscribers given over the last 7 days, we are moving towards WW3.

I've been abstaining from posting any political tweets for over a year now. This poll was the only exception.

Vikas

> China condemns US ‘attack’ on surveillance balloon as ‘overreaction’

LOL

CowperKettle

- Why did the Chinese use a balloon instead of a spying satellite?
- Because of inflation.

Dutch of the day: naaktloper - nudist, literally naked (naakt) + runner (loper)

> Naaktloper op het Leidseplein, uit protest tegen het tekort aan textielpunten

Cerberus

Nice.

CowperKettle

From here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streaking#History

A man in the Urals developed a spinal fracture by riding a snow tube from a hill e1.ru/text/incidents/2023/02/04/72033011

And fractures in four ribs.

Snow tubes are dangerous because it's very hard to steer them or get out of them before a collision.

One of my friends, a woman, got a concussion while skiing from a hill, but at least on skis you can do a snowplow to to dampen your speed.

Or a carved turn.

Bend In His Knees

►

> Long after the spill and the doctor’s bill
And he’d sold his boots and skis
Now he can’t make haste with a cast to his waist
And he doesn’t have a bend in his knees

Vikas

6:56 AM

> Pakistani former President Pervez Musharraf dies aged 79

CowperKettle

Xanne

8:12 AM

Wordle 596 5/6

🟨⬜⬜🟨🟩
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
🟨⬜🟨🟨⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

CowperKettle

8:23 AM

Do we pronounce v in placenta praevia, or do we pronounce it like iu?

> (Classical) IPA(key): /ˈprae̯.u̯i.us/, [ˈpräe̯u̯iʊs̠]
(Ecclesiastical) IPA(key): /ˈpre.vi.us/, [ˈprɛːvius]

Looks like in the old days, "V" was not pronounced as "V", but with this "ui" combination.

Xanne

9:49 AM

@CowperKettle “We” rarely have occasion to speak of such matters. But

>Placenta previa (pluh-SEN-tuh PREH-vee-uh) is a problem during pregnancy when the placenta completely or partially covers the opening of the uterus (cervix).

That, from the Mayo Clinic, a source I would consider up-to-date and fully professional in North America. If I were editing the OED or a medical dictionary, that’s where I’d go. ‘Course, Mitch and the MGH would be good too (I dated guys who were students at Harvard Med at one time).

On another matter—the dreaded news—the shoot-down of the Chinese “weather” balloon was quite spectacular, what with F22s and a Sidewinder missile, lots of folks watching on the beach and getting pix and videos on their phones. @CowperKettle and @Vikas—you should both find it remarkable. It’s been all over our media here in the States.

CowperKettle

10:07 AM

@Xanne Oh, Thank you Xanne!

@Xanne I'm not sure - it's just a balloon :)

Xanne

10:17 AM

Well, as “just a balloon”, do the owners expect to recover the balloon itself, and the solar panels and instruments, on normal flights? After all, that stuff isn’t cheap. And if they do, could they not have helped the U.S. with the recovery, which, after all, dropped the instrument package on hard water at some 500 mph and shredded the canopy. which was perhaps unnecessary.

Vikas

@Xanne Yeah I saw a video.

CowperKettle

@Xanne I was not tracking this story, because it seemed like a minor squabble. Who needs a balloon when there are spy satellites?

I was steeped in neuropsychiatry news. They are so interesting.

For instance: "Study Tackles the Mystery of Brain Zaps in Antidepressant Withdrawal" psychiatrist.com/news/…

I had brain zaps after escitalopram, so it's interesting to read up.

I'm afraid of a war, of course.

I think that one way to make the US stronger is, paradoxically, to place G.W.Bush and Tony Blair behind bars for their invasion of Iraq. This will return the US the moral highground. All across the globe, people who are pro-democracy and pro-West blush at the mention of that invasion and are forced to come up with excuses.

Like the dissolution of colonial empires brought the West to a moral highground in the 1960s-70s, along with the abandonment of Black suppression.

USSR could no longer propagandise itself as the side that fights oppression.

Vikas

10:45 AM

> David DesRoches, professor at the US-based National Defense University, said a balloon could gather higher resolution imagery than a satellite as it hovers over its targets for longer.

BTW this balloon incident would have never happened if I (Donald Trump) were the president.

Vikas

11:02 AM

Faheem Mitha

@Vikas For some reason this doesn't have a direct link to the story on Project Gutenberg.

Someone should add it.

gutenberg.org/files/1743/1743-h/1743-h.htm#link2H_4_0004

Vikas

11:41 AM

@FaheemMitha IDK. Can you even upload paid books? What if it has copyright laws?

> Iran's Supreme leader pardons large number of security-related prisoners linked to protests

Good will gesture.

Faheem Mitha

11:59 AM

@Vikas I don't know what you mean by "paid books". That work is out of copyright, so it's on Gutenberg, legally.

Vikas

@FaheemMitha I mean any paid book from Amazon,for example. Can we buy it and upload it if it's not already uploaded?

Faheem Mitha

@Vikas I'm not sure what you mean. Upload it where? And in general, the answer is no, of course. You can't upload copyrighted material without permission of the copyright holder.

All I was doing is providing a link to this short story on Gutenberg. I'm not sure how your question is relavant.

CowperKettle

1:30 PM

Vikas

1:46 PM

@CowperKettle Giant creature.

Is it real?

CowperKettle

A rare sighting of the snowcodile

@Vikas By the way, China has just launched a new balloon over the USA, much bigger

Vikas

@CowperKettle Wasn't it already there? One over Latin America.

CowperKettle

Vikas

LOL

🤣🤣

Overtake it if you can!

CowperKettle

:)

Robusto

2:16 PM

#Worldle #380 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
⭐⭐⭐🪙
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

🌎 Feb 5, 2023 🌍
🔥 23 | Avg. Guesses: 4.98
🟨🟥🟥🟧🟩 = 5

globle-game.com
#globle

Wordle 596 4/6

🟨🟨⬛🟨⬛
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬛🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Daily Quordle 377
3️⃣7️⃣
4️⃣5️⃣
quordle.com
Anything under 20 is a good score on Quordle.

tchrist

@Vikas Did you know that in the United States, that is not the "right" verb?

We pass vehicles here. We do not "overtake" them.

There's no such thing as a No Overtaking zone. It makes no sense. We only have No Passing zones.

Hijackers take over vehicles. :)

CowperKettle

2:32 PM

I once passed a stool on a highway.

tchrist

You are supposed to pass school buses.

CowperKettle

It was going too slow.

tchrist

Yesterday shortly before dusk I had a red linx come waltzing right through my property from front to back, and pause right at my back porch. I went to the window and glared at the magnificent creature, but it showed no fear. I wonder if it's living under my porch. I sealed the cat door for the next 15 hours.

Robusto

@tchrist Not when their lights are flashing.

Daily Octordle #377
8️⃣4️⃣
🔟🕐
🕚9️⃣
5️⃣7️⃣
Score: 67

Whew.

CowperKettle

@tchrist Is it dangerous?

tchrist

2:37 PM

@CowperKettle To things it outweighs, certainly.

It's the size of a small dog, somewhere between 20 and 30 pounds I would reckon. It has very long legs. It was incredibly beautiful.

Robusto

@tchrist How is the snow pack up there?

tchrist

I think it's pretty good. We've had a couple days of chinooks so most of the snow down at my elevation is only along shadowy areas. Maybe the first 50 feet north of my house, etc.

Been 60 for a couple days.

Robusto

Yeah, gonna be in the 60s down here.

tchrist

We're at 131% of median snowpack statewide.

Robusto

Nice. The Cascades are over their average for once in a decade.

26 ft. of base I read.

Avalanche time.

tchrist

2:42 PM

Yes, they've had to close things there because of that.

Robusto

You don't get avalanches in your immediate vicinity, do you?

tchrist

No.

Robusto

Maybe the fires will be less this year. Let's hope.

tchrist

I'm maybe 1/3 to 1/2 mile east of the very sharp steep slopes.

And those are probably only 1,000 feet higher tops. It's just the very beginning of the rise. Not enough builds up there to be a problem.

Robusto

The mountains here are sensibly spaced.

tchrist

2:46 PM

The almost 9,000 elevation gain from my house to the top of Long's Peak at the county's northwest corner takes a while to get to.

Robusto

Especially if you walk. ;-)

tchrist

Oh yes.

user2236

Do you do any skiing?

CowperKettle

@user2236 Last time 7 years ago, cross-country

tchrist

@CowperKettle They estimate that Colorado has 12,000 bobcats. They're in every state on the continent bar Delaware alone.

Robusto

2:53 PM

What's wrong with Delaware?

tchrist

Biden.

CowperKettle

@tchrist This is cool

Robusto

New windchill record for the US at Mt. Washington.

tchrist

In Spanish, they call them un/el gato montés, the mountain cat.

Robusto

Not to be confused with mountain lions.

tchrist

2:54 PM

Exactly.

CowperKettle

I've noticed that my ancient iPhone 5 started remembering the immediate previous lines when I speak to it. I asked it what weather it would be tomorrow, it answered. I asked "and the day after that?" It understood. I asked again, it moved to the day ahead in its answer.

Vikas

@tchrist I had absolutely no idea. But overtake is still correct English?

tchrist

Puma concolor

El puma, león de montaña o león americano (Nombre científico: Puma concolor)[2] es un mamífero carnívoro de la familia Felidae nativo de América. Este felino vive en más lugares que cualquier otro mamífero silvestre terrestre del continente, ya que se extiende desde el Yukón, en Canadá, hasta el sur de la cordillera de los Andes y la Patagonia en América del Sur. El puma es adaptable y generalista, por lo que vive en los principales biomas de toda América. Es el segundo mayor felino en el continente americano, después del jaguar, y el cuarto más grande del mundo, después del tigre, y el león.…

@Vikas Yes, it is.

Vikas

👍🏽

tchrist

león de montaña ≠ gato montés

user2236

2:55 PM

Jan 6 was an attempted overtake.

tchrist

Except mostly kinda.

Robusto

@user2236 You mean Jan 6?

tchrist

The red lynx=bobcat is the smallest of all the lynxes.

@Robusto I think they're a day or two ahead of us over there. :)

Robusto

Anyway, it would be "takeover" and not "overtake" /nod

tchrist

We also have the Canada lynx here, but because it preys almost exclusively on the snowshoe hare, it lives only in the high country, not down here amongst the rest of us. The red lynx is more of a generalist.

And a very good climber to boot.

Robusto

2:59 PM

Hunt ends for mountain lion that attacked 5-year-old California boy

tchrist

How the Lynx is silently spreading all over Europe

►

Robusto

They say that if you see a mountain lion, it's hunting you and it's already too late.

But most of us are too big to be targets.

CowperKettle

@tchrist We have bears going near villages

Robusto

Bears are pervasive in the West.

tchrist

@CowperKettle That's pretty common. Yours are the big ones, I think.

CowperKettle

3:02 PM

Yes, they are big.

tchrist

You should have lynx there, too, in the forests at least.

Robusto

Dec 17, 2022 at 15:36, by Robusto

Haha: "If it's black, fight back. If it's brown, lie down. If it's white, say good-night." Yeah, you certainly don't want to run into a polar bear.

CowperKettle

Once I was in a search party. The next day in the same location, a search party suddenly came across a bear.

tchrist

Then what happened?

user2236

A polar bear can never meet a penguin in the wild.

Robusto

3:04 PM

Dating sites, take note.

3

tchrist

For the great auks are no more.

CowperKettle

@tchrist In 2016, I guess

tchrist

Voilà le chat!

Bobcat Climbs Up 40ft Tall Cactus to Escape Predator

►

CowperKettle

Cactus-Climbing Bobcat

tchrist

For some reason, the lion chose not to pursue. :)

parz

3:09 PM

'lo

CowperKettle

\o

tchrist

@CowperKettle I had seen that.

Lynx rufus

El lince rojo (Lynx rufus) es una especie de mamífero carnívoro de la familia Felidae, una de las dos especies de linces que habitan en América del Norte. Permanece en parte de su rango original, pero las poblaciones son vulnerables a la extinción local ("extirpación") por los coyotes y los animales domésticos.[cita requerida]Aunque los linces rojos han sido cazados extensivamente por los humanos, tanto por deporte como por la piel, su población ha demostrado ser resistente, si bien declina en algunas áreas.[cita requerida] == Descripción == Con un pelaje que va del gris al marrón, y orejas negras…

That's what you hit when you search for gato montés.

Vikas

@CowperKettle I get it.

CowperKettle

@Vikas I looked up the meaning of "chaat", and it's even in Wikipedia :)

Some yummy-looking food

Vikas

I was more aware of "fruit chaat" though.

It's basically mix of fruits with some spices.

tchrist

3:15 PM

fruit baht

What do you call it?

Fruit salad.

Expected.

3:51 PM

Another ice fisher died near Yekaterinburg from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Found dead in a tent; slept and used a gas-fired contraption to keep warm.

> In the United States during 1990-1994, portable fuel-burning camp stoves and lanterns were involved in 10-17 CO poisoning deaths each year

Mitch

4:11 PM

@Xanne I heard my name.

If that actually does refer to me, i am no where near being an authority.

In fact my denial makes it look like I'm being modest, and I'm no where near being good enough to be modest.

OMG even that is misleading.

A first day medical student knows more medical vocab than I do.

To show you how dumb I am, I would first go to wikipedia.

Wikipedia is very questionable. So that should show you how reliable I am.

The more responsible places to go for definitions would be UpToDate (but I think you have to pay for that) or Mayo clinic (as you linked, which is free but dense).

CowperKettle

Mitch

@CowperKettle That's awful.

haha

Clippy was unfairly maligned.

Two design flaw that contributed to being disliked:

1) too invasive (responded too often)

2) childish graphics

That's my TED talk

Xanne

6:40 PM

@Mitch I thought you had some connection to Mass General. But the uninformed can only imagine.

The local (San Mateo County Sheriff, I think) decided not to pursue the mountain lion that attached a child. (It was a young mountain lion.) The child survived, just a few scratches . . . on the face . . . nothing really . . . serious.

jlliagre

7:33 PM

Daily Octordle #377
4️⃣🟥
🔟7️⃣
8️⃣🕚
🕐🕛
Score: 79

Daily Quordle 377
8️⃣7️⃣
5️⃣3️⃣
quordle.com

Wordle 596 4/6

⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜
⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
⬜⬜🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

CowperKettle

9:27 PM

CowperKettle

11:00 PM

In Russian, the word for chair is stool (стул)

And the word for stool is borrowed from French.

jlliagre

@CowperKettle Tabouret?

CowperKettle

@jlliagre Yes, табурет! I wonder how they were called before the 1700s in Russia

Maybe there was some old Slavic word.

jlliagre

Tabouret comes from an old form of tambour (drum) :-)

CowperKettle

Yes :)

Kruk (meubel)

Een kruk is een meubel om op te zitten. In tegenstelling tot de stoel heeft een kruk geen leuningen. Een kruk heeft meestal één, drie of vier poten. Een bekende kruk is de barkruk. Deze kruk kenmerkt zich door lange poten en de vaak lederen bekleding op het zitvlak. Een eenpotige melkkruk werd in het verleden veel gebruikt bij het met de hand melken van koeien.

scamol

Noun: sċamol m

stool

In Old English, stool was scamol, cognate with modern Russian skamya (bench)

jlliagre

11:18 PM

Italian: Sgabello, like scamol from Latin scabĕllum, gave the French escabeau

CowperKettle

Sounds nice.

jlliagre

bello even :-)

Linguriosa: Un linguïsta no tiene autoridad sobre la idoneidad del lenguage inclusivo

Que DEFIENDAS tú eso, siendo LINGÜISTA...

►

CowperKettle

11:47 PM

1

Q: Is AI the evolution of humanity through suicide of a species; via martyrdom?

We have and are currently in the process of creating, in the image of ourselves, artificial intelligence beings able to process, perform, and memorize beyond our scope. This belief, that a higher than human being, a deity, beyond our current human capabilities is within reach and something we can...

ethics philosophy-of-mind altruism

Michael Rybkin

youtube.com/watch?v=EAm7RgzWRhM#t=56s and that's ME done (what's he saying there?)

CowperKettle

@MichaelRybkin Yes, "and that's me done"

Meaning "That's all"

Michael Rybkin

youtube.com/watch?v=EAm7RgzWRhM#t=1m26s it is a little bit A FAFF compared to Excel .

CowperKettle

@MichaelRybkin faff means tedious work, hassle

faff

Noun: faff (plural faffs)

(Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, slang) An overcomplicated task, especially one perceived as a waste of time.
Synonyms: see Thesaurus:nuisance
(typically in the phrase 'in a faff') A state of confused or frantic activity.
Synonym: flap
faff m (plural faffen)
(Luserna, Sette Comuni) priest

Verb: faff (third-person singular simple present faffs, present participle faffing, simple past and past participle faffed)

(Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand) To waste time on an unproductive activity.
Synonyms: arse around, (American) dick around
2009, Steven Aitchison, 100 Ways to Develop Your Mind (page 131)
Stop Faffing And Just Do It

This kind of construction is commonly heard in Britain, and especially Scotland, where something like "that's me done" is even shortened to just "that's me", e.g. "Right, that's me, I'm off!" — ElendilTheTall Apr 11, 2013 at 8:23

On "that's me done": forum.wordreference.com/threads/…

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…