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12:06 AM
Oh that's right. The Greeks named all the winds.
 
@Mitch ALVIN!
@tchrist one must sometimes make sacrifices for their health and well-being
@CowperKettle those pantless future alien kids
@CowperKettle is that Bill Cosby or?
 
@M.A.R. I'm surprised yon theocrats don't make boys and men wear traditional robes and such instead of trousers.
 
12:21 AM
We're more traditional about women. It's all part of equality.
 
How did they walk?
 
On their feet.
 
Nah, probably grabbed all the baggy parts and rolled on the ground
 
Whoa, I didn't know you had renfairs!
They all look like morris dancers to me.
@M.A.R. That's certainly one way to protect your sole.
 
12:30 AM
Everybody had everything.
Except gunpowder.
And they eventually got that too
 
@jlliagre OK, interesting nonetheless.
 
 
2 hours later…
2:16 AM
> 200 operative workers and 500+ policemen are charged with looking for 26-yo Darya, who gifted Vladlen Tatarsky with an explosive statue
Turns out she managed to escape (thus far)
Even more amazingly, she had been previously arrested for 10 days -- for protesting against the Special Operation on the first day of the war.
This is an article in the (oppositional-leaning) media Fontanka about Darya: fontanka.ru/2023/04/03/72186191
She tried to enter the caffee, but the guards did not allow to carry the statuete through. She said to Vladlen, "I'm not being allowed in! The guards saying I'm carrying a bomb in there!" -- He replied "Haha, let her in, and we'll check her for a bomb, while we're at it".
 
You know how the Wagner guy also owns a bunch of bars? Guess what happens if you're a milblogger and you visit one: iswresearch.org/2023/04/…
 
The statuette exploded second after he took it. She was sitting just 2 or 3 meters from him.
She calmly stood up and just went out, and gone she was. Amazing. Amazing.
The famed Wagner Group did not even have a proper guard system for cordoning off and detaining people.
I guess the police will get to her soon.
 
Wagner will enlist convicts to hold all statues from now on
 
She wanted to take a seat at her place farther from the scene, but Vladlen asked her to take a seat near him. She said she felt shy, but complied.
Darya Trepova (Дарья Трепова)
 
2:33 AM
ISW seems incredibly uncertain about who was behind this and what their motives were
 
Her husband Dmitry also got a term, 9 days, for being with her during her protest in the first day of the war.
He is a member of the Libertarian Party of Russia.
 
> Some Russian political analysts also speculated that Prigozhin was supposed to attend Fomin’s event, although there is no confirmation of that speculation.
 
Now he is reportedly abroad.
@alphabet Prigozhin seems extremely risky. He recorded videos just hundred meters from Ukrainian positions at the frontline.
But thus far he has been extremely lucky, in terms of surviving.
Darya's account in a social network has no political posts. Her account is maintained under the alias Ophelia, and has the usual stuff, jokes and such.
 
> Fomin attended Russian President Vladimir Putin’s event announcing the annexation of four Ukrainian regions on September 30 where he stated: “We will defeat everyone, we will kill everyone, we will rob everyone we need; Everything will be as we like.”
 
@CowperKettle She stood up after it had exploded?
 
2:39 AM
@Cerberus Yes, according to a witness
 
And she was not injured?
 
A witness said that he felt like it was a specialized explosive, designed to only affect a specific spot, not an explosive that just randomly spreads shrapnel.
@Cerberus Probably not
 
Good.
I hope she hasn't been arrested.
 
@Cerberus Here's all that is known about her: fontanka.ru/2023/04/03/72186191
 
So ISW says the Russian government says she has been arrested.
 
2:41 AM
Ah.
20 minutes ago, BBC wrote that she was not apprehended yet bbc.com/russian/live/news-64970998
 
> Russian state media published unconfirmed information that Russian police detained St. Peterburg resident Daria Trepova, who had previously been arrested for anti-war protests in February 2022.[7]
7:
 
Oh. Yes. According to the Interfax agency, she has been apprehended, which means it's most likely true.
Interfax is a reputable governmental agency.
 
Hmm too bad.
 
2:59 AM
> A linguistic bias in the English language that leads us to 'improve' things by adding to them, rather than taking away, is so common that it is even ingrained in AI chatbots, a new study reveals. techxplore.com/news/…
 
Sounds somewhat silly.
This is not some subconscious magic.
Nor is it English.
 
 
1 hour later…
4:40 AM
I never remember any of my answers, not a single one. If I ever answer one twice, it'll be by accident.
 
Howdy, guys. Could you please tell me if this sentence sounds fine to you as native speakers (something that a native speaker could say):

And the characteristic that most defines an equity security—differentiating it from most other types of securities—is ownership.
 
I would say "would say" (not *could say).
 
got that, but what about the sentence in question? What can you say about that?
 
I know, right? Hahaha. It seems wordy, but I know squat about securities.
 
@HippoSawrUs I remember mine. For most answers I had to put lot of effort to make them decent enough.
On GDSE.
But I asked far more questions than writing answers.
 
5:08 AM
 
 
2 hours later…
7:11 AM
Wordle 653 3/6

🟨🟩🟩⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟨⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
 
> Research finds that frequent commenters on social media are more likely to have more polarized opinions and use toxic language. And exposure to toxic language in comments increases the toxicity of subsequent comments. twitter.com/jayvanbavel/status/1642519319702654979
He provides a source. Would be interesting to read later.
I do feel like attending political threads makes me more radicalized, but that could be a false impression. How does one self-assess this?
 
7:33 AM
Anyone here?
 
7:43 AM
More likely than what?
Daily Octordle #434
4️⃣5️⃣
6️⃣🔟
🕚🕛
7️⃣9️⃣
Score: 64
That was nice.
That commentators and political elites are more polarized than the general public has been known for some time—apparent from many polls.
 
 
2 hours later…
10:08 AM
@WingledTiger this place is more like a personal blog for two dozen people than what 'chatrooms' you may be used to. We usually just barge in, say a bunch of stuff, or initiate a conversation, and then leave
@CowperKettle well you enter a thread, someone is saying "X, what an idiot. Minor overview of X's policies". Half a dozen replies say "oh yeah, f*ck X". Whether or not you like X, you're gonna react.
 
@M.A.R. I've just returned from a visit to a doctor. While in the queue, I struck up a conversation with an old lady. She said that her 44 yo son received a mobilisation callup notice in the fall, and "we all were crying our eyes out", but the comissar said that he was not needed yet - because younger men were available.
I asked her "but what if he is called up again?" - She said "There's nothing else to do but go"
I said "my friend is determined on hiding from mobilisation".
She smiled and said "you cannot run and hide forever. Besides, if nobody enrolls in the army, what would happen to all of us?"
I asked her "what would happen to all of us?"
She said "America will come here!"
I asked "So what will it do?"
She said "America will come and send us to the Solovki islands" (the location of the first GULAG camps in the 1920s)
I said "Are you sure?"
She said "Yes, of course".
O_O
The Solovetsky Islands (Russian: Солове́цкие острова́), or Solovki (Соловки́), are an archipelago located in the Onega Bay of the White Sea, Russia. As an administrative division, the islands are incorporated as Solovetsky District of Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia. Within the framework of municipal divisions, they are incorporated as Solovetskoye Rural Settlement within Primorsky Municipal District. The administrative center of both divisions is the settlement of Solovetsky, located on Bolshoy Solovetsky Island. Almost all of the population of the islands lives in Solovetsky. As of the 2010 Census...
 
Oh don't worry it's just a metaphor for working at McDonald's
 
LOL
These conversations with older people are so surreal, I want to pinch myself every time.
Because she had this huge smartphone, and was wielding it like a pro.
And the next minute, it's "America will come and send us to the GULAG".
 
One keeps going back to those "loose" vs. "closed" minds. I can't talk with them either. They readily admit China and Russia are no better than America to cling onto, but Khomeini decided America is the big Satan so we have to roll with it
Now if we back off and, say, don't send drones to Russia, America will come and . . . And . . . Yeah I dunno
 
10:23 AM
Do you have some historical location where they used to send political prisoners, like the Solovki?
 
Nah we have never had that many prisoners
 
just got some weird line noise and part of it is "ñüðë!". how would you pronounce that? (also, bit of a weird conincidence)
 
It's a cat with allergies
 
 
1 hour later…
11:53 AM
Noun: line noise (uncountable)
  1. (computing) Spurious characters due to signal noise in a communications link.
  2. (programming) Data that looks random, as when outputting a binary file as text.
  3. (computing, derogatory) Incomprehensible source code or other textual material (often due to terseness or overuse of operators).
  4. 2000, Simon Cozens, Ten Perl Myths, perl.com,
  5. In short, Perl doesn't write illegible Perl, people do. If you can stop yourself being one of them, we can agree that Perl's reputation for looking like line noise is no more than a myth.
Ah. Line noise means not a sound, but some textual stream in a piece of software.
Live and learn.
Eth (, uppercase: Ð, lowercase: ð; also spelled edh or eð), known as ðæt in Old English, is a letter used in Old English, Middle English, Icelandic, Faroese (in which it is called edd), Khmer and Elfdalian. It was also used in Scandinavia during the Middle Ages, but was subsequently replaced with dh, and later d. It is often transliterated as d. The lowercase version has been adopted to represent a voiced dental fricative in the International Phonetic Alphabet. == Old English == In Old English, ð (called ðæt) was used interchangeably with þ to represent the Old English dental fricative phoneme...
It's so warm and sunny here.
+16°C
This spring is extremely warm.
> Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this;
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart,—Lord, I do fear
Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year
(Millay)
 
 
1 hour later…
1:27 PM
 
1:37 PM
@MichaelRybkin And the most salient, differentiating feature of an equity security is ownership. That said, I don't think that is a true statement, since all types of securities (debt, equity, derivative and hybrid) all entail ownership...
 
Etymology of the day: sambuca -- Borrowed from Italian sambuca, from Latin sambūcus (“elder tree”), considered to be from the instrument name sambūca for its being made of elderwood.
 
@M.A.R. Since forever in the US press they always mention 'such and such political prisoner is being held in Evin prison'
@CowperKettle I once visited a 'memory' ward (a section of an old people's home where people with advanced dementia are kept a closer eye on), and resident's would say outrageous conspiratorial things (eg which ethnicity is running the government and banks)...
 
Evin Prison (Persian: زندان اوین, romanized: Zendân-e-Evin) is a prison located in the Evin neighborhood of Tehran, Iran. The prison has been the primary site for the housing of Iran's political prisoners since 1972, before and after the Islamic Revolution, in a purpose-built wing nicknamed "Evin University" due to the number of students and intellectuals housed there. Evin Prison has been accused of committing "serious human rights abuses" against its political dissidents and critics of the government. == History == Evin Prison was constructed in 1972 under the reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi....
 
oh shit... I've heard similar from people who are not medically diagnosed with dementia nor old.
But anyway the lesson I learned is that people are thinking awful things all the time, it's just that circumstances (like dementia, or not having to care what other people think like writing on the internet) allow them to say what is floating through their mind.
But I guess that is open to hallucinatory thinking also being spoken out loud.
Or possibly for that woman in the line, reasonable inferences from what everybody is repeating in the news?
 
@Mitch Oh, that woman did not have any signs of any dementia
 
1:51 PM
@CowperKettle What I mean is that old age unblocks any social restrictions on saying what she actually thought.
Or to put it another way, we're all demented but no one notices because we know to cover it up.
 
Yes, this could be so.
 
@M.A.R. I came here to say this.
@CowperKettle I have other theories, but I still feel a social compunction not to tell you all.
 
Dostoyevsky's novels were masterpieces, but when he started a political blog (in printed form), he turned out to be quite orthodox in his opinions.
@Mitch "I have principles, and if you don't like them.. I have others"
 
@M.A.R. 😬
 
@Mitch How do you get medically diagnosed with old?
 
1:55 PM
@CowperKettle “The key to success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made.”
@tchrist counting down
 
Jean Giraudoux is author of the quote.
 
"In my next life I want to live my life backwards. You start out dead and get that out of the way. Then you wake up in an old people's home feeling better"
@CowperKettle Dickens is a similar great observer and commenter on personality. But in real life supposedly somewhat of a jerk.
 
@Mitch He was a poor friend?
 
@Mitch And you end up talking baby-talk and being fed milk. Oh, hang on... Which end of "old" are we talking about?
 
> "Out of each 5 men, only 2 are happy"
> "Who do you want to die as when you grow up?"
 
2:09 PM
@Mitch it's a prison near the most populous city in Iran. It's also been the subject of a few recent mistreatment scandals. So yes it's infamous as far as Iranian prisons can go but it's no Gulag
At least, not that I know.
 
@CowperKettle there is probably a lot of overlap between 'jerk' and 'poor friend' but they are not the same.
 
> - But you told me you were on the pill
- Yeah, on the flea control pill
 
@M.A.R. I think we can all agree that there's nothing else like the Soviet Gulag
Except maybe the Pre-revolutionary Russian Gulag
And maybe post-Soviet Russian Gulag? I don't really know about the latter.
 
> Other people: "I hate my life". Me: "I hate my life"
 
The US has ... cripes ... the prison industrial complex plus Guantanamo. China has ... Uigur work camps. The British Raj had the Black Hole of Calcutta.
And Sweden has ... the Ritz/Four Seasons/Waldorf Astoria.
@AndrewLeach I suppose that's the logical conclusion.
 
2:21 PM
Purple cauliflower
"All things counter, original, spare, strange" (GM Hopkins)
 
 
2 hours later…
4:02 PM
It seems that every time I answer an ELL question about whether to use the simple past or present perfect, I end up getting "corrected" by a BrE speaker. I need to start asking "Which dialect are you talking about?" before answering those.
(Sometimes intuitions even differ between AmE speakers; I lean towards using the simple past wherever AmE allows it.)
 
 
3 hours later…
6:46 PM
@CowperKettle also a purple human
@Mitch yeah honestly, I think we've neglected to create a legendary horrible prison to dissuade anyone
 
 
2 hours later…
9:04 PM
@M.A.R. wondering if that means @M.A.R. is planning something
If I were duly incentivized, by internal or external compunction, I would consider changing my avatar to:
Changing ones appearance means little to me except for what it means to me, but I know that when -others- do it, it confuses the hell out of me, so that is a bit of disincentive.
I am not totally blind to others state of mind. But sometimes it just doesn't even cross you mind that other people have feelings.
No names.
But they know what they did.
@alphabet It's the internet man. Here no one can see that you're British.
In the very early times (2011?) there was a meta question about having people state what their accent is. I can't remember what the outcome of the debate was, but the reality is that people seem not to do it. I always want to append to all my answers/comments "I speak GenAmE with very few Southernisms".
Also "I'm so sorry".
 
9:34 PM
Just published (in concert with your expectations). The bibliography has a few instances of older history of using LLMs for financial prediction. It doesn't mention anything about numerical time series predictive analysis which vastly outweighs (in size and age) this in the literature.
No, I don't know how something could outweigh another in age. Just roll with it man.
 
9:49 PM
People are hyperventilating about sentient AIs and shit.
What about:
What about:
The Gombe Chimpanzee War, also known as the Four-Year War, was a violent conflict between two communities of chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in the Kigoma region of Tanzania between 1974 and 1978. The two groups were once unified in the Kasakela community. By 1974, researcher Jane Goodall noticed the community splintering. Over a span of eight months, a large party of chimpanzees separated themselves into the southern area of Kasakela and were renamed the Kahama community. The separatists consisted of six adult males, three adult females and their young. The Kasakela was left with eight...
Did someone already post the sentient bees article?
Sentient Bees
With machine guns
Hippos kill more people per year than car accidents.
Don't get me going on the squirrocalypse.
 
10:52 PM
Yesterday the temperature reached +17.6°C in Yekaterinburg. The all-time high for 3 April had been +15.8°C, recorded in 1995. The new value is a whole 2 degrees higher. e1.ru/text/spring/2023/04/04/72189116
 
11:05 PM
@Vikas It seems like early onset dementia, or 7 out of 11 signs, or oldness in general.
 
@CowperKettle Nice. Today was cloudy with a high of 80° F here. But snowing in SD.
 
+26C, wow, a full blown summer
Videos of the actual explosion in the St Pete caffee appeared online. Sounded like a small explosion.
Amazing how it managed to wreck the whole caffee.
 
11:32 PM
> If we are to meet the climate targets set by scientists, we have to leave 90 percent of the fossil fuels we have discovered underground. And at current prices that means stranding about $100 trillion worth of assets in the soil. rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/…
I used the 12 ft ladder to read it 12ft.io
 
11:44 PM
@Mitch I would list "GenAm mostly, but also I only pretend to understand linguistics, so maybe don't take my word for it."
Of course, I'm pretty sure "General American" is code for "the accent in the three cities where all the cool linguistics professors live."
If we really want to include all dialects, we should append "*Except in AAVE" to pretty much every answer about tense/aspect
 
The heaviest bicycle in the world.
The Germans did it again.
 
@MichaelHarvey Can't you be half the man you used to be? — tchrist 5 hours ago
@tchrist - you heard about my sawmill accident? — Michael Harvey 5 hours ago
 
> Journalists discovered the wife of Russian Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov in Courchevel, France.
 
Special Glamour Operation.
 
11:57 PM
@CowperKettle They couldn't bury her at home?
 
General Specific and Private Public
From Sheep in the Big City
 

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