« first day (4591 days earlier)      last day (548 days later) » 

@CowperKettle They got divorced on the same day too--right after my mum got pregnant with someone other than her husband.
The other guy probably used ChatGPT-generated love letters to woo her.
And this is how ChatGPT entered the evolution - through human carries who use it for their procreation purposes.
After that moment, human carriers started using other GPT engines to help them find better mates and outsmart GPT engines used by rival human carriers. And so the evolution of the fused entity, "human carrier + GPT engine", began.
Humans who declined to ever use GPT engines came to be called prokaryotes.
> - See, this one is a prokaryote! He's got a large brain, but all unstructured and much more random in generation of thoughts.
- Wow! I wonder how they ever managed to exist before AI.
01:57
Today in sentences that H&P should really have astericized:
> We are requiring people to pay nothing for the concert.
They claim that this can mean "we aren't requiring people to pay anything for the concert."
awkwardish
oh that's just stupid and wrong
I call BS. I think it can only mean "We are requiring people not to pay anything for the concert."
Since when has Pullum been drinking UK koolaid? He knows better than that.
It could be a British thing. I think it's just wrong.
We don't make people pay anything.
We make people pay nothing.
Not the same.
Fucking Germans, I keep telling you.
We require that nothing be paid for admission.
Just say what you mean. There are a lot of ways to do it. That isn't one of them.
02:01
The issue is whether negators in a subordinate clause can end up negating the verb in the matrix clause (here "require").
Their other example is "We forced them to do no such thing," which they say can mean "We didn't force them to do any such thing." That one seems more plausible.
In linguistics, negative raising is a phenomenon that concerns the raising of negation from the embedded or subordinate clause of certain predicates to the matrix or main clause. The higher copy of the negation, in the matrix clause, is pronounced; but the semantic meaning is interpreted as though it were present in the embedded clause. == Background == The NEG-element was first introduced by Edward Klima, but the term neg raising has been accredited to the early transformational analysis as an instance of movement. Charles J. Fillmore was the first to propose a syntactic approach called ...
Oh you know what.
Maybe the problem is that not all negatives are amenable to raising via transformation.
You must pay nothing.
We will not allow you to pay anything.
Requiring them to pay nothing is NOT the same as not requiring them to pay anything.
This is elementary logic.
The nothing is in the object slot.
There isn't a directly negated verb, no never or not adverb.
The negative is hiding in the object.
We require that you never pay anything.
We never require that you pay anything.
But you can't say that you require they pay nothing can convert to not requiring them to pay anything. You can't pull the not of the nothing object and may a not verb here.
Or at least I can't.
Lawler is a published, citable authority on all things negative syntactically. He would know why they're wrong, and say so. But he's also 82 so go easy on him.
You can't do those things, certainly not in American English. I'm sure we've gone over this.
On the main site.
Oh right, it doesn't apply to all verbs!
That's the thing that's missing here.
9
A: Do the following negations mean the same thing?

John LawlerThink is one of the verbs that govern the rule called Negative Raising. Nothing actually gets raised, though. What this means is that the verb think is transparent to negation, because it doesn't really mean anything except to identify what you're thinking about. Consequently - X think (not Y...

What's important is that in other cases, "negators" negate the entire clause. "Kim gave us no help, and neither did Pat" is valid, just like "Kim didn't give us any help, and neither did Pat." But "Kim gave us some help, and neither did Pat" is obviously wrong.
You can't use it on arbitrary verbs.
Stalin met his future wife, Nadezhda Allilueva, when he was 33 years old and she was 10 years old.
> Other predicates that govern Neg-Raising include believe, feel, appear, intend, expect, seem, and suppose. These are all verbs of mental state that take complements.

This is not true, however, with most verbs that take complements.
Neg-Raising is a minor governed rule, with relatively few verbs that govern it.
@CowperKettle paedo
> I said he didn't like it. ≠ I didn't say he liked it.
She tried not to smile. ≠ She didn't try to smile.
02:12
@tchrist Her family was hiding him after he fled from Siberia, in 1911.
This is more a matter of the scope of negation than of negative raising.
I feel like CGEL is breaking that ≠ part.
@alphabet ok
I'm just faking being conscious. I was up at 4:30am and it's 8:15pm now.
Negators like "no" negate the entire surrounding clause. The question is whether they can negate, not the subordinate clause in which they exist syntactically, but the matrix clause above them.
I think he isn't going.
I don't think he's going.
There, yes.
But paying nothing? Don't think it works that way.
Not when requiring or not requiring etc.
@CowperKettle yuck
@CowperKettle Was he on Meet Your Second Wife?
02:33
@alphabet No :)
Francis Thompson fell in love with Monica Meynell when he was 32 and she was 11
> In 1888 Wilfrid and Alice Meynell read his poetry and took the opium-addicted and homeless writer into their home for a time, later publishing his first volume, Poems, in 1893.
> While excelling in essay writing, he took no interest in his medical studies; he had a passion for poetry and for watching cricket matches.
> He lived on the streets of Charing Cross and slept by the River Thames, with the homeless and other addicts. He was turned down by Oxford University, not because he was unqualified, but because of his addiction.
> A prostitute, whose identity Thompson never revealed, befriended him and gave him lodgings. Thompson later described her in his poetry as his saviour.
ISW: we don't know what happened, but probably maybe the Russians are the ones who blew up the dam: understandingwar.org/backgrounder/…
-1
A: Why should there be a comma in this sentence before "because"?

Benjamin HarmanGenerally speaking, a comma before "because" tends to be dealer's choice, more an issue of style than grammar and the choice to put one becoming more likely when it eliminates possible ambiguity. At first, I considered that it's not what it appears, not simply a subordinate clause introduced by "...

> ISW cannot offer a definitive assessment of responsibility for the June 6 incident at this time but finds that the balance of evidence, reasoning, and rhetoric suggests that the Russians deliberately damaged the dam.
People really shouldn't do bong hits before answering. It doesn't look good.
@alphabet The wanton mayhem is Putin's signature, isn't it?
I miss Smokey. Spam is surviving on our site for minutes now.
@tchrist I think the idea behind that answer is that you can replace the "which" with "that" and have it make sense...but then you get a comma splice.
The answerer has 10.8k karma though
02:45
He's an idiot.
He just pretends to know what he's talking about. Makes stuff up. No references.
A well-established idiot, I suppose.
You can go years never getting your bluff called. You get good at bamboozling people.
Or think you are.
It has nothing to do with restrictive vs nonrestrictive clauses.
Because a supplier was found whose major competitor is no longer in business, demand will be high and supply low.
This is a supplementary relative clause with a pied-piped prepositional phrase ("because of which"). Such clauses are generally offset with commas.
I'm not sure I believe low supply always means high demand — a low supply of alpaca dung hardly elevates its value for use as an overcoat. :)
@alphabet Yes. And now try parsing it without the comma. It's easily garden-pathed into some confusion.
I think supplementary relative clauses are pretty much always surrounded by commas, no?
02:52
That's why they're supplements. Otherwise you try to meld them into the rest of the sentence. Think about absolutes.
The ones with participles, usually.
> The dragon slain, the knight took his rest.
The battle over, the soldiers trudged back to the camp.
The truck finally loaded, they said goodbye to their neighbors and drove off.
We sit side by side, our legs touching, comfortable in the warm silence our two bodies create.
Spring advancing, the swallows arrived.
Like those. You just have to have commas setting them off.
> Researchers have uncovered, using MRI and audio recordings, some of the most conclusive evidence yet that parents who talk more to their infants improve their babies’ brain development news.utdallas.edu/health-medicine/…
I already just went to the store myself and brought back beer and pizza, because of which I don't need to have those delivered.
"because of which" could just as easily be "which is why" or "so" or "and so".
But you'd have to keep the comma even so.
@CowperKettle I've always believed that.
But based on anecdotal evidence only.
No rigorous data to fuel that belief.
I talk to my cat Behemoth a lot.
That's good.
@CowperKettle I think "most conclusive" is a pleonasm, and "some of the conclusive evidence" an oxymoron.
02:58
He had urinary blockage last week, and had to have a catheter installed
The doctor drained a gallon of red urine from him.
@tchrist Turned that into an answer.
Babies' brains improve through pleonasms from their parents
@CowperKettle Poor think.
Is he alright now?
One of mine always talks to me; the other rarely does except in extremis. I prefer the chatty one's behavior because it tells me he's here. He talks to neighbors to, a pseudo-conversational back and forth that amazes them.
@alphabet Thank you!
@Cerberus I'm suspicious. He doesn't seem to be urinating.
If he develops symptoms again, I'll carry him to the clinic again.
03:01
Oh, poor animal.
Aww so cute.
This was him after the catheterization
But not fun for him.
The next day he was better.
03:04
Does he eat and drink?
The doctor used propofol for anesthesia, I think. White liquid.
@Cerberus Yes
Like Michael Jackson. He also loved propofol.
@CowperKettle Good!
@CowperKettle Please don't wait too long if you're suspicious.
03:20
One solution for male cats is removing their external organ to permit an easier flow.
I guess previously cats just died. There was no surgery.
> Solar panel breakthrough paves way for ‘utility-scale’ space farms independent.co.uk/tech/…
> “The weight of 2D TMDC solar cells is 100 times less than silicon or gallium arsenide solar cells, so suddenly these cells become a very appealing technology.”
The first pet clinic I visited was in Siberia in our town, when our cat had Feline Panleukopenia. The clinic was the 2-room apartment of a woman. She made injections to our cat on the ironing board.
03:54
@CowperKettle Yikes.
It's hard enough to find good pet healthcare here. Granted, now they have doggie antidepressants.
They even have chemotherapy for hamsters with cancer. Hamsters!
04:22
@CowperKettle Personally, I believe you should never talk to your infants. If they want to learn to speak, they'd better work for it.
@Mitch Headline: "Russia to ban Pokémon, IKEA over logo colors"
04:46
@CowperKettle it's only a problem if he talks back
@alphabet one side benefit of that is if they continue going through the spectrum, the scientists will be forced to invent non-colors
Not invisibility. That of course would be ridiculous
05:24
> Today, pizza parties are so ubiquitous in the context of toxic workplaces that they’ve become a two-word punchline, a ubiquitous meme, universal shorthand for poorly run businesses.
Will the next GULAG have pizza parties?
@CowperKettle It is a pity that more than half of the population should live in the light-green areas.
@CowperKettle Same day? It's within 15 minutes now here, with "flash delivery".
Though several flash companies have already disappeared, I think we have only two left now.
05:47
Do you already have delivery by flying drones?
Word of the day: diegetic music (like "Johny B Goode" in Back to the Future)
> Diegesis (/ˌdaɪəˈdʒiːsɪs/; from the Greek διήγησις from διηγεῖσθαι, "to narrate") is a style of fiction storytelling which presents an interior view of a world in which the narrator presents the actions (and sometimes thoughts) of the characters to the readers or audience. From δῐηγέομαι (diēgéomai, “set out in detail, describe”) +‎ -σῐς (-sis).
@CowperKettle No, do you?
That would be illegal here.
@Cerberus Not yet
Especially with all the scares about Ukrainian drones
Haha right.
Nice idea, dress up your attack drones in the colours of the local delivery service.
2
 
1 hour later…
07:14
Wordle 718 5/6

🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜🟨🟨
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜
🟨🟩🟩🟩⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
07:43
Wordle 718 4/6

⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
⬜🟨🟨🟨⬜
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
08:24
Nice.
Daily Octordle #499
7️⃣🕛
9️⃣5️⃣
6️⃣🕚
4️⃣8️⃣
Score: 62
Not too bad, but could have been better.
08:45
Girkin writes that the Ukrainian Army was apparently absolutely unprepared for the flooding, and did not use the opportunity to shell retreating Russian forces t.me/s/strelkovii
This gives even more credibility to the theory that it was Russia that blew the dam.
The problem seems to be, by his own analysis, that he lacks troops, weapons, and ammunition.
Perhaps he’s all set on food and water?
09:02
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey is a 2023 British independent slasher film written, directed, and produced by Rhys Frake-Waterfield. It serves as a horror retelling of A. A. Milne and E. H. Shepard's Winnie-the-Pooh books and stars Craig David Dowsett as Winnie-the-Pooh and Chris Cordell as Piglet, with Amber Doig-Thorne, Nikolai Leon, Maria Taylor, Natasha Rose Mills, and Danielle Ronald in supporting roles. It follows Pooh and Piglet who have become feral and bloodthirsty murderers, as they terrorise a group of young university women and Christopher Robin when he returns to the Hundred Acre...
Looks like a flop.
> Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do all objects hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
09:29
> Regular internet users experienced approximately half the risk of dementia than non-regular users. Being a regular internet user for longer periods in late adulthood was associated with delayed cognitive impairment, although further evidence is needed on potential adverse effects of excessive usage.
Aah, good news :-)
Some internet users are at risk of diabetes, because they accept all cookies.
I wonder if French websites give a choice between cookies and brioches
> Brioches au sucre de Provence
Le gâteau battu (en picard : ech wâtieu batu) est une spécialité régionale de la Picardie, notamment de la Somme (tout particulièrement Abbeville et ses environs). Il s'agit d'un type de brioche réalisée avec une grande quantité de jaunes d'œuf. == Caractéristiques == Le gâteau battu, riche en jaunes d'œufs et en beurre, est de forme haute et cylindrique. Il est généralement confectionné avec une douzaine d'œufs. L'adjectif battu vient du fait que lors de la préparation, la pâte est battue à la main longuement pour obtenir une consistance souple et légère à la cuisson. La cuisson se fait dans un...
This was favored by the Beatniks
Head of a Finance Department throws Molotov cocktails at a military conscription station.
@CowperKettle They'd rather give a choice between chocolatines and pains au chocolat.
Шоколатин — это французское хлебобулочное изделие с шоколадом. «Сhocolatine», «Pain au chocolat» — вариации французского названия, дословно пер. как «шоколадный хлеб» или «булочка с шоколадом». Представляет собой ролл из слоеного теста с шоколадной начинкой. Такие булочки с шоколадом известны более всего на юго-западе Франции и в Канаде. Изготавливаются из такого же слоеного теста, что и круассаны. Часто продаются ещё горячими или теплыми из печи. Найти булочки можно в пекарнях и супермаркетах. == Происхождение названия == Легенда гласит, что Мария-Антуанетта представила круассан во Франции, но...
Cool
A woman, 55 yo, had prepared better than any students/activists etc. Brought a large 5-liter container with gasoline, and threw a whole three bottles.
Maybe she has some son or sons, or knows someone who was conscripted and died.
> The findings indicate that exercise can exacerbate the tendency to recall negative as opposed to positive material among those who engage in high levels of rumination. psypost.org/2023/03/…
Curious. I start ruminating and feeling depressed when I go running.
> To induce a negative mood, the participants were then instructed to watch a segment from the drama film “Sophie’s Choice.”
I downloaded the movie, but never watched it.
10:02
@CowperKettle Ruminate figurative meaning is also present at least in Dutch, French, Spanish and Italian (herkauwen, ruminer, rumiar, ruminare).
 
2 hours later…
11:56
@jlliagre I would gladly have that choice.
@CowperKettle I thought most evidence was that exercise (unspecified) was highly coordinated with improvement (less depression).
It's a lot like scientific research into diet - one study says X is good for Y, another says it is bad for Y, and then another says Y is adaptive behavior and prevents Z and then another says Z caused excess consumption of X. And then there are an equal number that say the opposite for every possible combination.
X = drinking coffee, Y is cancer, Z is ADHD, W = Borderline Personality Disorder which cause all of those and their negatives
I'm just glad that eggs are no longer considered evil
Or choclatines
@jlliagre I thought ruminate to be a value neutral word in English, but maybe that's me an old person. All the genZers like @CowperKettle (GenZ at heart) use it like it is a bad thing
@CowperKettle Great movie. Like a (nother) sequel to Mamma Mia!
It will have you dancing in the aisles
@CowperKettle I'm pretty sure it is about as depressing as it gets. Like a holocaust movie that ends well before 45.
I'm saying this as though I remember the plot, but of course I can remember nothing of it except that it was depressing.
12:11
42
A: Moderation strike

Shern Ren TeeThere once was a site StackExchange Which did well-writ answers arrange A corps of free mods Would even the odds Against porn and spam and 'net rage One day to the website did ride The Large Language Models blank-eyed While they did perchance Write like (noob) humans They oft bullshitted far and ...

12:48
@Mitch I didn't mention any specific value, just the fact that it's a metaphor, not about chewing regurgitated food.
#Worldle #502 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
⭐⭐
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
@Mitch I agree with you. It simply means to ponder.
🌎 Jun 7, 2023 🌍
🔥 26 | Avg. Guesses: 4.51
🟨⬜🟩 = 3

globle-game.com
#globle
Wordle 718 3/6

🟨⬛⬛🟩⬛
⬛🟨⬛🟨⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
13:05
Daily Quordle 499
7️⃣8️⃣
6️⃣5️⃣
m-w.com/games/quordle/
Daily Quordle 499
9️⃣6️⃣
7️⃣8️⃣
m-w.com/games/quordle/
Once again I chased the one-tile fills.
Daily Octordle #499
3️⃣🕛
🕚5️⃣
🔟🕐
7️⃣6️⃣
Score: 67
13:22
Daily Octordle #499
8️⃣🕐
🟥🔟
🕚🕛
9️⃣3️⃣
Score: 80
Blunder. I blindly ignored a letter I initially found so lost too much guesses.
@jlliagre who are you calling a cow in this scenario?
@Robusto exactly. Another perfectly innocuous word that kids have just ruined by using it wrong
Goddamit
-wrongly-
@Mitch The ruminant.
@jlliagre I thought as.much.
Ol fat.cow
I'm not calling -you- an ol fat cow
I mean... not directly
-2
A: What's a gender-neutral way of referring to a nurse?

Robert WadeIf you want to attract significantly more males into the grossly female dominated nurse profession (approximately 9 out of every 10 nurses are presently female!!!) then it is absolutely essential that a term without female connotations is used in place of the very NON GENDER NEUTRALTERM "NURSE". ...

13:31
That guy writes a lot
If nursing means suckling, then we're talking about sucklers and sucklees, right?
That sucks
@Mitch And how do you know our ranter is a guy? Think of all the well-dressed serial killers you've known!
@tchrist 1) as we have certainly established on ELU somewhere (by forcing women to answer point blank through gritted teeth) both men and women use (under some but not all circumstances) that 'guy' can be used to cover both sexes (and others)
2) also it's most likely a dude
3) Serial killer? looks over shoulder
looks over other shoulder
Oh God, why do we have to cover our sexes? Can't you just stop planting so many damned fig trees?
13:38
Uh... cause you get figs?
Please God not another figger.
@CowperKettle I may have told this anecdote before but goddammit I'm going to tell it again...
I remember when my kids were little that it's be good to have them be aware of the Bible stories that I remember from when I was young, so I started reading the Bible to sort of pick out the good ones.
Please check your labelling at the door: if your fruit of the loins says fig, you're part of the problem not part of the solution.
This is why we can't have nice things anymore.
And pretty much anytime I started to recognize one I'd get to the culmination of the story (often within 1 or 2 verses and be like OMG that is awful how about the next?
Clearly you missed all the tales that end with And they lived happily ever after.
13:43
And then I'd go a little further and start to recognize another and get to the end (in about 1 or 2 verses) and go OMG this is awful and go look for the next
Until they were smitten.
Over and over and over
Adam and eve how nice in paradise then there's a snake and an apple and they're suddenly embarrassed and they get kicked out of paradise... That can't have felt good.
Sure there are nasty verses all over the place, but the best choruses are in the Song of Songs.
Somebody kills somebody
There's a big flood that kills everybody
-everybody-
May all the pillars of your community be of salt made.
13:46
Except 8 people (I did my research)
Then ... Two daughters.. and the father...
Cripes
Wives wives and more wives.
@tchrist women can't read all that stuff and think wow what great times we missed
Hey lady you want a fig leaf for that or just a place to pin it on?
That said, 'The Red Tent's is a great telling of Dinah's story
I mean that story is made up
But
So is all the rest
13:50
Hey anybody wanna hear what I -really- think about that religion horseshit?
You'll never guess what I really think
Someone's in the kitchen with Dinah.
@tchrist The kitchen is the center of all life in a home.
@Mitch And whose genius loci is....?
@tchrist no math in chat please
Only Biblical parabolas.
Also, tangents.
13:54
Speaking of which, engineers would be building bridges that would never fall in a thousand years and knowing s
cience wouldn't make a difference
@tchrist why so elliptical?
You are making me hypergeometric
@Mitch Putin on the Ritz left no unburned bridges falling down.
14:23
> It was a bright, cold morning in Hyde Park, and a detachment of Household Cavalry was riding along North Carriage Drive in parade dress, escorting a tumbril of condemned prisoners to Marble Arch.
> 1. a. A farm cart designed to tilt backwards to tip out its load, typically having two broad wheels and a wide, flat body; spec. a cart of this type used to carry corpses, refuse, or dung; a dung cart. In later use esp.: a cart of this type as used to transport condemned prisoners to execution by guillotine during the French Revolution. Now chiefly historical.
@CowperKettle Their reasoning is: "we have several lines of defense (i.e. defense in depth), so it's fine if one gets broken." No it's not--you have several lines for a reason!
Also: it makes it harder to cross south of the dam, but much easier to cross northward!
They're going full George Bush: "the people whose land we're conquering will welcome us as liberators"
14:52
> “The first thing I did was type ‘generate Black Mirror episode’ and it comes up with something that, at first glance, reads plausibly, but on second glance, is s***.”
@tchrist searches Amazon for one
@CowperKettle I thought you'd like to know, I just took an online test and it confirmed that, among all my friends,-I- am the one most likely to be a philosophical zombie.
@tchrist It did indeed. A nourrice originally breastfeed babies. The word has been mostly superseded by its baby talk variant nounou.
Also, why does the woman who hosts that Russian state TV show always wear an expression that says "I can't believe they're making me talk to these guys"?
(See also this episode.)
15:10
@jlliagre So we'll just use nourreur for the male-sexed nourisher. Problem solved!
@tchrist Yes, nutrix / nutritor.
That's better.
@Mitch I'm more an old "big fat papa".
Sounds more nutritious that way.
@tchrist Père nourricier Here is a masculine form!
Chuck Nuriss
@Mitch Oh! I will look it up, I never heard of either
15:37
Another attack by the Ukrainian Army, this time in the direction of Orekhov. Girkin has written that this time the Ukrainians used aviation, which may indicate that this is a more ambitious strike than the previous ones goo.gl/maps/1Vpr8ZnNCBUDNUPd7
@alphabet She has such a.. theatrical face, as if hired to play a leather clad comical Nazi in an operetta
I constantly expect her to get a horsewhip out of her riding breeches
@CowperKettle Hah! Perfect analogy.
@alphabet More pineapple confusion about absolute commification:
0
Q: Why is the comma added?

sara elshabrawyWhy is the comma added in the following? [The] Hyena crept slowly round, making the most of his spotted brown camouflaged fur against the brownish stems of grass.

Surely, this must be a dupe, but I must fly.
15:59
Ukrainian band Zwyntar has a nice song Moonshine in the dark-country style
@CowperKettle Hmm not very well tested.
@Cerberus They probably fueled it with the wrong brand of vodka
Hah.
16:37
The free will theorem of John H. Conway and Simon B. Kochen states that if we have a free will in the sense that our choices are not a function of the past, then, subject to certain assumptions, so must some elementary particles. Conway and Kochen's paper was published in Foundations of Physics in 2006. In 2009, the authors published a stronger version of the theorem in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society. Later, in 2017, Kochen elaborated some details. == Axioms == The proof of the theorem as originally formulated relies on three axioms, which Conway and Kochen call "fin", "spin"...
I've read this article, but understood nothing.
@CowperKettle Isn't it academic, in the sense that because its axioms are false its conclusion is false also?
Of course I couldn't help pointing this out.
I don't understand the concept of 'free will' either. I never came across a proper definition without some hand waving in it.
17:20
Wordle 718 6/6

⬛🟨🟨🟨🟨
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
🟨⬛🟩🟨🟨
⬛🟩🟩🟩🟩
⬛🟨⬛⬛🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
@CowperKettle Try PF Strawson's paper "Freedom and Resentment"
@CowperKettle Free will, in the sense of unimpeded will, is perfectly sensible. Free will, in the sense of uncaused will, is absurd.
@Robusto wow, great round
17:49
@MetaEd I'd like to point out that you totally could have helped pointing it out.
I haven't done so yet, but I'd really like to.
@CowperKettle whether there is free will or not, absolutely everything done in science is directed towards making everything as deterministic as possible.
@CowperKettle it's no 'master and the margarita' but they are similar in that they both take a minor figure from the bible and extrapolate an entire story around it. There's no sense of humor in 'The Red Tent ' though.
Hm... It's a retelling of the Genesis story from the point of view of the wives of Jacob and very informative (as a story can do) of daily living in 1500BC Palestine
18:08
@MetaEd I got lucky. Even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while.
 
2 hours later…
20:09
@Mitch wait which one is that
@CowperKettle free will debates always start out as something simple and devolve into uselessly complicated. Halfway through you always wonder "why are we even trying to prove or disprove this?"
It has no bearing on what my next actions are whether or not they're predetermined
 
2 hours later…
21:51
مَكْتُوب or not مَكْتُوب, that is the question.
@CowperKettle I'd look at the original paper
Also JJC Smart on "Free-Will, Praise and Blame"
And the SEP on compatibilism: plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism
23:14
TL;DR: physicists don't understand what words mean and should leave this to the philosophers (literally)
Joseph Brodsky son's interview novorosinform.org/…
Joseph Brodsky is a famous 20 century poet
His son says that Russia should have invaded Ukraine in 2014.
Says that Russia should turn towards socialism, and children of wealthy officials should be sent to the very first trenches on the front.
Says that the Church should be reunited with the State.
"Ukraine should not exist as a state. ... Well, maybe as Soviet Ukraine in a restored Soviet Union. ... The war should end in Eastern Europe, we should not venture beyond, into Western Europe. We should just restore the Socialist Camp".
"We should turn to socialism, but this time omit the errors made last time in the USSR".
23:42
@CowperKettle Ñugoslavia reünites, eh? Doubtless stopping at East Germany will be popular among the great hordes. Or maybe he means at the Alsace? You can never tell with these sorts.

« first day (4591 days earlier)      last day (548 days later) »