English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

CowperKettle

3:54 AM

@alphabet This was called Aesopian language in the Soviet times en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesopian_language

CowperKettle

5:00 AM

38-yo Yegor Drovnikov died the death of the brave at the Special Operation.

He was serving a 22-year jail term for taking part in a gang that killed 14 people.

At the battlefront, he earned two Wagner crosses and two Russian Army medals for bravery.

e1.ru/text/politics/2023/09/29/72757265

The official commemoration ceremony will take place in Kamensk-Uralsky on the Alley of the Glory.

The Fedorovich gang was putting the fright into other criminals for 4 years, trying to gain influence in Kamensk-Uralsky.

The gang included a former policeman and the son of an official from the Oblast administration.

e1.ru/text/criminal/2014/07/08/52871091

Their lucky period ended when the police found the dead body of a man with double citizenship - Saudi Arabia and the USA.

Then the wheels started rolling, and the gang was arrested.

Ironically, most of the actual killings were done not as part of for-profit activity of the gang, but as an exam for aspiring band members - they were asked to kill somebody to prove their right to enroll.

A stray parrot was found in Yekaterinburg. He managed to fly some 2 km south-west

e1.ru/text/animals/2023/09/28/72754613

At this speed, I doubt he would have made it to the warmer climes in time not to die of cold.

Turns out there are some parrot species that are migratory theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/apr/22/…

Vikas

5:22 AM

@CowperKettle Parrots are rare there?

CowperKettle

@Vikas No, but they only live in homes, not in nature

In nature, they die.

Vikas

@CowperKettle Ah. Strange.

Here they keep flying freely in nature.

CowperKettle

Great tits keep flying here in nature, all year round.

Great tit

The great tit (Parus major) is a passerine bird in the tit family Paridae. It is a widespread and common species throughout Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and east across the Palearctic to the Amur River, south to parts of North Africa where it is generally resident in any sort of woodland; most great tits do not migrate except in extremely harsh winters. Until 2005 this species was lumped with numerous other subspecies. DNA studies have shown these other subspecies to be distinct from the great tit and these have now been separated as two distinct species, the cinereous tit (Parus cinereus...

CowperKettle

6:26 AM

> Exposure to unclean cooking fuels (natural gas, propane, or wood) throughout the study period was associated with increased odds of failing any development domain (OR = 1.28, 95% CI 1.07, 1.53), the gross motor domain (OR = 1.52, 95% CI: 1.09, 2.13), and the personal-social domain (OR = 1.36, 95% CI: 1.00, 1.85), respectively.

Do they mean "any single domain out of five", or "all domains out of five"?

sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0013935123013324

CowperKettle

6:45 AM

> In this prospective, population-based birth cohort of 4735 mother-child pairs, we found unclean cooking fuel exposure (natural gas, propane, or wood) throughout the study period was associated with failing a screening instrument on any developmental domain, the gross motor domain, and the personal-social domain.

I wonder what they mean by "throughout": necessarily from pregnancy to 36 months, or at any point (pregnancy, or 12 months, or 36 months) during the assessment period.

Xanne

7:09 AM

Wordle 832 3/6

🟩⬜⬜⬜🟩
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🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

CowperKettle

7:41 AM

A penguin walked into a bar and asked the bartender if he's seen his brother.
The bartender says ..what does he look like?

CowperKettle

8:23 AM

Deep learning enabled fast 3D brain MRI at 0.055 tesla

All I can say is "wow". An MRI scan of the brain using a portable (the size of half a fridge) MRI scanner, in only 3 minutes.

Granted, the resolution is low, but it will do to rule out a tumor.

CowperKettle

9:04 AM

Pro-Russian fighter who has a Telegram channel wrote that he knows Kipling's "If" by heart in English.

He memorized it while in Ukrainian prison, where he was placed for life, but later exchanged, I assume.

He repeated the poem each morning from memory.

> When you're sick, the advice you get is to literally do drugs and stay out of school

Xanne

9:24 AM

@CowperKettle If you can keep you head while all about you are losing theirs …just perhaps, maybe, you don’t understand the situation.

CowperKettle

11:13 AM

This is serious we could make you delirious

►

A masterpiece.

CowperKettle

11:51 AM

In Ukrainian, bribe is khabar, supposedly from Arabic خَبَر, but in Arabic it means "news". O_O

How did Arabic "news" transmogrify into Ukrainian "bribe"?

Vikas

@CowperKettle Used in Hindi also.

CowperKettle

> All-Soviet Quidditch Championship

@Vikas Yes, in lots of languages, including some languages used in Russia :)

Vikas

12:19 PM

Then I guess Persian also.

Mitch

1:19 PM

Toxic "Toxic positivity" negativity.

They're just jealous.

CowperKettle

O wood, burn bright; O flame, be quick;
O smoke, draw cleanly up the flue-
My lady chose your every brick
And sets her dearest hopes on you!

CowperKettle

1:46 PM

> Female intrasexual competition may be assortative with respect to mate quality.

Word of the day: assortative mating.

I still don't understand the quoted sentence at all..

Robusto

#Worldle #616 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
⭐⭐⭐🏙️
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

@CowperKettle It just means that the "best" females get the "best" mates.

CowperKettle

@Robusto Ah!

Robusto

The Taylor Swifts of the world don't mate with men who flip burgers at McDonald's.

CowperKettle

Off with her hair: Intrasexually competitive women advise other women to cut off more hair (Sulikowski et al., 2024)

women ☕

Interjection: women ☕

(Internet slang, derogatory, sometimes offensive) Expressing disapproval of the actions of a woman, especially one associated with stereotypically feminine traits.

Noun: women ☕

plural of woman ☕

Wow, the English language started migrating towards Egyptian.

Vikas

@CowperKettle It also has Wikipedia page 😂

Robusto

1:57 PM

🌎 Sep 29, 2023 🌍
🔥 45 | Avg. Guesses: 4.29
🟨🟧🟩 = 3

globle-game.com
#globle

Wordle 832 3/6

🟩⬛⬛🟨🟨
⬛⬛⬛🟩⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Robusto

2:16 PM

Daily Octordle #613
🕚3️⃣
5️⃣4️⃣
8️⃣🕐
🕛🔟
Score: 66

Coulda been a contender.

Robusto

2:28 PM

Daily Sequence Octordle #613
4️⃣5️⃣
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9️⃣🔟
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Score: 66

alphabet

2:43 PM

@CowperKettle Interesting fact: the poem "If" was written to celebrate a cruel British colonial official who attempted a completely unjustified invasion of Dutch South Africa. So it does make sense that pro-Russian fighters would see themselves in it.

Mitch

@Robusto Or maybe it means the female ranking is dependent on their mates ranking

Robusto

@Mitch Two sides of the same coin.

> No woman ever left the king's bed feeling unsatisfied.

Mitch

Sure, but if @CowperKettle is asking what the sentence -means-, then it's saying that how women sort or rank themselves according to their mate's ranking which has already been set. Of course it goes both ways, but the sentence is declaring (in an obfuscated academic manner) that the rank of the female is a function of the male's rank. Whereas your statement says the function is the other direction or that it is a bijection (extrapolating from just the maximum).

Robusto

@Mitch Nope. It's about how women compete with each other for the best mates. Obviously there has to be an assortative process going on on both sides.

Mitch

2:59 PM

And how dare you consider Taylor Swift some pinnacle of femaleness when Beyoncé is standing right there.

Robusto

Yes, but ... whose hair is longer?

Mitch

@Robusto B's hair can be any length she wants.

Robusto

Sure, with a wig. You think men can't tell who's wearing a wig?

Mitch

Wig? Again, have your mother wash your mouth out.

Robusto

Did Barbie have short hair?

There, I played the trump card.

Was Oppenheimer a wimp, or was he the Destroyer of Worlds?

Mitch

3:02 PM

The teenage Indian women who have sold their hair for B's extensions would populate unrecognizable Pacific Islands.

Robusto

They traded better mates for a little money. They deserve those islands.

Mitch

@Robusto Ouch.

@Robusto I had a schoolmate who was an Oppenheimer. Kind of a jerk. Neither a wimp nor world-destroyer.

But that's not to say you can't be both.

Nauru. It's gonna be Nauru.

Robusto

> I don't ask for much, but the things I do get should be very high quality, OK?

Mitch

@CowperKettle It took me a while to get this... the coffee emoji is part of the ... thing?

That somehow seems... a slippage.

A slippage in wiktionary's ... domain of interest.

MetaEd

3:18 PM

Wordle 832 4/6

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🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Mitch

if emojis -and- memes are allowed then... is there an entry for each emoji and its meaning? And what each emoji means in each language?

and memes in each language?

and textspeak for each language?

alphabet

(Some have argued that the poem "If" is racist, given its origins; the poem isn't, but Kipling definitely was.)

Mitch

ptdr

Interjection: ptdr

(Internet slang, text messaging) Initialism of pété de rire (literally “exploded from laughter”)., approximately equivalent to English PMSL
Synonyms: jrf, mdr

OK so at least they're consistent.

are any and all shortlived memes gonna show up? that's gonna make wiktionary look messy.

MetaEd

3:39 PM

@Robusto Perhaps he was a weakly interacting massive particle

CowperKettle

3:50 PM

> children with ASD and ADHD often have a reduced ability to clear the common plastic additive, bisphenol A (BPA), from their bodies, thereby increasing their exposure to BPA. medicalxpress.com/news/…

Plastic, plastic everywhere, and all the boards did shrink.

... and all the brains did shrink

Vikas

4:19 PM

Which is correct? "eye-catchy" or "eye-catching"?

Example: That Twitter post is absolutely eye-catchy/ing.

Cerberus

5:02 PM

Eye-catching.

There is the term catchy, which means something slightly different, usually not visual.

Vikas

The fact I can't find any reference on Google about "eye-catchy" now, I wonder how it came to my mind. I think my boss used to say "make the post eye-catching" which I heard as eye-catchy.

CowperKettle

Bible of the Day: katechon -- Someone or something (of disputed identity) whose removal is necessary before the Antichrist can be fully manifested, according to 2 Thessalonians 2:6-7 in the Bible.

Vikas

@Cerberus Thanks

Cerberus

@Vikas Yeah could be an eggcorn combined with a contamination.

MetaEd

5:50 PM

@CowperKettle Kate Chon the social media specialist for Pepsi?

Mazura

6:20 PM

Is there a word for the part after the battle where they walk around stabbing 'dead' people to make sure?

Robusto

6:34 PM

@MetaEd Aren't we all? Everybody in this chat, I mean.

Robusto

6:45 PM

Maybe I'm reaching semantic satiation, but my brain is going on tilt considering the term "look-see" just now ...

Cerberus

6:58 PM

@Mazura I don't know how realistic this is.

Anders Breivik did it.

But he is probably someone without experience who just watches films, and also a terrorist.

Mazura

There's no reason we can't be civilized, is there?

"In his book -Guadalcanal Diary- War correspondent Richard Tregaskis described how in the aftermath of the Tenaru River battle, US Marines walked through the battlefield, and shot all the Japanese bodies that were lying on the ground. This was deemed necessary as Japanese combatants would fake their death, and then ambush the US Marines."

Somebodies got to do it.

Gunshots you could extingunatie in 5m, stab wounds could take days.

Cerberus

7:48 PM

@Mazura That sounds horrific, a gross violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Of course it is also a gross act of the Japanese, mixing with the wounded.

Mazura

When I was thought of the question, those rules were a thousand years away still.

Bringoutgerdead!

CowperKettle

As a girl in Austria, Evy Mages was confined to a mysterious institution in Innsbruck. Decades later, she learned why. - The New Yorker, 25 Sept

Mazura

Yikes... I thought I was stretching it a bit. pppfffftt

Robusto

8:12 PM

@Mazura As long as there's war, the answer to that is no.

Mitch

@Robusto Are you saying my butt looks too big?

Robusto

@Mitch I wasn't going to put it that way, but now that you mention it ...

Rootl game #120

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

⬛🟩⬛🟩⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

⬛⬛⬛🟩🟩⬛⬛⬛
🟩⬛🟩🟩🟩🟩⬛🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Easy as 1, 2, 3 ...

Mitch

@Mazura I don't know but ''mopping up action" is nearby military slang.

Robusto

@Mitch There's a degree of separation between that and executing the wounded.

"Mopping up" usually refers to defeating pockets of resistance after a main battle is concluded.

@Mazura BTW, what part of Chi-town are you from?

Mitch

@Cerberus On the scale of atrocities, like shooting at paratroopers in the air or torture, hiding among the dead doesn't register for me. It may be cowardly for a soldier (and against the rules of combat, but very low on the list of 'war crimes' if on it at all.

And if a civilian, it would be just the clever thing to do to survive, no one getting hurt.

@Robusto Yes, which is why I used the word 'nearby'.

Robusto

8:26 PM

@Mitch I think it's some kind of distance from "nearby."

CowperKettle

Robusto

@Mitch I agree with that. If those dead-looking people have demonstrated that some of them could be alive and still intent on fighting, I for one would not judge those Marines. Guadalcanal is not the same as My Lai.

But as I've said before, the real war crime is war itself.

CowperKettle

I don't get it.

Mazura

@Robusto NW side as far as it gets. Palmer Square currently

Robusto

@Mazura I grew up in the North suburbs but lived variously in Lincoln Park-to-Wrigleyville-ish.

Mazura

8:35 PM

I still haven't gone and seen the bean.

Lame

CowperKettle

Me neither

Robusto

Heh. You're not really NW, mostly W. Fullerton was the northern limit of the Great Chicago Fire.

Mazura

W/e. nothing tops the Picasso

Robusto

I still feel at home in Chicago, but I seldom get back there these days.

Mazura

Naw, grew up 2 blocks in each direction N and W that you could still be in Chicago. I might as well be one of those people who 'claim' to live in it

Mitch

8:40 PM

@Mazura haha you grew up in O'Hare

Robusto

@Mazura So like Edison Park? That area?

Mazura

I'm two blocks from Fullerton, where all those nifty stupid YouTube shorts take place with people being idiots....

Oriole Park, but yeah basically. Wait... hold on.... Plane going by...

Ok , wut

Robusto

I lived in Chicago north of Howard Street until I was almost 4. Right on the lake, really.

Mazura

I like it. A neighborhood with not too many speed cams because we're poor and nobody cares. And smack dab in between nowhere with highways and public trans so it's cheeep ... IDK what all these kid's rent rage is about. Like they expect to live next to the 606 trail or something straight out of HS...

710 east Green street, in Bensinvil, near O'hare... lol

CowperKettle

I wonder if it's good to allow a cat eat at night, at 02:00 am.

Mazura

8:51 PM

Should be more like 4

CowperKettle

> "From age six months to maturity, most cats will do well when fed two times a day." Once the cat becomes an adult, at about one year, feeding once or twice a day is appropriate in most cases. Senior cats, age seven and above, should maintain the same feeding regimen.

My cat eats about 12 times a day. I should limit him.

Mazura

Well, that's by the time mine will bring home their own if I don't. And it's usually still alive so that's fun

Window I could put a cat door in was a prerequisite for my apartment. A 5" preying mantis was the last thing I got. Didn't know they got that big here

Lambie

@CowperKettle Yeah, but they eat very little at one time. My cat eats a bit, leaves her food, and then wanders around. She never eats all the food at once.

CowperKettle

@Lambie My too, but he has gotten fat.. I should look after his health..

Robusto

9:10 PM

@CowperKettle Good luck with that.

Feb 5, 2022 at 17:33, by Robusto

Blitzkrieg in chess is two boards, four players. One player on each side gets white, the other black. When a piece is captured on one board it can get picked up and played anywhere on the other board. Lotsa fun.

Heh, I meant to say Kriegsspiel.

Funny to correct a mistake more than a year and a half after inception. Almost like software. (Except most of those don't ever get fixed, I think.)

jlliagre

9:50 PM

@CowperKettle What I understand is the person had the idea to make this photographic montage of the Viaduc de Millau and several Venus de Milo despite his conscience telling him not to, louder and louder as it realized it had no effect. Finally, they do it anyway.

Oh, I got it. Millau and Milo !

ptdr

Wordle 832 4/6

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🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Daily Quordle 613
9️⃣6️⃣
5️⃣8️⃣
m-w.com/games/quordle/

Daily Octordle #613
9️⃣8️⃣
🔟🕛
7️⃣6️⃣
🕚4️⃣
Score: 67

Rootl game #120

🟩🟩⬛🟩🟩⬛🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

⬛🟩🟩🟩⬛⬛
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🟩🟩⬛🟩⬛⬛🟩⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

CowperKettle

10:11 PM

@Robusto I'm afraid of him getting into the clinic again. He has a precarious urinary system, and the doc said that if this gets worse, they will have to do some surgery to permanently widen the channel.

So maybe it's better to have him lean and healthy. I'll have to read up.

MetaEd

@CowperKettle jesus.

CowperKettle

10:30 PM

The new iteration of a graphical AI engine, DALL-E 3

11:04 PM

11:20 PM

Jun 13, 2013 at 13:21, by Robusto

@RegDwighт Look, none of that shit matters. The guy who invented the GIF pronounces it JIF. I pronounce it correctly. If someone in a position of authority disagrees with me, they're wrong. It's that simple.

@CowperKettle You should comb the annals of EL&U chat before posting. Otherwise you risk being unoriginal.

Nov 5, 2015 at 0:00, by Robusto

@Aequitas Not necessarily. Many people have violent disagreements over whether to pronounce "gif" (Graphic Interchange Format) as "gif" or "jif". The guy who created it says "jif" but the spelling indicates "gif"; I prefer to pronounce it with the hard g.

CowperKettle

Looks like I developed additional spots of allergy on my skin. Maybe there is some stronger stuff than simple hydrocortisone ointment. Otherwise I'd have to stop L-methylfolate.

CowperKettle

11:50 PM

I woke up at 00:00 am, and it's almost 05:00 am, and I've written a blog post about a study on autism and ADHD in Russian. On L-methylfolate, I feel like my brain is starting working again.

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…