English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

alphabet

12:04 AM

He also thinks HIV doesn't cause AIDS. That seems like it might not end well.

Robusto

12:21 AM

Dr. Strangelove (4/8) Movie CLIP - Water and Commies (1964) HD

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tchrist

@CowperKettle Dashing and clever both.

Cerberus

1:09 AM

@Conrado I'm sure the decision to put fluorine into the water was made after infinite deliberations among scientists and doctors consider all the best medical knowledge. And so the risk of these metabolic disorders must have been deemed extremely, negligably small.

Mitch

Vote for Oxford word of the year

5

tchrist

1:26 AM

Water fluoridation controversy

The water fluoridation controversy arises from political, ethical, economic, and health considerations regarding the fluoridation of public water supplies. For deprived groups in both maturing and matured countries, international and national agencies and dental associations across the world support the safety and effectiveness of water fluoridation. Proponents of water fluoridation see it as a question of public health policy and equate the issue to vaccination and food fortification, citing significant benefits to dental health and minimal risks. In contrast, opponents of water fluoridation view...

Cerberus

My assessment is the above.

tchrist

I'm sure you're right. I just wanted to give the link. :)

These things always have an underlying cost–benefit analysis that was made.

It doesn't help when there's 5x the amount of fluorine in the water compared to the amount which the analysis was made for.

People have grown sloppy.

Cerberus

@tchrist But intervening in people's health is always done with enormous margins of safety.

When there is the slightest doubt, no intervention will be made.

tchrist

@Cerberus Yes, like how you give medicines to sick people but you give vaccines to well people. So the standards are utterly different.

Cerberus

Yes.

tchrist

1:33 AM

There is only one fluoride controversy worth more than two seconds of contemplation. The rest are all so much fear mongering and chicken littling nonsense.

Cerberus

I am not surprised.

tchrist

The only important fluoride controversy is whether to pronounce the start of the word the new-fashioned way like flow or the old-fashioned way like flew. The rest aren't worth a dry fig.

I went a long time in my life before I ever heard the old-fashioned way. It sounded so quaint. :)

Cerberus

You do not pronounce the u and the o separately?

/ˈflʊəˌraɪd/

tchrist

Um no, there's just one vowel here.

Two syllables, not three.

Cerberus

Interesting.

I mean the schwa is weak.

But for me it is there.

tchrist

1:42 AM

And I can't have things like that before /r/. Almost no Americans can. Only tense vowels, or the NURSE vowel, are possible in that position.

Indeed so. You are correct. I don't know why you got so downvoted. // Remember that for many of us who are not from the northeast, we "can't" have a lax vowel like /æ, ɛ, ɪ, ɔ, ʊ/ in front of phonemic R. Those all get neutralized so that we have "only" tense vowels like /e, i, o, u/ (or also /ɑ/) before R. That’s why I said I've heard both /o/ and /u/ there in /pɑɹˈkuɹ/ and /pɑɹˈkoɹ/. I think turd though has what they call the NURSE vowel, which is more centralized and highly R-colored. — tchrist ♦ 1 hour ago

Peter deserves to be better treated.

Cerberus

/ˈflʊəˌraɪd/ is what Dictionary.com gives.

tchrist

Dude.

They just make stuff up.

Those are Britishíshimo vowels, not American ones.

Cerberus

It is also what I hear here: howjsay.com/how-to-pronounce-fluoride

tchrist

That's just a queer accent and you know it.

Ultramar.

1979 Aquafresh Toothpaste "Fluoride and Fresh Breath" TV Commercial

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Cerberus

The true accent.

tchrist

1:48 AM

Crest Toothpaste 'Mr. Goodwin' Commercial (Mid-1970s)

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Cerberus

@tchrist It must be said that the difference between a very slight schwa and nothing is...slight.

And the difference between the vowels is also not great.

tchrist

It's exactly the same for me as the start of Florida. It is one of the hardest words for little kids to spell because its letters make no sense whatsoever.

Starts like flow.

They hear it a million times before the first see it in print. And when they see it, it makes no sense.

Because that's not what they've always heard. So they ignore it and forget it. Same with fluorescent and fluorescence: that's just flow.

Fluoride is like some ide for the floor. :)

Not for the flower. :)

Which of course is the same as the flour.

I'm sure you grew up hearing it the British way.

We did not. It sounds weird to us.

And we just can't have lax vowels there. It cannot happen. So we have to choose between flow and flew; we chose flow.

Cerberus

Odd.

tchrist

I'm sure you can say words that start like flaw and then have an R. We cannot.

It has something to do with the weird R that we scrunch up and pull back.

It always constricts the vowel space, making it not be able to be so open.

This does NOT happen to arrhotic speakers!! Because their tongues just flop. They don't create an approximant. That's why this is very different here.

They don't constrict their open vowels because they don't put an R there. We always do, so ours can't be open anymore. For most of us.

There are fancy terms for the various weird American R's, but I don't think those really matter for the discussion.

Cerberus

It is true that the r tends to deform preceding vowels.

tchrist

2:00 AM

Yeah.

Cerberus

And so does the 'weak L'.

tchrist

Yes, because these are liquid approximants and the constriction requirements are curious.

They do things to the tongue, is why.

Which of course has to change a poor pristine vowel into some other thing less perfectly wide.

Cerberus

Makes sense.

tchrist

A front-L like in "standard" Italian or Spanish cannot do that. But the back-L like in Catalan or Portuguese very much does so.

Because the "back" part of their L is like the back part of our weird R.

The tongue gets all retroscrunched and pulled.

Cerberus

I have trouble thinking about all the various Ls.

Portuguese L reminds me of Slavic L.

And Dutch lower-class L.

tchrist

2:05 AM

@Cerberus LEAN/LIT vs FULL/WOOL.

@Cerberus So there is a bit of classicism in (European) Portuguese and even Spanish there, where L-vocalization is looked down on as showing an uneducated accent. But certainly in Brazil, and I believe perhaps also in some Spanish-speaking areas of the Americas, no such stigma exists. Certainly if you don't pronounce the final L as U/W in Brazil you won't fit in.

A front L and a high front vowel go hand in hand.

And vice versa.

It's a habit that English speakers have to break themselves of when learning (most) Romance.

Cerberus

Oh, I can feel that.

I mean, vocalising the L does sound a bit childish.

tchrist

Yes.

Cerberus

It is in fact what Dutch children / some classes/regions might do.

One of my classmates in primary school said baw for bal.

So did her brother, though.

tchrist

It's one of those "speech impediments" that they send you to a speech therapist to fix. A wittle pwobwem.

Cerberus

I do not know their origin, and I did not know anything of regions at the time.

Yeah.

I suppose this is also common in English.

tchrist

2:10 AM

It is.

Cerberus

In Greek, L could be vocalised in various ways.

I believe it could be lo, la, ol, al, a, o.

Depending on the dialect.

That is why you will see al in Greek often.

I think.

See also an.

tchrist

Why Jonathan Ross Can't Pronounce His Rs

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"Wossie".

twue wove < true love

Babawa Wawa.

Duelling accents:

Saoirse Ronan Loves Jonathan's Accent | The Jonathan Ross Show

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SHE has such very very interesting vowels.

Whereas his consonants are odd in the liquids.

Cerberus

I'm sure it will remain the object of mockery for some time to come.

tchrist

She's a rhotic speaker but he is not.

She has the Canadian about diphthong.

He simply cannot say horror to save his life.

HippoSawrUs

2:33 AM

AI today: Per AI, I need at least a 7' square area for a 3' sq. game table to allow 3' clearance on all sides.

I didn't know they couldn't add either.

Cerberus

2:46 AM

> lesser bladderwort

What do you see?

GratefulDisciple

@tchrist like Elmer Fudd? Rabbit -> Wabbit

tchrist

@GratefulDisciple Bingo! Exactwy that.

@Cerberus Spider trap?

Cerberus

@tchrist Hmm probably close, but what exactly is that?

tchrist

@Cerberus Is there a lurking dangling spider camouflaged in the second image?

Cerberus

Oh, well, the second image is, I believe, not how the plant is normally found.

If I understand the plant correctly.

The first image is.

But you can't see the plant's details as well in the first image.

tchrist

3:01 AM

I don't think I understand what you're trying to get us to notice in these images. That it's eating bugs?

Cerberus

@tchrist That is correct!

Why did you think so?

And how does it do that?

tchrist

Well, because I know that bladderwort is a carnivorous plant. It's pretty famous.

Cerberus

Oh, I shouldn't have posted the name.

Do you know how it catches them?

tchrist

Not like ~~honeydew~~ sundew. Some sort of trap door contraption?

We had these growing up in Wisconsin. Colorado is too far south, and too dry.

"Too far south" is probably unimportant. These are wetland plants, not dryland ones.

Cerberus

> Despite their small size, the traps are extremely sophisticated. In the active traps of the aquatic species, prey brush against trigger hairs connected to the trapdoor. The bladder, when "set", is under negative pressure in relation to its environment so that when the trapdoor is mechanically triggered, the prey, along with the water surrounding it, is sucked into the bladder. Once the bladder is full of water, the door closes again, the whole process taking only ten to fifteen milliseconds.

tchrist

3:06 AM

I can't think of a dryland carnivorous plant off the top of my head.

I remember hunting for pitcher plants in the bogs and fens as a child.

Cerberus

Perhaps wetlands offer more prey?

tchrist

They would.

Cerberus

I mean the biomass present in wet places is generally far greater than that in dry ones.

tchrist

Oh!

> Roundleaf sundew: A native species of Colorado.
Greater bladderwort: A native species of Colorado that grows in subalpine ponds.
Lesser bladderwort: A native species of Colorado that grows in subalpine ponds.

Cerberus

Might these be caught prey?

tchrist

3:09 AM

The subalpine zone is the very wet one high, high, high in the sky right before timberline. So from about two miles to around twelve thousand feet of elevation/altitude. It varies by which side of the mountain you're on, though.

Cerberus

Still, those grow in ponds?

tchrist

Yes, there are seasonal ponds up there.

In fact, you can find a crazy mayfly invasion over them at just the right day.

Cerberus

I don't know what those are, but I suspect they are up to no good.

tchrist

That could never happen down here where I live at 5635' or whatever it is.

Cerberus

Perhaps not flies even.

tchrist

3:11 AM

Mayflies?

Oh they're famous. On the Rhine, I think.

The males have TWO flying versions in their metamorphosis!

bbc.com/news/world-europe-40326102

Cerberus

> Haften zijn te herkennen aan hun netvormige vleugeladering. De vleugels kunnen niet worden opgevouwen en worden in rust verticaal achter het lichaam gehouden. Dit is vermoedelijk een primitief morfologisch kenmerk dat al aanwezig was in de eerste vliegende insecten.

tchrist

@Cerberus Yes, they have an alien look to them, don't they?

Cerberus

Or primitive.

They neither sting nor bite?

@tchrist Are they emerging from their pupal skins?

tchrist

No, these go egg > nymph > subimago > imago.

It's thus considered "incomplete" metamorphosis without the full pupal phase.

The subimagos can fly but not breed.

The imagos get to have sex, and fly better.

The nymphs have gills.

They're aquatic swimmers, not aerial flyers.

I'm sure you've seen these. But they cannot live in water with any pollution of note. It is a mark of a healthy ecosystem to have them.

There's a lovely set of ponds up at 10,500' that have them here in the county. I bet those ponds have bladderwort: they also have lily pads all over them.

Cerberus

I mean the stage we see in the photo: can those swim despite their wings?

Or are they only emerging from their cocoons which are just below the surface?

tchrist

3:22 AM

No, they cannot swim, they look emergent.

Cerberus

Meanwhile, this explains why a chrysalis is called that.

tchrist

That's a pupa.

> Their immature stages are aquatic fresh water forms (called "naiads" or "nymphs"), whose presence indicates a clean, unpolluted and highly oxygenated aquatic environment. They are unique among insect orders in having a fully winged terrestrial preadult stage, the subimago, which moults into a sexually mature adult, the imago.

Cerberus

@tchrist In the process of emerging from their cocoons / old, aquatic skins?

tchrist

@Cerberus Old aquatic skins of the nymphs.

Cerberus

OK.

Like mosquitoes.

tchrist

3:24 AM

They just kind of burst out. You can watch them climbing up on out of their old skins.

> The brief lives of mayfly adults have been noted by naturalists and encyclopaedists since Aristotle and Pliny the Elder in classical antiquity. The German engraver Albrecht Dürer included a mayfly in his 1495 engraving The Holy Family with the Mayfly to suggest a link between heaven and earth.

Cerberus

One wonders why they make the chrysalis stage so chryso.

tchrist

They molt into their new forms.

You mean the shininess or transparency of the "gold"?

They aren't all gold by any means. But they become transparent right at the end.

> Mayflies are hemimetabolous (they have "incomplete metamorphosis"). They are unique among insects in that they moult one more time after acquiring functional wings;[13] this last-but-one winged (alate) instar usually lives a very short time and is known as a subimago, or to fly fishermen as a dun.

I feel like I've talked about these here before, probably after having been delighted by their emergence one day.

Cerberus

@tchrist Yes.

I mean, why be so conspicuous?

You could be eaten.

You cannot escape.

tchrist

Mar 24 at 15:05, by tchrist

The year is still too young to chance upon the mayfly on his day of joy and rot.

Sep 20, 2022 at 13:30, by tchrist

In an allusion to its brief life span, Aristotle dubbed the insect ephemeron. And to this day they are known as the Ephemeroptera.

Cerberus

Like plants who die after flowering.

tchrist

3:30 AM

Or spiders. Or salmon. Or octopodes.

Cerberus

Do they?

tchrist

Some.

I mean the male spider seldom survives mating.

Cerberus

Unwise.

tchrist

And salmon always die IMMEDIATELY after spawning.

And an octopus male dies right afterwards, too. The female lives a little while longer, but not much. It is so sad.

Cerberus

@tchrist That is crazy.

A vertebrate!

tchrist

3:32 AM

Apparently he has a greater chance of passing on his genes if she eats him.

Cerberus

I suppose that makes sense.

So all this only applies to the male?

tchrist

> After spawning, adult salmon die and their bodies provide nutrients for the freshwater ecosystem. Eggs are buried in gravel nests, called “redds,” and salmon can stay in their eggs for several weeks to months until they hatch.

@Cerberus Not of salmon. Both sexes die.

Cerberus

Weird.

tchrist

Their bodies fall apart.

So do those of the octopodes.

Cerberus

Why can't the parents guard the eggs and let their kids eat them alive?

tchrist

3:34 AM

Well, the mom kind of does that for the octopus. For a while.

It's like a final metamorphosis for the salmon. It is very bizarre.

Cerberus

It just makes no sense to me for an animal to give up the body it has invested so much in, while still healthy.

I would say even humans die unnecessarily and cruelly young of 'old age'.

tchrist

Well, it isn't still healthy by then. It's biologically programmed to fall apart then.

Cerberus

But that would seem completely unnecessary, wasteful programming.

tchrist

This is Pacific salmon that always die. Apparently some Atlantic salmon can breed for several seasons.

Why do Pacific Salmon Die After Spawning?

Cerberus

Silly.

tchrist

3:38 AM

It's too hard on them getting up the rivers. This is the Pacific ones only. The Atlantic ones are differently programmed.

> “Salmon are one of the extreme cases where they put everything into reproducing just once, and then getting old and dying almost immediately thereafter (a common strategy among insects but much less so for vertebrates).”

Salmon run

A salmon run is an annual fish migration event where many salmonid species, which are typically hatched in fresh water and live most of their adult life downstream in the ocean, swim back against the stream to the upper reaches of rivers to spawn on the gravel beds of small creeks. After spawning, all species of Pacific salmon and most Atlantic salmon die, and the salmon life cycle starts over again with the new generation of hatchlings. Salmon are anadromous, spending their juvenile life in rivers or lakes, and then migrating out to sea where they spend adult lives and gain most of their body...

Cerberus

Why can't they eat some more and keep trying?

If it doesn't work, you lose nothing.

tchrist

> After spawning, all species of Pacific salmon and most Atlantic salmon die

Cerberus

If it does, you win.

tchrist

There is nothing for them to eat in the rivers. These are marine fish by now.

Cerberus

They could let themselves be taken back to the sea?

Oh, and have they thought about not mating in a crazy place like that?

tchrist

3:44 AM

They have to climb up into the mountains. It's very hard work when you're a fish to climb 7,000 feet!

> Most Atlantic salmon also die after spawning, but about 5 to 10% (mostly female) return to the ocean where they can recover and spawn again the next season.

The streams are far steeper on the Pacific side, the mountains far higher.

> There are also landlocked populations of some salmon species that have adapted to spend their entire life in freshwater like trout.

I don't know how those ones' lifecycles work.

> Landlocked and spawning Atlantic Salmon look very different to their ocean-going versions. They turn a dark, bronzish brown, and may even develop red spots instead of their usual dark x-shaped ones. Because of this, they're often mistaken for Brown Trout.

> Unlike Pacific species of salmon, S. salar is iteroparous, which means it can survive spawning and return to sea to repeat the process again in another year with 5–10% returning to the sea to spawn again. Such individuals can grow to extremely large sizes, although they are rare.

semelparous vs iteroparous: aren't you glad you know Latin? :)

So the salmon have a kind of metamorphosis as well.

> Unlike the various Pacific salmon species which die after spawning (semelparous), the Atlantic salmon is iteroparous, which means the fish may recondition themselves and return to the sea to repeat the migration and spawning pattern several times, although most spawn only once or twice.

They also don't "need" saltwater, unlike the Pacific ones. Which is why they can become landlocked and still live.

> Atlantic salmon breed in the rivers of Western Europe from northern Portugal north to Norway, Iceland, and Greenland, and the east coast of North America from Connecticut in the United States north to northern Labrador and Arctic Canada.

I presume the ones jumping up the fjords have a harder time than those wandering into your Dutch streams. :)

Cerberus

4:30 AM

@tchrist Naturally, though I wonder about the -o-.

@tchrist Yes, if everything isn't dammed off...

I still wonder.

They jump up the rivers to mate.

Then they must be tired, but the way back to sea is the easy way, isn't it?

alphabet

6:05 AM

@Vun-HughVaw Incidentally, I just noticed that the British pronunciations Cambridge gives for assure and ashore have the exact opposite problem--the transcriptions are the same, but the recorded pronunciations are different! — alphabet 3 mins ago

Earlier I'd complained about British lexicographers being unable to properly describe American pronunciation. I take that back; they can't describe British pronunciation well either.

alphabet

6:16 AM

At least my forthcoming Raccoon Dictionary of English has scratch-and-sniff.

Vikas

12:08 PM

SmokeDetector

2:20 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Mostly non-latin answer (51): Valid from and valid to or until?‭ by Soyel Sardar‭ on english.SE

Robusto

2:51 PM

#travle #702 +0 (Perfect)
✅✅✅✅✅
https://travle.earth

jlliagre

#travle #702 +0 (Perfect)
✅✅✅✅✅
https://travle.earth

Robusto

#WhenTaken #262 (15.11.2024)

I scored 565/1000 (💡x1) 🎗️

1️⃣📍💡927 km - 🗓️1 yrs - 🥈171/200
2️⃣📍246 m - 🗓️10 yrs - 🥇185/200
3️⃣📍14.3K km - 🗓️36 yrs - 🥉0/200
4️⃣📍1.7K km - 🗓️44 yrs - 🥉56/200
5️⃣📍342 km - 🗓️17 yrs - 🥈153/200

https://whentaken.com

A blivet.

I used a hint on the first one, just to see what that was about. It didn't help.

Wordle 1,245 5/6

⬛⬛⬛⬛🟨
🟨🟨⬛⬛⬛
⬛🟨⬛⬛⬛
🟨🟩🟨⬛🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Daily Octordle #1026
5️⃣🕛
7️⃣3️⃣
🕚8️⃣
9️⃣🔟
Score: 65

Daily Sequence Octordle #1026
5️⃣6️⃣
7️⃣8️⃣
9️⃣🔟
🕚🕛
Score: 68

Tightrope, a daily trivia game | Britannica

Nov. 15, 2024

T I G H T R O P E
✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ 💔 ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ 🎉

My Score: 2010

MetaEd

3:48 PM

Wordle 1,245 4/6

🟨⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬛🟩🟨🟨⬛
⬛🟩🟩🟨⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

jlliagre

4:11 PM

#WhenTaken #262 (15.11.2024)

I scored 826/1000🏅

1️⃣📍1.4K km - 🗓️5 yrs - 🥈156/200
2️⃣📍5.1 m - 🗓️8 yrs - 🥇189/200
3️⃣📍2.7K km - 🗓️2 yrs - 🥈141/200
4️⃣📍769 km - 🗓️13 yrs - 🥈153/200
5️⃣📍342 km - 🗓️2 yrs - 🥇187/200

https://whentaken.com

Wordle 1,245 4/6

⬛⬛⬛⬛🟨
⬛⬛⬛🟨⬛
⬛⬛🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Daily Octordle #1026
3️⃣🔟
5️⃣7️⃣
9️⃣6️⃣
🕛8️⃣
Score: 60

Daily Sequence Octordle #1026
4️⃣6️⃣
7️⃣8️⃣
9️⃣🔟
🕚🕛
Score: 67

Mitch

4:31 PM

tchrist

@Mitch Please post that as text so that it's searchable.

Mitch

4:50 PM

@tchrist The source was an image, I didn't screenshot it

tchrist

@Mitch Yes, and?

Mitch

@tchrist Do you have a recommended easy OCR available?

tchrist

@Mitch That I could find faster than anybody could simply type that in? Are you serious?

Clearly, you need to practice your scales more. :)

jlliagre

I can't read it but it's likely here: nytimes.com/2011/06/14/us/14bar.html

GratefulDisciple

@jlliagre Here you go:

> “I think that it’s probably wrong, in almost all situations, to use a dictionary in the courtroom,” said Jesse Sheidlower, the editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary. “Dictionary definitions are written with a lot of things in mind, but rigorously circumscribing the exact meanings and connotations of terms is not usually one of them.”

@tchrist Or use this fun typing game.

tchrist

4:58 PM

@GratefulDisciple Hey, at least I didn't throw Czerny's School of Velocity at him!

GratefulDisciple

@tchrist How kind of you. I remember my Czerny books, all 3 of them (Czerny Germer, Czerny Op. 299, Czerny Op. 740) + the Hanon will throw quite a punch.

tchrist

Somewhere I have a ditty than runs Hanon is vile, ...

GratefulDisciple

But yeah, I agree with NYTimes article author, that the use of dictionary by current Supreme Court justices is worrying, reminds me of how fundamentalists got hung up with word studies when interpreting the New Testament.

@tchrist Haven't heard that one. But a year ago I revisited some of the exercises, I think my teacher taught me wrong. Done right it's quite useful.

tchrist

@GratefulDisciple Yes, I've heard both those things.

And yes, I have these.

My teacher in college had me doing some of them.

@GratefulDisciple All these textual infallibility arguments collapse into each other. The nearly idolatrous worship of letter-by-letter text of the U.S. Constitution by so many of the recent and current Supreme Court justices contains within it its own heresy and paradoxes. The NYTimes best take care that Roberts doesn't also hit them with a $10B demand letter.

GratefulDisciple

@tchrist I have to do more etudes. My last teacher about 15 years ago wanted me to do Chopin Etudes (which I never did), which would be the next step after Czerny Op. 740. Last year I found this video giving difficulty ranking of all Op. 10 and Op. 25 Chopin etudes. Will need to start with the easiest ones.

tchrist

5:12 PM

Nobody who does translation work, even from older versions of the language as in historical philology, can possibly support the stinking nonsense these "conservative" jurists are pulling out of their butts.

GratefulDisciple

@tchrist Yes, quite worrisome. People really need to consider text-author perspective and their cultural milieu as primary. Thankfully recent Biblical scholarship is moving in that direction. Don't know much about the trend in constitutional interpretation lately, but NYTimes article points to a bad sign.

Conrado

My Bach of the day

GratefulDisciple

@tchrist Here's the list from that video: Painless: Op. 10 No. 6, 9 ; Advanced: Op. 10 No. 5, 3; Op. 25 No. 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 ; Demanding: Op. 10 No. 7, 11; Op. 25 No. 4, 9, 12 ; Hard Op 10 No. 4, 8, 10, 12; Op. 25 No. 8, 10, 11 ; Elite Op 10 No. 1, 2; Op. 25 No. 6. I'll start with the "Painless" tier.

tchrist

@Conrado Yeah, I love that piece.

GratefulDisciple

@Conrado When I played I didn't recognize it, but then I saw the title CPE Bach. Cool Jazzy version. Here's the original. I can use it for an etude for warming up.

Laurel

5:21 PM

@Mitch @tchrist Does anyone use chrome? It has good quick OCR even on mobile if you know the right option

> "I think that it's probably wrong, in almost all situations, to use a dictionary in the courtroom," said Jesse Sheidlower, the editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary. "Dictionary definitions are written with a lot of things in mind, but rigorously circumscribing the exact meanings and connotations of terms is not usually one of them."

tchrist

@Laurel I only use it on the desktop for work. I don't use a cell phone for almost anything if I can help it. :) But there I use the Samsung Internet Browser so I don't have to deal with spamvertising.

Mitch

@Laurel Wha?? What's the option?

Conrado

@GratefulDisciple I get that, I think. I don't know how to play, but it looks like it was something Carl might have invented while warming up.

Laurel

@Mitch "Search Google with image" or Google lens

That's how I've mostly been doing it

Mitch

@Laurel Oh. That's not OCR in the sense of "I have an image, please cut and paste out of the image as thought it's text" kind of easy.

Laurel

5:24 PM

On iPhone I sometimes take a screenshot and copy the text from there (you don't even have to save)

@Mitch Why isn't it OCR? Did I not just copy the text from the image?

You have to select the text (and you also have other features distracting you), but the option is there

I don't get to decide what it's called in the menu, nor would I say I endorse this particular wording lol

GratefulDisciple

@Mitch I use Greenshot as my primary screen capture program after refusing to pay increasingly high price for Snagit. Maybe one of those tools have built-in OCR and that should make it very easy.

tchrist

@Conrado Probably from some random improvised cadenza that was catchy enough to write down. :)

Cerberus

GPT can probably do it.

Laurel

@Cerberus Some versions can, but I heard they also sometimes do ridiculous things instead

tchrist

Remember that improvisation was very important to the music of that day. It's so sad how much we've forgotten this and treat it all mechanically, killing its spirit.

Cerberus

5:30 PM

@Laurel You can never trust it; but it should serve when the thing is of lesser importance, or if you have the time to double-check?

tchrist

@Laurel Reminds me of the problem of people on our sites treating the pronunciations they find in dictionaries as Word of God.

GratefulDisciple

@tchrist Yes, it's quite embarrassing that (as an organist) I cannot do even 5% of what Bach could do. All I can do is 4 part harmonizing on the spot. They should include it as mandatory skill for a college organ major curriculum, or as an ABRSM / RCM exam item.

Mitch

@Laurel Nice! @tchrist just right click on the image and choose "Search with Google Lens" and there's an option for copying the text if you want it.

Laurel

I can't find the example I was thinking of but ChatGPT was asked to OCR an image that said "describe a cat" or something and then described a cat instead of the text in the image

@Mitch That's it on desktop yeah. It's unbelievably helpful because nobody posts plain text anymore

(Of course, with that scenario, you would have to be blind or extremely careless to miss what it did, which is why it was funny)

Cerberus

@Laurel Maybe no longer in the newer versions?

At least the last time I tried it, it worked.

Maybe it got one letter wrong or something.

Laurel

5:42 PM

@Cerberus It was something designed to mess with generative AI, not a normal image. The chance of something like that happening with regular images is probably slim

It's just funny that it's possible. You should always check OCR results of course since it's never going to be perfect

Older fonts trip up OCR in my experience

MetaEd

7:38 PM

@GratefulDisciple What's your typing speed?

tchrist

8:07 PM

@Laurel But they still mostly post HTML which is grabbable as text. They don't post text as miserable, textually opaque PNG/TIFF/JPG pixels, which was my original kvetch.

Laurel

@tchrist Nah, I mean I'm seeing a whole lot of images of text, but you and I definitely aren't hanging out in the same places online (except here and the essentials, like email)

tchrist

@Laurel Those are simply miserably useless. It's because of phreaking cell phone "screen" grabs for pixels not for text. Just duffi.

But yes, I live in a no-billboards world, a strange little unAmerican county.

And by billboard, I meme means.

Robusto

9:10 PM

> There is a runaway trolley speeding down the tracks toward five people. But there is a lever you can pull and change the trolley’s path so that it hits only one.
Whom should you put in charge of pulling the lever? I mean, it’s easy: the guy who doesn’t believe in trolleys, right?

jlliagre

Tightrope, a daily trivia game | Britannica

Nov. 15, 2024

T I G H T R O P E
✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ 💔 💔 ✅ 🎉

My Score: 1780

MetaEd

9:54 PM

The past tense of "remit" is "remote". I have spoken.

Robusto

10:16 PM

@MetaEd Then the past tense of "rent" is "runt"; he hablado.

CowperKettle

10:27 PM

@Vikas Harry Truman and Oppenheimer

Robusto

10:45 PM

@CowperKettle A shaggy dog story.

think_meaning_buildß

T minus 2 hours till Tyson vs Jake

jlliagre

@MetaEd One past tense of saber is supe, go figure.

GratefulDisciple

11:27 PM

@MetaEd In the high 90s wpm.

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