English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

tchrist

00:20

@CowperKettle I'd read of this.

CowperKettle

tchrist

@CowperKettle Westminster Abbey definitely looks more like Notre-Dame than it does St Paul's. :)

MetaEd

that's from back when Paul was alive

tchrist

Ah not yet Sainted.

Thank you, Christopher Wren.

user 85795

Zoomer/boomer bait.

tchrist

00:30

Christopher Robin?

Did not live at St John's Wood but at the Hundred Acre Wood instead.

CowperKettle

@MetaEd In those halcyon days. (Inherited from Middle English Alceoun, from Latin halcyōn, alcyōn (“kingfisher”), from Ancient Greek ἀλκυών (alkuṓn).)

> A kingfisher whose nesting by the sea was said, in classical mythology, to cause the Gods to restrain the wind and waves.

tchrist

Poulaine

Poulaines, also known by other names, were a style of unisex footwear with extremely long toes that were fashionable in Europe at various times in the Middle Ages. The poulaine proper was a shoe or boot of soft material whose elongated toe (also known as a poulaine or pike) frequently required filling to maintain its shape. The chief vogue for poulaines spread across Europe from medieval Poland in the mid-14th century and spread across Europe, reaching upper-class England with the 1382 marriage of Richard II to Anne of Bohemia and remaining popular through most of the 15th century. Sturdier forms...

> In 1465, they were banned in England altogether, so that all cordwainers and cobblers within the City of London and environs were prohibited from making shoes with pikes more than 2 inches long.

> Nulle persone Cordewaner ou Cobeler .. face.. ascuns soler galoges ou husend oveqe ascun pike ou poleine qe passera la longuer ou mesure de deux poutz

user 85795

The birth of the fashion police 🚨

CowperKettle

Sumptuary law

Sumptuary laws (from Latin sūmptuāriae lēgēs) are laws that try to regulate consumption. Black's Law Dictionary defines them as "Laws made for the purpose of restraining luxury or extravagance, particularly against inordinate expenditures for apparel, food, furniture, or shoes, etc." Historically, they were intended to regulate and reinforce social hierarchies and morals through restrictions on clothing, food, and luxury expenditures, often depending on a person's social rank. Societies have used sumptuary laws for a variety of purposes. They were used to try to regulate the balance of trade by...

MetaEd

@CowperKettle that takes me back

7

Q: Usage of 'halcyon' to describe something other than a period of time

Can I use the term halcyon to mean calm or tranquil when describing something other than a period of time, especially a place or setting? For example, does the following sentence seems unnatural or contrived? He walked through the halcyon temple, admiring the aging frescoes. All dictionari...

tchrist

00:41

@CowperKettle Oh that kind of consumption, not the tuberculosis kind.

CowperKettle

> A free-born woman may not be accompanied by more than one female slave, unless she is drunk; she may not leave the city during the night, unless she is planning to commit adultery; she may not wear gold jewelry or a garment with a purple border, unless she is a courtesan;

MetaEd

so consumption but not of potatoes

CowperKettle

- Cause of visit?
- Planning to commit adultery, sir
- You may pass

tchrist

That folk etymon is a strange attractor.

Well, that's weird, the old pronuns-heation.

user 85795

I was just wondering, is there a way to shut off one boxing in chat rooms?

tchrist

00:44

Don't believe so.

user 85795

Thanks.

CowperKettle

00:59

A brain pacemaker helped a woman with crippling depression - 21 Feb 24

alphabet

01:12

@CowperKettle It worked very well for me, for anxiety. More effective than medication.

N=1, of course, but most meta-analyses show it's quite effective.

Didn't help my mood much, but whatever I had probably wasn't ordinary depression, and it seems like something one should try along with medication.

Mitch

01:42

@CowperKettle that's why lots of instances helps make a better test of the hypothesis. Because nothing is a %100.

@CowperKettle yeah I really don't know much

Mitch

01:56

@user85795 don't make the URL the entire char message. Add some text beforehand

I'm guessing that might work

CowperKettle

02:12

@alphabet Yes, meta-analyses show it's effective, but that page argues that the effect is so small as to be zero from the statistical standpoint, because one needs an effect size of >7 to believe that any kind of effect exists at all

they've added transport based on GPS transmitted data from each tram/bus/trolleybus

Now you can not only ask for a best rout to your destination but actually see the needed trams crawling on the map.

So, for instance, you can avoid waiting in the cold at the tram stop but just hop out a caffee or your apartment at the exact time.

alphabet

02:29

@CowperKettle IIRC that's not quite what "effect size" means from a statistical standpoint; even their graph says a size of 0.5 is clinically significant. That said, effect size is a very imperfect measure.

CowperKettle

@alphabet I forgot the exact term used in that critical page.. lemme look

carcinisation.com/2022/09/07/the-limits-of-help

> "As meager as the results for antidepressants are, the results for CBT are even worse. Researchers seem to think that subjects get a trivial amount better, but subjects themselves seem to feel no better compared to pill placebo."

> The community seems to have just accepted this finding as meaning that CBT works, without apparently addressing the fact that the effect represents less than a two-point drop on a 52-point symptom scale, which is, as explained above, not clinically significant and probably not even clinically detectable.

> [...] If the “stigma and shame” preventing people from seeking mental health treatment disappeared overnight, and everyone got treatment – and this seems to have largely happened, as antidepressants and CBT are as popular as they have ever been – it seems unlikely to make any difference in outcome.

alphabet

02:50

@CowperKettle That author seems to have no relevant expertise; I wouldn't trust them.

CowperKettle

@alphabet Yes, could be so. It's that Eiko Fried is subscribed to him on Twitter, and that interested me

alphabet

The meta-analysis doesn't seem to ever say that the drop is only 2 points. I suspect he's misreading one of the figures in it, which shows a drop of 2 in some fancy metric calculated from HAM-D scores.

CowperKettle

The older I'll get, the less discerning of the quality of sources I'll get, according to statistical research. I think that I should avoid reading on politics alltogether for that reason.

alphabet

He's just a layperson misreading the scientific literature.

CowperKettle

I don't know his name or education etc.

I wonder what percentage of patients is resistant to CBT in depression

The rough estimate bandied about for mainline antidepressant meds is 30% and for "everything we could throw at it" is 15% (the latted figure is stated by Lisa Pan for severe resistant depression with attempts of suicide)

alphabet

03:04

The thing is: most depressive episodes resolve on their own within a year, and many on much shorter timescales. Any treatment will "work" for a majority of patients if you give it enough time.

CowperKettle

So it might be that a vast majority of depression studies are trash; too short in duration

alphabet

@CowperKettle Mmm, trash. Perhaps I should become a depression researcher.

CowperKettle

07:02

LOL

The journal Cureus has retracted 56 papers nearly two years after it first began to suspect the works were of dubious lineage.

Dang. I saw an interesting review in it. Another journal publishing trash research

CowperKettle

07:37

gruntled

Adjective: gruntled (comparative more gruntled, superlative most gruntled)

(obsolete) Grunted.
gruntled (comparative more gruntled, superlative most gruntled)
(humorous) Satisfied, pleased, contented. [from 1930s]
Antonym: disgruntled

HippoSawrUs

08:48

@Mitch And some moms just make up stuff to entertain themselves, especially since the '80s.

Dannyu NDos

I'm going to the doctor's office tomorrow, and I cannot choose where to dine in-between the route.

McDonald's or KFC?

user 85795

09:10

I'd choose KFC.

@Mitch yup, that works. Thanks.

CowperKettle

@DannyuNDos You could prepare healthy food and bring it along :)

HippoSawrUs

@CowperKettle Mitch said something about Wiktionary's especially add on… I don't really pay attention; but from now on, possibly, all my especially phrases will add only arbitrary info. It's just for fun, especially with Nutellington. We tried that today…meh.

CowperKettle