English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

tchrist

00:00

Mom's had this.

I'm more or less without my dominant hand.

I can type a little.

Mostly I need to rest it.

And drink lots of water.

Hot burning and cold burning at the same time.

Cerberus

Super annoying.

webmd.com/arthritis/features/gout-triggers

tchrist

Indomethacin, 50mg, 3x daily.

Cerberus

Does this website sound reliable?

tchrist

Reasonably.

Cerberus

It seems to be OK.

Right.

Are you on any anti-gout medication?

tchrist

00:03

Well, indomethatin.

And they think it's pseudo-gout not gout, but dunno the diff.

I don't eat rich foods and booze it.

Which they asked me. Repeatedly.

Cerberus

Hmm.

tchrist

I'm waiting on blood work. May or may not say anything.

I did get dehydrated last week. This may have been the trigger.

I should have kept a daily log of all the trophies, living and dead, that my kitties bring me.

They are truly ferocious hunters.

Every day there are new dead things, sometimes living ones.

Cerberus

I see.

What is the most exotic thing they have brought home?

tchrist

Two nights ago Lorin somehow managed to capture and bring in, climbing through the basement cat door, a perfectly living white-lined sphinx moth. These are large and warm-blooded, acting like hummingbirds. It was flying around my kitchen. I released it.

@Cerberus Gartner snakes, probably.

Garter. Whatever the word is.

Robusto

Jul 9 '13 at 4:03, by Robusto

Cats are super-predators.

tchrist

00:10

There are daily rodent kills. The voles they always kill, the mice they sometimes play with.

And I don't want to talk about the birds. It makes me nearly cry.

And I get calls all the time from people about my lost cat. I look out the back door and say thank you.

There's a path behind my house in the field and the cats like to greet people. These people think the cats are escaped, pick them up, read the tag, and call me.

"Drop the cat and get off my lawn!"

Of course it isn't actually my lawn but shared open space/parkland.

> "People say gout can be some of the most severe and worst pain they’ve ever experienced."

Yes.

I had NO FUCKING IDEA how incredibly painful this thing is.

It's something you would do anything to avoid.

Lorin is so needy sometimes.

He'll walk on me till I get up.

I shut the door on them this morning but couldn't get back to sleep. Simply can't sleep when the sun is ascendant.

@Cerberus The magpie was exotic.

And this is little Lorin who got it, too. He catches dragonflies daily.

I don't know how.

Cerberus

@tchrist Warm blooded, really?

tchrist

> Gout attacks may be preventable with lifestyle changes, but pseudogout attacks aren't.

Cerberus

@tchrist Impressing. Garter, probably, since they are called ringslangen in Dutch.

tchrist

@Cerberus Endothermic, yes.

Cerberus

I had no idea insects could be warm blooded.

Hmm magpies, exotic?

@tchrist Ugh.

tchrist

00:25

Hawk moths are endotherms.

@Cerberus Because of relative sizes.

But the current record-holder is the sphinx (or hawk) moth, whose flight muscles reach a temperature of 115 degrees! So it turns out that the concept of a warm-blooded versus cold-blooded division of animals is overly simplistic. Some insects defy this separation.

It’s powered flight. It requires more energy that would be otherwise available.

You have Sphingidae, too, I’m certain (but haven’t checked).

Sphingidae

The Sphingidae are a family of moths (Lepidoptera), commonly known as hawk moths, sphinx moths, and hornworms; it includes about 1,450 species. It is best represented in the tropics, but species are found in every region. They are moderate to large in size and are distinguished among moths for their rapid, sustained flying ability. Their narrow wings and streamlined abdomens are adaptations for rapid flight. Some hawk moths, such as the hummingbird hawk moth or the white-lined sphinx, hover in midair while they feed on nectar from flowers, so are sometimes mistaken for hummingbirds. This hovering...

White-lined sphinx. That’s what he released into my kitchen. I can't understand how he got it to hold still to get it down the steps into the chute-flap and back up again.

> This hovering capability is only known to have evolved four times in nectar feeders: in hummingbirds, certain bats, hoverflies, and these sphingids,

It’s hard to hover.

That one.

Hyles lineata

They are very beautiful.

Google Images

Cerberus

01:19

I have a similar dead moth at my parents' house.

But it may have been found or caught far away, who knows?

tchrist

01:57

0

Q: Meaning of sentence

My boyfriend sent a message. Nothing someone says before a word 'But' it really couts. what is the meaning of above sentence.

meaning

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Monkey the Cat Hunts for Dinner

►

Check that out.

tchrist

Nice kitty.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

:)

tchrist

> It turns out, as long as your cat wasn't born feral or on a farm, it's probably a clumsy hunter. Birds and rodents zip away from its plodding, obvious approach. ... Unless you trained your pet in the art of war before the end of its second month—a crucial period in its development—it's probably next to useless against live prey (even if it does sometimes get lucky).

So wrong. So very, very wrong.

I don’t call a d6 kills per day per kitty “sometimes getting lucky”.

Cerberus

02:23

I agree they can still catch live prey.

But is it possible that the prey they catch is usually weakened or wounded already, or something?

tchrist

When they catch young’uns, sure.

Cerberus

And is it possible that kittens are trained automatically on house mice?

Our cats always brought in various kinds of prey.

tchrist

Mine never saw mice for many months.

Cerberus

Mice, squirrels, bunnies, moles, magpies, any kind of bird.

tchrist

Well, any bird that isn’t much larger than the kitty.

Cerberus

02:25

I remember finding those beautiful squirrel tails in the bathroom.

tchrist

My neighbor saw a face-off between Lorin and the local duck. The duck won.

Mine brought home the end of a coyote tail once.

Risky business.

Cerberus

tchrist

Rufous!

Cerberus

Most of our squirrels are like that. I believe we have talked about this.

tchrist

Lorin-colored squirrels.

I don’t recall that.

Our native ones are the grey or black version of that one.

Here he is

Cerberus

02:27

We have grey ones sometimes.

Pet him for me.

tchrist

He just came to the door, very chatty. No prey this time. Dark has just fallen.

Cerberus

And Olórin?

tchrist

That one.

It’s Randy who’s . . . somewhere.

Lorin comes in now.

Cerberus

Oh, huh.

I was confused.

tchrist

Randy I’ve not seen for a long time, maybe five or six hours.

Cerberus

02:29

Olórin and Mithrandir being the same.

tchrist

I have no earthly idea where he spends his time.

Abert's squirrel

Abert's squirrel (or tassel-eared squirrel) (Sciurus aberti) is a tree squirrel in the genus Sciurus endemic to the Rocky Mountains from United States to Mexico, with concentrations found in Arizona, The Grand Canyon, New Mexico, and southwestern Colorado. == Etymology == Abert's squirrel is named after Colonel John James Abert, an American naturalist and military officer who headed the Corps of Topographical Engineers and organized the effort to map the American West in the 19th century. == Taxonomy == The currently accepted scientific name for Abert's squirrel is Sciurus aberti Woodhouse. There...

Cerberus

Nice.

Robusto

Cream - Cat's Squirrel.

►

tchrist

That’s an unusually colored one, the kind that lives only at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. The rest are slate-grey to charcoal.

The white tail seems counter to survival.

Cerberus

02:45

Perhaps he resembles light playing on dark rocks.

tchrist

03:04

Infanticide is practiced for many reasons other than eating. — Hot Licks 37 mins ago

What a waste!!! — deadrat 17 mins ago

Cerberus

@hemflit Especially infantivore is good; it is properly formed and semantically appropriate. Paedophage is nice and properly formed, but it means child-eater. +1 — Cerberus 59 secs ago

tchrist

You’re distinguishing infants from children, I imagine.

Cerberus

03:23

Children are often fantes.

So infans is more specific.

tchrist

When the hell did from now on and in the future become the mealy-mouthed going forward crap?

Cerberus

03:42

I hate it.

Feb 13 '13 at 23:13, by aedia λ

@Cerb Just between you and I, I think that is the strategy that will be employed going forward.

Mar 3 '11 at 14:41, by Robusto

So ... @Kosmonaut: Are we cool? Can we move on from our recent acrimony? Or is that going to color our relationship going forward?

I see poor @Robusto once fell into the trap. But only once, luckily.

tchrist

Bizspeak. Just say no.

Cerberus

Aedia's line was ironic.

tchrist

I know.

Cerberus

Sep 9 '12 at 20:15, by Cerberus

Is this monstrosity only becoming popular in England, or also elsewhere?

It seems @Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 is the only person in this room who has used it repeatedly without irony.

tchrist

It’s cloying.

And finally Randy is here.

I went out and called for him and it took him like 7 minutes to get here.

It’s pitch black here. No stars. Warm. CRICKETS are loud.

Clouds hide stars.

Cerberus

03:48

I see the last time Mr Shiny used it seriously was two years ago.

tchrist

Moon, what’s left of it, still unrisen.

Cerberus

So there is hope.

tchrist

And his tail is wet.

Cerberus

Cool.

Are you never afraid, when they are afield?

tchrist

Always.

Randy is hard to see though. Lorin glows in the moonlight.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

03:57

@tchrist My kitty hunts crickets these days.

tchrist

Nighthoppers.

I don't know why, but although Lorin seems to bring me grasshoppers daily, he doesn't bring me crickets. I thin it's because he comes it as night falls.

Randy does not bring insects home.

Gigili

05:30

@RegDwigнt Was für ein controversialtheory ist es

@Mitch Absolutely, and Reg is supposed to do something hurtful

@Mitch yaY!!

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