@Jasper Oh, I hadn't noticed! When did he get suspended?

@Jasper Hi! Good to see you too. :)

Wow, am I out of the loop. Do you know why he was suspended?

I'm... a bit shocked. I mean, it doesn't escape my notice that it would have been shortly after I complained about him, but I didn't get a response from the mods.

Anyway, thanks for telling me.

That's been a long battle. How is it going?

I hope that day arrives soon.

That's ambitious! How is that going?

Haha... You have time. Learning other languages isn't easy. But the Romance languages, at least, are all related.

I know French and Spanish. That made Italian easier (but I lost it already.)

But German... that ought to be an interesting challenge. I admire your ambition.

@Jasper heh! Did you ever know it?

@Jasper lol! Oh, that...

Yeah, well, welcome to the club, I guess. ;)

@Jasper lol! Well, that's curable, you know.

Have you been dating?

It is wise, but maybe harder to achieve. Mental problems don't preclude meeting and dating. But I'm an optimist.

@Jasper Haha. Just a different structure. Probably just ignorance. I'm fearful to explore totally new things.

@Jasper Stupid is a label. I'm sure you have good qualities. But these are your choices, not mine.

@Jasper Well, again, I admire your ambition. I thought about trying to learn German a few years ago, but life got in the way, in a good way.

@Jasper Ikr?

@Jasper I think he's mean, too. I think it goes a bit beyond that. But I remember some of the things I've said and know that we can all have those moments.

@Jasper I think it might go beyond that. He doesn't seem to be able to recognize anything bad in his own behavior.

Well, I'm relieved that he's suspended, so I thank you for letting me know.

Take care of yourself. If you find German fascinating, please let me know. It's still not off the table for me! ;)

@Jasper: Hello Jasper! I don't remember if I've ever introduced myself before. I usually just lurk on here. But it's good to see you around again. How long did it take for your hair to grow back?

Hello

Nice to see you again

We all have our preferences

Welcome back

:-)

@Sᴋᴜʟʟᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ: did you change your name from Skullpatrol? When did that happen?

@Jasper: I see!

@Jasper That's a nice song. I used to be able to play it on piano

@sumelic about six months ago.

@Jasper yeah I think you said it, why was it a bad experience? Women all over you got tirirng?

Why don't we have naming companies or similar as a standard reason to vote to close?

The usual approach is to call it proofreading, but the term doesn't really match the intent.

Please ignore the above question - it's more appropriate on meta.

@Jasper Not really, maybe just the other half dozen others named in the Help Center that are explicitly off-topic. It comes up often enough to justify considering a canned response.

@Lawrence We should probably put all naming questions in the off-topic list, whether it's companies, book titles, or program variables.

hi @Jasper

@curiousdannii That was my intention :) . It's already there in the 5th dot point of the off-topic list.

@Jasper There is. When voting to close a question, there's a list of reasons why it is off-topic. Naming doesn't come up, so we have to type something appropriate each time. I'd like this to be automated. The link to the Help Center can even be part of the message.

Since it's not yet automated, I'm wondering whether there's a reason for that.

There used to be a rather heavy-handed canned-response for voting to delete answers, basically saying that the answer was totally worthless (I'm paraphrasing, but the sentiment was at least as strong). It was removed. Canned reasons have shifted around over time (changed wording, added, removed), so this is something that the mods (?) consider from time to time.

@Jasper Having a look now.

@Jasper I think I understand what you're trying to get at, but (1) idiomatically, the preamble "I am not sure" is just diplomatic language to avoid saying, "I know it isn't going to last"; and (2) if you're trying to say that the second form is slightly more absolute or the first form is slightly less, the way you're saying it can give the impression that both are not actually absolute.

There may be a little less confidence with the whether version, but I think the rest are all rather confident in the negative.

@Jasper 50-50 is expressing doubt.

Ok, let's look at this a little more.

Suppose you have a scale of 0 to 100, with 0 being absolutely sure it will fail and 100 being absolutely sure it will succeed, where will you place those statements?

So 0-100 vs 0-99.

@Jasper Glad to help :)

Who's sim?

There are rumours of a legendary mod that was granted mod status as an honorary gesture, possibly a sign of his much up-voted questions. Perhaps simchona is similar? I read somewhere that mods are mods for life. I don't know whether community mods enjoy the same privilege.

@Jasper I looked into removing the German. It seems the issue is when the german SE and our SE have the same tags we get their questions. At least, that's what it looked like to me... I didn't see a specific german feed.

What preposition is more appropriate in such a sentence?

The driver stoped (at) (on) the zebra crossing

@Jasper yeah I'm all italicy

@JustynaNogala They mean different things, I'd say.

how different?

oh yeah

"at" means a meter before the lines? yeah?

When you stop "at" something, you are usually next to it, or nearby, and the intended meaning is that you stop in an appropriate place - i.e. most likely you are stopping before you reach the crossing, so that people can cross.

When you stop "on" something, it usually means "on top"; at least, that's how I'd interpret it.

Thank you. Now I see it ;)

If I stopped on the crossing I could run over a pedestrian. If I stopped at the crossing, the pedestrian would be less likely to be run over.

xD

btw, is there another way of saying "to cross the road"? because I don't wanna use the words cross and a crossing at the same time, it's sounds kind of weird.

The drivers of fancy cars such as BMW's and Mercedeses are less likely to stop at the zebra crossing to let a pedestrian cross the road.

@JustynaNogala That sounds fine.

if you say so.

Never have I heard such an utter nonsense.

How can a native speaker speak worse than a foreigner?

I guess you're refering to an overuse of informal language or maybe it has its roots deeper than that.

@JustynaNogala Native speakers take many things about the language for granted, whereas non-native speakers intentionally try to conform to 'best practice', if I may use the term this way. It's like any complex skill - after a while, you get used to using just the subset you use often, instead of working regularly on everything. Of course, native speakers have the benefit of intuitively knowing when a turn of phrase just 'sounds' right, so it's not all doom and gloom :) .

@Lawrence But arguably native speakers determine what the language is. So they can't really be wrong... individuals make mistakes, but collectively however they speak is the language.

You're both right guys.

:)

However, natives make mistakes deliberately even if they know the rules.

Non-natives make mistakes unconsciously.

Non-natives try to sound like the natives so they all to often sound awkward.

Hi @Jasper.

Hi @KitZ.Fox, what happened to the poor little hidden-at-birth, definitely-not-swapped-as-a-baby, polyjuiced, aliased HP in the end?

She decides that she wants to continue being a woman.

Ah.

I don't know. It's not my story. It's @Mr.Shiny's.

But you were helping :) .

I think it's more likely he'd transition to male.

Glad to hear it.

But first he'd think he was trans-gendered AND simultaneously discover that he's the target of a dark wizard prophecy

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Because of the patriarchy?

Because I'm thinking that he'll want to support the cause of feminism.

@KitZ.Fox No, because his physical gender is a sham, a disguise.

And it doesn't hurt that he's suddenly respected and deferred to.

@KitZ.Fox I'd probably write it in a less-sexist world where that doesn't happen.

...

I guess I am interested in exploring different issues.

But let's say we flip it, and the prophecy referred to a girl, and she was polyjuiced to be male

You man.

;-)

Right. That would be revealing.

I'd still have her transition to female, that is, assert her true gender

Suddenly no one takes you seriously and they are always staring at your breasts. Of course, they are rather fabulous breasts...

But maybe only secretly? I mean, she still has a dark wizard to defeat.

Also there is the issue that nobody knows what she looks like as a woman.

Transitions to female and is then a transvestite? Hmm.

@KitZ.Fox No, I mean, transition at home, but in public still wear the pj disguise

for safety

I think they would have to tell her just prior to adolescence, because of body changes.

But seriously: puberty is going to SUCK for this person. What happens to your period when you're polyjuiced? Or vice versa?

Or maybe, they have to renew it every year or so, to let her body catch up.

Because otherwise, she'll be a baby boy forever.

sighs this is so complicated.

@Jasper What are they about?

@KitZ.Fox yeah I think they'd need a constant supply of material from the source person

It'd have to be someone far away or else there's the possibility of mistaken identity

Somewhere, in New Zealand, there's a muggle family that saves their son's hair from his haircuts and leaves them outside, with a dead mouse, and they don't find that weird at all.

But don't let the neighbours know.

Dead mouse?

Maybe they move every year "for mom's job", and they find a new source. The boyu/girl doesn't find it unusual to change his/her appearance every year because that's the way it has always been, although it is a secret.

It's a game.

@Lawrence For the owl that delivers mail to wizards

@KitZ.Fox Perhaps but they'd also need to live as muggles, on the run while the dark wizard runs rampant in their old world.

Otherwise, the wizarding world is just too small and they'd be caught.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Ah. But in that fictional world, why not just go back in time and pass on some hair to an earlier version?

I think you're going into great details of how this pjp is limiting, but isn't the rest of the story more interesting? maybe you make a 100 year supply and it accurately tracks how the other person looks via magic

@Lawrence Well, we're assuming they're using the polyjuice potion from HP, which transforms your physical self into whatever the current state of the self of the target person is. That is, you change into whatever they looked like at the time you took their hair.

So if you want to maintain a disguise as the same person over time, you need a constantly updated source of hair.

oh, well, I thought you'd decided it wasn't HP based

my mistake

we haven't come up with new rules for how the polyjuice works

The thing with magic is that you can just make up any rules you want...

if we're making up rules, why not just have the parents magically alter the actual gender of their child

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Indeed. The hair came from a pj'd version, and it's before the time-limit to expiry, so it turns someone into the disguised version.

no disguise, just a sex-change.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 why not have them magically defeat the dark lord before they get pregnant ;)

@MattE.Эллен well, the prophecy says the child will do it.

I'll be honest, I sorta hate prophecy.

"Let's just take away choice and agency"

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 it's the motivation of wanting a child that causes his downfall. prophecies are vague

Turner Cooper Movies?

ah

@MattE.Эллен I'd probably write it so that prophecies are just superstition, and every case of a prophecy being fulfilled was simply because people believed the prophecy would be true.

Someone makes a prophecy, someone else makes it happen.

But also I'd make the prophecy wrong

I dunno.

:D

But hiding a child by raising them as a different gender..... it could work.

But polyjuice itself is probably too risky and error-prone.

the dark lord made the prophecy about himself, to give people hope and at the same time prevent himself from ever being defeated, because children are rubbish at magic

What happens if your disguise-giver gets hit by a car and loses a limb? Or just dies?

@MattE.Эллен ooh, good one.

Basically creating religion.

yes!

Actually that's a lot like one of the elements of the story I have been fiddling with.

oh?

@Jasper Funny you should say that. I had a discussion recently about this. TCM has arguably thousands of years of empirical data - repeatable, testable, so it's scientific. The primary objection is that it doesn't have a model that accords with reality. The macro level is testable, but the micro level, well, that's debatable.

@Jasper You think it's rubbish on Wikipedia's say-so?

@Lawrence TCM is testable. It doesn't have good data though.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 By not having good data, do you mean it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't?

@MattE.Эллен yeah something along the lines of one of the first magic users causes an apocalypse, finds immortality (well, effectively), and creates religions to restructure the world.

sounds exciting!

@Lawrence No, I mean, the thousands of years of usage is not properly controlled for scientific consideration. It hasn't been double-blind tested, for example.

@Jasper There are some who equate it with hypnosis, very much a placebo effect. Others consider it quite effective.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yup, that's part of the objection, too.

@Jasper Well, the stuff that's like eucalyptus oil for headaches (external use) is quite effective.

@Jasper Heh . Don't knock pain-relief, though :) .

@Jasper It's tough when you don't have a fundamental trust in the effectiveness of the medication.

@Jasper Bye. Have a good rest.

@Lawrence I guess I don't understand where you're going with this. TCM can be studied scientifically. Some of it has been (and been found to be placebo).

is the word 'bilk' common?

i.imgur.com/GO22Mqr.webm does it have a name in Maths?

too many questions ok

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I'm undecided. I think objective results have been demonstrated, but there are questions about consistency. The general idea that TCM is sometimes slow to act (more like vitamin supplements than antibiotics, to take it to extremes) doesn't help the perception. On the other hand, the physiological basis seems to be lacking - e.g. apparently 'meridians' can't be medically demonstrated, don't correspond to blood vessels, lymphatic systems, etc.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 What I didn't pick up until too late was that Jasper might not have intended it to be an academic discussion. I hope I haven't caused any problems there.

@Lawrence Jasper talks about lots of things. it's fine.

@crl Perhaps something related to a square spiral.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Thanks.

@Lawrence I'd be interested in seeing cases where TCM has been shown to have positive, non-placebo benefits.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 There was something I half remember. Have a look at this: <http://www.techtimes.com/articles/93754/20151012/malaria-cure-based-on-traditio‌​nal-chinese-medicine-wins-tu-youyou-nobel-prize.htm>, not sure whether this is it. I think there's a lot of scope and promise in TCM-scientific collaboration.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 What do you think of TCM personally? Would you use it?

@MattE.Эллен I'm having trouble following all this with the boobs and dead mice and ...pj is for pajamas, right?

@Lawrence I wouldn't use it.

@Mitch poly juice potion

@Mitch Boobs and mice are unrelated

@MattE.Эллен I like pajamas better

TCM, as I see it, is a collection of folk remedies with no plausible basis for utility. What effects it does have are based on poorly-understood chemical reactions. There is essentially no way to predict what it will do. There is no control for quality or dose. Where TCM can be shown to have any positive effect, it essentially stops being "traditional chinese medicine" and becomes just "medicine"

@Mitch certainly more comfortable

@Mitch The boobs was Jasper talking about a movie.

Also Turner Classic Movies. I think one of them involves chinese medicine that involves dead mice.

The PJ is polyjuice potion, used to disguise the identity (and gender) of a fugitive child.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Ok.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 so 'load o' horse twaddle', presuming that horse twaddle has medicinal effects.

@Mitch an aphrodisiac

@Mitch Well, it might have medicinal effects, depending on the horse and its diet and what you're currently suffering from right now.

But it might also just taste really bad and waste your money and divert you from getting proper treatment.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 haha I trolled you all. But I do think mice have mammary glands, not prominent. And the owls really don't care one way or the other about that.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 But at least you're doing something about it.

@Mitch Something must be done. This is something. Therefore we must do it.

@MattE.Эллен I don't think horse twaddle does anything like that. considers trying

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 "just don't do something. Stand there!"

@Mitch ow, you injured my idiom parser

unreconsiders the horse twaddle thing. that stuff is nasty

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Depending on what the horse is suffering from right now, you might be able to get a vaccine from it :) . I'm no MD, though, so don't quote me on this.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 My day is complete.

the thing with handwriting recognition is that I can't tell if my spelling is any good or is significantly affected by chance

@MattE.Эллен spelling is what concerns you? I might as well type given how slowly I have to handwrite to get them to understand anything.

@Lawrence Horsepox. It's a thing.

@Mitch this works ok, but is noticeably slower than typing

You're using it now?

Looks fine to me.

handwriting is slow

@Lawrence Yeah. But the point is that it's a poor substitute for actual medicine. It's just random chemicals.

if everyone used a speech interface, we'd all be yelling to shout out all the other users

The other problem is that TCM is totally unregulated and has no oversight. So anyone can sell anything.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 barely that. random biologicals. or animal and plant parts.

@Mitch Also Tetanus?

If I wasn't using my wa com anyway I'd type

@Mitch Well, those are made of chemicals

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 They have entire hospitals devoted to 'alternate medicine. Like the 'Teaching Hospital for acupuncture for Liver disease'

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 ... that people have been taking for millennia :) .

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Well, your face is made of chemicals.

And I meant that to sting.

not in the eyes though. that would be mean.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Well, yes, there is that. :/

as a comedian once said "If it worked it would just be called medicine"

@Lawrence You can get tetanus from a horse? I guess, if they stepped on you. Which would be troublesome enough without the infection

@MattE.Эллен Mr Shiny and New's a comedian now? :P

possibly

@Mitch Ha ha. I meant they use(d) horses to produce vaccine. Not sure whether it's the tetanus one, though.

Oh. never knew that.

@MattE.Эллен I was referring to this message.

ok

books.google.co.uk/…

sites.psu.edu/whothehelldoyouthinkiam/2015/03/25/…

I can't find an origin

maybe I should ask on the main site

@Lawrence Just because an idea is old doesn't mean it's right.

@Lawrence no but I'm quoting Tim Minchin

@Mitch Maybe this? <http://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/blog/1945-diphtheria-antitoxin-product‌​ion-film>

> "By definition, alternative medicine is medicine that's either not been proven to work or been proven not to work. Do you know what they call alternative medicine that's been proven to work? Medicine."

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 that's who I was thinking of!

@MattE.Эллен He's the only comedian, or indeed thinker of any kind, who matters.

:D

If it was easy, it would be called "the way"

It it were so horse, it would just be called 'twaddle'

Which reminds me. Mahlzeit!

@Mitch gesundheit.

By definition, an alternative comedian is a comedian that's either not been proven to be Tim Minchin or been proven not to be Tim Minchin. Do you know what they call an alternative comedian that's been proven to be Tim Minchin? Tim Minchin.

What's the fancy name for the rule that makes there have been a group of people wrong and there has been a group of people correct?

Something something agreement.

Yes, agreement.

Subject-verb agreement, if you will.

Or concord.

Thanks

[ SmokeDetector ] Bad keyword in answer, bad keyword with email in answer, email in answer: "5 weeks pregnant" or "5 week pregnancy?" by Alexia Ruby on english.stackexchange.com …

This needs to be closed with fire: english.stackexchange.com/questions/315423/…

Just remember to stay calm pal :)

Don't waste too much time and energy on this stuff...

How's life? @Jasper

Are you still on meds? @Jasper

Is it helping?

No ping, @Jasper since nobody's chatting

Wow! Now that sounds...ambitious?

Believe in that my friend, believe in that.

Nope, have you?

Trust, like respect is earned in my book.

:-D