English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

12:34 AM

@Cerberus Or the dragon was borne or the dragon had borne.

1:27 AM

@tchrist Well, people always die who shouldn't. Not that that is an exculpation of ham-handed attempts to deal with the crisis, but there it is.

Cerberus

@Robusto Yeah, but I don't expect the asker to be looking for that sense...

Robusto

@Cerberus I just mentioned that for the sake of completeness. Completeness has a pleasing symmetry to it.

My mother-in-law turned 100 last year. Can you imagine the actuarial odds of her surviving longer from that point than zillionaire basketball player Kobe Bryant? It's really all luck.

Cerberus

Perhaps not all!

Robusto

And yet you've seen how capricious the Fates are.

@Mitch I haven't made any plans beyond 100 million years.

tchrist

@Cerberus statnews.com/2020/03/10/simple-math-alarming-answers-covid-19

Your data are incorrect.

10% of infected Italians need an ICU bed. 50% need a hospital bed.

You can't just count those who need an ICU bed.

And ventilator, etc.

Bottom line:

> At a 10% hospitalization rate, all hospital beds in the U.S. will be filled by about May 10.

Two months until we're full.

Lots of fudge factor in there, but this is super-serious even if you halve or double a couple times here or there.

And that's with that 10% rate you were accidentally using, too.

Not anything like what's going on Italy, nor even what went on in China.

> But among 44,000 cases in China, about 15% required hospitalization and 5% ended up in critical care. In Italy, the statistics so far are even more dismal: More than half of infected individuals require hospitalization and about 10% need treatment in the ICU.

Cerberus

1:46 AM

@tchrist Of those diagnosed, not of those infected.

But I agree with your general point: insufficient capacity is a major issue.

tchrist

Infected means sick.

Cerberus

A much larger number will be infected.

tchrist

Oh because of testing. True.

Cerberus

In China, just before the lock-down, the ratio was around 1:8, I believe.

tchrist

?

Because they gave up on testing?

Cerberus

1:48 AM

1 diagnosed to 8 infected.

You can't test tens of millions of people.

I have another nice, fear-mongering article for you.

tchrist

That article wasn't mongering fear.

Cerberus

tchrist

> Unwarranted panic does no one any good, but neither does ill-informed complacency. It’s inappropriate to assuage the public with misleading comparisons to the seasonal flu or by assuring people that there’s “only” a 2% fatality rate. The fraction of cases that are severe really sets Covid-19 apart from more familiar respiratory illnesses, compounded by the fact that it’s whipping through a population without natural immune protection at lightning speed.

Cerberus

@tchrist I was being playful.

Those bars above are the number of new cases per day.

Blue is actual cases (only known later), orange is diagnosed cases.

So maybe Italy already has, what, 40,000 actual infections, known and unknown?

I don't know about the 1:8 ratio.

tchrist

Is that the known unknowns or the unknown unknowns, Rumsfield?

Korea is testing 20,000 a day right now.

Cerberus

1:53 AM

Only confirmed cases.

tchrist

Fauci said we'd need millions of tests.

Cerberus

Yes, Korea is testing a lot, and so they have a lower death rate.

The same applies to China outside Hubei, I think.

medium.com/@tomaspueyo/…

Here is the article whence came that chart.

tchrist

We're running out of reagent here, too.

@Cerberus I'd invert the final clause.

Cerberus

In China as well, or so I heard.

@tchrist I suppose I could, with the adverb of location.

tchrist

But maybe I've been reading too much Spanish. They like to do that there, too.

Cerberus

1:55 AM

It is a bit old fashioned.

But I mind it not.

tchrist

Lift thine eyes to the mountains whence cometh help.

"whence come" is an inversion-attractor.

Cerberus

There comes the King!

Adverbs of place like that.

In Cuba lies my heart.

tchrist

Locative inversion, it's called.

Of which was that no example.

It wasn't even inversion.

Just OSV but the SV is still S before V except after C or sounded like Ed as in Wilbur and Fred.

Cerberus

Argh, don't speak in code!

By the way, you'll like the article I posted above.

tchrist

To whom shall I will it?

Cerberus

2:01 AM

It also has a spreadsheet "when should I close my office/company?".

I saw a few incorrect assumptions and extrapolations in the article.

But its main point stands.

tchrist

My company suspended all business travel for the foreseeable future tonight. Exceptions require executive override.

Cerberus

Good.

But you'll still congregate at the office?

I hear Denmark has closed all schools.

Now I wonder, why don't we?

tchrist

We were sending lemmings into California ever few days.

Cerberus

Poor critters.

tchrist

Because seven-year-olds are immortal?

Cerberus

2:03 AM

But any congregation of people spreads the virus.

And the virus will infect others.

Most children have grandparents.

tchrist

Yes, even a seven-year-old whose symptoms are almost unnoticeable.

Cerberus

My parents are flying to Geneva in ten days, I think, to visit my brother.

tchrist

Courageous?

Why not drive?

Cerberus

Well, that takes much longer.

I have booked plane tickets for June.

I wanted to go by train, but that, too, takes quite a bit longer than flying, and it is much more expensive.

tchrist

Don't take mass transit.

Take personal transit.

Cerberus

2:05 AM

It will take too long by bike.

tchrist

I'm supposed to go to Geneva in June, too. I may drive.

Cerberus

How far away is yours?

tchrist

I certainly shan't be booking a plane ticket.

13-15 hours something like that.

Cerberus

That is far away!

Ours is 10 hours by car, 7.5 by train.

tchrist

Naw, just a kilomile.

1024, in fact.

Cerberus

2:08 AM

Somewhat less than 1000 km for us.

tchrist

It would be shorter if it were in miles.

Because then you would have to use metric time instead.

Cerberus

I wish we had metric time.

A missed opportunity.

tchrist

I still want a 360 day year.

Cerberus

There are two units of time one cannot change: day and year.

tchrist

Oh, it can.

Cerberus

2:10 AM

All the others are insignificant.

tchrist

Just not quickly.

I want 12 months of 30 days each, damn it.

We can just have a leap month every so often.

Cerberus

So I would propose that we take a day and divide it into ten hours, another ten hours for each night.

tchrist

Or nice intercalary days like Yule and Lithe.

Cerberus

We don't need months nor weeks.

tchrist

Yes, you do.

Cerberus

2:11 AM

I think intercalcary days are fine.

No, we can drop the moon.

And weeks don't even have idols.

tchrist

Moon would be lonely were his moonths taken from him.

Cerberus

She will survive.

tchrist

And you need weeks so you can have weekends.

Cerberus

You can do ten-day weeks with tridiurnal ends.

tchrist

Nobody should have to work seven days on end.

It said so on that clay tablet.

Cerberus

2:14 AM

Then two end-days and one middle.

Let the Jews have their own calendar, as they like to do.

tchrist

We just learned that we have community spread in the Colorado high country.

> “What we saw today was evidence of community spread. It appears the virus will be disproportionately hitting our resort and mountain communities first,” Polis said.

That...is not what I would have expected. But it's the jetsetting skiing people.

> Gov. Jared Polis confirmed on Wednesday that the new coronavirus has spread in the high country without being detected by public health workers.

The state suspects that they’ll find this phenomenon, known as community spread, along the Front Range.

In one concrete move, the governor is advising older people and those with compromised immune systems to avoid the high country. Nine cases have been diagnosed so far in Aspen.

My immune system isn't compromised, but I'd prefer to stay on its good side nonetheless.

I live along the Front Range.

Cerberus

Wise.

I wish they had forbidden all private air travel.

A month ago.

tchrist

Horses and cattle long departed.

Mitch

@Robusto You could pencil in some things.

tchrist

I don't think the colleges and universities are coming back from Spring Break.

Lord I hope they don't congregate in drunken masses upon the Gulf strand this year.

Then again, maybe that would be why they wouldn't be coming back.

A worker at the Denver airport just tested positive.

Here they're now telling people at "events" to stay at least six feet away from others, and preferably eight.

Oh they've just suspended incoming travel from the EU for 30 days.

Cerberus

2:29 AM

That is something.

tchrist

The Brexiteers are not affected.

Cerberus

Haha.

tchrist

Well, it's true.

The UK isn't included in the ban.

> President Trump said he would be suspending all travel from Europe for the next 30 days starting Friday. The restrictions will not apply to Britain.

Cerberus

How about Switzerland?

Norway?

tchrist

He likes Norway.

Did you know that his grandfather died of the 1918 influenza pandemic?

Eram quod es, eris quod sum:

@Cerberus Holland is also growing fast.

Couple of days behind us, as we appear a couple days behind Germany and France.

Funny that the US State Department hasn't issued travel advisories for the new hot spots.

The thing with a pandemic is that because it's affecting virtually the entire world, the community of nations cannot send targeted relief (supplies, staff) collected among the unaffected majority to a particular country experiencing an epidemic. There is no such thing now.

During both World Wars, governments conscripted the wheels of industry to support their war effort.

Cerberus

2:48 AM

@tchrist Yeah.

Less than two weeks ago, we still had zero diagnosed cases.

tchrist

Medical supplies are the big thing, and I don't how many of those we could increase our own domestic production of even under the exigencies of the current battle.

Because we may simply not make those things ourselves.

Cerberus

Those are probably all made in China.

tchrist

That's the thing, yeah.

Cerberus

At least the shipments from China may not dry up too much.

@tchrist We could do that, but it would take many months.

tchrist

We'll see. We don't know whether it's safe to open the flood gates there again yet. I believe they're proceeding with great caution.

@Cerberus That's the problem. And I cannot foresee what the world even two months from now will be like. At all.

Cerberus

2:51 AM

@tchrist Yes, but I believe production mostly chugged on.

@tchrist Isolated, I hope.

tchrist

@Cerberus Oh, I don't think so. Remember the clearing of the pollution.

Cerberus

Yes.

But I don't think that is enough for a big effect?

They also prioritised necessary supplies, such as food and mecidine.

Those factories were probably never closed.

Or at least most weren't.

tchrist

RNA reagent shortage, posted yesterday.

Cerberus

I think there has been a shortage of that for quite some time, at least a week or so?

tchrist

Aye.

Cerberus

3:02 AM

asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Coronavirus/…

The twentieth of February.

tchrist

> The actor Tom Hanks said on Wednesday that he and his wife, Rita Wilson, have the coronavirus.

They're in Australia now, too.

> Mr. Hanks and Ms. Wilson, both 63, are in Australia, where he was set to film a movie about the life of Elvis Presley. “We felt a bit tired, like we had colds, and some body aches,” the Academy Award-winning actor said in a statement. “Rita had some chills that came and went. Slight fevers, too. To play things right, as is needed in the world right now, we were tested for the coronavirus, and were found to be positive.”

Cerberus

And?

tchrist

> He added that he and Ms. Wilson “will be tested, observed and isolated for as long as public health and safety requires.” “Not much more to it than a one-qday-at-a-time approach, no?” Mr. Hanks said in his statement, which he also posted on Instagram accompanied by a photograph of a lone medical glove in a hazardous waste container. “We’ll keep the world posted and updated.”

Poor guy.

You knew it had to start some time: people with names everybody recognizes catching it.

> Mr. Hanks is by far the most prominent entertainment figure to say he has the virus and, by going public with the information, instantly becomes the face of an outbreak that has cascaded around the globe.

With the seriousness of the pandemic still being debated in some corners of the media, learning that Mr. Hanks, the star of films like “Saving Private Ryan” and “Apollo 13,” has been stricken may make the situation seem much more tangible to some Americans.

We'll see.

The leader of the free world spoke today. Serious words that needed saying.

I'm going to miss Merkel.

Cerberus

3:30 AM

So are we all.

By the way, is the dot taken literally inside a character class?

It seems so.

I wonder why.

This was quite an annoying bug to solve.

Cerberus

3:44 AM

> [Korea heeft] zelfs genoeg capaciteit om tests te exporteren.

CowperKettle

4:55 AM

> Companyname lessor
Lessor to Companyname

I think the second option is better because the meaning is understood quicklier

Færd

9:09 AM

You might want to take this Coronavirus quiz from Harvard Medical School. Pass it and you get enrolled.

Just kidding. It addresses Americans, but it's informative enough for everyone.

RegDwigнt

11:41 AM

0

Q: single word for singular and plural

Is there a single English word for the singular and plural form of the word? I want to write a java function that gets the singular or plural form of the word based on the count. If count is greater than 1 then plural els singular word. To name the method, I wanted to know if there is any such wo...

This site just always keeps on giving.

Or taking?

I forgot.

Is there a single word for "giving" and "taking"?

It would definitely fix my problem.

@Færd I have studied the graph for the last fifteen minutes, and I still don't understand how the X axis works, or whether the creators do. It seems to represent three different, and conflicting, things at once.

And where's Germany anyway.

Why are graphs and charts always created by the people least qualified to do any kind of visual representation of anything.

2

Gigili

12:58 PM

@CowperKettle First time I see that word, "quicklier"

Mitch

1:08 PM

@Færd I GOT IN!

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected, potentially bad keyword in answer, toxic answer detected (159): Is there an alternative modern approach to the fused-head NP? by Timothy Bereta on english.SE

Mitch

For the most part seemed a good quiz... but there were some (irrelevant) bloopers:

> "Honestly, no one knows but as of now this is good science."

If no one knows then -that's not science-

Then there was this:

> "Many Chinese restaurants are reporting dramatic declines in business. How much higher are the odds of getting coronavirus from eating Chinese food vs. other ethnic cuisines?

0 times higher
1 times higher
2 times higher
3 times higher
(and so on)"

With the 'correct answer being '0 times higher'.

That's not how that works.

It should be 'as high', '2 times higher' etc. with the correct answer being 'as high'.

They know what is going on but they aren't able to articulate the numbers right and reflect on how they're saying it. '0 times as high' should mean 0, right?

And then there is the wording of the question which is a different problem. 'getting coronavirus from eating food'? No one is thinking it's the food. It's just 'Chinese'.

> Answer: No one in the US has gotten coronavirus from eating Chinese food or any other food. Coronavirus is a respiratory virus like influenza. People get food-borne illnesses like E. coli or Salmonella bacteria from food, not respiratory viruses. There is still more we don't know than what we know about this coronavirus. But it seems very unlikely that it will ever be transmitted through food.

No one is thinking 'eating Chinese food' is the problem. It's just being near 'Chinese' things. Just like sales of Corona beer are down. It's just mental association.

Anyway, I still got into Harvard and will now be parlaying that into conversational repartee:

> "So, where did you go to college?"

> "Oh, this place in the Boston area."

> "Oh yeah, where?"

> "Yeah, it's in Cambridge."

> "Oh like Lesley? Cambridge College? McLean Medical School? The New England Conservatory of Music? Regis? Simmons? BC? BU? Tufts? Brandeis? Bentley? Wellesley?"

> "No. None of those."

> "Wow, I know there are a lot of schools in Boston that I probably missed. Is it one I've heard of?"

> "Uhhh..."

Saying outloud that you went to Harvard is called 'dropping the H bomb' because it's stops the conversation.

> Dropping the name is commonly termed the H bomb. I definitely dance around dropping this bomb and would much rather drop little grenades like “I attend college in Massachusetts” or “It’s a school in Boston” commonly followed by “Well, it’s not really in Boston, but an area just outside of Boston” and if the inquirer is really pushy, they’ll get it out of me…maybe.

> My roommates think it’s weird that I still avoid it that much as a junior in college, but I’ve always noticed a change in dynamics post H bomb and it’s a change I don’t really like. I’m not embarrassed nor ashamed of my school, I just rather not openly discuss it? Not sure, I’m weird about it.

Matt E. Эллен

1:51 PM

I guess it stimulates the idea that you're a rich know-it-all, like saying "I went to Oxford"

but worse

anongoodnurse

@tchrist - Don't know much of your medical history, but if you're on ACE Inhibitors, might be a good reason to increase social isolation: thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanres/PIIS2213-2600(20)30116-8.pdf

Mitch

2:26 PM

@MattE.Эллен But is there a weird thing about Oxbridgeans worried about expectations? "Oh you went to Oxford/Cambridge? Then why aren't you a millionaire now? Why haven't you cured cancer yet?"

Matt E. Эллен

2:48 PM

@Mitch I don't know about Cambridge. With Oxford it's more like "Oh, you went to Oxford. You probably think a lot of yourself. You haven't cured cancer so you're no better than the rest of us."

CowperKettle

> Employees must be familiarized (against signature) with this procedure before being allowed entry to the production area.

Is this natural English?

The meaning is, their signatures must be obtained on some form saying "I, such and such, have familiarized myself with the procedure".

Matt E. Эллен

I don't know what (against signature) is meant to mean, but the rest is fine

CowperKettle

Against signature means that their signatures must be obtained to later prove that they indeed were told about the procedure.

Matt E. Эллен

hmmmm

CowperKettle

And if some of them violates the procedure it's not the foreman's fault, because he obtained their signatures.

They knew what the procedure was, and there are signatures to prove it.

Matt E. Эллен

2:55 PM

we have similar things to sign :D

perhaps (signature obtained)

CowperKettle

Russian translators routinely use "against signature" to translate Russian под подпись

> Company employees were not familiarized (against signature) with the document establishing the procedure for processing personal data of Company employees.

I'm translating an audit report in which different shortcomings in the processing of personal data by a company are described.

Multitran says "against signature" and most Russian translators use Multitran.

Maybe I should add some other formulation in Multitran for this phrase.

Thus far I've added some 700 terms to Multitran ))

Matt E. Эллен

maybe it's popular in the states, but it meant nothing to me

tchrist

@anongoodnurse Yeah, I'm in three separate high-risk categories, and that's one of them.

Maybe four or five, depending on how you count them. I'm treating this is as serious.

Robusto

> The town is under quarantine for Influenza. No one can come into this place or leave it. Good-Night! I see where you won't get to come home for a while. Henry cannot even go to Work. They closed mines No. 15 & 5 on account of it. (Excuse figures because I don't feel like writing)
> This is some place, they wouldn't let us celebrate the close of the world war. We wanted to hang the Kaiser in effigy but we weren't even _allowed_ to ring the bells. The policeman said we would celebrate next week. Wel that's just like this town always behind times.

@tchrist: Tom. Here's an excerpt from that letter I mentioned a while ago. It's from November 12, 1918, the day after the armistice ending World War I. The parts I extracted reference the war and the influenza epidemic.

tchrist

Thanks.

Robusto

3:09 PM

BTW, it's a letter to her sister, who lived in a different town.

tchrist

I see no way to avoid a rerun of all that ordeal.

terdon

@Mitch I disagree, actually. The entire point of that question is to emphasize that the idea that Chinese food is in any way related to the virus is absurd. They're right to write it as they did because that's the point they're trying to get across. Apparently people have actually been thinking that "chinese" food is somehow more likely to give them the virus.

Robusto

Two or three funerals every day in a town of about 2,000 population.

CowperKettle

@Færd I wonder when Russia gets a lockdown based on this chart.

There are suspiciously few cases in Russia reported, and most of them are persons who went to Italy.

I suspect that people are just not being diagnozed properly

tchrist

@CowperKettle Yeah, this is curious.

Matt E. Эллен

3:16 PM

@CowperKettle nice!

CowperKettle

Putin extended his term in power till 2036 the day before yesterday.

Matt E. Эллен

:-o

CowperKettle

As always, it was not he who proposed it but some other person. This time, Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space.

After her sole flight to space in the early 60s she has spent her life being a faux people's deputy, and is now a State Duma deputy.

tchrist

Has anyone here read Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy?

Matt E. Эллен

I haven't

CowperKettle

3:18 PM

I haven't

Mitch

@MattE.Эллен 'against signature' sounds strange. I've never seen it.

CowperKettle

I found some instances of "against signature" in Google Books.

tchrist

It's about how communities live through times of extreme orogenic/mountain-building/earth-quaking activities. There's a lockdown enforced by soldiers at each settlement's city-walls, and nobody gets in or out, because if you're out, you'll die.

It is strangely applicable to the isolating effects of mass pandemic lockdowns.

Mitch

@terdon OK. I suppose I think the whole thing absurd and so it's hard to see how others understand it.

terdon

@Mitch Yeah. But it's one of the things I've heard mentioned: people avoiding chinese food. May as well address such silliness directly.

@tchrist yes, it's excellent!

And yes, interesting parallel if a little dystopian.

tchrist

3:24 PM

@terdon I found it a little depressing, yeah.

Or painful.

I enjoyed her writing, though.

terdon

Very much so.

tchrist

@terdon I cannot begin to understand people leaping to casting racist aspersions about this infection.

Perhaps we can take it as a proxy or sentinel indicator of inherent racism in those individuals which is normally latent or unexpressed.

There's no such thing as an alien virus this side of The Andromeda Strain.

terdon

@tchrist Same reason they do for everything else, I guess.

Nothing Spanish about the Spanish flu either.

And, it seems to be going both ways:

theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/12/…

Gigili

5:02 PM

Oh, Mist. Wir hätten gestern Abend kein Rührei machen sollen.

ich frage mal die Nachbarn, ob sie uns noch drei Eier geben, dann können wir endlich backen.

Robusto

5:16 PM

@Gigili Mist has to be the mildest epithet in German. So mild they even taught it in my high school. But why your issue with eggs, why here, and why auf Deutsch?

Gigili

Because I am trying to make sentences with baking related words

Robusto

@Gigili You need a modal in ob sie uns noch drei Eier geben. Something like kann, perhaps.

Gigili

@Robusto I like it, sounds like sneeze noise.

Robusto

Well, @RegDwigнt can probably tell you whether it sounds like little old lady speech or not.

Gigili

@Robusto I was unsure about that too, but it sometimes is left out e.g. ich kann Deutsch

But you are probably right about that, sounds weird.

Robusto

5:29 PM

@Gigili Not the same case. in Ich kann Deutsch the verb is left out because it is implied, not the modal.

In English what you have is "if they give us three eggs" ... and it should be "if they can give us three eggs".

Or if they will or if they might, etc.

And, of course since Nachbarn is plural you would use können, not kann.

My stupid brain read Nachbarn as Nachbarin ...

Gigili

@Robusto Right

I like how they mock German language in American movies. I was watching good fight the other day, a pissed man said in a nagging tone, "I can't believe I spent 3 months trying to learn German ischhh nischht..."

Robusto

6:05 PM

@Gigili Never saw that one.

Robusto

6:20 PM

Iran building large burial plots in Qom

RegDwigнt

7:22 PM

@Robusto ayup. In English you have to say that.

But this is German, so you actually don't.

What @Gigili has there is not just grammatical, but indeed exceptionally idiomatic.

The Abend is only capitalized following the new rules, though.

Following the traditional rules, it must not, for it is not used as a noun but as an adverb.

And the endlich is questionable not grammatically, but semantically. I'm struggling to picture the situation in which this sequence of sentences is legit.

In the first one, you only just realized that you don't have enough eggs left. In the very next one, you make it sound as if you've been looking for a solution to that problem for quite some time now and so you say screw that, let's just ask the neighbors and get the ball rolling at long last.