English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

CowperKettle

00:55

> Sweden carried out a record number of new coronavirus tests last week with only 1.2% coming back positive, the health agency said on Tuesday, the lowest rate since the pandemic began at a time when countries across Europe are seeing surges in infections.

SmokeDetector

01:13

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body, pattern-matching website in body, potentially bad ns for domain in body, potentially bad keyword in body, blacklisted user (264): What was it like doing so job around the start of the global pandemic? by Dingbest on english.SE

Mitch

03:26

@Robusto Pfft. That's exactly my problem, I read everything sincerely as possible, sincerelyly. I can give it but not take it.

CowperKettle

06:38

> Black, Hot Ice May Be Nature’s Most Common Form of Water

Wow

Word of the day: superionic ice

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch Thank you. And I'm also reasonably sure that I didn't disappear from the Universe, and pop back in. Though these days, who can tell what's true.

Some days I feel like I'm living in Mark Twain's novel "The Mysterious Stranger".

CowperKettle

I wonder what superionic ice cream tastes like

Faheem Mitha

I wonder if aliens (should they exist), would use idioms.

Humans really love them.

CowperKettle

In my region, the state statistics service has made classified the covid statistics starting from July

They are refusing to publish the figures for August

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle I've got pretty good evidence that our local municipality (the BMC), who are basically incompetent corrupt scum, are testing people, saying they are COVID-19 positive when they're not, and putting them in quarantine. Oh, and refusing to give people their test results.

I wrote to a few outlets about this, but was ignored.

I wonder who would win in a Russia vs India contest.

CowperKettle

06:51

Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation

The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), also known as Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), (formerly the Bombay Municipal Corporation) is the governing civic body of Mumbai, the capital city of Maharashtra. It is India's richest municipal corporation.The MCGM's annual budget exceeds that of some of India's smaller states. It was established under the Bombay Municipal Corporation Act 1888. MCGM is responsible for the civic infrastructure and administration of the city and some suburbs. In 2015, Trushna Vishwasrao became the first female corporator to serve as its leader. =...

12 million people, it's like Moscow in size

10 times the size of my city

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in answer (87): Phrasal prepositions ✏️ by LPH on english.SE

CowperKettle

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle More like 25 million, possibly including the suburbs.

CowperKettle

Mumbai Metro

The Mumbai Metro is a rapid transit system serving the city of Mumbai, Maharashtra, and the wider metropolitan region. The system is designed to reduce traffic congestion in the city, and supplement the overcrowded Mumbai Suburban Railway (colloquially called local trains) network. It is being built in three phases over a 15-year period, with overall completion expected in 2025. When completed, the core system will comprise eight high-capacity metro railway lines, spanning a total of 235 kilometres (146 mi) (24% underground, the rest elevated, with a minuscule portion built at-grade), and serviced...

Good thing, I love metros

We have only a single line

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle Oh yes, that nightmare.

CowperKettle

06:58

Construction stopped in 2012.

@FaheemMitha Nightmare? Is it overloaded with people?

Faheem Mitha

I suspect the real reason for that metro is to make Ambani richer.

@CowperKettle Just created chaos in the city in recent years. It's still under construction.

Plus, I personally look askance at anything involving reliance.

CowperKettle

Our line is completely underground, that helps alot

But it was built at a crawling pace.

The soil in the Urals is very rocky.

It's very hard to dig underground.

Faheem Mitha

Backstory: the current fascist ruler of India is very close to the Gujarati billionaires, Ambani and Adani. And is apparently busy giving away India to them in bits and pieces.

CowperKettle

And with Putin's invasion of Ukraine, all activities ground to a halt in 2014.

Faheem Mitha

I believe this is called crony capitalism, and is a very bad thing.

CowperKettle

07:00

Ah, corruption is bad.

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle Question: is Putin, bad, very bad, or very very bad?

I suppose I could add some more verys to that.

CowperKettle

@FaheemMitha There were rulers much worse than him in Russia's history. He is just "bad".

Faheem Mitha

The Reliance Group is now India's largest corporation by market capital. Its stock zoomed recently, in the middle of the pandemic. While half of India doesn't have enough to eat. This is called development.

@CowperKettle Interesting. In Russia's recent history?

CowperKettle

He is just trying to stay in power. With his age advancing, he has gotten more agressive.

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle Hmm. So he's not the Antichrist?

CowperKettle

07:03

@FaheemMitha Under Brezhnev, who ruled in 1965-1981, there was no free press, and people were put in psychiatry wards for political protest.

@FaheemMitha No, not even close. He is like a common medieval ruler who tries to stay in power and help out his billionaire friends.

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle Ah yes, the good old Soviet era. Did you have universal health care then? Assuming you are old enough to remember.

I thought the psychiatric thing was a general feature of the Soviet era.

Was it just Brezhnev, then?

CowperKettle

@FaheemMitha We still have universtal medical care. And thanks to the general advances in medicine, it must be generally better than in Brezhnev's era

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle The billionaire friends part sounds familiar.

@CowperKettle Oh, glad to hear it. Doing better than India, then.

CowperKettle

@FaheemMitha Brezhnev was a saint compared with Stalin.

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle I'm sure he was.

CowperKettle

07:05

I think Stalin ang Ivan the Terrible top the list in terms of atrocity.

Faheem Mitha

But what I was asking was whether putting political activists in psychiatric hospitals was particularly a feature of the Brezhnev adminstration.

Do you have a free press now?

CowperKettle

Yes

All state-controlled press is unfree though

All TV stations

@FaheemMitha There have been several cases under Putin recently

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle All TV stations are what?

@CowperKettle Hmm.

CowperKettle

All TV stations that are aired in the coutnry are controlled by Putin, and it's 100% state propaganda. The just omit mentioning some protests.

Faheem Mitha

Sounds nasty. At least that's something that has not happened in India. Yet.

CowperKettle

07:09

@FaheemMitha The so-called shaman who was traveling on foot to Moscow in order to perform a magical ceremony to "expel" Putin was put under psychiatric care a couple of times.

Габышев, Александр Прокопьевич

Алекса́ндр Проко́пьевич Га́бышев (род. 22 ноября 1968, Якутская АССР, РСФСР, СССР) — российский общественный деятель, оппозиционер, называющий себя шаманом-воином. В 2019 году организовал публичную общественную акцию протеста в форме пешего марша по маршруту от Якутска до Москвы. 12 мая 2020 года принудительно госпитализирован в Якутский республиканский психоневрологический диспансер. 25 июня 2020 года международная правозащитная организация «Мемориал» объявила его политзаключённым. == Биография == === Происхождение === Александр Габышев родился 22 ноября 1968 года. Учился на историческ...

Alexander Gabyshev, a self-proclaimed "shaman"

He is not insane, it's just his political position.

The authorities got afraid because in each town he passed on his way, people were gathering in crowds to support him.

A couple of dozen people joined him.

And they were accosted by the police numerous times under different pretexts, in order to intimidate them and disperse them. Which made the shaman more popular.

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle Is that legal?

CowperKettle

@FaheemMitha I dont think that a magical ceremony could be illegal.

After all, it brings no harm to anyone.

He would just dance around with a tambourine and stuff.

> Starting the journey in March 2019, Gabyshev walked more than 2,000 kilometers -- speaking with hundreds of Russians along the way. rferl.org/a/…

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle I meant putting him in a mental hospital.

Sorry for ambiguity.

@Cerberus Stage 6: The angels weep.

CowperKettle

@FaheemMitha My friend is a Moscow psychiatrist, and he think it was illegal. In Russia, one could be involuntarily hospitalized only if there is convincing proof of immediate danger to himself or to others.

He was clearly not in a state of psychosis, hence no danger to himself.

He was not presenting any immediate danger to other people.

The laws were quite creatively bent in order to get him hospitalized.

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle I see. And this happened recently?

CowperKettle

07:21

@FaheemMitha Yes, 2019 and 2020

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle Ok.

CowperKettle

A 14-year old girl was involuntarily committed to a psych hospital for being subscribed to a Columbine group in a social network.

This was about 10 days ago.

The girl's apartment was raided at 6 a.m. by a squad of police.

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle That sounds nasty. What's a Columbine group?

CowperKettle

A group discussing the Columbine-like incidents of school shooting.

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle Oh. Hmm.

CowperKettle

07:23

Russian Teens’ Online Chat About School Massacre Leads To Forced Psychiatric Treatment

Faheem Mitha

Oh, the topic of the group was possibly attacking schools? Or am I misunderstanding?

CowperKettle

Yes, but nobody knows if she really was plotting anything. You could just subscribe to a lot of groups in a social network

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle I understand. Certainly sounds like an extreme overreaction. And with no due process at all.

SmokeDetector

07:49

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Blacklisted user (71): Other word for 'spiel' by LPH on english.SE

M.A.R.

08:18

@CowperKettle now I want cake

How long do you warm up before exercise @Cowp?

@FaheemMitha I wonder if the aliens' language would be so mature it'd have idioms for idioms, whether they wouldn't use meaningful sentences in speech at all, or the sentences would be too long and quickly uttered for humans to comprehend

CowperKettle

08:32

@M.A.R. I'm very haphazard, thus I don't warm up at all, I just start jogging right away.

I used to do some basic warm up from a hatha yoga book, but that was more than 15 years ago.

CowperKettle

08:45

CowperKettle

08:58

I'm having a sore throat since morning, and I'm doing everything at a crawling pace. I'm basically trying to repeat the words in Anki, and it has taken me an hour and I'm still only 50% done.

CowperKettle

09:09

A list of wristwatches owned by Tatarstan's President. From a latest journalistic investigation.

He also owns several houses, each costing 1 billion rubles

They discovered that he owns property far beyond his official means.

Взятки. Дворцы. Самолёты. За что продали народ Татарстана

►

While my region, Sverdlovsk Oblast, is known for being relatively liberal, Tatarstan is known as being blatantly corrupt and "owned" by a single family clan.

The election figures from Tatarstan are constantly denounced as blatanly fraudulent.

CowperKettle

09:42

Word of the noon: stoping

> Stoping is the process of extracting the desired ore or other mineral from an underground mine, leaving behind an open space known as a stope

CowperKettle

10:13

Word of the minute: whiffling (Sometimes to whiffle, a bird flies briefly with its body turned upside down but with its neck and head twisted 180 degrees around in a normal position.)

RegDwigнt

10:34

@Cerberus so just now for the first time in my life I realized I don't know the difference between hebt and heeft. Is it "hebt u een link naar het stuk" or is it "heeft u een link naar het stuk". I feel like it can be either, but then what the fuck is the difference.

Gigili

11:40

@CowperKettle That's crazy, why would a bird do such a thing?

2

Trust me, that neck won't be the same after that twist

Faheem Mitha

@M.A.R. What I meant to say that perhaps idioms are a human peculiarity, and other sapien beings might (hypothetically) be more literal-minded.

Human language can be confusing even for humans, sometimes.

SmokeDetector

11:59

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at end of answer, potentially bad keyword in answer (62): What is the difference between fervor and ardor? by bikash sahu on english.SE

Cerberus

12:16

@RegDwigнt It can indeed be either! There is some debate about this question.

At the moment, I feel that heeft is very marginally better, but both are perfectly fine.

@FaheemMitha Exactly.

RegDwigнt

12:42

@Edwin Ashworth Thanks babe — neverturnedback 30 mins ago

Oh this is gold.

0

Q: Can I paraphrase a sentence in this way?

Can I make 'I have three pencils' into 'I have two pencils. I have one pencil'?

sentence

Walk in, walk in, everyone watch the show.

@Cerberus OIC. Well that's a bit anticlimactic.

In that case I'll go with heeft.

Hebt sounds like too little u and too much je.

Faheem Mitha

13:00

@Cerberus I don't know if you are aware of the Prashant Bhushan contempt cases (maybe I mentioned it here), but if you didn't, it's quite something.

So this guy wrote a couple of tweets making critical remarks about the judicary. And a decade ago he wrote an article about how half the recent Chief Justices were corrupt (probably an underestimate, if anything).

So the Supreme Court (who apparently has nothing better to do, with enormous numbers of cases piling up), decided to prosecute him.

In many countries, this would simply be impossible, or at least wildly unconstitutional, because of separation of powers. But these idiots were using a British-era law.

The fact that it was a law passed by one of the largest and most brutal criminal organizations in history to help them keep a captive population subjugated wasn't enough of a clue that they might be doing something wrong.

Oops, sorry, meant to address that to @CowperKettle. @Cerberus please ignore.

The case that was just complated was about the tweets. They demanded an apology, but Mr. Bhushan declined to provide one. So they they fined him Rs. 1. Around USD 0.01, give or take.

I don't know what kind of international coverage this is getting, but it certainly deserves to get it.

Now they're about to have another case about what he said in 2009.

Mitch

13:19

> When the moon hits your knees and you mispronounce trees; sycamore

2

Mitch

13:30

@FaheemMitha There's too much loaded with 'aliens'. Most likely any animal that has the intelligence to plan a hunt together by communicating will also have semantic shifting of symbols, which is the source of literal vs figurative meanings.

Packs of wolves, -at this moment- are having prayer meetings before they go off to kill a moose. And the one dog at the back of the pack who is not really into the whole disembowelling thing feels a little low because he thinks the other dogs don't think he's cool.

Robusto

13:53

@Mitch What color is the sky in your world?

Mitch

@Robusto Today is cloudy/rainy/thunderstorms so can't tell by looking if the smoke has reached this far east.

Robusto

Same here.

Mitch

As far as dystopian futures go, it's more like Blade Runner (dark and rainy) and not Blade Runner 2049 (thick orange air).

Robusto

Interesting that I remember almost everything about the original Blade Runner and virtually nothing from the sequel. Part of that may be age, but not the major part.

Mitch

Same. I think that's just basic cognitive psych.1) we've had many more years of thinking and repeating things from the 1st, and 2) assuming they are of same quality and ... cogency? the first one is literally more primal (and the subject of the 2nd is just extra details.

a comparable but different example would be Star Wars/Empire Strikes Back. ESB is (arguably) the esthetically better movie, but as to plot to 1st one is more... outstanding just because it came first and ... well that's pretty tautological.

I'm trying to make my point by repeating my words more distinctly in my own head.

Robusto

14:08

The first Star Wars was just more fun. As soon as it became a hit, George Lucas began padding the script with self-satisfied "Star Wars Universe" hagiography. I liked it better when the whole franchise was an underdog.

And while it was tolerable with ESB and RotJ, once it got to Phantom Menace the whole thing was simply unwatchable for me.

I was sitting in the theater saying the next lines to my wife before they happened.

And oh yeah, that's really not the princess.

And oh yeah, who the fuck decided that it would be fun to watch a bunch of elected officials arguing?

And oh yeah, who decided Jar Jar Binks was going to add just the right touch of seasoning to that ugly stew?

Jun 12 at 1:37, by Robusto

The last Star Wars I saw was Phantom Menace, which was about as much fun as a meeting of the Soviet Politburo.

@Mitch Have you convinced yourself yet?

Mitch

The Death of Stalin is pretty good. I couldn't anticipate -any- lines in that.

@Robusto Oh I'm totally convinced. But the words come out are no different.

Robusto

@Mitch I've heard that. Not seen it yet, though.

Mitch

It's like the Pythagorean theorem is so obvious, but if you want a proof, I can give it to you, but it turns out I'm jus saying the theorem over again.

@Robusto It's really hard to tell what's fiction and what's not.

Robusto

I think we probably have a harder time remembering movies these days simply because there are so fucking many of them now. I saw Blade Runner in a theater, but I haven't seen anything in a theater since I have had a huge flat-screen TV and my choice of Netflix, HBO, Amazon Prime and whatever the hell else.

I used to go to the movies at most once a week, but now it's hard not to see something every day.

There didn't used to be such a thing as binge-watching.

Mitch

Movie theaters were ---dying---slowly losing customers long before 2020. But some movies are still being made where the big screen really makes it great.

LIke Dunkirk (or 1917) or ... well... I'm sure some other non killing movie.

Robusto

14:18

Lassie Come Home?

Mitch

Maybe... what was the sequel to that?

Lassie rips the throat out of some shoplifter.

There's a touching scene where the mom washes the blood off of Lassies thick beautiful fur and finds an ear in it.

I almost wept.

Robusto

@Mitch Lassie Comes Home—Again.

Mitch

Because it was -my- ear.

I could finally see what I looked like from the side.

Robusto

@Mitch That was the comic relief.

Mitch

It's that kind of artistry that touches the soil

@Robusto Oh yeah...that was when the series really came into its own.

Like Road Warrior.

Robusto

14:23

Yeah. Curiously, I really liked—and remember very well—the latest Mad Max, Fury Road. I thought it was probably the best one yet.

Very little dialogue, but lots of great film.

And Charlize Theron kicks ass no matter what she's in.

She was a one-armed woman in an ass-kicking contest.

Mitch

I have way more memories of Mad Max and Road Warrior that flood out the newer one.

Robusto

I loved the whole metal-band-on-a-trailer motif.

Mitch

hm... but I have more memories of Fury Road than I do of Blade Runner 2049

@Robusto the only word for that is awesome.

Robusto

And the "blood bag" thing.

Mitch

yeah...lots of little details that were really great.

spraying some silver metal thing in your mouth to get hyped up

the fire tornado

Robusto

14:28

Road Warrior was probably next best. Mad Max the original I found pretty ho-hum.

Mitch

( a little too close to real life though)

Robusto

@Mitch Yes.

Mitch

the swing poles to lean over a person into another car

Robusto

And the fact that they didn't explain anything, just let you figure it out as you went along.

Mitch

@Robusto I liked the first one as a prequel (even though it wasn't it was released that way in the US I think)

Robusto

14:31

Well, it was a de facto prequel for me, since I only saw it after Road Warrior.

CowperKettle

15:47

@FaheemMitha It's quite sad to hear! I hope India's democratic system will allow the country to get better gradually.

Word of the day: Ready to Answer Bells (nautical)

Faheem Mitha

16:20

@Mitch I think it's a big leap to assume that animals have a language. I don't know what the current status of that is, but the last I heard the jury was still out. And surely you need some sort of stable natural language to have idiomatic usage, because it's the froth on the top.

I was just speculating that human style idiomatic usage isn't an inevitable byproduct of sapience.

Or, more precisely, the natural languages employed by a sapient being for communication.

Mitch

@FaheemMitha Oh the jury is in and the great majority of animals, even mammals, have nothing anywhere close to humans.

But some animals can communicate with what could be called single sign gestures.

And words are not thoughts.

and the gestures, like words, are somewhat arbitrary.

and so that arbitrariness can slip.

@FaheemMitha And I'm just disagreeing. That how language is created in animals is a very slow non-logical process. It's not some error-correcting Hamming Code, designed mathematically.

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch I wasn't aware that had been definitively determined.

The sort of idiomatic usage I'm thinking of does involve the precision of a precisely defined language, relatively speaking. As in, a written one. With dictionaries, and rules of grammar and the suchlike.

I wasn't talking about slippage per se. That would be more akin to the state of the English language before Johnson's dictionary sort-of stabilized the language, or so I've heard.

So variant spellings and even variant word usage were legion.

Animals don't have a written language, or an alphabet, and can't encode their communications in a series of 0s and 1s if they so desire.

Faheem Mitha

17:10

@Mitch That sounds like something out of SF. I've heard animals don't intentionally practice cruelty, but I don't know if that is delusion, wishful thinking, or something else.

Cerberus

@FaheemMitha I suppose that depends on one's definition of 'intentional'...

Faheem Mitha

@Cerberus I suppose it does.

But it's hard to define something so intrinsically subjective.

Cerberus

@RegDwigнt Exactly: normally, one would expect the third person verb with U, like ga je weg? / gaat hij weg? → gaat U weg? (there is no doubt it must be heeft). However, with the verb zijn, U bent is strongly preferred by almost everyone: U is sounds provincial or possibly archaic. So it would be logical to use is, but alas. With hebt/heeft, the form heeft is possible, so let's choose the most logical form.

@FaheemMitha Exactly.

When you see a cat play with its prey, it looks cruel enough.

Knight

17:59

@M.A.R. Hi! I can find with a google search (and I found) what it generally means, but I want to know how you understand this holy word

> ALHAM DUL ILLAH

Mitch

@FaheemMitha There has been years of research in animal cognition and communication. only a handful of gorillas and chimpanzees, after many years of training, have been able to learn a large handful of sign language, which for these animals is mostly nouns (which means it is difficult for nonhuman animals to figure out how to do what humans do. But that doesn't mean that animals don't have their own way.

But similarly many years of research have gone into understand native animal communication, and similarly nothing anywhere near the complexity of human language has been found. But -that-'s not to say that we might miss a lot (maybe all those weird clicks dolphins are doing are recitations of the dolphin versions of Homer's Odyssey). So pretty conclusively animals can't do language (except maybe at the fringes).

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch An absence is hard to prove.

Mitch

@FaheemMitha A dictionary is not language. Spelling is not language.

Faheem Mitha

There seems to be some evidence that dolphins do communicate. But the specifics are murky. Though it would need a specialist to say where the matter stands.

@Mitch No, but they do help to pin it down.

Mitch

@FaheemMitha THat's a fine sentiment but 'lots and lots of research' and coming up with very little is considered a good way to show that something probably doesn't exist.

Faheem Mitha

18:04

@Mitch I don't know how much research has been done, or what kind of research it was. And they may be looking for something different than the reality.

Perhaps they communicate in ways that are hard for humans to recognize.

But of course, this is all speculation.

Mitch

@FaheemMitha What does 'pin it down' mean? If it means to talk -about- language, sure, consistent spelling helps with communicating by reading. But something magical didn't happen to the English language the day the Johnson's book was published. Do you think Sanskrit popped into existence out of the chaotic void when Panini wrote his grammar?

Faheem Mitha

And I wasn't talking about animals, anyway.

Mitch

@FaheemMitha Then all I can say is you should do a lot of reading.

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch No, but the language certainly did stabilize around that time.

I'm not saying that Johnson's directory was the only thing.

@Mitch Sorry, I don't have that kind of time.

Mitch

@FaheemMitha Do you mean English?

Faheem Mitha

18:06

@Mitch Yes, English.

Mitch

@FaheemMitha That's what communication is for, so that someone else can figure out things and then tell you, rather than having to do all the work yourself.

@FaheemMitha But English is not language.

English is only one language

Why isn't French the standard?

Or Latin?

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch Reading scientific articles is hard work. Understanding them is even harder. And I don't have the background, anyway.

Mitch

@FaheemMitha OK.

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch I was just talking about the English language. Similar comments probably apply to other languages.

But I'm not familiar with them.

Mitch

If you want to corroborate what I've told you, you'll need to read someone else in addition.

Faheem Mitha

18:09

For example, Austen's novels were published around 200 years ago. But it's striking how close they are to Modern English. Go back 200 years further, and the language is definitely different. 200 years earlier, and it's almost incomprehensible.

@Mitch It's not my highest priority.

Mitch

@FaheemMitha OK. But that just goes right back to spelling. Only spelling was made a bit more consistent by one particularly well publicized dictionary plus a lot of public school teaching. But again, spelling is not language.

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch Something definitely slowed down language mutation at that point.

The late 18th century, I'd say.

Mitch

@FaheemMitha I wouldn't expect it to be a high priority for you. That's why to get any info on a subject without having to do all that extra work, you'd have to trust what others say about it.

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch Well, that's the problem. Knowing who to trust. But you probably know that feeling too.

Mitch

@FaheemMitha Sure. maybe.

Faheem Mitha

18:12

I do a lot of reading. But scientific reading is just very hard. And like I said, it's outside my background, anyway.

Mitch

@FaheemMitha I'm saying all this stuff about trust because you seem to have mistrusted some of the claims I've made.

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch I have trust issues. I think everyone should. It's a dangerous world out there.

Mitch

So, as to what started all this... animals don't communicate like humans. They certainly do communicate but it is terribly impoverished in comparison.

But...

Faheem Mitha

If you recall, I was talking about aliens, not animals...

Mitch

Yes, you said aliens and since knowledge of them is unattainable I turned it to animals.

Faheem Mitha

18:16

I was just trying to make a point about how humans use language. I use a lot of idioms myself, but I guess it's always struck me as a bit odd that humans do. Just... idiosyncratic. Also, unnecessary.

One can imagine a world where people don't.

@Mitch People really don't know that much about animals either.

Probably Jane Goodall knows something about primates, but she's probably also the exception.

Mitch

@FaheemMitha Your original point was about wether aliens would use metaphors.

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch Idiomatic usage of language. Including, but not limited to metaphors.

Mitch

@FaheemMitha Did you not just read what I said about 'lots and lots of research'?

Faheem Mitha

That's just one specific thing.

@Mitch I did.

Mitch

@FaheemMitha Sure. 'non-literal' use.

Faheem Mitha

18:18

@Mitch Right.

Mitch

@FaheemMitha So you don't trust what I said then?

Faheem Mitha

Like synecdoche, for example.

@Mitch It's not that I don't trust what you said. But it's hard to prove a negative.

And really science doesn't know much about anything, especially complicated things like animals. It mostly just tells us about our limitations.

It does fairly well with elementary particles and suchlike, though.

And the elements that they make up.

Beyond that it's increasingly iffy.

I should point out that 20 years of a math background (or whatever it was), it calculated to make one a sceptic, leaving natural leanings out of the equation.

Math is full of things that look like they should be true, but aren't. And that's within the confines of an axiomatic system.

For a long time people thought series that were divergent were actually convergent. For example.

Synecdoche has always struck me as a bit curious, personally. I feel no personal inclination to refer to things in this manner, but apparently many do.

Mitch

@FaheemMitha I explained how to confirm a negative with high probability. You do 'lots and lots of research' that shows nothing.

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch I do know what high probability means. That doesn't actually prove anything. It's just a statistical statement. Note that probability zero events can still happen.

Mitch

OK.

CowperKettle

18:29

Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin, 30 July: "We expect the figures to stay in a corridor of 650 to 700 new cases per day"
Novaya Gazeta (a major newspaper that is not under Putin's censorship), 22 August: "Were the corona figures forged?"

This high-profile publication shook the authorities into producing a more realistic curve.

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle India is now at 90k a day and rising. It's extremely unlikely these are the true figures.

CowperKettle

@FaheemMitha I'm very sorry! 90K a day is horrible.

Faheem Mitha

@CowperKettle Yes, it is. I'm not sure how scared we should all be.

And most of India doesn't have anything resembling proper health services.

M.A.R.

@Knight "Thank God"

That Romanization is odd. Hamd is a single word meaning praise. Allah is the Islamic God. Li is a sort of preposition meaning "for". Alhamdu-lillah, praise be Allah. "Al" is a definite article or particle or something. But it works like "the".

M.A.R.

19:07

Whiffling is legit, BTW

(cc the folks who starred the incredulity)

@FaheemMitha Whoa

@CowperKettle so you do have newspapers that are not censoring things

Cerberus

19:36

@CowperKettle Haha very nice.

Robusto

21:37

Cerberus

22:09

@Robusto Haha smart.

The Jewish bowl could just as well have said "Dutch".

Matt E. Эллен

22:24

@FaheemMitha the book is "Introduction to the theory of computation" by Michael Sipser

tchrist

22:39

At precisely the same instant, the first two of these are in Mountain Time and the third is in Pacific Time:

#1: In Denver, it is now 2020-09-10 16:24:09 -0600 (MDT). #2: In Phoenix, it is now 2020-09-10 15:24:09 -0700 (MST). #3: In Los Angeles, it is now 2020-09-10 15:24:09 -0700 (PDT)

. Which of those three are the ‘same time’ as each other? The two in Mountain Time, even though one has 16:24:09 and the other has 15:24:09? The two that think it’s 15:24:09 even though one is in MST and the other in PDT? All three of them? None of them? Still think ‘Standard’ is dispensable⁈ 😈 — tchrist ♦ 13 mins ago

Time zones: Just Say No. :)

Faheem Mitha

@MattE.Эллен What is that book for?

Robusto

23:55

@tchrist I go through that shit every time I drive to California.

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