He claimed that because it's an infectious disease, it cannot be controlled. Pretty sure the CDC and NIH know better.

Yeah. We're closing in on full occupancy hospitals here.

Oh look, it's Ebola! Oh well, can't control it, it's infectious.

@Robusto That has to be very very worrying to your governor.

It is.

Have we ever found a way to avert the inexorably exponential growth short of lockdown?

I mean pre-vaccination.

I don't know. I don't really understand how one week it's declining and the next it's accelerating out of control. It's not like anything changed.

@tchrist How do you define lockdown?

Wisconsin is a microcosm of America today

> Today, the grounds are host to a field hospital for treating coronavirus patients, row-upon-row of stark white beds to accommodate overflow from the state’s beleaguered medical centers.

The reproduction number in Holland.

@Robusto Read that.

@Robusto I think something turned around 4 to 6 weeks ago.

And still the Republicans think Trump is the One True Saviour.

@tchrist I wonder if we are experiencing the much more contagious version of the coronavirus now.

@Cerberus No congregating of anyone anywhere.

Closing schools, bars, restaurants, and 'contact professions' like barbers, forbidding all events, and urging people to keep their distance was enough to keep R well below 1 for a long time.

All shops remained open, and no mouth caps.

@Cerberus That feels like full lockdown to me. Is it rising despite that now?

@tchrist Schools and cafés reopened in summer.

That's probably when R began to rise above 1 again.

Well, schools only opened by the end of August, of course.

What's the difference between a bar, a restaurant, and a café? What's a café?

I suppose bar, pub, and café are synonyms?

They mainly serve drinks.

I don't know. That's why I asked.

Whereas restaurants mainly serve food, and everyone is seated.

Oh. No drinking.

Alcohol is a problem.

Drinking, but less, and seated.

The biggest problem is drinking and walking, I suppose.

No, breathing. :)

But all restaurants are closed now here.

Well, yes, breathing. But that is independent of alcohol, mostly.

I suppose people tend to speak louder with alcohol.

Alcohol makes people dumb.

So alcohol is bad for everything.

Yes.

They stop being careful.

But restaurants are praesumably much better than cafés, ceteris paribus.

Exactly.

I don't know.

One factor I do not hear people talk enough about is music.

Here a café is usually a restaurant that serves breakfast and lunch only, not supper.

Loud music (as in most cafés) requires that you shall bend over close to your interlocutor's face and shout.

In Spain it's a place to get your coffee, or a light snack. They do have alcohol there though.

@tchrist Oh, really. I had no idea.

@Cerberus My neighborhood café is open from 7am till 2pm only.

And they're carryout only these days.

Oh, yes, take-away is allowed still.

Here's their breakfast and lunch menu. No suppers.

Because of the epidemic?

No, it's only a café. They aren't open for dinner.

It's just what a café does, or doesn't do, here.

It's like a supper joint isn't going to be open for breakfast.

OK.

Different from a lunch room?

@tchrist All so very exotic!

Except the Dutch sauce.

Here's another one.

> Hours: Monday - Sunday 7:30 am - 2:00 pm (last order taken @1:30pm)

I'm not sure we have anything with those times.

I think some close before dinner time, but not that early.

It's a pretty common closing time for a café or diner.

The point is that they serve only breakfast and lunch. No reason to stay open past then.

But serving tea is easy.

And beers and snacks around borreltijd.

Here, it is uncommon to find any such place that closes before compulsory closing time.

Which is normally 1 AM.

Because the evening is usually the busiest time.

They might open at 4 PM and close at 1 AM, never serving dinner or anything more than simple snacks.

Or they might open at 11 AM.

And here's another one. Opens 7am, closes 2pm.

More interesting menu, maybe.

America is filled with places that serve breakfast and lunch but not dinner. Very common.

Sure, we have those.

But they would not close so early.

They would continue to serve drinks into the evening.

Then you just attract drunks.

Well, not particularly.

People don't go looking for lunch after 2pm.

No reason to be open.

And here’s Mickie's Dairy Bar in Madison, Wisconsin. Hours 7am till 2pm.

I mean, sure they have a Dinners section the menu, but they're still kicking you out at 2pm. :)

@tchrist But they may go looking for tea or drinks.

@Cerberus Like Starbucks?

"Looking for drinks" sounds like you want a bar.

Not a cup of tea. :)

@tchrist Uhh that is a bleh chain.

I'm not talking about those.

But never mind.

Joni's Diner actually stays open till 3pm.

Maybe it's best to call these breakfast joints that also serve light lunches.

@Cerberus Coffee shops?

Damn it, now I'm hungry.

That term has a different meaning here.

@Cerberus Oh right. We call those pot shops. :)

@tchrist I think the technical term for "breakfast joint" is actually "wake and bake."

@tchrist Better.

@Robusto After a foot of snow, they're letting residents back into Estes Park. No structures was lost there or at the east RMNP entrance. I believe some minor outbuildings were lost in the west part of RMNP. But Grand County lost 300–400 homes, including those of 5 firefighters and 2 dispatchers, who all still came to work without a home to return to.

> (CNN)A tropical depression east of Mexico strengthened Sunday morning into Tropical Storm Zeta and could reach the US Gulf Coast by midweek.

It's exceeding rare to have a Z storm. :)

Even weirder when you realize that that means it's the 27th not the 26th named storm of the season.

> The fire had split into two fingers around a burn scar inside the park, running to the south between Steep Mountain and Bierstadt Lake, and to the north along a ridge above Moraine Park, where Livingston said firefighters used burnout techniques to check its spread.

Hm, an existing burn scar? Let's see which one.

I think it was the one from 2012, but I'm not positive. That indentation in the northeast is where the entrance is, and the long red bit labelled 2012 might be what it skirted around.

Yeah, I think that was the one.

Fern Lake was 3500 acres. This one was 3000 acres yesterday, in the part east of the Divide.

Amazing how much fire that area has seen in the past centuries. More amazing still is how much better the full East Troublesome Fire's extent was, counting its western part.

@tchrist They have records going back to 1493?

Impressive.

@Cerberus I've been thinking about that for the past several years, and particularly last night. Since it's a recurring point in our discussions, I thought I'd add my personal, if selfish, perspective to it too: even if this rule vanished tomorrow, I'd still be haunted for the rest of my life by the dreams and passions of my childhood and my youth that went to waste because of it.

I won't go into detail about that so I don't sound whiny. I said that as a matter of fact, not in order to elicit pity. And I think I'm among the luckier ones.

But that doesn't invalidate your perspective, of course. You've got a point: things are going to change. Perhaps for the better, based on some indications. But how much? In what conditions? How long from now? At what cost? I don't think the suspense is exactly killing anybody in anticipation.

We are back at top incidence levels seen in June and July. All hospitals are overloaded. Queues of ambulances. Too bad.

@Cerberus I thought pre-Islamic Iran was Zorastrian.

@Cerberus IIRC brought over by Macedonians when they conquered Iran. Heck, this historian said this local king hit on a young man from one of the Ashkani tribes and that's how Ashkanis united to make Iran whole again. But the historian that provided these details might be biased

@FaheemMitha The Sassanid empire sought to revise 'old' traditions and since its founder was the son of a . . . monk (God I hate it when I have to translate my thoughts into English) they raised the status of the Zoroastrian monks and allowed them to freely preach once more. Essentially, they aimed for a theocracy.

But fast forward 150 years and the fire temple became a corrupt, intricate net of connections and betrayals and mind games. People were disillusioned a bit, and even if they were practitioners of Zoroastrianism they hated monks and this itself immensely helped the Muslim invaders conquer then-Iran with little resistance.

Jeez stop chatting so much, how much do I have to scroll.

@Færd Dafuq! First time I'm hearing this.

I've seen numerous female cyclists when I cycled. They often even have a better hijab than pedestrians, so I thought they would promote it to give off a false aura of respecting women rights?

@Cerberus Notably, a very small number of people compared to everywhere else cycle here. Unimaginably small. Cyclists aren't respected, they're essentially invisible on the roads. Women rights in cycling is hardly the only thing to improve about it.

@Cerberus With due respect to Fard, I think he is once again fixating on probably something written in some legal manuscript everyone has forgotten about. That I never ever knew such a law existed speaks volumes about how much it really is enforced. It's of course a good thing to strive to be inclusive, but these sort of outrages serve nothing but to give off a hyperbolic, barbaric and primitive image of Iran, so it gets my goat a bit.

It's insane that such a rule even exists if it's not enforced, but at least it means people are not without common sense here. If such a rule were indeed enforced, it would have implied a considerable portion of the population are too sexist to care, and I despise that implication. Sure, there are many sexist people here, but not just because they 'tell women to work in a kitchen'

@Cerberus so the elite = citizens?

@Færd This is very true

I think homosexuality is an ignored topic for most people. The state is of course homophobic, but they haven't represented people ideologically for who knows how long.

Among the very many hot topics to discuss on which Islam or the version preached by the regime differ from western influences, the stance on homosexuality is oddly almost entirely ignored.

Most people (like me) never had an encounter with a gay person to decide whether they should love or hate them.

Of course it's frowned upon in religious contexts, but everyone is very quickly forgetting what the texts are saying anyway.

@tchrist Heh, I've probably never had this year a lunch earlier than 2 p.m.

Is everyone really so punctual about their meal times abroad?

@CowperKettle This is one of the 3 a.m. thoughts

But, as usual, they keep missing the point eyeroll

@M.A.R. I would expect that you have had more encounters with gay people than you realise, but when people are persecuted they learn how to hide well. There's no way for you to know someone is gay just from meeting them.

@MattE.Эллен That's true, but what it also says is that gay people blend in so well with people that there wouldn't be any stereotypes for homophobes to fixate on for their hating.

Personally, I just tend to care very little about how people look or sound like. Makes life much easier.

aye

@M.A.R. Where did you get the idea that I wanted to depict a barbaric picture of the Iranians? I already said that some women do cycle in public.

It's like hijab itself: many, if not most, people are actively violating the "decency" laws in their day-to-day normal lives, and thus shifting the cultural norms and undermining restrictions from above.

And it's not just something on paper that everyone's forgotten about. Women in more conservative cities like Isfahan and Mashhad are struggling to be able to continue to cycle in public, against the barrage from the Imams of Friday who are always reminding them that it's haram to do so, and the ad-hoc operations of the morality police.

@M.A.R. Minorities should not be expected to "blend" and become invisible. They only do that under this or that kind of oppression. In this regard, as opposed to the cases of hijab and cycling, I do think that we live in a deeply homophobic society.

This from the Leader himself: "It's haram for women to cycle in public.". I rest my case.

And here's a funny one from the Leader himself, where he manages to be racist and sexist at the same time: "A Tehrani girl that goes and cycles on the streets is not like a Chinese girl. The Chinese are such that you can't tell whether this person is a male or a female.".

@Færd And my point is no one listens to that. Their position is insane, sure, but very few people uphold these rules (the nutjob morality police guy that does the sporadic ad hoc reprimanding) so sighing in exasperation that things would probably not improve because of these sparse isolated events is unnecessary.

@Færd Well, perhaps I did not express myself clearly. IMHO any designation of sexuality is indecent, be it hetero- or homo-. We don't need people to show off their genitals, we simply shouldn't care. That's IMHO the inclusive utopia to aim for. So if homosexuals 'blend' in by not wearing outlandish clothes, that's pretty good in my opinion. (Of course, the more drastic forms of 'blending in', like marriages they're not at all interested in, are oppressive)

@M.A.R. And my point was that the restrictions are more real in some areas than others. And at some level, they are ubiquitous. Just an example: have you ever seen or heard of a cycling contest for women?

@Færd Deviation from common sense (zomg people in the country X do this) is the most fundamental aspect of xenophobia. So a mental image of the Iranian society being so strict and primitive that women are afraid of cycling, which I thought the way you ignited the discussion projects, deviates from common sense and exaggerates the differences between cultures.

@M.A.R. Not at all what I said.

@M.A.R. Could you please explain why visible sexuality or sexual orientation is indecent in your mind?

@Færd Nope, but with the exception of 'Azerbaijan tour', I've heard of very few cycling contests in general. Cycling's just so unfathomably unpopular here. Underground 'women's rights' activist in Iran probably don't ask people to push for more women cyclists, because cycling itself is relatively uncommon and mostly confined to a narrow stage of life

@Færd I think people should show off what they have done, not what they are. Being a white or black person or belonging to a sex shouldn't be awarded with any social karma.

@M.A.R. So you're okay with restricting what people can do or wear or identify as based on this idea?

(I know it is, and some of the oppression is the oppressive race/sex/ethnicity getting social karma and more tangible awards for who they are, but two wrongs don't make a right in my opinion.)

@Færd Now that's a leap of logic, and it's precisely against not caring who people are.

By the same token, you should be against smae-sex marriages too.

Marriage is a single ceremony defined in a specific time range.

Well, it's not about being awarded for your sexuality, race, or whatever. It's about being recognized for what you are. Is that indecent too, if I'm gay, to want to be recognized as such?

Well, recognized as in being allowed the same opportunities in life as other people? Sure. Recognized as in let me walk in front of everyone and yell that I'm gay, probably not. That's a jerk move for a hetero- person doing it to the gays as much as it is for a gay person doing it to a crowd of hetero- people. Emphasizing differences, especially ones that can't be helped, is not the way to be inclusive.

Marriage is also often a ceremony of two (or more) people binding together in love and probably have an intimate sexual relationship. It's socially inseparable from your sexual representation of yourself.

BRB lunch

Bon appetit.

@Færd I think it's just as stupid to go nuts on social media that you married twelve years and five months ago for hetero- people as it is for gay people

But it's not indecent, is it?

At least not if it's a heterosexual marriage! So why should it be indecent for gay marriages, is my question.

@M.A.R. I don't have a problem with oppressed people and minorities using their basic rights in society (freedom of speech and expression, etc) to parade who they are in front of everybody else. It can go too far (through unhinged identity politics and political correctness, etc), sure, but essentially the freedom to do so is very important. And it does serve a purpose: people become aware that the norms of their society is inhospitable for some of its members.

As long as there are systemic oppressions going on, the oppressed are more than justified to unite and fight against the system under the banner of their shared experience.

So if somebody is offended by a gay person wearing a rainbow shirt or marching in a gay parade or a woman removing her hijab, maybe they should look in the mirror first and ask themselves what those people are trying to tell me.

Interested to hear your thoughts after your lunch. Talk to you soon.

@Færd I think a message of "I'm being discriminated against, dammit!" can be sent without "I'm proud of who I am because of who I am". I think oppressed people want the former, but then are told by hypocrites to cling on to the latter because it would send the message better or something, which is untrue. Sure, we should be "proud" of ourselves and the things that we consider our identity, and defend them when needed, but the need to shoehorn it in the face of people with different . . .

identities alienates the folks who share the same values, and that's when it goes too far.

The line is blurry of course but I'm trying to draw a distinction as best as I can.

@Færd And to fight against the system is to rally the indifferent opinions to your side, not by alienating them by emphasizing differences that can be helped.

Essentially, certain entities are looking for some selfish gain from every social movement. They push oppressed people to make the same mistake that the oppressors in power do: Different identities move from being embraced to tolerated to unacceptable.

I've had gay rights activists tell me that every non-LGBT+ person is homophobic to some extent. That sort of perspective, no matter how true, opens up venues for "reverse discrimination", "positive discrimination", "affirmative action" or whatever else it's called.

If I couldn't apply for a job at the US company X before because I was a brown (?) Iranian, and now they would choose me over an individual with the same or better qualifications because I am a brown Iranian, this is just as wrong as before.

And meanwhile, while we're at it, systematic oppression can evolve and go on with other names like nothing has happened, like for me not being able to apply because of "national security" reasons or that I have a chance to be a "terrorist" or whatever.

A black woman not being able to apply for a racist school board because "statistically, black women are less educated"

Pretty sure the versions for homosexuals exist as well.

BBL

Disagree. All things being equal between you and a white applicant (in a country where white people are the privileged class), then they should choose you as you bring diversity, which is a virtue in itself. The more diverse a company culture the less hostile to minorities the culture will seem, so they are less excluded by default. It's a virtuous cycle.

@M.A.R. *can't

I mean, that's not facts, just my thought process

I'm actually distracted because I've been reading so much biochem lately I keep thinking LGBT+ has a positive charge

The non-superscripted positive is really jarring for me right now

@MattE.Эллен I guess the people in the company matter much more than the company's public image. On the one hand, one of the best ways to help Xist people become less Xist is exposing them to a nice X person. OTOH, what happens when rumors circulate that I wasn't any more talented than the people who didn't get the job? My every superficial mistake will become grave incompetence, and this very virtue will breed more hate

And let's not forget that you hear numerous anecdotes of Xist people changing not much, but instead saying things like "you're alright X, but X people are really stupid in general".

@MattE.Эллен Positive discrimination may have some advantages. But one problem with it is that it is unjust for the individual person.

Another is that it creates rancour.

So the net effect may very well be a more negative attitude towards the group of the day.

But injustice towards an individual person is a problem unto itself.

@M.A.R. If you're dehumanized because of this or that trait you have, then you have every right to assert your humanity while brandishing that trait. You can't oppose a deep-rooted discrimination with a neutral stance. You have to clearly call it out. Or at least you should have a right to do that. And what better way to do that than wearing your trait on your sleave?

And it won't be you driving a wedge in society and dividing people. The wedge already exists: it separates "normal citizens" from "the others". Those "others" have every right to expose it.

@M.A.R. Let's put the fringe examples aside for now. Look at the history of civil rights movements, gay rights movements, worker's rights, children's rights, women's rights: hard-won achievements after bitter fights and making many people uncomfortable in the process until they started to realize that they were in the wrong.

We could talk about the terms and conditions of those fights and struggels. Non-violence, no labeling people solely based on identity, etc. But that's after we acknowledge the strategy at the first step.

@Cerberus "All things being equal" was Matt's premise. Why should it be injustice against any of the choices who are otherwise equal if one of them was preferred based on secondary criterion like being a minority?

@Færd Because it introduces a new systemic injustice?

Besides, all things are never equal.

@M.A.R. "In the Shadow of Man" is a really good book. It's by Jane Goodall, who studied chimps in the wild in the 1960's. Chimps in zoos for the most part had been understood to be, while obviously clever, mostly docile. But studied in nature, she found lots of other human-like behavior: jealousy, lying, 'war' between groups, even outright murder. These weren;t everyday things, but they did happen.

Job applications are treated in highly arbitrary ways by organisations. Sure, a number of people will be eliminated early who are really lacking in objective requirements, and later some are eliminated who are really unsuitable socially; but the remaining candidates are chosen from in a highly arbitrary matter (which is necessarily the case, because suitability is rather unknowable in advance).

So the same person of background X will always be at a disadvantage if positive discrimination is applied.

I don't think one can draw the conclusion that these 'negative' characteristics are genetic, or even 'adaptive' (lead to more gene transfer than otherwise). It's easy to make a case that these are behaviors (non-genetic) that any sufficiently intelligent population will exhibit.

That's it, that's my TED talk.

And it could be a huge disadvantage. If he wants to work in a specific field where positive discrimination is rampant and jobs scarce, he could be might never be hired.

@Cerberus what is 'positive discrimination'?

@Cerberus except that if the majority of people are of background X (bgx), in which case positive discrimination it evens out the problem due to higher numbers of bgx people existing#

@Mitch Hiring someone just because he belongs to a certain group, when this group is irrelevant to the job.

@Cerberus So why not apply diversity criteria at the last stage where everything else is also arbitrary?

@Cerberus oh like the American 'Affirmative Action' or the Article 15 laws in India?

@MattE.Эллен But it will still be unjust and highly problematic to the individual at the wrong end.

@Cerberus I don't get the logical link implied by this "so"

@Mitch Probably.

I have to run, bye all!

bye!

@Cerberus but then what you're saying is people of bgx should be chosen because otherwise it's positive discrimination.

@Cerberus bye!

@Cerberus It's already -super- unjust and problematic to the -many- individuals in the minority non-prestige class.

Nice weather

@CowperKettle do you at least wear gloves?

my hands get cold real quick in the wind

@Mitch Yes, I weath thin gloves with rubber small bumps that allow the use of the iPhone

@CowperKettle pants. pants are also good.

The cheap disposable kind used during different kind of work

@Mitch I know

I haven't yet seen a person running without pants

@Mitch And speaking of qualifications relevant to the job, many of those are gained through advantaged access to social goods like education.

@CowperKettle I mean... I'm not really looking for it, but I think it would be pretty noticeable.

@Færd I think that is what is referred to as structural racism/discrimination. No one is actively being racist in their choices in hiring, but there are these inherent barriers in getting to the interview stage.

Is there a lot of group discrimination there? A slightly diffferent question, is there government representation of Kurds, Afghans, Baluchis, Azeris, Gilaki, etc etc in the national government? Or do they just tend not to try to be involved?

@M.A.R. I think that only happens with racists/sexists: "See? I knew they were terrible!"

Me, the class of people I can't stand are the incompetent.

They can be black, white, brown, yellow, wheat-colored, male, female, gay, straight—you name it. And they are legion. And they never do their jobs completely or correctly.

I hated working with them.

@Robusto Is there a preferred pejorative slur for the incompetent?

@tchrist Idiots? Imbeciles? Morons?

The people I prize and cherish are the ones who not only do their jobs but do it better than I can.

Call them the immensely competent. The thoroughly competent.

@Robusto I was hoping to provoke schlemiel out of you.

The incompetent need hardly be limited to those below average in intelligence.

klutz is another, but that's for physical screw-ups only.

It also includes the lazy, indolent, shiftless.

That.

The unreliable.

@tchrist Too esoteric for most Christians to fathom.

@Robusto It isn't enough to put the fires out, and they expect a resurgence in a few days when it gets warm and dry again. But it may have been enough to turn the tide of destruction.

@tchrist And has the snowfall helped?

They're letting some people back into the eastern parts of Estes.

A backwards ping! Well-played, sir!

Not your fault that I type faster than you.

I wasn't really trying.

When I realize it's a race I can type pretty damn fast.

Don't be racist.

Hey, I let you win, didn't I?

So having failed by never doing anything in the first place, now they're simply giving up?

These are the thoroughly incompetent that I mentioned earlier.

can't fail if you don't try!

you miss 0% of the shots where you're not aiming at the hoop

How did we get to such a state? Seriously.

I'm sure many a future historian will make tenure on this year alone

ah, yes. when a time travelling robot is sent to the wrong era

@Robusto They surrendered many months ago now.

To avoid being blamed for failure, say you didn’t even try in the first place and so you have not failed.

It’s a bit of a fox-and-the-grapes attitude.

“I can't reach those grapes way up high there hanging from the tree branch so they probably aren’t any good and I never really wanted them in the first place.”

@MattE.Эллен We are all such folk.

Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator is sent back in time to kill John Conner, but a freak accident sends him to Renaissance era Italy. The film is him pretending to be dead in a ditch and we learn about the people's lives of a nearby village.

@tchrist Actually, it's worse: they declared victory these many months ago.

Abrogating their responsibility to protect the people derogates the office of the presidency.

Scammers never come through.

Shirkers will shirk.

Scammers will scam.

Bananas will banan

ban?

@Robusto Mission Accomplished! —GWB

How're the cats?

@Robusto I think this is one of the best ways to choose to judge people with. So when it becomes a question of identity, choosing for competence is lost in the noise of all the identity profiling.

@skullpatrol Perched upon the heating registers.

niiice

@Robusto Sure but it's often controllable how often these preconceptions are enabled. Given enough wrong exposure, a normal person can become a racist

@skullpatrol ♬ Bana-nana-na-nana-na / She loves a gong bong and always will / Because a gong bong gives her such a thrill. ♬

:-D

@Færd well, as I said, there is behavior that enables the reverse sort of discrimination. A feminist that says "there should be equal opportunities" doesn't by their own accord enter the "men are pigs" or "buildings are phallic" territory. "Let's get together and celebrate our gayness" moves into "straight people are just a bunch of homophobes" territory.

An interesting case is vegans vs. antivegans. They both display the similar attitude.

Meat lovers gather and celebrate their meat love, and this then quickly escalates into "Vegans are <insert bad adjective>".

It's funny how we're even doing this to our dietary habits, but that's besides the point.

Vegans also gather in different places and celebrate eating celery, which then escalates into "wow, meat lovers are unhealthy morons" and "I make my dog eat vegan products"

The net result is Me The Normal Guy is equally repulsed by both sides. A self-declared vegan that seeks opportunity to argue with people online about how they are superior because their food is superior is an obnoxious asshole, simply because of the way they chose to preach their stance.

What's the exact phrase (I knew it but have forgotten) that someone have to give to someone (when court orders) for the mental agitation caused by it?

Similarly, a homosexual person that enters vicious circles of pats in the back decides to pick on every perceived heterosexual trait. By then the fight shifts to a war on other people's identities, not just fighting against discrimination.

@Knight "compensation for causing mental distress" or something like that. Or are you looking for more esoteric legal jargon?

For example, when some shop misbehaves/cheats a customer and the customer moves to the Consumer Forums, the court (once the customer wins the case) orders the shop to pay the cheating amount along with the compensations caused for mental distress by the shop to the customer.

@M.A.R. If we can get more legal I would surely like it.

dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=1239

Word of the day: jugaad (a non-conventional, frugal innovation, often termed a "hack")

so "compensation for mental anguish" is right?

Maybe some of the buzzwords here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_and_suffering

@Knight often with "caused"

@Knight Indian English

@Knight By reading the Facebook community "Science Humour"

oh!

An Indian guy commented there using the word jugaad, and I looked it up in Wiktionary

Today I learned, writing "I'm curious" before a personal question makes it polite :)

Here's a cool German word: Fisimatenten

Fish tents?

Much Fisimatenten about Nothing

yeah, @M.A.R. I'm curious (:D) why you found it cool?

It's long and obscure to an English speaker so may be used to sneakily shut them up in an argument I MEAN haha I guess it just is

Will the pronunciation be same if we write it as Visimatenten? Just curious and want to learn also.

@Knight I'm very far from the point where I would be able to say a yes or no to that with confidence, but probably yeah

I can't believe I wanted to be a mod a few years ago. Thank God that bullet was dodged.

On a brighter note, here's a biology pun to soften chat's atmosphere a bit

A new party has been registered in Russia, named "People Against Corruption". Guess who is the chair of the party? Putin's nephew. LOL.

first order of business: redefine corruption to suit us

@M.A.R. You're too ready to misinterpret those actions. For people who are culturally and structurally dehumanized all the time, it just means "We're humans too, and we won't have anyone not treating us as such anymore".

Of course it's going to spark outrage and misunderstanding in some people. But that always happens when social norms start to change and society starts to adapt.

@M.A.R. Interesting. I didn't know any of this. I suppose you know we have Zorastrians here. There's a temple a stones throw from where I live. Maybe two. The dentist I use is one. Parsi. He has a Zorastrian poster on his office wall.

But probably a lot of people know who the Parsis are. They're a fairly visible community internationally.

Do women in Iran have to cover up their bodies when they go out? Including their faces?

@M.A.R. You mean no gay person has ever declared himself or herself as such, to you. :-) Because your statement as written is statistically unlikely. Implying you've never met a gay person.

@Mitch Those are vastly different questions :)

This map shows the distribution of cabinet members (high ranking leaders in the executive) during the past 18 years by province:

Compare with this one, which is population by province:

But that only scratches the surface of your first question, as you might guess.

(the borders of some provinces have gone thru some changes some years ago, as is evident from the maps. comparison should still be possible)

@M.A.R. Both curiously and ambiguously phrased. Not sure what you mean here.